CSPS Board of Education Meeting 2.28.22 HD 720p

001good evening at 6 15 and i'll call the february 28th cedar springs public school school guard meeting to order and if everyone could please rise for the pledge of to the allegiance for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice yes trustee bowser here trustee brevard here trustee vanderheim here treasurer gilmore here secretary slater here vice president shafner here president reed here thank you and we have established a forum for this evening's meeting and that brings us to the adoption of the agenda and i would entertain the emotion for as president yes secretary schneider yes treasurer gilmore yes trustee vanderheide yes justine yes trustee bowser yes president yes the agenda is adopted that brings us to gratitude i can start um i am grateful not only that i got to go

002but that our students got to go to uh florida our band got to go to florida this last weekend i mean not like yesterday um it was fantastic i mean it was fun like you would expect that trip to be but on top of that they had some really great experiences they had got to give a concert at the disney springs which is their market their shopping district uh and then at universal studios they actually got to record a score for about five minutes of the movie um secret life of pets so they got to do this to the score for it some kids got to do the voices for it they did some sound effects and it's my understanding they're going to get a dvd of that when it's all done but we got

003to see a rough copy it was just really really cool um and all that was on top of you know getting to go to disney world for a couple days in universal studios for a couple days so the weather was perfect my uh group of kiddos that i chef grown were fantastic honestly all of the kids were fantastic there was a couple you know pushing boundaries a couple of them but um even they you know we're up to the challenge so it was a it was a fantastic trip um i'm i'm glad that we were able to do it this year and i hope that we continue to do this in the future i would definitely echo that i think the performance was on facebook i believe so it was i know it was live

004streaming too i didn't watch the performance so that was really good good job and about the third song you can see me run out in front because i'm taking photos so i'm gonna watch it just for that well thank you uh last thursday i was at trails and i was very grateful for that time just the littles just gave me energy and it was good to be in the building and see them all doing their things and their box walks and i'm really glad we're getting new carpet room definitely that's i'll just add one thing i spent 10 hours yesterday at our team wrestling team state finals at the wing stadium in kalamazoo and i just i'm grateful just for our wrestling community and just coaches and parents that have been involved over the years

005so pouring into these kids what's neat about this competition this tournament was you know some of the kids were a part of different clubs including the middle school team but this was all students from cedar springs and i had two boys that will probably never be able to be on the same team again because they're six years apart because this was the k through eighth grade team so it was just a really great time i was able to go to freshman orientation that's what my kids are doing going into that grade so i got to sit through that again and it was great a lot of information a lot of refresher information great teachers and staff there so i really appreciate it i'm grateful for the progress that we continue to make on both the

006physical projects but also the academic gains student wellness games and staffing gains that we continue to make we i went through the high school walk through the high school office in new editions on friday and it's just remarkable the advances that have been made since we had the opportunity to tour back in normal january so we'll get another another tour scheduled for you if you're interested but um you know all the classroom floors are in you can actually see the spaces it really feels then to walk through the offices is really starting to take take shape so we're making great progress staffing wise we're making great progress as long as we keep the snow away we'll continue to make academic progress so making a lot of a lot of new things happen it's a great

007team member all right moving on to our consent items i would entertain a motion for as presented so support vice president shocker yes secretary schleicher yes treasurer gilmore yes trustee vanderheim yes trustee rabar yes justin bowser yes president reid yes consent items are approved as presented leading us to discussion and first up we have grades 6 through 12 math resources with jen haberling scott monster and anna ramirez yes welcome thank you so um we're grateful to have two of our fantastic teachers here to share with you a little bit of the work that we've been doing around the 612 math resource adoption the reason that we're here is that in this in the early fall the publisher of big ideas math which we use at the middle school and pearson both let us know that

008our digital access would be going dark and that the resources that we currently have board adopted will no longer be supported by them so that gave us a bit of a hello dear we weren't planning to do that quite yet um but there's really a need to do that so we are looking at new resources and it actually gives us the chance to do something really great because the resources that we have you'll see in just a minute we'll be looking at something called ad reports which tells us how um how rigorous how aligned how focused are our resources and the ones that we currently have board approved are really not very high quality so this gives us the chance to do something a little bit better and i have some friends here who will

009be able to talk with us about that let's see if i can get this to move forward scott is there a special trick that i don't know oh there we go all right so on our math resource adoption team you can see that it is a large group of people pictured here uh ranging from our sixth grade teachers up through our secondary folks at the high school including our technology specialist annie kim marcus deja from the isd um has been helping us with this and sami tenheigh who is one of our k5 instructional specialists in math has also been helping along the way so we have a really wide swath of our teachers and administrators helping with this and giving their voice to it which is important to know because that's that's all that's a

010big undertaking in a public year to bring all of these people together and as you know teaching is really not super easy right now not that it ever is but it's been a really challenging year and a half and these folks are willing to dedicate their time to making some improvements in the resources so i would love to introduce anna ramirez our eighth grade teacher and plc leader and scott monasher um high school teacher and plc leader who are here to talk us through the process we've taken and we're doing things a little bit in a different order for this resource adaption so typically we would bring to you here's the one and then for 30 days that would be on display here at district office for any parents who are interested in taking a

011peek at it um we've decided because we would really our teachers said we would really like a little bit more time with these resources to really live into them a little bit more than our time was allowing we did have some change schedules because of snow days and not enough subs and things like that so we have decided that if we um could with your permission we would like to say here are the two we've narrowed it down to let's put them on display so parents can see either one and we can gather some feedback and then our teachers are still working through a trial process of both of those and we'll come together in april to say and then this is the one that the committee is recommending and i'll be back then in

012april to share that one with you okay so it kind of gives us a neat opportunity in case ever there were parent concerns we'd be able to hear those before there was just one identified and that could weigh into our decision so i would love to introduce anna and scott to talk through our selection and vetting process so um it kind of started in about november when we all got together and we marcus led us through a a couple of exercises about what what do we want in a in a resource um and so we came up with a bunch of a list for each not each resource but what a resource should include and so we came up with that list um and then we looked at what what does focus mean what does

013the appearance mean and what is it those are the three big ideas in mathematics right now um focus meaning like if you remember in the past you had to do all these standards there was all these standards for eighth grade level and everything else and everybody all the teachers were expected to get through all these statements well focus now with the common core we've really kind of focused all those standards and so we're looking at just the the common core standards for the eos whereas a lot of resources in the past they've just thrown out here are all these here's all these standards you go do them and all these extra things that you have to go do and so we're really looking at the common core making sure that we're looking at just those

014standards that are that are particularly bad coherence is like how how usable like usability basically um like how how readable is it how can students work their way through it um things like that that's what the coherence is about and then the rigor is are we making them problem solvers are we making them critically think um so the rigor is um is it is it making them critically think is it making the problem solve is it making them like um really think about the mathematics and everything else that goes into that so those are the three three big key ideas and that's what every reports user uses also um more than anything else so that's what we were focusing on one of the things with those things and then during that same meeting we started

015to look at um some of the reports we went through all here's the red report says every single mass resource there possibly is they went through all the rigor the coherence the um oh the focus they did all that themselves and they put it into a nice like outline and um support each one um and so we started looking at every single resource we were trying to come up with a list of which ones would you want to kind of look at so i would add that we did not look at every single resource we looked at we started at the top of the resources that really really kind of were green light resources that um met a lot of those requirements that we wanted to have we tried to stay away from those things

016that had red and yellow and stuff like that yes sorry i think you're there um after after we kind of looked at the list and we were narrowing them down we have now brought ourselves to two different texts two different resources to you and over the six weeks eight weeks approximately right now we are piloting these two different resources in our classrooms so one portion of time we're doing the first resource all at at the same time um 612 and then the second portion we will pilot and kind of try to see what that feels like in our classroom um over the next few months so those two resources are revealed and illustrated math both that come from mcgraw hill and this is kind of what uh those ad reports that scott and jen were

017talking about you'll notice the one on top there that is our current sixth grade text and as you expected kind of like green yellow red light red being not not good green being the best and currently our big idea is not rating so well it's written pretty poorly and actually many other things aren't even available so looking at updates um you'll notice reveal is um rated pretty highly and this is not a report that comes from a specific company this is a group of educators that work to evaluate curriculums this is a high school one um so right now we're using pearson um and that that's the top one there obviously that's a red one which is eight out of eighteen just on the focus of appearance um i've taught out of that for seven

