CSPS Board of Education Meeting 1.25.22 HD 720p

001rise for the pledge of allegiance pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice here secretary slater here vice president schachter president reid here thank you and we have established a quorum and moving on to the adoption of the agenda i would entertain a motion for as presented support and discussion having none vice president shaw yes secretary schweiger yes treasurer gilmore yes i do alistair um i just would like to thank all of our teachers and building um principals administration um my daughter milo who's a graduate of here is a fourth grade teacher in oklahoma and they just they don't have any balls footballs basketballs nothing for the recess and so i guess i ignorance on

002my part i just thought the school provided that her school does not and so i'm just thinking mike and they have cockroaches too but um yeah it's not an air force base so it's like military kids and then kinder city but so i'm just like oh my goodness and so i know that like i'm thankful that our building administration and our pto and also our teachers bring all of that because like these kids don't have anything to play with that on the playground and so that's just my gratitude is how well everybody works together here in cedar to provide for our kiddos not only academically but also socially so every day of health is something to be grateful for i'm grateful for the fact that we just had an opportunity to tour some pretty neat

003spaces as a board get your questions answered just have an idea of what a picture going to look like here in the next few weeks and months as we continue to make progress on our projects all right move on to our consent items and i would entertain culture so moved support vice president yes secretary schleicher yes treasurer gilmore yes yes jesse bowser yes president reed yes the consent items are free as presented that brings us to the discussion portion of our decision and our first item for discussion is the selection review process for course materials and we have with us dan martin for too long and as we're navigating the waters through policy and law and expectations of the community my pleasure you should have in your board book and outline that is 10 pages

004first i'm going to tell you that i'm not going to read all 10 pages it's a resource that you can use i'm going to kind of hit the highlights in there but i thought it would be good for you to have because there's some statutory language that we'll get to kind of compare and contrast different statutes but i'll be hitting the high hands the first high point is that you're really seeking to balance sort of the rights and responsibilities of various players involved when i was in high school in our student code of conduct was called rights and responsibilities now too often i think people are focused on rights and not so much responsibilities the next part of the outline there are six court cases the ones on the left side are meyers nebraska emerson

005versus arkansas and edwards versus aguilar those are all kind of cases that dealt sort of with um like this this freedom or right of teachers to have academic freedom and the first one came after world war one and the law was prohibited teaching foreign languages the united states supreme court said that's unconstitutional violates new process rights of students next one 1968 dealt with teaching of evolution of course struck that down as violating the establishment clause that's one in 87 the state said that you're going to teach evolution you also have to teach creationism court found that that was struck down unconstitutional violates the establishment clause because there's a religious attention three cases on the right side all deal with first amendment free speech rights of public employees the only one i'm going to talk just

006a little bit about is like our steady case case where the united states supreme court said that public employees acting in their official capacity basically aren't protected by the first amendment and so there hasn't been anything since these cases that deal specifically with teachers so those cases kind of on the right almost go a little bit against some of the cases on the left as we're seeking to try to balance what is a teacher's innocence free speech right as a teacher to provide something in the curriculum and speaking of curriculum the next case jordan needs to focus on a little bit more is the board of education versus pico which was decided in 1982 and so there's some quotes in the board book on that the thing to point out here is this case dealt

007with removing books from the library which is a little bit different than i think the dishes that you're working with which are books within a classroom library not a big library or classroom books that are being used as part of a reading list as part of the curriculum so the court kind of makes this makes a distinction there because the court very clearly said that local school boards have flawed discretion when managing school affairs and that can include you seeking to transmit community values as part of the curriculum but the court said that that discretion that you have has to be exercised in a manner that is consistent with the values of the first amendment to the united states constitution and the constitution itself protects the right to receive ideas so this idea of freedom

008of speech it includes the right to receive ideas that other people might be publishing or speaking and so the course said that that becomes important for the educational context because it helps prepare students for active and effective participation in the pluralistic and often potential society in which they will soon be adult networks so that's kind of the rationale behind the court of the people case where the court said that a school board that was removing books from the library violated the first amendment rights of students and the court basically noted that there's a unique role of the library where kids go and check out books completely voluntary they have free choice its only option when they contrast with that but then use the word might that's that school boards and officials might be able to

009defend their claim of absolute discretion in matters of the curriculum but even there the court didn't answer that question because it wasn't forced before the court and then two also said that the intent matters if what you're trying to do is deny students access to something because you disagree with it the court is going to frown upon that but if what you're doing is denying it because it's pervasively vulgar and we'll come back to that in just a bit or that it's based on the educational suitability of the materials then the court is going to give you that discretion so now part two legal definitions um and i know jen asked me to give you some of these definitions um the first one that we're going to start off with is obscenity and a quote

010from a concurring opinion by justice stewart that you've probably heard before which is i know it when i see it um and in that particular case the united states supreme court was struggling with upset and they had not yet established the task that is now currently the test that the courts follow which was established in 1973 in a place called miller versus california the court basically has a three-part task to decide when any particular material is deemed obscene the importance of that is obscene materials are not protected by the first amendment which means if you say that you have free speech rights to be obscene the court is going to say no the school officials or state officials can censor obscene materials but the test for obscenity is very very tough it's whether the average

011person applying contemporary community standards we find that the work taken as a whole appeals to the current interest we're going to come and define some of those terms in a little bit looking at state statutes the second piece is whether the work depicts or describes a patently offensive way sexual conduct that is specifically defined in the applicable state of law and then the third piece this is where it becomes really difficult for schools that are looking at materials that have been selected by their teachers is whether the work taken as a whole lacks serious literary artistic political or scientific value so all three of those things of course look so if a book has serious literary artistic political or scientific value it's not exceeding according to the united states supreme court and what i explained

012to jen what i explained to uh students at grand valley where i teach is essentially this is the reason why hugh hefner had articles in playbook so that playboy magazine would not be deemed obscene and even though it might have dirty pictures in it or pornographic pictures it would still be protected by the first amendment because there are articles or interviews with various people uh whether politicians or other world leaders the federal law there's some definitions in here too a couple of things that become important to understand the united states criminal code prohibits transferring obscene materials to minors and so i've heard in a lot of communities where parents are upset with some of the books claiming that these books on the shelves in the classroom would violate state or federal law and so when

013you're looking at the federal law and here they define 916 years of but basically you're going to be using that definition of the senate that's contained in the court's decision so if the material taken as a whole has any serious literary artistic or political scientific value it will not be deemed at sea the children's internet protection act is also in there this has some pretty good definitions the one thing that i want to point out is that this applies only to internet access your school library you could probably get some e-rate funds um it has to have blockers on web pages um so that kids can't access pornographic materials or other inappropriate matter and this law basically says the following content has to be filtered obscenity as defined by the miller versus california case child

014pornography which is pornographic images depicting children or material that's harmful to violence and then the court excuse me not the court the federal legislature defined harmful to minors again using those phrases taken as a whole so any picture image or graphic image that taken as a whole and with respect to minors appeals to the current interest and duty sacrifice reaching um the pics described represents a patently offensive way uh anything that is not suitable for minors that are actual or simulated sexual acts of sexual contact and then again the image taken as a whole lacking any serious literary artistic political or scientific value as to minors and so under those definitions that they're focusing on miners and whether the material again taken as a whole would lack that value michigan law the michigan penal code

