001good evening everyone it is 6 45 and i'll call the february 14th cedar springs public school board meeting to order thank you for being with us and the first thing on our agenda would be if we could all rise together for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance of america and into the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with receiving the justices thank you yes trustee bowser here trustee rivard here trustee vanderheim here treasurer gilmore here secretary slater here vice president schaffner here president reid here thank you and we have established a forum for this evening moving on to the adoption of the agenda i would entertain a motion for as presented any discussion having none vice president shafner yes secretary slagger yes treasurer gilmore yes trustee vanderheide yes justine barr
002yes trustee bowser yes president reid yes the adoption the agenda is adopted as presented that brings us to gratitude i will open it up to the board for gratitude happy valentine's day yes thank everyone for spending valentine's day together here i again am grateful for the theater program um it has been just a fantastic thing for all my kids all of my kids have joined it now and for them individually it's lifted them up for them as a family it's brought them together it's brought so much doing and pride into our family and how school i'm very thankful for the theater program we all are too thank you so not only is it valentine's day but it's also my mother's birthday and uh she used to work for the school so there's a lot of
003new faces that might not have known that but she worked here for several years and just appreciate her and her work that she has done a very nice lady she comes to my library sometimes happy birthday i am grateful for our maintenance team and our facilities team and our technology team for providing us with an opportunity to have a meeting in this space once again they worked tirelessly over the last week or so two weeks under vic's mixed leadership and um it's it's just a nice feeling space so it's great to be back and uh we're celebrating their efforts they work so hard on the board table that i thought it was only fitting that they have lunch at the board table so on friday you're all welcome to join us at 11 45 we're
004just going to eat and have some fellowship and just enjoy each other's company so we'd love to have you join us uh if you're if you're open and interested so the tech team the uh facilities team the maintenance team uh and then various other support teams that are on campus on friday will be joining us so you're welcome to the table but you might have to sit out there because we got a special guest in the reserve seats maybe you could sit on tyler's mic i'll be at universal studios in florida so i mean it's only going to be 86. i didn't know that thank you to the little babies all right we're moving on to our high school representative they are here emma mia or jade okay next we have our mhs fca assistant
005coach of the year award presentation and that will be presented by mr gospel thank you president reed for the floor um i think everybody here knows i'm a head football coach uh but also over the last 22 years i've served as a director on the board of directors for the michigan high school football coaches association and i resigned my position as a regional director back in january for some different reasons entire constraints so this will be my last official act uh is a representative and and my position is i am the region one division three um regional director and my last official act is going to be to present an assistant coach of the year award and these are these are presented one per region per year typically to coaches who have long term service
006as assistant coaches and programs people that have made tremendous impact in their communities tremendous impact in the lives of young people um and i i would like to stand up here and say it's a great pride and pleasure that i present this award kevin but he's not hearing that but his his widowing is here and before i present this award i think i've said this a lot um but i i think i i use this every every opportunity i got to remind people that that kevin's legacy goes you know much farther beyond an award a plaque a trophy a championship but at game one that his legacy his impact would live on and the people that he touched and and his children in this community and young men that he molded in the 20-plus years
007of service that he put into this this district um so kevin's not with us here tonight uh but he'll he'll walk with us every day for the rest of our lives and it is with great pride and heavy heart that i represent this very hard earned award for assistant coach of the year awarded two cabins and i will award it to okay thank you we'll move on we have our consent items and i would entertain a motion support vice president shelter yes secretary schleger yes treasurer of gilmore yes trustee vader high yes trustee rivera yes christy bowser yes president read yes consent items are proof presented that brings us to the discussion portion of our meeting and first up tonight we have a financial update with mr crystal hey and if anyone would like to
008stay here more than welcome to but don't feel bad if you want to screw it out if you don't want to hear more business things but crystal hayes board uh riveting so do you have any interest in budget numbers thank you um i'll just start it down i'll be brief tonight there's not a whole lot going on in february um year to date general fund budget report we're coming in right where we would expect to be for this time of year the way through so obviously state aid lags behind if you look at that report but that's to be expected the bond fund budget update is number two i'll speak a little bit more about that when we get to the red hawk bids because now we've really got a good look at all of
009series one uh holistically so we can kind of reflect on where we stand so we'll talk more about that and then really that just leaves the the first major part of the budget for the 2223 school year which was just announced last week as part of governor whitmer's executive budget we knew it was going to be robust because uh as i spoke about last month there's quite a bit of money in school aid fund in general on general purpose for the state so i put a lot of detail in here not a lot but just some bullet points about what was wrapped into the governor's budget you see that she proposed a 435 people increase for next year some more at risk funding for districts to fully fund that there's a lot of other things
010littered throughout some of the things i really like to see no increase in retirement costs for districts because those costs are extremely high and so really this is a great first step to kind of show us that we're continuing to move in the right direction for next year's budget keep in mind last year i think the executive budget came out and it proposed a 200 250 per people increase and we settled at 589 so a lot can change between this and what we will eventually see hopefully by by june but uh all real good things here for uh for looking into the future for 22.33 so if you have any questions please feel free to reach out but that's uh that's the extent of my little financial update listening and i'm just going to stay
011put if that's okay yes you're up to that okay am i next um and so and they didn't catch that early enough but i don't we don't have an athletic eligibility update to give it to us all right and well that'll become important yes the next meeting yeah we'll put that on for february 28th sorry about that that's right so would be the next chris is the 2021-22 food service fund budget update okay so as promised last morning food service one time um and we need to make some purchases so this is way too small to see on the screen hopefully you can look at it but i'll give you the rundown um after looking through the budget over the first several months obviously everybody's pretty much aware that lunch is free and breakfast is
012free so we're serving more meals than we ever have been in the reimbursement rate from usda the state of michigan is higher than it ever has been as well um so we're running into the same issue we've had for a few years where our food service budget is is running in excess of one balance basically so after looking over this for for several months at a time um i'm pretty confident now as we as we are in february that if we don't act i'm going to try to zoom up on one of these i guess i've got controllers in the back there's a lot of numbers up here and it's in the bottom bottom right corner um it shows that we would finish this school year when i'm projecting with the fund balances in the