018well seven years and uh i can say that that's honestly true is that focus is just not there it's just a lot of standards that you just take that to all of them and so um so i have no focus so the reveal is obviously all greens and what we're looking at um and so that's why we chose that one and then this is a comparison to a lakshmi which is very very similar and helps you understand why we would choose these two resources if they both meet all those requirements um in comparison to what we have so that is why we are testing out them and then obviously high school one uh also we did try to choose two um resources that would be six through twelve um there was a couple resources that

019rated really highly just for middle school or just for high school we felt like we needed to have a continued idea all the way through and so we're gonna adopt either reveal or lester go to six through twelve um and just have that out all follow through so on the horizon what's coming next thank you very much the books will be available at district office for anyone who is interested in taking a peek at them we do have most grade levels represented illustrative does not have physical textbooks that they send us for a pilot or a trial they're all available online so you could do a google search of illustrated math there are several different vendors we happen to be looking at the one for mcgraw-hill but kendall hunt also supplies it and illustrative is

020a program that requires the vendors to keep their program secure so they cannot change very many things about it so it really is quite similar the things that differ are more of the ancillary online platform usability those kinds of things but the programming in terms of the math instruction is very much the same of all of the different illustrative examples and then the reveal example we do have those down in my office area and anyone who would want to come see them and to take a peek at them is welcome to do so over the next 30 days the committee will make a recommendation in april and mid-april they are working on some feedback as they go so after the first week of trying the resource we know it's uncomfortable whenever something changes about your

021instruction it's uncomfortable but we want to get what's your first impression how does this rate on those things that the committee determined were most important in a math resource and that would know lead to the best outcomes in mathematics instruction then at the end of looking at that resource what are your impressions then at the end of week one of the second resource and at the end of the final one we'll ask the committee members to say you know reveal or illustrative is better on this trade reveal or illustrative is better on that trait and we'll list them out to ask them to kind of make some choices there and then what do you think will be the best for our students really that's what we want to keep in the center is great outcomes

022for our students once we have that recommendation we'll come back to you all with that recommendation um hoping for some approval from you and then we would place orders before the end of the school year so that teachers would have the opportunity to have those resources in their hands over the summer not come back in august and say here's something new go ahead both resources would have some training involved reveal a little less than illustrative illustrative is a different instructional model and because of the science behind that it does require a bit more implementation training and then ongoing training throughout the year either way one of the things we'll be asking the committee is what support will you need in order to be successful with this resource so that will be something that will be

023planning forward um over the summer we plan to pay teachers to do some planning so that they have the choice of let's plan together as a group i need to do some individual playing and then we'll come back together or maybe we'd like to take some release time because it is something that takes a full year or two or three to feel like i'm confident with this new resource and we want to make sure we support them through that the kent isd and marcus deja will continue to support our teachers as well and then we hope to have some instructional support in place in terms of someone to journey alongside and do productive conversations with people some co-teaching some modeling some things like that fall we hope to implement and we know that that always

024requires us to give ourselves lots of grace because teachers want to hit the a plus mark and so we know that we'll have to say often you know give yourself grace you're learning to and it's okay um we'll have opportunities to continue learning in our professional development plan going into the next couple of years so on those days when they have plc time i would imagine that would be a bulk of the maths plc work would be let's talk about how it's going let's plan for the next couple you know what do we want students to do in this next unit how are we going to know if they do it what will we do if they don't know how to do it and what will we do if they already know how to do

025it so that's very much the plc work already and then they'll have time to continue planning and norming with all of that support into the first several years of implementation so that's the plan that we have in place um when we order we would be ordering for um sixth through twelfth grade math though we have not really talked yet about the upper level math courses i think our math teacher there is looking at the resources that exist and deciding is that something we want to continue that continuum or shall we keep what we have but we would be ordering six years of digital access for students and teachers student workbooks and teacher guides and then we would also be on top of that including implementation training and professional development and support that comes along with

026whatever we choose so for illustrative um it looks a bit like this sequence that you have in your vertical and for reveal it's very similar the difference really is in the advanced track and where does that pick up so that's work that's yet to come so we're curious what questions you might have for us i have two comments and two questions but they should be brief um one i actually really like the concept of parents and community members having two to look at because i think it's actually more helpful because you can compare more um oftentimes if you're just reviewing one thing you don't really know what else is out there especially if it's not something that is part of your field and you've been involved with so i'd like that um and i i

027guess well my two questions level two next i i wondered if student feedback was involved at all in the decision making in terms of how they are engaging we actually didn't talk about it but it was something i thought about wanting to survey the kids and see kind of their feelings as well maybe not the same type of survey you know more of a kid language type thing but um it was something that we were thinking of doing so yeah actually we didn't meet together as our plc the last time um but we as a high school decided yes we're going to give them a google form to fill out at the end of each one and kind of get their feedback on how they they think it went knowing that it's just a small

028snippet of the you know everything that goes into it but yes we're going to get that feedback and there's definitely a learning curve that we're really not able to hit quite you know as in-depth as as we would if we hadn't used the resource sure no that's great and and then i really like so my second comment was i really like that you did choose two that are six through twelfth grade because i think that helps the process be seamless so then my other question is have you consulted with the lower grades through fifth grade i'll speak to that tracy that's a great question they're actually in a resource adoption that was planned for this year so they use math and focus which also is all read at reports it's one of the probably least

029aligned materials that you could be using so they have been going through they've been working on this for the past year as a math committee and just today meant to identify the one after having two or three weeks to try each resource so we have ensured that they are aligned it will probably not be the same resource from k5 and then through 612 but the practices will be very similar so some of the math talks and the questioning techniques will carry from k through 12. you have a question i know that just from my children's experience my niece that from like really from 2016 to 2012 i mean algebra 2 has been horrendous so is this a little bit easier to for the students to grasp with algebra two because i know like up from

030like my niece was that a a student and then my son just got good grades for sports and so like but they both were having issues with algebra two so i don't know if this you know this company is is it a little bit better seen all the red i mean maybe it wasn't on camera's fault i don't know but i just i see that i'm just hoping that maybe this how do you feel i i wouldn't say it's i mean i would say it's easier i don't want to say that it's going to be easier um i think it's a different way of looking at the material um i've always tried to i mean i teach other two who you're speaking to so um i i try to teach about problem solving and critical

031things and um more about that than the material because i know not all everybody's going to use the the concepts that we learn in note 42 so the way i teach is about the problem-solving critical thinking more than anything else and i think both of these do that okay um and so i think that's what's nice about either one so like it's gonna cover the same material but how it covers the material is gonna be completely different than what we've had before so i think it would be good i'm looking at the numbers that anything's really probably got to be better [Music] so you did say that the higher level math might not be part of this curriculum so i was wondering what the y would be for that to break off so ap has

032their own um so we have ap calculate stacks and they're already have adopted ones so they have to go with those it would be the pre-kelp and with precalc um it's kind of difficult because pre-calc has in the common core there are these plus standards which are the fourth year standards and that's what precalc was made up of and so the plus standards in the common core is all over the place and so it's not really there's not very many resources that provide good things for that not that he's not going to be looking at him i think chris will definitely look at them um and what each one i know illustrative doesn't will pass though too but he feels good because he's also the ap health teacher he feels good about how he's preparing

033his kids for the class also and so that's the whole idea of hotel is to get into that stuff like that so and he's feeling good about anybody that doesn't take detail he's preparing him for college or after after his school so for what he's doing right now and his ap scores will show that very much any other questions about 612 match you mentioned that of the two choices that you've selected they're they're taught in a different way one of them will require our teachers some additional time to get up to speed with it now i'm not an educator but what does that mean you're educating what other learnings would they have to do in order to teach these properties so illustrative is a problem-based curriculum and reveal is a little bit more middle-of-the-road traditional

034leaning so it's just a different way of thinking about how you approach the beginning of the lesson and i would refer to our experts here who might be able to talk a little bit about it a little bit more based on what things so with the lust group being apollo based and we've been going to what we call wishbee it's been a kisd um sponsored program for the last five seven years something like that and a lot of what we've learned from bishopy is that problem-based idea it's that critical thinking is that problem-solving more than anything else i think there will be some definitely teachers that will have to grow more than others but um i know illustrative that is that way it reveals much of what you know a little bit deeper and more

035in depth than what we're doing right now but it's more a little bit leaning towards that traditional think of it as kind of the questioning students to help them develop understanding or just telling them the stuff okay so um you know maybe you could look at a textbook and say oh yeah this is how you do it you know follow step a b c d right and just go along with it where the problem base is more helping students through that discovery and sometimes we just need some help with figuring out how to ask those right questions and that's what our plc time and any you know anything that we have in the summer time will help us with that but we've we've been talking about it through our vlcs in the last few years