015basically prohibits anybody giving any material containing the same language or seen pictures to a person under the age of 18. there's also a prohibition on seeing material and here's where the state is trying to define some of this language contemporary community standards basically means in the state at the time of the alleged violation of c is basically the same definition that you see in the miller case they just kind of move the three steps around two becomes three staff prairie interest as defined in state law is a shameful or morbid interest of duty sex or excretion um and so those are the things that you're looking at in the materials whether they appeal to them in a patently defensive way and lack serious literary artistic political or scientific value the state law that prohibits disseminating

016sexually explicit matter there will be some parents who say okay maybe this isn't obscene but it's still sexually explicit that if you look at that law it says any sexually explicit matter that is harmful to minds and that definition of harmful to minors again pulls in essentially that same definition of obscenity for minors but they're looking at the work as a whole to determine whether it lacks the serious literary artistic or scientific political values and so when you're looking at these books it becomes very very important that you're looking at them as a whole not isolated passages that might describe sexual activity to determine whether or not it is period to determine whether or not it is lacking serious literary article artistic political or scientific value the next thing that i do want to point

017out is a page 8 and this is right at the top that law that prohibits disseminating sexually explicit material designers has two specific exclusions for teachers of administrators and librarians of public schools if they're doing it as part of a school program or in the course of their plan so while distributing obscenity doesn't have an exception for teachers distributing sexually explicit material does so that even if it fits the definition there's an exception that doesn't apply to teachers in librarian schools the next thing which isn't highlighted still on that page is a provision of that law that allows a person who wants to disseminate information to a student or excuse me to a minor they can go to the local prosecutor and basically get an advisory opinion as to whether or not it would buy

018a label and so there's a time frame that's put in there i believe yeah i think it's like five days like five business days yeah not more than five business days the prosecutor has to give an answer to that question so if you ever get into the situation where you're really concerned about some books you may go to your local prostitute to find out whether or not it would be something that would be deemed sexually explicit that the general public couldn't disseminate to a minor but again understand that there are exceptions for public school teachers and librarians the third piece that i want to talk about just to kind of highlight taking a work as a whole is this idea of a tale of two songs that's the song of solomon the old testament has

019a book called the song of solomon that some people would say is essentially erotic poetry um tony morrison has a book called the song of solomon which is a bit of like a narrative dealing with the african-american experience that deals with impacts of sexual assault and things of that sort and so both of that in some people's views have parts that are somewhat sexually explicit one more explicit than the other one a little more sweating one using more metaphors but if you were to look at the idea of the song of solomon on the bible that does describe body parts does describe certain types of sexual activities and say okay wait a minute that shouldn't be in our library you would be looking at just those isolated passages in one of the books the chapters

020of the bible seeking to remove the whole similarly doing that with tony morrison's book would not be consistent with the united states supreme court president or the state and federal statutes that require you to look at the work as informed and then finally talking about how your process policies procedures and guidelines there's a long list here of your current board policies and administrative guidelines that have some connection to the topic these are all available online that you'll be able to access and then talking about what is being proposed as you move forward and what seems to be very good procedures good practices first and foremost the procedures are looking at the age of the students involved looking at the fact that this is between grades 6 and 12 and even what might be appropriate for

021a 12th grader isn't going to be appropriate for a sixth grader next the policies set forth what the core beliefs are of your program you've heard me talking before about the court explaining why the first amendment allows for receiving ideas not just speaking and part of that is to help kids who are about to become adults be responsible members of society being able to engage in debates that's what some of the principles are put out in the policies and procedures is basically explaining that we're running these kids to be able to see different perspectives that they might not otherwise have parent senior strengths by being able to read the words of an author who provides those different voices they'll be able to see that um sort of as you were saying you know your daughter

022teaching on a military base inner city kids kids here at cedar springs might not have any idea what that's like let's hope they don't have cockroaches running around the classrooms but they probably have no idea what it's like but if your daughter were to write a story or a memoir they would be able to see into that world then the the good thing that i like as the attorney is your procedures as proposed are seeking to balance the parents and students rights and trying to apply that balance acknowledging that all students have the right to review and listen to their library classroom resources and they have the opportunity and the right to be challenged they critically process these different ideas but then also any person student or parent can challenge and express their concerns about

023some of the material and during that time frame um the books would remain on the shelves this would follow picos because you're not removing the books until an ultimate decision is being made and then further it's it's allowing the parents to have the right to guide the reading of their own children but then seeking to respect that right of other parents so in other words if if i said that i did not want my daughter sophie to read tony morrison's book the song of solomon i would be able to talk to the teacher see that on the list say i don't want sophie to read that she's you know it's not gonna she's gonna have nightmares whatever um and sophie doesn't read that but then another child in the classroom might have access to that

024if the parent doesn't object so that we're not having one parent deciding for all parents what kids can and cannot read in the classroom the next thing is it considers the selection and approval process it has different guides for the different types of books that are being used some books are produced by the entire class some books are actually read aloud in class one of the books that often causes issues is probably something you all read from your children tom sawyer the use of the n-word and kids you know nowadays you're really really upset about that understandably so um the next are what might be on book clubs or reading lists where a teacher might have an assignment that kids have to read one two three books off of a list that contains 15 to

02520 so that they're getting some of those diverse perspectives and then the choice reading that might be in the library where it's not anything that's even on the list that's a sign but again the kids have that voluntary independent choice and so your procedures look at those differently and separate in terms of how much control should be over those decisions and then it's got a in my mind a very good procedure for reviewing the book that is being challenged by a student or a parent beginning first and foremost with an informal meeting with a teacher where a parent teacher can both express their views as to why the book was selected based upon its academic rigor based upon this different view window into another world and the parent can explain why they object to it

026and then after that if the parent's not satisfied and the teacher is not satisfied it gets referred to the building principle keeps it off your desk uh keeps it off your desk for the time being as well and then the building principle is going to notify all teachers um or excuse me who will notify the parent to make sure that the parent notifies them the principal notifies the teacher to make sure the teacher notifies all parents who have any students currently reading the book that they have the choice the parent has the choice so again if i've objected to song of solomon by tony morrison and i say i don't want sophie to read it and i talk to the teacher the teacher explains why and i still say no that the teacher sends every

027other parent in that classroom who might be reading that book hey just so you know your kids have a choice whether or not you read this book and you as a parent have that forward and then you've got a committee of stakeholders who are going to review the book as a whole so that you're going to have people um teachers parent is included in that who are going to consider the book as a whole to make a decision whether or not it would come off the shelf or remain on the shelf so that kids can't have that choice to review it taking something off the shelf that is not obscene as defined by the united states supreme court could create legal liability right now under pico it will create legal liability if it is in

028the library it's not clear whether that would be like the teacher's classroom library where kids have free choice reading but could apply there as opposed to the general library it's not clear how the course will move if you're taking it off of a reading list because that is curriculum if your intent is to censor views that you disagree with the court's going to find that to be a first amendment violation if your intent is that the book is pervasively vulgar or doesn't have the appropriate educational suitability for the grades that the book is being offered the course might be more likely to refer to your discretion so with that i'll open it up to questions just you also have a draft of our procedures attached there as well and something that i just recently added

029in appearance and students rights was the cross references to our board policy in niola so that you can see where those came from they came right from our ward policy um and then some graphics in there about exactly the process that dan just mentioned first there's a conversation with a parent and a teacher or a student and a teacher if it's not resolved at that level then it rises to the level of the principle if it's not resolved at that level then it rises to my level where i'm committing together to consider that you know we would be thinking about what's the best solution for this book does it belong where it is because of the literary value or is it really misplaced if we should be using it in a different way or not

