001okay thank you [Music] the please states of america and to the republic of which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all here any opposed we're going to step over here thank you everyone for having us this evening my name is jennifer grange i'm the career education director at clinton county resume i know i've seen some of you before and grateful to be here i think this is the first year where none of my board presentations involve a snow day which today who knows maybe it could have been the way the weather's been going michigan so and i'll talk a little bit about some of the handouts that you have in your board packet and then we'll get to the most important part which is to hear from one of
002our our students and she has some pretty exciting things to share so i have prepped her a little bit i did at least uh you know caught off guard uh one of the handouts you have which is kind of a summary handout it's uh this journey we call it that is kind of highlights bullet points a lot of the things that we do in the career education department at clinton county research you see it's on the screen here and you have this and on the back is some bulleted items there is rob scrolls through these would be different events activities that our department tries to spearhead for the county and to try to provide career education activities in support of our local districts and ways that business industry can be involved and i will tell
003you that we are so grateful to the business community in clinton county because all of these things tend to be a huge success and it is because of the the volunteer support that we have you know i have regional partners and i'm sure they have great business support in their communities as well but i feel pretty fortunate to work in this county for the things that we need to do dewitt has been very gracious although we haven't been able to have it for a couple of years but we have moved our career expo to the the gym at dewitt and into the outside parking lot area and we're hoping that next fall i'll save the dates wednesday november 2nd that we'll be back face-to-face uh better than ever with our career expo and that is
004also very much largely due to one of our dewitt one of your dewitt staff members kelly williams and she has been very instrumental in getting that event up and off the ground and networking and working with my predecessor pat jackson so another event that we have been able to do because we've been able to transition into it transition it into a virtual event is our annual pave your own path which is strictly for our juniors and seniors throughout the county that are enrolled in a career connections program and that is a tends to be well it's been a half day but when it's in person it's been a full day long career preparation workshop so the students they for instance they go into breakout rooms or real physical rooms when we get back to uh
005face to face and they present their resumes and cover letters and they get feedback not only on you know they get their own feedback but they also get to hear feedback of their you know their peers that are presenting that to the business and industry they work with someone from business and industry and they have to prepare a little pitch a little one minute elevator speech and um and see what kind of feedback they get like hey you've got one minute to sell yourself to this employer what are you going to say and so those are the kinds of things we do with pave your own path but they're actually practicing these things with employers which is a great experience for them to have business and industry make up all of our program advisory boards
006so in in our auto program we have mechanics we have you know people that work at car part stores all over the place dealerships that help advise our auto program these are the skills that students need if they're going to be employed after they leave your programs and i could go on and on but these are the some of the many ways that we are proud to be supported by the community and grateful and it's a success only because of that so um another handout that you have and that rod has pulled up here is the current enrollment this year in each of our career connections programs of dewitt students and so you'll see the program listed the current enrollment this year what college credits or credit by exam or articulated credit students can get
007and then if there are test scores via either accuplacer or students can use sat psat act scores for those programs and students take advantage of this they may go to lcc they may go to mid-michigan college after they finish but that would be the number of dewitt students that are currently this year enrolled and then at the bottom you'll see from last year how much was saved in college credit expenses at mid michigan college and lcc in terms of the number of credits that they earned part of it is at lcc is credit by exam so students when they complete the program the instructor signs off that they've completed the curriculum they have to then apply to lcc and take essentially the exam that would correspond to that course content so we're trying to encourage
008more students to do that we send them a letter every june hey you know you took this class you're eligible for these credits you have to take the test to receive them and we're still trying to beef that up because that's an underutilized opportunity then you'll see in all of our programs from all of our districts that have the opportu opportunity to earn either direct or credit by exam credit from lansing community college and what was earned in the savings from last year's enrollment because we don't have that quite yet this year we're coming to the end of the year but we try to calculate that every fall from the previous year so that you can see just a comparison in terms of enrollments and the savings and then you also have that similar information
009from the courses that are direct college credit with michigan college which olivia is in one of those programs and i think oh the last one is we also have a number of local in-house cte programs throughout the county dewitt has obviously a finance family in consumer science which is very popular i understand that can have wait lists important skills that students need and then the business programs programming also is one of them and digital media so dewey has a number of in-house cte programs that are also supported by the work that we do at clinton county resa so you can see the enrollments from last year and all of those but most importantly i wanted to make sure that we had a chance to hear from a student um i just think that this is
010the best testimony that we have to speak to why it might be a good idea to take a ctv class or career in technical education so olivia is in our year two of criminal justice yes and she uh was class captain for a very long time almost the whole time she was in there um and has earned how many college credits now at the end of this year at mid michigan i believe 18 yeah 18 mid michigan credits okay so why don't you share just a few of the work based learning experiences places you've been able to tour or go or see or do as part of the cte program yeah so i for work-based learning it's the only year two opportunity but you go through year one and get accepted to year two and
011instead of being at class thursday and fridays you get to go out and actually experience what you can do in law enforcement we had people at prosecutor the prosecuting office we had people on board patrol county side and out of dirk out of clinton county as well like owasso lansing and graduate i was at gratia county jail for three months i just finished last friday there because my end of my college classes so we were earning college credits for going and job shadowing employers and see what they do and getting our foot in the door networking with future employers um instead of looking at books doing powerpoints that's mainly all first year but we also did field trips where we went to fort custer uh for we did their uh obstacle course uh did leadership
