001good evening in our another alternative meeting area welcome to tonight's meeting the november 8th uh cedar springs public schools board of education and we're starting at 6 45 so good rise for me for the pledge of allegiance and let's use the nice big flag on the wall strong thank you and if we could have you we'll call please secretary clinton yes trustee bowser here trustee reminder trustee vanderheim your thank you and we have established a forum for tonight's meeting and that brings us to the adoption of our agenda and i would entertain emotion any discussion having none vice president shafner yes secretary slager yes treasurer gilmore yes justine vanderheim yes justine barr yes jesse bowser yes president reid yes the agenda is adopted as presented and that brings us to gratitude and i think we're
002going to have to you let's go i am grateful that the uh cedar springs marching band for example in detroit for state finals this [Music] so it's a fun time great to see the kids out there enjoying themselves i was at the 12th and that was very exciting and very grateful just for the experience for our peers and families thankful and excited about that the energy was better yes did have girls operating across the country um violence also so yes i'm grateful for the multitude of opportunities that our students are having to show success academically and extracurricularly with play coming out this week and football this week and winter sports starting it's just it's so that was a great reason for us to be displaced here because of play scenery but that's totally fine thank
003you all right on to our high school representative and do we have neil with us i don't see mia is there another high school student here to share thank you both for coming so apparently we are mainly working on organizing our student council deposit and writing thank you for everyone who is involved every other wednesday keep on going you're doing good all right we'll move on to our consent items and i would entertain a motion so vice president sharpner yes secretary snyder yes treasurer gilmore yes trustee vanderhyde yes jesse revar yes jesse bowser yes president reid yes consent items are approved as presented that brings us to discussion and our first item is financial update with mr president all right thank you so i made our financial update extremely quick because there's a lot of
004other things that i tied into the back end of it that's the discussion and action items so um year-to-date budget update and five budget updates are more booked as usual um i did put a fall count update on here that you can see where we are for fall count looks like we're going to come in um right about 3333 students for the fall we're hoping to get back to those numbers from a few years ago so uh investments are on here as well through october you can see where we are fiscal year today where we were last year for october little asterisks there they had printed the building inside the bond investment numbers by last wednesday so that's it for this and then uh they'll do plenty more for device purchase okay so this is
005something where obviously it's one of our initiatives to continue the one-to-one student devices and some of our devices are somehow so working with rob agler in august he applied for a universal service administration administrative company ruled by the fcc this grant through our our era and we just had to commit that we were going to actually purchase these devices if we it for the ek grain and so that's not the problem anyways because it was part of our essence quantum plan to purchase from both devices and some new teacher devices because we purchased them last year but as we have new staff coming in it's nice and fast well i just received the word last week right before i was getting everything around for the board meeting that we were approved for this cranks right
006here on my discussion items i gave everybody um this it's right there in front of you i wasn't sure where we're gonna be as far as presenting tonight so um on the front page you have my report but then right behind it you got my discussion action items um so anyways we were approved for 119 960 worth of devices everything's short of what we applied for because we could only get 400 per device okay so there was some extra cost associated with a few 25 teacher and 10 teacher administrative devices that are out of here so what we're looking for tonight is for the board to take action and actually put this so we can place the order and then seek reimbursement through the e-grade because we need to do it we've got a quick
007quick timeline commitment to it so that's right there you'd be essentially getting 400 chromebooks for absolutely free we wouldn't be using master phones reallocate that for more technology or others down below so it's i'll entertain any questions you may have i know it's come up quick it was off my radar and then all of a sudden popped up so we need to approve it because you've already committed to it you know what you said great question we've committed to it because we're approved we're going to we're approved for the sr2 funding answers so we had to approve uh some plan to the state of michigan i think we had 600 devices in that we could do up to 400 on this because we're not approved by the board but we're approved by the state as
008part of that plan it's just kind of moving those funds and now we've got this opportunity so i wasn't planning on bringing a purchase for technology to the board until later of the year with the sf2 dollars but because of this opportunity if we don't want these devices you do not have to approve the recommendation absolutely so well just catch how that always works right just to be clear you'd be you'd be improving the purchase of 129 060 but we'd be reimbursed for 119 000 right so we've got to uh we've got to approve the full amount so it's another nine thousand it seems like the price is right it sure does yeah on devices [Music] preparedness and response plan you will probably recall that we spent a great deal of time looking at this
009over a year and a half ago when we were starting last school year we've been fortunate to be in person for much of the time since then but as a result of receiving new sr3 funding that will be coming our way and we'll be sharing some plans with you about that we're required to update this pullman 19 preparedness plan so that our board or we have a chance to say yup this is still how we want to prioritize in-person learning and that is our intent so we've simplified this considerably you will notice that the details from building to building have gone away that a lot of some of the cleaning and sanitation requirements that are no longer with us have gone away and we've really just simplified it down to the very um minimal expectations
010of we will follow the guidance that we're given and uh if we need to go remote we will do so following the rules that are in place for uh tuple accounting right now in addition we added a piece about what to expect with student absence so if a student is required to be absent from three or more days they can expect that work will be provided to them and we've outlined what that should look like so specifics about learning goals assignments and progress toward mediated standards has been outlined here and we reviewed that with our administrator so looking for a discussion any questions you might have today and then action on this as very good next you thank you okay moving on to discussion item indeed this interview with redlock hvac equipment live purchase with
