Clarkston Community Schools - School Board 1/10/2021

001sure scholarship um okay we'll call the meeting to order happy new year everyone we will begin with the pledge of allegiance of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all this has been claimed may i have a roll call please mrs crane here mrs egan here miss catalina mr heyer here mr nead here mrs mcginnis mrs horst here mrs mcginnis sends her apologies she is attending to a family matter this evening this meeting is a meeting of the board of education and public for the purpose of conducting the school district's business it is not to be considered a public community hearing there is time for public participation during the meeting as indicated on the agenda in items three and nine item two is

002approval of the consent agenda may i have a motion please i move that the board of education approves the consent agenda as presented support all in favor say aye aye any opposed the motion carries item three is citizen's request to address the board you were given two opportunities to address the board under item 3.1 you can request to address the board on any topic on tonight's agenda under item 9 you are welcome to address the board on any topic when making comments please state your name and address direct your comments to mrs kelly horst president each person may speak for up to two minutes per established procedures the board will not respond to questions or interact with the speaker during public comment and per our established procedures the sign in sheet is over on the

003side table and we need you to fill out the sign up sheet completely to be acknowledged by the chair to address the board so mrs mclean if we can check and see if there's anyone who so far has requested to address the board on tonight's agenda and obviously a sign up sheet will stay there uh for anyone who would like to sign up and address the board under item nine let me just do a quick check okay okay it looks like i only have one person who wants to address the board on an agenda topic and so when we get to item five i will call on mr bialys otherwise we will hold everyone else until item nine again when we get to or if you want to address the board if you find during

004the meeting when we get to item nine just please sign up and fill out the form completely so you can be recognized by the chair tonight item 4 superintendent update i will turn it over to dr ryan for our first update of 2022. thank you president horse first for us i'd like to wish our entire community and our school community a happy new year we appreciate you coming out this evening or hope you're off to a good start obviously uh as we ended year 2021 when we proceeded at 2022 many of the things that we carried with us as a school district and a community we still carry with us moving forward into this new year we have a positive attitude collectively as an organization as a school district and i can speak for our

005entire board of education but we know we have challenges ahead and we know that we have to continue to bring forth maximum effort to support every single child that goes to school here in clarkson community schools there's many different things that we're facing along the lines of both safety and security i know that was on everybody's hearts and minds over the last month as we ended 2021 with the oxford tragedy and i took it upon myself as our superintendent team with my administration and our board to not take a reactionary as easy as would be to fall kind of into throwing everything in the kitchen sink or looking for quick fixes we took more of the stance to do an evaluation to look at the overall security and safety of every school building in clarkson

006in our procedures and to the point where we have carried through this year already i have to report back to the community that i'm we are prepared in terms of the safety of our buildings as it was as it existed and what we've done in the past in terms of preparation whether it be the alice training which all of our employees and students have been through or looking at the locks that we put on our doors you know when we did our last bond and all the revisions all those parts make an overall safety layer at least of the three different layers within our school buildings we looked at it as that is part of what we can do but we felt that there's always opportunities to do more and to that end we did

007it at a very first evaluation within our buildings thought we could even do better in terms of our security of our doors and over our holiday break i tip my hat to mr lucito in the second row there mr goodman in our facilities department installed night locks on almost every single door in clarkson community schools to add just another area of protection that seemed to me low hanging fruit other areas though as i see other school districts start to put in procedures and policies i think are premature in terms of evaluating the entire system's approach to safety and security and i got this insights from speaking at length with our oakland county sheriff's department and their security divisions and recommendations of a more comprehensive review of every single building in clarkston and looking at not

008only what the physical safety in terms of the buildings but our procedures and how we react to any threat that we have for staff and students to that end tonight we have a proposal for approval for what we believe after researching it the best possible security firm that specializes in school security i would like this this firm to evaluate again every single building in clarkston to provide our community myself our administration and our staff and community a unbiased and outside opinion and review of all of what we're doing in terms of keep our our community safe and we would like to come back on the 14th of february based on the approval of that proposal this evening to be able to share with the community the results and i want to make it fully public

009whatever they say i want to make it things that we need to address we'll need to address i look at that as kind of a systems approach i think that's the most pragmatic way to kind of uh carry through and make sure that we are doing this one step at a time and doing it right i feel like the last time we did a major security upgrades that's how we did it we didn't just willy-nilly put it together we had a bigger plan in mind and that is my hope not only for this evening to get that approval but that as we move into february it's not going to simply be that one-dimensional in terms of procedures and physical plant but we'll come also with a review from our various departments within the school district

010also share information on our updated review of our threat matrix in terms of responding and evaluating students that may be potentially a threat to themselves or others i think that is something that needs to be shared and update with our community and overall mental health supports across the district for students and staff as well to be able to vet that and be able to share that as a comprehensive package to look at really safety is not simply as a one-dimensional piece but really is a comprehensive approach and i would hope once we get the insights provided on on this report on the 14th that with the support of the board we'll be able to make some good decisions moving forward for our community and get community input along the way i mean this is really

011a community approach our community is as safe as we want it to be and the message i've received in many different layers through emails calls and personal meetings is that we want more we expect more and we want to make sure that we have peace of mind for our individual staff and for our students so that's with the safety security piece obviously the other big area challenge has to do with covid with the omicron variant and operationally effective way to keep school open and our our staff and students safe as we've started this year like many school districts across michigan and across the united states clarkson schools is right now fully operational and our goal i'll say right off the top is to keep our students in school in school learning in school to do

012that though there's challenges as it relates to making sure that we can properly staff based on people who are affected positively right now as i got the most frequent or the most updated numbers we have 200 active cases of covid right now and 26 of those are among staff members and we had 59 cases just today now what that means in terms of we're going to continue to do our best to keep our doors open and keep school kids in school but there's operational challenges to having large numbers of staff members who can't come to work i saw some recent reports this week to suggest that nationwide this could be one of the largest number of sick outs over the next couple of weeks in the history of our country in terms of when they've

013been posting and capturing these type of labor statistics so i think it's going to be a challenge for us as a school district to keep our doors open i take also great pride and want to give credit to mr lucito and our human resources department who is taking this as a long-term approach of really trying to have in-depth as much support and coverage we can for all positions because it's not simply to say that we have a classroom teacher i mean we have an entire support crew of bus drivers and pair pros and office personnel that make our schools operate every day and yes you know what there's been an amazing amount of utility with our employees really stretching to make sure that we cover all the spots every day but i'm telling you as

014much as they make it look easy many days you really have to look at the challenges of making these covers really is landed on the shoulders of our employees and our administration to make sure that we can kind of keep operating and it's not easy and i can tell you the reflection of meeting and being out in buildings today they're struggling and they want me to know and i want to make sure we know as a community that you know we're going to do our best but we're hoping that this quickly passes so that we can get to some sense of the new normalcy of whatever that looks like in terms of covid and pushing on but we're doing our darndest to make sure that we keep kids in school so on one i want

