001good evening we're going to call the 2022-23 budget hearings please stand for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the light of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands mr stoddard we're going to turn over the budget hearing right to uh rob smith thank you thank you so we're gonna go through this a lot of what you've seen as we've been talking about the last few months there's really no new information if you will and then just as caveat as we get into this we did build our budget based on the governor's proposal so that's what i'll focus on even though we'll have some house and senate versions of their budgets out there and just by way of note we do not have a final state budget they're
002predicting by the end of june early july the state aid budget should be set but as of right now we do not have a finalized state budget so as you look at the governor's proposal again this is by way of review the governor proposed a 435 dollar foundation increase that's for all districts so we're removed from the 2x formula of the past the governor has also proposed an increase in the categorical for special ed as well as an increase in funding for the at-risk categorical retirement rate which is actually determined is flat year-over-year we've got a slight increase built in just because of the fact that there's multiple plans and newer staff go on plans that currently are a little bit more costly if you will than existing plans and then good news is the
003governor has continued all the categoricals that were in play this year related to retirement as well as the categoricals for early literacy and vocab senate proposal i'll go through really quick just so you have the comparison so it's a 450 foundation increase no changes in the special life categorical or in the at-risk categorical and then similar to the governor retirement's the same the retirement categoricals are the same and the early literacy and vocab categorical is the same house proposal differs a little bit from what the governor and the senate have put out it's a 300 per pupil foundation increases versus the 400 plus that we saw in the house and governor there is an increase in special ed categorical that was actually a little bit higher than what the governor proposed but no change in
004the at-risk categorical retirement rate again is flat they've continued funding for the mipster's cost offset and the retirement normal cost offset categoricals but they proposed a billion plus increase in the retirement ual if this was to pass it would have a net bottom line impact of zero for districts because it's a flow through the revenue that we received was statutorily are required to then remit the retirement system so it comes in and then about 10 days later give or take depending on when we get the state aid it goes out and that's statutorily because originally when they started funding the ual they wanted to just cut a check directly to retirement system in law it says that the state can't do that schools have to so they came up the mechanism of giving the money
005to the schools and the schools have to turn around and pay it so that's why you see that in and that out this budget projection has not changed from what you saw in may and it's slightly changed from what we saw in april and i'm going to only focus on the governor column since that's what we built the budget on so our starting point is our 2122 budget so we had about a 22 000 deficit in 2122 so that becomes the starting point the foundation increase of 435 on the governor's proposal is about a million three million 341 of revenue the increase in the special ed categorical is about 113 000. if you recall we're looking at about a 31 fte student enrollment decrease so that revenue loss is about 283 000 and then similarly
006we know we're going to have an adjustment down in our vocab revenue from cc resa we've got a 50 000 estimate built into the budget currently uh back last summer or maybe early fall we didn't sell a bus that was a one-time revenue stream so we have to take the 22 000 out for that and then our sr2 funds will be spent this year so that's removing the 150 000 of so2 funding the rest of the lines are expenditure lines you'll see the wage adjustments for our union groups dea dea despa as well as our non-affiliated the teacher steps longevity lateral pay increases are built into there we've also built in the increase estimates for medical dental and vision the retirement rate as i told you is fairly flat we got about a ten thousand
007dollar increase built into the budget as we make those adjustments uh in the 2122 year mid year we brought in a half fpe for a special ed position so that half fte reflected here makes that position whole going into next year and then similarly we had to bring in two specialized peris mid-year so it's two positions but it's half ft each to make both of those whole going into 22-23 year the next line is in addition for athletic coaching positions and officials we built those into the budget but until we have a final state budget we're not going to make a move on those but that would add our athletics department covering the cost of some salaries related to bowling and lacrosse and then some officials wages related to hockey we had an estimated increase
008for property cash for the insurance about thirteen thousand good news on that is we got our renewal rate late last week and we're within a few hundred dollars on that estimate so we pretty much hit that target and then increase for substitute rate so we're really hoping to do that but again we need to let the governor's house and senate reconcile out the budget process and get something finalized before we officially make those adjustments we have two teacher retirements that were built into this budget one position is replaced we've got 142 000 savings there and then finally if the budget allows we're looking to add an elementary dean of students into the budget for next year so that gets us the bottom line of about 60 000 deficit on the governor's side you'll see it
009actually it's just under 59 when we get to our budget diving a little bit deeper looking at revenue specifically in the general fund the board approved about 35.9 million dollars in december of revenue we're looking at just over 35 million dollars of projected revenue for 22.23 which is an actual decrease about 853 000. now you might say why we have a net decrease in revenue when we're actually seeing some increases in foundation and other things that's what this will cover so our state revenues got about 170 000 the first three bullet points we saw on the slide two prior which shows the foundation increase the special categorical increase and the decrease in student enrollment the bottom two lines are are kind of new um the big one is the fourth bullet point we have two
010one-time revenue streams per pupil equalization and an innovative fund categorical that we have to remove from the budget that were in there in 2122 there's also corresponding expenditures that tie to those so as the revenue comes off so is the expenditure so it nets out as a net zero we got to decrease the revenue and the expenditures to remove that and then the bottom bullet point is just a couple categoricals within our state aid that had some changes and a small net decrease about eleven thousand dollars so that gets you the net state revenue decrease similarly on the federal revenue side we're seeing a decrease overall about six hundred and ten thousand dollars that's primarily due to the summer school credit recovery and then the required state stipends that we paid the staff that ran
011those programs last year those were one-time programs so we removed the revenue we also removed the expenditure so that has a net impact at zero and then removing the federal lesser two funds of about 150 000 accounts for the remaining 610. and then our final revenue lining is our transfers and other and that's down about 72 000 and that takes as well as the bus sale shifting focuses to expenditures again about 35.9 million is what was approved in december we're now projecting about 35.1 million which is a decrease about 816 000 fairly consistent with the decrease you saw on the revenue side the breakdown of that here are the major areas of adjustment i'm not going to go through those because we went through those on the slide with the numbers but i will just
012highlight the last two bullet points that does show the removal of the one-time expenditures for the state per pupil equalization and innovative funds categorical as well as the removal of our federal summer school credit recovery and summer staff stipends so we take all that that we've talked about talking about for the last four or so months this is how the budget shakes out from a numbers perspective it's about 35 million in revenue as we talked about on the slide prior it's about 35.1 million on the expenditures which gives us about a 59 000 deficit projected for 22.23 we're looking at a just under 4.9 million dollar fund balance to start the year we're looking at just over 4.8 million dollars as we end the 22-23 year which puts us at a fun balance of about
01313.75 so that is our general fund in a nutshell we do have three other funds that that need approval tonight the first is our community ad budget with community edits it's a a budget that's been unusual the last couple years with covet we've had restrictions on numbers and classrooms and everything so we built this budget assuming that program will continue as normal meaning pre-pandemic normal as far as numbers and staffing and and all of that we will make adjustments as needed once we get into the year things do end up looking different we've also built in a dollar per day increase in our kids program rates for next year our community ed director surveys other child care providers and programs in the area that keeps us right in line kind of we're kind of right