011preston pay okay so on the october 25th board meeting i discussed purchasing student ventilators for cedarview and red home as part of our next stage at that time we were planning on using consortium pricing but actually on my way to the to that meeting i had a conversation with our superintendent from triangle talking about actually doing a two-week bid process to make sure it's a fair fair process we've got the best price uh so we did that i actually got home from the board meeting on october 25th and posted on the state website forbids a two-week window and we opened the bids this morning so we could still bring to the board for approvals um so actually in front of you as part of the packet that i uh i laid out there's a there's
012a form here that says triangle on the top um and i apologize in my in my report i didn't have numbers yet because again it was over the weekend and these were just open this morning so we had two bids uh one from bowl house who we worked with on the senior trails project and then one from train and their numbers came in within 1300 of each other but they really sharpen their pencils and if you look through this i'll give you the really practical uh chemical level our budget for for these unit ventilated purchases was 890 000 okay and we came in at 792 150 and that included um two alternates that were voluntary alternates one was the bipolar ionization which is something that we've said we wanted to add that clean cleans and
013purifies the air okay um so we'll add that in every classroom and cedar view and red lock and then the other one was factory mounted freeze stacks i'm not entirely sure what that is um but it's something that they put in there on the coils from the factory and uh i'm told something that we really want so i apologize for not not having anything but that was a united's decision from our engineers at spring and triangle it can uh have said as much as 12 to 14 so it's really great to see us under budget by almost 98 thousand dollars on this purchasable equipment this will allow us to issue a po uh with board approvals evening issue po order them and have them stored so they'll be in district in may and as soon
014as students leave for the summer we won't have to worry about supply supply chain issues cost inflation et cetera thanks so much who's very excited about those despite the cost of any prices do you know what the lead present is for those right now like this seems like it's about three months yeah well i'm told by doing it now we should be able to wait until january february all right thank you chris moving on to discussion item e masb delegate assembly so i loaded into board book a copy of the nasb delegate assembly handbook that we were provided by from masd misty has a copy of it in her hands it's all marked up because she is ready if you recall tracy was elected as our delegate for the uh assembly the nasb assembly in
015grand rapids um however misty is actually going to represent us on thursday night at the delegate and so i don't know if anyone had any questions regarding anything in the handbook that they wanted us to review or miss any of you edited highlights from the handbook that you would like to share um the only um only thing that i kind of looked at that was is just um the sections that they were talking about the isd the relationship with isd um having um over global reports and so i don't know if you guys want to take a look at that and then get back to me of your feelings on that um so um it's thick and there's a lot in there but it's i didn't see anything really anything that's really gonna change or
016anything like that crazy buddy a little bit more there were a couple things that i needed that worked there i felt like it was straightforward as well but i would invite other board members if you haven't you haven't looked at it to look at it it's about 40 pages legal language so i think you see you have a pretty good idea where each board member sits i mean yes we'll look over it and we'll give you our input but if there's something that you think you need to speak up about the flag we're all pretty uniforms i would encourage you thank you for calling oh definitely i'll be there thursday friday saturday and sunday but it's local so it works out that's actually midnight all right okay discussion item app professional policies and practices of
017book selection use and update jenny all right i wanted to take this chance to update you on the work that we've done since the last board um really regarding the book selection use and review process that we'll follow and we're really looking at several parts of the work here so one is about how are books selected to be used in class another is about how are they used in class and a third is about how are they reviewed if there's a concern so i've been working in all three of those lanes and would just like to share some draft thinking with you right now and let you know where we are in the process thank you scott so we start with some draft core beliefs and the purpose of literacy really literacy is something that
018we want all of our students to be fluent in we want them to be readers writers thinkers speakers listeners and able to process information through what they need we know that students are more likely to be engaged than what they need when they're able to choose some of the books that appeal to them and for that reason we have broad classroom libraries because our students are very diverse we learn that they know we know that they learn to navigate complex text better when they're reading books that often offer reasonable challenges and one of the things that's tricky about that is as you get up into the high school grades books that offer reasonable challenges are often adult award-winning books and so um if you remember the craft that you had to draw when you were
019in school about the complex nature of a plot and how it unfolds there has to be a conflict in it and often that means the characters are messy and gray and earthy so we expect that especially in our 6-12 choices that we're making and as i said because we have a diverse student body with different needs life experiences and social identities we need to make sure that we have books for that wide range of students the common core state standards really drive our work and define the level of rigor and depth of knowledge our students need to have in order to engage in the right level of work and be prepared for what comes next for them and we use a mixed model of instruction that means some of it is direct instruction from a
020teacher some of it is small group work with other students that might be published or facilitated by the teacher or might be equal facilitated by the students and some of it is independent reading so those are draft core beliefs about our literacy program we also recognize that our families our students and our parents now rights as well so all students have the right to view read and listen to library classroom resources they all have the right to be challenged to think critically to process ideas that differ from their own and to come to conclusions about a variety of perspectives and experiences and issues in addition any student or parent who have a concern has the right to express that and to be taken if a parent or a guardian does not like the choice of
021reading they have the absolute right to guide that with their children and then they also have to give that same right to other parents or guardians so again those are just some draft thinking ideas as i said earlier we have three different scenarios so there is full class reading and that means all students are reading one book that's been selected as this is an exemplar that all students need to read in order to understand the common core state standards or practice those together full class meaning should be a novel that's children is homeless reading should go through a review by the department that is being uh asked to be read in so for example if a social studies teacher said all students must be physical colon angels then that department should have reviewed that first