015to make sure our community hears that i heard as early as today that waterford is looking at some surrounding school districts so moving virtual for the short term just based on staffing just being able to keep their their classrooms and schools open we're not at that critical red line right now but when you have uh the number you know upwards of 60 cases in a day and that could quickly spiral in the situation can change and i want to make sure our board our community hears that from me and also again that commitment that we want to keep our doors open we want to make sure kids are in school because we know that's where they belong and we want to do it uh with the best and the most supportive way we can so

016that is a big message and again a thank you to our employees a thank you to our employees that are helping making this work each and every day so long covid we're going to keep fighting the fight and uh we'll keep updating you as as time goes on so those are the two major areas i wanted to make sure to report back on right thank you so much dr ryan uh we'll move on to item five presentation items we only have one tonight 5.1 board appreciation month recognition dr ryan thank you um and this really is on behalf of all of our administration and employees of clarkson schools i wanted to take a moment tonight to let everybody know january is our school board it's a it's a national recognition month and across hopefully the

017state in this country communities are taking pause as i will tonight to make sure that we don't forget those individuals who week after week month after month have shown up uh and probably i would say arguably some of the most difficult times that schools communities and our country has faced and have done it with a sense of grace fortitude and sense of strength and purpose day after day and i think that the school board in clarkson exemplifies not only a school board that stretches to educate themselves to be the best board in terms of governance and caring and investing in their community but we have a board of education here that they don't show up here obviously for the fame and it doesn't really pay except a volunteer stipend kind of like jury duty but

018they take month after month of of whatever they need to do to be here for the kids in this community and i think we're fortunate not only to have individuals that are committed educated and forward-thinking but we're lucky to have a school board that has the right heart with kids at the focus of everything they do and i've been incredibly fortunate through the last several years as your superintendent to be able to work with this group individuals and i know from my conversations with other superintendents in other school districts it doesn't always operate fully as an integral kind of team you know we have a governance angle with oversight in terms of finances the policies and the procedures of how we operate the school district and you have kind of an executive branch it's a

019mini kind of microcosm of government and we know right now there's not many good examples of good governance going on within our country right now sometimes i think we can also say that our school boards across the country have operated in some format as the highest working form of government some days in terms of how directions provided within a community as that might give you pause or even for me to think or say it does give me comfort in clarkson at least that we have such high quality individuals or whether to step up and to make it happen so on behalf again myself our administrative team and i know from our school community i just want to say thank you we really appreciate everything you've you put in there in terms of heart to bring

020in here and and honestly i could not any form of imagination and i know i speak for our administrative team and our teachers think that we could have had the level of grace everything that you have brought to these very turbulent and difficult times so thank you and please keep serving and uh can we appreciate everything you do thank you very much dr ryan and we have a small token uh for you from our team just to say thank you thank you so much we appreciate the kind words i know there's one citizen who'd signed up to address the board tonight mr bialys thank you daryl b ellis 5415 old say brook road i want you to see my face as i try to follow what dr ryan just said even though i don't know

021how i could i'm here on behalf of the clarkson education association to thank you as school board members for all that you do for our school community i want you to know that we know as a cea that it's it's a difficult job to steer the ship and thinking over the last two years dr ryan said it earlier it has not been easy doing what we do in the trenches every day but to know that we've got a board of education that is there supporting us and doing their best to provide us with the resources that we need to navigate through this pandemic it makes it a little bit easier so again i just want to thank you and in recognition of your commitment to our schools and our community and our students and in

022honor of school board appreciation month the cea is going to be donating a book to each of the learning commons and all of our buildings in your name and this year i'm excited to say that we're going to donate one to the early childhood center as well we know that they've got a little bookshelf we'll call it a library out by the main entrance there for the little kiddos and so we're gonna we're gonna continue what we've done in the past and expand a little bit so again on behalf of the cea and all of its members thank you for everything you do to move clarkson community schools forward and to provide our students with the quality public education that they deserve thank you all right thank you so much for your comments um i

023will just say uh there's one other body to thank here i think that that has made us such a high functioning team here and i do want to thank our community and i know there are several in the audience tonight and over the last couple of years we've had upwards of a thousand participate here i think it really is what makes us um a strong team and certainly there have been times in the last couple of years where maybe this room has been more heated than others but quite honestly i think it's what has helped make um make clarkston a pretty good place to to sit in this seat even though it hasn't maybe always been the most pleasant pleasant place to sit in it hasn't always been fun to have to hear some of

024the comments i think um we have a very active community that cares very much about its kids and and how we're educating them and um you know where those kids are going to go when they leave clarkston and i for one have always appreciated and i think i can speak for all of my colleagues up here we have always appreciated parents who speak up and advocate for their kids whatever that position is and i feel like our position is to listen to every side of every person's story and consider that when we sit up here and make decisions about the kind of school district that we want to have so if i can just you know acknowledge your thanks acknowledge your thanks mr biales but also thank the community for being as active as you

025are and helping direct us and steer us so we will we will continue on with our meeting this this evening um item six is action items 6.1 is approval of personnel changes may i have a motion please and move the board of education approve the personnel changes listed on the attach sheets support uh and i know mr lucito is here i had asked if he would just uh quickly explain the very you know we had a late addition this afternoon and i know um you know dr ryan and mrs mclean sent a quick email but for the sake of transparency that we're going to vote on tonight for our public who may not have been able to see any late edition could you just quickly explain the the we late entry but we are requesting

026an additional esl teacher we have grant funding available for this and reviewing our staffing late last week and and today um oakland schools is recommending that all of our intervention are done with a certified teacher we're currently we're using some basically instructional aids to do some of that one of them is going on maternity leave and another one is reducing to part-time so we just thought with the funding available this is the perfect time for us to add an additional teacher and we did not want to wait till the next board meeting so my apologies to the late entry okay nope i just appreciate the explanation are there any other questions for mr lucito on the personnel report okay all in favor say aye aye any opposed the motion carries item 6.2 is approval of

027security education consultant's proposal for services may i have a motion please i move that the board of education authorized the administration to execute a contract for a district-wide assessment of our security safety and emergency preparedness for a total of thirty thousand dollars to secure education consultants as presented support any questions or discussion from the board on this proposal no i think dr ryan explained in his report and certainly this is what you alluded to uh last month in terms of of wanting to think through what we're doing and then bring an update back to the community and i think just adding this uh adding this outside expertise is wanted to push this out a little bit from from the end of january which is what we initially discussed but we'll be bringing this then back

028to the board into the community in february instead of late january that was the first availability that we could have to get appointments uh and it'll be fast it'll start coming in the next next two weeks i would imagine this group is incredibly busy yes this time all right all right see no questions or discussion all in favor say aye aye aye any opposed the motion carries item 6.3 is second reading approval of policies may i have a motion please i move that the board of education approves the revised policies as presented support mrs ziegan were there any other questions or discussion provided after last month's meeting i received none um and as we all received in the mail today um emailed today that you know there was just a pronoun change in one of

