001good evening I will call the November 14th uh Cedar Springs public school school board meeting to order it is now 6 45 so if you would rise in 20 Pledge of Allegiance I apologize yes trustee Bowser here trustee Rivard here trustee vanderheide here Treasurer Gilmore here secretary slager here vice president shockner here president Reed here thank you Evan we have established a whole forum and next on our agenda is the adoption of the agenda and I would um accept emotion or as presented except for under action we would be removing action item a student discipline that was unnecessary so I would entertain a motion so support any discussion having none vice president shopner yes secretary slager yes treasure Gilmore yes Justine vanderheim yes Jesse Rivard yes trustee Bowser yes president Reed yes the agenda is
002adapted that brings us to gratitude and who opened her sharing from the board I had a really fun time going to the school play this weekend um I think they did a great job uh it was I thought it was really cool the way they didn't use props so much so when they decided to drive they just kind of did this and walked which was which was so that was super fun so I am grateful that we have a program that allows students to enjoy the Arts thank you anyone else grateful for all the hard work and stuff let me know people so I would attended the okay help me out Ron Career College boyfriends very LR life Readiness and that was very nice uh first time and well attended I thought and what I'm
003really grateful for is at lunchtime um one of the other vendors or business has asked what is New Beginnings and the two students at our table explained it was such um empathy and caring and really knew what how it helped the kids so that was very nice that reminded me of another one okay I'm thankful for the way uh they do um October with the seniors at the high school and we've been bugging our kids to our oldest uh no our oldest in high school uh to get cracking on flying to colleges and they were dragging their feet and finally they were at school and they applied to some places so get it yeah I'm grateful for the fact that we didn't have to call a snow day today despite the heavy snows that we
004received over the weekend um and I don't want to steal Ryan's Thunder because he's going to do some sharing which is that whole experience on a Friday morning for our high school students was very special and um yeah it's just something that is only going to gain momentum uh in multiple ways over time so is outstanding all right thank you and high school Representatives do what we have okay and who if you want to come to the podium and what is your name um [Music] we have just been working on holiday hallway decorating which will happen I believe the week before we go on winter break and we're basically doing Christmas movies for each of the hallways stuff like all the Grinch Etc and the junior Council has been beginning to play for prom We
005just started talking about that and that's basically always bring out to a disappointing doctor homecoming a week and all that thank you thank you now you have to sit through the rest of the meeting just kidding all right next up on our agenda is our consent items and I will entertain a motion for as presented so move to support vice president chapter yes secretary yes treasure Gilmore yes trustee vanderheid yes Jesse revart yes Jesse Bowser yes president three yes consistent items are approved as presented and beginning our discussion items first up we have our auditory reports and we have Mr Happy we are Mr Hackman from a partner at redevelopedner or it's Marty so originally you thought we had a you know disciplinary hearing so we asked him to be here at 7 15. we
006gave him that option um so I just I emailed him about uh 40 minutes ago let him know that that has been removed from the agenda and if he can make it so so as of now available I assumed it'll be here at 7 15. okay all right so if you give us the high side yeah okay so moving on then to the financial update all right I think we'll be pretty heavy on financial stuff to this board meeting so I'll be pretty brief with uh my presentation but a couple things I wanted to highlight um on the finance report I think the biggest thing that we need to be aware of is the fall count is still unaudited but right now our numbers are down 128 ftds from uh last uh October so that's
007a pretty significant decrease in our enrollment we did anticipate 25 of those related to uh the Reds program moving from Cedar Springs to the ISD so we knew that was going to be part of that we also anticipated a summary smaller kindergarten class but as you'll recall I project that we went down approximately 50 ftes so we are 78 more than that so at 128. so that's something we do need to keep an eye on obviously we're funded for pupils so I am so going through working on budget amendment one and uh my hope is to present uh budget amendment one to the board either at the December or meeting or the first meeting in January um with those numbers I'll I'll just be frank that uh the budget amendment one will significantly different than
008that was presented in June um because of that but also there there are some additional funding opportunities that have been made available to us uh since the budget was adopted back in June so something we definitely have to keep an eye on um you know rough estimate we're about down 400 ftese from uh 2020. um and then if you factor in what we had anticipated at all men doing we might be down six five or six hundred so it is a pretty sizable heat race um another thing to keep on your radar is I have presented the proposed schedule events for the series of two Bond issuance um we moved that I moved that up about a month originally they had we were anticipating an advanced sale closing in uh late April early May based
009on the cash flow projections and had them move that up about a month so we can meet our cash flow requirements and continue the construction projects does that does that mean that the construction is ahead of schedule or does that mean that we need more money now for what we've got scheduled the construction has to be faster than anticipated than the original so at the beginning of each project they do a cash flow protection so we have moved faster than what was originally projected also prior to Chris leaving and myself starting Chris invested some of the funds in some U.S treasury bonds to uh trying to capture a higher rate of return those funds will become become mature in April May and June of 23. so but we're locked in I mean we could we
010could sell them right but we would lose but uh right now approximately a hundred thousand dollars so combination of the cash going out has been a little bit faster than the original cash flow project projections and we have some of our funds in our kind of tied in tied up in Investments we can move up that well a little bit to alleviate that stress any any other questions okay let's we have proposed High School courses with Jen Haverly absolutely and I do have some friends here from the high school to share as well um we have several different courses on the docket for next fall one of them is a law and Justice course at the high school level and then we have some reconfiguration of our PE Department in terms of the names of
011courses and prerequisite that will be available so an overview an overhaul of a department at the high school level um Tamira what's been happening at the middle level so I'd like to ask Joe tuscarin from our high school to come on up and talk to you a bit about the law and Justice proposal so that you have a chance to ask any questions you might have about this elective course thank you all um my name is Joe testering students usually call me Coach T as the social today for the high school you may hear a slight Southern draw and originally from North Carolina for my first year in Cedar Springs I would like to know something that superintendents said earlier about the amount of snow that we had okay that's all enough precipitation to put