022to say yeah that's really the best book to teach those standards it should also go through a committee process where we have parents involved in that choice as well as myself and a building principle and then once it's approved through that process it will come to the board of education just like a taxable one so when we think about different resources that we adapt and say these are our tier one resources we're using them for all students that's what a whole class reading really is okay so that's the process we're thinking about right now for that and by and large the books that our whole flash novels are approved in that way already because they usually come as part of a resource that we've adopted through a board of food processing i think what we
023heard about in our last score meeting was books that are on a list or for a quote club so those are books that a small group of students will be meeting together and processing through those also should be reviewed by the department and one thing that we should have in place there is reasons why these books were chosen on this list of books so that's something that we're working on a process for vetting materials that teachers would use prior to a book going on a list and we want them we want parents to know that there are choices within those parameters so if the purpose is to read a contemporary book from a certain perspective that's an award winner we want to just be clear that that's the purpose so if a parent says boy
024these aren't these don't fit my needs as a parent with my child they have the opportunity to know what could i recommend that would fit those needs so that's book list or book club reading independent choice meeting has less oversight because it is wide open choice so usually those books come from literacy organizations that require that recommend lists each year they are both award winners that have won high accolades at the state national or international level or their uh their respective national literacy leaders like penny kittle or neil grim or donald miller who say this is a list of books that students at this level should read in addition student needed interest really drives those independent choices so you would expect that in a classroom library there would be books that you wouldn't pick as
025a reader because it would not be your interest or need but others have that instance for that those are really the three different scenarios and we're looking at processes all the way along the path to ensure that we're making nice choices for our students so what happens if someone says this book doesn't fit the bill for what i think my child should be exposed to we recognize that parents have that right just like they would help their students engage with television shows acts on their phones movies that they watch video games that they're allowed to play we also would hope that they're involved in their child's reading life this weekend my daughter who's 25 years old was sharing with me um that was one of the best things that you've ever taught me was if
026i wanted to read something challenging you were going to read it alongside of me and we were going to have conversations about that as a family that's absolutely a parent's choice and responsibility to help with that so when a concern is broad we ask that it start with a review request form which is in draft form right now it allows a parent to say this is my concern here's why i have a problem with this here's where you can find it in the book and it starts with the teacher so there's a conversation with the teacher first the teacher then would let the principal know that there's been a concern raised we would discuss that matter with depending on whether it's full class book list or independent reading we can discuss it with those who
027have made the similar choice to let them know that there's been a concern raised and that we want them to have the choice about whether their child continues as well and then we have a committee that will review that to determine is this a good fit should it remain or should we make a different choice of something that would fit better so we have a draft of that ready to go for parents who might have a concern and it would begin by asking the teacher our sources that we're using to develop this process we are not the first to have books raised in concern we are definitely not the first so there are many who love before us and done some good work the national council of teachers of english has a really great toolkit
028for this the american library association has done quite a bit of work on this the michigan department of education has been involved in the conversations that i've been having about this we really started this work about six months ago with the notion that i had that we needed to have something more proactive in place because we had some gaps in our process so it's something that we've been working on for a bit with those organizations as well as other schools in our kent and museum counties so as an example last week we met together in the zoo and talking about what the different processes were in the different districts we also are looking to core rulings and legal definitions and we will um check with our legal counsel to make sure that we're within the
029balance what does that really foreign what we do and what have other schools empowered that we need to be mindful of and planning so our next steps really i'm at the point where i have invited um teachers 6 through 12th grade teachers to come and give some feedback on the guidance documents so that will be happening over the next several weeks we want to make sure if i said that the processes and guidelines need advice from legal counsel and are in alignment with our board policy but i did use our board policy in creation of several of the forms to make sure that we really are mindful that they are tightly aligned we will revise as we receive also in the administrative guidelines that we have in place to drive this work and so rather
030than creating new language new measures of procedure we utilize the measures that we have i think this is a great start great setup we all appreciate the opportunity to say oh with this we would appreciate some guidance on this sure let's you know it feels like this is a little bit reactive i know i know there was it was kind of reactive have you sensed that teachers this is an opportunity that teachers are taking to review what is in their classroom libraries and looking very closely because of you know great question tracy i've had a chance to talk with the sixth through eighth grade teachers most closely i work with the high school teachers will begin next so i we want to be clear that the work where it really needs to have a player
031vetting process is at the whole class level and the booklets are both a classroom library is like a public library in that there will be a wide array of things and again we'll rely on organizations beyond ourselves to say these books are appropriate at this level so um as a former english teacher with probably 4 000 titles in my classroom library there's no way i could have read or reviewed every single title of the work but it would not be possible i absolutely should have reviewed those so this gives us the chance to say okay let's put in place what's the bridge going to be from where we are to where we want to be how much is the reasonable amount of time for that to happen and what are we going to do in
032the meantime to make sure that the parents know that they have choices too because that's an important that's an important piece of this that as a parent you do get to oversee what your child needs and what they are engaged in so it'll take us a little bit of time to get that done that's not something that can happen you know after thanksgiving and it's all set to go but so this is 6 through 12. we also have something for the and part of the challenge with this work is you know in many courses the content is geared towards those students who are going to be pursuing higher level rigor in terms of literacy or literature and so many of the books that are selected are books that are award-winning books for adult readers and