029the um the policies other than that there were no changes great i was satisfied being no legal reason um that we were going to keep keep it as is right it's worth the consistency with to remember with the pronoun usage that we're using in our other policies we're going to keep it as as it was yes okay see no other questions or discussion all in favor say aye aye any opposed motion carries we'll move on to item 7 report items 7.1 is our facilities update i'll turn it over to mr goodman good evening i might need heidi's help pulling up the um i think you might can we run it from over here you'll have to move it okay that's fine we're going to talk mostly about this page i think in the beginning so

030uh tom vandegrin's here with me tonight and we're gonna just to reiterate we've we've been here uh since early october as you know we're working through the uh master plan over the last year updating the the five-year master plan which led us into uh the clarkston junior high and looking to what what it would really look like to replace that building as we recommended based on the age of the building and the cost of renovations um we're recommending a replacement and uh so gathering that information we have started the we had tours with the clarkson junior high staff back in october and in november and then in december we provided this list but we didn't really give a presentation to it so this is the program that you were provided i'm going to have tom

031really speak to it high level and then we're going to give you a little over a drawings that we have just to kind of show how that would uh look on that site and certainly here for any questions you have thank you mrs mclean is there any way to increase the size of that so we can just on the screen thank you all right um yeah as wes said you know when we went through the master plan process and identified the junior high as a big component it it it's a very complicated project and so we needed to dig deeper to program it with your staff what does it really want to be when it's new and and and what you know what kind of facility is it going to be is more than just

032the uh the old component of it wearing out it's a 21st century educational facility if you're going to build something new so all that programming went through some some tours etc to decide what's what what should that building be in terms of 21st century concepts that was all put into the meetings we had with your staff then we developed this program which we sent you last time which is a list of all the spaces the spaces on the left on this sheet are a summary of all the major components in the building the next column lists the square footage for each one of those components and the next column to the right of that is the it says ts at the top of it that stands for teaching station that says it's defined by the

033department of treasury so you can use that that's what we use to to evaluate the capacity of the building in terms of student count so you can see the multi-use learning environment at the top which is basically classrooms has 32 teaching stations a lot of those down below are zeros because they're not considered teaching stations for capacity as a relations department of treasury at this point we have another column there that's that's for a master plan um they are all the same right now because we're we're intending to to bring this forward as a complete project if some of it were to say hey we need to wait on that uh component of the building it would slide over into that master plan column um we when we looked at this building it's it's got

034a unique issue that there are three components that are going on that site there's the junior high and there's the facilities your district facilities component that's in that building then there's a relationship with your life skills program which is your post-high your adult special needs program and so we looked at that and ended up developing three programs for all three of those those when you saw multiple programs that's what those were for the big one is the junior high that's this one here that's the majority of the need the other two define those other programs we'll get into those a little bit let me show you that on on site this program again i'll go through what's in there right now there are some criteria design criteria and some site explanation they're under some of

035the first sheets then it goes into the multi-use learning environments those are all the classroom components there are then a couple things after that that i would say are some of those 21st century spaces that support classrooms that you don't have right now multi-use learning environment support with project rooms and extended learning areas some breakout rooms those group areas those are things the building does not have that were not included in 1950 kind of designs after that are some some pretty standard groupings your science component art music learning commons media center component physical education is all the gymnasium spaces and locker rooms etc then there's your career technical education a couple different programs a smaller stem program and then the construction trades program sort of unique program you have that program does include again all

036the things that they're are desiring to add on to that program so that is a little bigger than what they have now that's including some addition to that program student support services sort of the special ed components the junior high piece is what's listed in this building for junior high the post high that's the one that refers to a separate program and that one you received as a document similar to this but only like four or five pages the auditorium um is primarily existing it's what we're looking at about 19 to 20 000 square foot of that is your existing auditorium the 5 000 to 6 000 square foot of additional space in that line item is for some additional things your auditorium performing arts center does not have dressing rooms costume storage expanded scene

037shop things like that the next things are staff support things restrooms and rooms conference rooms for them administration student services are basically the front office and then food service and some miscellaneous bases again the last one there's a district maintenance that's a part of that where wes's group is right now and that's again we're looking at pulling them out and putting them in a different location um and that's the separate program that you received as well to cut to that that uh we'll show you that on the on the on the plan but the maintenance we're looking at moving to be an addition to your existing transportation facility so the square footage is total up there all the sheets behind that you look at basically define you won't go into all those sheets but there's

038there's several i think it's 50 or 60 pages so for example if you went to physical education you'll find a breakout of that 55 000 square feet what does that include and we've gone through some fairly detailed programming with your staff so it shows uh three station gymnasiums one station auxiliary gym locker rooms uh training facilities uh weight room et cetera et cetera it shows all that breakout and even some detail what's in those that that gives you that 55 000 square feet every one of those major categories has that breakout for in sheets behind the total then when you look at your your math there is 233 000 square feet and 54 teaching stations the plinth number always everybody that's what is that that's an architectural category that basically is all non-programmed space the

039glue that pulls that all together the biggest component of this corridors and hallways and things that get you to all these spaces and that is a just sort of a historically standard number that you use at 35 on any program space that lets you get done when you draw the building that it ends up being about uh 35 additional space to pull it all together so that totals at this point 314 0705 again you can see the master plan is the same right now because we've done no prioritization to say none of this is some of the parts of this are not going to get built now we'll push that off to a master plan so they're the same number so some of those numbers we did a little bit of work on that from

040the last time we talked to you you know to compare them your existing junior high is 232 513 so 230 to 233 000 as compared to 314 the biggest change to the building from this program to what you have programmed from 1955 is is specifically classrooms are right-sized to what we would do in today's environment uh you're changing from sitting at a desk and just taking notes from someone on the chalkboard to project-based learning where you need to spread out and do group work so we today we'd spend a lot more square footage per student in a classroom so it's right-sizing all of your classrooms to today's kind of standard that's a big part of it the other piece is those those support spaces to classrooms extended learning areas breakout rooms these project rooms where

041project stuff can happen none of those exist right now in your existing building and then um one of the components that you have in your building that that that also changes some of the math is your construction trades is a unique program that has some square footage that might not exist in in other types of junior highs if you compare that square footage just to to say how does that compare to what we have in other buildings in your district um if i take that 314 000 square feet and i subtract the auditorium and i subtract the construction trades that ends up being a very similar program to your junior i'm sorry your middle school sashable middle school and has the same grade configuration two grades at that building two grades at this building they

042end up almost identical in terms of square footage the the square footage of the of uh of this building there's 26 000 something for the auditorium when i subtract that and the construction trades they come to 270 thousand 355. the june the middle school is 270 0713. so they're within 500 square feet of each other so comparison of academic area to academic area up aside from the auditorium and the construction trades being unique at the junior high they're very similar so the comfort i think for you to say is that building over design because it looks big i think it's very similar to what you have at the junior at the middle school comparison to your high school uh 430 000 plus square feet so you can see it's it's three quarters of that and

043then the teaching stations right now you have 53 teaching stations in the junior high this is proposed for 54 so it's again very very similar we're not seeing any need right now for any growth it's basically the same number of teaching stations just adding that space right sizing them i think that's everything on the program obviously there's a lot of detail behind there that you had questions on going to questions on the numbers okay so the next thing we're going to go into is is we took this program which is all those architectural spaces and square footages and started to overlay it on the existing building that's the complexity of this project that we want to understand uh to some degree you know we'll go into if this became a project we'd spend 12 months