030so that process overview as well as work that is yet to come in terms of the preparation for books that are whole facts books read alouds book lists those kinds of things i had yet to talk with teachers about those or enough but that's the process that we've um kind of put together on and of course really hard on that is also how questions so let's go ahead and we'll start with misty and we'll head down before example this way and we'll do questions that way and then if we have follow-up so everybody gets a chance to speak once before if there's multiple questions in reading some of those um like those definitions like um one passage that um i think you read was that the room smelled like sweat so wouldn't that be classified

031as describing like a a sexual situation not necessarily describing the sexual situation um it's kind of describing the aftermath if you want rather than the actual act but two even if it does then what you'd be looking at is that passage in context of the book as a whole and so in determining whether or not the book as a whole is either obscene or deemed sexually explicit and so what you would describe in terms of like bodily excretions isn't necessarily a sexual act but it's the aftermath and so it might not even fall within the definition of the picnic of the depiction of the sexual activity itself and then even if it does you still then have to look at the work as a whole not just that isolated passage where it says that to

032determine if the work interest in is to look to see if they work as a whole like serious literary artistic scientific reproduction and if it does as a whole then it's obscene and it shouldn't be in the classroom but if it's just the isolated passage that might describe an activity or the aftermath of the activity then it more likely than not has first amount of protection so i've got a couple things number one i guess i'd like your opinion i want rewards in your mouth it's a very difficult test oh yeah to have something bmc that has to be obscene in whole correct when you're looking at the workouts as a whole to determine whether it's obscene and not only obscene but again as as the court do you find sexually explicit for minors right

033that's still looking at the work as a whole for minors and then in addition it has to lack as you point out serious literary artistic political the playboy references a very difficult test it is a difficult task for things to be deemed obscene yes the other question i would have is you referenced the library the school library may be held to a different standard than a classroom like potentially yes but you also uh in your notes here have indicated that there are exceptions for teachers and librarians can you describe or speak to that a little bit more for us yeah sure so i think when the legislature was was passing the law that says thou shalt not disseminate sexually explicit material to minors the michigan association of school boards other people probably the american library

034association said hey wait a minute we've got a lot of books whether it's school libraries um or in school reading lists that might have sexually explicit portions and we don't want our teachers being arrested for this and so they put those exceptions in there and so two things kind of happen first and foremost you've got to meet that very difficult task as we talked about for it to be deemed sexually explicit material and then even if that happens the teachers and librarians would not be prosecuted as long as they're doing it as part of their official functions now this doesn't mean that i as a football coach can groove my players by providing them with gay pornography and have then that lead to an inappropriate relationship etc that would be part of my official jobs

035if i'm a teacher and coach and i'm doing it that way as opposed to here's the reading list on the reading list are books like tony morrison's beloved or song of song do you understand that distinction yes right so so i guess just to be clear the exception for a teacher a librarian does not speak to obscenity it speaks to their personal liability correct okay and it speaks to disseminated sexually explicit materials which kind of parallels the definition of website okay thank you um one question is i try to understand the law i mean i think our policy is good but it sounds like even if we follow the proposed policy and we end up having a review we still could be exposed to liability if we're not in line necessarily with pulling a book

036that is not deemed obscene so right i mean yeah i oftentimes apologize for being an attorney yes and that's mostly to cover my own backside sure because if i don't tell you that there's that risk of liability there and something happens and you get sued and you lose then you're consuming for malpractice yeah so under the definition of vulgar i guess i just want to ask this question i know we're taking it to the extreme yeah if we had a teacher decide that they were going to hand out playboys because it had a dodge truck article inside so it was not in whole obscene and we had the committee come together and we decided to pull that off the shelf we could be sued because according to the law it's okay right now not with

037our policy but with state law and federal law for the teacher to hand that out because it does contain some non-sexual material is that true potential probably not because i'm not i'm not sure what the educational value is of showing the entire playboy bands i'll give you two examples of both from first amendment classes that i had at notre dame law school so i'm going to a very catholic law school i have a class with professor john carvey um on first amendment in particular he brought in a box of pornographic magazines dumped him on the table and said go through these and you tell me what's insane or not because you'll know that they're gonna see it you know trying to make a point yeah uh another very important case is is falwell versus flint

038that there was even a movie made of it uh and it was woody harrelson uh talking about a very important person in the case basically in that case i think was hustler magazine larry flynn published a parody of a liquor ad where people would describe their quote first time and he had the parody about jerry falwell who was a prominent televangelist at the time and that went all the way up to the united states supreme court i had a professor that would use that and showed us the parrot now he didn't give us the entire magazine but he gave us just the parrot so if a teacher wants to use the literary value if you will uh or scientific political value like i believe i've not got what i'm not certain i think there was

039probably a play away interview with martin luther king jr during the civil rights and if we're going into uh black history month and a teacher in social sciences is wanting to use that interview rather than plop down the entire magazine excerpt the interview that's what i would advise the teacher to do from a curriculum perspective because i think most people would say okay well yes this book might have depictions of sexual activity but the book taken as a whole does not lack serious literary value but when you're giving minors pornographic magazines people are going to start asking why is this in line with the education of the children i'm not advocating for that i'm just trying to figure out where that light is because that's the extreme correct some of the content that i from

040my perspective was also i would say obscene from i mean i didn't want to tell my mother about what we heard from the parents in that one meeting so somewhere in the middle there is obscene so i'm just trying to figure out from the law's perspective if you know if some of the content in the magazine is not obscene then as a whole it's not is it 92 i just don't know where that line is correct and and that's kind of why one justice when he was looking at a film says i know it when i see it that film's not in but somebody else looking at that film might say yeah that's it okay you know but again from from an educational standpoint my professor at a law school dealing with students who are

041between 21 to 35 years of age is a lot different than sixth graders to 12th graders and so if i were coming in here doing a civics lesson on the first amendment and talking about obscenity i would not bring in pornographic magazines to tell kids to look at it and tell me what is obscene right to be similar if there was an article in sports illustrated um we wouldn't necessarily give the whole magazine out but teachers might use the individual right article from the magazine i think it's a little different when you've got a book you know so then you've got to think about okay is the is the book in its totality what's that story about you know is it a coming-of-age story is it about uh individuals struggles to you know go through

042these unique challenges or is it about yeah right i appreciate this guy just i'm thinking of the parents that are gonna and they're gonna talk to us about i'm probably gonna be asked following this meeting on youtube um they're gonna ask okay so if this much content a book this thick is acceptable i mean where is the line and it's fuzzy sounds like by the way it's fuzzy and that's really the challenge we're not deciding anything tonight right now this is for sure for sure but it's also very clear because those parents have that choice to say i don't want my child to pay that goal in our policy but the law is different about taking it out of the classroom that's what i was trying to understand correct and that's where like your procedures

043and policies are seeking to balance that parental choice so that parents can make the choice for themselves and their children right but not necessarily make the choice for others and then the idea of one more question are we doing one at a going time well first i just want to say thank you this is very helpful the way it outlines the work that you have done this is very good clarification i do have a question kind of circling back even to just what scott even just brought up but the parent choice piece of it because in jen maybe you can speak to this but currently and when you are describing a book is under review or there's some books under investigation so to speak and they're going through this review process at what point is