012skills stuff and we just actually competed against ian andresa for the criminal justice program as well and at lcc west's campus yes which it's a local cte program where we go head to head seeing who is a better program or who knows their stuff more and unfortunately county we had the disadvantage of only having too much to prepare for it because we weren't sure if it was going to happen again this year or not it hadn't happened in three years so and we had all new instructors so trying to learn all that in a month it was a little challenging but we did do really well in place a lot and next year we'll know what we had to work on um we will win that trophy back again but yeah it's going to tell
013the board a little bit about for instance your trip to grand rapids to the federal courthouse oh yeah we also went to the federal court to chief yonkers courtroom and we were able to sit on a federal case and experience what it what it's like to sit in a federal courtroom instead of just like a local district criminal court case and stuff where it's a lot more heavier fines heavier sentencing it was very interesting because we were able to watch a case actually happen in pan out and the outcome of the cases and just be able to talk to chief bianco because he was an ingham county judge before going to be in the uh federal judge now so and then you got to hear from a u.s marshal that day yes we do and
014then he also showed us what they do for like how they transport inmates and how they do beautiful people and everything it was a great experience all of our field trips are actually a great experiences and stuff what are your plans after you graduate um so i'm enrolled in mid michigan in the fall of 2022 for criminal justice where i will continue taking more of my classes to get my criminal justice associate's degree and pre-service law enforcement while working hopefully at local at one of the jails that i was just working for with my workplace learning online doing my online college classes for right now because it's just my basic college classes i need to get out the way and then i'll be in person for the rest of them and then after college i'll
015go head to the police academy that michigan's partnered with in delta it's part of delta college where i'll do my eight 18-week yeah 18-week police academy and get my m-cole certified in law enforcement and then i'll go to do roadside of county side how do you think being in the cte program has given you a little bit of an advantage as opposed to maybe some that don't choose that hey with all the experiences we've done in field trips and the employers we've worked with it gets you it it shows you what you're about to walk into in your career and shows opportunities of what can happen in itself because there's another kid in our class that he has three employers that are wanting him right now after college and it just shows the opportunities you
016can get from from networking and that other people pers don't have in if you're like not really including in the cte of doing all the workplace learning and all the guest speakers we have coming in and stuff what's been your favorite part of the class the connections you make with peers from different schools from instructors to guest speakers to employers olivia is a dewitt student that's why i brought you here just so you know any questions for either of us about any of these materials or just her experience in criminal justice so jennifer we talked we had a strategic plan about the few weeks ago and cte was a big item i think we had several people mentioning more and i think we do a lot but from your perspective what can we do better
017as a district maybe let people know what's out there yeah we've always talked about i think in the past few years the same how do we get how do we let even parents know you know i mean a student is the best testimony to a student but how do we get that information to parents about these opportunities i also think it's changing the narrative because there's still a bit of a mentality out there she's going to college you know and so not that you don't not that you have to but i just think that a long time ago but it still exists it's still a little bit pervasive of oh well that's if you're not going to go to college and that's not true i mean most of our programs get direct or credit by
018exam or they can take certification tests that are industry recognized and so some of that is how do we get that good information out there to parents whether it's a spotlight in a newsletter that we could certainly put together you know whether it's us being present at more of your events where parents are present you know we are certainly willing to brainstorm that it can be challenging when you want to do something like a welding class because that takes a certain space which is very expensive to put together and then you have to find someone from industry that's willing to leave their industry position and come teach in the classroom but other programs like the business program um you know some of the others that are like the programming some of those that are also
019you know huge shortages are not so expensive to get up and running and there are a lot of latitude that i don't think even some people in industry know in terms of you can be an industry and if you wanted to come into the classroom your industry experience you can you can come into the classroom based on the amount of industry experience you have the state has an annual career authorization that they'll do now where they will allow an industry expert in to teach classes in cte so i think that's a message that just probably hasn't gotten out there it's tricky because we send people to teacher college for a reason there are skills that they need not every just because i know how to do it doesn't mean i can teach somebody else how
020to do it but it does give us some flexibility in terms of hiring any other questions thank you both for being here thank you so much for having us we appreciate it stand up now so we're gonna do a budget update it's been a while uh unfortunately a governor's proposal came out in february and we didn't get any information from the senator house until about three weeks ago the senate came out with their their subcommittee proposal and the house a week later came out with their subcommittee proposals so what we wanted to do tonight is just kind of uh recap again what was in the governor's proposal and i put that side by side with the senate and house proposals and then localized that to see how it impacts and what it looks like with
021our numbers specifically so as a bit of a refresher when the governor's proposal came out in february she proposed a 435 for pupil foundation increase for districts she went with the weighted model formula that had been proposed maybe five years ago now uh of additional resources into specialty areas like special ed vocad and at risk and so her proposal does have an increase for special ed categorical as well as at risk categorical funds good news is that the retirement rate is basically flat there's a small increase just with different plans that are out there but the rates themselves in essence are held year over year and then some other good news is there's three or four different retirement categoricals that work their way into the budget over the last several years and the governor's proposal
022fully funds those and makes the adjustments necessary to continue that funding into the 22-23 school year and then finally a couple not very large categoricals uh but some categoricals that we get the early literacy and the vocab categoricals were continued in the governor's proposal senate subcommittee's proposal came out and this is a very traditional type of proposal it's a 450 per pupil foundation increase but they did not make any changes to any of the categorical so the at risk especially categoricals are held at the same levels that they are at this year and and i kind of speculated this might be what happened in an election year being able to stay a foundation increase above what the governor proposed and a lot of the below the line stuff it doesn't get the media coverage the