012aside school for like at least three days so I'll be free uh but we put in the paperwork you know all the uh processities not in the eyes lowercase J's to propose a wall and Justice place the north theater's Grand title this is a naturally recognized social studies elective and this is something that I had the privilege of starting and really doubling our moment when I applied to multiple High School down in North Carolina and so when I looked at a law and Justice curriculum right you say well there should be why in the world would we need a law and Justice force in life well there's three ways of looking at it right the first thing is content we really have an absence of legal jurisprudence or looking at a legal system in the
013United States and social studies Department we touched on a little bit with government but that's it right beyond that it's really something that since we had this goal of being the number one holistic School for students within the state of Michigan we really need to be more student-centered and I think one way to do that is to really look into what students are interested in and having that bribe curriculum having that broad content Developmental and so forth a lot of students are interested in working in the legal profession whether it be Department of Corrections law enforcement prosecutor defense attorney you name it right and these aren't like low dollar salary items either right well the Lawsons are interested in it and they want to learn more about it and maybe persons May evidence a lot
014of students just love watching Law and Order right that's okay too right so hey you know what I love the true Prime podcast I'd like to learn more about this stuff sometimes this class and not even know they're interested in it until later on they start to develop more marketable skills right during my time in North Carolina I was able to really make a lot of relationships in connection with our local community with that in mind at a level almost like a job fair to a certain extent where we had judges come in people from the SBI people from local law enforcement we had guest speakers all the time right and really what the students were interested in really drove what we did throughout that semester and really gave me ideas okay I need to
015have these people in my classroom and from there I was able to do that celebration with them to say hey you know what I really appreciate you coming for like judges just so on can you come back and help us out with our job fair in spring right it's a really establishing relationships between our school and our community which I think is so part or so important especially for a public school uh now with that you really start to look into that Community piece right so that's really the second big thing is that we want to establish interests and we'll establish avenues for kids to be successful beyond graduation so when they leave these doors we know they're going to get spot right really establishing those relationships with our communities and members of those communities
016so kind of using my focus which is Law and just pay those connections to say hey thank you so much for helping us out will you come back right and really having that customer service been held and then finally the last thing really focusing on critical thinking all right there's a lot of things within the law and Justice curriculum that really complements a lot of our other curriculum and there's not enough time that we especially in high school curriculum where we emphasize perfectly right there's not always going to be a writer wrote answer we want to be able to provide students with the skills necessary to be able to make immigrants to be able to evaluate information and then use their brains collaborating with their peers do it will come from the results right that's
017something I really like to focus on in my largest curriculum and that what I my observations have really emphasized a lot of those skills and Advocates that they do for their classes now I would I did provide a syllabus uh so there's an example one that I've used in the past but that provides benchmarks and really a lot of those critical skills and attributes that we emphasize that curriculum and that's hopefully something that um we take time to grow throughout the semester so that's that's my Spiel right probably doesn't uh what questions do you have so is the book that's being proposed the book that you've used before so it is familiar with it yes uh and that's something that's been uh developed through I want to say University of Washington law school and so
018that's also a partner that we use quite a bit in the past um when I was down south North Carolina we also apartment with Campbell law school and they provided a lot of resources to us as well so it's not totally inclusive I think the book is really good it provides a lot of good content um interviewer is kind of what we do a lot but also lightning a lot of other resources as well so I think this was great I love the idea of have you had a lot of interest from students a little bit yeah I thought there were a few students that I had and I've had a few of that and said you know fishy I kind of want to explore the legal field one day kind of want to be
019a lawyer um I just don't know a bunch about that you know that that realm so I was like hey you know hey son for one just a second all right and so I think that's just kind of one of the big drivers for the course is that people are just either interested in the content or want to utilize that to learn more to develop those those skills long term for future career great following up on his question I think I read somewhere you're estimating 30 students in the fall of next year and I read that somewhere how do you determine that number how do you how do you measure that interest if we haven't uh done some sort of survey with our students well I think that interests me more towards like a student
020services like counseling question okay I think we'd have to be able to determine a feature for my social studies and if we have an uh last year's nose during the day to be able to operate in the past I would have about 30 36 per class at the very beginning it was about 36 per semester by the time I left about five year span that went from 30th semester to like 80 a semester and then do you see this as the beginning of something are there other classes that you would see adding in the fall 24 to to use this in the prereqs put towards the next thing eventually potentially I mean it's kind of we want to kind of lay the groundwork first when I first started in North Carolina teaching while I'm just
021it was very small and then we grew the program and then eventually one thing I was really starting to emphasizing world's leadership and having a big part within the school right and so we actually are partnered with Campbell law who came in to teach our class about juvenile law restorative justice and then they wanted to use as a compiler program to be able to expand that to have our student leader leaders those are big law adjustments to be able to have almost a restorative practice to be able to solve a lot of at a very low level of services unfortunately I got created um but I was we were very privileged I guess who had had that opportunity and to be able to be recognized for example on that way yeah and I I asked
022him because you've had brought it up students talking about I like to watch a law and order you know so forensic sciences and these kind of things are all involved with true and we did offer a forensic science as a science elective down south and that was one thing we were able to do as partner and maybe we'd have a lot of prospericular collaborations thank you for the presentation so I have a question too um it looks like you're going to delve a little bit into the First Amendment you dig deeper into the Constitution as a whole as part of the foundation of that class or the Bill of Rights is kind of the foundation of law or do you just focus on that personal money I mean we focus on the entire Bill of
