CSPS Board of Education Meeting 6.14.21

001so it is 6 46 and welcome to the june 14th board of education meeting we'll call the meeting to order and welcome to our zoo meeting and zoom allows for greater flexibility in conducting our board of education meeting without violating any piece of the current mdhhs order for some of our community it also gives a greater chance for them to participate board of meeting board of education meetings are designed to conduct the business of the district public comment is the formal process to address the board of education during a scheduled meeting the board of education members regularly update themselves with personal research personal experience community correspondence and personal conversations out in the community the policies of the board of education are designed for process and decorum always including input from our community thank you for

002joining us in the zoom format this evening to observe or participate during public comment and email is also always available to share your thoughts so with that let's begin with the pledge of allegiance if you are ready with a flag mr smith okay i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which which stands for nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice problem thank you and that brings us to our roll call secretary slager from the houseboat and we have noted that mr rivard is an excused absence for this evening okay trustee bowser here trustee rivard absent trustee vanderhyde treasurer gilmore here vice president schaffner here president reed here secretary slager here okay thank you and we will move on to the adoption of the agenda

003and i would entertain a motion for as presented so moved support is there any discussion having none i'll call the role vice president schofner yes secretary slagger yes treasurer gilmore yes trustee vanderheide yes and trustee bowser yes and president reed yes the agenda is adopted as presented and that brings us to gratitude is there anybody that would like to start and share i'm grateful for the end of the school year and just things winding down i know it was a pretty crazy year in a lot of ways and new challenges but just really thankful for the administration and teachers and students parents just sticking with it to the end and yeah just thankful for a strong ending and at the celebration the cookies and the ice cream i heard were a big hit and the

004cookie ended up on one of my counters so they were very good anyone else sure i am very grateful for just the high school staff administration and the way that graduation went uh with the community i mean that was just wonderful to see so many people out celebrating the graduation of their children and it just was very exciting i really appreciated mr painter's commencement uh speech there that was awesome and just yeah that that was a great day and really exciting to to be a part of it i agree it's wonderful to see full stadium seats i'm very thankful for the progress that's being made both uh on the projects at the middle school and the project at cedar trails so at this point it's very early but both projects are ahead of schedule which

005is is really exciting the teams are doing an outstanding job and we're excited to see further progress over the next few months okay all right thank you everyone for sharing we will move on to our consent items i would entertain a motion to approve so moved okay i'll call the role vice president shafner yes secretary schleiger yes treasurer gilmore yes trustee vanderheide yes trustee bowser yes president reed yes the consent items are approved as presented at this time we are going to be moving into closed session so i would entertain a motion to move into closed session pursuant to open meetings at 8c for contract negotiations so moved support any discussion having none vice president shafner yes secretary slager yes treasurer gilmore yes trustee vanderheide josie bowser yes president reed yes we will move into

006closed session so we will mute our mics and we will move to our other link for that meeting uh individuals that are here as attendees we will be back momentarily all right we're rolling back into open session at 7 18 so if we can let the minutes show that please and we'll move forward with our first discussion item the budget hearing for the all final 2021 and initial 2122 budget information with chris lahaye presenting all right thank you in board book uh still have the general fund here to date and the bond construction fund here today i won't go over them but they are there for your review and we'll get into our budget so share my screen here with a new theme this year the the composition notebook something that i borrowed from online

007but uh so final budgets from the 2021 school year very exciting um it's been a heck of a year and and the budget will show that so first things first we'll talk about our revenue streams there's two major components of the revenue to district uh seas each year the first one is is enrollment uh and you can see that our actual enrollment took quite a dip this year obviously we've spoken about that so i won't belabor it but a couple hundred students down from pre-covet uh a year ago or i guess it's going on for more than a year ago but because of the state super blend we were able to claim membership for 3538 students and really not feel much of that impact uh for this school year so very nice uh the foundation

008allowance maintained the same if you remember a year ago i came to the board and said man it looks like from the school aid fund we're going to see a large decline in per pupil revenue excuse me and we did see a proration for last school year that took place in august that we had to book back but then for this school year we maintained the same foundation allowance of eight thousand one hundred and eleven dollars per student uh so that was very nice we did see a sixty five dollar per student one-time appropriation that's not reflected here because uh it was not added to the foundation allowance uh so that takes us to our overall uh revenue picture for the year and and i've i put on there on the screen here the initial

009budget where we started a year ago the amendment that i brought to you in january and then our 2021 uh final budget that you see here in the third column and so what i'm going to focus on for this final budget presentation is really what's changed since the january amendment so we're really just going to be looking at uh this column here and the final column here because once again with the initial budget a year ago it was anyone's guess what we were going to be looking at so you see there's quite a stark difference comparing to the january amendment there's really not a big difference only 364 thousand dollars on a 41 million dollar almost a 42 million dollar budget for the general fund so really extremely close you know less than a less

010than a percentage um the changes real briefly i'm not going to take a whole lot of time on this we did see a little bit more local revenue just based on upon things like fuel reimbursements and in some small rentals of school facilities that i didn't anticipate any uh back in back in january state revenue we received some special one-time funds you can see there was an increase there of about a hundred thousand dollars uh there was a federal revenue increase of 286 thousand dollars from the amendment most of that was because of something that i we didn't know anything about in january and that was the summer school credit recovery program the state of michigan has has flowed through from the federal government that will be taking place actually started today um and then

011some additional covet funding and then slight decrease and transfers out most of that is because uh the ca isd supplies us with act 18 revenue that's a special ed revenue uh and they decided we decided as a group to base that on actual enrollment versus that super blended enrollment so you saw how our actual enrollment took a hit that flowed through and we saw a little bit less than 117 000 less than what i had anticipated in january and that decision was made mid-year so really not a big change you can see it here in pie graph form uh if we put these together january amendment on the left final budget on the right they look pretty identical i mean you can see that the state is right around 76 percent i won't belabor that

012anymore but uh really the january amendment for revenues was pretty spot on to where it looks like we're going to finish so we'll flip to expense there's a few slides to this so i'll just continue to blow on through it and then take questions uh at the end of the general fund before we get into the other funds um so for our our general fund expenses uh you can see here focusing on the two same columns our amendment there down the middle and then the final budget here i'm coming to you with a with a decrease in expenditures of 17 717 000 uh and i'll go through the reasons as to why that is and they are a little bit complicated for basic programs and this is and i put next to it here you

013can see the percentage of the budget forty seven point three six percent of our overall expenditure budget is basic programs and then just a really brief explanation of what that means it's teachers and classrooms if it's if it's right there in front of our students that's a basic program and it represents this large red part of the pie chart so there's quite a bit that's changed here you can see we've increased by 125 000 uh from the january amendment if you put that on the scope of 19 million it's not that big of a change but it's worth noting that all of these things took place so there was ups there were downs um but we that's the ebbs and flows especially in the year like covet so again you see that summer school credit

014recovery really impacted basic programs because that's instruction of students the 150 dollar social studies curriculum purchase you see that reflected here is an increase and actually that will be something that will need to change prior to the next board meeting because i just found out on friday that that's not going to hit us until next fiscal year so i'll have to pull that out because with accounting we have to recognize we have to have that in the district physically in order to count it it won't be uh and then there were some ebbs and flows of the different buildings i put it in here i won't go through it unless anybody has specific questions but you can see where wages benefits substitute costs supplies cedar trails and beach they were down cedarview and middle school