023foundation increase does below you know really beyond that the senate proposal does exactly what the governors did with retirement so the rates the rate that's actually determined they kept all the categoricals in play and then they also kept the early literacy and the vocab categorical then we moved to the house proposal and they did something really unique in comparison so their foundation increase is 300 versus the 435 or the 450. they did increase funding for special ed that categorical they did a little bit more than what the governor proposed and then they kept the at-risk funding flat year-over-year retirement rate again that's extraordinarily determined so no changes across any of the proposals they did continue the mipster's cost offset and the retirement normal cost offset categoricals but they dumped a lot of money into the
024uaal which is the unfunded portion of the retirement system to the tune of 1.7 billion dollars that will have no bottom line impact on our district because it truly is a flow-through the money comes in and then by statute five days later within five days we have to remit that to the state and so again what this is doing is ultimately putting the retirement system into better financial footing but it doesn't have direct impact at least in today's dollars for this district and then they also continued the early literacy and vocab categoricals couple things that are not on here that they did put some funds into uh two additional reserve funds uh one was a mipster's reserve fund at the tune of i want to say 425 million dollars i am speculating that that's just
025a future buy down potentially of rates unfortunately with the size of the mixers program although 425 million is a lot of money it's really a drop in the ocean as far as what can do for the system and then they also put some money into a kind of school aid reserve fund which i would speculate that would be basically rainy day funds so if next year the year after they wanted to do some foundation increases and the funds weren't there because of economic factors they'd have that reserve fund to rely on neither the senator the governor put anything like that in a proposal so it'll be interesting to see how that plays out along with the 1.7 billion that they put into the ual but i just want to highlight a couple things that are
026a little bit unique in what the house did with their subcommittee proposal so as we looked at how this this impacts the district specifically you see there's three columns one for the governor one for the senate one for the house a lot of the line items are going to be the same because they're district specific but i wanted to highlight kind of where we're at difference wise so the first is that foundation increase so again 435 on the governor 450 on the senate and 300 on the house that translates to a little over 1.3 million from the governor it's about 1.4 million on the senate's proposal and it's about 925 000 on the house proposal the special ed categorical increase again only the governor and the house subcommittee proposed any increases there anticipating about 113
027000 on the governor's proposal nothing with the senate and about 158 000 with the house proposal next series of lines we've gone through but it's been a while so i'll just quickly go through these student fte we're anticipating being down 31 that's basically due to the fact that we've got our largest class as seniors 285 ish and our our incoming canadian classes have been between 2 20 and 2 30. so there's natural reductions because of that we have a vocab teaching position that's been open all year and because of that there's not as much in the way of cost this year our reimbursement from cc resa is partly due to prior your actual costs so we're anticipating some reduction in the funding that we'll receive from cc resa because of that it is a one-time
028adjustment and some of its timing so we'll have some savings this year because we didn't use all the budget for the teaching position we hadn't played but next year we'll have to account for the reduction in the revenue we had a bus that we sold i want to say last maybe august one-time funds so that's removing that we've also removed the sr2 funds that we used this year and then good news in the sense that negotiations are all done so we were able to work a budget through that had all the adjustments related to negotiations so all the wage adjustments all the steps insurance related medical dental and vision all of that is worked into this budget already we don't have to put any estimates in as we go forward with the initial budget retirement
029expense pretty much flat line to 10 000 and then the next two lines related special ed if you'll recall our budget amendment we added a special ed teaching position but it was mid-year so we had half fte that was built into the 21-22 amendment this puts that other half in since we'll now have a full year's worth of cost and similarly with the pair pros we had two pair pros that were added mid-year this year so we have to add those other two half fpes which gets you that one there next few lines you'll see some subtle differences depending on the proposal that may or may not ultimately get passed so the first is athletic coaching positions at officials pre-covered we put a plan in place with our club sports which is the cross bowling
030and um blank on the third lacrosse bullying in hockey and it was to cover some of the officials costs with hockey and cover some coaching positions with both lacrosse and with bowling that had to get put on pause with covet 2122 we started that process for 22.23 the anticipation as we continued that unfortunately when you see the bottom lines of the house proposal we needed to back that off initially because even with that removed and a couple other things we're still looking at about 139 000 deficit ultimately if the fund's coming better than that that is something that we would look to continue doing the property casualty insurance increase that's just using an estimate of where we've been the last couple years i will hopefully get our renewal rates here in the next month and
031we can true that up if it's in time before the budget's approved the substitute rate that's something we really really want to do but again under the house proposal to add 139 000 on top of 139 000 deficit uh maybe we could do a partial something but right now we're planning zero there but with the governor and the senate proposals we want to put that in uh as a cost adjustment we have two fte teacher retirements that we worked into this budget uh the first uh would not be replaced the second would be replaced this is about 142 000 savings across three proposals for that and then the very last line is adding an elementary dean of students at our three elementaries unfortunately again the way that the budget looks the governor's proposal is the
032only one that we would really be able to do that with but we really would like to to hopefully get that into the budget at the end of the day it's it's a need i know the assistant principal at the high school that was added this year has been immensely helpful and and being able to throw a little bit of a lifeline to our elementary principals and staff quite honestly would be something huge to be able to do next year that the budget allowed for it a lot of information any questions before we kind of go to a what's next wrap up how solid do you do on the 31 fd xt reduction i know we have the big public class this year but we'll drive around construction guests a little bit to what degree
033those are going to create students in the district for next year but right yeah what we do we so we've had some so when we were doing the budget or the bond qualification app we did have a enrollment study done and at that time which has been a couple years now since that was done it really wasn't anticipating large increases in overall enrollment but obviously we get information from the city township as developments come into play we look at current enrollments and we try to speculate move-ins move outs and hopefully we budget low and when we get to an amendment we're in a little bit better spot but just kind of with the information that we have and kind of our model of topping off classes as we need to and are able to we