036so people know about it but coming up with those questions sometimes is the difficult part and having students be comfortable with that as well because it does require students to do a bit more talking than i normally do in a medical class and explaining yeah the why why why do you think that a lot of times numbers people aren't really talkers how does it work out to success or testing or even for in for differentiated learning so it's in my experience it's understanding so i i have noticed when i just tell a student how to do something and i said this is how you do it just just do it 10 minutes down the road they have no idea why they did what they did or you know what its purpose ever was but when

037they understand the behind of you know why something works they might not remember the exact algorithm but they know the why behind it so they're able to then apply it to and so as far as then assessments are tested later they can then apply it to whatever the case means we ask questions ourselves or we ask questions to them so i the way i teach my classes i'm never really telling them how to do it i'm asking them questions to probe their thinking in order for them to understand what's going on and so now as i ask those questions and they're hearing me day after day every day asking the same types of questions now when they get to that test they can ask those same questions to themselves and try to work through it

038as they go through it so what if the student says i don't know what point at what point do you tell them you know what i mean i don't i keep asking those questions it's like being a coach it's like being a coach a little bit so the example i saw on friday and i'm sure they could give multiple other examples the entry point was four pictures and the question that you started with was which of these is not like the others and so it's a very easy entry point for any student it could have been the colors were not the same it could have been a pattern was not the same it could have been something more technical like we heard chris painter say about tessellations um you know three have tessellations and one

039does not so there were multiple entry points to begin the conversation where students can all be right around their answer and then launch the learning from there one other thing you opened by saying that our current provider uh identified force that they'd be going dark at some point now i guess that doesn't matter that's behind us do we are we sure the six years we're getting is what we're getting that has been a question that the committee has asked as well because it is hard to learn a new resource so illustrative has stood the test of time and is something that i think will it's very research-based and we'll be around for a bit of time i don't know as much about reveal with the digital resources there's always the risk that there will be

040a changeover one would hope that part of the reason that our current provider is going dark is because they're going to be making some improvements hopefully so that they're not all red on everything and vendors are really starting to pay attention to that because educators are as well so since we've chosen something that is proven to be focused and coherent and rigorous and aligned we would hope that that would continue on it might be in a new digital format so in six years we may just be getting the newest version of it but it should still align with the programming i don't think ad reports was as prevalent when we first put big ideas in place so i think had it had it been and had we seen all that right to start with you

041know we would have probably been making a different choice but we are certainly not alone almost every curriculum broker i've talked to in west michigan is looking at a math adoption this year one more question uh tracy asked about the students getting involved have the parents been engaged also just a time as a parent myself i know it's difficult to have a child come home with homework and trying to teach them something that you know i may or may not be familiar with i just wondered if you had their perspective we have not yet it certainly has been a question that teachers have asked though um what is there to assist parents from home that is pretty um easy for parents to navigate so that's definitely something we're looking at i know both of them

042do have a parent supplement that will help the parents understand where everything comes from so i have noticed that in the materials and so that is part of it but to get their feedback and we certainly would be glad to receive it the next 30 days too sure yeah they have that opportunity now for sure thank you thank you very much high school course offerings curriculum guide course selection process review jen and becky are presenting and this is mostly going to be becky do you want to come drive over here all right it's like i want this computer screen is just scrolling up because it's enjoyable so i am rebecca cooney or becky i am a school counselor at the high school i have students last night through hell right now and sometimes i've had

043m so maybe i had your student um or maybe not i mostly had the uh many of the alphabet throughout my time here i've been a counselor at the high school um for a while now i can't believe like i think um so it's been a while and i've seen lots of different uh versions of what high school counseling looked at like at the high school um and i'm going to talk to you a little bit about how we help our students plan their coursework um and i'll show you a little bit about what our process has been recently and then some of the upcoming things that we have in place so we're trying to help our students plan for the future so one of the things that i say all the time whenever i'm

044meeting with students is i want you to leave here already of taking steps until our future is so whether that's doing kctc program in your career interest and you're like doing the job that you're going to do after high school or if it's doing dual enrollment or an ap class to get some of that college coursework out of the way we want them to already be thinking about their future as they're planning their courses all right so our current process the students complete their edp through naviance an edp educational development plan they start that in seventh grade and they revise it every year um and so they look at first they do some self-discovery because they have to kind of figure out what makes a good fit for a career for them or what they're

045gonna do after high school and then they create some career goals around that and they create training roles like what are the training they're going to need before you know they move on to that career and so once they create those goals and they do that self-discovery then making their classes a little bit easier because they don't you know i need to i'm going to go into science i need to be happy in the sciences um you know some of the through naviance you can look at different careers and you can actually see the course they recommend for it so it's really nice to have that piece there because they can already start to see like how are they going to align what they want to do in the future with what they're doing now

046um and then we have been doing a four-year scheduling plan in naviance so they just look at naviance and there's language four english classes they're gonna take which four methods are and it's not very like interactive but they just kind of know because we've talked about it over and over what they need for graduation requirements so they kind of pick them out um so that happens in the edp and that we go over over and over again so they can keep you know keep exploring themselves and keep looking at what they want to do in the future because it changes a lot i love to give the eighth or the ninth graders their eighth grade um iep because they're like what i can't believe that so um and then we do some free scheduling lessons

047so in advisory or in a large group we will have the students like all the freshmen come and talk to them about what the next step you know what classes they should be taking in the future they get their transcript at that point so they can see do they feel anything that they need for graduation do they need to retake that um do you know have they met all those little requirements they might not know about so you kind of compare their transcript to what the scheduling um list is i have link done here um they're scheduling checklists so we have a document that i use all the times i just like it's one page that has all of the courses that we offer at center springs high school on it and it kind of

048tells which category they're going to be meeting with those courses so a lot of times they're new students i'll pull that out and be like okay let's see what you've already taken here's what we have and then they can use the curriculum guide to go back in and see like what certain classes are like um and then i did also that powerpoint presentation that we do with the students it's very similar whether we do it in a large group or individually just to kind of walk through and what are your next classes you're going to be taking what should you be thinking about you know how does kctc dual enrollment maintain fit and things like that um throughout advisory and then other things direct throughout the year night meetings with parents and things we talked

049about dual enrollment ap you know all those pieces that might fit into their plan for their future um so we have lots of little pieces that come together in how they plan their schedule for their future um and then we do scheduling sessions so we did those we spend it to or guess tomorrow will be our last day because the snow day we had a little hiccup on getting those done but the counselors go into the english classes typically and they meet with the students just in that small group and they look at their scheduling checklist that they've been filling out they kind of have it all planned out and they fill it in um in power school what their requests for the next year doesn't guarantee they'll get them so they have to put

050some alternative things like that in there as well um but then we answer more questions so if they have very specific questions or i wanted to do this but i couldn't figure out how it you know does it fit into the normal um setting or normal progression how do i do it and then we follow up with meetings with them too if there's anything that's really out of the normal because we do have students i'm like do what you want to do i will make it work so i really encourage them to you know if you want to do kctc and efc we can make that work if you want to do ap if you want to do any of these combinations of programs that feel like you're not going to have enough room we're

051going to figure it out with you so we did that in english classrooms we let them schedule appointments afterwards if they're in english class and like they can schedule appointments with their counselors more individually um and then that's pretty much how they're scheduling their appointments we have students who come talk to us all throughout this year has been a really great year i don't know what we're doing differently but we have so many student appointments this year it's kind of blossomed um that we're very busy and helping students with all those little specific questions they have so we also sometimes we try new junior meetings um the juniors just to make sure that they have those that senior year plan really strong um so we'll probably like put out a let's make sure we're getting

052your senior year stronger pretty soon they've been doing such a good job of being proactive that we've seen a lot of our students already that are interesting and then upcoming the course planner in naviance will be replacing a four-year plan survey and i'm just going to show you a video because i think it's going to be way better than i could ever do at presenting what it will actually look like for students but it helps to connect the pieces of what we do in the edp with their course planner or with their plan for their future courses so hopefully this will get sound all right you guys can't do that time to go is this new experience simplifies setup and implementation and allows schools and districts to fulfill buy element requirements and align the course

053plans with career paths will have greater ownership over their high school course planning and are well positioned for future career success creating a new course plan is straightforward fully integrated with the national solution that begins with the click of a button student from there a guidance process moves students through three sustained steps to ensure that their course planning is meeting high school and college district and student needs students are given the option to select a career cluster in order to see the courses that are correlated individual pathways and a cluster are more tailored to a specific interest the process from here the sidebar concept even provides a messaging tool for students to easily communicate with the answers about their courses completed students with this provides an overview to see if their plans list this school