013food service fund of 740 000 okay um and the way mde works this is that you can only have a fund balance that equates to three months of your expenditures for the year if not then we get put on a spend down plan by the state i would get an audit finding um you know all that so we've got to stay below that threshold i calculate that threshold to be this year six hundred thousand three hundred eighty five so to map on that you need to spend 140 000 before june 30th in order to get just below that threshold okay um very confident in these numbers we've got enough of the data from the year to see where we're going to end up so what you're going to see here uh in this proposal is
014a way to spend that money met with holland spoken to her keep in mind that i know the first question that i've answered before is well can't we just pay our employees more the issue there is we can but all of our food service staff are part of a negotiating challenge so it's not as easy as just saying this that's something we'll certainly look at as we negotiate support staff contract this spring but something that we can't do right now before so what we need to do is address our needs and we certainly do bed needs and there's three primary needs before we get there so what i did want to mention i think i had it coming up just working here those numbers so yeah here it is this kind of gives a better
015idea i forgot that i put this together so are necessary to spend 139 792 just to get below that uh that threshold and so there's three purchases talking about holly hey what our director food service that we need there's a combination of them for the high school one's about forty thousand dollars i currently have that on the state website right now we should have numbers by the next board meeting there's need for new cafeteria tables at cedarview beach and cedar trails so 46 total tables what i understand what i've seen there will be a lot of advantages to that they're kind of ragtag so that would run again these numbers are a little bit high i believe uh but no more than 80 000 so that'd be about 120. and then we talked about this
016last year i kind of floated this idea about a new serving line at the high school to kind of go along with our bond work uh we project that that will cost somewhere in the range of 130 to 150 thousand dollars and that really serves another purpose now as we uh transition eighth grade to red hawk in the future because there's still a lot of really good items in our food service line at the high school they're not end of life um but that will allow us to transition some of those items or maybe all of those items down to other other buildings like red hawk to make those spaces more inviting and able to serve more so if we make these three purchases i mentioned the combination oven is already up to bit the
017cafeteria tables out to bit the serving line i want to speak with russell and some other members of the team before i do that i have the rfp ready we're ready to press play on it but there's some other things to consider there uh so if we made those three purchases uh i would project our year and fundamentals to be 470 000 okay so that would safely put us 130 000 below that line um but i think it's a conservative okay that you don't wanna i don't wanna finish right at six hundred thousand and then oops we're over and then we did all this production still have the right plans and everything for mde and it's worth noting as well i thought i'd put it on here our fund balance at the end of last
018year was in the 400 to 470 thousand dollar range but we were okay because obviously our expenditures are three months expenditures okay so it's still a very even if we finished at 470 thousand dollars it would still be the largest or nearly the largest fund balance we've ever had in service okay so we're certainly not scratching the bottom of the barrel i had on here there would still be plenty of money to consider employee compensation as we approach the support staff so that's all i have for the food service more to come on that so that's just you know there's no budget amendment to we don't have to adopt anything service we only have to do that for general park um so that's really for informational purposes and then the purchases uh we'll have numbers
019as subsequent board meetings any questions i'd be happy to answer just trying to get what we need and stay below that question i was just curious were there other items that you considered that holly had was thinking about but then decided not to move forward with that honestly these were the ones you know we made some purchases last year um and these were the ones we had spoken about last year as well she she wanted cafeteria tables last year as well but there was a little bit of concern on my behalf about if it was allowable or not as long as you um i gotta clarify clear fine answer on that basically if we must only use them for food service and not roll them out and use them for classrooms and things like that
020it is allowable in service fun um serving line we weren't sure on it's obviously a big purchase i kind of wanted to see how this year was going to shake out it's shaking out that we can make that purchase and then the combination of them we purchased two of those last june for red hawk i believe and it's it's they've worked out so well she wanted another high school and i think the oven that's at the high school currently she's planning to move sorry that okay have you looked at uh potentially a variety of food quality of food uh any of those aspects to kind of run our selections those are great questions um yeah i have not um maybe that maybe the students here can talk to talk to us about how they feel
021about women you don't want to give those answers i'm not sure i do know that um you know as with anything else this year with the supply chain issues um you know in the past it's been easy to get food supplies you know holly's had to go on amazon this year to order silverware and you know serving need type things when the past you just get in service so that's where our expenditures have gone up i thought we were going to be higher than this but the costs have risen as well so um i'm not sure i know that some of the menu choices have been you know narrowed by just things not either hopefully that gets better do you anticipate us keeping on lunches and memphis free first year that's the other thing i
022don't see [Music] mde putting this back anytime soon in fact there's i think the announcement will be coming soon that for all of next year they'll be three as well so this is one of those things where it's gonna be difficult to put the toothpaste back into and make all those meals so i don't anticipate it could happen but we're going on year two almost year three of this now i'm all for it i was advocating for that pretty pandemic happy about that yeah and obviously you know i mean there's still a la carte options that can be paid for and we see that happening too so it's a good thing for kids but it certainly is raising revenues but we're not the only ones in this boat how did we get uh from the
023original budget to the event amended budget um without being aware that those big increases were on their way i i guess i'm a for me i've been an optimist and as i prepared that original budget this past may you know my thinking was as i think a lot of ours we're at the time we're going to go back and we're going to go back to normal this year if you look at that original budget with the amendment or amended budget right um you know revenues are way up and expenses are way up so they've kind of traveled together but that's where i've i've learned from you know at first i thought in march 2020 that hey by spring break we'll be back and then by the end of the school year back to normal and
024then you know so so good conservative budgeting yeah yeah and that's what i was really looking to do because i knew we could make these these changes on the fly and if uh if there was gonna be a change it was gonna be in the way of access yeah if you're going to have a bunch of variants it's always better to have it on the positive side or the other side yeah and i you know i kind of held this off through november through december you know and wanted to make sure i was really certain you know we're not going to come to board with these purchases or even how they're with these purchases and say hey we need to buy some things i'm certain this is and come to discussion item d sex education
025advisory board recommendation and jen haylin presenting hello so you have um the minutes of the meeting that we had just a couple of weeks ago in early february we decided to move it from a june meeting to a mid-year meeting so that it really drives what happens going forward into next school year and often in february we begin planning for staffing and course offerings and things like that training for staff to be prepared so with um the help of natasha from willing to wait we slid that meeting back to mid-year uh got the committee together and as you might know required to have that every two years to look at our program offerings and make a recommendation to the board which is what you have here before you if you look at our item three