034feel it's a fairly safe number to use right now and again hopefully it's not a full 31 when we get to our october count and and work that in with our blend of our february account any other questions matt just fyi our finance committee met on friday we went through this in fairly great detail but what we'll do over the course the next month obviously the board approval will be on june 13th we're about a month away from that we're just going to continue to review enrollment we'll also continue reviewing staffing there's been a lot of changes coming recently i don't know how much it'll impact the bottom line but we'll continue to work through that internally we'll work with our cabinet likely we'll have another finance committee meeting just because we don't have another
035board meeting scheduled between now and june 13th and hopefully we'll have more information from the state what i heard last thursday maybe from masb john smith who's their government relations person said it's highly unlikely that the budget will be approved in june it's probably going to be in july so it kind of takes us back to you know really governor schneider's time when we had a republican governor house and senate and they were you know getting those budgets done in june prior to that it was really not common to have budgets done by the time we had to have ours approved but we take the best information we have usually taken the road approach and and we've run with that but that's as of last week that was kind of what they were saying is
036july is probably when the budget will be approved i think one of the things they're waiting for is the revenue estimating conference which is coming up a week from this friday may 20th if revenues are trending the way that they were back in january and with information that they've received the last couple months that might expedite the process could open the door for conversations about different tax cuts as well so we'll have to monitor where that might go but i think we're in a decent spot our budget prep i'd just be you know more information we have from the state the more refined we can make it so that's kind of what will hopefully happen here over the next month and then we'll bring it to you on june 13th along with our our other
037budgets of community and food service and the student activities so if there are any other questions that would conclude my presentation i just want to thank you for getting this out friday and i know it's an extra effort for you and your team but i appreciate it it's great to have it out there so folks [Music] thank you hello everybody some of you know me some of you don't michelle wilka is the director of community ed and we are in charge of little panthers um and we have a small presentation for you today we were going to come in person and then decided you know it's going to be developmentally appropriate to record them because they freeze up in front of me and they see me every day [Music] he was is [Music] we currently
038just wrapped up enrollment for 2023 where fall as always and i was told that they were studying weather and insects so those were they have moved on to their favorite subject now which is dinosaurs so they are if you stop by they are all in their little excavator outfits and digging in the sand you're welcome to bring absolutely is there so we do half day programs is there any demand i mean you hear from parents about like the possibility of a full day program you should ask that i'm actually putting out a survey monkey uh this summer to see what the demand would be because we have had a couple people ask you know what do we offer in the way of a full day program and currently we have gsrp in the district but
039little campus does not have a full day program all right thank you so our next agenda is to recognize sending poacher who's been our board of education student representative sonny had a softball game tonight so she couldn't be here i think that probably at least not my time on the board she's got the most minutes of attendance out of board meetings we've had such wonderful women over her terms so um we appreciate everything she did sorry she can't be here i told shawn if she could come back in this maybe our july meeting give her her official never gonna happen i can go to the high school and but no we [Music] on the agenda it's the practice of the board of education permanent persons in the audience to make statements concerning agenda after this
040time please complete the public comment form um you can return to the more desk you'd like to speak public comments limited to three minutes and it's 70 degrees um none have to be a different version of the others so amanda carson hi um i wanted to come here and ask for more information and more transparency on what's going on the bond project um i see that you're putting out these wonderful pictures of the excavation on the football field and everything on the website but really this is a big project it's a big undertaking is expected to last for six years who's actually responsible for monitoring the timelines of these projects what are the deliverables what are the slas who is approving any amendments to the project the proposals and budget who's overseeing any unforeseen such
041as material availability labor and other and what is the post-project review plan did the contract get fulfilled did services get delivered as described does there need to be a warranty or a fix and forced to make the project right who is monitoring the warranty periods workmanship and materials who is determining the cadence of projects as they get as there are multiple projects coming in a row and they're all coming from the same bonds and then the impacts of budgetary changes on those projects or creep and how that's going to affect projects later down in the world because we kicked off at the football football field first but how are we doing on the budget with that project did we have creep in that and is that going to impact other projects down the road thank
042you agenda it's the recommendation by superintendent shannon squiggers if the board of education approved adopt accept the following items for immediate implementation an appropriate action is presented approval of the 23rd the 2022 meeting from april 25th 2022 and the finance committee being from may 6 may 6th 2022. also the treasurer is reported from bill's repayment by march 12 2022 the treasurer has reviewed the ech debits and the purchase card for the month of april 2022 we have a motion so support who would have supported any discussion all favorite please say hi opposed motion carries our first action item cc reside provided a pre-recorded presentation of the 2022-2023 proposed budget to each constituent district on april 25th 2022 for the review and it's the recommendation by superintendent sean speaker that the board of education adopt the
0432022-2023 clinton county regional education service cc reset general fund operating budget resolution as presented do we have a motion support moved and supported any discussion all in favor please say aye any opposed motion carries the recommendation by superintendent sean speaker the board of education aboard the 2021 building and site capital project card construction for guaranteed maximum pricing for the dewood high school roof renovations for the gymnasium in the amount of three hundred twenty-five thousand one hundred sixty-five dollars and sixteen cents as presented and clamoring krisa and clark construction have provided a recommendation from the portrait review if you haven't reviewed those already do we have them here tonight if people have questions or are they prepared mark did you want to talk or change so they serve as the ownership i'm mark alex with climate
044crescent as shauna said part of the gmb clark construction team overseeing the bond on behalf of the school district so uh this is for obviously the um the gymnasium portion only of the high school roof um dollars and cents were noted on march 22nd bid documents were issued those went out for approximately two weeks shane's team with clark construction issued those documents we had um a pre-bid answered questions to rfis throughout that process bids then came in we analyzed the bids um go through financials with it with those companies before we make a board recommendation make sure that our eyes have gotten their teaser across we go through postman interview process and then we make a recommendation to the school board so um and we have the oac meetings every um every wednesday so that's