054district but basically the video walks you through how all those pieces that i talked about are going to be visual on the screen of the student as they're picking their courses and they'll also connect to their future training so they will know like are the courses i'm taking and prepare me for that college that i want and so it's a really cool tool um i shared that video jen last year and i said we just would really love to have this because it would just make all the pieces that you put in here pull together a little bit and our students are kind of like so-so on naviance because they don't see the power of it yet so i think this is just going to help show them the power of what naviance can do

055and help them there's some upgrades that just came this year that i'm so excited about as well i will say we do have a link and yeah [Music] so basically this year oh it's back but this year we're just doing the basic course planning so we have that basic piece set up right now and i'm just playing with it to make sure i know how to do it myself um because we have somebody helping me on the naviance end but once i have all the pieces and like going through the students um because we had a lot of um staff changing at that school i've been doing a lot of training and staff and things so i haven't had as much time to develop making sure this is up and ready to go so this

056year we're just gonna have the general course planning ready to go um year two we want to add parents so that they can actually look in and see um and we can do lots of things in audience we're not really doing that but we can put notes in and you could see like oh my student not at the counselor to talk about this um the career cluster coordination so they can see what the careers might match their courses and the college connection so all those pieces will start to get a little further next year and then for year three and uh we'll just continue to be working with the departments and you know if a student wants to go into a stem career what are the courses they should take so we can have them

057have little differences in their programs of study to make sure that they are aware of the variations or what the classes they should be taking depending on what their plan is so we're really excited about that and um so that just leads me to question answers you mentioned this process starts in seventh grade but they don't actually use the programming until high school is that correct or they would be so in we have a sequence that we go through so in seventh grade there's certain self discovery tools that they use and they write their career goal and they write their education planning goals so that's kind of the basis basics of an edp and then their eighth grade year they add a little more self-discovery update their goals freshman year do a little bit more

058so every year they're adding there's quite a few features so they can keep adding they will be as early as eighth grade able to make a course plan for their high school so how are parents involved in that process so at this point we've been wanting to get parents on board and do not be us we just haven't been able to yet just because we've had um just like a time crunch but as we get um as we get parents involved they'll be able to actually go into naviance they'll have a parent code i have some parents who have been asking lately because there's scholarships and things in there too that i'm no one to get to so they can go in and they'll be able to view their students and there's like a list

059of things they can see for their students so they'll be able to look at the um eventually the edp is like a student profile report and they'll have all the like times that they've got their account so these were discussed in there it'll have their four-year plan their college and career plans and everything and there's a way for parents to sign off on it as well so we'll have you know parents will be able to see it sign off on it how are our students selecting their career in seventh grade what's a little bit more background about how we get there yeah and we know that it's gonna transform yeah so we at the seventh grade level we do a career cluster finder so they're just looking at clusters of careers that might be a

060good fit for them so it might be in health sciences or it might be in business so they just kind of get a general idea and we have um the assessment that's a pretty quick assessment but it looks like what are your favorite you know classes that you take in high school what are some things that you're interested in doing and it just gives you like some general knowledge about what cluster they might be interested because then they can kind of see what classes to take that might hit that semester so we start out kind of broad and then build more specific as they get older so in eighth grade are they taking this same series of questions or no they don't have to stick with that so they can retake anything they've taken in

061the past and then they can they'll take we'll decide a different self-exploration tool every year there's eight of them so like right now in juniors or seniors i'm like do them all just stop you um but we will have us open secrets so right now we have public sector students safeguarders do this as freshmen do this does that have anything to do with that or that's just of course planning so that when they course plan it shows you which pigtails there's a column on the side that has their results from some of those sales discovery surveys and tells them like what they might be good fits for and so all that's like right in their face as they're planning and they can actually choose like i wanted to do this career cluster what courses should

062i take or this career or courses should i take and just break until like um some other links to be able to see that so they can and then that corresponds with the curriculum guide like how do they always get what they pick or what's that ratio or how does that change like they turn it in they're like oh geez i didn't get what i wanted yeah so what happens then so they always when we do the scheduling checklist we always tell them you know pick some alternates because there might be some backgrounds and when i schedule with the juniors in particular going to their senior year it's a lot more times where you're going to have one class only offered one hour because you know they're taking an ap class or even just some

063of the electives are offered every hour where there's more of them for freshmen sophomores juniors um so we let them know like you're putting your requests in our school district is amazing because we're trying to honor your requests like we make choices based on what we request versus some schools that just say this is how many spots you have in this class you know first come first serve we say we're going to try to make as much space as we can it doesn't always work for everybody so we just let them know like that's why you get alternates as backups and sometimes those don't even always work um and in that case um we have another conversation with them like hey you saw a hole in your schedule this is what happened what you know

064what company is the best we can make it so sometimes it looks like putting an online course in that fits with their career goals sometimes that looks like you know being creative with how to schedule them but we try to work with them specifically so that everyone gets for the most part what they want i don't know like what percentage of them don't get everything that they want and it really like if their students have to get certain classes for graduation we make sure that those those are going to be non-negotiable um but there are some times where they might not get what they want we try to have a conversation and do our best and we've already prepared them to know that it might not happen hoped but you've already given us some ideas

065of things we could do instead so when are we going to schedule the next year we just did okay so we just we i finished my last day of classes today and then we have i think one more teacher that's going to be scheduling tomorrow so you said there's much more uh counseling appointments that were made this year are they different types of questions or is it just more frequency of the same types of questions you guys usually get yeah that's a good question because it'd be nice to answer them in one place versus over and over um for the most part it's been students planning their schedule for next you know the following semester so right now we're fielding a lot of appointments before next year just to make sure they have everything nailed

066down for it um before the semester so starting in probably october we had a great bulk with students who are planning for the next semester especially either had everything set or they want to do something different to make sure it might match their career goals so it was a lot of just a lot of just scheduling making sure that things fit with what they were hoping so that it can do some about that work um the hard part is that it's not gonna be fulfilled like it's gonna say you need this when maybe you could use like some sort of variation from it um so there will be times where students will like have to put something potentially an audience that might not totally match what they're doing so but it should hopefully make sure

067that every student has a chance to look at how their career girls are matching and make sure that you know not just the kids who are proactive and you know coming to the customer everything that they need but also like every student across the board so is that actually to be expanded or to lose more next year or what yeah so we the course planner has just a few more steps for me to have it ready to use this year so we will have some classroom guidance lessons hopefully at the end of this year where we'll have start to use it but we still need to like demo the students and see what errors are like errors are going to come up when they're trying to do it so that's where we're at right now

068we have mostly everything in there and ready to go but we just need to see like what's you know what are the same experiences for it some of our seniors have seen it but do you know of any other districts that are using yeah so navies is used by northview that we've been in northwest a couple of times to do like trainings there without an audience um i want to say like horse hills or um these frame rapids are using it i know linda came from these fairgrounds and she was they were using it there so there's several schools in the area so we go to the training center i don't remember all of them um but you know we see quite a handful of the different areas at county schools who are using now

069yes i think it's growing a little bit career cruising is the other one has a different name thank you okay next up for discussion we have food service equipment purchase scott's presenting and this is on direction this evening so i will do my best to follow up in the wake of uh mr lahaye's department uh chris presented uh some items to you uh at our meeting on the 14th so there were three items that were presented the first was the presentation of some combination ovens for the high school and at that time the projected crop cost of those combination ovens was forty thousand dollars uh chris's uh recommendation was that we move to purchase combination oven uh for a price to not exceed thirty seven thousand two hundred twenty three dollars so those bids actually

070came in slightly under projection for the combination of them the second uh top the second item that we spoke about last month or last week was the purchase of some additional cafeteria tables and at that time before we had the bids chris was projecting the cost of those tables to be in the ballpark of eighty thousand dollars the actual bid came through at 76 for the cafeteria tables we'd be purchasing 46 tables at that cost and then the third item is the serving line the serving line is currently out for rfp um the closing date on that is uh march and so we'll have bid tabulations and have that information to the board for our hopefully we'll get it together for our first meeting in march but if we run into a staff room we