023Rights now that is something that we spend a lot of time on inside each government as well it's also an entire unit on constitutional laws about that right now when it comes to law and we spent a lot of time focusing on amendments four through eight because they mainly pertain to legal rights now we will delve into constitutional a little bit especially with the First Amendment they're always right because we'll cover everything in the legal sphere right but mainly looking at work through eight in the term learning when those are coming into question from the Supreme Court what the decision has been and how that's evolved especially with the ad and social media thank you thank you just to comment I mean I I think it sounds great too I'm I'm excited about it and
024I don't I don't know that much about the programs at kctc but I know they have a criminology in forensics and I don't know if you've been in Communications with them at all that I'm kind of curious what overlap there is there okay that's something we talked about a little bit um she's got a small group and I do have a lot of students that I signed up for classes like that I think those are very uh specific I know I have a lot of you students have signed up for their law enforcement training program and so I think this is something that complement that as well yeah great thank you thank you and also come on just to visit since you know this information appreciate it thank you all right and then we also
025have a whole series of adjustments to our PPE offerings and I have their Dash here to speak about the overview of those well um my name is Derek thank you for the opportunity to talk about these polls um really excited about it I'm a born and raised Redhawk uh found my way back into the classroom and I noticed uh early on that we're offering the same black courses uh that were offered here when I took those classes 10 years ago so biggest reason for a change in these courses um it'll allow some more opportunity for our students uh give them more student Choice and then also um so I'm really passionate about is applying the tools of physical fitness and lifetime physical fitness to improve mental health so I've noticed quite a bit in my
026classes that I've had I teach strength and conditioning in high school and I teach a few of the Middle School classes as well but one huge success story that I'd like to share from my strength conditioning classes there's a student I had it was a little bit overweight to start the old school year he's lost over 25 pounds his mental health through the roof and he's got confidence to go and try out for two other sports um so super proud of that but the three new glasses I guess they're not new but we're just changing some of the names strength conditioning it was currently called conditioning weight training um so we just changed the name and then we drop or prerequisite the biggest reason for that is by not allowing freshmen in to that course
027I feel like it's it really hurts the numbers by not letting them even have a choice of taking class and that goes for Lifetime Fitness which is currently kind of like cross-training and lifetime activities but that would be more focused on you know students going and coming into classes and finding things they might enjoy outside of you know maybe the way over our cardio thing like you know pickleball or badminton or even something like you know walking um and then team sports is currently not a class but it's a class in a lot of our a lot of schools close by um that would be more for the kids that you know I I like to be active um but I really like to compete and just and play different games um I like to
028try different a different thing a few different things um so those would be the the recommendations and then I would like to open them up all 9 through 12. uh to really try to increase our numbers and just put education which have been on the rise the last I would say a half a year foreign I just have one of these courses they focus on movement right they don't you're not going to talk about like diets and stuff um correct I know with my commissioning weight training class I I do have Cloud nutritional certification as well so with a lot of my more advanced students I do dive into like um you know why or how we're going to fuel the body and exactly what you need to feel the workouts um with some of
029them you know go through and I'll show them how to calculate their basal metabolic rate um and that helps them figure out how many calories they need per uh day as per their age and then from there we can kind of go into you know the macronutrients and so if the kids you know have interest in it I guide a little bit more into that topic um I know our current women's talks about it a little bit so I try to stay out of that realm but I do try like try to give them a little bit of information on Sports Nutrition and how to fuel the body for working out thank you so how many strength and conditioning students would you expect to have in a class so the number has grown I don't
030know the exact amount but I know we only offered one class last fall um and I currently teach two classes of over 35 and I have another I have three classes in the spring with enrollment going on so and then I do offer a couple hours but so if you're doing strength and conditioning they're all at a different level right so how is it that you're able to you know successfully maneuver 35 people all at different levels yeah so just like in any classroom differentiation of students so I differentiated by their age or their ability but I also do it in season versus off-season so I found that to be super successful for our kids this past fall if I'm in a sport I'm working in this group in this location and if I'm not
031in a sport currently I'm working in this group uh it just allows me to monitor those students a little bit more so luckily moving the weight room into where it's currently at allows me more space so I love to have more kids in there and then I would just compliment the team sport class to me that's uh there's probably a lot of students who don't want to play on one of the major sports teams but being honesty is a huge deal in life and I think that goes much further than just physical education so yeah and they never know like what they might find interesting sure um so you know more exposure to say different things though brilliant thank you thank you appreciate it thank you thank you lined up all right so um the
032last time we were together we looked at the um a test for introduction to livestock and companion animals or one of our Agricultural Science courses so this is just another look at that and the digital access so that you are welcome to please the entire resource if you would enjoy doing it there is also a digital resource for the law and Justice proposal there that you are welcome to peruse as well and we have both of those chats set on display down in my office for anyone who would care to see them in person as well um those will be there for at least 30 days International equivalent thank you thank you right so next let's jump back up to discussion item a for our audit report we have Mr Hefner please join it thank
033you yes thank you appreciate the opportunity to be here my name is Peter Hefner I represent right around Hefner the Burma certified public accountants that conducted your audit for the year ended up 2022 and I'm here to answer any questions on this document and I also wanted to point out a few highlights if I may please do you mean so the document itself a point if I asked and the front of the report provides Management's discussion and Analysis um and then the basic financial statements but I'm going to ask you to turn with me if you were so inclined to the back of the report as there's a nice summary that is provided to the federal audit Clearinghouse they found page 63. and this provides a nice summary of the three opinions that we provide