033as was pointed out in our last board meeting not all of our students are adults and they have varying levels of maturity in terms of their abilities to handle different levels of of adult content or different levels of content and so you know the expectation that a fifth grader or a third grader would be reading content at an adult level it's very small unless you have incredibly off-the-chart gifted students one of those great levels you know so to jen's point we will have a review process k-12 because we know that there could be objectionable materials at all levels um what we were trying to start first things first and address yes you know this this 6 12 wrap has gone through probably 10 or 12 iterations and it keeps getting longer i keep thinking we
034should add this and we need to make sure to think about that and until it gives me feedback so i think that will really help inform the k51 as well and make it a little bit smaller i would imagine you would have a similar process in the you know there's a vetting process for what makes it on the pile in the list and then there's recommendations like i said from you know national national and state level literacy leaders about what looks negative in classroom library and also methods for a parent to raise we are planning to start using the process knowing that that revises needed peace is going to be important anytime i've talked to someone about it they've brought up an interesting perspective that informs how we might adjust it a little bit more
035progress and then perhaps in two more weeks to be able to say okay i think we're ready to you know show me the whole thing but also we you know we want to check with our advisors to make sure that we're not missing anything so i appreciate the work that's been done jim thank you for that um i'll just say for me and i know i'm i can be a conservative christian i guess that's who i am we heard three minutes of content that i found personally offensive at my level and i have a master's degree so i'm imagining that that's inappropriate content for six through twelve regardless of what that person's parent wants them to read the best content that should not be in our school i consider that borderline pornographic and definitely the
036sexual content there has got to be mature reading levels at an adult level college grade level master's pre-level that doesn't contain that kind of material because i want to be able to look my community in the face and tell them that i'm safeguarding their kids making sure that there's appropriate content and i feel like what we heard the last week definitely was not appropriate so i feel like you've got a process a place to filter that out but from my perspective that's that's really what i'm hoping the end of that looks like to make sure we can catch some of that so the parents don't have to catch it because at that point we've already exposed kids inappropriate content if they have to go through the vetting process so again i i know we've just
037started somewhere it feels like you've got some great work going there and and maybe it's just a checkpoint for me maybe i'm a smaller conservative on the board but i mean if i could just ask my fellow board members to raise me did you find that content last week appropriate the three minutes of time if you could see your hands i'd like to see your hands of course i just went just a checkpoint for me because i realized i could have been the ultra conservative and it's been a while since i got out of school but i would not want my kids my son or daughter exposed that material so i appreciate the work you're doing to make sure that we're not exposing kids to that content i appreciate your explanation um i totally understand
038the intention of not being able for a class in the library i'm just wondering if you can maybe make that work here available to their students in their classroom but if they understood if includes a note for teachers to send to parents outlining the process as well as evaluating the fact that classroom libraries are diverse and may include mature content there's a tool called common sense media that parents can use to find out what is the level of this book and it's not something that we decide it's something that's decided at a much broader level it gives information about what might so it's hard you know to really we can't make that judgment for every parent parents have very specific views and beliefs that would guide what choices they will make for their children and
039you need to be careful to allow them to have that choice um the guidance also about taking the book as a whole not taking just individual pieces so the american library association is really clear about that and we're taking that apart because they've gone through this before but we do have some tools included for um teachers to send to parents and ways we're going to be very transparent feel free we encourage you to research purpose reviews look at common sense media what fits with your values and your morals and your belief system and how does that work for your children any comments for jen for that work and we'll continue to listen all right next item f we'll move to item g the cedar view classroom versus your all purchase so this is a uh
040let's say it comes back from the last four game we discuss the furniture for seater view um so bringing this back up for potential action this evening uh what's been done since october 25th uh we did meet with another vendor um mr smith and i went to custer met with their team um unbeknownst to me our lead uh sales rep there went on a trip for her 10 year anniversary so i haven't been able to get a quote done yet but i talked to her today and she'll happen by the end of this week our plan is to use message three dollars for this furniture refresh okay for the whole district um and going back to the survey results that we've gotten from staff one of the things that's the second most requested thing is
041facility updates so as i talked about with the bomb with bipolar ionization a lot of that part with the air purification is being taken care of already so having classroom furniture that's easily movable easily cleanable is something that we're really going to take a look at district wide or wherever it is needed not necessarily some buildings but definitely at cedar view where did we use the grades so um we've received the quote from hayworth we received a quote from me cluster this week there's samples over at cbd which are being uh discussed there's layouts and actual physical samples as well that can be discussed and shown to teachers and then obviously that'll conclude materials as well what i'm looking for potentially tonight is where to take action to approve the purchase of furniture for secretly
042okay so tonight it's in my discussion in action uh back in mind but i'll be actually out of town for the november 22nd board meeting and then the last board meeting of the year is december 13th um so with the timeline you know consortium pricing is set to raise at the end of the calendar year we don't want to miss out we discuss that a little bit last time we're at eight thousand dollar class we might turn into a nine thousand dollar classroom looking at ten and twelve percent price increases uh you know we're still going to do our due diligence we're still going to make sure we have all the voices heard in this we're not going to rush it still have a month and a half um but this has been approved as
043an allowable expense for so3 i have to i actually put my email in here i don't think i had a chance to look at it and board what tim walters saying yep that's model expense um so our plan is to wrap more funding for us from sr3 into the overall uh plan but starting at cedar view yeah to really do that building in 20 students so i take any questions they have again that's that's kind of that's uh let's talk to the board not to approve that tonight or wait december 2nd yeah i mean we're looking at flexible seating it really seems like there's nothing that's specific that i was exposed to from being we didn't ask the question of customer but i'll definitely ask that um you know i will say that the cheers