071have to push that back a little bit so the recommendation for this evening that we'll be asking you to make is or to approve the purchase of a comedy oven for the price of 37 and then the second purchase for 46 cafeteria tables that would be [Music] to a cost not to exceed seventy six thousand five hundred fifty five dollars so i will take any questions that you may have yeah and the tables loaded will be nice that will be they'll be utilized at the elementary buildings which is we need some some freshening up there 2023 schools of choice and section 105c resolution so our recommendation is to move forward with our school of choice approach as we have in the past so it will be to opt out of the 105 resolution the section

072105 and opt in to the section 105c as well as the kent county consortium agreement so the 105c permits districts who are contiguous to the isds boundaries to be able to act in our schools of choice exchange just as they would if they were in the uh in within within the kent county isd region so no change on our no proposed changes any questions on that discussion item sex education advisory board program recommendation jen haberling this is not for action so this is a review absolutely so you'll remember last time i shared the agenda with you from our reproductive health advisory board meeting that we had in february the recommendation of the committee is that we continue our strong relationship with willing to wait and the programming that they offer for reproductive health we did

073hear from them some of the changes they've made in terms of updated statistics and more um accurate representations of uh specific slides and things like that uh in the past um cedar springs has chosen to omit the socks in the dark blessing as well as the morning after pill we intend to continue to omit the morning after pill but the committee felt that it was important to include the sex in the dark lesson in addition they felt that it was important to include updated statistics on lgbtq especially because of the of what the statistics say to that population of students and how it helps engage them in the material as well and then continuing with the updates to internal and external female anatomy so with um i'd like to answer any questions you have but

074we would hope that just would be improved we appreciate the minute format that was helpful great any other questions secondly okay thank you we'll move forward thank you jen uh item f the city of cedar springs utility easements this is on for action tonight and it's with you and scott's gonna give us a reminder yeah so we've been working with the city of cedar springs to upgrade the water system as it would be able to eventually serve campus to a greater capacity the easement that was provided to us from the city of cedar springs is very straightforward it's a utility easement that allows them to drop a new line onto our campus we need to grant them permission to do that any questions and then item g we have a legal update and scott is

075presenting so back on may 20th 2021 we were served with a lawsuit from a member of the community indicating or expressing that we were violating [Music] an individual's rights by following the mandates put forward by the state of michigan regarding masks and other restrictions that were in place that we were following regarding other protocols so that took place on may 20th we were all served i was served as an administrator of the district the district was served and each of the board members was served on the 2nd of september our attorney john miller from gmarco mullins and horton filed a motion to dismiss based on a lack of standing and merit but on november 1st the plaintiff then filed a motion to compel which requires us to take action on november 11 2021 that motion

076was denied so the motion to compel is that one party is demanding that another party take certain actions and the court denied that motion um finally on around february 11 we received notice that the the original motion had been dismissed and i'll just read briefly to you from our attorney i shared this with you as well um i'm happy to pass along the opinion dismissing the plaintiff's lawsuit the court found that the plaintiff lacked standing to file a lawsuit and that the lawsuit was baseless so that came through on february 11 and then we received word on the 18th of february that an objection was filed and i can read to you again from our attorney on that um so this came through from john owens again on the 18th of february so um there

077is a note from john miller enclosed is the plaintiff's objection to this dismissal we will prepare a response but it is unlikely that the court will change its mind and this matter will remain dismissed it will keep keep us further prized of any further developments in the meantime should we have any questions please don't hesitate to reach out to them so that that the objection came through on the 18th uh then on the 24th we received the following email again from john miller uh our attorney um just indicating uh good afternoon this came through quicker than usual attached is the federal judge's opinion on the plaintiff's objection to the magistrate's judge says legal opinion so now we've had a magistrate judge dismissed the case a federal judge also has dismissed the case the federal judge

078adopted the magistrate's dismissal also the judgment is closing the plaintiff's case the plaintiff can seek further review but they would have to go to the sixth circuit court of appeals in cincinnati so furthermore then we received notice on the 24th or excuse me on the 25th that the judge has ordered the plaintiff to pay the district some of 1800 to cover our legal fees and that payment has to be made by march 23rd so from john's position john miller's position this is a closed case um if the plaintiff does not pay the legal fees of the district then there will be further court action against the plaintiff but again just repetitive use of the words frivolous and baseless because they're the basis for their opinion so any questions on that thank you for sure thank

079you very much yeah thank you thank you all right moving to discussion item h 20 22 23 organizational meeting revisions so back on january 10 we adopted a set of organizational meeting proposals so one was a calendar other other included who was going to be the recording secretary for the board meetings so the recording secretary is no longer with the organization and there were two dates that shifting work sessions from november back to october and from march back to february just gives us a little bit more time to put real timely data in front of the board and i'd also had the wrong date for our second meeting in march and so i made those corrections as well and so what i've submitted to you is just the same basic tenets of the organizational meeting

080that you approved in on january 10 but with some minor revisions naming barb gust as our recording secretary and then those those three corrections to the calendar any questions that brings us to item eight which is public comments and this is the time that we would hear from the public for three minutes if anyone would like to address the board we won't be answering you at this time but it's our time to listen to any concerns or any missions pertaining to the district so i will open the world now if we have anyone republican so we received one request to make public comment from kathy at the end pearl the public commenting on november 15th of 2021 regarding the summer middle school on november 16th nina went out to the middle school staff from brian

081baldwin forwarded from the gym heralding that was sanji scott stacey and jen stated [Music] on december 21st of 2021 dr burns sent a staff email stating i just wanted to let you know that the qr code from grbs did work today i came into my classroom that had not been backing in three days i've been investigating [Music] yesterday and there were two grbs employees who worked in other buildings and they said they could not believe the position that the building was in and were excited for teachers to get back in their classrooms after they were done with them and then this involved them upstairs and chaplain was very excited about how they looked on january 19th i sent an email to memphis mangrover of grbs on behalf of our middle school food service stating that

082he stopped into our kitchen a few months ago we wanted to let him know that our current journal of casey is doing a fantastic job our kitchen floors and bathroom has not been participated in many years except when drake was there um jackie who was training her was a great trainer for casey was always making sure things were done practically in case he was doing the same thing we want to give her a huge wow and pray that she won the name he was our championship and he responded and thankfulness that the feedback was good and his wedding never improved on the 10th of february email week again because i'm going to have the opportunity to use one of our ladies about to keep the central that was not working in our kitchen and it

083was all the toilets were filthy and i thought it was just like the back of the toilet and i just thought there's been a mention to him in case he came in and took pictures and they went to grbs and the issue was taking care of that day so that was awesome so all that being said i just wanted it to know that our middle school is much cleaner and very thankful for that um a few other questions i have though um we have tvs that were installed and i know the middle school in high school to put the pictures of the menus on there and i just wondered why we needed tvs with pictures of food menus and i wondered when items get replaced our schools that are still in usable condition if they're

084being sold or if they're donated somewhere or we just have to kind of stuff somewhere we have a lead hunter in our kitchen that's not been used since i work there and it just sits there in our venues and i just wonder if it can be sold or donated and then they had a few invented keyboard meetings in the past and it's been mentioned in public comments about a few concerns regarding specific teachers and principles and whether one has been investigating regarding these concerns one teacher saying that they would continue or teach the crt no matter what thank you thank you we also received an electronic submission from kelly collins good evening um i live in rockford um but i teach here um i'm just here to give a different perspective on one of the

085books that was being challenged because i think that um my understanding the way that it was depicted in the meeting is certainly not doing the book itself nor the way that it's taught justice um and that's my understanding not being present with that meaning so i just thought i would share like what would happen with this book in my classroom we were in my classroom reading it so this book is called homegoing and it's an excellent book it covers 300 years of slavery and oppression in both africa and the united states and it is in a safe space of fiction that it covers these things it begins um in africa with two half sisters um who are daughters of one woman one of these women lives in the castle and one lives in the dungeon

086beneath the it follows both of their past among the descendants one generation at a time it provides context on both forced immigration the slave trade and choice immigration from africa and later generations just as the author moved from ghana to huntsville alabama at the age of three ten percent of black people in the united states are immigrants not people who legit whose genealogy make the trace when there is documentation to the slave trade or plantations that existed here that's why they were brought over and they have been have a different experience than those who were born in the united states because the history of what needs to be black here is different than what we need in other parts of the world um i write them through the book to find an excerpt that might

087be the one that was um pulled from the context and stated in its own isolation instead of in the context i'm imagining this is it because i heard a word over and over again that i imagine that this is what it's talking about um so when i got to that section in there um it says something about the woman saying um um she has the um first it begins with her saying she cringed when she thought of what had happened between they were only children then this is a direct preface to her memory of this then she goes on to say back then she had been the strong unshadeable one the one who could talk him into anything now she stared at him as he stood broad-shouldered and smirking waiting for the favor he knew