026final recommendations so we've had a long-standing uh relationship with willing to wait since 2007 and they have provided our reproductive health at fifth grade at the middle level and at the high school and the committee unanimously said we should continue that relationship our data shows that it's very positive for our students and our teachers and so we were excited to be able to continue that after we made that determination natasha shared with us some of the programming changes that have happened in their programming so she laid out for us very nicely um it's been exciting to work with her this year because we're working on more of a contract situation where we say let's lay out carefully what are our choices as a community so that we're basing it on what our community would like
027from the recommendations of this reproductive health committee and so she shared with us that elementary and middle school had very few changes to the programming small changes like the statistics were updated so nothing that would really change the content high school had some additional changes and we spent some time talking about each of those and what our options were regarding them she showed many of the lessons and talked that through with the committee to say this is exactly what we'd be talking about this is what we would not be talking about and the committee was able to have some conversations about that and so the recommendations are of the committee are that we take those updates that are made to the lessons specifically about internal and external female anatomy specifically about lgbtq statistics and specifically
028about a lesson that had previously been excluded but that allows our teachers to talk about um allows willing to wait teachers to talk about uh the information related to um how to prevent stds and stis so the committee felt very comfortable with all of those recommendations and that's what you have before you today i'd be glad to answer any questions that you make i don't have any questions but i did appreciate the minute format that was very helpful thank you yeah i just wanted to know that as well this is this is really helpful to see the process thank you all right so this is just for discussion this time but in two weeks we will take action on it and then it will help us to know what to do going forward into the
029next school year thank you all right moving on to discussion item e red hot bond renovations project bid recap with chris haye all right so on the 24th of january we spoke a little bit about the red hawk uh bond work this is the last big project for the series one bonds um which remember the timeline we're set to wrap up in 2023 before we get really rolling on series two uh which will go from 2023 to 2025. so uh bids are in and they are here uh on the screen and you can see them in board book as well these are all the different trades the vendors that were the uh consensus blow better uh the better we were comfortable to work with the budget for each trade on red hawk and where the
030bid came in and then of course on the far right how far we were over uh or under budget and there were some big fluctuations which is to be expected uh because quite frankly um right now is just a really interesting time for materials and really anything in the trades if anybody's doing any work on any projects in your home or businesses you know so we were significantly bailed out by by two local businesses that have been absolute phenomenal stewards um and i i'd be remiss to not mention them by name and that's hillard electric and dean's expert they have been phenomenal to work with through this whole process they're on all of our projects if you see here deans came in almost a half million dollars under budget on their aspect here they're part
031of red hawk and then hillary electric came in 874 000 under budget if we didn't have those come in uh we would be significantly over on this project so really really really great it was the air got heavy in the room as we were opening beds on february 1st but uh just really really great local companies they have a lot of pride in this community so it's great to see them so and that scott durenberg from triangle construction said that he has never seen anything like this before where a local business owner comes in and demonstrates such a commitment to the community and demonstrates such a commitment to the school district that they're literally leaving hundreds of thousands of dollars on the table which they could bid to be competitive but they're leaving those dollars
032on the table for the district and he just said he's never never seen that before in over 30 years of construction so it is a great testimony to the commitment of those local business owners to the district it's worth noting that it's not just on these big multi-million dollar contracts as well i think you know vic knows just as much as anybody that uh hillard electric you know they're they're right here when we need them for small things too they're just fantastic to work so all things considered if you take a look at the bottom of this uh we had budgeted now this is just for the trades this is just for the bids it doesn't include any of the contingency and i'll talk about that in a second that is part of all these
033projects as well we came in just 50 000 53 000 above project which if you hear some of the horror stories um in other districts upon construction that's that's pretty cool so we're very very happy about that and that's one other thing i should mention it wasn't it was a it was a larger um delta as you said it was a larger difference before and triangle work to whittle this down and really kind of shave off some things that that we could kind of leave on the cutting room for to get closer to our budget so these are the bids that we'll be looking to uh to approve tonight so this is the midday contractor cost here on the top that's the 95 we have a lot of other things that go into this so
034we're working on asbestos removal i won't read through all of these but these are the same as the other projects that we have we've looked at as we've gone through cedarview the high school secret trails in the middle school and with the smaller part added all up we've got a recommended award tonight at 11 million 208 245 but i did want to also add that we already did we're already approved the pre-purchase of the hvac at the same time as we approved uh cedar view so that number's up there as well if you put it all together our budget for the red hawk project was 11 million 238 792 and if you add our bids the contingency costs the other costs and we already approved it's a total of 11 675 974. so we are
035over budget on this project but in the scope of our oral bonds and and what's happening in the trades right now uh i think scott would agree with me that we're pretty happy with the state my last slide because i promised i would only do five slide presentations this evening there's a promise to myself this is everything in series one so we've uh we've done trails we've done view we've done the middle school the high school we have our support costs built in and this kind of stacks up where we're at so our overall revenue remember back from uh when we saw the bonds last june we came up with a really good bond sale we anticipated having 32 million just over 32 million for this series one we had with just shy of 32
036million 300. right now if you stack up all of our bid costs and what we're asking the board to approve we're at 32 million six hundred and three thousand nine seventy four i'm gonna say well you're over by three hundred thousand that all includes a lot of contingency that concludes a lot of areas that includes a lot of contingency costs a lot of those things that we build in just to make sure that we've got that buffer we already returned some of that if you look at uh senior trails for example super trails is is complete or very close to complete it's been built completely we finished uh over 200 000 below in that actual column what we approved okay if you look at uh the middle school we approved a million ninety nine we
037came in at a millionaire so there were some changes there from the original budget but we're coming in below because those contingencies aren't being completely so i can say with confidence that even though the board approval amount exceeds what we have in revenue it's by a percentage by one percent less um and and we're coming in below it's got those contingency costs so i'm comfortable saying to the policy that you can take action to improve this 11 million change project but i'll entertain any have and i know scott was in a lot of needs as well so if you have anything to add on this please feel free so that's all for action that's our only accident so i'm confident that you're that you're right about the contingency so i'm not questioning that at all