044that teacher notifying parents and let me just give you a couple examples you know i just think of sex education you know from a very young age all the way up no matter what grade they're in you know and i just signed a form again for health you know parents are notified and can sign they have to sign a form and they have the choice to remove their child if they do not want them to participate um outside of a school setting even if you think of a movie which is an artistic there is artistic value in a movie but if there is sexual explicit content you know it has in our rating and they cannot see it unless they're 17 they have to be accompanied by adults so kind of same same idea here

045i'm just wondering i guess i'm just wondering at what point are we notifying parents because you know my experience has been with the reading list parents that have not been notified or given that choice of hey 13 of these books on this list have explicit content or there have been concerns about some of this content we want to make you aware of that so your child can choose something else because right now there's none there's not that notification which also concerns me what i see right now is if after the informal meeting between the teacher and the parent if it's not resolved it goes to the principal that's where notice to all of the other parents about the book comes in i don't know if that's if there's something different too well in the framework

046one of the things we'll be asking teachers to do is to explicitly say on the form with you know their syllabus and then as a both choices being made where it's from a closed list not a choice book from a classroom library but on a list where these are the choices here are the reasons we're giving these choices we're hoping to meet these educational goals there's a sign-on from us so that's not been in place yet because this is all this pre-work has been happening if we will be working to move into that situation okay yeah that's helpful that was more of and i know we're just gathering information right that was so that's the part where jen is working through that too so so part of this is looking at the books that said

047over here you know uh disclosure of your child might be in a room where there's adult literature right right but then what are we putting which falls to curriculum on the requirements right yeah and there's not a required required reading list right now but it wasn't suggested but there is a reading list though your students have to choose a certain number of books that they are forming flip flops right so they would have that choice of appearance to say not that well so we're working to put that in with the notifications appearance no in advance and this i mean this is this has been a challenging body of work and we are as a group with jen and other you know curriculum specialists throughout west michigan is is a kind of a collection of productive

048struggles right no one has the ideal platform or the ideal approach to this work yet but because of the work and the the leadership that dan has provided the work that jen and other members of her work we've provided we're getting closer to that to that system to that to that process yes yeah which i'm very thankful for i'm very thankful thanks okay so is the miller case predicated for college or through page 12 it is not educational at all it's basically a case that was dealing with using the united states mail to deliver products um so it's it's in the context of more along the lines of magazines and films than what's being shown on a college campus or on all right so because we're looking at the board we're elected to cover and

049curriculum falls under what we discover right in curriculum that would cover curriculum right that doesn't cover free reading books correct i would say that you've got much more discretion within curriculum than you do library and then again there the court would look at the intent that you're seeking to achieve um but you're going to have more discretionary library okay so suggested reading books follow their curriculum my understanding is yes it's basically like our book club correct we don't have time for everybody to read all of these books but i want you as part of the curriculum to give a diverse perspective to hear from other voices marginalized voices what happened here are 20 different you pick three or five i i would say that's part of the class because it's probably going to be an

050assignment whether a paper or something is getting graded or even just interaction between the kids and so i would say it's probably more part of a curriculum library so in your opinion that that could be a policy that we could explore to help god help guide that to not have the continual challenge and then we could make parents aware that free reading books might be available that are um a more adult face so that that sexually explicit when the definitions under the state law disseminated sexually explicit materials looks at the work as a whole and if we're looking at a 300 page book and there are 30 pages that might have sexually explicit material that's 10 right 10 of the book you know is it sexually explicit is it not you've got the risk that

051a student might file a suit against the school district and say you're taking away my right to have access to this now i would defend you by saying no this is a curriculum matter for our discretionary do you have the right challenge on the shelf you have the right to read it on your own but it's not part of the curriculum we're trying to transmit some of our community values as part of our curriculum okay so then i just can't guarantee that we're going to come in but yes we keep working with everybody okay okay so putting yourselves at rc um you know sophie we have the student handbook you know um we have those values with that we have values that we transmitted dances you know so we're looking two of the pieces of

052confusion for the students of you know what are we what are we doing here so i think that's another piece of our work of you know as far as the curriculum piece material in our curriculum or um then it then is there are many materials that we use that might have some level of explicitness to them but we could get those we could get those approved via process correct one of the things you could potentially do is the thing with the prosecutor but in our own process in your own process i i i don't know if i want to do this i'm not sure how many we've read the song of solomon from the old testament um but there's and again it's very poetic but but there are descriptions of body parts and things in

053there um and so some parents might look at that and say that's just too explicit for me and then would you remove the bible or one teacher plans correct and again my understanding is part of the rationale for selecting some of these is to try to give students a lens into other worlds so rather than just focusing on the one lens of what that list of book is maybe we bring a similar approach to deciding what the curriculum is well aware of you know there's been accusations that the list of folks is has a lot of well obviously he's got some sexually explicit but you know in american literature we're all talking about coming of age yeah so i mean and john's well aware of that so that's not that much uh talking about censorship

054a little bit so there's a live potential liability for the school district if we're censoring is that what you said well yes if if you're found to violate the first amendment then there would be more likely than that a 1983 action not the year of the section of the civil rights act that lawsuits are typically brought under for constitutional violations because they get attorney's fees so that if you're found or violated the first amendment rights of students you would have to put the book back on the shelf pay damages and the attorney fees for the student who run the case potential advising a student group or a parent group that something may be offensive to them is in no way censorship no um so like the sort of analogy i would use back back when

055i was in high school going into college around the time of the parents music resource conference tip or and now records have labels on it if they have explicit lyrics it's almost like that type of thing that's not censoring it's providing more information so that parents can make an informed decision um if we don't censor material that's deemed to be obscene as a whole we could also be exposing ourselves to liability if we're sued in my opinion no because of governmental immunity because of the exceptions for librarians and teachers for the dissemination of sexually explicit materials because of the work taken as a whole i think the risk of liability if you are removing it is greater than the potential liability of a parent suing you saying this is on the shelf and it's obscene

056and you've got people who are disseminating it and the board said it was okay okay um the second part of that vulgar test was if it's illegal in the state well if if the work is depicting certain sexual acts that are listed so if you look at the definitions uh under state law there are certain acts probably that are listed um and i didn't read them all but they're kind of in there so like there's a definition of sexual conduct um state law is saying what you can't describe in the book so again going back to the aftermath versus the conduct itself you know there's a the state law specifically says you can't describe the ultimate sexual acts but it doesn't say anything about the smells and so if if what you're looking at and

057that's why i was making that distinction from what you brought up it's it's it's not that the act itself is illegal but that the state law describes the acts that can't be described without being deemed sexually explicit so it's not just illegal activity like you could have a book about being a bank robber and that would be the obscene or bolder okay thank you well okay i thought i thought i was following and then that made it a little bit more unclear for me so if if a book does have a portion that is explicitly describing a sexual act that's part of a three-part test the three-part test correct so so like going going back to you know the smells that situation probably wouldn't meet any of the three parts of the text you've basically

058got to meet them all that the the work taken as a whole has to appeal to the brain interest that it has to describe certain sexual activities that the work as a whole lacks serious literary artistic political scientific jobs if any one of those three aren't in a sense met the work isn't considered the same so even if it explicitly is describing the act or like in one of the books for example it does involve a minor in the sexual acts which is on this list but it still might be okay because it still has to meet those three correct correct potential yeah and so then again you're sort of wavering at whether or not it will work as a whole has any literary scientific artistic or political boundaries and then they're looking at that