088was pulling at her lips clearly this is about power the shift of it and the wand for it the situation continues and he builds his power over her and she must leave her society to even continue to exist and live because of the mistakes she made as a young woman if anything this quote is a moment of warning for young women there is nothing explicit about it if you read it for the context and not these quotes that are pulled out for shots this is important it's important for the piece of part as a whole and it's important information for our students thank you and we'll move to action and our first action item for this evening is food service equipment purchase and i would entertain a motion for as presented support any discussion just

089clarifications for the oven and the tables can't be happening tables is coming next all right headed no further discussion thank you for the clarification vice president sharpner yes secretary snyder yes treasurer gilmore yes justine hi yes justine brevard yes justin bowser yes president reed yes service items are approved next action item is the 2022-2023 schools of choice and section c resolution i would entertain a motion for as presented support any discussion heavy none vice president chapmer yes secretary snyder yes treasurer gilmore yes trustee vanderheim yes trustee brevard yes trustee bowser yes prisoner yes the school of choice resolution is approved action item c sex education advisory board program recommendations i would entertain a motion for as presented still moved support any discussion i would just like to say that the state of michigan compels us

090to choose an abstinence-only program and i would much prefer to have a a more comprehensive program it's been shown many times to be better for students but i will be voting according to what michigan the state of michigan says i have to and now how i actually feel and how the science actually says so noted any other discussion vice president shot there yes secretary slager yes treasurer gilmore yes trustee vanderheim yes trustee levier yes trustee bowser yes president reid yes motion carries for the sex education advisory programming action item d city of cedar springs utility easement for our upcoming construction i would entertain a motion for as presented so report any discussion having none vice president shockner yes secretary snyder yes treasurer gilmore yes trustee vanderheim yes steve rivera last action item for this evening

091the 2022-23 organizational media revisions i would entertain a motion for support any discussion vice president schofner yes secretary snyder yes treasurer gilmore yes trustee vanderheim yes trustee brevard yes christy bowser yes president yes motion carries for the revised meeting schedule which brings us to the work session portion of our need take a break and our first item up is construction update on the agricultural science greenhouse so um one of the items that we've included in the initial divine both of the initial the initial bond proposal from 2019 in november and then the black proposal those passed in august of 20 was to build a new greenhouse space for our egg science program and um so we were it was really uh you know you've heard of a person without a country or a person yeah

092well we had a greenhouse without a location because we really wanted to build it but we were just trying to find the optimal location to put it into place and you know i've been i've met several times with mr willett the teacher from the egg science program and ideally you know we saw the space just to the south of that wing of the high school being the ideal location just over the drive that takes us around the back of the building the problem is we didn't own that property which you know was a pretty significant problem but in further review and in some conversations with mr matulis um around you know we um i we had that space that that was a soccer field between cedar view and the high school and what i heard

093over time was that the surface was not adequate for it to be a well appreciated green space and so when i asked vic you know how often is it being used well he said that they took it offline two years ago and i believe it was casa and the casa that was using it and jb yeah but now those those programs are utilizing the the former grass football field practice field uh with greater frequency and we really haven't had a desire for that space and so the idea was to uh reclaim that location and uh put a greenhouse structure on that parcel and you can see it in the in the map in board book but then also put a cold storage building up adjacent to the greenhouse on that space as well so what

094that will do is that will really give the ag science program the space that they're looking for and requesting now they've got some ideas as to how they can enhance that that cold structure the cold storage structure with some additional items and they've also got some aspirations to create some space for livestock up in that area as well and so the neat thing is is that with the kind of a creative land swap um they really could take that entire parcel um currently they they farm some of it um and then they fire some of it adjacent in the soccer field and they sum farms a little bit to the south of the soccer field and what we're proposing is that we do a trade they would take that whole parcel by the high school

095between the high school and cedar view in exchange for the parcel that they're currently farming down by the middle school and then we'll create green spaces down there for fields to to do a field swap we can actually put as we are currently estimating it's likely we should be able to put two fields down at the middle school side by side for soccer rocket football whatever teams want to utilize that space it'll just be a large green space so it'll be a nice trade for the egg science program they'll give some space much closer to the high school and it'll be a nice trade-off for our community teams and our and our athletic teams and then we'll have some green space uh down adjacent to the middle school that that would use so also on

096the on the map that you can see in the lower left hand corner you'll see two x's two red x's those are the current cold storage buildings that we're using one basically is being used by a science one is being used by the maintenance team so both those both of those buildings need to come offline for for several reasons but one they're going to be right where the bus loop is going to be for red hawk and so you'll see in the upper [Music] left excuse me in the kind of center of the page you'll see a red a yellow rectangle that's a space that we're looking to put up a cold storage building for maintenance and then the two rectangles that you'll see up on that parcel of land that's currently the soccer field

097one will be a greenhouse one will be cold storage for ag science and then the other yellow rectangle that you see up by the stadium will be a third pole barn structure that we'll be putting up that we'll use for some for maintenance some for athletics some for band just to provide those programs with those spaces that we need for storage so it's a comprehensive shift um kind of a land swap but really it makes a lot of sense if you were to measure the distance between mr willett's classroom at the high school and the walk over to the greenhouse and the cold storage space that we'll be building or the barn that we'll be building for them uh it will it would be basically the equivalent of walking from the end of that hall

098down to the y so you know from a from a logistics from a walking perspective it will be it'll be reasonable for students the only thing that this model doesn't take into consideration is the woodlot that they have down by the middle school so they'll continue to utilize that space and once we can work out some arrangements to get access to the robot that's adjacent to that field that ag science will be eventually cultivated so it's an exciting shift so now that we've got a location uh we're going to move forward we've been working with the egg science team um some students are going to be involved in the planning process we've been working with russell vic has been a part of the conversations we're working with the team from triangle um to just help

099with some logistics but it's likely that we're gonna build these spaces our own or on our own um utilizing uh building a size sinking fund dollars for the storage spaces uh the slabs and the pool bar structures but then using bond dollars for the greenhouse itself so it's uh it's nice to have fun it's not our first choice but it's a little close so any questions on it i like it almost better really in that area well can cross country still run yeah okay yeah i've had a community member ask about those two buildings that are getting demo because of the bus loop so they'll be thrilled that they have red x's on yeah it's great it's great okay yeah you really want to get the students involved in the process we just think that's

100a natural part of the program so it'll be a neat to see them you know be involved [Music] somewhere excited looks great thank you thanks you're welcome why didn't i think of this question yes i wanted to give you a little update on where we've been and where we're heading still in our revision process for requests for books to be reviewed so i have met with some of our middle level teachers regarding this to kind of share the plan with them we've had the opportunity to walk through three book challenges and refine that process as we've gone with the committee um and really just a reminder on what that looks like from a former presentation if a parent raises a concern about a book we of course want to honor parents choice in this matter

101they would speak to the teacher and the teacher would work to help them understand the pedagogical goals of what they're doing in class and help them to find something that meets the needs of their family and honors those choices and that that would be and we're all set if that can happen we know that sometimes there are cases where parents may say well i have a different concern and i'd like to raise it to a higher level so if that's the case we would invite the parent to talk with the principal and we have a form to fill out that would indicate the specific concerns and outline what those are and then they would turn that into the principal who would share it with me at that point i would well the principal would call

102the family to explain this is the process that we'll have in place it's going to take us a little bit of time as you know it takes a minute to order the books and make sure that we get the committee together and we have the chance to hear from the teacher um there's a vetting form that the teacher fills out that says these are the reasons i chose this book it's in a collection that looks like this here are the reasons that um it may be challenging but here are the merits of that book the family has the chance to express their concerns as well so we have some balanced voice there um and then uh the so the principal would call to explain the process that you know we'll pull together a committee we'd

103like your concerns represented there um the teacher would notify any families who are reading that book we had a concern raised here's what the concern is and we would of course like you to have the opportunity as a parent to choose for your child then i would pull together a book review committee which i would facilitate but not participate in that would include parents of children who have students in that same class where the book is being taught or used it would include the teacher or a representative of the department and it would include administration from that building who we all would read the book fully all the way through uh and so just so that you're aware the meetings that we did have um i read the concerns from the parents i read the