015they were they were up slightly and then red hawk and the high school they were down and there was just a multitude of reasons for all that we had some resignations mid-year we had a retirement mid-year so certainly you know supply budgets weren't always spent overall slight increase but nothing really to a material change as as they would say next added needs just about a hundred thousand dollar increase brought it up to 5.7 million that's this next biggest pie chart here the biggest increase for this part was regional special education programs and and that was primarily because of virtual special education programs we sent some students to rockford and because we kept the foundation allowance for those students we're going to pay that to rockford in addition uh to the added cost that we typically

016would for the regional programs and you can see there was some other changes for special ed staff this is our specialized staff and interventionists so again not a not a large change people support this is our counselors occupational therapists psychologists social workers any non-instructional staff you can see there's an increase here this was primarily due to extra time for those itinerants spending time with students we did have maternity leave and we paid our own staff to kind of fill in that burden while we were still paying staff member that was out so slight change there as well still six point seven one percent of the budget um instructional staff services this is the professional development student services academic services jen aberlin uh and stacey vasco's departments we actually decreased by about 60 thousand dollars here

017uh and most of that was because we moved some instructional software to different funds or i'm excuse me to different functions versus the january amendment so really pretty flat there general administration again down twenty thousand nothing worth noting that's just small changes due to unspent budget and days worked of administrators very small part of the pie school administration very much the same uh this is our principals and secretaries forty five thousand dollars on the 2.2 million very small slightly over budget due to the covet uncertainty so we brought that down uh business services we were down by about 31 000 um 10 000 of that was because we brought in aca that's the affordable care act reporting we brought that in ourselves something that matt andrews handled in payroll with a little help from myself

018and we realized the savings there so that was a bonus operations and maintenance you can see there was a slight increase in wages and benefits but we really underspent the budget phones water and sewer we made some adjustments with att so we came in far under budget on that and repairs and maintenance really really were lower electricity costs were down by about 38 000 and then supplies and materials just weren't going to be the budget so about 287 000 in savings there transportation this was a big one about a half million dollars under budget i had left that in the january amendment but we had a lot of closure credits from dean just because school was closed for some of that time in december uh and we just didn't have as many kids riding the

019bus the bus routes were lower and so they gave us closure credits for that and then we saved obviously in fuel costs and then you can see 200 000 in regional special ed transportation that really follows the same line with kids doing virtual learning uh we didn't have we didn't have as much expense there so some nice savings in transportation uh central support services and i apologize my pie chart this is again a small part of our budget uh but i apologize it covers the uh explanation there we saved a little bit of money believe it or not matt blood and hr about twenty thousand dollars and then technology services we had budgeted but because we had so many covet type technology expenses we were able to bring that budget down so it's about 40

020000 savings there and then athletics about a 60 000 savings from our january budget and this was primarily due to uh equipment and supplies john norton really kind of shored up and only only spent what he needed through conversations that we had uh just due to the uncertainties so we saw some savings in athletics and then there i believe there was only one sport that didn't run and that was uh jv tennis in the spring so there was a little bit of savings there for wages and benefits and that is it for all those expense but i also wanted to i also wanted to point out our covet funds and you'll see this in the initial budget as well so one million seven hundred and seventy nine thousand five hundred and twenty four dollars of

021covert related funding flowed through the district this year and i kind of laid it out in all the different buckets so there was sr1 that was the cares act i won't read through everything that we spent these these federal dollars on we also received some money from kent county uh some money from the state that's that coveted cost 103.2 funding about 43 000. we received some my connect grants that we applied to or applied for for our our online curriculum and some new student devices uh we got rebates back in some of those chromebooks and then there was a large bucket from the state this corona relief funds which is about 1.2 million so you can see where this is the slide i remember from one of our our parent forums that someone asked the

022question of or made the statement that the district hasn't done hasn't prepared any more than we did in april of 2020 and this slide really embodies all of the at least purchases that we made um and some of the pd and things that we did this year to help support when you look at all the new devices and providing internet we had 300 hot spots out uh to our students and all the neat things that were done and it's really just the beginning and you'll see that in the in the next budget because there's a really really cool uh stream of funding coming through the next three years that's going to allow us to really catch these students up and then lastly you know i like the pie charts i don't know why my labels

023didn't come through on that one let me back up but this shows the pie chart i can see the benefits now but i can't see the the salaries i believe the salaries uh up there is about 40 and the only reason i put this on here is uh you really want your district expenses to be no more than 75 absolutely no more than about 76 77 in salaries and benefits because those are your fixed people costs so we're very very comfortable there just around 70 percent and the rest is all in in kind of those supplies and maintenance and capital outlay so not sure why some of my labels didn't come through i'll take a breather there's a lot more to come but any questions that anyone has on the revenue or the expense side

024uh for the 2021 school year for the general fund and if not that's fine too you can ask them later all right i'm going to keep moving so real quickly the fund balance this is the this is the thing that a lot of people want to know it's reported and you see comparables around the county uh this budget puts cedar springs public schools with a general fund balance of 25.66 of expenditures so it's going to have us finishing the school year with a fund balance in excess of 10 million dollars which is extremely healthy and allows us to do some really great things moving out of this covet pandemic and i'll help fill in just a little bit of that coming up there's my question slide i got ahead of myself a pretty neat little

025color colored pencil slide there um and then this is a little road map that shows all the different funds so the general fund is just the start we have 12 different funds and it's soon to be 14 because of the new funds related to the school bonds uh but it's you know how much money flows through this office and through this district it's in excess of 85 million dollars when you add all of the funds together 41 of that being the general fund and then uh everything else in into consideration 85 million dollars pretty neat i won't spend nearly as much time on the others if you recall we just have these other small funds the first one is the community services fund this is campus kids this is our our tuition preschool we took

026a significant hit this year kova took a big toll on the community services fund i'm not there's no way to sugarcoat that our our staffing expenses were about 90 000 less but our tuition was significant less our tuition revenue decreased by 205 000 the good news was we had a very robust fund balance in this fund uh we came into the year with a fund balance of 157 thousand dollars and we're gonna spend that down to just about thirty five thousand dollars this may be a bit conservative uh but we need to come back strong and we need to uh make sure that moving forward in the future that we can sustain this fund because it's been something that's been a bit of pride i know uh prior to this year and just with the

027inconsistencies due to covet it really really took a hit so any questions about the community services fund keep moving food service fund we talked about this throughout the year as again this is one of those funds that the state will not allow us to have an excess fund balance uh holly and i met frequently talked about the things you remember the equipment purchases that we that we made throughout this year to get better better services and better meals for our staff and our students our revenues increased again this is a lot of federal dollars every meal is free for every student and that's going to continue into next year as well they've announced so breakfast and lunch it's free for all and you can see that expenses increased as well and that was primarily due

028to the the planned purchases that we made we are going to finish the year underneath the allowable threshold i made sure to check into that we will have a fund balance of 424 thousand dollars is what i'm projecting in the food service fund uh and so holly and i will continue to work and look at the serving line new cafeteria tables those type of things but for now we're good we're healthy and we're under the allowable threshold and food service the student activity fund this is just the fund with all the fundraising accounts this was something prior to last year we did not need to look at we did not need to approve gas b84 came through and it requires the board to adopt this budget just like all the rest so this is really

029our first full year of budgeting it the revenues and expenses are very close um and and you know appropriate for a district of our size you can see we started the year with a fund balance of 226 000 and we're projecting to end the year with a fund balance of 229 000 again this is this is all those things like class of 2021 account class of 2022 account all the fund raised accounts debt funds these are all of our debt retirements so the revenue comes from the seven mill tax collection that all property owners in cedar springs public schools pay and our expenses are based on what we owe based on the the retirement schedule of our existing debt we pay in november and may so you can see the list here we do have