038but if for whatever reason those costs don't come in lower than what we'd expect where were those where would that additional funding come from so we uh will sell the other 36 million in 2023 and obviously there's a lot of projects there the main project of series two is this bleach element his plan is to completely remodel it other than the gymnasium or sorry rebuild it um but then we have the other main parts of series two there's some work on the high school there's drive work and parking work and road work and then there's there's money quite a bit of money in for groups so we're a long ways from being finished um you remember may remember we had we're going to see some room savings in the high school storm damage that was
039about 250 000 there um and we've just actually realized recently that there's a we had a we had a company come through years ago and kind of go give us an estimate of the useful life life of our roofs we've come to find that a lot of the insulation that was thought to be bad still in great condition so it's pretty much consensus from triangle and our team and gmb that we're going to realize some significant costs we don't know for sure yet we're going to have that all reappraised uh as we move forward to make sure that it's all needed to be done to the extent that we worship so i think there will be savings out there and we're being very strategic we recognize that we can't kick the can down the road
040and shortchange the project at beach we can't shortchange the project at the high school but there are things that we can do strategically now in the planning process so for example in the paving work at redhawk rather than expand the parking lots the new parking lots to their maximum capacity as they're currently drawn by scaling those projects back slightly in maintaining the existing parking that we have to the north and west of red hawk we can save some dollars you know it'll we would be ready in the event that we could add those back in but we can pull them out to provide us with some some more grace in terms of those numbers you know we do have some dollars remaining in building the site sinking fund if needed again we don't want to
041go to that as our ready five we can also go to the general fund if we need to but we really want to be as strategic as we can be to make sure that we're leaving those dollars for those future projects we would rather scale back somewhat uh the projects that we're currently working on with room to to expand given the opportunity um than to you know tap into those budgets down the road it is very um you know that the teams that we're working with at triangle and at gmb are very mindful that we have a fixed set of dollars and the scope of the work that we need to accomplish is pretty pretty vast and so they're really trying to be creative you know so for example the savings at red hawk alone
042um by uh doing some finishes in the bathrooms uh with paint versus peeling tile off and putting new tile up was you know in excess of a hundred thousand dollars to go with an epoxy paint finish uh in some of the in some of the finish work and so it's just little things like that that we'll we'll find the dollars or we'll scale back the projects let's scale them back into the x students yeah and we're moving forward with discussion item app the city of cedar springs utility easement so in board book there were three documents that i included one was a map that the city of theater springs provided us with in regard to a proposal that they have to bring another water main into the high school the other two documents were drafts
043of easement agreements that we would enter into with the city in order for them to bring that water main across school property the benefit of the new water main is that it will be a bigger diameter water main which will then be able to provide the district with more water across the board as we continue to expand and grow but you know in order to do that they've got to bring that line across across the property and therefore we would need to enter a new agreement with them for an easement so their attorneys have looked over the document our attorneys have looked over the document it's really rather generic in terms of its layout and structure but it would be something that the board would have to approve as we would be granting them access
044to district property so russell ray is working with the city project manager on this work and we also are working with mike recting from triangle construction just to make sure and to you know dance around the uh you know all of the the various projects that are going to be going on on the high school campus uh over the next you know 10 months so their ideal timeline is april to october but we know that they're gonna be some some pretty hot hot windows for us as far as student traffic on and off campus construction traffic on and off campus that's why we've got mike correcting from triangle construction involved and that's why russell is working with the project so confident that we can make it happen we would do it during the summer when
045we weren't impacting student traffic as much so construction projects are interesting christine yeah very much thank you well we're even looking at the possibility of you know can they cut the drives in over spring break put the necessary you know infrastructure below the drive back fill it and then over the summer do the rest of their trenching you know that way they won't have to cut that main drive in june it really gives them a little bit more flexibility in there with their timing or something it's a dance all right we'll move on with discussion item g 2022 2023 school of choice resolution with chris haye all right last one this is just a it's that time of year again uh resolution it hasn't changed in the previous years so this is a three-part resolution
046to opt out of section 105 which is we will not accept students from inside kent county districts to come here and the reason we will not accept section 105 which is part of the state law is because we will opt in to the kent isd collaborative school of choice agreement so it really does the same thing but it's just an agreement between the districts in the county and we are also opting in to section 105 c which is the resolution to accept students from contiguous counties um into our school districts so we have a lot of students from newego county and surrounding counties that way so it's an opt-out of 105 opt into 105c and then opt into the kent isd collaborative schools of choice program out up for action tonight same as it was
047the last several years this will be up for action so if you have any questions feel free to reach out we didn't talk about just maybe making this a consent agenda but for years if it's not changing we have another discussion those questions thank you you got that write down pat thank you all right that brings us to the portion of our meeting where we have public comments and this would be the time if anyone like would like to address the board for three minutes we would be listening to your concerns or comments we won't be following up at this time um this superintendent smith will be following up at a later date so do we have anyone scheduled for public comments we do we several individuals submit requests online and then i have one
048request from an individual in person who also submitted online chris can you move the podium up into the center of this space please um so the first uh individual that submitted a public comment request is actually a group of people so we have four of our amazing students um so addison brown caitlyn brown annalise elliott and hayley van kampen okay are you all gonna go separately or together we have two times or like two different spaces scheduled or whatever but um we're all speaking at different times like we have the same i'm saying all right so what did you time that i'm just i don't want to interrupt you a lot no we want to know what's going on we have two slots for a total of six minutes twice yeah all right okay then
049i'm gonna set it thank you okay good evening my name is emily tully this is julian campbell madison brown and katelyn we are all sophomores at cedar springs high school it has come to our attention that there is a list of books that are being reviewed to be potentially banned from our school and our classroom among libraries within this community is that by collecting students within our schools are reading the things within these votes and immediately becoming influenced by them and attempting to add a certain way of inspiration from the book this assumption is misleading that our teachers have been teaching us to clinically analyze pieces of literature through other years of education we have been taught to take it in take in what we're reading analyze the meaning and context of the text and