014in the medium of what districts and others are charging so that's a fairly consistent increase and then we're not looking at an increase in preschool rates for this year but we likely will do something next year so we look at the community head budget and that's a little small on the screen i apologize uh but we've got about 944 thousand dollars of revenue projected we've got about 963 64 000 expenditures projected and that puts us at looking at an ending fund balance about 58 000 the reality is that we'll our ending fund balance will be higher if you'll recall from the federal grant presentation that we did maybe two months ago we received a grant this year that we didn't originally budget for in our community end budget that's going to probably prop that fund
015balance up a couple hundred thousand dollars when we close out this year so although we're looking at about a 58 thousand dollar pending projected fund balance it's probably going to be closer to 250 000 which puts us back into line with where we were pre-pandemic which is some good news food service is our next fund that we're required to have again similar to community ad we're going to assume that the programming will continue as normal the big change you're going to see in the food service budget is that last two years we provided free breakfast and lunch for all students there's been no free reduced and full paying meals that program federally is gone as of friday for us and so you're going to see a large decrease on the federal line in essence a
016corresponding increase on the local line as we go back to a model of fully paid meals and then free and reduced we also have a 10 cent increase in our breakfast and lunch meal prices for next year and a 40 increase in our adult meal prices for next year that's federally determined we have a tool that we have to run through that calculates out what those increases need to be and the reason that's done is the federal government doesn't want districts using the federal dollars to prop up the full paying meals and so it does a calculation to tell us what our meal prices need to be and then finally we're continuing our capital outlay expenditures for equipment needs that unfortunately was paused a little bit with some long lead time delays this year alongside
017the fact that our food service program was really overwhelmed with the number of meals that they were preparing so we weren't able to do some of the capital replacements that we would have otherwise liked to but we're continuing that cycle so with our food service budget we're looking at about 881 000 in revenue and you'll see a 520 000 increase on the local line that's for the free free uh meals going away and our full paid meals and about a 500 and three thousand dollar reduction on the federal level and then on the expenditure side about 926 thousand dollars getting us fund balance projected at the end of next year about 118 000 and that puts us in a good good footing with that that fund balance for food service and then finally we have
018our student school activity fund budget this was a change in an accounting standard a few years ago it became live technically in 1920 but there was a one year delay for school so the first year that this became active for us was in it's primarily a procedural function we're required to have a budget but school internal funds kind of got roped into this accounting standard meeting these requirements but it doesn't change the day-to-day activity of what these internal funds are doing it's more an accounting function of things that i have to do at the end of the year but part of that is that we have to have a budget approved for that fund and then i gave a couple examples of what some of those internal funds are so with this one it's fairly
019simple you just have to have a revenue and expenditure line item i take about a three year average and i took kind of a pre-coveted three-year average that's why you see 800 for both last year and this year so it's a balanced budget and then the fund balance is based upon our prior year audit so that would conclude the budget presentation for this evening i have a question the dollar increase for the kids program i understand that it puts us in line with other districts but i'm curious what our increases were last year in the year before and if we need the money to operate we do need the money to operate because we did not increase meal or his pricing the last couple of years so we're kind of we got into a cycle
020pre-code of doing some type of an increase every year so that there wasn't a larger increase if we you know you go a number of years but with kovid we held all all of our rates uh with maybe like an activity fee that we might have adjusted a couple years ago but otherwise we kept things flat so this kind of helps get us back up to where we would otherwise have been if we were doing some of those gradual increases okay and what is the cost um there's about eight or nine different rates i could share those with you afterwards if you want to see them but it depends on if they're in the am or the pm or if they're coming for clt half days or regular half days so there's there's a lot
021of different rates then summer rates are different as well so um there are through um i don't know what the department's called but use pdhs we do get there are a couple families uh that we receive dhs payments that offset that so there is help available through the state yep that's a good question thank you public communication anybody have uh any way they want to address the board on the budget during all in favor okay we'll go right into the regularly scheduled meeting for june 13th call that to order please once again for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god and indivisible with liberty and justice mr here well we are going to amend
022this i'm going to make uh item 4c first off instructional coaches and specialists we are going to postpone this august meeting and just as a point of reference for 4b uh mr decker is unable to join us tonight so dr spicard will take care of that presentation is that okay with emotions of athletics mr michael bryant welcome thank you um try to make this uh as as brief as possible i know that the agenda is full but um you know from an athletic standpoint we're very grateful obviously there's in athletics a lot of moving parts this year we faced a bus driver shortage we faced an official shortage so you know athletics is one that works almost touches every aspect of our district from community ed to the business office with rob to shauna support
023in hr here in central office so a lot of thanks i want to thank dr speaker for her support and the board i know jody is here and and this is you know he's retiring so i want to extend my gratitude to jody for his support and mentoring and guidance these last four years and and uh same goes with sean and marie uh and marie's in attendance and then certainly um i would be remiss if i didn't uh thank shauna shawn is our athletic assistant in the athletic office and she really has redefined that role and is taking on more and more you know from especially from a social media standpoint and trying to create uh information on the website so that families have that information so um we are uh this last year we
024were at a thousand and nine that will go down a little bit and i'm sure that you're aware of that but the mhsa bases our classification on the count day which we're about down 21 27 actually 27 students still class a still in the blue division and the caac from the athletic standpoint you can access our website doitpanthers.net and again that's one of the things we've tried to do over the last couple of years is to have more of an online presence especially on social media so you can follow us on twitter instagram and on facebook this last year we hosted 257 different athletic events 11 mhsaa competitions just within the caac we hosted six conference tournaments and then hosting our own seven do-it invitationals so this is a season-by-season comparison just so you know
025what comes in and out of our athletic office in our athletic department looking at totals we've got 27 different athletic programs which includes 48 teams encompasses 70 district paid coaches that does not include volunteer coaches and then if you look at our total number of student athletes 807 that's up uh 12 from what it was in 2021 this number um you know our spring sport numbers uh dipped coming out of covid when we lost our season in 2020 we went down about 50 students uh and we're back up about 23 so still a net loss from where it was pre-covered in the spring um don't want to bury with numbers but if you looking at comparisons these are these are pretty consistent across and usually we're right around 54 to 56 57 for total percent
026of our student body that participates in athletics as you would expect to the number of our three sport student athletes compared to our two sports student athletes compared to our single sport student athletes increases with less involvement we do emphasize student athlete and i'm very careful not to refer to them as football players or baseball players or lacrosse players but they are student athletes and we do emphasize the student first extremely proud of the fact that our student athlete average gpa is a 3.5 and um the average gpa at the high school is about a 3.2 which if you look at that the for academic hall league in the caac the cutoff is 3.5 so we have 281 student athletes that are academic all league which is about two out of every three of our
027student athletes which is which is really remarkable um 85 percent and i just used above a three point as as a cutoff but 85 percent of our student athletes carry a cumulative gpa of above a three point uh again you know with athletics we firmly believe that that our student athletes are going to be better when they're involved in something helps with time management and and able to prioritize and i think that you know that reflect is reflected here um with uh you know even by grade and then by season some of our athletic achievements um while you know last year uh was just an absolutely outstanding year one that i kind of needed to step back and take a look at we had 14 mhsaa championships last year so this is not 14 but