044we're looking at for the fourth and fifth grade building at all are you know there's such a wide range of sizes students so i think that we would make sure that they're they're large enough for for myself to sit at because quite frankly those fifth graders that are almost difficult you know so i think we'll take care of them and and the other big piece we're looking at a separate table and chair uh system right and so that will give greater flexibility for students as well i just went to first grade conferences for my daughter last week slightly um i think their chairs are very terrible as well which did seem a lot lighter so i think they're appropriately silenced but the question i have if we approve these funds are we are we going
045to see those bills they're quite a bit lower than this so i left a little bit in there because i anticipated cluster to be more expensive but high quality at the same time um potentially i mean we'll see that's kind of the industry labs so you know it leaves a little bit of room we're definitely not going to go with the cheapest we're going to go fast we want to last and we want to want to listen to the voices so and it may be that the best chair comes from one and the best desks come from a different one as long as they'll work together and that's why quite frankly abraham sent me um a sample of a desk that wasn't what they put i said i do need to have the desk that's
046that's in this in this floor plan because people see it so well it's got to be shifted one of the big structural differences that we're seeing in terms of manufacturing process is in regard to how the leg is attached to the work surface um the mean system the leg is attached to the work surface with six uh screws with paper desks attached to the work surface you know drilled into the work surface itself one of the things that i really appreciated about the custard system the tables that we were looking at from custer which are manufactured by smith's furnishings down in texas is that they have a steel frame that the legs are attached to and then the desk is attached the work surface is attached to the steel frame so as as students are
047moving their tables around in the classroom uh that energy that's the friction that's coming off the table being dragged across the carpet or across the before is transmitting into the frame of the leg system instead of transmitting into the work surface which is in turn loosening those screws we want a long-term investment here and you know we've all walked past multiple tables like that with a leg missing and you just can't put that leg back in like once it gets ripped out it's virtually impossible to to repair even as amazing as vic is and his team is in terms of maintenance on furnishings that's just a really difficult repair to make to have a long-lasting uh successful mission in a classroom and so you know we're going to be considering those types of things as
048well as far as longevity but we want to be good stewards of these resources and get the greatest return on that investment as possible extend the life of this and that's the difference in the quality he's talking about potentially that's what you're trying to build that's my anticipated potential price increase from the customer because quite frankly it's scott seemed like the quality of the custom furniture was superior i would say so without having a quote i was hoping to have a hope i'm sure get it so here i mean that's not to say and quite frankly if the teachers and staff have you just want monster you know obviously if they look at the other ones and say these are the [Music] and that's a great point too about pricing all of these standards for
049consortium price so these are all pre-bid prices state of mission gaming you don't have to go through that classes which allows us to choose thanks for clarification absolutely that's what they've all said um so if we ordered in december we could have spent january but that is until that's part of the price where they actually come out they will install the classes imagine we'll have to move and there are some really neat nuances of quality you know so for example all of these chairs have rivets in them that are holding the seat to the metal legs um consistent across the industry now is a riverless chair so that the chair base the seat has little pegs on it those pegs sit down into spaces on the leg systems the custard chair is actually a different
050design so it doesn't have full legs but it's designed in such a way that the chair when students pick it up or when students when they place the chair on the table the the chair rests on the bottom of the seat portion so the legs don't interfere with that chair being placed up on the chair that are up on the tape to work surface that way you know some advantages to that type of system is you don't have students like flipping the chair over and walking their neighbor or trying to put the chair way up on the table so that the legs are down so there are several ergonomic factors that are at play that we'll be considering as we look at the different options yeah and that's what they call the camera chair they
051don't have one like that as opposed to the four-legged chair the drawback is you can't stack them and we actually purchased something like that from high school um well that's really bizarre honestly that's really the work of the of the staff at the school because they see things and progress with china chris all right so we wanted to take a chance to give you an update on um sr3 spending and you'll get the chance to see after some feedback chose their top three areas of need that they indicated classroom furniture staffing and instructional supports and so with the sr release spending we wanted to have enough detail to be able to answer questions that might come your way and understand why we've made these choices there we go so classroom furniture um as we've said
052the requirements of estrogen from the federal government require that we use some of this funding to safely return to in-person learning or continue in-person learning because we're reducing the transmission of the virus flexible city will allow us to do that and we think that it's the best use of that little part of that copic relief funding that would give us the best outcome for students and the best opportunity for cedar springs public schools as opposed to spending it for example on masks or hand sanitizer or things like that that would also fall in that pocket so we will have to report to mde how we're using the funds to mitigate pulmonary 19. so our current plan is that we would take some of our mixed and match furniture that is often difficult to clean and
053um sometimes fluff covered and replace it with what chris just talked about so that's one of the buckets and why we chose classroom furniture the next bucket is staffing and again we're required to consider how will we address the impact of lost instructional time with evidence-based practices so what our staff indicated is that we really have it's been great to have smaller class sizes because we give students more individualized attention so um using the funds this way will allow us to continue to have students learning after a global material with a smaller class size where a teacher can quickly diagnose the apps and adjust their instruction to a smaller group of students in addition this allows us to keep our interventionists doing intervention talk about some of the staffing shortages that we've had and one