030two new ones the the fund 34 and 35 are new 2021 uh bonds for the refunding and then the school building and site bonds those won't be part of this so a little bit about that for 2021 uh we needed six million just over six million um dollars to pay off our interest in our principal we bring in a revenue of about 4.6 million so that's why we borrowed about 1.4 from the school bond loan fund uh in april to pay off our debt so i'll breeze through these really the revenues pretty much match the expenses because we borrow from the school bond loan fund what we need to make our principal and interest payments this year we had principal payments for the 2012 2016 b and the 2018 uh refunding accounts everyone else we

031just had retirement on i'm not going to speak much more on these so i'll keep splitting spinning the block here for these funds uh for the new one this is the debt fund 34 this is the 2021 refunding you see there's three million dollars in revenues there and three million dollars in expenses that's because we receive the revenue and we send it right to the school bond loan fund because we repaid that debt at the lower interest rate and that was the topic of a presentation from last month's board meeting so you can see we end with zero there and that's it for debt funds moving through capital project funds we've only had one up to this point it was the sinking fund uh but starting with this school year we have to adopt a

032new one and that's our 2021 school building and site bond fund so we're making that fund 43. um this is the sinking fund each year this brings in about 650 000 this year we brought in 000 excuse me 548 we will end up spending 217 of that so you can see our estimated fund balance on june 30th will be about 1.375 million in the sinking fund i put what those expenditures were there to the right and it's worth noting that summer of 2021 currently will be the last year that we collect on the sinking fund because it expires in december of 2021 so it is a it is a it is ending unless we were to go for an extension on it and then 2021 bond construction fund this is brand new obviously there was

033no original budget it's all zeros uh our revenue is what we just received and that was 32.4 million dollars in our bond proceeds from the bonds we sold on may 11th and then our expenditure is 1.8 million that's based on all of the progress billing and now the work that you're seeing done right now at the middle school and cedar trails that gets billed out before june 30th insignificant in the big scheme of the 32 million but it's it's the start so that is the last budget that we will need to adopt for 2021 so as typical we'll need to take action to adopt these resolutions at our next board meeting if there are any changes i'll provide them swiftly and concisely at that meeting any questions about the final 21 budgets no very um

034thorough it's a lot i try to be thorough but also try to be as quick as possible so and to add to the excitement we get to go into the initial budgets for next year as soon as everyone is ready shannon is with us she's saving bandwidth and keeping her camera off okay with the board's permission i'd like to go into the initial budgets for grant permission granted thank you okay so i this is a little bit of a little bit of um housekeeping we have to show this notice again this is a budget hearing and we are uh levying 17.8168 mills of ad valorem taxes on non-homestead properties and non-qualified ag property in the district so if your primary residence is in the district you are not paying that property tax that is just

035on second homes and commercial properties but it is again something that we do need to post it was posted in the cedar springs post and outside uh the district offices and on the website so that is the millage rate proposed for this budget so getting back to the same theme uh first first part of the budget is to look at the revenues and i i showed here and i won't go into any detail typically uh you know i have a big spreadsheet that kind of projects the enrollment we look at what the trends have been we look at where our students are it's more challenging this year than it ever has been in my experience just because we're not sure who's coming back and who isn't and where everyone is so looking at the actual

036enrollment from this previous year we came with a projection of 3446 students and it really kind of works through to uh split the difference between the 2019-20 and the 2020-2021 school years in half and that's where we're hoping we come in at i think it's a conservative estimate i think as as covid winds down and restrictions are peeled back very hopeful that that students will be back in our buildings eager and willing to learn as well our teachers after a summer where they can hopefully catch a breather so uh the declining enrollment is worth noting there was the the super blend this year to help districts with declining enrollment it helped every district in kent county with the exception of one it certainly helped us uh the governor has put it in her budget proposal

037for 2122. uh the house and the senate have said not not not something we're interested in but it's not dead yet so it's something that we still don't know on we also don't know where the where the school aid fund budget will be for next year but just worth noting so hey chris yes are you intending to show your screen oh is it not on there it is not goodness thanks matt no problem so there it is i don't think we missed anything this was the notice of a budget hearing can you see that now no no no no thank you for telling me that man yep okay so there's the budget here and i won't i won't read through it again um this is the this is just my screen showing the worksheet you

038know briefly with the enrollment estimate we're coming in at 3446 and this was just a little language about the government's proposal saying she's still in favor of a blended enrollment for declining districts i i did put a little bit of uh a few slides in here from the consensus revenue estimating conference which i found to be extremely these slides to be informative at the very least and shine some light on where it really looks like there's a lot to look forward to in terms of not only the school aid fund but the the general fund for the state of michigan retail sales and food service you look at this these are all slides that were prepared by the research seminar and quantitative economics from the university of michigan very very smart economist there although i

039don't like the colors it's definitely worth sharing so you can see where retail sales and food services took the dip from covet but they are just going sky high and if you're out and about you see that i'm not going to go through any of these slides with any great detail but they all have a similar theme and that's growth so institute supply management indices there's strong growth there we know that right now supply can't keep up with demand and a lot of you know factors of the economy so you see that growth coming back from coven inflation i think it is alarming uh these economists said it's not alarming yet but you can see the yellow line that's the inflation line really trending up so it'll be interesting to see where cpi ends up

040for next year that's consumer price index but prices and wages are trending up and here you see their projection for the consumer price inflation 2021 uh we're still at 2.4 the 3.17 is all items that's considering really the items that are in short supply but they're projecting it to come back down which is good especially when looking at our bond construction because right now when districts are going out to bid for big projects they're coming in way way over budget um i won't read through this with monetary policy the the so really the take-home right here is that they're still projecting that there won't be a rate hike until 2023 they really want to let the markets get back and comfortable and recover from covid before we see any type of rate hike and get

041employment down so monetary policy not really changing this is good news and bad news the market interest rates uh you can see the conventional mortgage they're projecting is going to steadily rise throughout the next couple years so if you personally are looking at getting a mortgage now is a great time it doesn't look like it's going to be lower but you see at the bottom the three month treasury bill still going to stay very low which means very low interest earnings for us but it does make me hopeful that by the time we sell our bonds again in 2023 we'll still see a lot of savings in a good bond sale similar to this year um and i just threw some of these on here because they do pertain to the district from a standpoint

042but they're also kind of a personal interest single single-family home price appreciation this is projection and where we've been you can see that we're at the top of this very very significant peak at this time that impacts the district because as home prices raise so does local property tax revenue but it obviously has other impacts as well so this tells us you know if you're looking to buy maybe now is not the best time if you're looking to sell and you have a place to go hey it's they're projecting it's going to come back down at least the economic economists at the university of michigan um so a little bit there and i won't go into that anymore this is a very important slide so this is the school aid fund revenue consensus revenue estimated

043conference and it really goes back five conferences so we go back to january 2020 that was the last one pre whoops that was the last one pre-covet um so we'll focus on this this uh row right here 2021 so in 2020 january pre-covered and this is in millions of dollars okay the projection was 14 317 in the school aid fund which is really 14 uh excuse me 14 million i'm sorry 14 billion 317 okay in the latest consensus revenue estimating conference that was north of 15 okay so that means that 2020 2021 will finish with 714 almost 715 million dollars more in revenue than that was projected pre-coveted which is significant especially when you consider where we were a year ago with with the sky is falling so really significant and just this last january

