001January 22nd 2024 meeting of the East Lancing Board of Education uh Miss hore can we get a roll call Mr Martin here Dr Lions here Dr edel Dr edel is excused from the meeting okay uh Miss Ferris Highland here Dr Chambers present Mr Holbrook here Dr Torres um our student representatives are not here and Miss Leo here uh trusty Torres can you read our mission statement our mission is statement is nurturing each child educating all students building World citizens thank you uh may I get a motion for the approval of the agenda move the Board of Education approves the agenda of the January 22nd 2024 regular meeting meting as presented second all right all in favor I I any opposition motion carries unanimously can I get a motion for the approval of the minutes move
002the Board of Education approve the minutes of the following meeting as presented January 8th 2024 organizational meeting second second oh it was moved by trustey Chambers and I'm going to say it was seconded by trusty Lions uh all in favor I I I any post motion carries unanimously is there any recognition today truste Ferris Highland we do have a couple awesome items of recognition the first is a big congratulations to our 2024 Mid Michigan MLK commission Award winners the Dr Martin Luther King Jr Commission of mid Michigan held its 39th Annual MLK day of celebration last Monday January 15th at the Lancing Center one part of this annual celebration is their competitive scholarship program and Essay cont contest that is designed to inspire and Empower high school and middle school students from all backgrounds to
003achieve higher education three students from East Lancing Public Schools were honored this year khed tfur one of two 2024 Mark s McDaniel Legacy scholarship award winners Elena Andrews was second place sa contest winner in the 9th through 11th grade group and Gabrielle Ferguson was third place sa contest winner in the 9th through 11th grade group multiple Board of aded members district and building Administration teachers and students were present to recognize and congratulates our congratulate our students and their families and the second item is sophomore Josh D received an award from the MSU Fri Trailblazer competition earlier this evening actually for submitting a creative project on a nuclear physicist Trailblazer this is a national contest so congrats to Josh that's all I have tonight aome it's impressive yes is there any other recognition from the board
004all right next on our agenda is our student Representatives report do we have anything yeah right go ahead awesome first semester is over so that means no more exams and a fresh start on the Gradebook our boys varsity basketball um Team continues undefeated on an 11-0 run and our girls varsity is also doing well playing some tough games but still maintaining a 5 to four record uh our theater Pro program whoa our theater program is working fast towards March 8th for the opening of our spring musical mam Mia catch it catch it on opening day or come see another showing on March 9th 15th 16th or 17th students are starting to get excited for winter formal dance on February 10th just a couple of short weeks away but one of the events I'm most looking
005forward to is our upcoming Multicultural assembly join us on February 2nd during our double Excel to con to celebrate a variety of cultures through their clothing dances and songs lastly when I spoke to the students today about what they'd like me to talk to the school board about basically every single person said please ask Miss Leo for a snow day which I told them I cannot fluence but I'm a woman of the people that is all thank you love it and uh forgive me for asking but do you pronounce your name is it Rari rarig rarig thank you Miss rarig and I've read uh I've been following the news reports and all the coverage of the ba the the boys basketball team in their number one ranking which is exciting all right let's move on
006to our superintendent report Miss Leo yep there seems to be a little movement about um uh student voice in snow days um they would like their voice heard uh regarding snow days and uh before I think it was before uh the first one we had that day uh my inbox was um I would say sprinkled probably more like uh peppered with um Middle School uh emails from middle school students um telling me how treacherous the driving was which I replied okay but you aren't driving yet you know you're so but their their passenger uh riding skills must have been yes treacherous and uh you know trying to pull together some good rationale for why we should continue to have more um so stay tuned uh I'll just today again won't be an evening call our
007our team of County superintendents will be convening tomorrow morning at 5:00 a.m. after we check the roads to um make a decision so uh doesn't look like we'll have enough information to make that call tonight um also before I get to my formal report I do want to add one more thing to recognition uh for those of you who are unaware January is National Schoolboard recognition month so I do want to recognize the folks sitting around this table and truste Edsel uh for their um volunteerism in sitting on this board and um showing up for our students and staff and families um every week uh sometimes more than every two weeks uh with committee meetings and such so we do uh an we're going to do an annual photo coming up in February so we
008will have a photo that replaces last year's um so we'll do a little event coming up here at the 2 February board meeting um that I'll put more information to all of you out about um I want to share a little bit about uh training that we held here in the district last Tuesday we held kind of a followup to our critical incident response training by doing a um active shooter scenario training this one was just with our administrative team along with um our director our uh District mental health coordinator and our Behavior system specialist so that um a few reasons administrators had a kind of a heads up and experience about what it was going to look like for staff so that we could frontload information to staff and best prepare them um also
009to give um the trainers that secure education Consultants some feedback about um East Lancing and how we do things and what we might want to individualize uh for our district or kind of be a little more proactive in providing our lens to their training in terms of how we can um find that good balance between preparing our staff and not um causing uh additional uh emotional anguish to them in this process and um we also brought some folks on to hear it all so we can prepare support for our people so the um Heather and Paul were there as well in addition to Matt to um kind of look at it from the lens of uh what when might our staff need some support and how will we be prepared to uh support them so