104um betting form from the teacher everyone who was a part of the conversation had a pile of sticky notes and they made these are things that i find challenging these are things that might be good about this book and then they took their pile of sticky notes to a partner who was not in the same role as them and shared their sticky notes and then we traded so it wasn't me representing my concerns or my slant or my bias it was me representing the conversation i had had with someone else we took those then to a poster where we sorted them into categories and we processed through it together you know what are some of the challenges let's be honest not every book is fully um i mean they have they have a conflict every

105book does and has complex characters so we would expect that in any good work of literature that there would be some things that might be a little bit challenging um that that's the meaning of art is that it gives us the chance to examine you know where are we and what do we believe and how do we want to behave and how do we not want to behave um so we talked we talked about the merits of the book and we talked about the challenges of the book i took notes um the committee had a chance to really have a deep conversation about each one and weigh those merits and challenges back and forth and then based on board policy uh there's a rubric in board policy about materials and so the committee members each

106had a ballot and they ranked the beach book on that rubric for board policy in terms of its appropriateness for the grade level or age that it's being used in terms of its curricular merits in terms of any challenges that it might have at the end of that process then each committee member had the chance to say i think we should continue to use the book as it's been used and presented or i think we should remove the book at this grade spanner in this class i collected all of those and then put together a report that outlined all of that for each book and they were several pages long really for each book um so that's the process that we would go through i did share a report with you all uh outlining what

107the committee's recommendations were um and it gave us a really great chance to reflect on the process and think about you know what could we do differently um one of the things the committee raised was we could use some legal definitions so you have that presentation from true many of those things will be included in future work should we have the need to pull a company together again because those were definitely questions that people had you know what are the legal definitions of for example obscenity pornography carpal tunnel minor some of those kinds of things so um that's that's good work for us to continue to be there so i would of course be glad to answer any questions you have if you have specifics that you'd like to email me about i'm happy to

108answer those questions um if you have questions about the process that we're going through of course i'm happy to answer those as well we just really want to make sure that we balance the choice that parents have to monitor the materials that their students engage with any other question sure the process is this a process that's gonna that would be applied to any book that happens to be in the classroom like even the library of the classroom or is this more specific to books that are that are required or books that are on a list that can be chosen great questions what books does this apart yep um in the case of the three that were challenged this current year one of them two of them were from a list and one of the adjustments

109that we've been able to talk through with teachers and that we're working on implementing is the idea that there's some kind of a and any other book that you would choose that meets the goals of the class statement included as well as some communication with parents one of the books was a classroom library book and that was a really interesting discussion to have with the committee because that's a much different situation than here's a list it's more you can pick anything to read um so you know those were discussions that we had this would apply to any concern that was raised um it you know unless the book were not designed for people of this age level we probably would be unlikely to remove it from a classroom library shelf i know as a former

110english teacher at the secondary level if a seventh grader came to me and said this is hey really this sports baby has some things in it that i i don't know you know i would say oh my goodness thank you so much let's help find you another book and i would probably check it out myself then as a teacher to say let me take a look at it um much like a public library you know our teachers aren't expected to read every book on their shelves um that would be we would need to provide them with several years of um sabbatical in order to do that really um so that you know it we would handle that a little differently and certainly our communication with the parent would be boy we want to make sure

111that just like the movies that your child is watching or the apps that they have on the phone or the access that they have on their phone you do have the right to help you know be a part of that process then it's your question for the most part yeah i i guess i would be concerned if there's a lot of if there's a lot of parent concerns about just classroom books then i feel like that has a lot of work for that classroom teacher if they have to go through all the pedagogical reasons that that just happens to be on the show i see what you're getting at so the process beforehand is a little bit more with classroom libraries we're trusting uh resources where we get information about literary works in order to

112help guide the selections of what's on our shelves in classroom libraries so you know teachers have a really big job right now as it is we wouldn't expect them to also be able to be a librarian that's a whole separate job um so they're trusting lists of you know what is ap recommending what does lastics say what is on purpose reviews what's in the resource that scott mentioned tidal wave what are the age stands and reviews for those from professional literary resources that help guide what goes on our classroom shelves if it's a whole class novel that everyone is reading we would just like a textbook like you saw with the math adoption that would come through a board process if it's a book list the process that we have in place right now is

113that it would be going through the department level and then some vetting materials would stand violent academic services um and then of course you know that still gives a choice to parents and say you know here are some choices that fit my goals academically in the common four goals academically and the level of the students and where they are or other books that you find that would meet these goals so you know just giving that extra piece of we're working with you your partners in education with us parents and we would like you involved in that process because we do want you talking with your students about what they're reading and learning at school you know that's one of the great things you can do with your kiddos is to say what you read about

114i'm going to read that with you thank you i really appreciate you sharing the process and what that looked like so that was very helpful and i know this has been a lot of work for you so i you know i don't have any i don't have any other questions to bring uh tonight but i do have some other follow-up questions i'll probably be asking you when the teacher um because i'm also a parent so but i want to stay in my lane and and ask appropriately um some of those questions just develop later in that year but i just want to thank you for this folks this is great it has not been me alone it has certainly been a collaborative effort so the teachers have been fantastic and giving feedback and saying yes

115we too would like parents to feel supported yes we would love to have a process for this um it'll take us a little bit of time to get that all in place because it is a big undertaking and certainly one of the great things that we learned is we didn't have a process this year we certainly learned that so this gives us an opportunity to move forward in a positive production and continue to retire so one question you said the professional literary list obviously is kind of how we would select those books to the library um there's a lot of i'm sure a lot of different um scholastic lists do we have some that we adopt is kind of this is this is how cedar does it or is it as long as it appears

116on any um kind of professional literary list how does that work so i mean we would use what the experts tell us in the field of literature so like college board and ap that's how we decide what content we give to those classes is because it's recommended and we know it will be mentioned at an ap test at some point or it has been very frequently in the past we wouldn't use a crowd source so good reads is an example of a crowd source goodreads is anyone can post their review and say whatever they'd like that would not be considered a literary review that would be considered a crowdsource review we would try to use something that's more from a publishing standpoint or from you know developmentally this is what we would want in front

117of our students okay thank you you you mentioned that if the book is challenged we're going to let the families of anybody else who's reading that book know that that's been challenged so once it's been challenged next year any student just likes that book are there or is that family going to be notified that last year we had a channel i mean how far does that go yeah thank you that's an interesting question i haven't thought about um if the committee has made a recommendation then we feel pretty pretty good about that recommendation that you know there was a process in place and one of the things i know that trune has said to me through this all is it's really important that you follow your processes if you have a process in place one

118of the most important things you can do is follow that process so that's why we've been refining it as we go trying to keep them in the loop keeping teachers in the loop and making sure that we're in alignment with your policy and with the law um so i don't think we would going forward but again that communication with parents is something that we're trying to be more aligned about through our secondary levels especially i haven't started working on this in k5 yet they have taken a look at it and given me some ideas of what might need to be a little bit different but just being aligned and saying you know here's how we'll communicate about books it is partially the responsibility of the parents to make sure that they are informed as well

119so you know we just want to make sure that we're clear in our trip in our communication about that and so there is policy coming forward from troon and will when that is issued we can see if it is something that gives us clarity but i think the focus for right now has been to go be sure we're using our existing policies and see how they're serving us um looking at jen's work on that process so it's been it's going to continue to be a work in progress it's not just done and the communication level you know beyond the uptick with the parents but as we know we've heard from two different we've got three lenses going here we've heard from two different lenses from the public common podium and then we do have what

120we're responsible for is the policy lens so we'll keep braiding those all together and working along as we go where there isn't it doesn't seem to make sense if there's one swipe of the pen that's going to fix this we want our process to be really good and aligned with our policies so we're going to keep working towards that and you know tracy will be putting there's going to be parenting and what continues and again as you have questions please feel free to send me an email or one question we could get is the the books that are in the classroom libraries now have those also been selected using these uh literary lists or are those old stock and this is our new process so that's a great question that's why i say it's going

121to take time for it all to be fully implemented um you know our hope would be that if there's something that's on the list that a teacher has gone through a process and vetted that with colleagues and then made a record of that um so that we have documentation of you know we've talked about there are some challenges in this and there are some errands and we think the merits are getting challenges we want to make sure that we have a balanced representation of books on the list we want to make sure that you know what we have in our our curricular resources has been board approved there is certainly work to do going forward in classroom libraries i think you might find that you would touch a nerve of many english teachers because they

122spend a lot of their own money and time working on building those up so you know we want to make sure that we're also supporting them and giving them time to do that work and valuing what they're doing every day one of the comments that was really really fun that came out of the committee work one of the parents looked at our teachers and said i did not realize i mean i knew you guys were really good but i did not realize all the work and thought and preparation you put into what you're doing and i had the chance today to really hear you unpack that wow our kids are so lucky to have you and that was just really great to hear from a parent perspective that often as a teacher you know much