044of 2021 it looks like the school aid fund is going to have more than a billion dollars more in revenue so that's why when you see the governor's proposal for the school aid fund this is why because i've never seen anything like this in terms of revenues uh coming in to the fund anyways it's very robust it's very it looks it's a great projection for years to come as well um so the other part of my proposal for the budget the revenue you had the number of pupils i based this budget on a 300 per pupil increase which would bring us up to eight thousand four hundred and eleven dollars per student um that's the largest i've ever proposed for an increase in per pupil but if you look at the governor's foundation allowance increase

045proposal which is down here on the left she's proposing a 581 dollar per pupil increase um still haven't heard from the senate and house on that so it's roughly half of that more to come but that's what we base the budget on the revenue projection unfortunately i still project revenues are gonna fall primarily because we're gonna we're gonna have less students in the district at least it looks like right now and i think that's conservative but uh we will see some changes so property tax revenue is going to be up that's going to pull local revenue up but on a whole it's going to be down by about a quarter of a million and that's really a reduction because of our her our roof uh catastrophe at the high school gym this past year added

046a half million dollars in local revenue i mean it was offsetted by expense but we're not going to see that in next year so that's the change there state revenue we'll see a decrease in foundation allowance but we're going to get more esser funds come through there and offset that so that's why that's about the same and then federal revenue 841 thousand dollars less in covid related funds is what i have on here and that's a little misleading because it just means we haven't appropriated it yet it's going to be there i'm sure the federal revenue will end up being probably the same as this year or more but it's just not appropriated in this budget so please be aware of that and then transfers another there's really no change there as far as our

047revenues now i'm just gonna i'm gonna move through the expense budget as quickly as i can here so you see a big change in basic programs on a whole our final budget here on the left our initial budget for 2122 on the right it's an increase of 1.3 million dollars okay so projecting that our expenses are going to grow by quite a bit obviously one big consideration is the csea contract and this is just a real small snapshot of the cost associated with it there is guarant there are guaranteed steps here and there are costs that are going to be associated with them so i put those costs in there and you'll see them as we move through this budget presentation uh basic programs so this is the teachers in the classrooms increase in the

048budget of 684 thousand dollars there's an increase in certificate certified staff wages that you'll see there's an increase in retirement fighting on workers comp that have to come into play with that there's also the typical increases in insurance costs due to public act 152 hard caps and some sr2 funding that we approved for ckla the the the language arts curriculum that really added about six hundred thousand dollars to the budget in its own right um but again it's offset by covet 19 expenses from this previous year so you don't really see that in the bottom line and then something that i think is very exciting we're going to allocate about we're going to allocate 120 000 for classroom furniture needs so something scott and i spoke about i've spoken with ken about as part of

049our ongoing flight plan related to related to our operations budget and that's getting a steady stream for furniture at cedar trails cedar view and the high school so that our classrooms are more uniform and more inviting for students to learn added needs we'll see a decrease there about 152 thousand a lot of one-time esser expenses went here that we don't see coming into next year's budget people support we will have some increase in staff wages and benefits but the health aides we don't anticipate coming back next year because we're hoping covert 19 is a thing of the past so about a hundred thousand dollar decrease overall in pupil support instructional staff services we are going to hire some some staff members uh to really move forward the district and really recover some of that learning

050loss it'll be they will be paid with esser funds with these coveted relief type dollars that's two learning champions one math and one uh english language arts and then one educational technology uh full-time staff person that will be helping but i do see a reduction in educational tech hardware expenses for next year so that offsets as well overall an increase of 267 thousand dollars in instructional staff services for next year um i'm not gonna go through each of these in aggregate general admin school admin and business services these are all up slightly and they're really to just increase um due to salary and wage uh increases in steps for administrators there are some movements to full family insurance for a few folks uh we did reallocate fte for our accounts payable was split over three

051different funds we're going to bring it in and it's really just going to be split over human resources and the business office and then really dues fees and workshops i'm anticipating them coming back to pre-covered levels a lot of people have not been going to those for the last year so you see an increase there we're almost through the expenses operations and maintenance i mentioned it already the half million dollar roof repair at the high school was a one-time expense that falls off so it makes it look like our operations budget is really going to decrease but it doesn't overall because we're going to return a lot of that to pre-pandemic levels and i anticipate seeing more work done there transportation was a very large increase i spoke about how there was a half million

052decrease this year in our in our uh contract with dean transportation we have a built-in 2.75 percent increase last next year is the last year of that contract but that's built in and again anticipating getting back to pre-pandemic levels so that's factored in and then again kisd special education transportation going back to normal which is about 800 to 850 000 annually and then really not much change on central and support staff services and that's hr technology communication and pupil accounting not much change there and then lastly athletics getting everyone back up a lot of supplies and and uniform needs that we had unspent from last year we're going to catch up and get everyone what they need so a slight increase of about ninety one thousand dollars in athletics um now typically at this point

053uh we talk about staffing changes in in our budget presentation i decided to put it all onto one slide rather than do it building by building so we did have some retirements from the past year that we'll realize in next year's budget we had some temporary placements for some one-time teachers we had some substitutes fill in for our mid-year retirements and resignations that are no longer budgeted in but then we also have new positions for 2021 in those new positions i spoke about the math champion literacy champion in educational technology we'll be adding three fte at the high school and uh you see a first grade teacher a second grade teacher a fourth grade teacher and a replacement band director that i believe we just made an offer to today so a few staffing changes

054those are all built into the budget as well but again nothing too significant and a lot of the temporary placements we already knew about they replaced other folks and some of them were offset with covert relief type dollars any questions about the staffing changes for myself or matt blood i can pull matt back into this too keep on going for new positions like for example the band director position that was in the 2020 2021 budget it's not a new position it's a new person in an old position that's right we're not adding that many positions um across the across the district yep that's worth noting too scott um i appreciate and that the the high school teachers um you know two of those high school teachers are replacements for for teachers that have gone to

055other other uh parts of the district for example the uh the educational technology person is a former high school teacher so they're not all straight ads i spoke about the coveted relief type dollars and said there's a lot of money coming in for years to come we really have through 2024 to spend these dollars and you can see it's north of five and a half million dollars for covert relief funding so there are specific things that we can spend these dollars on mostly we plan to spend them on academics and getting getting students caught back up and getting them what they need through social emotional support through instruction instructional support excuse me through educational technology we currently have allocated about 1.3 million dollars of this 5.6 million in this budget uh but there's summer school

056funds in here as well so a lot more to come related to covet funding over the next several years here's our pie charts you can still see and i mentioned before i like to stay under 75 percent on salary and benefits those are fixed costs if we can um and i didn't label this on the left is our final 2021 budget on the right is our initial or original 2022 budget you can see salaries and benefits have crept up a little bit but they're still around 72 percent so we're still very much in a healthy healthy uh location with those and then overall general fund budget so as a percentage of expenses we would finish uh the 2021 school year with a 25.66 fund balance if we come in here our fund balance would be

057just shy of 9.5 million at 22.62 still extremely robust and one of the highest in the county but it shows that we are doing some of those things uh like putting money towards furniture and additional staffing to get our students back to where they need to be and that's it for the general fund i did not have a question slide here but i'll pause if anyone has any specific questions related to the general fund before we move through the next ones quickly so i don't have a question well i just want to confirm so for the board of education there's been a statement made about our compensation and it's really a stipend um it started out that it was going to be thirty dollars a meeting but we everyone had wanted to keep it under