045what we did um on april 5th you know those bids came in like so then we reviewed that those documents make sure everything was complete and then we made a recommendation to the school board in which we're here tonight to discuss um it's it's it's a crazy uh bidding environment right now this it was on budget which was very nice the market is wild and we're doing everything we can to make sure that we can stay within that um you know prescribed budget and work with the school district every week on that so it's as you as you folks all know whether it's groceries or you know buying tvs or mechanical equipment or whatever not only our lead times extended but trying to get a hold of that equipment is difficult too as as with
046the roof too so um but we did we don't have a long lead lead time on that it's about a four week process um shane's gonna be overseeing that too along with the track and turf and uh they're here um every day of the week and um they're doing a great job so far and we don't expect them to not do a great job i should say thank you very much any questions action item 2022-2023 will be the fifth year of five one-year contracts with chartwells who provides food service management from the district um captures a series of one-year renewals that are only renewed annually by the board prior to the beginning of the next school year patrick was last bid in the spring of 2018 and can be donated by either part of the
04760 days advancing lewis with that is the recommendation by superintendent chinese figure that the board of education wore the contract to charter both school dining services to provide food service management for the district for 2022-2003 and authorize the administration to execute the contract do you have a motion support who've been supported in the discussion i'll be here we say hi it's the recommendation by superintendent shannon speaker that the board of education set the 2023 toward high school commencement ceremony for sunday may 21st 2023 at 2 p.m dual high school has been amazing we have a motion so a supporter who would have supported any discussion all in favor please say aye the host lastly uh the superintendent approved the first family leave request per the dea contract a second leave request requires a board of
048education approval so it is the recommendation by superintendent shannon spicer that the board of education approved the second year leave league of absence requests for stephanie brown what middle school science teacher for the 2022-2023 school year so move required to support any discussion i have a question under the contract it looks like there's two provisions under which someone can take leave so d as a maternity leave up to one year shall be granted and then under e there's a parental leave up to one year not to exceed one year for child rearing and i'm just seeking clarification the last items is for any any reason that i don't have an acronym there's an unpaid for 12 weeks which would be an fmla qualifying it's one of the last reasons it says the superintendent for any
049reason can approve and then the second the second year needs to be approved by the board so in the information that you have which was an email sent to me for the request has the reason why she's requesting the second year so what we have is an excellent teacher that we hope to have back and with the job pool the way it is it kind of what it does is it locks that position in for her so she doesn't have the same position it's not guaranteed to her we have right of assignment to place her so it's not considered a parental leave or a maternity leave or a monthly lead no i said i'm haley well any of those can be unpaid i'm just saying i'm just looking for what provision under the contract is
050being granted so i mean she's asking because of being pregnant with her second child but um i i'm bringing it to you just as a second second i just don't see a contractual prediction for it so i'm just looking for there's no contractual division it's an extension of the lead right so you've already granted the linear lead and so you can always grant extensions for any reason that's the last item like you always get do it if you want to and the district's practice so far has been to grant those that they feel like there's a need but contractually you have to if it's parental or maternity for a year for the other one that's when they have to come to the board so you can you can deny it i'm just recommending that they
051um and then extend the lead and i'm just looking for a contractual provision that allows a discretionary extension i just don't feel is it just a pattern in practice or is it part of the contract it's definitely past practice but we have found it easier to just do extensions rather than having them reapply for a year leave under the superintendent's discretion we thought the board would want the ability to say yes or no rather than bypassing the border just going straight to the superintendent and doing a whole new year's leave if that makes sense so the way and i could get the administrative guidelines but the way that it works is they kind of parallel with layoffs so even though it's not a layoff the language kind of parallels with layout so i mean in
052c it says such leaf may be extended for one year upon application should provide a teacher so i've done the one year i'm just looking to see where it says it doesn't say anything about board approval for the extension so a parental leave does have the provision that says such leave is renewable at the discretion of the board f which is the personal illness also is board discretion extension as is maternity lead just doesn't see a general catch-up that's all just looking quick i mean it could so she's trying to prevent coming back for a few months having the baby and going on you know maternity leave and then [Music] um not coming back so that way with her deciding not to come back we're able to hire the physician but i'm just i'm just
053looking because i've got my copy and my um i've got all my notes on where did you find it wrong no okay and just so that you can work on this too so i mean i can i can bring back a different recommendation or take a look and see i'm trying to find the item where it says for any reason make her end do we need to approve this tonight is the timing well i mean she's she's not coming back regardless so we can move forward with the fulfilling the position but she's just trying to preserve her spot return and that would be my question was it actually a preservation because fmla gives the preservation of job return but the other physicians don't necessarily appear to do that um [Music] may grant any 10-year teacher
054on paid leave of absence for up to one year for any reason unwritten applications that would be the general catch-all but it doesn't have a board extension can we consider the employer as the board though no we talked about your extension could be done for any of those positions or reasons are you thinking that d two doesn't apply is that the bot i think that's the question and if not d2 let's assume that the original lead was granted for e are we saying that he doesn't fly like i'm confused that where the confusion is like whether it's with d or whether it's with e whichever was the original leave whether it was maternity or parental both of them save and be extended by the board and that's what the teacher is asking the sport to
055be extended i don't know if you know what the original is consequence to not accruing this tonight say hi hi public communications for items not fun on the agenda i just have a few quick items um number one i was really happy to hear the uh ccr freestyle presentation tonight i really appreciate that it's very important for our district in all districts to have that opportunity not every student is geared for the four-year degree program and having that opportunity for to do other career paths is fantastic and in order to get college credit through that my two older boys actually did the early college program at lansing community college which unfortunately doesn't exist anymore but that was just a great opportunity for them and then my youngest is currently in the business resa program and