059again for a mic right and then sorry just clarification with that too because um it really comes down to that intent because you mentioned the intent what the intent of the board in the sense is yes yeah okay um just that distinction of well you use the example like of coaching like if you're using the material like if the intent is the academic value versus yeah yes and that i mean technically goes to the teacher or librarian's ability to be exempt from the law that promises sexually exclusive material it could be the same exact material but just the intent of how it's used potentially yes yeah so in other words english teacher assigning a particular book because of his literary value and then you've got the gym teacher art teacher telling the kid hey you

060should read this book i think you'll really really like it might be different that's part of the professional responsibility sure so we're weighing you know our government's position and providing for the safety and welfare of the students and you know to be frank i've spoken to the social worker outside the district and she was alarmed at some of the excerpts of the books that heard the answers but we have students who you know that's just going to be taken to them how are they going to know what's in there until they open up the book and then there they are like oh i don't want to read this you know hello so if you right so and again i don't know if this is part of what you're gonna eventually get to um but like

061how many of you watch movies or programs streaming on netflix hulu and all those things they'll have you know great if you will and then they'll try to describe what's in and my wife and i were i think ozark watching um and it's got you know like ludity sex violence and smoking like oh my gosh not smoke you know but but it's going to list out the potential things that some people might find defensive and so it might be that the teacher would providing notice to the parents might explain okay here is in a sense how the work is rated uh and what types of things might be in there that people find depends the potential now but kind of your question is if the teacher doesn't cover everything that somebody might find offensive do

062you have liability because the teacher didn't list smoking when the teacher was focused on the sex and violence we're gonna get points just but but you know a parent might argue wait a minute this is an issue and it's our job to ensure that those processes are in place to give the illustration the gardener is yep yes uh the local prosecutor making an advisory ruling with something you reference um who can request the advisory ruling for the prosecutor understanding is anybody who's interested in disseminating the material disseminators only uh one second is anybody it says a person intending to disseminate to a diner so so somebody who's objecting to material does not have the right to go to the local prospect correct unless they themselves want to disseminate it based on based on the way

063this is written and that's the way the statute is written theoretically it could be a school administrator on behalf of the teachers you know it could be jensen here's our list of books we want to get the county prosecutors okay advisory opinion on this list of books um even though jen herself won't be the one disseminating it um but it's a person intending to disseminate not the person who's objecting to what has been disseminated so they would just file a criminal complaint okay so that's one that's their resources correct and then and then again the teacher or librarian is exempt from the law unless they're not providing those materials sort of pursuant to their capacity but he potentially has to need a lot of folks potentially or have like an assistant prosecutor has anybody and

064if you've got a list of 20 books prosecuted to read five business days [Music] itself that deals with the harmful to minors but basically that parallels the number of tasks um and it would be looking at all three so again if if it's not describing the ultimate sexual act sort of the aftermath it would meet that problem um but they're probably looking for the literature one of the things that the prosecutor might rely on is okay wait a minute this is a book that has won multiple awards in a literary world i'm not going to say that black series that are very valuable if it's received rewards from whatever organizations [Music] whatever um is there that criteria for books that maybe that could help with what's allowed in a high school classroom and what's a

065lot of junior high like is there such a thing and i mean there's probably curriculum guides for for students at different levels okay and you might have a student who's reading at a higher level but the material might not be appropriate for them so in other words you might have a student who's in fourth grade reading at a ninth grade reading but you're not going to give them a book on coming of age right you know that an adolescent might be interested in reading at that time but there's probably a quick look back for the grades so i know the books always have grade levels yeah there's a crowd sourced um something called common sense media which is a crowd source so it's not a professional uh resource to use but it does provide a

066guideline okay unless we're talking about adult books which is what we're often talking about at the high school level because students have reached that top threshold we want them reading not young adult books but adult books so common sense media will rate many books all kinds of media video games movies all kinds of things it tells what age parents think it's appropriate for what age students think it's appropriate for and what some of the common challenges might be to it okay the three books that we looked at with our committee all were rated for 10th grade or below it's a book company that typically sells books to public libraries and school libraries they have a resource called title wave so you know district leaders principals teachers would have an account on type title weight part

067of the following resource category and they could type in a particular title and then there would be not a crowd-sourced uh review of the of the book but more of a professional review so there are a variety of ways that you can get different people's either professional or personal insights on a book and often the publisher will tell you that as well so it's often printed on a publisher's information about the book okay either the lexile which is the reading level so what reading level does that go to or the grade stand that it's recommended for okay or the age i just do those given those don't typically i mean you'd have to read into the description of it and i would also say you know not every student has the same threshold and so

068again to the point of smoking it makes it difficult to know what the things are that people might have um concerns about and narrow dance explicit such a case because that also could be a moving line so um so as far as a kind of a committee or the group that will come together uh i know with um success we have a committee and on that committee there's certain criteria we have to have parents staff specifically says when you're doing this sex education curriculum who has to be part of that committee there is no provision of revised school code specifically what you're dealing with here so you've got to get more discretion as to how that committee is comprised now the purpose of these books isn't to teach sex education uh it's to teach something

069else whether it's english the different views by having so it doesn't have to go through that sex ed review committee even though there might be references to sexually explicit types of activities you may want to think of having your committee be similar to that but you're not legally obligated that probably carries through to any kind of that you have to go through yes okay thank you for joining us thank you okay the 2022 budget i'll let this warm up again real quick so we took a really broad look at this on the january 10th meeting and i was going to go into quite a bit of detail i kind of knew we were going to be running a little bit late tonight so i did abbreviate it a little bit but there is a longer

070presentation in workbook with a little bit more detail you're free to look at if you have any questions obviously please reach out to me so um this is just the general fund budget update it doesn't include service or any of the other things that we'll talk about soon um i actually will bring the food service fund um for discussion on on february 14th because there's something to look at there but just gonna run through really three things here where we're standing on this fiscal year right now um versus where we uh where we thought we'd be um take a look at where that compares to other districts in the county and then where indications are where we're heading for for next year so that january consensus revenue estimating conference has passed now and so we've

071got kind of our first look at where state ones are i wanted so the first thing we've spoken about this is our this is our blended enrollment so this is uh this is where we ended up for the 21 22 school year student-wise and we'll talk a little bit more about the moment as we get uh towards the end of this but obviously two major things contribute to our revenue and that's our enrollment and then of course the foundation allowance per pupil so that's something that we will uh uh the foundation allowance obviously this has not changed this is we knew um coming into this fiscal year that we were going to be receiving eight thousand seven hundred dollars per student that hasn't changed uh and that's what we're looking at for this uh stuff

072so a little bit more about the enrollment we projected the fall 21 enrollment to be 3446 fte it came in at 3 328. you might say what you just said it's it was that was our fall count but again that's the 90 percent 10 blend from fall and then last spring so it really doesn't have a big impact but we have slightly fewer students foundation allowance is the same you may remember the super blend uh last year we had the super blend formula which was 75 from the previous fiscal year just 25 last fiscal year so we really didn't feel the impact of a sharp enrollment decline until this year as we still received that but the big picture is still good because you looked at this before our general revenue is still up on