058um six hundred dollars a year so each board of education member receives 599 a year that is correct okay i just wanted to confirm that and put that on the record because that's you know even though we are elected officials we're not officially on the payroll we get paid um that amount of stipend so i just wanted to put that out there yep it's a 599 stipend once per year so that it doesn't you know beam that amount it doesn't even require a 1099 form per irs guidelines and i will say from the districts that i have served uh it's certainly one of the lowest so i don't know what the perception is but if you consider all the work that the board does it's a very small price i'll leave it at that it

059was this was a good time to clarify that during the session thank you absolutely i can provide a percent of the overall 41 million dollar budget if anyone would like but i'll need a calculator because there's a lot of zeros before and you get the number um so community services budget i'm going to run through these really briefly stop me if you have any questions again campus kids and tuition preschool uh i am projecting uh we're gonna get back to normal and at least uh no longer really uh cut into this budget i've spoke with the leaders of the community services funds and we're really looking to get back to pre-pandemic levels in campus kids and the services they provide so i think this is a conservative budget i have us really breaking even but

060maintaining about a thirty thousand dollar fund balance at the end of the year uh something we will certainly monitor and hope that that that it exceeds where i have set the budget for community services for the food service budget uh this is something really going to have to watch i mentioned before meals have already been announced that all breakfast and owl lunch are completely free again for all students next year and so that really drives the revenue especially if we have more students back in the buildings next year so right now looking at the raw numbers and the expenses again we can't just raise wages for employees because they're part of a of a contract and we've got to follow the contract wage schedule as written but as i have it as i projected in

061this budget we would have an estimated fund balance on june 30th 2022 of 688 000 that would be in excess of the allowable threshold you can see on the right side of my screen by about 177 thousand dollars uh so we're really going to have to watch this a new serving line at the high school which we could really use to complement our bond construction carries a price tag of about 130 000 so there's some really neat things we can do with that and some other things we're looking at to enhance services for families from the way of a mobile app and we'll go into that another time but we're gonna use those dollars in a in a great way student activity bond again funds excuse me this is again the the fundraising dollars uh

062i'm really projecting this to be about flat revenues typically match expenses so you can see that here we will finish this year with 229 000 in that fund projecting next year it'll be about 234 nothing really worth of note in the student activity fund just need to adopt it debt funds i mentioned before that is a lot of funds we're adding two more so in in total we will have eight debt retirement funds for next year uh it's worth noting that next year will be the last year we need to borrow from the school bond loan fund i project we will bring in a revenue of about 4.8 million dollars from tax collections we need 7.1 million dollars next year for our principal and interest payments so you can see where there's the difference we'll

063have to borrow about 2.2 million from the school bond loan fund but after next year we will retire our 2016 b debt and therefore from then on our property tax collections in the debt fund from the seven mills will exceed our expenditures so we will no longer need to borrow so it's just worth noting there i'll run through these briefly please look at these if you're interested and if you have any questions please reach out but for the sake of time and everyone's sanity this evening i won't run through each each fund specifically and 34. fun 35 is the new fund we will have debt payments on the new construction funds next year so you can see that's brand new for 21.22 and then finally the capital projects funds the sinking fund again this is

064the last year we'll collect on that and fund 43 will have a lot of action next year first the sinki fund currently our last summer to collect uh and we plan to use this in conjunction with 21 bonds ken and i plan to get together and work through this and really come up with a plan if this is the last time we collect we'll have roughly two million dollars left in the sinking fund and we want to make sure that those are used in a way uh that is extremely meaningful and then finally the 21 construction fund will really hit full gear you can see uh most of our revenue is in the current year but most of our about half of our about 19 million dollars in expenses will be in next year because

065we plan to spend this 32 million dollars between 21 22 and 22 23 before we sell the next series of bonds in 2023 right at the tail end so expenses include the middle school lots of trails high school renovation and addition red hawk renovation cedar view renovation and then of course all of the gmb architect fees and triangle construction management fees that are part of the budget so that is everything i have for the initial 21 22 budgets there will be a few changes i've already started to write them down on notepads but i will just give them in a bulleted list for next board meeting and then i will have the budget resolutions all ready to go for your review in board book by probably wednesday of this week if anybody would like to

066see the resolutions for the general fund they are already posted on the budget transparency page of the website um so we'll read them for you there and i am all set unless anybody has any questions or comments can you remind us once more about the bonds just how much did we save so there's a couple different ways of looking at it matt i mean if you look at the original the original treasury application with the pre-covered interest rates we saved about 18 million dollars which means we're going to pay the debt off you know for four years five years before what was projected and we were already going to pay it off um you know well ahead of when the mandatory repayment date was set to be so yeah that was a really really really

067great showing i hope we could do that again with series 2 in 2023 i did amy mccarthy our community communications specialist did post that on the website if you go to the uh the bond update part of the website i wrote up a little a little narrative about it there and you can read about uh all of our bond savings so very good i believe it's coming out in the newsletter soon as well so i appreciated your your recommendation from the last board meeting hopefully everyone will be able to see that and and recognize the savings we experienced so okay any other questions from the board comments okay i just want to say i appreciate the conservative approach chris and also to let the public know uh all of these funds do undergo a full

068audit every year by cpa firm so while we're approving the budget there is other oversight to be sure things get put in the right categories which that's a whole other report it sure is look for that look for that one in september there you go all right thank you absolutely all right we'll move on to discussion item b the l 4029 property tax forms and chris will be presenting okay so this is very brief because i uh brought this presentation to you at the may 24th board meeting knowing that i would be talking this much during this meeting uh so i will not go back through the calculation the l4029 is just a tax rate request form we have to send to each taxing uh municipal unit uh before june 30th so that they can

069get it onto their their july first tax bills so this is just really a compliance type piece uh it lays out the property tax rate that i mentioned at the beginning of the initial budget and that is rolled back to looks like i i grabbed the wrong one for this but it isn't board book it has rolled back to 17.8168 mills for a non-homestead property tax this year so as presented last board meeting there's no changes there uh to our l429 and i'll answer any questions anybody has pretty straightforward i think we're good all right you betcha thank you and discussion item c the independent bank instruction funds account with chris okay so this uh account paperwork was uploaded in board book this is really our last piece we received the funds we have them

070invested and we'll draw them down per our draw schedule provided by triangle construction but we need to set up a bank account with our with independent bank just so that we can cut checks for all of the different pieces of our bond work out of it so one thing that ib requires is the board minutes that show that the board has adopted the creation of an account so really no changes during our organization meeting the beginning of january you know we approve independent bank as our as our bank this is just an additional account that we need to create there because we must keep of course the construction funds the bond funds separate from all the other general fund food service funds um you know debt funds right so that's all this is yep so

071this might be preliminary but on the draws like do two people sign them or do is it just paid out according to schedule or what will we hear more about the oversight later about that no i can go into that that's a great question so triangle construction oversees all the subcontractors they submit those as pay applications they're first reviewed by gmb uh who's our architect and engineering firm uh as does if we get invoices from gmb they're reviewed by by triangle and then before we pay them here they're reviewed by myself and then they're reported to the board they're also signed off by by natalie who's our accountant so there's a pretty extensive review um we make sure that they they follow through you know pretty strict protocol i've heard some horror stories of districts