028still you know i can tell you there's a lot of schools around the area and around the state that would happily take this and so we had seven cac championships um seven mhsaa championships um just more specifically with the caac football won its 16th consecutive in the caac swim and dive won its second consecutive and that would also be the second consecutive within the blue obviously going from the red division which is the middle of the three divisions going up to the bigger schools and we were the second smallest school in the caac blue and are are still competing boys swim and dive uh won their second consecutive this year and then boys bowling won their second consecutive which also happened to be the second in school history with spring sports baseball wanted second consecutive
029two out of three girls lacrosse went in second consecutive and second in school history and then softball won its second in the blue division from an mhsaa standpoint football again uh very successful won its sixth consecutive district championship fourth consecutive regional championship and was uh a matter of inches short of another state championship but that runner-up finish was the sixth in school history uh boys soccer again did very well won their third consecutive district uh in their second consecutive regional and that their last year's regional was the first since 2011. uh girls competitive cheer um you know have a conversation with our coaches about what is success because i don't want this to be the measure of success and i think that you know our cheer program emphasized really lived up to that that you
030want to be performing your best at the end of the season and they didn't win a league they didn't win a district but they they did earn a regional championship and punch their ticket to the state championship or state finals for spring sports girls lacrosse won their second consecutive and second in school history uh regional championship and then softball won in athletics finished this past saturday we had the golf team competing at the meadows on the campus of grand valley state they finished their season and girls softball was knocked out in regional play we as a league there are 19 schools in the caac each school honors its top 10 scholar athletes so those 10 are based on the highest gpa but they must have lettered earned two varsity letters as seniors so um there
031are five of them there are the other five and uh you know when i talk about shawna redefining the role she's the mastermind behind all of these graphics that we again try to honor and recognize our student athletes our female athlete athlete of the year was morgan beathard she was a three sports student athlete uh going to calvin university to play lacrosse and then our male student athlete was bryce devery two sport student athlete going to hope college to play football we honored those student-athletes that are continuing their academics and athletics at the collegiate level with one signing pre-code would be used to do this at the end of of every season um there's a national letter of intent signing day in november there's also one in february after coving we wanted to make sure
032that we could recognize that entire class received all sorts of positive feedback so now we do one in the spring again a pretty special group 28 student athletes their average gpa 3.567 and of the 28.5 uh at above a four point a couple of athletic accolades our football coach rob zimmerman was the national federation of high school state football coach of the year he also received a very elite honor in that he was the national coach of the year and from everything that i know that's the first time that that's happened in any sport uh for a coach here at dewett high school and then another special honor the michigan high school football coaches association honors two scholar athletes uh and tyler holtz who's going to brown university received one of those two honors i
033did want to point out our website again with panthers.net if you are i send these out weekly to our high school staff just so they know what's coming to try to minimize instructional interruptions but if you click on this pause notes that will give you the schedule for that week if you're on campus and want to see what's happening that will give you the schedule weekly and that's updated in real time um some of our athletic announcements that we've tried to use on on social media we view you know just for announcements this one over here was for t-shirt sales for a football trip down to the silverdale or two silverdome adam knows what i'm talking about ford field the pre-sale of tickets the spectator bus that was organized and then we also put on
034their spring sport trial information we also like to recognize our student athletes the this was a good luck for uh wrestling and competitive cheer that was competing at states uh and then shawna took this upon herself to to do this for for seniors and senior night so she lists all of those seniors come out and support and then she'll post one of these uh afterwards with justice uh also like to recognize individuals uh coach byers received earned his 500th win in wrestling um she'll also do something like this uh after the fact of where they finished and then um you know as i said uh our athletic department touches almost every aspect of the district one of those obviously is grounds rick cole grove and and his crew does a phenomenal job and i do
035want to point out that um this might this we can put in the archives with this actual being natural grass that will be going away but rick really does a nice job and was honored by pioneer athletics for being recognized as one of the fields of excellence so one of the improvements that we did have through some sponsors we were able to purchase a 38 foot sorry 34 foot scores table which is digital and we can do some fun things with that and that's it i i was also thought i would take the opportunity to kind of update uh the board if it's okay on our club funded sports i know that i think that that's kind of been a recurring question so just to kind of give you some some context and history here
036ice hockey is a club funded sport boys and girls bowling along with boys and girls lacrosse those are all club funded sports freshman baseball would also be a club-funded sport and i want to be careful because those aren't when we say club funded they are still a varsity sport they're recognized by the mhsaa they get to wear dewitt jerseys they're just club funded okay and so there's you know i think that there's a misnomer that um they're just clubbed and they don't get to to do anything else or compete but they are a varsity sport they will earn a varsity letter they can compete at the mhs in the mhsa tournament they're just club funded okay so a little bit of historical context here ice hockey was established in 2001 2002 the only thing that
037the district pays and that was agreed upon at that time is the head coaching position there is one head coach okay there is no uh paid assistant coaches all other expenses are covered by the club and as you would imagine um uh besides equipment and uniform ice time is is the most expensive okay uh as far as boys and girls bowling um that was established in the 2017-2018 school year with a memorandum of understanding okay and there were there were a group of parents who wanted bowling to be a varsity sport so i believe that the school board got together with uh that club and the club said we will not ask the district for any funds but we would like to become a varsity sport so at that time that's what was agreed upon
038uh moving forward um we have uh and i have to tell you uh pre-covet dr dieter um mr spagnolo and i were uh in agreement that we were gonna try to have the district take on some of these expenses okay and obviously covet wiped that out we were able to add half of the boys varsity head coach and half of the varsity girls coach that the district has taken on um that leaves the other half of the boys position in the other half of the girls position that is still paid by the club in addition to both of those have um or no i'm sorry uh that would be there are no jv positions for bowling okay there are teams but but no coaching positions uh and then again uh it became an mhsa competitive
039sport at a no-cost basis for that 2017-2018 school year okay um for boys and girls lacrosse that was established in 2005 as a jv boys team the boys varsity created and or established in 2006 girls 2008 again a memorandum of understanding in 2010 all expenses would be paid by the club this year the district has taken on the expense of the varsity head coach for boys varsity head coach for girls that leaves an unpaid or club funded jb position for boys in the jd position for girls okay uh and again that they their first season competing in the mhsa was uh 2010 and 2011. so um you know pending on um budget projections moving forward we do have a plan where we do want to take on some of these uh expenses so um i
040don't know if there are any questions that you have questions yeah we've had some people in comments ask us about the difference between a club sport and a school sponsors board how they get elevated can you briefly describe what that process is like and how someone becomes school sponsored as opposed to club yeah i think you know just historically the district has uh taken on from the under the young athletic director umbrella those sports that are honored by the mhsaa so the only sport that we don't have that is honored or recognized by the mhsa is scheme um we we have all of the other ones so i think that that's kind of um what's under the athletic director uh umbrella um you know i can tell you that i've gotten emails on you know