054of those is the complexities that come when there aren't enough teachers and our interventionists have to step in as classroom teachers which allows you know it doesn't allow for intervention to be happy so we'd like to use the money for that there's another pot of surfering coming that will be used for after school and or summer programming for a very targeted group of students so please know that that will also be part of what we'll be talking more about is that i was just going to say by using some of the sr3 dollars here it allows us to maintain our current staff um keep class sizes low as john said but not lose those folks because we know we're going to need them as our students come back so it allows us the flexibility to
055have interventions have substantive teachers you know pay the floating substitutes and really retain our staff even though especially the elementary levels we're not an app where the contract says class sizes can be and then lastly instructional supports so again that academic impact of lost instructional time one of the areas that we've improved is offering some sports for teachers to guide instructional strategies that help them in any materials or resources that we've implemented so having another professional walk alongside them to reflect with them to model teach with them to come observe and give them feedback in a non-evaluative way in our tier one all students everyday instruction so that will allow us um to continue doing that uh work so that teachers have that support right at their at the ready and then in addition again
056that other pot of money called 11t that we'll be talking about more in the future we'll continue that intensive and targeted intervention and it will require a different approach than we've ever used for after school so this will allow us to address that lost instructional time or interrupted instructional time in a really switching different way so why beats why did we pick these well first we served in our employee room and they were the top three areas that came up but also because there's going to be a fair amount of federal oversight on these funds we wanted to choose areas that allowed us the most flexibility to address interrupted learning in other ways with general fund dollars or other grant monies that we have accessible to us for example purchasing new resources for 6a we
057ela resources that are evidence-based and ran high on reports purchasing new intervention materials for math five continued training for teachers and interventionists in evidence-based practices like vehicle we have two trainers in district who will soon be certified to train others called abmr which is a math recovery program which they've already done some early work on um and it's tremendous the outcomes that they're seeing for that in addition some of our teachers are highlighting some people at the elementary level and we're seeing some really fantastic outcomes in that regard so it's something that we want to think about how do we scale this up without stressing everyone out tremendously in a way that's supportive but also giving our students what they need and then also we will be able to refresh technology in terms of our
058infrastructure and our hardware um adaptable to today's instruction so one thing we also benefited with was we've received a lot of federal dollars covered relief dollars asset dollars to date we're currently in the process of spending the estimate funds this year but we spent the yes or one that was all the different sections of the state code but there's been different buckets that the state has said the federal government has said our allowable buckets for us to spend these down so uh in total this all began back in 2020 we actually spent about 210 000 on chromebooks educational technology in may of 2020 um and through this date through the sr2 we'll spend over 3.3 million dollars these are the different buckets they've fallen into so just some examples and i can't hear something you
059know obviously we did classroom technology hot spots we provided an internet for four families at home last year we still do for some families this year um we've had to increase our firewall with all of the traffic coming in and going out to make sure everyone's safe so that's that first bucket educational technology 161 000 bought new places for all staff members um i think the next bucket is developing that's uh cleaning materials i won't read through them all you guys can see them we've obviously we've put a lot of money into addressing the learning laws of students so through our canvas the ckla curriculum that's k5 literacy curriculum this year professional development for teachers in august of 2020 especially for them to get up to speed on remote learning and instructing over the internet
060you can see almost 1.8 million dollars there different instructional supports across the board um so this is really where where our spending has been so far all approved and gone through on the board over the last year and a half two years it's been quite a ride so any questions anybody has there we wanted to add a little bit of clarity on what we've spent so far and how it's fit into the different buckets as we've done so i think you know one of the pieces of feedback that we're receiving about as their free spending plan is why are you spending this on learning loss but what you can see with that bar graph really is that we have spent a considerable amount of money on learning loss and the flexibility that we'll appreciate so
061just keep that in mind as people maybe ask you why aren't they spending this on learning class we're not setting those exact tag dollars on it but we are sitting quite not learning any questions i know they were all right so that's the end of our discussion items it brings us to public comments and we do have some folks that have signed up for public comment and it will be the time that the board listens to your public comment we won't be responding this time so don't be offended um ones all right so our first public comment comes from kathy paul thank you i have worked in the middle school for about seven years in food service and the blueberry building it's almost unbearable grbs should be embarrassed and ashamed that the quality of service
062students respect public schools the first few years of working at the middle school we had two janitors during the day and did a fantastic job ever since campaign left the janitorial staff has done nothing i was told by ken simon that the middle school staff only wants one gender in the day and that makes absolutely no sense to me the staff in our school all agrees that our buildings filthy there is no possible way that one person on a day shift and one person on the night should keep an entire school building [Music] manager stacy came in two weeks ago with our current day 10 gender so i can show her how to make more in the bathroom by the way the nighttime supervisor had left a note on her whiteboard stating that she had
063made sure that scotland had not been touched i asked jc and piles of dirt are left in the cafeteria daily instead of piles being thrown in the trash and supplies and tools are clearly are not delayed properly i've talked to several staff that said they are sending the planes to the qr code tank that we now have but i can tell you nothing has changed school food service staff spent many hours in every classroom all the teachers locked us in the houses the media center the cafeteria and the entire kitchen last night i even steamed up the entire kitchen and serving area before and i do not know when the last time was classrooms the longest media center had to clean before that i'm sure they were not going to do this we wiped off
064your desk to your shelf we did not do the exterior [Music] large push parts they could load some trash in or recycle they were full of sticky trash on the bottom and one part in wet insulation from the concealer it was all very smelly you should know how to do this you can't just keep leaving trash things stuck in parks they need to be cleaned out their agreements i talked to a parent this last weekend and then she was at school for conferences and she also connected with discussion before the entire and come and do a good walk through the middle school feel free to stop in the kitchen we'll gladly show you our issues [Music] our time to get rid of grbs [Music] michelle guppy [Music] her eyebrows yes finally after a course of