056it's been a very good experience for them so just great support for that i thank you um the last or the lacrosse i always call it lack sorry the lacrosse sports club and the other club sports that we have on camp out here for the school i know lacrosse has probably been around for at least 15 years as a 12 sport at what point do these club sports get the opportunity to become a school-sponsored sport um you know these students have to pay a lot of extra fees as opposed to being a school-sponsored sport and i would really like to see especially lacrosse it's such a you know it's been around a long time it's a well-established sport and i would love to see for it to have the proper recognition that it deserves um
057and then lastly i am going to become a member of the dewitt township public safety committee because public safety is really important to me in terms of respect for our law enforcement fire department public safety i know that some of us are our school districts kind of weird because it's got the city and the town shed and the schools are broken up between the two i know there's a good relationship between the city and the schools that are within the city boundaries they've got some interaction with the police department and maybe that's because they're more the elementary school that you can do that i think it's really important that our high school have that interaction with law enforcement because once they get up to that age they're starting that sort of disrespect sort of attitude
058and i would like to see the township have not not necessarily presence in the high school but like some sort of program or something where we can bring them in and make it a positive interaction in september there's going to be a national night out portowick township and it's going to be law enforcement fire department and um building uh i'm not saying that right but anyway uh i would like to talk to you more in the future about having uh the wit the high school present yeah that evening so that we can build relationships between the two shepherds thank you i want to thank both of them for trimming my time down and if you brought up the point of an itemized list of where the blind money is going i'm just going to touch
059on that real fast because that was the first thing i was going to speak but i had to stole my phone good job and you mentioned communication as the temperature bar in this town simmers down and i talk to townsfolks every day voters people that are supporting against whatever has happened over the last two years the biggest thing that i hear that people want is communication i'm hoping that this board has learned through our communication to your communication the good bad that moving forward these folks in the town want preempted the chaos that went on the last two years that falls on the shoulders of all to communicate back and forth between the town to the board a lot of folks that don't have kids in this school i can tell you for a fact
060or sick of baseball taxes around here as most people are because they don't feel like they have a voice at all and then they watch kids or parents with children in this town get nowhere coming here streaming into the microphone sometimes to be stared at like we are looking in a fishbowl and can we please going through the summer into the next year because the biggest thing that strikes my eye on an other daily basis is these eight active cases of herbicides the words outbreak then they rate a very very tender cord in this town now if we're scared of this crap coming back up again and they want to know what's going to happen what is the end game i think if we're open and honest with the towns people will be more willing
061to accept what you guys edict or what two guys propose a lot of that comes to play between the two meetings that always coincide as soon as i'm done here i'm running across town to go to the city gallery and i know the question was asked and raised 15 times over the last four or five months is there a way that these folks can have meetings on different days so they're not picking and choosing where to go to because one hand does wash the other of this town city council has their issues and agendas the school board has its initiative but they do work the same in terms of government and you want as many people in this building as you can it's important that you hear them you should have no trouble hearing me
062i don't even like you but we want to talk to you hopefully since halloween and before that you've heard the frustrations you've heard the voices if not you should just resign now because i'm out there talking to them and i'm running for this board and you might not like me and i don't care but the question is if you ask a question it should be answered when i attend other school board meetings there is a give and take to clean the audience okay why don't you all why don't you answer a question directly is it against the law to have a communication with your people up front i do every day and i'm not paid and if i do have a given any pay that i do get is going right to the wounded quarterbacks
063i've already made that announcement but let's be willing to communicate back and forth good and bad you ask me a question i'll give you an answer you don't have to like it you don't have to like yours that's what it's built upon our children are watching this on a daily basis a lot of them are like well are you under school board that means no more masks no that doesn't but it does mean that i will let you know where i stand i know where you stand case i know you stand on letting the people out here know is critical our children watch us they watch our every lead if they stonewall like they're watching you do sometimes what are you going to teach when government does this again did you submit to just take
064it if you don't raise your children that way please don't raise my children or their children that way thank you all right i'm first tying into a clay so i think this is the fourth time i've asked for the date change for this board meeting so it doesn't conflict with the city and township meetings those are both on the same date so really the meeting that needs to move is this there's 20 some days that are work days can we please do that um what i really want to spend time on is the mental health crisis we have one in this country and the state in this district it breaks my heart it should break all of our arts what i want to know and what i haven't heard is does the school have a
065comprehensive plan to help our kids recover from this crisis what i've heard is we need more interventionalists behavioral specialists and i'm probably getting the terms wrong and that social emotional learning will be a tool okay but have we really diagnosed the problem do we really know all the issues that cause this crisis i think about if a plane crashes hundreds of people flood in and they diagnose every single thing and they don't give up until they find the answer so what have we done i'm not asking us to do a big study but what research have we done and what have we found out shouldn't this be shared with the community we constantly talk about how the parents in school need to work together just like we did for the strategic plan it was awesome
066i'm not asking the school to solve all the mental health issues i'm asking them to help though and for them to explain to us what we can do i think we deserve a plan i think we deserve to know more and how what their what the school's proposing fits together just as clay said i see a number of letters sent out from herbert's and woods telling parents there are a handful of cases there's an outbreak and i take pause are we gonna go through this all again um you know we've we seem to be wanting to raise the level of fear and anxiety as high as we can and there's a price to be paid for that all of us and especially our children who are most at risk fear anxiety masking and constant testing