073a daily basis i was kind of grumpy slash nervous for a little while there because of the enrollment decline and as i worked through the thousands and thousands of clients that make up our general fund budget i got less from me around christmas time so overall this is where i would take you through each part of it our local state federal and then our incoming transfers and other parts of our revenue we'd go through each part of that but i just kind of want to give you guys an overall general picture tonight so i'm gonna go with some notes down for myself this really you can see the 2021 audited numbers on the left and i apologize that could be a little bit difficult mr right underneath them but i'm really just comparing where we

074started our initial budget from june and where the amended budget is you know so when you see the dollar change in the percent change here that's all i'm comparing there so on the local level um there there is an increase of 219 000 that's really the result of uh some athletics revenue that i wasn't anticipating not knowing where colgate was going to be so that was a good thing um and then remember we passed the board approved the purchase of some chromebooks because we received some rates it was about a hundred and ten thousand dollars so that goes into the local revenue too so that made up just about exactly fifty percent of that on the state level this is where it can be deceiving you'd say we lost all that foundation allowance revenue why

075isn't that a decrease well there was a there's there's a lot of categoricals that we've received and again we'll go through all the details of that but there's special ed funding that that wasn't anticipated that we're receiving this year that are one-time funds uh but the biggest part of this is over a half million dollars in what we call 147 c revenue it's the it's the revenue that the state provides districts to pay off the unfunded liability in the retirement system it shows up on the ledger as revenue and then we send it right back out as expense so a little bit misleading there but that's why that's an increase on the federal side we're gonna spend more s or two dollars previously anticipated and then again there were some other american recovery increases in

076idea and things like that so uh that's really the story of the weapons if you look at them as a pie chart uh the original budget's the amended budget show up it's really about okay most are most of our revenue almost 78 percent come in at the state level and then the other pieces are there that's really pretty typical okay running to the expense side so this is again where i would take everybody through every different part of it basic programs added dates i'm not going to do that tonight because i know it's chilly and we all want to get out of here eventually so i will say some major overarching things on basic programs has had indeed you can see basic programs went up by almost 700 000 and it needs went down now

077basic programs again are your classrooms direct instructional type things those there are are teachers that you think of as general ed teachers not special ed teachers any supplies they need any substitutes in their classrooms et cetera et cetera added needs are more of those added needs as defined by the state so those are special ed teachers those are a lot of the title one type funded activities 31a classrooms that provide that intervention additional instruction that's not foreign so really the change there a lot of it was because of that mipser's revenue okay there's a big increase in revenue there's going to be an offsetting increase in expect so that that's part of that 669 000 uh that you see there um there are additional costs for for substitutes at one point we had 16 floating

078substitutes this year i think we're at 14 now now we are funding those out of some lesser dollars but those are increased costs we're paying more than we ever have for substitutes because of the number of teachers out and quite frankly some days it's still not enough as we know but there's some significant increase costs there um and you'll notice the decrease on added needs that was just because i reclassified some of our ckla curriculum that we purchased at sr2 i classified it into the basic programs and so that's why you see that they play against each other um as we go down just the major things people support we are down one counselor at the high school versus last year so that's why you see a decrease there um in instructional staff services the

079primary reason for that is we added an academic services special projects direction so that's a big increase in that bucket but again i had budget for it june i'm not quite sure what we were doing with that and then we had some training for the ckla costs again offset by esser revenue but that falls into that bucket so quite a big increase there um and maintenance operations and maintenance you see a 132 000 increase here the trucks that we agreed to purchase for 60 000 that's in there now we did add one fantastic staff member to our maintenance staff so that's an increase there um the only other thing i wanted to say for for this was support services central you see a 70 000 increase there that's really uh the increase from those chromebooks

080that we purchased because of the universal services so really we're trending about the same if you remember going way back to june i projected that we were going to be 64 ish above you know revenues above expenses and on a 42 million dollar budget it's pretty much right we talked about that a little bit last time we're still right there 819 000 increase in revenue 838 000 increase in expenses okay so a little bit less than that but that brings us to where and i don't have it on here it wasn't board book this budget is projecting that we're still just about even 49 000 revenues over expenses and there's a ton of different moving parts that are going on but the overall overarching picture is the same i did want to i always like

081to compare it not just by the category but also by a different type of category which is the salaries benefits purchase services repairs and maintenance and so on and so forth you see that salaries actually went down but it's pretty much the same as forecasts and that's good i want to forecast that initial budget for salaries and wait just where we end up so proud of that that's good benefits is up three hundred thousand dollars fish screwed up i'd say no that's that nipser's retirement expense um i was actually pretty spot on with that purchase services up by 835 000 that's a huge increase so i wanted to make sure that i captured that in case there were any questions about it that's really comprised of several things the substitute cost that i didn't anticipate

082when i was making the budget i was being too optimistic i thought hey covet's going to be weenie we're not going to need as many substitutes as last year very long there um we did do some online curriculum things with new beginnings at the high school and then dual enrollment so there's some costs for that those are purchase services uh we saw it tonight our legal services bill sorry is up this year okay uh legal services for a multitude of reasons we've that tab has gone up we purchased some things like firewall uh because we have more devices ever than ever so we've upped those services to make sure that our students are safe and not doing things they shouldn't be and then again um the ckla curriculum we purchased with esser that was a

083huge expenditure we invested quite a bit into training staff training for that as well so another big one real quick and then i'm moving on past this and i'll take time for questions i promise is capital outlay so you see that i budgeted 264 000 for capital outlay those are those big ticket purchases and then we ended up because right now i'm projecting 372 so an increase of over 100 000 um banned uniforms i had that budgeted but there was a there was a contribution from the band boosters that i had to recognize as revenue and so the increase in expense offsets it but it's still an increase in expense the trucks of course which i mentioned and those laptops so you see those trends throughout the whole thing they're just increases that we've talked

084about throughout the year we're not going to quickly i'm just trying to get right after it pie charts because who doesn't love a good pie chart you can see overall we're roughly the same uh from the original budget to the amended budget still in that 71 salary but benefits as a district that's where i love to live as you get up into the 80 those are really fixed costs and difficult times to adjust so no concerns there on my behalf um this is something that shifting gears a little bit received quite a few questions about what about those astrophones they've received a lot of esser dollars well this slide right here you know i'm nothing if not transparent so this was actually taken right off our june budget amendment and this is how we spent

085every dollar that we received for overt relief funding last fiscal year so 1 779 524 audited on the ledger in the books on the website on the transparency page that's what we sent spent that i will go through everything but in a fair amount of detail that's what we spent last year if everybody asks it's right okay um and by the way well i won't go back to that this year what's currently budgeted in the budget that i'm presenting to you tonight there's really only two buckets so significantly fewer buckets but they're larger the sr2 money we're really spending that on three things again all board approved all mde approved and you see those there by the way indirect costs those are just dollars that we could capture for state initiative it's one point something

086percent uh really just to offset the costs that all the different work that goes into this it doesn't go in anybody's bucket it just goes into our ledger for all of our equalization those were dollars we received because the state guaranteed every district would get the same amount of that's with two dollars so that's what that is and you can see what we have that indicated for over there so there are more cova dollars coming you might say where's sr3 i don't have sr3 included in this budget and the reason for that are there's two reasons one state hasn't approved anybody's estrogen budget yet so i'm not going to put it in the budget yet we don't know what's going to happen number two more importantly whatever best or three dollar we spend on the