065champs and house there was a sudden shooting then silence she dropped her rules she was tall in the skills over here [Music] and then cracking across the face i almost faded the drops again simon's belly and finished again to children in a different temple so fast her movements flirted each time in the world but my eyes never wondered the drum fell silent she played with the leather strips that held their arms together and then suddenly she let it drop and there they were wearing only both castles that she drove there's one way that the other mesmerizing i was dizzy from the time equipment [Music] she and there was a g-string made of soft black that's fur she straddled shawn's lap carefully did not let down her weight helped her castle dressed in her hands michelle
066put his arms around his face rested his forehead in [Music] i tristan greene i'm here tonight because i would like you to look into the employment of maureen baker who started here in 2019 and is listed as an interventionist at red cross i want to read a quote from the 2013 mla article about miss baker as it relates to the end of her employment at tri county schools 14 miles of road instead of pursuing 10-year charges the district entered into resignation agreements with alice and baker who are being paid through the end of their 2013-14 contracts in response to prospective employer requests the district will state that baker chose to resign during an investigation of alleged misuse of district technology equipment and allegations that she sent former high school graduates facebook communications of a sexual
067nature on non-work time using her own personal technology equipment according to the degrader and during the 20 years at tri county schools lauren baker has engaged in multiple inappropriate relationships of a sexual nature with students both former and parent including with someone that i loved when they were a minor despite the omission of this fact in that article she also engaged in disruptive and inappropriate sexual relationships with other staff members more than once during that time i'm disturbed to see that she is employed in education in any capacity especially where she has access to young people i was assured during the investigation at trikona that she wouldn't be working k-12 again to see her listed as an interventionist makes me sick to my son as a current student in the school of social work at
068grand valley state i understand the private nature of conversations ms baker will be having with her at-risk students and unfortunately it is at-risk students that are the exact demographic of miss baker that miss baker has preyed upon at tri-county in her past last week i pointed the records of who cedar springs spoke to at tri county and the foia showed that no one at troy county was contacted by cedar springs during her hiring process how can this be it was her longest running employer didn't it seem strange that someone who was tenured would leave mid-year float around for a few years and then get a job 14 miles up the road and no one thought to check on that please dig deeper into the conduct of marie baker because i believe she is unfit to
069work with students of any kind especially afres thank you sarah um sarah kitchell i have four kiddos that i homeschool i had a couple enrolled a couple years ago um and then all the stuff happened last meeting some information was shared about the esser dollars and i appreciated the extra information tonight um my gut in state is is to actually take caution with the esser funds i know that you are probably more familiar with the fine print that comes along with that but i get a little bit nervous that the government you know the federal funds might come back in and use more restrictions and say but we gave you a lot of money so i i don't know what that fine print looks like so i can't have not looked into that if i
070had kiddos that went to school here um i would have emailed probably you um and gotten some information but i guess i just want to give a word of um like it's not warning or caution but like red flags go up for me um and so one of the things that i wanted to share with you is that you know you say boy i hope that we get some people back eventually as one of those people that would have had piddles going here um i i gain attention enough to say um that i won't i'm liking home school more and more i like the curriculum i like the freedom and if if cedar schools is um is going to be reigned in by the money that the government gives you and if they use it
071even you know hindsight if they if they say but we've given you a bunch of money so here's all of the restrictions that we're gonna make you adhere to i will not consider sending my kids back and i have four um we would like to be able to consider sending them back um especially for sports i think that would be great but as it stands um i just thought that it would be good healthy feedback and if kiddos if kiddos are being held at home because they're afraid of hope the families are afraid um i would hope that they would share their concerns with you and give their feedback but that's from my perspective so i'm looking for the future and i'm keeping an eye out to see you know what can be done so
072encouraging you to look at things like that and i know and i appreciate the work that you're doing already um and i just wanted to say before the time being that um that i respectfully think to divert that about the library i feel like that material could be vetted because i totally had the same feelings and i'm glad that you said something earlier that i think that there's um there's a way to get all of that and even if it goes to the point of having genres and i have a romance novel in one genre [Music] but i do think that it can be done the library does it which is genre so thank you excellent viewers um material but from my perspective there is federal um the sexually exclusive materials which is a film
073um so this isn't just a matter of um honestly we should start from behavior that is destructive or even stuff that leads to um behavior that is discovered we should do our best to inhibit that i mean as soon as they step out of school they become 18 they'll have a free brain to do whatever they want by law but in their formative years in school we should be able to say that we have a whole hard line when it comes to not allowing destructive material or books that even for that matter that talk about uh how to lead kids deeper into depression or cutting themselves or just destructive mental behavior i mean if we can't guard against stuff then what are we doing as parents you know what are we doing is as teachers
074as guardians of our kids if we're saying anything from the in the military and other other things in life have led me to do that and say i can say you know what i'm going to say no it's going to be i guess one person i have just fun opinions i do respect if there are laws i think that we should apply for them and encourage others to at least protect our kids this is i only had enough time to get up and read the passages that i had prepared tonight i wanted to elaborate why i read those passages my daughter was given a list of 17 books where she would have to choose four to read and discuss with other peers throughout the year when this list was handed out to the students it