050then form an opinion on it based on our individual beliefs additionally it is important to note that we aren't reading these literary words for pleasure moreover we leave these books to enhance our faculty of knowledge and understand the context and messaging from the story it is instilled in us that the purpose of high school is to prepare students not only for college but also adulthood and jobs thus our education should reflect that of the real world in reality the world is tough place filled with uncensored and unforgiving things so the more we are able to learn and attain at a young age the more useful it will be to us later in life in terms of problem solving and understanding the complexities of life considering that literature is a work of art and art expresses
051life's ups and downs it is also fitting that we learn how to weather and understand pieces of literature that reflect on not only life but society as a whole as famous author william shakespeare wrote in his piece a mid midsummer's night stream the object of art is given is to give life shape this demonstrates that an author's goal is not to simply tell high schoolers what they should do but to say something about life and what should could occur within it literature is also a bridge for students to explore other cultures and learn about what occurred in and is occurring worldwide taking these books away is not just taking away from our education but also our connection to foreign cultures it is in fact a regular occurrence to encounter a plethora of different inappropriate situations
052and conversations within the hallway of our school it is not uncommon to witness various racial slurs obscene language and subjective hand gestures begging the question as to why students feel the need to portray these traits we have found that it certainly isn't due to literature with one click of a button a student can open up social media apps and see all sorts of indecent content and unprofessional actions according to the american physiological association more than 80 percent of teens report that they use social media theory whereas only 20 percent of teens report reading a book magazine or newspaper every day how does the theory that reading these cultures prize-winning novels taint students views online apply when teens rarely read in the first place the contents of social media artists are not discussed or analyzed within
053the classroom in contrast the literature in which we read is heavily presented and teachers go to great lengths to ensure we understand what it is we're reading when horse themes pop up in our literature teachers provide an in-depth explanation on what has happened why it is happening and the master message the author is trying to portray making students feel comfortable and aware of the topic at hand classrooms are one of the safest environments for students to apply appropriately and maturely discuss difficult discuss difficult thought-provoking contact with the with the guidance and expertise of a teacher it should also be noted that as students we were given a document at the beginning of the school year that our parents had to sign ensuring that we could read any book within the classroom thus this document gave
054parents a choice about which content their student is allowed to read additionally if a student is uncomfortable with the content of a part in the novel they can choose to skip it with no consequence to their grade as students we trust our teachers to make knowledgeable choices about what we read in the classroom environment for these years to provide a school perspective on the issue at camp and we asked cshs students to take our team into consideration and reconsider the implications of danny wilson thank you all for your spirit all right the next individual who signed up to speak and i've been a little dramatic so i'm just kind of um william and deborah childs for three minutes the unfortunate events that have taken place in the last couple of years trust me so i
055wrote to south meadowland the reason that they do things is also the explanation of the medical profession in the united states and that is satanism and occult practices and here we go back to the ancient world the babylonians when they built the pre pre-dominoes the great temple of the escalations the largest healing center in the entire ancient world it is named after him baos the son of apollo who became known as the healer but he did not heal by god or through god or by perfection or purification which which is the ancient dealing method healing method of every people in the world not merely the indians or anyone else by the purification but to do it by artificial intelligence so it's no different today than what's back then by what they call pharmakia pharmacia is
056a part of babylon this is what the bible predicts that babylon would use to deceive all nations you don't have to be deceived there is no way to be part of god's true people at the end of time and be connected with the system of administering poisonous drugs that manipulate and confuse the mind in greek mythology pharmakia is witchcraft magic the use of spells and potions of magic often involving drugs it's called a magic spell the water is under the bridge and the bridge is over the water watch the waters the thoughts and opinions of others are not facts and they were not defined reality when i was a child the only races that were hated and the ones that were named this world thinks bacteria is life unmarked but heartbeat it doesn't make sense
057to me we persecute women for leaving their children by calling them the deadliest yet a woman can abort a child it's called pro-choice it's funny how we believe that the world knows us something and the people get dumber just like that young lady said about the books an election so how does that give me the ability to be able to trust in what a computer has to offer this is my child we're talking about this isn't a kitchen table your three minutes is off yep so if you want to give us copies of that yeah i can share that with the board if you'd like me to make a copy of it i just wanted my voice heard this is the first time i've ever done this and i think of my participation matters i'm
058really nervous i don't like crowded people and with everything that's gone out on in the last couple years like i said it makes me not know who i can trust this is my child we all have children we all have families we're all in this together but that's not a democrat theme that's not a republican king we're all one human race and that's what matters the most so the ideology of the past language children oh they should learn the facts and the facts on them because if they don't know the facts how are they going to become a police officer are we going to trust them to be a judge in our case as we're being tried or our children are being tried we're not we will have no faith in our system and it
059starts with our children thank you thank you for sharing um the only other person that we have that signed up is kelly health i tell you i work here and i'm terrified right so run welcome hi good evening my name is kelly holiday i live at 307 valley view in rockford michigan takes bravery saying that from my students but there you go um so i currently work as an english teacher here at the high school i entered teaching school i signed up to become an english teacher i knew my days would be spent doing a large amount of work outside of the classroom if only i knew what that load would be since that time i have taught for nearly 11 years i have also earned a master's of english and a masters of education
060and literacy i've also been teaching full-time and raising two small daughters while accomplishing these tasks i earn these degrees for two reasons one in education it's one of the only ways to increase your income and two so that i could have the expertise to offer the best possible education to my students i began teaching american literature in the fall of 2020 after reviewing the curriculum it startled me that the only two voices that were mandatory in the curriculum outside of the norm of columbus to fitzgerald where ann bradstreet a puritan minister's wife reading about her dear and loving husband and her piece of poetry and emily dickinson a recluse who the world would not accept because she was a woman author that's it only other two voices that are in that curriculum so the essential