087expense side we'll have offset so there's really it's not going to change our bond for a mid year so that's the situation for both again always up for questions that you might ask do this discussion which is another important and we need to be transparent moving right now uh the fun bandits so everybody wants to know what's fun bands what's fun so our fund balance actually is projected to go down this year which is interesting because i just told you revenues are going to be higher than expenses how can our fund balance go down well if one balance is calculated as a percentage of your overall expenditures so if you look at our overall expenditures they're going up by two million dollars over last year that's going to make our fund balance look like 25.46

088even though we're actually putting more money just something to take note of but again right down there in the red in the bottom projecting a surplus okay and still get the above water this is something where we explode okay so that was our overall picture of the budget where the general fund lands right now this is just some comparables i always like to do this on the mid-year got the data from other kent county districts so just a quick four slides about okay where do we sit in relation some of this is good some of it is but it's it's this is data this is information and it's my job to share it so um this is 21 versus 22 enrollment take a look at this county wide i know it's kind of hard to

089see up here um and 21 versus 20 i'm sorry 21 versus 20. by the way this is fiscal year 2021 even though it's a 21-22 school year i always talk about fiscal years so we're in 2021 right now as far as fiscal years go we are down 50.54 students versus last year okay so when comparing that that's a 1.5 percent student enrollment from fall of 2020 and sorted by all districts we definitely lost more than districts but we're not certain um just something to make many districts did um actually add back students this year the kent would you bring private centers to grantville m6 corridor districts okay and again two factors potentially but we're still optimistic that we can get some inspection this is the more difficult one for me comparing this fall versus fall

090of 2019 before the pandemic started we are third from the top in loss of students we've lost 248.97 students since fall of 2019. um definitely concerning and on a percentage basis uh our 6.96 percent is the largest student so obviously there's two districts that have lost more students than us but a percentage they have more students um talking about funds so this was a change from 2021 i'm sorry 2020 to 2021 fund balance our fund balance increased by 3.31 percent you see that's about middle of the half okay so we still added fun balance last fiscal year some districts added one in thumbnails and we came in with a higher fund balance so that plays into that as well something a bit make and then overall coming into well this is final audited fiscal year

09121 2021 numbers um if you rank all the districts in kent county cedar springs has the third highest general fund coming into this statewide average just for no we're at 27.03 statewide average is 18.5 kent isd average 15.35 so it's a very healthy time for general fund fund balances in the state of michigan there's been a lot of revenue for districts there has been a lot of student loss and student student count is down statewide there's no question about it but districts are still relatively healthy um okay so then switching to the last thing and i promise to agree two weeks ago was the consensus revenue estimating conference it's that annual fun time uh where they have numbers and it's really neat um but this really shows where we're headed i won't i won't belabor

092this but i thought this was really an interesting this is my favorite graph of the whole thing so this was the the general fund general purpose and school age one combined their budgets and the roller coaster that we went on so in january of uh they projected that the fiscal year overall revenue would be 25.5 billion dollars right and then if you remember global hit boom they had a special conference in may they dropped that by three billion dollars and we i mean the bottom was falling out and we were gonna have a huge deficit and everything else and long story short it up up and then now they're saying the actual month of fiscal year is all the actual revenue received during that fiscal year 2021 which for the state ended on september 30th

093was 29 billion dollars was actually 3.5 billion over what they just projected crazy so anyways they still have caution and all those things but man really interesting so school aid fund uh which is the only one that we really care about right here for these purposes um projected to end again the fiscal year we just ended with a balance of 2.9 billion dollars we came in the last fiscal year with a balance of 1.2 million so it almost tripled or 2.5 times um projected to add 700 million in this current year 1.2 billion i'm sorry yeah i know 1.2 billion next year which would push the balance to 4.8 billion so they're still projecting even though we've multiplied it by two and a half that's going to continue to grow the school aid fund and

094so there's some opportunities to really get some extra dollars in the schools where we know we need them it's worth noting it might sound that so much money just received six hundred dollars per people and they're giving us so much if you look at the ongoing school eight fund revenue and adjust it for inflation two thousand twelve dollars where actually schools are receiving less funding oh so this is the long one and this is the last one so considerations for 22.23 so our first look at what next fiscal year um will hold so let's just say my budget projection here is right we hold and we're going to finish flat for this fiscal year for 22.23 we're going to look at the uh at the governor's budget next month i could fix the daily but

095there's actually several billion dollars of federal infrastructure month grant money that the state is set to receive that's going to come off they're not going to need those dollars to rob the school aid presume and still be able to fix the name so ways they could take that 4.8 billion dollars and allocate it they could they could increase by a thousand dollars per pupil in this state and still only be 1.5 billion they still have 3.3 i'm sorry yeah um i can't do simple math anymore 3.3 billion dollars left so we are potentially looking at an even larger student increase uh per people increase them last year they could take the unfunded special education costs in the whole state and give those to districts there's a teacher attraction proposal that's coming out 500 million double

096the at-risk fund of 500 million so there's a lot of options for what the state legislature the governor could do for districts and of course locally at least i for one have optimism that we're going to get that back headed in the right direction um so before i take questions next steps i support to recommend i'm sorry to prove this culture to seemingly comfortable as always i'll continue to monitor this budget i don't anticipate having another amendment before we get to the end of the fiscal year if something happened where there was a drastic increase or decrease we of course come back and do it we will need to take a look at food service budget it's good that's all i have this was my abbreviated version what are your questions i mean is it

097not necessary because it's all upsetting i wouldn't i mean i would keep you updated and and honestly you know with the furniture piece of it we already received claimants from mde and say yeah you could do that smart on that part of it but yeah i would say it would have to be a drastic change to the overall okay we're actually going to be downloading that or something like that but if we've got offsetting revenue and there's already some things that have happened for example our roof uh here at the high school that was about a quarter of a million dollars and those are taking place in two weeks or so hopefully but that's going to be revenue you're going to see that on the expense side and the side according to the box you

098explain again the money that yeah so the state has this goal to to fund the the pension system they call it web services michigan public schools employee retirement system they want to have it fully funded by 250. so what they do is they they take money out of the school agency and we want to put it right into the retirement so that way everybody that has a pension tired someday there are actually others but they can't i mean i guess it's in statute they don't have the mcl or anything of that nature they can't actually take dollars on school labels and put them directly so what they what they started this has been happening for years and then we get an invoice from ventures so in addition to those values how much are we paying

099for yeah so those dollars are totally about that's about 14 percent of our salaries and wages paid from that issue so when i did my original projection simple percentage i came up with about 2.5 million dollars um when we received our first state aid payment in october it was over three dollars like three million five so that's where there was over half a million there which frankly i don't know why they received that much and i don't really care because that's what we're going to get bill for right but in addition to that so we pay depending on the employee we pay between and 31 those charts and they're pretty interesting they haven't been corrected they've actually moved it up i think it's 2037 they're saying um but it's a clip and nobody really knows

100what's going to happen so right now you know districts are paying 30 on the dollar uh for employee or s or retirement costs it's going to fall that's going to be really nice but i don't know if that's how they're going to do it [Music] but that question was asked that it's always asked they don't seem to want to do a huge contribution or anything like that they're just very happy with going like this and just seeing where it ends up so they could do and they do i don't want to say they don't increase it they they do increase it every year as times are good and honestly that's what's left a lot of districts to privatize things like custodial transportation because you know substitute teachers fortune you're welcome thank you you have to