034on uh provide for purposes of your report so we provide an opinion on the financial statement which are in the corner of the report and that's what I will refer to on page 63 at the top as an unmodified opinion it's our opinion that the financial statements present fairly in all material respects the financial position of the governmental activities each major fund and the aggregate remaining funds that afford this was generally accepted accounting principles our opinion is on page one of the financial statements and we'll get there but I'm going to go through this summary first um and that's what I would refer to as a cleanup in Union Island like they have when I'm sitting on a board um in addition we conducted your audit and a purpose with government auditing standards um and
035that is required when you receive federal financial assistance in excess of 750 000 dollars so you did and so we conducted your audit in accordance with Federal accepted on any standards government auditing standards and we provide an opinion on the purposes of government auditing standards and it precedes your schedule and expenditure of federal Awards and again it's within this data at the back of the report and uh that report on internal controls we identified no material weaknesses no significant deficiencies on their no non-compliance material that the financial statements and that's what I would refer to as a clean opinion as well um and in addition to our report on this financial information we have that internal composite report and then we also have a report on your compliance to a federal auditory with Grant requirements
036so that third opinion is summarized on page 63 as well where we have Federal Awards about men made on the page and the purposes of your compliance with Federal grant requirements we identify no material weaknesses no significant deficiencies or other items that we need to bring to the attention of the federal government so that's uh three opinions under the clean sweeper uh unmodified opinion on the financial statements no issues on internal controls identified no issues on federal compliance identified we audited the education stabilization funding as well as the special education cluster for purposes of that Federal compliance on every version there's a single audit oftentimes and so those three opinions are approximately since paid as long across them but that's a nice summary of what what they are referring to and I'm happy to look
037at any of the individual opinions but I thought if I just pointed out a couple of highlights as well um so I would ask you to turn with me to Page Six so if you provide an opinion proceeding page six that's our opinion on the financial statements and beginning on page sets of Management's discussion and Analysis and I thought um as a review partner I reviewed all of the report itself and singing to their favorite I thought this was a nice consent uh Tennessee uh description of what happened during the current year from the perspective of additional funding favorable averaging you know student Talent additional Federal funding so um Rodney did a nice job of providing that summary and that's what I would bring to the attention this Management's discussion and Analysis to someone who
038is interested in or audited by InfoCision because it provides a nice selling there's definitely detail lender um following page six if you take a look at move seven I just wanted to point out I mean this is Big Picture full approval accounting so this is the business perspective of your financial position including all of your assets all your liabilities and if you take a look at the net position at the top of the page bottom line of the first table you'll see you're in that position increased by 10 million dollars I just wanted to point out this largely due to the fact that you had an improvement inflund balance in your general fund but also it's very susceptible to rate of return on the other course employment and pension plan that you participate within so
039you get a share of the entire School Pension Plan across the entire State the public schools and when that market value is fluctuates or they came to something that really drives this number so but I wanted to point out what it actually was when we start looking at the fund statements you'll see you did well um but not that million dollars well following that on PG is a picture at the bottom of the page just bringing your Capital assets for their current year and on page nine you're a long-term liabilities to a large extent had Finance those Capital assets so they're approximately the same balance and then on page nine you'll see on the table at the very top the last two last free from the last and two from the last line You'll see
040those are the big numbers that come from that pension I know that plan and when market value streams those things swing quite a lot all around but I wanted to give you kind of a big picture full of cool all your assets all your reliabilities where did you end up here and then I take you to page 14. I mean these are your funded by any questions this is the modified of human races for that time so we were looking at it was current assets that you were verifiably this if you find interesting as following the flow of Current financial resources measuremental it's not the business perspective but more current things in current out ended with a solid ending fund balance of 11.4 million dollars in your general fund and then you have some activity
041that's reported two pages further age 16 where we can see what dollar is getting in and what dollars we're on page 16 years in your general fund I had 43 million dollars worth of relatives 43 million dollars worth of expenditures so Insurance recoveries and end of the year with a positive change in fund balance in the first column on page 16 and then we have your 21 building Bond and site activity we can see you invested approximately 13 million dollars in additional capital for the district in the second column and then all of the other activities of the district is displayed in that third column and it shows uh this week your food service food and activities many behind in Project service funds all rolled up the big funds trail democrine report those smaller funds
042are in the back of but um but again and so you'll see in that second column you actually have a reduction in the bottom line of 13 million dollars the result of issuing Bonds in one year and using those bonds to do the projects in the following year same thing used in general but how are you operating you'll live with a strong financial position and that mode well for who knows what comes next month um following the financial statements and that I'm heading on the highway are a lot of knowledge there's probably eight pages I know it's just related to your pension and other posting Department benefits by detail of how to be asked suffixed assets changed in the current year what I've heard with the debt you may do that service payments etc etc
043um I think the on the process went fine there were some changes and people to ventilate things a bit um and illnesses and things of that nature but from our perspective um all right clean opinion across all all the uh three advantages that we have and uh um enjoyed working with yourself and I talked to the folks that were out here for the field work and there wasn't something to bring to your attention are there questions I can answer about the audit the process the where you landed but what are you playing the mean and it happened I I have a question or two regarding internal control of how you lay out here several times that you're not judging the internal control you're just assuring that they meet the standard right and they provide the
044results that we're trying to achieve sure during discussion with body what were there or are there discussions regarding the controls and perhaps this might be better or perhaps you're and so on and so forth or you don't even go to anyone we specifically talk with our clients periodically throughout the year of some process was changing or some new funding or there are no new requirements um and so there's been definitely discussion now in that I'll report on internal controls we would identify a significant deficiency or a material weakness we also provide Communications to the board in the form of a letter that talks about our responsibilities and your responsibility that's where we would bring something to your attention like you should change your internal controls that isn't a significant agency or a material weakness and