041where the school sponsor um equestrian which we we do have as a club uh that would fall under the umbrella of the principal um water polo figure skating um archery um taekwondo so those are all that you know but again it's you know hard to do where to draw that line so historically we've just drawn the line on those sports that are honored by the mhsaa so mhsaa does not recognize some of those other ones that you correctly correct and they're they're trying to to be equitable equitable obviously with with boys and girls sports um there has been some talk about taking on esports um boys or men boys volleyball um but those are the probably the two that are maybe on the horizon any other questions thank you good congratulations yeah thank you thank
042you very much next we'll have dr stickerd with our ktme and benchmark assessment presentation let's see if it'll find it i can log into this so while i'm getting logged into the other computer sometimes it's picked up our computers and sometimes it doesn't um brian put together a 40 slide presentation on our data and i will do my best to get through that the first 15 slides will be ones that you've seen twice already so once in the beginning of the school year and then once in february when we review data so i'll kind of quickly go through those and then get to the data so we're obligated to if i can get drive to come up there we go so the first like i said first few slides obviously legislation was passed saying that
043we need to do benchmark goals for the year which we've done and then we had to do a review of those goals in february at mid-year and then take a review of those goals for k-8 at the end of the year so that's what this presentation is for we use nwea for that particular data point and nwa is map testing so for those of you who aren't familiar with nwa it's measures of academic progress and it's a computer adaptive test so students will keep getting questions to be able to fit within the level that they are at so the more questions they answer correctly the more difficult questions they'll get we've had some parents say why is my pet getting calculus questions that's because they've worked their way up to that level so nwa will
044start at their grade level and then advance from there on out so our goals were set up to follow the rti model so saying that we would like to have 80 percent of our kids being at average or grade level or higher so that was the goal and we established that goal to try to beat that within two years knowing that that would be kind of a lofty goal coming off of covid so that benchmark data we wanted to make sure that we got at least halfway there this year and then worked on getting there the rest of the way next year obviously it's a pretty rigorous goal but one that we are really working to to meet and i'll be able to show you that data so as a reminder we have quintiles where
045the data is developed into so these are what they would look like high students are performing at about in the 81st percentile whereas average would be somewhere between the 40th and 60th percentile this is what a grade level report looks like and as you can see the grade level rip band down below the blue would be how many students in your grade level that would be at the high level and then on down so we tried to mimic that in our reporting as well class reports for the teacher are really useful so this is just a sample of a class report so a teacher can kind of pull up and see where their specific students fall within those bands and then nwa provides resources for students so if we have these five students here we
046can actually give them more advanced work to meet them at where they are and then if we have students who are struggling like the four and the bottom it will tell us what specific objectives we need to work on to help get those those students up to the next rip band level this is what a student report looks like so it shows trend data over the entire testing that the student has done and where they fit within those rip bands and then i think it's really important to realize that students are just more than they're more than just a test score so these tests are only on reading and math they don't include science and social studies or any of our electives and they're just on these given snapshots throughout the year and this is
047what they would look like if you were to put breakdown all students across the quintiles obviously that's not how we want students to fall but it's just to show you how they could fit for a reference so again we use the tier one tier two tier three so meaning those students who are struggling the most are the ones that we want to give the most prescriptive and multi-level support for so a lot of the times your special ed will fall up into those tier where they're receiving individualized services so the key we have to desegregate this data so part of the state reporting says we have to take a look at our subgroups and how our subgroups have been affected and so you'll see sed as social and economically disadvantaged soc is students of color
048and then swd is students with disabilities so here's what the k8 looks like all together so the k8 shows fall winter and spring and so in spring we have some more students that what we had in fall but we have to remember that the content and the skill sets getting more rigorous and we said that we wanted to be at 80 so if you take a look at the blue the green and the yellow we're close to 80 so by next year we hope that the yellow will be over the 80 mark so this is for reading and then for math if we take a look at all of our k-8 data together again we're close to the 80 mark but not quite there and then here is with the subgroups so you can see
049that male and female there's not a huge gap there between our boys and girls but we do have our other subgroups where we're showing more of those students are struggling and not at grade level same thing for math taking a look at our subgroups it's interesting if i mean if you look boys typically perform better in math which they did here in girls and ela which they they did here but again that's a pretty trivial difference between the two as far as that gap is concerned the bigger gap that we're worried about are these students that are economically disadvantaged students of color and then students with disability so here's grade level and there's a lot of them so i'm going to go through them pretty quickly and then i'll kind of explain things these are
050also available on the transparency page and after tonight's meeting they'll be available on the board website so first grade take a look overall um so we're about 60 percent proficient with those first or i'm sorry this is kindergarten kindergartners um and you can take a look a lot of the times our subgroups are going to mirror pretty much the same outcome our first graders getting closer second grade so our third grade doing pretty well considering the fact that you know the first two years well not kindergarten the second third grade were pretty interrupted third grade is also really important because of the third grade reading bill and we only had one student that fell short of the expectations as far as the reading is with the state fourth grade fifth grade and again these are
051all reading i'll show you math in just just a moment sixth grade so sixth grade has done the cap of the eighty percent overall seventh grade again they're right at eighty percent a little higher and then eighth grade a little lower and then we have the same thing for our math so kindergarten first grade again pretty close um there were a lot of really great reading gains in first grade with local data and we'll talk a little bit about local data second grade again that 80 close third grade so this is what's interesting as we look through these our students are performing better overall in math than they are reading and usually it's the other way around so when we were doing interventions this this year we were focusing on the reading versus the math
052interventions and you'll see some where data is not designated because of the fact that there weren't enough students in that population to report out without giving away identifiable information so that's why it's not reported seventh grade and eighth grade so i put together this report uh just to kind of show you a little bit as far as about how we are compared nationally so one of the things about nwa is that we really use it as a district to measure growth but here it's showing proficiency because that's what the state says we need to do so teachers taking a look at their growth data we actually have students who've grown tremendously some of them even 14 months they're not proficient yet but they've done a lot of growth over this year so we need to
053celebrate that but for the state we have to report obviously proficiency but what i wanted to show you is that if you take a look at our means of our writs across each of the grade levels which are in the center column here that they're actually above the national norm or with the exception of second grade equal to the norm ritz score so we're performing better than the national averages in addition um eighth grade i wanted to point out that we actually separate our algebra kids from the regular math test so we have eighth graders that are taking six plus it's the tests within the nwa and then we have eighth graders that are taking an algebra test and when you pull out your top students to take a test that's going to affect the