010we participated in that as an admin team Tuesday uh Tuesday evening and then we have uh building um specific training scheduled uh so that every staff will practice it at their buildings in one of the afternoons coming up on one of our um last three PD days so we have three buildings who will participate in that um with three different trainers from sec in February three buildings in March and then our last two buildings will do it in April so um that was very successful eye openening and um needed so that we're well prepared um Board of Education um has new officers I just want to share um from our January our last meeting in January 8th so as you see Chris Martin is our new president Dr Elizabeth Lions is our vice president Dr
011kath edel is our Treasurer and Terry T Ferris Highland is our secretary um just a reminder also I announced this before winter break but I know it's a busy time for folks so we have no classes scheduled February 13th in recognition of the one-year anniversary of the MSU campus shootings um this will allow our staff families and students to observe and honor this day in a way that is Meaningful to them um the office of resource and support coordination at Michigan state is planning for a student L day of action and also an evening Community remembrance event on that day and uh more information about the details of those events is coming I saw little update in the newspaper today um but there still are details that will be forthcoming uh that we'll have uh
012before our or at our board meeting February 12th which will be the night before this um little update on our safety security accessibility bond proposal our pre-qualification application for the proposed Bond project has been submitted to the Department of Treasury following the board's approval at our last meeting upon approval by the Department of Treasury the Board of Education will take action to call the May 7th election um that will be done in February and we're working right now on information materials and a communication plan to get information out to all of our community members members and our next board meeting is scheduled for February 12th 2024 thank you thank you superintendent Leo are there any questions for our superintendent based on the superintendent's report all right let's move along the next item on the agenda
013is the consent agenda as a reminder there is no discussion uh on the consent agenda um is there a motion move the Board of Education to approve the consent agenda to include the following a designation of depositories the Board of Education approves the following financial institutions in which district funds may be deposited One commerica Bank two Huntington National Bank three Michigan liquid asset fund Mila Mila something MF second that all right it was moved by trusty Chambers seconded by trustee Holbrook all in favor hi any opposed the motion carries unanimously next on our agenda is public comment is there any public comment today Miss hore uh while she's bringing that up uh I'll remind everybody who's present that if you'd like to make public comment uh you need to fill out one of the blue
014forms and we have a statement that we read prior to public comment this is the opportunity to address the board speakers are to confine their remarks to 5 minutes if a speaker requires more than 5 minutes after all the persons who have requested to speak during this part of the meeting have spoken that speaker will be allowed additional time the superintendent or other District staff may comment to clear up or avoid significant misunderstandings and the first uh blue sheet I have appears to be from o I can't it's having a hard time reading is it Joshua hwit Joshua huitt and it is is uh hiring a diverse teaching staff hello everybody um so my name is Josh R HT um I have two boys that attend Glen Ken Elementary and I'm also on the Human
015Rights Commission um I normally stay behind the scenes I normally have been emailing um Dory Leo back and forth for probably like the last three years regarding this issue but um I figured I'll show up today just to show my face sheet she's never met me in person before um so just saying hello um so basically um we've been going back and forth um the last email I sent um to you Dory was dated December 28th and I asked two specific questions that I didn't receive a response to so I'm just showing up today to pretty much just ask the same questions um I just wanted to know if there's any specific goal for um the school district to hire more black teachers um I actually went to morning celebration at Glen K Elementary today
016and I know it's totally anecdotal but I didn't see a single um black teacher um I have been receiving some information from you um regarding um a diverse Workforce specifically teachers in East Lansing and you have been receiv receiving sending me that information so I just want to say thank you um and my second question is does the school district actually have a mission statement specific to Dei so that's the only two questions I need an answer to thank you right thank you Mr hwit and um I understand that you have questions Mr huitt it's not our practice to have a question and answer at these meetings so um I I know that you've been in contact with superintendent Leo and there may be some additional information forthcoming in the coming days U is there
017any additional public comment I'll call this last call for public comment all right so we'll close out public comment and move on to the next items on our agenda we have uh some special guests today from McDonald Middle School we have principal Amy Martin and assistant principal John Atkinson and they're uh they're here for a restorative J Justice and McDonald Middle School presentation so come on up good evening uh first of all just want to introduce myself Amy Martin principal of McDonald this is my ninth year uh at the middle school and I'm here with John ainson who is our assistant principal and how many years for you Mr ainson I think this is 16 my 16 so uh first of all thank you for uh this opportunity when superintendent Leo uh let all of
018the principles know that we would be having opportunity to present to the board uh I think uh Mr tinson and I without hesitation uh wanted to present our kind of philosophy and where we have been with restorative justice uh like I said this is my ninth year and we've been doing restorative justice and part of our practices at the middle school since even before it was a thing uh so so tonight we're super excited about uh the success that it has had at the middle school and continues to have and uh I am going to turn it over to John uh to kind of go over the overview and then we'll talk a little bit more about the history and then the most exciting part is our student outcome data so go ahead thank you