067are all contributing in my mind to the mental health issue i'm also concerned about the letters from the district that continue to promote copic shocks for kids there was a recent study from mit that showed that covet vaccination was significantly associated with a 25 jump in emergency medical services for heart problems in 16 to 39 year olds my son 16 25 percent increase doesn't sound like a good idea there's other studies well j j just now is not recommended other studies show that it doesn't help in overall mortality to take the shots there's a lot of studies out there so i'm very concerned that this school would play a role in promoting shots that aren't fully fully tested for a number of years like other vaccinations finally on the topic of social emotional learning i
068think all of us would like to know more about it as i did some reading there was some good stuff that i read about it i also read that it's been banned by some school districts it's not free of controversy i think that should concern us all and it goes back to what i've been saying time and time again parents want transparency what is social emotional learning how is the school planning to use that as a tool and why is it banned in other schools thank you thank you jim thank you um i'm going to ask for a couple seconds more because the recent presentation brought back a lot of memories i was responsible for global employment a major company in grand rapids and during that time we had a very active partnership with risa
069or its equivalent in the lowell schools forest hills schools ten counties and to the extent that we hired hundreds of kids good paying jobs good careers actually i go back and i see some of these young people they're not that young anymore but they're still there now married they have children they're responsible citizens so this program does work okay we had a consortium of employers in the area rapid stand myers alticore amway steel case just to name a few we work together as a private consortium no government dollars we refuse to accept government dollars but we use programs like this in addition to other programs to identify young people that were not going to four-year college provided them the information the encouragement the training job readiness training how to do an interview how to do
070a resume how to dress during an interview i know these are basic issues but they're key because many of these young people this is their first opportunity so i cannot overly stress the importance of dewitt schools participating actively participating in this type of format you'll see people 10 years from now they don't know you touch their lies but you know you touch them that's the critical element what you take away is invaluable to them and it helps build this core stability in your community you don't have young people leaving they have futures they have commitment so that's that's a paid advertisement really and then we also had a program with goodwill and we funnel people that may not have been employable at that time we funneled them through these training programs and within and basically
071it could be a 10-week program 14-week programs and guess what same thing i see people at the anwar grand plaza i see people at steelcase when i go over there there they are unemployable at one time but now they are now so i cannot overly stress the importance of that little presentation i i wish that young lady good luck in law enforcement um but i cannot overstress it okay now thank you for the indulgence um i have been stressing for the last presentations you know how many i've made i've lost track about who is the advocate for the parent in the dewitt school system i've asked parents and they're confused they don't know is it the school board is it the superintendent is it the teacher is it some outside organization we've gone through some
072of these already national association of school boards that's a discredited organization now through this collusion with the department of education with the attorney general with the abiding administration and in fact more almost half of the states have left it to my understanding michigan association school boards is considering leaving if they not have already so they're definitely not the mea okay the mea is an interesting organization but it's proven not to be an advocate for parents but for teachers and rightly so they're a labor organization often they were formed to protect teachers they were formed to negotiate for work environmental issues benefits grievances things of that sort they are not advocates actually they're the reverse of the africa in the mea website i just perused there's this question that they're now against a motion that was
073put forth to have teachers to publicly list plan field trips reading and writing assignments before the start of the school year well it sounds like a syllabus doesn't it how many of you had a syllabus when you went to college i know i did none are available in a high school or a middle school so t so parents are adrift in addition they're talking about that if there's questions they're best directed at parents during a parent teacher conference and other individual communications that's after the fact it's not before the fact that's after the fact and believe me i had my share of those discussions when my two boys went through this school 20 seconds okay well i'm going to have to bring this up again okay because this is a serious matter and uh i
074think it takes much more time and it can goes back to the whole issue of transparency who is the advocate for the parent are you you don't respond so how can you be an advocate thank you thank you is what is actually being taught in classrooms as we all know there are some really really good teachers in the school district and some that are not open as i mentioned at previous school board meetings my husband and i pulled our two high school daughters from dubai high school about three days into their current school year the masks were certainly one factor in our decision making the level of depravity and what is actually being taught in the classrooms is appalling and it impacted our decision this week is national police week which is a collaborative effort
075of many organizations dedicated to eyeing america's law enforcement community so as such i wanted to take the opportunity to discuss the film that was shown in my daughter's high school class the hate you give stands for thug the hate you give the plot is about a 16 year old american girl who lives in a predominantly black neighborhood but attends a predominantly white private school after mom goes off at a party she's attending she's driven home by her childhood best friend while driving only shot by a police officer the feeling to signal a lane change the officer barks orders at him not my words such as to roll down the window and turn off the music he disagrees with the officer who then instructs him to exit the car while outside the car the officer then
076instructs the driver to keep his hands on the roof while the officer checks his id the driver disobeys leans down into the car window and just to pick up a hairbrush the officer thinking that he has a gun shoots and kills the young man the plot continues the grand jury does not indict the officer and as a reaction to this decision the girl becomes a community activist and promises to keep his memory alive and to continue her advocacy against police by any means necessary what exactly did this teach my daughter and the rest of the class teach them about unity no they certainly did not did it teach them how to respond appropriately during traffic stop no they did not what it did teach them that it's okay to be disrespectful and disobedient to our
077police this type of critical race theory has been taught in classrooms within this district for several years the major framework of crt is that systematic racism is part of american society i'm so old that when i was in school i didn't know how my teachers voted or what their personal beliefs were they kept it professional and the things should be expected of teachers within this district you have teachers who are very outspoken about their distrust and their will issues to our local law enforcement in our home we back the blue and support our local law enforcement and while teachers can certainly feel differently they should keep their feelings and thoughts to themselves the teachers are empowered in this district to use their classroom time indoctrinate and desensitize our future leaders so i'm just curious if