061question of our textbook and of this course is what does it mean to be american it is clear even without doing statistical analysis that we are missing a few voices and what it means to be an american the books that have been included in our list that are under questions in my classroom right now facilitate the major gaps in learning for our students in this curriculum not only did they address what it means to be american more inclusively but the texts are also more contemporary and deal with conflicts relationships and situations that many of our students are constantly facing regardless of how we try to protect them from it these books took hundreds of hours to select i sourced the ap texts tests from the last 20 years pulled all the authors and titles off
062of them that i could find to facilitate this search pulitzer prize winners national book award winners etc seeking to find the most engaging and relevant literature possible for my students creating an assignment organizing the book club's partners and making sure everyone had a book they want to read as much as any of them want to read any book i tell them they have to um is a very big challenge it takes a lot of time and i care so i do it after these books were challenged a committee was formed the books were read by administrators parents of the students currently enrolled in my class and other teachers throughout the meeting difficulties and age-appropriate-ish news that were in the text were discussed the committee came to the determination that the book should be left where
063they are in the curriculum i'm really struggling to understand how this collective voice is not being trusted or honored i have also a wondering as to whether or not as a school board any of you have read these books or taken the time to read the criticism on them or talked about them all which i promise i have done so i have a wealth of knowledge resources and researches research that could be exceptionally beneficial to this conversation it's very unclear to me why no one has asked me why these books are in my classroom in the first place and so because of the limited time i have to share with you i will leave you with this students need windows they need mirrors and they need to be able to see themselves and others in
064what they read if we take these books away what mirror window are we taking away from student what if that student desperately needed that text to cope to grieve to make a hard choice to see how they deserve to be treated by people who love them some of our students only experience that through reading these books um they only see the pieces of themselves and others through these books we are here to teach all students the book list has 18 books on it my intention is to have it continue to grow as i have the time to research more books students are only asked to select four of these books over the school year there is also a caveat saying i will help them find something else more appropriate for them if none of the
065provided texts are deemed appropriate the choice is already there not to read the books if we care about every student and every stakeholder and many of the stakeholders have stated their want or at least acceptance of their students and of the students wants to continue reading these books how are we really honoring every student and their opportunity for an equitable and accessible education thank you for your time that's all he has [Music] okay and we'll close public comments saying no other person is interested in addressing the board and thank you to everybody that spoke tonight so we will move on to our only action item for tonight and let's run the big one so it is the red hot bond renovation project bid in awards not to exceed 11 million 2008 245 and i would
066entertain a motion for as presented support any discussion having none vice president schachner yes secretary schleicher yes treasurer gilmore yes trustee vanderheim yes trustee robert yes trustee bowser yes president reid yes the bond renovation project is approved unanimously thank you okay that brings us to the communication portion of our board meeting and for the board i do have um as was noted in public comment we are discussing a curriculum policy and that is in the works and it would be coming to you for revision and the pieces of it are not necessarily looking to ban books but to look at what curriculum pieces would offer and then disclaimer for parents of what other books might be in the classroom so the goal of looking towards a policy is that it serves all all the pieces
067of the puzzle so it serves the whole community and concerns whichever way either person was looking at the policy and we did have as we had the attorney dan martin with us talking to us we're not looking we're not looking to censor but we're looking to look at just like we do per se with the sex ed curriculum um we're looking at the curriculum piece of it so it wouldn't be so that's but that would be uh coming to you for a first book and it would be on for in our normal two reads but we've been methodical and thoughtful looking at the legal pieces and hearing the different voices and thank you you know for the people that's here tonight also we've heard from different different sets of people so so that that's the
068thing behind it we're not looking to just do something with a slam dunk and it's one and done but we're looking to serve everyone and all of the students that's right it's not a hurried process and really a process that'll serve us well in the future so we don't have this necessarily right yeah right and it puts you know i don't i don't say it what the expectations for her but as we you know there's lots of reading things you know whether we went to the public library or our work is not to just not to take books off the shelf it's not that it's not the goal of looking at policy but that everyone is aware of what's there so we have so that will be coming so that's my communication to you that'll
069be coming forth and then we do have masb we have some dates coming up my encouragement will be if something interests you in the classes you know do that but if you're just looking to check them out you know if you want to be that person you can but you know interest is is always more fun learning we have with us uh five principals tonight um to provide you with just a quick update some celebrations that are happening in each of the buildings um so we'll kick things off with mr robert while the high school principal just come up here sure thank you as well thank you well good evening and thank you for some time to be able to celebrate some activities of our students at the high school first and foremost it's been
070talked about a little bit tonight the musical and into the woods i had about 900 spectators come to that performance and just a wonderful opportunity for our students um it was the last show for our director rebecca cospon so he'll be looking for a new director this next year but she's completed at least six shows i might be a little bit off on that maybe a few more than that but we certainly appreciate all the work that she's done um tomorrow night we have pre-festival uh concert for our um marching band or our our concert bands and uh the band itself uh many of its members are headed to florida uh come thursday and so they're looking forward to that trip and be able to perform down at the orlando site and everything we had
071on last saturday uh two of our choirs uh go to seoul one ensemble festival where they actually received one ratings very strong one ratings and so we're very happy for their performance as well we also want to celebrate the ffa group and the other district leadership contest february 4th and i so let me say that this wednesday they'll be actually having the regional competitions and we had two groups that are two individuals that move forward with that one in the cree contest which is for beginning members and then also in the job interview contest speaking of that group they also had their first harvest of lettuce i don't know if you've been informed about the fact that they have these flex farm grow units that they're working with holly haywood and the food service department
072growing lettuce about every 30 days they'll be harvesting and i think they have three total units uh two of which i think are up and running right now at this point and they did their first harvest last week and i believe that was serving some of the salads on thursday next week is their national ffa week and celebrating the activities of their organization as well the today we had uh 16 students sit for the seal of by literacy uh examination um that's something that we've been doing at least three years now and uh our number's a little bit down from where they were the very first time we offered it because uh we had several students who want to be able to do that um and so we just been getting caught up and uh