072getting bond invoices and someone just runs it through and processes it and so we'll make sure that we avoid that because that once that money's out the door you can't get it back obviously okay good thank you and that is on for action tonight all right moving to discussion item d the cedar springs public schools extended learning plan report with jen and chris okay i don't think i have jen here this is our this is our last one so you all are used to seeing this document um this is the the document we've had to bring to the board i have some light on my face uh this is document we've brought to the board each month all school year it starts with september and it really just shows our attendance rate i'm trying to

073scroll all the way down to may yep here's may you can see all of our attendance rates for each building both online and traditional and then in aggregate all students we finished strong we met the 75 requirement by light years we were always about 90 well 85 to 95 some cases higher percentages so attendance was never an issue all year and then i believe jen did put um the comments from may in here no changes um on the return to learn plan so you can read that on your screen but i have no other comments scott i don't know if jen left any comment for you on this you're muted scott thank you chris uh no other comments uh other than we hope that this is the last extended learning plan that we will ever

074have to agree participate in yes and i i will be glad to not have to go into power school and run all these attendant reports and calculate the percentages that's nice to be done with it okay any questions from the board comments are many observations this will be posted to the transparency page of the website as well perfect thank you so quick question this where did the this come from just curious so it came out of the early work it's that accountability piece so when we get when we get dollars from additional dollars that come through or the flow through from either the state or the federal government then there's always an accountability component to that to make sure that those dollars are being used wisely and invested appropriately into into student programming and so

075this was just a piece of that check and balance system that came with all of those flow-through dollars from the federal government and from the state of michigan yup matt and uh on top of that um it's i believe it's public act 45 requires the district to to um report attendance and so in a in a typical year we have to have 75 percent attendance uh in order to meet the requirement and and receive funding for each school day uh because of covet 19 the state passed this temporary relief that the district just needed to report its attendance through this and have it approved by the board on a monthly basis and meet 75 percent attendance uh in each building weekly and so that's what this was really tracking in aggregate as long as we

076were above 75 percent for the month and for the weeks then we didn't have any issues with what's getting all of our funding so that's this was just as scott said that compliance piece that went along with that legislation sure yeah just one of the many right yeah just throughout this entire year so we do appreciate you guys tracking all of that i know it's a lot of extra work so thank you very much for for the uh for the hard work really absolutely yeah it's been many many hands make light work it's one of the great things about being part of a a strong team because we've all had hands in it and kept each other held accountable on it so thanks thank you anyone else okay all right we'll move on to discussion

077item e and the superintendent evaluation which we um do annually according with the rules that also the state puts forth and in the spirit of transparency we stay in open session so scott's going to share with us from there yeah so thank you heidi so there are two attachments in board book one is just the overall tool that we use to provide guidance and feedback on my performance over the year it's the tool that's brought to us from masb and we use it as it is presented without any modifications and so that's a document that is uh something that you would all be familiar with and that you've gone through training on as far as your ms masb credits the other attachment is a self-assessment that i've done to give you an indication of some

078of the things and some of the places within the rubric where my performance would align again it's very similar to the resources and tools that you've had in the past and so really tonight is just a first look at the tools to make sure that there aren't any questions and then the next step in the process would be for the board to provide me with some feedback at our next meeting and then determine an effectiveness rating for the 2020 2021 school year so i would say we we appreciate your candor um and we'll review this and is there any interest from the board in receiving um the list of artifacts like we did before i would say yes um i think it's always helpful just to have that as you know backup and additional support

079for the great job that you're doing so far so yeah i agree i think more information is always better okay and we know that scott's calendar is deep so that's not that's not a hard thing for him to do and you know we know that this year's been uh just challenging with the covid plus the bond work and as we've stated with with chris we hope the cove the coveted work is uh falling off as we walk all of that back and that things might be a little more normal so we we acknowledge your all all the hard work you've done scott perfect thank you is there any other comments for this time next meeting would be more typically more conversational as this is the first look okay all right thank you for that and

080that brings us to our last discussion item which is the community use of district facilities for pickleball courts so um i've been working with sue wolf and other members of the cedar springs community building development team as well as the city of cedar springs they're actively looking for places for community members to just enjoy life and to be able to get out there and be active and be engaged in the community one of the activities that they're looking to advance uh in cedar springs is the development of a space where community members can play pickleball and a location that we have i've actually been having conversation with the city manager for cedar springs uh since really you know july of 2018 when i first arrived on campus the possibility of transforming the courts on the

081north end of the property on 17 mile into some space for pickleball the courts as they currently sit are go unused the fence is uh getting rustier and rustier by the year um you know the courts are in tough shape and they're uh not necessarily playable at any higher level of performance or expectation but the cedar springs community building development team is interested in investing some of their dollars into upgrading those courts but they also want to make a wise use of that investment they don't want to invest dollars into that space and then for the district to turn around in five years and realize oh wow we needed that space for an extra driveway or we needed that space for some other some other purpose and so what they're you know what sue is

082is asking about is you know is there some type of agreement that the district could reach um to provide a 10-year window at minimum of time where we would not uh do anything else with that space if the cedar springs community building development team was to invest dollars in in making those spaces uh more more updated and and a higher level of quality for the people who were were using the courts so there are some pros and cons um you know if we make a commitment then we've made a commitment and it would prevent us from from doing other things on that space if new opportunities came our way but obviously the pro would be you know it would give our community a space to enjoy the outdoors and to get engaged and be active

083there is no um you know there would be no governing body over that space you know the city is not necessarily interested in uh maintaining that type of relationship or that type of degree of governance over the space and really you know pickleball is not part of our curricular program so it's really not something that the district would do either it would be more of just a you know an open an open facility for community members to use there was some talk of the north kent community enrichment group providing some degree of organization around pickleball teams and pickleball tournaments and pickleball leagues and that type of thing but that is yet to be determined really right now we're trying to get a sense they're trying to get a sense of you know let's let's identify

084a place to play first um and they're just looking for some guidance you know would the board be open to you know making some type of commitment where um you know they would at least have a a 10-year window if they invest the 25 000 so really right now it's just we don't have a hard presentation or a hard proposal for you we just want to get the lay of the land to see if there's interest in us continuing with the conversation thank you about that oh i'm sorry no go ahead shannon my question that is next to hilltop and i know we were having issues with the the brick facade are is that space far enough away from the building that that would not cause a problem or is that something that's also being

085looked at so that's a great question i think it would be out of the fall zone um so in the event that the the brick does fall on the on the east facing side of the building i don't think that there would be any danger to people who are you know um playing on those courts it is far enough away from the building that you know in case there was some type of failure structurally that that it would not impact the courts but that's a great question that yeah nice question shannon that was one of mine uh another question i have is as far you're saying the city's not kind of taking responsibility for that section of land we would still retain the property rights i would assume correct and would we also be responsible

086or liable for any accidents on that court um for the general public yeah i'll let chris jump in on this with his uh awareness of set sag and our insurance coverage but yeah so that's a great question matt it really would be treated just like you know any other district property like our our tennis courts or our basketball hoops where you know we're indemnified for many accidents such as that because they are you know we're a government entity and you know they'd be playing it playing on it on their own you know resolve so we'd be covered there there's there's no concern of extra liability unless there was something of gross negligence which so we would have to obviously monitor it but in no way differently than we do in the other district grounds i

087i think it's a great idea um how long has that court been sitting there and not having anything done with it so putting the money into it and and getting some use out of it especially right there at that intersection it seems like it could be something good there would probably be less gross negligence if if we fixed it up then there might be now just saying people walking across i don't know anything about pickleball but it sounds like fun to me you know for a lot of people so i would i would support going forward i don't think the district wants to be in the management business of anything pickleball so you know if another entity did that that seems to make sense to me um but as matt said how long has it