045the actual letter itself doesn't identify any um that doesn't mean that so typically when I'm working on a lot of I will share things with management like a finance director business manager what have you but they're usually not significant enough for you to write down the ship so when I have something to share with you I would put it in this letter or a big problem it would be identified as an issue with no limited does that help did yes thank you I have one other question on page 28 paragraph deposit risk um page 28 the top paragraph as of year-end 3.5 million of the district's bank balance was exposed to custodial credit risk because you're uninsured and uncollateralized is that a standard statement that is in a audit for uh I would say yes
046in that school and then any government in Michigan um there are states where they the state government has required that governmental entities have 100 of their deposits with FDIC insured Banks and either insured or collateral and so maybe they'll buy 20 different CDs from 20 Banks to start stacking up the FBISD or you start paying basic points to have your your deposits collateralized but in Michigan uh I don't know that I work with a school that actually collateralizes um I do work with a couple colleagues that take some action in that area they're they're talking hundreds of millions of numbers but yes very typical statement but I think these just I thought that if you have more than 250 earning interest and 250 000 not earning interested in One bank that would not be insured
047right here comment okay very good and of course we're investing in the highest grade I think we'll probably require two correct our investments have to be a very high grade so that the risk of actually losing this is very very very slim right I don't measure How likely it is I'm losing it but historically I haven't seen that occur okay um doesn't mean anything um uh you know qualify your Banks and Michigan State law only allows you to invest in certain certain things right but these are really just deposits have you ever seen a school where they have it in their Bank where they have them not necessarily the CDs but like the sweep accounts where they do have the funds in uh overnight repurchase agreements or something like that well are there other um
048not their their Prime and bank but they're they work in a group of Bank s so they space out the them so it's off um FDIC signature yeah uh I I don't see schools doing that typically what I see is uh units of government such as scholarships cities things of that nature um they may go through a program at they named for it was Cedars where you could basically buy a go through one bank and get 250 000 lsds that have multiple Banks States provided for that for local government but I don't know of a school that we work with that has done that probably in some extent schools cash flow is you know you're not necessarily investing for quite a long term because it got kind of cyclical and then Marty I'll just say
049you know congratulations this is a great audit report I mean fantastic one question I would ask it kind of similar I think to uh to one you've been asked already but was there anything I guess in terms of uh oversight that you would recommend obviously it's not anything you felt you needed to report to us but what's the good thing you were able to I mean obviously did a fantastic job I mean with with this audit finding but was or not finding but report was there anything that you would say you know to to strengthen it just a little bit more there is something that we could do I I don't know that I would say that I looked at the adjustments and things of that nature as well as a friend cleaned out so
050yeah that's great when you aren't uh when you're newer on the scene with a big handful I just don't understand what's occurring and uh all right fantastic that sounds like a plus next year Natalie area they all received a lot of credit for this as well absolutely thank you very much thank you we are at the fall 2023 in the oral Board of Education policy updates so I think this is our third look at this collection of uh recommendations from Neola um a couple of adjustments that we've made since the first one if you'll tune in to the policy number zero one four or dot one on compensation um one revision that we made was it acknowledgment of the fact that we now have fewer than the number of the the number of times we're
051meeting is less uh we made a slight adjustment in the uh amount of compensation received per meeting uh bumping that number up from 30 to 40 but the cap is still at 5.99. uh the other adjustment that we made in that particular policy was adjusting the housing allowance up from two hundred dollars per night to 250 dollars per night and that's just the reflection of increases in overnight expenses if it is the case that a board member does go to a complex so those are the two adjustments to that particular policy the only other one um that we made a slight adjustment to was um policy recommendation eight zero or I'm sorry 8805 flags and displays and the information initially under G and H the second box was not selected only the first box was
052selected this is new policy language from Meola and in consultation with President Reed today we thought that there might be some life in checking that second box as well and putting some parameters around that piece in G and H in which to say flags of countries representing our foreign exchange students may be placed in locations as approved by the superintendent similarly an H displays representing student organizations and clubs May display Flags which may be placed in locations is approved by the superintendent just to give a little bit more structure and format for those two items in this new policy initially we'd left it open because you could list from spaces in you know forever but this gives us some fluidity but it also gives us some some restrictions as well other than that the policy
053the language is as you have the opportunity to review it for the last okay six weeks when we get to the action part does anybody have any feeling about anyone if I were to call them all to be approved as presented or does anybody there all right thank you thank you and we will move forward to the Food Services expenditure update with money all right so on the heels of the financial state or not we submit all of our financial data to the state it's doing annually on November 1st um part of that information that we submit relates to the Food Service program um and uh this year I assume we were in the same situation last year we've built up a fund balance to a liberal level that we essentially have more fund balance
054than what the mde will allow a food service program to continue to carry so we have to do what's called a spend out plan for excess fund balance so what I have presented and attached some information on access fun balance if you'd like to dig into it a little bit deeper but the main thing I want to cover is some uh proposed expenditures for our spend down plan um two of the items we have already encumbered we have issued purchase orders or they were actually part of our spending on plan last year but due to the two supply chain issues um everything that was not delivered prior to June June 30th so it will actually be an expenditure of this year so the first two items um would be the high school serving line and
055then High School about it so almost a total of 215 000 hours um and I suppose I jumped ahead our excess fund balance was calculated at June 30th of being uh 354 000 so essentially that's your um take your annual total expenditure divide that by nine um multiply that by three compare that to where your fund balance is and that's how you calculate what your excess flooding benefits and so ours is 354 000. So currently we have encumbered 215 000 that will apply towards that spending on the plan I met with Holly hey what last week and did it kind of brainstorm some ideas of how we can address every main balance one thing that isn't allowable expense would be to be canned the district can cover the costs to serve universally free breakfast to