054average of your others of your others because they're pulled out so while 228 is a little lower than 230 which was the normative you have to remember we had i think 50 some students that were pulled out that were algebra students that affected that and if you take a look at their norm it was 258 so if you average those together accordingly it's going to be higher than the norm but i wanted to leave you with this one here because it just shows okay here here's how we're looking compared to our others but like i said we really take a look at that growth data and so i've been meeting with the principals doing their end of the year meetings and the teacher the teacher goal data is looking really good meaning that even though
055we're not quite at benchmark yet or where we want to be the overall students have had a lot of growth this year and that's to be celebrated so the next steps one of the things that the curriculum team and those coaches have been able to do and brian has been able to do is really help teachers understand all these reports that nwa offers and then to use this data formatively to guide their instruction to take a look at these subgroups and how they can better support the subgroups but then also compare this to their local data as well as attendance data and behavioral data and really take a look at the chat that's like the whole child the whole learner and see where he or she is and where they need to go so they'll
056continue to work with our teachers like analyzing these reports understanding where to go and not only help our struggling kids but those kids who are kind of maxing out so if i'm a second grader reading at a fifth grade reading level what are some additional resources to make sure that i'm still being challenged and don't lose that edge so i know a lot of data and i know you had it ahead of time but any questions um so that's a good question and i know brian has the actual percentage um so it ranges depending on the group between uh 12 and 17 but i can get actual numbers for you is there any idea like what types of interventions those students need at this point to raise their markers i guess to figure out what
057additional resources they'll need to be successful in meeting those standards yeah so i know that during their data team meetings that's why that's what they talk about right and so and the other issue is that sometimes we're talking a handful of students which can have a huge impact on on those scores so at the high school level and the middle school level both attendance was an issue within that so that's something that is becoming a part of the strategic planning as far as looking at that and making sure that we can help with that and then taking a look at some of those students also are affected because of behavioral issues and then supporting that so what's nice is with the we have the mtss coaches both for academic support as well as behavioral support
058and so one of the things that they have really been working on is not only helping with resources but going in and modeling and helping those students and then you'd be surprised that some of the students who are struggling just strategies of movement so brain breaks and movement and i know that there are a couple of math classrooms that are looking at this is just a strategy but whiteboards to where they'll get up and work around and do math and moving around which is supposed to help with some of those students who are who um are really struggling so they are digging into all those aspects as far as helping those students thank you any other questions thank you sean next we'll move to public communication for items found on the agenda the practice board
059of education to permit persons in the audience to make sense concerning agenda items at this time please complete a public comment form and return to the war desk if you wish to speak or if you prefer to express a written comment public comment shall be limited to three minutes no participant may speak i'll make it short because to the state council meeting very much right now when we've talked to the budgets schools in security and common sense above all else i look in the wake of the tragedy and the curbing and divaldi this could occur anywhere anytime you can't predict it you can't throw more money away at the problem hoping that it just poof goes away and you can't wait you as a school board we as the talent people and the taxpayers need
060to work as one to institute preventative measures to be absolutely certain of what occurred columbine sandy hook if aldi franklin regional where i graduated from and on and on never happens here therefore you'll lock the doors they place security at those doors we have the budgets we have the funding and follow the example of one man one great man who knew this danger long before the advent of the internet violent violent video games children just simply being tossed away in a numbered system that's rigged against them and determined them into a permanent underclass that man was joe lewis you've heard me mention his name before numerous times of these meetings principal of east side high who in 1982 took over a school that was so bad it was declared a culture of violence teachers were
061assaulted drugs dealers gang bangers and yes stabbings and even rape occurred inside of these schools public school in his first week he experienced 300 students just kicked them right out the ones that were systematically dismantling the skull from within caused them out in order to protect those that were there to learn five years later he expelled sixty more calling them leeches miscreants doing nothing more than the same 300 he tossed out before he was effective he was respected he wasn't the superintendent he was the principal he was an interface leader you've had a generation of students that can hardly read and do nothing but degradation most of their lives growing up mr clark in restoring order keeping them safe making them want to go to school providing an environment of learning instead of an environment
062of what's going to become on the streets if you have something like that happen in it vastly the vastly worse than the school that i grew up in but kind of similar he was immortalized in the 1989 filming on course as you all have seen a lot of it is artistic liberty taken but the lessons still remain mr over mr clark oversaw a poor largely black and hispanic student body denounced affirmative action welfare policies and hopeless focused liberalism basically throwing more money at the problem thinking it's going to magically go away dewitt is nearly polar opposite demographic here but a child is a child you cut me i bleed red because mr hand spike he bleeds red it should not matter protecting disturbing students is what matters we must keep them safe if we treat
063children as if they are controllable animals that's exactly how they will behave they're not you control the building and the students within will control themselves if they are coming to a respected environment you get control of this confidence school he is a tutor automatic suspensions for assault drug possession fighting vandalism guns and using profanity against teachers it's not tough what can we do and lock the doors and also place highly trained security officials off to the police officers and field teams to prevent the city destroying tragedy that occurred in the equality because god fit and ever came here this town will be closed in five minutes thank you folks we will move on to the consent agenda bear with me this is a long one recommendation by superintendent dr sean spicker the board of education
064approve adopt accept the following items for immediate implementation and appropriate action as presented approval of minutes from the regular meeting may 9th 2022 closed session may 9 2022 curriculum and improvement committee meeting may 18 2022 finance and facility committee meeting june 7 22 treasurer's report bills for payment for the month of may 2022 professional hires matthew dobson dewitt high school principal david casada director of technology and media services kristin kreshar dewitt high school counselor megan canelli dewitt high school business teacher katie nolan dewitt high school english teacher and recognizing teacher tenure laura bach shavey road kindergarten teacher sarah becker shapiro kindergarten teacher sarah carey shady road kindergarten teacher amy christman scott elementary special education teacher todd karnish jewett middle school language arts teacher caitlin mcdougall shipper stewart middle school music teacher and then items for
065approval of 2022 and 2023 michigan high school athletic association membership and property tax levy do i have a motion uh promotion to i think this item is not in your board packet so we will look to approve that following month is there one is there one supposed to be in there rob we don't have any it's listed can we postpone that to next month or can we do it at the june meeting later this month yeah it will turn over okay and um any further discussion okay all those in favor please say aye any opposed and i know we do have at least two here mr matthew dotson and mr david casino hello everybody nice to meet you my name is i'm happy to come home hi i'm david casada i currently work for barron
066springs public schools i'm excited to join the team thank you dr speaker appreciate the opportunity thank you anybody else's marriage all right moving on to action items oh i'm sorry oh sorry we'll do okay great all those in favor please say aye any opposed all right action items the proposed 2022-23 budget presented and discussed the june 13th 2022 public schools budget hearing meeting recommendation by superintendent assistant superintendent rob spagnolo and superintendent dr shawna spicard the board of education adopt the following budgets for 2022-23 fiscal year for dewitt public schools the general fund community education fund the food service fund and the student school activity fund rental news and expenditures in front of you do i have a motion second okay it's been moved and supported any discussion okay hearing none all those in favor please