088sat there so um as far as parking has that one talked about considered so there there is some parking on the north end of the property um but you know pickleballers would have to use their resourcefulness and you know they could park down on the drive to uh by redhawk or um you know we wouldn't we wouldn't be adding parking to the to the space so they would have to use the parking that was available to them um accessibility wise do we have to take that into consideration i know it's an existing um tennis court that we're you know updating and and i just wonder about any civil um responsibility that we will have to get a sidewalk up there or any ramps because i know it's kind of on a hill too so just

089the thought on that excellent question thank you [Music] does anybody have any objections if scott were to go forward with us all right okay perfect all right well thank you thank you pickleball conversation there you go okay all right that brings us to the portion of our meeting where we would entertain public comments and at this time is there anyone that would like to address the board we do have the timer set at three minutes and we would look forward to hearing from anybody that has any comments on anything on our agenda or would like to address the board this time so i've had two individuals reach out mr dwayne gritter has requested time with the board and then also mr john nix uh has also requested time so we'll start with mr gritter and

090then we'll go from there so i will turn uh i will permit dwayne's microphone to be used um dwayne microphone okay i think up there yeah can you hear me yes uh i can't hear you hang on a second it's out uh let me try something different here okay here can you hear me you know yes we can hear you okay great great great great okay so uh see the springs last meeting may 24 2021 i spoke to the zoo meetings uh i wasn't very happy with the comments that miss heidi had made i'm sorry which someone there had made in reference to the ease and the comfort and the convenience of having zoom in as you may remember that so i don't believe that they're conducive to uh good relations with your attendees tonight

091i'm going to speak to the legalities of using this method and the tactics that you guys are using to silence the public i'm at rockford i find it interesting that both of you have chosen this week to have your comments section from the public at the very end of your meetings i just find that interesting matter of fact at rockford we've gone through several other minutes and found out they have not done this many many many months if not before so you guys could use this tactic but we're not going to go away anyway using the method that you guys have i'd like to indicate to the board that the illegal use of this medium that you have been using the zoom meetings and exercising to ask that you immediately begin abiding by the law

092i'm going to refer you to the law once again i believe i may have done this previously referring to act 267 196 of the actual 1976 the open meetings act 15.263 paragraph four it is not required for a person first of all to identify himself at a meeting to attend that meeting or be part of that meeting of course if someone wants to expect an answer from the board they're going to have to give them their information one way or another whether it be email or whatever so now uh regarding to the electronic portion of a zoom meeting which is what we're doing versus regular public meetings it's mentioned in the act specifically referencing electronic meetings it says specifically all electronic meetings must be conducted quote to me must be conducted in a manner that

093allows two-way communication unquote the pair i will paraphrase the rest of that during the public comment period all participants public body and public participants must be able to hear members of each other body now i can't hear anybody in the background but i know that there's several other people on board with me between the board members and the public i'm supposed to be able to hear them and they're supposed to be able to respond while i'm speaking to you and i don't hear that so obviously someone is violating the act of this case in other words all microphones must be on during the public portion of this meeting if you guys don't want to follow that that's entirely up to you but you face whatever may come from that also you're probably one of the

094only schools that i know of that's had a zoo meeting all the way into june where i've been attending other public meetings since april excuse me march also 15 263 a person is not required once again to identify themselves even at an electronic meeting the superintendent has my contact information for anybody wishing to speak with me regarding this i'm going to recommend you guys kind of recognize your constituents those that pay taxes and pay your wages we had a pretty ruckus meeting down here at rockford we're going to have more of them and i'm sure that we're going to have more with you guys you got to start listening to the people we're trying to educate you on these laws i know you're trying to say that you follow your legal advice but guess what

095those lawyers don't care if we go to law lost excuse me into a suit they're gonna make more money going to court using my money to fight so i'm just asking you guys to wake up recognize what you're doing we see what's going on next year two or three of you will be gone i will do my best to make sure that happens you guys got to meet the public face to face eye to eye not up on a platform not up on a stage meet him at their level speak to him like you know human beings your three minutes is up thank you i let you go a little over [Music] okay the next the next person uh requesting an opportunity to speak is april patton so i will open up her mic hi

096april you're muted there you go hi heidi hi scott oh can you hear me now yep we can hear you hi guys ah great thank you for letting me know um hey heidi thank you so much for that letter that you sent i read it fantastic that really made me smile thank you very much for sending that to the health department um the only thing i really wanted to touch base on today was the social studies curriculum is that still available for review um i i know i should have touched base on it when it was mentioned a couple times prior but i was so busy thinking about all the other things that i wanted to talk about um i totally overlooked the social studies curriculum i work until five at night all the way

097out on cascade so is there a way that um if i can still review the curriculum like is there like a link that we can put on the site or maybe send in a newsletter not just for me to look at but maybe other parents as well just like if there's a link that gives us an overview of what's in the social studies curriculum like i would really appreciate that i'm sure other parents would as well um i can't imagine any teacher or anybody working at the school would want to come meet me at six o'clock at night so i can view it and if it's too late to view that can we can we at least get the link just to take a peek at it anyhow if it's already been approved i understand

098if it has and i'm too late but i still would like to take a look at it if that's okay and i think that's all i have okay thank you and mr smith will follow up with you so thank you thank you april um the next person is listed as jeremy bott hi this is jeremy um i'm just curious why you guys are not here um why somebody's on a boat it looks like um i work a whole lot of hours i'm able to make it here don't understand why you guys aren't here to actually answer our questions this is quite ridiculous um there's a bunch of us here don't understand why you guys aren't here um pretty pretty sad oh that's all i got to say okay thank you okay is there anyone else

099that would like to address the board that we see in anybody's hand so i'm guessing this is john nix the hilltop cedar yes this is john hi hi john would you guys hear me okay yep we can so as we dive deeper into trying to help the board out i've known i'd have tapped you guys and i came at you pretty hard but my child is all i really care about in the end so the next journey is curriculum and i know trent has reached out to us multiple times saying going through these social studies this new curriculum is they're overwhelmed and i misspoke i would like to put that on record saying 500 a month which is five to six hundred year thank you for that that's a lot to go above and beyond

100however you have a community here that's starting to wake up and want to get involved and we would like to propose a place or a time that we could get together offline and actually review this curriculum critical race theory is something very huge here in the united states it's becoming more and more obvious and we really like to work with you guys we really like to clean up our schools and uh that's task i guess the next task for me some other people have asked the same question that's all i have to say thank you thank you and scott we'll follow up on that thank you mr nix okay is there anyone else that would like that hasn't already spoken that would like to address the board i have an individual listed as julie and

101so i will open up her mic okay hi this is julie kaiser i just wanted to say thank you for everything that you guys are doing and we are here to support you and work with you i am also disappointed that you're not here with us as zoom can be done anywhere so you could have done the meeting from here but we want to know how we can work with you and work with our students as parents as the administration here and come together so that we can do what's best for the community and best for the children so whatever we can do to help you let us know so that we can support you and you can support us and we can take care of these kids together okay thank you julie thank you

102julie okay um so i don't know if someone else has jeremy bott's phone so i'll open that mic to see if it's a new person okay hello hi hi my name is angelbot okay hi angel we can hear you go ahead okay um i just want to know specifically if the what your goal and plan is with the critical race theory curriculum um i would like to see us work together i think between all of you guys and all of our minds i really think we could really make some really good progress but i think it's going to take a little more than you know what's being given at the current moment i also um i'm still a little interested as to that budget what's going on with views playground the other thing is is