056all students I know we've talked about what are some ways that we continue to all of our students this is one way we can feed our sir at least breakfast to all of our students um for lunch we can't quite get to Universal but what we can do is eliminate uh we can cover the cost for our reduced population so we have the University of three population and then the reduced the district can cover the reduced so essentially if anybody that qualifies for free or reduce will get lunch 100 free so those are two of the items that we can use coming as excess unbalance to cover the cost of um other items highly mentioned we need a new oven in Cedar View so she projected rough estimate of fifteen thousand dollars for that oven
057um the universal free breakfast she is estimating at just under 22 000 that number can go up and down based on meals served but that's what based on our current um what we're currently serving right now uh reduce eliminate reduce launch is actually quite inexpensive custom made it should be about forty four hundred dollars because that's really they only that's covering 40 cents per meal for for a lunch for lunch um some other ideas backup generators for our freezers um this one we would do in conjunction with we would work with GMB and triangle to come up with estimates and plans for those but that also might be part of the bond work if we're putting back up I know we're talking about a backup generator for uh Redhawk so if we're doing it through
058the bond for an entire program we wouldn't you know obviously install a second generator just for a freezer um so that's one option also some cafeteria Furniture before the high school um how he estimates that could be upwards to a hundred thousand dollars as well um and then the final thing we discussed was potentially charging some indirect costs to the Food Service program we can charge uh 12.54 indirect costs uh and that's based on Personnel costs and indirect costs would essentially be recognizing that I spend time working on Food Service Russell spends time on Food Service uh Barb and Natalie everybody who is involved with it but not directly you know for that working side by side with Holly and her team but we do spend time portions of our day you know leading that
059program so then is where we're kind of the direction we're looking at going I don't know if anybody has any thoughts to that if I provide some additional guidance I did include a two-pager that shows what are some of the pre-approved equipment items that we can purchase don't need to get approval from the state some of the things you uh you do need to get prior approval from the state if you want to move forward but there's a whole list there of things that they've already given the green light on I'm really happy to see the the free breakfast um and I'm happy to see the reduced lunch um my question is how do we how does the cafeteria know is that just something they swipe their card like all the other kids and and
060just it doesn't charge them or like they're not singled out in any way other people can't tell who is reduced okay I'm very happy with the direction that's going yeah but we do still have there are fewer as students get older you know fortunately we have fewer students who participate in the industry and reduce lunch and application process and it's just it's an unfortunate byproduct I guess maybe of um just that development that it occurs it's unfortunate but maybe as you know students can find out about more opportunities um they can encourage their parents to engage and do you know participate in them in the program yeah that would be great yeah yeah earlier we've discussed uh some concern that we wouldn't be capturing all of the families that are eligible I think the district
061has done a good job of promoting the pre and reduced application I saw the numbers earlier today or starting to pick back up to where we were prior to the pandemic that that's promising but I wonder I'll say that we were capturing 100 of our eligible students and because that would be the goal so how does the the free breakfast program work do they scan for the breakfast tour is it or they don't have to everybody just walks through I'm just wondering how do we get account so we can yeah perfect disagree with them submit our mental analysis to this day for a reimbursement looking through the list that you gave us and I'm saying the farm to school and school of the gardens is that something we've tried to collaborate at all with a
062programming then I'd have to look into I believe we have done a little bit um Stacy and Jenner saying we have um I want to say that that last year we received some funds that were approve your local produce as well yeah it looks like there's some equipment potential listed on there I don't know if they need anything or not but having that coordination yeah yeah it was grown by students even by students is a Feeling any further questions if I could I'm just looking at the report of the flooding balance so the fund balance at the end of 2022 was 934 000. but we hadn't spent some yet because it was still uh there's some supply chain issues and so on and so forth so does that can does that number consider that 250
063000 already taken out no it doesn't that 215 is included in that 934 000. because as of June 30th we had never received voices okay thank you in this excess fund has to be spent every two years this is the second year right it's it's annually so in January ruler is we will receive a notice from the state saying you have access fund balance please submit they spending out a plan you have until June 30th to spend it but part of the application is you can request a 12-month extension so we'll have until June 30th of 2024 essentially to spend this money um and a lot of districts are having the pandemic kind of pushed a lot of food service programs into excess fund balance situations because it was Universal appraised the reimbursement rate was
064much higher than the regular reimbursement rate so we're universally pre-practice and lunch so I at one point I calculated when I was as part of we had served a million meals and getting reimbursed for it all uh at a higher rate than normal so that really kind of increased that fund balance but they did not change the um calculation is in rally mostly conservative programs at that point were operating in 12 months they're operating year round not just for nine months so so one question on the um cable bill that of the time that people are working on this is there enough money to allow for that time that you you and your staff or however that works so it doesn't take away from the things that they need that's just one of them you're
065not obligated to um essentially recognize the indirect cost they'll be good but we're we're not obligated to capture it depends essentially what you call waving the interact right my interest was as long as you didn't think what the objectives we wanted to meet if they're still there people want to leave it on the table s thank you thank you okay that brings us to the portion of our meeting for public comments and it's a time for you to address the board for three minutes and do we have any tickets for public comment this evening convenient okay having none will close public comment and we'll move on to our action items and our first action item listed um via the cross off for this evening because we did not need that student this is going to
066be meeting so we're grateful for that and we go to our action item B and I'm going to call it all as one and so when you don't see anything clearly we might need discussion for so I would entertain a motion before the fall 2022 Neola board Palestinian education policy updates as presented and items 1 through 15. so support any discussion having none vice president shockner yes secretary sliger yes treasure Gilmore yes Justin Rivard yes Justine Bowser yes president Reid yes foreign and that brings us to the communication portion of our meeting and we have Shannon that's going to be sharing a piece that she got from masb I believe I got those thoughts together that I talked about okay so I was there three days this is going to be a super um super