067say aye any opposed okay motion carries next bylaws and policies uh the wellness committee is charged to meet biannually and review the district wellness policy and propose changes to the board of education committee members are listed there below the wellness policy revisions reflect more inclusive in terms of parents and guardians and also tend to lend more balance to policy help reflect actual practice this is for first reading the recommendation by superintendent dr shawna spicker the board of education place on first reading as presented policy 8510 wellness revised do i have a motion moved and supported any discussion i just wanted thank you any other discussion okay all those in favor please say aye aye okay superintendent approved a year parental leave request however this need change to leave for any reason for the dea agreement
068a second league request requires board of education approval under article 10g there's a recommendation by the superintendent dr shawna spicker that the board of education retroactively deemed the 2021-22 lead for this year as article 10g and the board grant stephanie brown one-year extension for the 22-23 school year which will end the last day of the 22-23 school year you can move and support it any discussion all those in favor please say hi and you opposed superintendent approved the first leave uh for any reason request for the dea contract a second lead request requires board of education approval on our 10g it's recommendation by superintendent dr shawna spicker that the board of education grants a one-year extension of elizabeth hotline's 21-22 lead as proved under the dea contract article 10g for the 2022-23 school year which
069will end the last day of the 22-23 school year due promotion okay there's a recommendation by superintendent shawna speaker that the board of education approved the michigan association of school boards school district membership for the 22-23 school year as presented 22-23 membership is based on mde audited fall people count of 31-17 okay public communications for items not found i wanted to talk about school safety and i see that that wasn't on the agenda one of the things that i noticed is that just taking a brief look at wood school and also looking at this building one of the features that i do if there is one and it's just not a publicly prominent entrance but this allows first responders key access to the building so when they talk about the event and it also is
070good for fire emergencies because if a first responder is looking at information about panic buttons or direct connects to law enforcement the competitive school safety grant was put on a two-year hold schools doing um that and is there a plan for a security presence during times of heightened awareness for following a threat and is there a plan for working with law enforcement to conduct wellness checks for students or other individuals when a threat is made or other students become aware of the potential threat recently going through issues at a workplace where an individual showed up and laughed and in a bit of rage punched a bystander then we went through a process of where the individual returned to those workplace locations with a backpack and at that point we had no idea what that individual's
071intense work it took a 45 minute response for the police to show up and this is a person who was known to conduct harm to another individual on a previous occasion so you need to think about that too is how long is your police but any backup support is not this evening i have come before the board to talk about amy bulk miriam webster defines both besides the past tense and past participle of plague as aware of and actively attention to important facts and issues especially issues of racial and social justice alphabet rockers is a music group and their mission is to make music that makes change this is from their website during the pandemic alphabet rock was created we got work to do an anti-racism curriculum that uses music and dance the collective offers
072virtual workshops for young change makers that use imagination and art i'm going to read the lyrics from the song stand up for you from the album rise shine hashtag hulk album it's time to be woke in the single course i'ma stand up for you i'ma stand up for you for who and repeat that four times step back and listen be alex it's not about you then you know why everyone is different no one's the same from gender to color to how you pray ask yourself is the world really fair ask yourself what's going on over there ask yourself who's really all right ask yourself how can i open up my mind ask yourself who do i stand up for ask yourself do i want to do more ask yourself am i a wolf if you're
073woke then stand up speak up then of course again to be together and stand as one gotta want to know each other everyone it takes mad courage and that fierce love to greatly stand up and defend someone ask now do i say your name right ask him now are you really all right ask him now did you get your turn ask him now is there more for me to learn ask him how i can stand up for you ask him how can i do more for you ask yourself am i woke if you're woke then stand up speak up sing of course again we are the ones we've been waiting for we've got to change things now right now not some other time i don't look like you but i still got your back i
074don't look like you but i still got your back do something make a difference don't wait once again when we look at the context of the word woke that is being used in the lyrics of this song it denotes the social justice element as previously discussed in public comments at these school board meetings social justice is a key component of the critical race theory which administration denies is being taught yet this song was on display of the dwight community showcase from the young children in the school district i'm all for children being taught kindness and respect but i'm totally against them being taught how to be woke by this school district thank you i hope you all have read the appellate brief that was filed in the district's name and i hope you are all
075embarrassed what an absolute abomination as a public institution of learning you should be especially ashamed of yourselves alas maybe it's a proper representation of the current state of the district critical of errors devoid of substance and heavy on ad hominem attacks and misrepresentations at the april board meeting where learned how we behold district is to compliance specifically with regard to title vii because the employee dress code was updated to conform the supreme court's decision in both staff with regard to gender identity falling within the statutory definition obsessed the spars gave us a thorough explanation in that regard and as to the anticipated extension of both sac's application or title ix which uses parallel terminology but applies to educational programs fair enough if you disregard the sick irony of passing a policy promoting the freedom of
076students and staff to express themselves with the clothing they choose to place on their bodies after the superintendent forced district-wide masking without board approval but i digress last month we received an update regarding the summer school offerings for k-8 students last year it was a great opportunity to catch up on the learning laws you caused or contributed to with cancellation of in-person instruction our rising sixth grader was all over the place with concept retention testing behavior and the light during covet so as much structure and learning material as is available we will participate unfortunately my son is white and both of those protected classes sex and race reduced his eligibility for the programs oddly astr 3 monies require this sort of invidious discrimination based on protected class though that doesn't excuse the district acting under
077the color of law in violation of title vi and equal protection and the district didn't have any trouble refusing compliance with fc3's requirements that the board c can take into account public input in the development and revision of its return to school plans detailing coveted mitigation measures so much of the culture of compliance we went back to bostock and the district's extension to the educational setting the but four causation tests affirmed by the court simply asked would my son have been treated any differently if he if he was of a different race or sex the answer is plainly yes as that is the stated reason for exclusion on the face of the summer school program letter along those lines here's a quote from a recent decision out of the southern district in new york regarding
078an employee's objection to mandatory dei training given that defendants about disappointment the plaintiff was a white person who failed to accept that her race and job title obligated her to adhere to their understanding of anti-racism the court concludes that planet has adequately alleged motivation at least in part by her race under title vii as the supreme court stated bluntly 15 years ago the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race and finally i'd like to congrat congratulate and wish best of luck to uh mr dodson who hopefully can restore some sanity of the district chelsea i commented in november about how my family wouldn't be sending my five-year-old in kindergarten in the fall because no seriously the district had already reached my trust at that
079time i had hoped that the board would wake up and course correct the downward spiral so that maybe someday i could send my children to the schools that we chose a decade ago and have been funding ever since unfortunately the opposite has happened parents email call and come here to speech but rarely are timely but rarely are responses timely responsive or coherent some of you are so silent and seemingly disengaged at these meetings that i honestly couldn't say for certain if you've ever shared a complete thought in the time that i've been attending why does it feel like the parents are more informed and engaged than those of you who sit up here i don't even have my children enrolled in the district and i'm aware and asking questions about things that some of you