044to 14 months designing this project but we obviously don't have that kind of effort to put into it right now but we want to know as as well as we can what are the complexities of this project to to properly uh budget for it as we looked at that as a big piece we looked at with you in terms of the master plan what is this project really going to cost if we if we tackle this so we're studying that right now this is the first attempt we've had a few meetings with your staff kind of looking at the bubbles and pieces but but overlaying it on your existing site so this first one again is trying to show you how those pieces overlay on on the existing site very conceptual again you're not seeing

045all the detail of each each little area and and and i guarantee you a final project things will move around but it's trying to understand how it might work so what you're seeing there is the google image below is your existing site and all those boxes colored boxes are the the main components you saw on that program for example the auditorium the gyms the auxiliary gym there's delineation in between those but those are overlaid on your existing building um the best way we see it working educationally with your staff especially adam who's been helping with that so the main thing that we're we're looking at which starts the organization of this is that white box to the bottom leftish middle left existing auditorium that we're looking at trying to keep that and trying to to

046save that piece the rest of the building for the most part is going to be replaced we are also attempting to keep the bottom orange box it says construction lab that would be that construction trades component that we were talking about earlier we're attempting to reuse some of that space that's still being studied but those are the only two places that we're talking about keeping the rest of it would be a puzzle piece where we build and tear down and build and tear down fairly complicated we just started some of that with awk your construction manager just started to study this we had some meetings today with them to understand uh the complexity of construction here what are the what are the concerns they might have about things so we might tweak this plan with

047with some of their thoughts in terms of constructability uh those components are the two we're trying to keep i'll give you a real simple understanding of the building to the top we're looking at having that be the entry to the building separating uh trying to work better at separation of the parent and the bus drop off for students coming in as you come into the administration on the top to the right of the of that plan is where the learning wings are the classrooms if you will we are looking at that most likely being a two-story piece with those two wings each being two stories and then to the left the gymnasium auxiliary gym the support locker rooms etc uh and then the auxiliary i'm sorry the auditorium to the left those spaces all organized

048around this cafeteria which is we're hoping to serve as a commons for the building so they can use that space for half time for intermissions for for anything play-wise and organizing uh the entire building uh then some music and stamina art and stuff have a relationship towards the construction lab the other places that you see where you see the building would be torn down and and returned back to grass if you will that's very simple in its in its layout but uh it's it's turning to be a very complex project because of the grade as well that is not a site uh not a flat site it's low on the left from the auditorium and it works its way up the hill to the classrooms almost 10 feet of grade change there so we're in

049the middle of starting to study all that how does that that really get built i mean awk is helping us with that component one of the things i should mention about this this that drawing though yet um is last time we were with you you guys mentioned the the potential of of this building being on the i think it's rattly lake road property that you own and we have looked at that there are some there's some substantial differences from cost to being on that site and they basically are as it relates to the building um you know the auditorium itself we would have to entirely rebuild here we're looking at trying to save that so there's some cost there that this this obviously gets favored and then the construction lab we're hoping to reuse that

050as well if we do that'll be even further building pieces that we can reuse versus have to entirely rebuild the all the infrastructure to get here in terms of utilities exists we don't have any of that at the other properties we'd have to bring that in we'd have to deal with roads and parking lots differently than we do here here we will be developing them and redeveloping them we don't have to entirely develop them at the uradele lake site some of the other things that are on that site you have uh on this site that we're going to be reusing is the stadium the ball diamonds the two baseball softball fields and some of the practice facilities so those already exist here as well that we would have to to duplicate on that site so

051those components are making it uh fairly different substantially cost wise to build on that site we're evaluating it a bit more yet but uh just to be frank that was what we looked at in terms of that site unreadily the next drawing is just giving you a little bit of an understanding of how that floor plan that you just saw looks in three dimension again this is the entry coming you know you're you're at clarkson elementary here basically looking back at it so the the entry would face sort of that direction as you come in to the left is the classroom wings working their way up the hill to the right is that gymnasium athletic component then they're all working around that bluish piece which is that cafeteria the learning commons is going to develop

052that that that open area that all those spaces can use for collaboration and then the auditorium staying in the back the existing music art stem from the construction lab very very high level gives you a little bit of understanding about maybe how those are coming together i think um i don't throw any questions on that that's about as much details we have into that plan at this point trustees any questions at this point i mean this was meant to be just a very high level uh if you remember from some of the reports we've been given weekly that they took groups to go visit other middles or other junior highs and some other sort of what are considered very innovative facilities so i don't know if that you know would help inform kind of what

053they're seeing here any questions or discussion i guess i'm always interested in sort of as at every one of these phases what is it you're looking from you know for from us right i mean i think there are probably a lot of very detailed questions maybe that we have but maybe that's not what you need from us at this point so you know if there are specific things other than just general questions you want from us i mean this is a long process with a lot more detail to come as you continue to investigate so it is yeah i i i don't know wes if you want to comment to that i think what we're looking for is just you know we're continuing to develop it hopefully we're on the right track we are you

054know spending some time now moving into the phase where uh how does this really work in 3d because a big part of it is what is this going to cost right as we look at the master plan and what part you do and what parts don't fit into that so we're trying to develop that cost which is taking some time more than normal at this stage of the game to understand uh how complex is this construction so that's where we're engaging awk to understand that a little better um for the junior high i mean obviously we were very clear in our direction this is when we're meeting back at the high school that we wanted you to pursue this or i mean we wanted to look at you know what it was going to take

055to you know to to look at a new junior high that we knew that was coming out of the bond previously that that wasn't addressed that we knew it would have to be addressed and we needed some real solutions and so i mean obviously this is something that we're looking at so i don't know any any thoughts about what i mean this is what they've come back to us with here's conceptually what it could look like they've looked at rhys road at the property we owned there and said you know probably cost-wise that's not going to be as attractive um i'm looking for some some thoughts or reflections from the board ms zegan well i just think it's worth mentioning that maybe five years ago when we hired gmb as our new architect we started

056from the ground up in developing our master plan and refreshing um what we could but also renewing where we needed to go based on you know our students and you know the current way to be teaching given that some of our buildings are quite old and this has this was part of the master plan it was not part of the previous bond for the reason that you stated the funding was just not sufficient we couldn't borrow that money at the time to do this as well as to do the safety and security that we wanted to do at the time and that took precedence over this so i just think it's worth mentioning this is why we're looking at it now i've been on this committee with mr heyer for probably five years now and

057mrs horst is also now part of this committee so there are there is um trustee participation in the dialogue as we're going through this and and looking at what are the next steps yeah i think we're on the right track here i mean obviously we've got to be able to execute the plan and i appreciate you doing the due diligence to determine you know with awk can we really pull this off you know obviously we were duty-bound to ask the questions in terms of timeline and budget and you know those are all the things you're working on so i think we're we're right on track with where we need to be and we appreciate i think every meeting here in the near future is probably going to have an update on this and we look