078the school board supports this type of anti-law enforcement that's taught in the classroom what class what was the subject what class was that uh this showman this was in a ela class it was language arts into web yes all right so as far as teaching and learning goes lots of pride awards have been handed out over the last couple weeks and we celebrated a teacher's staff appreciation week last week and just want to give the pta a huge shout out that did pre-k five for ps5 dinners and then also lots of parent groups helping at the secondary schools as well with showering teachers and staff with gifts spring testing has been going on so we're glad to see the windows starting to close on that been looking at staffing and assignments interviews for the director
079of technology and media services have taken place and we hope to bring your recommendation next month the high school principal position has been post but we've posted but the pool is low so please share that posting out on your networks to help encourage people to apply for that we also do what is called mtss multi-tiered systems of support where we are looking at student data very regularly and with that data not only includes academic data but behavioral data attendance data to really take a look at students and what their needs are in addition we do mental health screenings to not only have our own services and counselors support but we have cece arisa also have social workers to help support students as far as the bond goes right now the focus has been on plan
080the planning for herbison woods elementary we do meet with the owners rep and construction it's a large team gmb clark construction as well as plant moran presa about two or three hours a week to discuss all the elements of what's going on so we do have um some bids that are going to be going out pretty soon for the maintenance building but depending on how those come in we may kind of go back to the drawing board and decide some different shelves because pricing and materials are up so shane who is with clark construction has been working on trying to put pictures into a file and they will also help with newsletters but there's not a whole lot to report out right now because the stadium has been the biggest part of the work that's
081happening right now covet updates so our dashboard is a little underrated right now with 20 active cases 24 at the high school so we did have about six sheets of positive and cases that came in today from the health department that we're working on making sure that we get updated the health department is the one who guides us to talking about if we're an outbreak or not that's not a decision we make the health department makes that decision and then we have to communicate not only exposures but when there is a outbreak so one of the things we've heard is more communication so we're trying to make sure parents hear that from us versus the state reporting because we do get reported through the state so as right as of right now herbicide woods the
082high school and scott schools are all considered outbreak schools it only takes three students in a specific case to become an outbreak we do have like i said a couple of dozen students and i've heard from mr mckean today about 40 students from the high school probably prom problem related so we're just keeping an eye on those numbers the health department again they're the ones that tell us that the vaccine is the one of the best things that we can do to fight covid but also that when we have an outbreak to recommend masking and social distancing um as well so those are things that we're doing to help support and then the test to stay for people who are close contacts or close contacts so for example i'm testing every day to stay because
083i'm a close contact and that's the service that we do offer here strategic planning we had our implementation meeting today with the facilitators who came out with the cabinet so we were able to take a look at the mission vision belief statements which will come to the board the second meeting excuse me in june and we were able to take a look at the goal statements and try to take a look at what objectives could be accomplished in the next year so what could we get done in the next year that's underneath those goals who would be in charge of that so working on an action plan for those strategic goals bless you the showcase as a reminder is june 2nd from 5 to 7 30 so we hope people put that on their calendars
084and i know that it's come up several times about changing our meeting dates so our meeting dates are are decided at our organizational meeting they've always been the same time we are the largest employer in the city if i'm correct saying that so our meetings involve a lot of people they have been the same even on holidays we continue to have those meetings so they are the second and the fourth and we've encouraged people to reach out to the other boards to maybe consider changing theirs i know we've upped our time from seven to six which was hopefully supposed to help as well so that's all i have for you have a question so um i think this is where john was probably going as well as some of the other parents that are here
085tonight does cc risa attend the showcase as an opportunity for parents or students so i don't know i haven't been to the showcase yet but i don't think they have i don't remember from past years but it seems like it's a good opportunity if there's a booth there i can mention that to jen i wanted to follow up on some of the comments tonight too and i know that school boards throughout the state do things differently some interact some don't um and i would like to see a little bit more interaction when people ask questions some of the questions tonight i think some of them can be answered on the spot and i think that we've made an attempt at some of our meetings to address some issues i think some things probably take more
086investigation but one of the questions tonight was you know what does it take for a lacrosse club or a club sport to become a school station sport is there a simple answer to that well a lot of that would be going back to the person who's in charge of that so mike bryant can give a whole history so the athletic director so the real athletic director can talk about what the history is he'll be here next he comes in june usually to do his presentation so maybe that's a time to have that conversation okay that's helpful um and i was going to address the date change but you just did that and i guess i would be curious to know if um if anyone care knows if it has been addressed with the city council
087or the township about changing their dates so we did move we didn't move it two years ago to six and historically our meetings have been like 30 minutes so it was plenty of time for people to come here and then go to the other one obviously they've been a little longer the last nine months but i was just curious and and jim you mentioned um you were talking about cc recent programs and at our strategic planning as jason mentioned cte was a big topic and one that everyone could get behind it seemed like everyone in the room agreed about the importance of it and that it will be a focus so i don't think you're alone in that opinion it's the model the model is the key and it's it's an interactive model with employers
088and sources and it's a it's it's a pretty functional model that doesn't use educational terms it's it's it's private employment yeah okay and so it's not to take offense but it's very the employers understand the language and i would encourage you to go to their board meetings too to share that when is it we could get that information to you i don't know okay thank you okay that's the recommendation by superintendent shawna speaker the board of education go into closed session to consider the district emergency operation plan security review and under section 8k of the open beams we need a mobile convert for this one thank you hi we're