101listen to me oh i don't think i'm going to be able to get your presentation to i don't think i'm going to be able to get it to work oh okay so this is a broken record and honestly i'm using the same presentation so uh red hog bond work timeline you just saw this for cedarview as we approved that we've got more work coming up so for those of you that took the tour beforehand we're going to have some made with lots of people uh anyways i'll say that so redwater we this is the original scope this is a really really big project obviously we're going to turn redhawk into make some changes to the early childhood center we're going to add some some area to it and we're going to put our district admin

102offices in this building as well so it's going to look quite a bit different in a few years than it does right now i always like to put that that initial this was the initial bond board um that scott had put together the triangle i believe and when it all started so certainly won't move through it but it's just interesting to see how our how our plans have evolved um this is what it looks like now this is a phasing diagram in my perfect world i think oh we'll talk about i'll zoom in and we'll talk about how this is going to move around and this is going to i'll save you guys on this around that but this is really a project that's going to start this spring and it's going to go through

103august of 2023 so this building won't actually be done until august of 2023 so the phasing diagram is pretty intricate spaces around the photo um you saw in that previous plan the original idea was to add an area over here and that was the district offices we're actually going to add some space down here and that'll be the early childhood center so the footprint will look different than what it does not and i think what it was originally thought it would look like and that was through a process that we so this is really just to um inform you that we're out to bid on this plan uh gmb has signed off on it triangle's signed off on it there's actually a second addendum today to the mids so i'll actually move the bid deadline

104back a few days to give contractors a little bit more time to kind of sharpen their pencils and really don't come in with their best numbers hopefully but real quick what will be happening so we're going to be adding new boiler new boiler and the boiler room renovation a whole new heating and cooling system throughout the entire building and obviously in the new area as well it's all going to jive and scalp out of work uh new addition to that southwest side classroom locker room hallways bathroom renovations media center renovation into district admin offices there will be an office main office to build that will be renovated um that's where we're going to have our district technology so that's something that we're meeting out about how are we going to cool the servers and all

105these things so that was actually just happening at 4 o'clock last friday as we were finalizing these plans um new fire panels and system throughout the entire building and then finally there will be site with a new playground for the young kids parking lots drives landscaping all of that area behind it and i said this before it works we talked about it and we really want it to be something cool i mean there's other districts that have really cool things um it wasn't in the budget so it required me to sit there and go uh we have 68 million not 80 million so there's some really cool out there and in the perfect world yeah we would but yeah it sure is that's an opportunity um anyways this is the timeline and this is really

106all i have for you tonight because we're gonna come back on february 14th and we'll have all the numbers and uh exactly what we're looking at so you'll remember we already purchased the human ventilators to make sure that we have them on site and not causing us to be delayed so we purchased those didn't po in november we don't have them yet i'm not surprised it won't happen for several months but will happen before we need to so this is just the timeline now the proposal is have been opening uh proposals are due the bid opening is on february 1st next tuesday it was originally slated for this thursday the 27th we pushed it back because we needed to make some new changes most post-bid that is yeah it's all in the contingency costs of

107it you know but it's included and we hope that they're less than what we've budgeted but those are kind of those tough things that they're so tough to quantify and look at i mean we had it built into trails and we came in on it that's how you get those extra points towards the end of it that's all this one's just a just a forewarning that unfortunately we'll have something for you all just like we do with you thank you all right that brings us um i'm just kidding um is yes thanks for yes all right um yes it is time for our ftss acronyms and so you all have um anytime you hear uh one of the turns that you see in your intro card make sure you check it off when you get

108to all five feel free to interrupt the speaker raise your hand [Music] prizes so that may or may not be a reflection of inequality um as we were preparing for the nps typically my updates include data about fidelity and capacity and status of implementation and things that are all very important but are also culturally dry we really wanted to this time share some of the stories how journey is really positively affected our district ftss team okay um so our district fcss team includes representatives elizabeth robinson is pbis interventionist as well as an fpss coach redlaw we have jefferson special education resources teacher and an assessed coach and emily pfeiffer is joining us she is a math and social studies teacher um and also an mksf college uh middle school brian baldwin is a principal community

109as well is unexpectedly home today so so i am going to let our leaders in our buildings share some of the good things that they're doing um it's just all based on um is um so um [Music] um they come to the media center and then um coming at us quite a bit but here it was really played abc stakeholder serving data and specifically with their student data so at the middle school eighty-one percent of students strongly agree to agree that i was successful at school my school is high stages for achievement for getting 87 percent of the agreement with a place where i've been physically safe 89 school high school levels a lot of our tps has focused on positive school and positive engagement and making sure that we are making those positive connections

110with students in a way that makes them feel safe and gives them a predictable point where they understand what is expected of them and understand what the result will be um so as we value self-safety and others the price for one thing coming into the year that we realized we really wanted to focus on was recognition always ask this question and i think that really well like who might be missing so if we're doing that we're doing the card system or if you see something good you say something at the end of the card but we're missing a lot of students that way and really the fidelity piece is being able to recognize at least 80 percent of students so through staff feedback we came up with a multi-tiered system of recognition we're at the

111base tier sorry um at the base tier we wanted to go with a data driven standard and we decided to go with our early learning indicators so every student that is meeting selecting all of the early morning indicators gets rewarded at this stage all students we were able to send out an email to 634 students and that many parents because we want to bring them in under recognition too thank you for supporting your student in a way that will help them experience this is how we know they are so standardized evidence-based that so since every classroom has behavior matrix we ask the teachers to reach out to us when they have an hour that's really like hitting it out of the car so we did have some pictures with that too this is the classroom

112recognition that we did uh jen swift's ceramics class they just got to do more in the classroom because they were meeting with a bigger expectation so the projects turned out awesome they got that classroom recognition and the top tier is that one-to-one face-to-face like icu i see all of these students from this pyramid got into a raffle where they got to vote for what price they wanted to burn and my favorite prize that we got to do from that was the redhawk reader so students got to vote for that yes i want to go do that um we have got to pick multiple ones so we had a reader and a student dress up as the mascot and we got to like extend our arms and reach our wind down into the lower end elementary

113right and like lift them up celebrate it was so much fun so we got to bring that to cedar trails and beach and i got to reach out to the interventionists there and say who is really winning big in their classroom with behavior so we got to go to those classrooms and say like it's really important to the red hawk that you that you value self-safety with others and that was fact responsibility so that's this and then my favorite story so far this year is from a one-to-one face-to-face kid without a card and this student historically has had a lot of behavioral issues but it's kind of turning around and they're doing really well and i noticed that they were hard and i asked them why they didn't turn it into the rep one of

114the prizes and they said you know it meant more to me just to get the car the staff member's name on it to know that they saw what i did with the laboratories so we know it's about recognition if you could think about our students january and february so it's initiatives like these that are going to help us move forward and like enhance that time and culture so right now we're doing that data full like post semester one and we're going to be re-initiating this and hopefully right now it's looking more like 800 to 1000 students could not be more grateful for the leaders with kids learning today i just want to recommend them in the spirit um i we are really trying to get rid of these prizes any questions participate a little bit

115in it just being able to just did you get the next fitness [Laughter] it's so exciting to have you all come here and here you speak not because you are speaking to the foreign education you're genuinely very excited about what's happening we had some principles in here a couple weeks ago and they too were excited but to see you people be on the ground and it also could not happen is i know that um members so we're hoping that that is going to be happening over the next couple weeks we'll see thank you good job is a week ago right today today the doors were shut in the wardrobe so it was 69 degrees [Music] just let us know there's hope [Music] nerves is a lot worse all right so next meeting is