058forward to more detail really as as we go forward at every meeting and any anybody that has any questions between meetings or you go home and you mention this and you come up with something else um you know please funnel those through because we want to make sure we we address those through the the process here so we don't have to certainly wait for the next meeting before we get to those kind of things but this is uh it certainly is a living breathing exercise that we're doing together and collaboratively and appreciate the uh opportunity to work together and we've had you know great experiences thus far with our team and i think we want to continue to preserve that team and and you know do things that are appropriate for our community the right

059learning environments for our kids giving flexibility to to change as we know we're going to need to change in the future so i think we're right where we need to be sorry mr goodman i'm sure i stepped in there when you were maybe going to say something is there anything you want to add no i i think uh yeah tom hid it right on that we're making sure that we're on the right track that we're uh we've been looking at all kinds of scenarios and and it does lead us back to uh keeping the building on this site and working through it it is going to be a very challenging uh project but we had our first kickoff meeting with uh awk today and you know their their minds go right into constructability while you're

060while you have kids in the in the school and um so we're going to work through that we hope to be back to you next month with the number that would uh really explain um the phasing a project like that like this if we were to do it takes a good year of design this these are really high level designs but to get into the details of uh of a building to make a constructability um that is a a year and then it's probably we're talking so you know three three four phases possibly over three to four years to complete it 100 percent where we build move move uh into that area and then tear down um and like like tom said the site is very challenging um as it's about a 10 foot difference

061between the parking lot and the and the to the um east of the building going uphill and it kind of goes uphill to the south as well but um but those challenges are are doable that's why there's so many ups and downs in that building right now which is which is what we've tried to avoid um but yeah we uh if you have questions please uh don't hesitate to to ask us and some of the things we do have another slide some of the things that have led to this site we really wanted to focus on the junior high we started that with facilities is there in the maintenance shop it's not ideal to be part of a building but because we moved into that area as the old high school we took space that

062we had we said let's let's really figure that out not be part of a school building but uh you know with the transportation center made sense but the life skills and we found that the life skills and adult um it's life skills and post time sorry are kind of split now we have 20 kids at the junior high and there's 40 kids at the renaissance high school and uh the preferred would be to put them all together and so when we looked at where would that work out best um we started brainstorming do we put in addition do we add them to the junior high does it make sense we kind of said no they don't really need to be part of that they need to be separate and then we looked at should we

063do an addition to the renaissance building and um as a potential and we don't really like that idea because that site is uh confined and it's a beautiful building the way it sits and so then it led us to our independent site and um on this site we have as you recall bought the farm from the bayless family and the house is uh now we've owned it nearly 20 years and it's been vacant so we still have to maintain it and and one of the options would be how do we deal with that in the master plan and um so we programmed the life skills with all and post high with everybody together and what it would look like on this site and have a relationship with possibly with the family farm and just having

064their whole program under one roof so just something to show you here it's uh as we've walked through these things how kind of ideas uh come about but um this is an eight kind of showing this box of an eighteen thousand square foot post high building on the former bayless farm site independence elementary site i think that's our last slide but if you have any questions to that yeah we didn't have a slide specifically of the maintenance facility piece but it's basically in addition to the existing transportation facility it's quite simple moving that that function out of the junior high as we take that over and rebuild that okay any last comments or questions at this point looking forward to the next steps okay okay thank you thank you thank you so much all right

065we'll continue on with report items uh 7.2 is our board reports from our attendance at the masb annual conference and for our bylaws we are required to bring back our report uh to the community whenever we attend our own professional development uh last month just didn't seem right to be talking about that obviously in in light of keeping our meeting kind of short and tight with what happened um in oxford and so we wanted to bring that back here this month so i'll just start here with mrs crane and we'll go down the list any just reflections on any workshops you attended or kind of what your takeaways were from the annual leadership conference uh in november yeah it was it was hard to really go back and look at my notes because it had

066been about five weeks um i was able to go early i attended a pre-conference workshop on diversity equity and inclusion and there were a lot of good things in the workshop but what i found that with the work that clarkston's been doing for many years it felt more like this was geared towards districts starting at zero and it made me kind of proud that we've really been spearheading this for quite a while already um but i was glad to go then the last little bit we were kind of able to talk about some next steps it was great i thought to be in a room with people again other school board members in the state i thought masb did a great job of putting it together in the middle of the pandemic the most memorable

067thing to me was the general session on friday which was by brandon p fleming i've since read his book miseducated which i would wholeheartedly recommend which i meant to bring for you tonight and i forgot i'm sorry i'll bring it um he was inspiring dynamic he was a great speaker um the other one that i really enjoyed there there was another general session on what it was called data therapy finding narratives in the numbers session and i also did a breakout clinic with that speaker kenda lawson and again i was really just taken aback by how much clarkston already looks at the data to make our decisions and so while a lot of the people that i was sitting with were looking at how they could take this back to their district and implement some

068changes i was just very proud that we are already doing those things so all right thank you mr heyer i would echo those remarks um i'm was most glad to be back in person interacting and meeting other school board members collaborating is something i've certainly missed the last couple of years where we haven't had that opportunity i really appreciated the the keynote sessions i thought the gentleman brandon that you mentioned was awesome the colonel i thought was awesome as well um had the privilege to introduce him and and meet him and speak with him and and uh whatever wherever he's going i would get right behind him and and support him in those ventures the delegate assembly was nice to take a lot of the work we have done over the past two years and

069finally implement and cement that and put all that into practice so there were some things in there nothing earth shattering or major but certainly some things that you know support all of our efforts and inform our legislative positions um that got done as well so i was pleased with that mrs mcginnis had sent to me just a brief report to share with everyone that she attended several workshops focused on students mental health mentioning that all of the presenters backstories were as diverse as the many issues that districts face when helping our youth she attended a presentation on the be nice program featuring eric hipple former detroit lions quarterback who lost his son to suicide at 15 years old and found out as a follow-up that we have a group active at our high school using

070this program and i know i attended um um uh a presentation by eric hipple at our high school that must have been 2019 maybe 2018 and heard his story of his own attempt his own suicide attempt following following that in his own struggle with mental health so he was a pretty powerful speaker and i'm sure had our own our students probably you know pretty enraptured um i attended a lot of workshop sessions focused on governance um leadership just you know to help me in in my position here as uh as the current sitting president of our board and uh some of the big takeaways um that i took were some of the big questions i thought that helped that helped me think about how we do our work and how we lead our work and

071we were getting ready to have in december our own self-evaluation and so they were kind of guiding my thoughts as as i facilitated that conversation um you know do we have a shared moral imperative as a board and i think that we do you know as a and certainly as a board superintendent team when it comes to the work of clarkston schools and are we committed to doing what's necessary to realize our mission and how can we as a board better support the district's mission those were some of the questions that i took away from the presenters that i listened to one of them was the group from troy who i think is a pretty high functioning board as well they gave shared some resources with us you know the tools that they use the