123like as a board member you hear often from people who really have something to say and not always who are cheering young so it was really neat to be able to see that happening thank you something else all right we'll move forward to the sixth and eighth grade transition plan update with mr smith so we had a construction meeting last thursday morning and um [Music] there's been a tremendous amount of work and meetings going on behind the scenes in preparation for the transition that we were anticipating to happen this upcoming fall so this fall we were moving forward we were going to be moving 8th grade over to red hawk we were going to be moving 6th grade over to [Music] to the middle school one of the things that we were hearing from those

124uh meetings were oh we only have more time you know we're coming on that you know we're finally seeing the light at the end of the you know golden pandemic tunnel um you know if we only have a little bit more time to work through some of the logistics that are before us we could do it and just move addresses so basically pick up one grade level and move it to another grade level and drop it down and pick up the other and move it and all the programming would just be the same as it currently is but we have some opportunities to reflect and look at our programming to see if there are some opportunities that we could do things better in a different environment so for example what could we excuse me what

125could we do differently with sixth grade if they were in that building with the seventh graders what could we do differently with our eighth graders given a closer proximity to the high school and so um you know i promised one of the committees that i was working with that i would ask the question in the construction meeting that i was having the following day now the last time i asked this question um as contractors are i would say they kind of giggled when i asked the question but really contractors don't giggle so don't know what term you would use to describe the reaction that i got but i just asked you know is there any possibility you know is there any benefit to us pushing pause on the on the work in certain areas of

126the building so that we could maintain the occupation of the band room for the 2022-2023 school year and one of the other data points that i put into the conversation was that currently in our fifth grade class we have 217 students um currently in our seventh grade class we have 277 students and so we could we could serve 217 students in eight spaces we're going to need 11 spaces to serve 277 students and so when i put that data point on the table then it wasn't a gable moment anymore it was like wow so i could have fewer classrooms there's fewer pressure on the contractors to get those classrooms ready to go which gives us more fluidity more flexibility in terms of how we're managing that transition and so um we made the decision on

127thursday the team from triangle and the team from gmb and through logistics with some minor adjustments to their plan we could maintain that bandwidth space for for one more year we'll actually save money because we wouldn't have to reconfigure the band room into two kind of floating classrooms those are going to be rotating classroom spaces so while we were doing the work in classroom a the teacher from classroom a would be in the band room and then once their classroom was done similar to what we did with mr willett's classroom at the high school when we were doing the flooring in his ag science room he was temporarily housed down in the library that's just logistical uh you know gerbils on a wheel i mean it just is a really busy time and so um

128they saw some benefit to pushing the paws both from pressure on the contractor's schedule but also on the contractor's budget um the only real downside to pushing pause on the move is that we'll need this building to be functional for you know likely another you know realistically 24 months from now um so vic has promised me that uh he will keep the boiler working as well and um came up with some creative ways to maybe do some large-scale shrink wrapping of the exterior facade so you don't have any buildings or bricks coming off but um you know it's a risk that we're going to have to to run but to me i think it's it's the right way to go it takes just a lot of pressure off the system so sixth graders will stay

129in red hot for one more year it will give them an opportunity to in a non-pandemic year have some deeper level conversations in terms of how they want to approach some new uh new ways to to provide sixth grade programming it also gives eighth grade staff a window of opportunity to do some creative thinking around uh some enhancements that we can make to our e3 programming um so that's the that's the reason for the shift mid-stream uh because it just made sense you know from a human spirit perspective um from a cost perspective it was the right thing to do so how are we feeling about the exterior of this building is there uh i'm just wondering i mean is it going to take 24 months or do we need to do some kind of

130a fluid seal is there a concern that you have with the the the exterior of this last none whatsoever perfect one boiler that's it and then someone learned this week that if you close that door the room will stay warm so we're good okay i was the one that learned that lesson they taught me that lesson and i was able to learn it so the exterior there's no concern there's there's statement after statement um even the structure you know that's been resupported the engineers i mean i'm sure you can write all the reports so we're good so okay thank you we took the pressure off that exterior wall which then decreased the burst consumption yeah i mean we just you know come back you know yeah for sure thank you um so that's the shift

131from that's the pushing pause on the right shift all right thank you moving on to the north kent community in richmond yeah so i just want to bring the board up to speed on that um we've been brought into some a variety of different conversations in the community you know the the district really has no you know any fiduciary responsibility or commitment to north korean community enrichment we simply provide locations for them to you know to even do their programming and so there was a time when the district cedar springs public schools actually made a contribution of our general fund budget uh into supporting one of them it was one of the six of the time entities that provided financial supports to basically keep northcat community enrichment afloat without those dollars from the townships from

132the city and from the district um the organization just wasn't financially uh solvent it wasn't it wasn't it wasn't a successful business model they needed uh significant support in order to provide the programs that they were providing so we stopped making payments in 2018 and then the townships and city picked up the extra dollars that we were we were reimbursing the program for um but really it's just a point where the you know nelson township uh pulled out of the agreement and so then it left the burden of providing that support to algoma township cortland township solemn township in the city of cedar springs and now there's question about from those townships that they too are willing to continue to support uh the north carolina regiment because frankly they just don't see a lot of

133return on the investment for the number of community members that they're seeing using the programs so it's not that they're not great programs it's just that the business model is such that the only way it can survive is with some significant infusion of outside dollars in order to keep it afloat and so it's you know it's not a matter of do we want to you know close north kent community in regiment that's not the question the question is do the townships want to continue to fund it and if they vote no that's you know then it's either incumbent upon the organization to you know rise up and and become financially independent or close and so you know there have been many questions about uh you know how will community members be able to um do

134recreational activities on campus uh if north korean enrichment was to was to close um you know i've been working with russell uh and russell we've been working with various stakeholders on on campus matt moffitt just in terms of how we can provide access to our spaces for community members uh moving forward in the event that northcat canadian richmond wants to close and we're confident we'll be able to provide access to spaces at an affordable rate for community members who want to to use spaces so with north carolina community enrichment closes you know it's not that the pickleball players are no longer going to have a location to play they will have a location to play and we will figure that out we know we are committed as a district to providing spaces for our community

135members to to use the facilities and so you know we're not going to you know we won't completely close our doors to community members in the event that north korea community enrichment does not is not able to financially sustain operations moving forward things like you know specific programs that have been asked about like the daddy daughter dance and that kind of thing in many districts those programs are just functions of the school you know so the pto might run the bad database or you know depending on the the layout or the the makeup of the district you know a particular building would do a damn job advance so you know we can do those things independent from an outside agency you know providing those supports so you know if you had questions or if you

136were hearing things from the community that i could address i think he already touched on someone you know i think just general concern about particular programs that might not be available but yeah like i said i think you touched on it just affirming yes spaces will still be available it could still be recreational basketball for weehawks or you know whatever it is yeah and those are typical those are run right now by the varsity coaches anyway so the way the only changes would be the athletic department would be buying the t-shirts okay just briefly hit us with costs that we would incur that we're not currently incurring and i want dollars and cents but in general terms so i can't project because i just don't know what we would be doing but i can promise

137you that if we if it was not financially sustainable to run a particular program we simply wouldn't run it okay you know we wouldn't run programs at a deficit or we get creative and reach out to kent city or reach out to sparta and say hey we want to do a babysitting class might any of your middle schoolers like to participate with us you know so there are some different ways that we can get created to make those things happen [Music] was doing that so i don't know that we're going to be able to do anything yeah oh so we're saying i think it's really too bad it's not it's not meant to be a sustainable business it's supposed to be a the community comes together and provides programs to the community it's disappointing oh

138that's disappointing i think it was the name change that started the downward curve based on the books the downward curve had started a long time yes and i will be abstaining from any vote because we don't have a fiscal connection to the decision thank you okay so for communication um the board of education i i've already touched on the book policy piece we're gonna keep policing on and looking um so that will continue and it's a little more communication that i have we've the staffing train marches on with mark dobiash as the conductor so we're we interviewed today for student services we've got middle school principal applications closed we're doing screening conversations this week we'll be interviewing candidates for that position in a couple of weeks we've got the high school assistant principal position enrolling

139you know we've said it before but i do have great concern for the workforce that everybody's carrying you so we're planning our march meetings are march 14th and march 28th no one needs to spread the word early just saying so with that having no more business before it's this evening we will stand adjourned at 8 19.