067short summary of what happened in those three days but the first day I took a couple classes um CBA 264 was about working with the public and getting out good news and making sure we're seeking out alternative information not just the vocal people who come to the board meetings um and it encouraged us to find influencers in the community in the community and team up with them find that common ground and try to earn the trust of the public um and they actually use that as an acronym uh trust so T is for truth and transparency R is for relationships with stakeholders you as understanding through involvement s is shared Vision through dialogue and T is two-way communication so that was what I got out of that class then I took CBA 226 which was
068exercising political judgment and it talked about um how we all have different skills and we should use those differing skills to help benefit the district um they narrowed them down to the skills of setting an agenda networking nabbing political terrain and bargaining and then they had a whole bunch of information about each of those which if you want more information on them I can give it to you but not right now um and this was the class where they encouraged us to rotate the first person to vote and randomize the order in which we vote so and then one thing I wrote down on there is trust is the blue that holds um oh I'm sorry we looked at different strategies to solve problems and then trust is the blue that holds things together so
069they really pushed on trust in those two um those two classes so trust with each other trusted with the community the Community Trust with us all that fun stuff so that was the first day so then uh I went to a breakout section communication through conflict and the biggest thing with that was they had an acronym Pals so when you're having a conflict pause ask for clarification listen listen to here rather than to respond and then speak once you understand what you're listening to um and I thought that was really cool especially the pause part that's something I have trouble with sometimes okay um we uh I went to one called academic success through an equity lens and um I didn't write down a lot about that except there was a book that a school
070board had read together with their superintendent um like the book club where we'd read you'd read a chapter and then you talk about it um but it was called cultural proficiency a manual for school leaders and I thought that was interesting that we might consider that and they also mentioned that in Michigan there's um a company called Midwestern Plains Equity Assistance Center and it's free and they can come and do use an equity rubric um looking at your District I'm not sure if they just give you the rubric or if they actually go through and and put your school into it but I thought that would be interesting um to see kind of where we are with that and then I went to a breakout section that was about lgbtq plus students um and it
071asked the questions are we collecting School climate data um and if we are can we see it um just how students feel if they feel safe if they feel secure they feel you know good about being students here um it talked about having a policy uh regarding sex side requiring um the information used to be medically and scientifically accurate um to have that as an actual policy in our in our documents which I think could be good that's kind of personal thing now uh oh they they said it would be nice to have a single shot of what we teach for sex ed just like highlights for parents this is what's gonna what your kids are gonna learn about like one page boom that would be a nice thing to be able to hand to
072them rather than expecting them to go through our entire curriculum um and then there was some other policies I printed out from saline um that's what this this is in front of you uh they have a policy that that involves making sure that all of our students are being treated equally within our schools and they have a policy that's specific to protecting our transgender and non-binary students and that one is very very long um so I'm obviously not bringing this up for a vote or anything right now but if you could give it a look um I don't know that we need to put into policy or I just want to get a discussion started about it I guess where we're thinking about that because we do have students who are non-binary and transgender um
073and they deserve to have the same education as everyone else and to feel safe and and cared for here um they also talked about making sure our bullying policy includes um sexual orientation gender identity and gender expression as far as not being bullied for our bullying policy does include a sexual orientation it does not include the gender uh specific gender expression and gender identity and then there is also an anti-harassment um policy that we have that doesn't include any of those three so I I would hope that we would take a look at those and that is the end of my Spiel I'm very organized thank you thank you and thank you for allowing me to go to that because I also Beyond learning all this stuff I I connected with a lot of school
074board members around the state and it was a great it was great fun but also great to hear what's happening at other schools and being able to connect with people on there I took notes of some of what you shared thank you and thank you for going to because it's not easy oh it's super easy this is the end of our communication piece and so we both use perhaps yeah so it's funny that Shannon asked about student surveys so we're in the process of collecting data points for our students from our staff and our parents through our flight plan 2.0 which will take off next summer yes that was fun and it was intended but to date as of this morning at uh 8 45 ish um we've had 4147 surveys submitted and that blew
075me away because the last time we did this work we had we worked with 2600 survey responses so we've had 26.65 uh 2665 surveys submitted from parents uh we've had 120 surveys submitted to the staff 736 surveys submitted from students in grades 9 through 12 and 626 surveys submitted from our students grades six through eight so I think you know we're really getting a significant collection of voices that will help us identify areas in which we can continue to grow over the next three years so it's really exciting for those sent to emails I'm sorry yeah yes yes I'll tell my kids to open it yeah and we'll and we'll be sending out yeah because students just do an email appreciated they both fill them out on Friday during their half day they have medicated
076tennis oh okay so within the teacher in some directions why our student numbers are perfect I think that's great High School oh okay okay I know we had a little bit of a hiccup with on the survey wouldn't our firewall was being too protected and so we were trying to hit go uh the survey wouldn't open but the tech team swooped in and uh and quitted the path so we could we could take off um as planned and so just really exciting to dig into the data that comes from these surveys and much of you know as you saw from the question that I shared via um you know the questions in there do you ask students about how they feel in their school um so I'm excited and and those results should be uh
077coming in uh we're expecting results mid mid-January from Jeff Gardner and Associates so we'll share those uh with some summaries as soon as we get them so now I'll turn it over to Jen uh and then we can turn it over to Ron and anyone else if there's anything that they want to share for the meeting so just an update um on November 16 our next half day I will be meeting the high school English Department around a couple of updates we've made in the books process those two very small things one of them we've added the word mature content to the letter that we send home adherence not just um content so mature content and then in addition we've added the caveats and I'll order them through this on if they'd like to change