072books and the authors that they read and follow so um you know i was i was pretty glad i think that i think that we also were the only board maybe is that right mr hire to have all seven of us attend this conference i think we put a pretty high premium on our own professional development it's a complicated job that we have to do and have to learn a lot about and have to understand a lot of complicated tasks to fold into the decisions that we make and so i'm proud that all seven of us make the time to go and to stay on top of the issues and and to learn a lot about it and um so i think that says a lot about the value that we place on on staying

073on top of the work that we have to do mr nead uh sure i would echo the comments about being nice to be in person finally um it is interesting that many times we're hearing suggestions and ideas from other other board members are asking about and we're doing them in clarkston so we're kind of i think in a leadership position at least in my interaction with school board members statewide dr fleming's speech was dynamic a gentleman really a teenage drug dealer who turned his life around with education and is now the assistant debate coach at harvard university and very very active in bringing debate into the inner city and bringing those kids along as well so it was very dynamic very inspiring i went to several clinic sessions as well the one that kind of

074was a little interesting was from michigan virtual learning and i know as dr ryan mentioned before our goal is to keep all our kids in person but we do offer a virtual program as a choice for those parents that choose to do that and i was interested to learn that michigan virtual beyond just the standard curriculum they also have a substantial social emotional component as well including some behavior intervention programs that can be used for struggling kids um and as a restorative justice as a place for suspension so i thought that was interesting and it was a great conference all along all right mrs egan sure i won't reiterate i've been in some of the same sessions and of course the keynote speakers i thought were excellent one thing to make the public aware of

075since all seven board members attended parts of this and i believe this is the second year in a row we did this we are considered by the michigan association of school boards a standard of excellence board we get that award for coming together and committing as a team to go through this professional development and here's some of the innovative things that are going on in education i'm just touching briefly i attended a cba class creating trust a key ingredient in school improvement and student achievement and just one of the big takeaways was research shows that schools reporting strong trust links across the organization were three times more likely to report improvements in math and reading scores so working very closely with the superintendent and the administrative team is incredibly important and that was a great

076reiteration of hearing some of the things that we know when we practice some of the breakout sessions that i attended one was the school's leaders the school leaders guide to michigan school data which is a website it gives a dashboard and how you can read our particular dashboard for our district and compare ourselves to other light districts as well that was worth uh definitely worthwhile it was a virtual course though so it wasn't as easy to um you know you just kind of had to follow along you really didn't have the opportunity to ask too many questions and then another clinic session that i attended that i enjoyed was put on by set seg which is one of our vendors and it was putting together the puzzle pieces of cyber protection and some of the

077steps that you need to be going through to protect the integrity of your systems against fishing and some of the training initiatives that you can put your staff through and i'm happy to report that since sega is one of our providers that we do do that um so um i also just attended the uh diversity equity inclusion workshop also with mr heyer and mrs crane and found it very interesting for us to take our own inventory to see where we are compared to other districts so very fruitful trip for me thank you and we also did receive a scholarship from our county school board association for um for one of us to attend as well so reimbursed for part of our cost for attending okay thank you everyone for the time devoted to that and

078for your reports we will move on to discussion items uh we have one discussion item tonight item 8.1 is board operating procedures this is crane i will turn that over to you this has been a two and a half year process started before the pandemic then put on hold and then picked back up again so finally we have updated the unwritten rules yes i believe mr termed themselves yes which yes i i actually came to that term quite a bit as i was writing the unwritten rules because and it would have so just so everybody knows i was tasked with revising and updating our board operating procedures as at the time i was just finishing my first year as a board officer so i was the newest member and i think you very wisely thought

079it would be best for the newest person to go back and look and kind of you know measure my experience that first year with what we have written so then the pandemic hit and then two years later i finally got to it after my third year on the board two years of which were in the pandemic it was a little more challenging but i wanted to thank everybody once i did get that to you everyone responded within 24 hours i had a lot of historical knowledge expertise legal help from mr need and i'm happy to say that there were very very little conflicting pieces of advice or edits or comments so this won't take long but i did want to say thank you and i think it also goes to show that while we don't

080always agree i think we work very well together and that was very evident as i was doing this so most of what i did was really just kind of the overall formatting the tightening up the language and i was trying very hard to put things in a more cohesive or at least intuitive you know order and i'm not sure if i did that i'm happy to discuss it further i'm happy to take more comments but what you have in front of you is kind of everybody's comments gather together and hear so first the introduction and pledge which was originally in the draft that i sent you the conclusion in signatures page and i had the comment and the idea and i really liked it rather than doing it as a conclusion the idea behind this

081is to revise review and reaffirm it every year at our retreat so i kind of like having this introduction page and us doing that every year so that is why that is moved i also have a cba class on board operating procedures but not until february during the winter institute so as much as i think i'd like to pass the torch on this i think i'd ask to stay on the committee one more year until at least after that class so in considering that we will do this on an annual basis i assume it will be an ongoing committee the code of ethics pages not much change there i really tried just to combine what i thought were repetitive bullets i think it can be further tightened up a little bit in the future but

082it's a really good foundation the additional three bullets i think it is as board president i would just ask that every committee member asked the board president whoever it is mrs horst this year to really read those to really let us know if there any anything needs to be edited revised added to those three bullets so i'll stop here does anyone have anything on those two pages yeah i think maybe the easiest thing is everyone just sort of follow along i mean this is probably the first time you're seeing this with everybody's comments sort of added in and revised from when you saw it a week or two weeks ago so i would say maybe highlight anything where you've made sort of significant changes you can add some have whatever discussion or if you have

083something that you want to highlight whatever you have exactly questions or comments and we'll put out sort of the final draft until we look at it again in july does that sound fair absolutely um okay so that's really getting to the next part is where there were any significant comments the board district oversight that third fourth section down where there's still a cross out that was really the only place where there was a lot of comment everybody almost commented on that and it was everything from let's expand it further to let's delete it completely to it's repetitive so this was really the only place in the entire document that had just a lot of comments and they weren't really it was more it was there were no comments as really let's we have to do

084this it was just i don't really know what this means and i have to agree i do think it's a little repetitive and i would be happy deleting that entire section because i do think if you read it the board's review of the district's progress toward goals and accomplishments the first bullet board members will be continually guided in what is best for all students in the district i think that's kind of covered in our code of ethics the board will annually review the district goals which i think is in the very first section the board's approval of the goals and then at the last part i i'm not sure actually why i even left that in i think that was unanimously decided to get rid of it so that was really the one section that

085had the most what is this why is this either expand and make it bigger or delete it it'd be fine to get rid of it i think it's covered elsewhere that's how i felt as well is everybody okay with that when you say delete it which one are you talking about i'm talking about the board's review of the district's progress toward goals and accounts and every bullet underneath that speaking of that was another question i did have in the formatting would it be better to go to a number bulleted because one a two a three a it used to be like that but only in certain sections and then it's so when i was redoing it i don't like the way it looks but i i'm happy to do it if it makes it easier