073those individuals were actually scheduled for it last friday but due to the snow day took it today and from what mrs holmes let me know she thought they did very very well in listening and other speaking pieces we also start tomorrow with the scheduling for our students at the high school and the incoming freshmen at least it kicks off that part we have all the background work done with going through the curriculum guide any updates there along with making sure all the back end work is done on powerschool and so tomorrow the 9th 10th and 11th graders will be called to the auditorium one each hour the 9th and 11th graders actually be participating in the kent isd perception survey as well as giving information um in preparation for their selection of classes which will
074take place after midwinter break so it's kind of a pre-meeting they get their transcripts kind of talk about and remind them certain things to plan on and therefore years worth of time to make sure they're staying on track and updating their naviance information and then the incoming freshman and eighth grade parent meeting it will be next wednesday or something next uh thursday february the 24th it's 7 p.m um we've sent out invites to all of our current students and also put an ad that'll run two weeks in the cedar springs post to invite those families that may not currently be senior spring students so that we'd love to have the cedar springs high school students and then they'll start making their course selections i believe it's around march 4th so a lot of exciting things
075happening at the high school and again pleasure to be able to share that with you this evening thank you thank you brian baldwin from the middle school everybody thank you very much for having me tonight it's good to see you um i had three things i was gonna update you on one uh if you haven't heard the east coast trip is on um exciting very exciting uh i was talking to uh the director tonight on ramirez and just a lot of challenger i'm figuring out what we're going to be able to do kind of the moving target guessing where will the euro be vaccine mandates where will can we go through the border in canada but she's working really hard to make sure that a great experience is there for the kids and for those
076of you who don't know it's been three years since you've been able to do this this is a tradition at the school so very excited that we're working it out and and figuring out a way to do that uh parent-teacher conferences for us are march first and third coming up uh in the fall we kind of stumbled on something with doing the zoom interviews just like our zoom conferences like we did last year in the fall we had the best turnout that we've had in my four years here that anyone can remember finding that parents you know really appreciate the ability to not have to make that drive in to have those five-minute meetings with each person we have them scheduled out so that a parent can just schedule six five-minute meetings in a row
077and meet with their teachers and it was great uh the teachers said it was awesome and so we're very excited about seeing in spring conferences is usually like kind of a ghost town and so we're really hoping that those those numbers still stay high for the spring conferences and the last thing is we are also looking at our clad new class sign ups and uh just kind of an update on the way that our encore class uh change and renovation for this year has gone it's just really the kids have shown that there's a lot of excitement around it um if you're not aware of it we've we've kind of revamped the way we do our classes so we have like a robotics class an internal coding class we've added creative writing and mythology and
078a conceptual art class and probably the most popular in the 8th grade is athletic performance class which is exciting but there's just a lot of it's really exciting to see the kids really pick something that they want that they're passionate about go learn about and chase after for for a semester and uh and now we're seeing kids you know ask what can i take in this next semester i want to change something what can i take next year so it's exciting to see for those kids one of the classes that we've added this year that we have all seventh graders taking is team leadership it's uh if you've had one of your kids uh take that class you know it's a it's just an outstanding class talks about a lot of core values um incorporate
079some public public speaking uh it is where our willing to wait program sits i think the awesome teacher somewhere right she's still very nice to me libby matiba is a teacher so if you bet your kids have ever had living you know that it's a home run as far as the teacher teaching the class is just an outstanding experience so that uh we we're only going to look at growing that that program the the different encore options and uh we have a survey going out to students here at the end of march to see you know what kinds of things would you like what can we what experiences can we give you while you're here that would be really meaningful to you so that's my update for the middle school come see us anytime for
080the place of happiness thanks thanks thank you bill cataldo um hello to you all uh gonna do a mix of some data and opportunities that we have going for us at red hawk in our sixth grade building uh kicking it off and might as well celebrate the musical again um and as brian said our kids haven't had a lot of opportunities over the past three years for a field trip so had a last second hey we have the we used to do this can we still do this yes let's put this together and get our kids out there um i think parents handled it well students and teachers were really flexible got kids out there um it aligned completely with the curriculum and what they were looking at and characterization as well as being able
081to uh take what they're reading and see how that looks in in motion and through theater and it was really great to be able to get them outside of the book and compare some of that um out of the classroom and having teachers be able to connect with kids and see the opportunities that we have at cedar springs that was a big thing that we tried to sell knowing the arts have been down in choir and and band we wanted them to really see as they're going to start doing some selecting of course work see look at what you can grow into these students were in your seats and provide them that opportunity so that was really um fun and positive experience for the kids which haven't had that field trip since about third grade
082um other opportunities i know i spoke to you a little bit about the intervention we've got going on um academic services teams are really helping our interventionists just not just make like hey let's go ahead and do a little more skill and drill it's hey how can we make this a little more fun how can we bring some activities that the positive experience for our learners who struggle in math and reading and really growing those as we saw great gains and data how can we fine-tune those and make those better student leadership committee another opportunity for our learners courtney mcdonald as a teacher has done an amazing job of really building that program uh they're reading to the preschoolers in the building having an opportunity to do that because you know the big kids they
083tower over those little ones and like they look up to them so it's a great opportunity for the sixth graders to be a role model within uh red hawk in that building um they're also doing some of the end of the year planning and how could they present to our building management team a team of teachers and myself about what our end of the year looks like to take some of our funding and have a fun positive experience at the end of the year for our sixth graders that they have to present it to us and also with our title one finding supporting curriculum night that we're going to have on the 23rd and 24th for an hour where again we try to have some fun where we're going to do a literature night and
084um a math night where we have uh teachers rotating families through to see how can we make learning fun at home and just some game ideas that are just targeted with some of our um categories based on i ready for what target areas a student has and how can we just get a little more learning at home this is a fun way to connect with your kids at home that is universal to any of our learners so the slc pumping that up and that curriculum night coming up some great opportunities a little bit of the data we had our mid-year review looking at our referral data and that's how many write-ups come through the office daily and the past two years we saw that go from oh you know the honeymoon period up to about