075was stated by the teacher that all books would contain sex i try to form at the beginning of the year allowing my daughter to choose choice books off the shelves in the classroom and i would not hold the teacher responsible for anything that she were to read that was in those books i did not sign a form allowing the teacher to give my book that contained explicit materials there is a difference which was stated earlier by jen okay since the last meeting jen has reached out supposed to explain that she is working on something and we do appreciate that one of the one of my daughter's friends who was in the class that she was in commented to her last week about how she can understand why her parents were so concerned about the books
076that she was reading and why we were doing what we were doing my daughter didn't tell her what we were doing she merely said this is why my parents are pulling me out because they don't feel that the books are appropriate for me there are books out there that have rigorous content without being filled with explicit content we need to look at the true meat of the book and what it's teaching our kids and not the fact that it has a mobile price steal on it that makes it suitable for the classroom thank you okay all right thank you and we'll be following you alright onto our action items for tonight and our first action item is technology device purchases and an entertaining motion for as presented so support yes treasurer gilmore yes jessie vanderheim
077yes justine yes st bowser yes president reed yes motion carries for technology purchase action item b is the cedar view and red hot hbac equipment bond purchase and i would entertain a motion for as presented you said yes training was um any further discussion having none vice president shotner yes secretary schleger yes treasurer guildmark yes trustee vanderheim yes justin bart yes christy bowser yes president reid yes hvac improvement purchase is approved best action item for tonight is the cdrv classroom furniture purchase and i will entertain emotion for as secretary slager yes fisher gilmore yes jesse vanderheim yes just stupid bars yes jesse bowser yes president reid yes motion fairies award senior classroom furniture that brings us to our communication portion of the meeting and for the board i have a little an overview from misty
078and i seem to pull the political ticket she went to the um meeting with sparta board event representatives and adam london himself in his meeting along with two other kent county health department personnel and we thank sparta for getting that meeting and including us in it and we did that on wednesday october 27th and we appreciated our growing network with the kent county voice of students and we feel that we're echoing our superintendent's good work and we don't agree on that and for our board members we still speak from a different seat and we could say things dr london did give insights that i wished that he would have shared had the faith there was a different tone that i did appreciate dr london brought watched the conversation that he does feel the laws are
079archaic and that is one thing we could all agree on very basically that there could be some legislative work to help this process work better while nothing was changed it was an olive branch and dr london didn't know that we letting know very clearly that we're different from fair america's folks and that we told each other for our districts we told different incidences of how had we not had the public health order mandated what we would have done proactively whether it was massive risks using large learning areas and misty i think you'll agree but there was a couple times that we did have this intention as far as the alternatives i could have done and we also expressed um appreciation to him with working staff for our high school outbreak and that that was another
080good work of how to grow through an outbreak with creativity and stay open and keep everybody really fresh air and ask our students so we there was good um back and forth discussion and while there wasn't anything resolved we were the people of the room we were honored to be in the room and even though i might not have agreed with a few things that he said we did ask for some compliance stats from a university of michigan study looking at accounting with mandates without mandates specifically for the k number six the stats that they showed were k 12. we haven't gotten a feedback on that but that was a good point that very possibly could be a different number so every any time that we can get in the room to have those conversations
081that we might not agree we are honored to do that but certainly kind if we have our kiddos seated six feet apart may they remove their pants and he said well bring to the band-aid no but send me the pictures of what that looks like and so i mean at least he was open to looking at like not just masking but i mean if the kiddos are there like take their mask off or even having massive breaks and so he did he was it seemed like he was interested in what we had to say and totally put my understanding is he thought that the state or was going to stop it before so it was a conversation and we did talk very frankly about concern about moving goal posts and you know parents choice for
082community decisions for their children that's going to be a big thing so so that was but it was done um yeah you guys had a chance to share with the statistics right um you know the cases are rising what might do you know the things thank you both for taking the time to hear that yeah we're all busy and we have busy schedules so definitely in fact one is a busy man as well i'm glad we were able to get together if we didn't come away with you know the same resolution at least your voice your choice i felt good to represent your friends and have our he would have how he spoke to us in that meeting i really wish he would have been that way at the commissioner's meeting because it was like
083two different people yeah yeah similar to heidi and the state you know in terms of getting our voice out into the public sector i had an opportunity um charlie take care from wsaccm reached out asked me sent an email to me i said good morning bring together a resource for parents to pass the cdc's final decision regarding the emergency authorization for pfizer's vaccine for children if and when it does receive approval is the district coordinating the local health officials with regard to eula does the district have a plan to host its own vaccination clinics is there any discussion of a vaccine requirement for children who would be eligible under the updated guidelines my deadline is 5 pm this evening any relevant information greatly appreciated i promptly responded to charlie thank you for covering this important
084story for our county cedar springs public schools is not planning to host any vaccine clinics on our campus we will work with the kent county health department to find appropriate locations in the region to support the clinic who need it we will or we took a similar approach but the vaccine was made available in the fall for other groups as a district we believe important medical decisions are best left to parents at this time i'm not aware of any vaccine requirement for children in the pipeline at the county state or national levels that obviously was not a flashy enough quote because it didn't make the story i also spent time with charlie um in a later call with mike scheibler retiring media sources in the county are looking to other superintendents to share some some
085screen time so i i met with charlie i'll get a really nice conversation on the second um again speaking about similar things but unfortunately that story didn't run but we're trying to get the same message out that our parents deserve an opportunity to have voice in these types of critical decisions and that will be the message that we continue to share as given the opportunity thank you all right so moving on we're planning our november 22nd work session we at 6 15. i'm suspecting here but we'll stay tuned for that and remember that we get any comments to misty from 40 pages about destiny for an mbsp we trust thank you you