086to think about it i have no preference okay um so the rest of this is really just an overall 30 000 foot view of what a new board member can expect you know what comes from the board what comes from the administration and i thought it did a really good job of doing that um down to the meetings section i think this is also very well fleshed out the only thing i would like to add and i'd like to talk to mrs horst and really anyone who's on the board up here right now i'd like to add a section on open's open meetings act because that is something i felt like i didn't have a firm grasp of when i first started that i'd like to add a complete section on just the bullet points

087of what that means and what to follow as a new board member if anyone is okay if everyone is okay with that but other than that i think this one really does a good job and again i tightened up language i combined some things and i think it's about as good as it needs to be minus what i think it needs the oma you know the only i had this thought actually over the weekend as i was thinking about when information is posted and how we might change how information gets changed over the weekend you know as we find things and you know just presentations change and i wondered um if we want something on here where it says board member i don't know where it would go board member preparation for meetings but um

088since this is how we operate would we want to put something in here about when things are posted to the website yeah i mean i think that's is there sort of a standard i mean i know typically when you send us information i mean is there sort of a standard of when we put the packet on the website i'm thinking more for our community like when can does is there a typically uh community knows they can go and look at the packaging even though it may change over the weekend say by noon on fridays it's one on friday what about the minutes for the meetings do we have a standard the minutes i do it's okay i don't have to do that i won't say there's like a that's what it's a standard timeline right

089now but yeah um typically within the next week that's what i mean and there's draft obviously until they're approved at the next regular meeting i mean i would i would kind of like to have that in there i mean i think it's good for the you know for the community to know when they can find a packet i mean i don't know how everyone else feels about that but i'm that was just one thing i thought in kind of hindsight i thought oh that's not really i mean it is sort of one of our unwritten rules it is that the community can go and find the packet you know knowing that it may change i mean i think we say that about agendas as well that they may change and typically do as the packet

090typically does but knowing when they can go to the website and find it that might be one bullet i would um i just don't know where it necessarily belongs but to me it's part of our whole meeting protocol is that it gets sent to us and then it gets posted to the website yeah no i agree i will talk to mrs mclean and add that in both yeah it could be that you just say it will be available to the board before the next board meeting because legally that's what i think we have to do is we have to approve our minutes at the very next board meeting and i would leave it at that because um you know things happen yeah i mean schedules change and um i don't think we want to pin

091ourselves down into trying to make it tighter than what we're legally required to do because there are going to be some times where we are just going to you know during the holidays for instance i certainly don't expect you know to be getting this you know the december meeting minutes right you're talking about there's two different things like i'm talking about you know the packet and the minutes i mean i don't yeah yeah minutes i'm not necessarily as as tied to but i mean as far as the packet goes yeah i don't know that we should be posting the minutes before we approve them right but i think getting back to you know a board brief kind of scenario of letting our staff and community know if you had you weren't able to attend the

092meeting this is what happened you know here's sort of the the crib sheet of you know what we did and i think our staff and community yeah if you want that you could sign up for it and get it i see what you're saying because the minutes are in the packet yeah i got you i got okay yeah that's true so that that sort of board board brief crib sheet i think is uh is something that i would love to to do more of um moving into the communication section the biggest change here was that the original draft that i sent you had the original language that stated the board members who receive calls from the media must direct the inquiry to the board president or the district marketing manager and that has been changed

093as it was pointed out that there are times it's appropriate to respond from our individual roles so i changed that language to say that you know we have to make it a pro or evidently clear that we are responding as ourselves not for the district and when it's appropriate to direct it to the president or the marketing director so that was the biggest change i think you should say district spokesperson okay rather than marketing director because there are times when the superintendent would be the district spokesperson and it's really up to the superintendent to decide what who's going to address what issue is everybody here okay with that sure okay that was really the big one on that one others are again unwritten rules if you have if a board member has a concern bring

094it to the other board person first it's a lot of golden rule stuff in there the new member orientation i edited most i edited most of this based on the memory of my orientation which i believe was much better than people who've gone before me i know that mr nead and mrs horace did a lot of work in creating what you guys gave to me and i'm very grateful for that so i think this was already in pretty good shape because of the work that you guys did and i did not really get uh the only thing i think i added was the expectation of maintaining an honor board which i did add because that is definitely an unwritten rule i know thank you for catching that yeah it was um and it was something

095that i think mr heyer told me before i and i got half of those classes done before you know after i was elected but before i took office which was really nice i knew i had to do it and i did it um so and then uh actually it was mrs mcginnis it's a state i think it's law that all board members have to be trained in the evaluation tool so i added that in as well that is law so um not you should probably clarify that superintendent superintendent evaluation okay yes yep okay um okay so the board development which is the last section um and again if anybody has any issues with the order of these sections let me know i think they're in the most logical sense at this point but i'm happy

096to discuss um so the really i guess this was the only conflicting advice i got here is some people were saying that we should write down in the unwritten rules that the role of vice president the expectation is often that they will be the next president and then i had people who came back and said no we shouldn't write that in at all so that was really the only direct yup add it nope don't so my thoughts were it is an unwritten rule i do think that that is the expectation most of the time i have no problem putting it in because it doesn't mean that you have to take presidency if you're the vice president but the expectation is that's where you're heading way it was written okay i felt like sort of intimated

097that it was happening and i didn't think that was appropriate i think there are plenty of times when it's appropriate but i think like just having thought about all the different presidents and vice presidents we've had over the years like i don't know that that's really the case i think there are a number of times where we would do something different which is why yeah i wouldn't think that like the vp is a president-elect like that's not really how we use it i mean they might ascend to the presidency or it might not be appropriate and i think um i don't know how to write that in a way that it sort of says that which is why i think i said take out what was in there because i think just like with committee

098positions you know you have that uh the section above that it'd be great if there are two board members on a committee and one state and one rotated like then the practicality of how we do it like board members change people might not want to continue doing it i mean they're like that'd be great to do that but it doesn't work exactly the way you know i think we would want it to if you know the the continuity was there so i don't know if we could write down you know it would be great if i mean because there's a whole number of things on board president right it'd be great if the board president wasn't a brand new board member who didn't have a clue right right like yeah yeah i hope i hope

099that's obvious you know it would be it would be great if the board president had support of the board well they need four votes you know they kind of have to have support of the board you know be great if the board president actually checked in with the needs of the board and leading the board you know i mean there's a number of things that i don't know we need to get that prescriptive but so thoughts from this side um i was surprised to see that in there sorry mr i do think you could put in that the vice president um assumes the chair in the absence of the president oh okay you know i think that's at least put that in and then it's foiled again you were foiled you tried yeah okay i'm

100fine with that and i i okay i can understand that mm-hmm for sure and i would just add there are boards that that make it a point to rotate every year they don't keep anybody the same that's not us i think we've done a good job of rotating when appropriate and and sticking with you know continuity when appropriate there are other boards there it's a lifetime appointment practically you know they just the expectation is they never rotate and that's not us either you know i think i think there is certainly if if there was something to write in here i think it may be something along the lines of we do want to share share the roles you know and and rotate when appropriate or you know it it isn't sort of set it and