080know or claim to know nothing about but if it's truly an awareness issue why is it so hard to get answers once you've been informed what are the visitor policies i've been asking for since november why is it a big secret what about the dbi committee curriculum access do you think it's appropriate for teachers to criticize the minds of six-year-olds to have them sing boldness songs and introduce them to ideologies which create divisiveness within their own families behind the backs of their parents young children don't have the mental framework question toxic authority figures but this board ought to whether you agree with any particular message being told to kids or not do you really support teachers pushing their own agendas in the schools that you speak for some of you do seem to support it
081i think that you must think that you're enlightened or more educated educated or better equipped to ruin the schools than those of us here on the side this side of the divide but we've all seen the numbers the last two years have been a disaster for students as a small example vox the new york times and the atlantic have run recent articles about learning law studies quote kids learning losses are worse than educators are acknowledging the atlantic set those are hardly publications on friendly to public education and they're blasting you and instead of worrying about how to fix those real problems here we have teachers making six-year-olds sing about being bold administrators champion championing so-called social emotional learning paradigms and focus on pushing political ideologies and then playing dumb when parents ask for access to
082curriculum i could go on and study for hours i've tried to get answers all of us have but even using mechanisms of the law designed to force transparency in exactly these situations i've been lied to over and over you're asking us to trust you with our children i know i certainly don't that is wrong and sad and i wish that all of you hello first off i just want to say that um you know for the most part we've been really happy with those schools i went here my son has gone here kindergarten he'll be now a sophomore um and i've always been a big supporter of joint schools however i am very concerned about the path that i see in the school system or where i see us going over the past few years
083i have heard about the type of indoctrination that is being attempted in the student and the school system through parents in the community other children in the community and most importantly my son from about eighth grade through his freshman year of high school he said certain teachers find their way to insert controversial topics into the classroom that are actually not relevant to what they're teaching and basically tell the students how they should think and feel about them rather than what the students decide for themselves i have overlooked i have looked the other way because he's 15. he can think for himself he's very aware when teachers are presenting their opinions as facts so i don't worry about him he's also incredibly kind empathetic he's accepting of all races cultures lifestyles choices etc um and he
084also knows you don't have to be bulk to be that way however i have an incoming kindergartner and now i'm very concerned and that brings me to the woke song i was really disappointed to hear that dewitt is pushing this divisive and controversial ideology on young impressionable kids um we actually met with shady road staff in regards to her iep and i was so excited for her to enter into its school system and now i'm already wondering if i should pull her out um there were a lot of positive things in the song but where it goes too far is where it states being woke you could have said it's time to be kind it's time to help others you know it's it's time to come together um instead you chose woke woke ideology is
085connected to blm blm crt and dei institutions movements and other progressive beliefs whatever you want to call them and if you really take a step back and look at what the goal of these institutions are it's really to systematically dismantle any sort of pertinent current societal norm that they deem oppressive or unjust so it's destructive um volk ideology destroys everything in its path that does not share its societal world view but creates nothing we've seen that firsthand with removal of statues destruction of property bringing cities to the ground to cancel culture so this is what i'm really concerned about with the administration allowing the first graders to sing this song most people are aware that wolf ideology along with many other trendy movements right now are polarizing controversial and not everyone agrees with them however
086it was decided to allow them to sing that song anyways why because vocalism also convinces people that they are a more intelligent moral morally superior human if they believe or support these ideologies um so so therefore any other opinion in any other opposition doesn't really matter it's completely disregarded and that really became apparent when i found out about this song uh the movement is completely void of any social critical there are any sort of critical thinking or freedom of independent thought because there is no freedom to disagree and no cardiology there's no discussion um how so but regardless of honeymoon feels about these ideologies the public school system has no right pushing these beliefs on their students if the educators in this administration have truly done extensive research on what it means to be woke
087halfway the pros and cons and any negative outcomes consequences of these movements and still want to support them that's fine but it is a personal decision that one can instill in themselves and in their families it is not theirs to force on others especially students in the public school system and that's the main issue that i have with all of this my son said it best our teacher's job is to teach us academics not our morals and values those are taught by our parents why is it that my teenage son gets an age-old concept that for some reason our current adult educators cannot sing to grants i am asking this administration to really reevaluate their approach to education make sure it's not indoctrination and bring it back to the basics tell the teachers to stick
088to the facts and keep their opinions out of it thank you thank you i've been a resident of dewitt for 24 years and tonight i'm representing the national night out committee i'm the chair of the fundraising sponsorship and volunteer committee and for those of you that may not know national night now is an annual community building campaign that promotes police community partnerships and neighborhood camaraderie to make our neighborhood safer more caring places to live this typically takes place nationwide on the first tuesday in august but dewitt our committee wants to put a little different spin on national night out we want to recognize our first responders that include not only law enforcement but firefighters and emergency medical services we prefer not to hold national night out on the first tuesday in august because of a
089little tradition we have called the ox roast which is the third week of august so we want to move that to a tentative date and i'll explain that in a second to september 24th from 4 to 7 at the dewitt township and fire station campus um it's tentative because msu has a home football game now on that day and so we want to make sure that everybody has an opportunity to attend so that might change but today it's september 24th we're looking to partner with dewitt public schools to provide a great opportunity to bring all first responders and community together under positive circumstances we're also looking for student volunteers that can use volunteer hours towards national honor society qualifications or other endeavors last year we did have the football team help us with parking that
090night out will include live music food trucks and catering smaller kids play area sponsor tents as well as an opportunity to meet many of our dewitt's first responders and the vehicles and choose the tools that they use i'm asking the board to provide the best route to take for the national night out team to partner with public schools on this event i have this outline here if i can leave with somebody that'd be great if not i'll just take it with me to give it to you thank you so much appreciate it uh thanks mike for the oh my god sorry okay um i just i'm clear i understand the difference between the club and the school sports my question was what had to happen to make the club sport a school sport so like
091lacrosse for this last year if you only played lacrosse you have to play the school sports fee and the lacrosse club fee and that was just an extra expense an extra burden for those lacrosse players that um not for other players and i want to know what those fees go for because there were those two fees for lacrosse um and like i said it that sport's been around for a really long time it's very well established it's clearly doing very well in the state and it would be really nice to see that and i don't even have a lacrosse player in my home so just you know all right what i really want to talk to you about is this at the beginning of may the usda food and nutrition service department announced a new
092interpretation of title ix they are planning to issue a formal rule making that any establishment that accepts federal food funding must allow biological males claiming to be females access to female private areas spaces such as showers bathrooms and sleeping areas and vice versa i'm bringing this rulemaking to your attention so that the board starts to consider how to win schools will address this in the future even though the rulemaking has not been officially issued it's expected in june which is shortly and it does require review so it may be a long time but i really think it's very important that the board start discussing this before so that we're just not leaping into it and making willy-nilly decisions for the lack of a better word in addition the board must allow the community to participate