078any of the learning inside those homes appearance that they run into their principal first um they have been working on the PLC on developing that and sending out something in Houston from my understanding but I'll have some more time defending this number to update their levels choose small changes thank you and Mr beardlaw a good update on Friday morning yes Friday morning's college career and life Readiness our Career College of my Readiness Expo uh was a huge success and you've heard um especially given that it fell on Veterans Day and uh there were quite a few of the agencies that were not able to make it because it was a state but at one time so we invited over 100 businesses and agencies from the greater Cedar Springs area uh 27 of them signed up
079as we there and 25 were represented that Hawaii uh the colleges that were 13 sign up in Japan we're representing that day several of those were from technical schools and some Elite colleges had already done their college visits to the high school Library College staff we and all that so these were some additional ones I want to make sure that I emphasize two that it takes a team to put this all together and I want to thank especially uh Mr solaji for working on winning the college's a portion of it all put together but also Mrs Curry Mrs siebel as the three of them and myself sit down with the high school admin team to really look at how we can utilize these past days that we have and committing a portion of each one
080of those half days they have some college readiness and so I'm napping the hell that up that's why we had to have this on the 11th because of what we wanted to do the remaining times of the school year it was also an opportunity uh in putting this together as well that one I was able to learn that when really in Northern Kent County don't have a great list put together of all the businesses and agencies um I would want to thank Stacy Bosco and her team for providing me a list of agencies that they have I thank the Chamber of Commerce for getting involved as well they get the best points of contact even though most of them were retail and several of them were not able to come but they communicate back their
081support and a reason why they couldn't come is if they don't have enough help to be able to keep the retail money to come to the event they've actually had to shut it down for the date and time soil um I also you know want a lot of door-to-door um introducing myself getting out the information about what uh we are trying to do in this Expo that it's a career awareness opportunity to hear um about career Pathways that there are all these individuals got to where they were at I get really stressed upon those uh individuals that came to not only list out all the different jobs that are available within your organization because sometimes people hold presumptions as to you know both of those jobs are this and I'm not interested in where they
082could list out all those components but also to share their own life stories and how they got from A to B or C or D or further down you know when they left High School what they thought they'd knew and how they got to where they are today um I want to thank Holly Heywood for the food service department did a great job uh providing food for that day and we invited all of the exhibitors to come to the cafeteria for lunch I was able to share some more information about the close um secondary success position and some of the initiatives that we are trying to put forward with work-based learning opportunities job sharing being the guest speaker coming to help do interviews my interviews potentially or even presenting a problem of practice within your
083business that you think within our curriculum we could find a spot for students to get engaged in in the classroom as well to help solve that and you can follow through on that process I want to thank the maintenance staff for helping with the tables chairs and the setup of the long lead some of the coaches that were there after school tuition some of the teams that took care of finishing it up also our six student ambassadors from the high school and Savannah Mayfield uh Maley van campen Izzy pickleman Addison nogot angry Lake and Addison wood where ambassadors that day so after meeting with them and kind of problem solving what we would do as an ambassador in that time that morning when the registration opened up at seven o'clock they handled it from there
084on and make sure every vendor felt very comfortable knowing where the bathrooms are the trees or snacks and all that and just taking care of anything you have and it also Barbed us with the exhibitor badges um and make sure everything else written down uh we are still going to have a bit of a follow-up to this on April 21st where we'll actually have an opportunity to invite um all these folks back again to do an actual job an interview or job fair opportunity for all of our graduating seniors are soon to be graduating seniors and then any students who are looking for selling jobs okay and so that'll be a tie-in for them there I've heard back from many of them as folks that very day at the lunch so let me know of
085students that they were very impressed with that they wanted to continue to follow up with either one of the work-based learning opportunity or potentially hiring for after several times so all in all a wonderful successful event and then it takes a lot of people to put that together and make sure that I recognize this individuals that have Assisted Living was that something that the students were required to go to or did they have the choice yeah it was part of their four day for uh piece of rotation they have on that date so they were able to come down and um they're also given provided a list of potential questions like if they were struggling with uh question prompts both for colleges and on the website of the paper for the actual businesses that were
086present and then they had been presented a week before at least at that point everyone who knew at that time was going to be there there's probably six or seven more added in that last week that you know they went back to explain it we looked it out if we would have seen that but we wanted to give them some credit and producing research on it and we set out a survey today to get some feedback not only from the vendor Network at all but also um that you know the students as well as to what they'd like to see fantastic I wish they'd had that when I was in high school I guess we're talking about it and my oldest son finally figured out what he thinks he wants to do so though that
087was exciting yeah I think for me um the vision behind the work that Ron is doing I didn't have this as a part of that Vision um and so this was just such an amazing um thing that blossomed out of that initial idea and um as as you felt the energy in the room as you saw the depth to which the day was planned and the smoothness would wish the event flowed um it blew me away that this was the first time we did it you know you would have thought that this would have been something that we've been doing for a long long time so that's off to run hats off to a team um it was a great day everyone was happy and participating this community thank you Ryan nope good thank you
088all right so moving on to planning we have before us we don't have any other meetings in November and our next meeting will be December 12th providing we don't have type of emergency meeting for anything and that will be Mr Jack Berg's last meeting with us he'll be retirement and as we know um Patton has been elected with Misty Tracy and myself to continue for another four years so I have reached out to April and talked to her and getting her more information so she'll be joining us in January so with that it is 808 and we will stand adjourned