101forget it and i i don't know if that's necessary but i mean that that's really our philosophy of how we do board and committee assignments is we absolutely want to share you know the load i mean it's not like three of us have time and we all do it all like that's not how it worked i mean if if we had a few people that didn't do any of the actual work like we would be upset about it yeah and and you know that's that's kind of how it works and like we try to help each other i mean we all have different schedules different work you know scenarios and you know contrary to some folks beliefs this is not a day job that pays us to you know have a living here this is

102a volunteer role in a large extent and we need to treat it as such you know when when people ask me about running for school board they ask how much time does it take and i usually say as much time as you let it you know it could eat up a tremendous amount of time and so in in that vein we do absolutely split the workload and try to make sure everybody is you know pulling their fair share i don't know how to write that and i don't i don't either all right i can help you with some of this some of these language things i think there's just very little tweaking and i think this is great i think this is phenomenal work thanks for taking it on i i thought it was hazing

103um i did when we gave it to the new board member and i appreciate you coming through thank you i would ditto that i really appreciate the work that you put into this yep i will third then thank you thank you thank you mrs crane and and i will say like when we started this it was it was more because we needed it yes like it's nice to continue this because it's a nice to have not that we need it well again echoing what i said about the masb conference it was really nice to read the code of ethics and think i don't i don't have anybody that i would say doesn't follow these yeah and it's i i know how lucky i am to be on the board that i am right now and

104i'm very grateful for that well i think you also follow the you know the rule that you you do these in good times so you have them yes if you if you run into challenging times right that's not the time to try to create a document like this so all right very good thank you so much so you think you've got what you need now you can make any final tweaks and i can certainly help you with any perfect thank you all right we'll bring you back we'll we'll sign it and we'll maybe then sit on it for a few months kind of let it marinate you said you have that class next month so if there's anything you learn that you want to incorporate yep we'll revisit again in july great okay very good

105next up is item nine citizen comments citizens are welcome to address the board on any topic at this point on the agenda i have three citizens who had signed up earlier in the meeting can we do a quick check and see if there were any others who had signed up during the course of the meeting i don't remember seeing anyone walk over but let's just do a quick check no additional citizens okay great we will go ahead and get started and i will just remind everyone our process has not changed if you'll please approach the microphone you'll have two minutes uh to speak if you'll please state your name and address also remind you that calling out individuals by name any personal attacks are inappropriate in this forum and i will have to stop you

106and ask you to step away from the microphone if we go down that route um we will begin with stephen i don't want to mispronounce your name could you say it for me please see oma very good did i do it wrong no you did well okay all right thank you so much very good sir you'll just state your name and address and you will have two minutes uh steve sion 5109 whatever now some people are saying that after oxford they wanted to see more done we can understand it there's so much that you can do in terms of security and doors and things of that nature but these are addressing symptoms of a problem there's a school in louisiana if you ever need some uplifting news i'd say look it up dad's on duty

107there are these kids getting into fights and things we're looking to escalate members of the community a bunch of fathers started talking got some shirts printed out and started showing up in the schools to mentor the kids to be there to be a shoulder to lean on or an ear to hear or sometimes just give them a dad joke while sending the mom to class these dads on duty took up their part in the community to directly help these kids feel comfortable and safe in school they were started looking forward to coming to school now i imagine that there's some logistical concerns in organizing something to that degree here but if people want something done why not give them the opportunity to do so directly now i'm happy it's not my job to figure it

108out but if anybody want to reach out i'd be happy to help however our kid thank you so much for your comments next we have is it justin murdock all right welcome mr murdock state your name and address you'll have two minutes thank you justin murdock 6381 snow apple a couple points the first one i'm open to having my understanding corrected as it was given to me by a staff member at the junior high or middle school but it's just a sign it says diverse inclusive accepting welcoming safe space for everyone and the way that it was explained to me was that if a teacher staff member something like this is seen to exemplify this standard that they would have a sign placed on their on their door of their classroom maybe i'm correct man

109that's what they said um as they were a safe person or their classroom was a safe space for a person to go if they needed to and a number of uh teachers kind of on both sides of this were kind of worried about it from one side a teacher who was given this doesn't feel comfortable having it because they don't feel like well i'm not a counselor i don't have a way to speak with somebody who is coming for counsel or whatever the case may be and yet i'm not allowed to take this down so i i mean i have to put up with it and then the other side of it there are teachers who are saying well if i don't have one of these now people are kind of looking at me cross-eyed

110or whatever because i don't exemplify this so now they're kind of subconsciously nervous around me so that was just an interesting thing that was brought up uh the second the second thing i did a little bit more looking into a couple of people one specifically dr j marks uh specifically in this instance the podcast title understanding self and embracing the conflict if anyone hasn't listened to it i would recommend it if you have listened to it and still believe that he would be a good person to teach the staff of this community then i think that you're very ill guided in doing so because it is uh full of it's full of racism i'll call it what it is um but there will be more on that later and then uh lastly i do want

111to commend my dog yeah thank you so much for your comments appreciate it and finally tonight we have mr tim parkin good evening mr parkin hello i'm tim parkin 910 michigan road uh in an effort to just suppress dii disinformation the notes on the css website read when we talk about equity and inclusion at clarkston we mean two things eliminating barriers to student achievement and supporting a culture of respect that sounds very commendable however if you find the dei training audios and videos on the internet you'll find a darker view of dei for example and there are many and how to talk to your kids about race racism and anti-racism podcasts oakland county schools dei consultant dr j marks begin by begins disrespecting our community and country and i quote i want to begin and

112provide a context when engaging in these types of conversation that i operate under the premise that the systems in this country and the institutions within the systems were built to be inequitable they are built on the framework of racism and white supremacy our nation is functioning exactly as it was designed to do and that is to be inequitable so we either have a culture of respect or we don't di is a stain on our community and our school systems and should not be taught to our children i find it disrespectful that dr marks an african-american who earn six-figure salary sends his children to elite private schools yet claims that america which includes oakland county and clarkson which is 85 percent white taxpayers is systematically racist why are you allowing this individual to disrespect our community

113over 3 million african americans have migrated to the united states over the past 50 years 2 million from africa 1 million from the caribbean what do you call these people stupid what do these migrants know that our school board and dr mark seem to struggle with it's that america is the least racist most multi-ethnic multiracial thank you mr parkin in the history of the entire world thank you appreciate your comments tonight thank you everyone for coming we appreciate your participation in our meeting our first meeting of the year tonight uh item 10 is information items our next board of education meeting will be monday february 14th at 7 pm so i clearly planned well tonight is uh the national football championship sorry about that gentlemen and next month is valentine's day sorry about that ladies

114i'm batting two for two uh we have to move into a closed session now um we will adjourn from the closed session there are no decisions or no further discussion that will be made so we will adjourn from our closed session may i have a motion please i move that we move into closed session for purposes of negotiations support mrs mclean may i have a roll call please mrs egan yes mr heyer yes mr nead yes ms catalina mrs crane yes mrs mcginnis mrs horst yes we are in closed session i will meet everyone in the room you