093and have input into this these decision-making processes if a student identifies as an opposite sex and wants to use these facilities that are intended for the opposite sex how will the district address this if students who do not identify as the opposite sex and are not comfortable with this with a student of the opposite sex using these facilities how will they be accommodated across the country these policies have been implemented and we have seen some negative impacts that are really impacting our children in virginia in the last year a girl was raped because a boy who was identifying as a girl went into the the girls block the girl's bathroom and ranked her in addition girls throughout the country are not feeling comfortable using facilities within their their schools because of these policies and we
094need to address this how is our board going to protect the girls in our school district if this becomes an official role in fact how will the district protect our boys the age groups that we're talking about these policies being implemented for are so fragile they are so incredibly uncomfortable with every part of their body especially middle school and really high school and for allowing girls and boys facilities these can be just as detrimental and we need to consider that it's unhealthy for anyone not to use a bathroom facility for an entire day and in addition to that these children may not be hydrating throughout the day because they don't want to have to go to the bathroom they may start their day and not drink anything because they don't want to have to use
095these facilities because they're uncomfortable with whatever is going on i'm asking how much funding does the district receive for the from the federal government for their lunch program 250 um how does that affect what might happen in this policy for this rulemaking how many families are affected the usda stated no one should be denied access to nutritious food simply because of who they are or how they identify i agree with this 100 however the usga is in the process doing exactly that they will hold our children hostage and restrict funding because who of who they are and how they identify frankly stating that this is a government ruling and we must follow it is not acceptable i want to request one more time for this board to engage with the township and the city such
096that all three meetings aren't on the same evening we actually had some discussion about this at the end of the last meeting and i heard two things one that the school is the biggest employer i'm not sure if that's a reason for not getting together with the rest of the group so that we are coming out on the same night and the other i heard was we moved this meeting a half hour early and that used to be enough time for these meetings when they were shorter which i took as if your parents hadn't shown up to talk then we would have plenty of time to make both meetings that's how i took it it was very insulting so please let's consider that again um also i want to talk about the desire in this
097community to have a two-week conversation with the board there's some really great ideas to make this district better which includes greater transparency building positive relationships with law enforcement which we just heard expanding volunteer opportunities and many more and those really need a two-way conversation there are also people that want to have a two-way conversation because they have concerns about things in this going on in this district you know i don't have a child in eighth grade but i heard that the eighth grade academic awards ceremony was to be done in the bus parking lot seems like an awful thing to do to our eighth graders and not really respectful of all the great stuff that they did and i'm not sure what message that sends to the students but it's not good many others are
098concerned that first graders are being taught a song that says it's time to be woke and we've heard some people talk about that tonight some people say being woke is great that's their opinion and they can have it many others do not believe that being woke has good connotations i've said this many times we all want to make this community great but when it comes to controversial subjects we should have a community conversation and there should be two sides of the conversation at the table so that we can have a good conversation i personally think this is the greatest and most fair country ever created but i really wonder are we teaching our kids that i'm horrified to see that we had an armed terrorist show up and at justice's house to assassinate them and
099i wondered how did we get here we have hundreds outside the supreme court that were interviewed and said that violence is okay how did we get here i've been here 50 years i've never seen this i wonder how we got here again and i wonder how we get out of this how did we get to the point where violence against your people that disagree with you is okay how did we get to the point where violence against supreme court which is a very important branch of our government is simply okay one has to question if many believe that violence against people is okay because our young people are being taught in school and university this country is a horrible place and it must be changed at any cost and violence is okay it's time to
100have a conversation about how to bring this country together and it starts in our community it starts with our two-way conversation that i've been asking for for months i'm still waiting and i'm still hoping that we can have that conversation we can do better and our community is great and we can be greater thanks thank you thank you i'm going to pass i was able to chat with jordy mckean who was here and take care of my question obviously thank you okay we'll then close public communications so as far as teaching and learning those we summed up the year with 58 pride awards so those are awards that 20 is donated to the foundation and we get to recognize staff members of all sorts so from transportation administration and teachers pear pros being recognized so
101that was a lot of fun being able to give a shout out to all those we had a lot of celebrations this spring a lot of hiring for next year dave and i are working on enrollment with school of choice numbers for that draw the bond the bidding for the maintenance building is out right now and harvesting woods we're taking a look at the hvac system and those units and where they'll go and then the owners rep and construction manager are also working on communication that will go on the board are on the bond website as well as sent out to families strategic planning just a reminder that our next meeting is when we'll have a presentation from um name was escaping my mind it was our facilitator at the retreat and he'll be reviewing
102the final plan we've been working on that with cabinet and making sure that it's getting updated and so i've shared that um dropped out with you as well as a two-pager which will come to the board on the 27th to be approved and then just a safety update since it was asked so we went into closed session at our last meeting our main meeting to talk about the emergency of operations plan which has been updated today i just met with chief ferguson because we did have training that we were going to try to do in may for our staff but the chief of the township has changed over so we're working on that training to be taken place we have a date planned for september 16 and then they're going to be coming in during
103the summer to do kind of a run through the training and use our facility facilities to actually train first responders and with that we do have a rave system which is a notification system our chiefs all have keys and access to the building so that's something that they already have in place so they don't have to open up a box or anything and they have those available and readily available so for example we've had our buildings searched over the weekend because of any you know potential information and they're able to do that without any trouble and then also they have maps as well as access to our camera system we also use what's called handle with care so law enforcement will call and notify specific representatives in each of the buildings or in the district
104to know to let the staff know if the student needs to be handled with care because of law enforcement being at the household for any reason domestic violence substance abuse arrest and so we have a really great relationship with them as well as a threat assessment that is used so that's a lot of the work that we have been doing we have a safety task force as well that's been meeting pretty regularly to make sure that those plans are updated so i just wanted to give some information on that oh then the last thing i just want to say thanks to the board the community and um staff because i think on even though it wasn't official until july 1 it was uh june 8th 16th june 16th 17th i can't remember almost a year
105ago when i moved into the office and started getting that ready and just the notes the gifts the flowers emails and i just felt really blessed to be here and just really appreciate this opportunity to serve the district um was working on something and a law enforcement official suggested that there be an announcement that all families of children who have been injured have been contacted to kind of relieve people from waiting to hear i don't know if there's any part of a plan that we have but i thought it was a great suggestion if nothing else then i will entertain a motion for a german absolutely all those in favor