103there what buildings have air conditioning and which ones are the the summer camp that's happening in the beach elementary am i correct or is it going to the other buildings like as far as the elementary students [Music] so we wouldn't answer that for you now but when mr smith um that would be part of the response then okay because again i'm going to revert back to the mask okay and then um and then i'm also curious about a four-year request on the budget if that's something that we can look into uh it just seems like there's a awful lot of money and i really think i don't know another second set of eyes on it just to be on the safe side of things just especially with the past history that cedar springs has endured

104with money issues i think that's definitely a warranted request um and like i said it's just a lot of money that's going around and we we all know that the schools need lots of updating there's lots and lots of things that need to be going on um yeah so that's all i got i hope you guys have a great rest of the week and i look forward to a follow-up okay thank you thank you angel so the hilltop community center hand is raised again so i'll open up that mic in case someone else is using that device is there someone with the hilltop community center device no okay okay i think we've i think we got everybody i don't see anybody no all the hands are down all right thank you and um we've got

105notes and scott will be following up on that so we'll proceed with our meeting and also our email addresses are on the website if there's any other notations that wanted to be given to the board so we'll move on to our first action item which is the l4029 property tax resolutions and i would entertain a motion for as presented so moved report any discussion having none vice president schofner yes secretary slager yes treasurer gilmore yes trustee vanderheide trustee bowser yes president reed yes motion carries with a vote of 6-0 the second action item for tonight is independent bank construction funds account and i would entertain a motion for as presented support any discussion having none i'll call the role vice president shafner yes secretary slager yes treasurer gilmore yes trustee vanderheide yes trustee bowser yes

106president reed yes motion carries where the vote is 6-0 thank you and that brings us to our communication portion of the meeting and um for the board of education i would like to thank you for hanging in there and all the knowledge base and the different experiences that you're bringing to the board and we know that you are everyone is out talking with other people and different parts of the community we not only hear from public comment so i would just give a shout out to the board because i know you're active and out there so that's the first piece of that communication and scott did you have anything that you wanted to communicate back to us about any prior conversations or any updates for us that we would need to know as the board

107yeah so i think you know one big area of question is in regard to you know many people have are continuing to wonder about the mask requirement and there's been some confusion and some postings on facebook that the kent county health department has lifted the mask requirement um in making mat face masks a recommendation are the the masking orders that we're following the the orders that we're following for meeting attendance and that type of thing those are all still orders that were were required to follow based on the michigan department of health and human services mask and gatherings order that was issued on june 1st that order expires at 11 59 p.m on july 1. so it is my hope that after that there will be no more orders we can meet as many people

108as we want we don't have to wear face masks there still will be recommendations in place the health department will still be recommending that individuals use face masks if they're not fully vaccinated but again they're just recommendations they would not be requirements and so i think that's the biggest question we're still obligated to follow those michigan department of health and human services orders and so those are still in place for you know a little over two weeks the first couple of sessions of summer school those students will have to wear face coverings if they're not fully vaccinated if they're not eating or drinking or if they're not if they don't have a medical exemption when they're gathered indoors our teachers are being very strategic and the planning that's going on we're going to have our

109kids outside as much as we can for the next couple of weeks we know that it's hot as you know as we're having summer school at both red hawk and beach you know we were strategic in terms of when we scheduled those those sessions so the sessions are scheduled in the morning students will arrive on campus around 8 30 they'll engage in some learning activities both indoors and outdoors weather permitting and then they'll have lunch and then they'll be uh they'll be sent home at 12 30. um you know and so we're trying to be strategic to get them out of the heat as much as possible because the reality is that those buildings are going to be hot it's summer in michigan and and so we know that but again after those mandates are

110lifted and i'm not hearing anything in the pipeline that there's going to be any any extension of those michigan department of health and human services emergency orders i think we're going to be all set but unfortunately we have to wait till july 1 to uh to make that happen so that was really the big piece um and scott remind me does that also cover zoom meetings and the open meetings act or is was that a different no i appreciate that question so the reason why um we're permitted to meet in zoom is that kent county has an emergency order declared through june 30 of 2021 and so part of the open meetings act if if there's a declaration of an emergency within a county then governing boards are permitted to have their meetings remote hybrid

111or in person the tricky thing about having in-person meetings is managing the logistics because we still have to follow those michigan department of health and human services orders you know and so tonight for the bulk of the time that we were together you and we had over 26 people in attendance if all of those individuals had come in person we would not have been able to meet in the boardroom uh and so just those logistics uh were tricky and this zoom option because the kent county has that emergency order in place through june 30 is fully permissible within the within the open meetings act and the plan moving forward after june is to meet in person correct uh that would be the plan again i don't anticipate any extension of that emergency action by kent

112county and so by law we would be required and by choice we would want to meet in person you know we won't have any gathering uh requirements or restrictions um you know people can sit on each other's laps if they want in attendance uh at a board meeting and so um you know we it will be back to you know pre-march of of 2020 as far as operations go and the piece too you mentioned about um mass and vaccinations um there is no vaccination requirement and there's no waiver needed for any vaccination because it isn't required so i think that was another you know piece to share with the board when we're talking to people yeah no good point thank you um yeah the vaccination um is is strictly uh voluntary across the board some

113families are choosing to become vaccinated others others are not and um and so because there's no requirement then there's no waiver uh to to avoid the requirement right right yeah so strictly voluntary right um another piece to share with the board um there had been a question of our oaths of office and our acceptance of office and there was a glitch with what was on file at the county scott if i if i would say that right so if people had called the county to check um and scott has has brought the county up to date and all of those items are completed and they were given to the elections clerk correct we had email correspondence dated appropriately showing that all of the documentation has been submitted in a within the timelines that are required

114by law and um we also had copies of all of the original documents that we were able to share with the kent county clerk's office and so now their records are up to speed um so in case anyone does inquire about uh the acceptance of office of any of our board members or the oath of office any of our board members the district keeps the oath of office documentation the county keeps the acceptance of offer office documentation and so those records are all up to date both in our files and in the kent county clerk's files and and another piece to share um with the board uh there there was an off the cuff remark of claims of bullying or corruption in our district so if anyone hears of any of those allegations or things

115please encourage any those reports to be filed because we don't have any knowledge of that until someone were to file a report so that would be another awareness to the board um and giving you public notice that there is nothing on record right now correct okay so if you hear of things from parents or community members please uh have those individuals share with the principals or you know you could reach out on that reach out on their behalf you know get the information to staff members on campus and we will investigate and take action appropriately certainly so the other piece is um you know just again to thank the board for their your dedication and tracy is out of town we do see a lake in the background she is out of town for work

116so zoom has been hopeful that we can keep connected as a board and jeff was actually on an airplane that wouldn't work too well for zoom or any other kind of uh zooming in so so that's that piece so that's bringing you up to speed for the board communication and if scott do you if you have anything else for us the only other thing is we're meeting the we're meeting on june 21 instead of june 28 and so if you can make a note of that in your calendar and we'll get that posted we've got it posted on the website um so the public will know and uh and we'll go from there [Music] okay so next meeting is june 21st and having no other business before the board tonight we will stand adjourned at

1178 54. thank you thank you everyone thank you i looked for the gavel it's not here thank you so much just bang the microphone yeah there you go see you guys thanks bye you