085three a day and it's dropped down to about one and a half a day which is really fun to look at that we've been consistent where it's like yep honeymoon we find out what's going on with this group and then we've really put good things in place and got it back down to where students see what the positive behaviors are in our classroom um we build the positive culture throughout the building and then even have some fun celebrations for those that are really showing those positive trends as well and it's worked for two years now and then our counselor spoke with you a little bit about how fifty percent of our students identified her as a positive person that they would go to if they um needed support she's connected with 42 percent of our
086student body so in in a meaningful way that 42 percent of our students have had her as a support that they've used her uh in some capacity this year um help brought bring ellie's place in for our students that have lost a loved one and partnered with the middle school for some of those students to be provided that opportunity and then knowing depression and anxiety is something we've seen in our students are going to be starting up working with our mental health team uh to support a group um with some curriculum from u of m that we're looking at and seeing how can we support those students with the depression and anxiety component so just some more great things going on at red hot so i appreciate your time thank you carol or trisha who
087would like to go next well i've got a little uh courtney mcdonald courtney o'brien share some things from trails because there's a lot of good things going on at the view i got to tell you okay all right thank you just give me the signal um we have valentines for seniors today our students wrote 240 valentines we had to talk about how do you write that to somebody that you don't know but it just warmed my heart and they delivered they're going to be delivering those so they wrote 240 to deliver to the three homes that are locally here for us for our seniors i thought that was really awesome um we had a valentine's day staff breakfast this morning together to just kind of spend some time to get ready for the day because
088there's a lot of candy and love going on today so we had some successful valentine's parties um the nape test that i know that you talked about last time when i was gone we were explained as an exemplary school is what they said our students were incredibly polite and this man travels all over in the state to do these and he had i get a report from the official report but he sent me an uh off the record report just to thank me so much and say how amazing our staff and our students were so exemplary we are fully staffed for recess and lunch amen okay that's a big deal so we have the same people at recess lunch every day now we're training them in our pbis systems so we're excited for that so
089thank you mark dobies for all that work it was not an easy job um we have the rough readers of western michigan and these aren't fighters but these are dogs that come in ruff ruff um and they come into all three of our schools every month and reach our kids our teachers pick kids that need it for the month and they'll come in and read to them so that's really exciting work um we had for ctla we had our eureka invention presentations by our fourth grade and they had to come up with a problem and then they had to come up with a solution and a sales pitch and i'm telling you we have some politicians and salesmen coming at you for sure and we had some very special guests um john came over and
090helped and annie kim and i myself and we had to act like producers so they actually dressed up in hats and it was a big production and they presented their pitch and their posters and it was they were so incredibly proud but all of the fourth grade students did that with the teachers it was a huge hit um also going on with ckla our my side program our highly cognitively impaired students are partnered with one of our fifth grade classrooms and they're both doing a cla now my side classroom's doing like the first grade edition fifth grade is doing fifth grade edition but some of the topics overlap so when the my science students go into the fifth grade classrooms they know some of the things that the fifth grade students don't know about the
091same topics and it has been so powerful for those students to go in there and have conversations with their peers about the same topics and sometimes they know things that they don't so they're even seen as experts at some things so it is amazing and wonderful to see um we have the mid-year teacher and support staff meetings i met with all of my staff support staff and teachers and they're doing some great things and setting goals for the rest of the year we have 175 students participating in battle of the books which is they have to agree to read at least five books and once they read those five books they're entered in a competition to see if they can answer the questions the quickest we have to race down and get it so there's
092a little bit of athletic and a little bit of reading going on together with that um when i asked staff what you want me to share tonight they said that we are supporting each other through all of this because we are filling a lot of holes on a daily basis with students and the staff and with recess so they are taking care of each other making sure that our students have all of their needs met we're planning battle um march's reading month next month it's usually basketball and we're hoping to be able to actually do the staff student basketball game again because that is a huge win um next coming up in c kelly we're really excited we have the renaissance at fifth grade so that's a big point of interest in geology at fourth
093grade but rocks could be cool so it's going to be good um we are planning a virtual math night and tomorrow i'm going to spend the day with our mtss team reviewing all of our dab for the year so are you ready for trails i'm going to share this from courtney and she said we had a donation of native american artifacts donated to trails the artifacts fit well with the kindergarten ckla unit the kindergarten teachers have some key pieces displayed in one of the corner glass cases they also are setting up a walk-through museum in the media center so the kindergarten classes can do a walkthrough and our golden hawk squawk celebration is this thursday and they're gonna have a fancy lunch for those classes who are in the most golden fox walks during their
094lunch period i asked her where the donation came from and she said it was bequeathed and a will and she and their school was chosen for that so i guess that's a pretty big deal that they got that so they're really excited about that so thank you so much for your time and please come visit us at the view we would love to have you thank thank you all right trisha shetterfield who is our principal she has way too much energy all right and i get to be at the end so we had a great month also at beach some of the things that we've been doing is really just trying to keep up staff morale during these cold months and february we're having fabulous fridays in february and just doing some fun things with
095the staff which includes some competitions which have allowed us to donate coats and personal hygiene items to student services we have given those to tina and also many canned goods to hand to hand which we are giving out on a weekly basis as well and also as our staff is growing their understanding of using their acadians data we have really um been able to be focused and intentional with our reading interventions even more and more than ever before so we're super excited about that our third graders started caget testing this year so that will place students for ap and gifted and talented classes as they go into fourth grade we also had uh they finished our ancient roman ckla unit in third grade and we had a huge celebration where students came to school dressed
096up as an ancient roman so you can look at our facebook page for all those pictures they're fabulous um this month we also had our 100th day of school celebrations which is always fun the kids come to school dressed up like they're 100 years old and they love love that every year it's a it's a great day and um we also had our results from our staff and family surveys come in this month and they were very positive and encouraging as we continue to [Music] make these great things that we're doing even um even better and then we also had guest readers of scott and jen both in our building this month this is which has been really fun thank you thank you thank you thank you all for sharing your valentine's day with us
097that's all my hands okay all so right we're going to talk about winter institute we'll have our next um our second board meeting this month and again february and i don't have anything else for planning so it is 8 10 and we will stay and adjourn