019um before we get into the data about you know what we're doing with restor to Justice at the middle school any the outcomes that we've had with it we thought that there should be just a at least a little bit of a brief presentation of what is restorative justice I think a lot of people have an idea of what it is and some people may not so we just kind of want to go over it's a very very brief um kind of overview of what restorative justice is so first I want to talk about traditional discipline in the school setting um where um you ask what rule was broken um you ask who broke the rule so there is this aggressor who broke the rule and what do they deserve so the authority makes the
020decisions on the consequences on the aggressor but the victim is largely outside of that process the rule was broken what does that person deserve and what is a person in Authority going to do to that aggressor to make them pay for what they did restorative justice is much different so restorative discipline instead of asking what rule was broken it asked what harm was done you can see that the person responsible and the person affected are part of the process with members of the community um you ask who was harmed and what are those that person who was harmed what are their needs related to the incident and who has an obligation to address those needs or how can we heal the harm part of this whole process is building competency um Public Safety and accountability
021you know we talk about often the middle school or anywhere then accountability can look two different ways it can be punitive I'm going to hold you responsible or um accountable in a punitive way or we're going to do this together in a restorative way to be accountable to the person that you harmed um next slide please so basically the kind of old way that I and probably many of you kind of um is that not going there we go just need a minute the the traditional sense was what are we going to do to the person who broke the rule restorative discipline asks what are we going to do together with the person who was responsible and to those who are affected the next is called the social discipline on window and really when you're
022looking at um how we want to do things in a system way restoratively on the bottom axis you have a high level of support so that is um that you are empathic with your students you're giving them opportunity to to have their voice to be heard um and then on the left hand um or the vertical um axis is the control so having um significant amount of of accountability throughout the processes that you have at the at the at the institution and the more that the higher you are on both of those accesses you want to end up kind of on the right hand side of that line you want to be doing things with because if you don't have you have a high level of support So a very empathic community one where there
023is people that are listening um and um and things like that but you don't have that high level of support where you don't have a high systems it become become a very permissive type of environment when you do the other way where you have a high level of support but not a lot of the high or high level of control but not the high level of support where you take that empathy out you're just doing things to the person so you want to kind of exist on that top right hand portion of the line when you're looking at doing things restoratively so there are three basic stages when you do a restorative justice Circle um you know so and what that looks like is that the person affected and the responsible parties um and often
024with members of the community as well and a give an example of that in a in a moment we fa meet face to face in a circle before any decision is made about um how we're going to heal the harm and they sit together as a community and they work through a three-stage process where um each person basically answers these very basic questions what happened so everyone has an opportunity to discuss um how um what happened in the incident from their perspective who has been affected and how and I'll tell you in my experience that can be the most powerful part especially in the Middle School of the restorative justice process because a lot of times um even an adults but especially Middle School sometimes when a middle school student is um um acting out
025in a behavior they're not thinking about the immediate impact and the further down impact that their behavior may have on other people and it's not just the impact it's going to have on them oh I might get in trouble for this and it's not just about the person they may be doing things too A lot of times they have a hard time thinking about there's someone who just witnessed this event that we're traumatized that person now has to go home or there has to be a phone call home because that person was harmed by me their grandparents are going to know about it the teachers are going to know about it um the community may know about it and so when we go through this process in a circle this is my personal favorite um
026part of a circle is really opening that up and so that um everyone involved in that Circle really sees how big of an impact their behavior may have and not just to people in that room and finally the last part of the circle and this is done collectively with everyone involved um the person impacted um the person responsible and members of the community okay we know what happened we know know who was affected how we're going to make things right as much as possible and I highlight it as much as possible because sometimes you can't completely heal the harm you can heal it as much as possible you can put some things in place um so that we hope that something doesn't happen again but sometimes there is harm that you just you can't completely
027um fill in all of those um voids there so we work as hard as possible to make things right so the recap for the what restor to justice is it's an approach to addressing conflict and misconduct that focuses on healing the harm rather than punishment and it values accountability over exclusion um oftentimes we will use Restort of Justice to reduce or eliminate exclusionary um discipline which Amy will go over that data later and we're really excited about that um it assumes that misconduct and conflict endure those directly involved um as well as the rest of the community it's not just about the people involved in the conflict and then rather than relying on just punishment or sort of Justice expect those who cause injuries to make things right um You and I was telling Amy
028this morning as I Was preparing this I was thinking so I'm a parent I'm a parent of of two children and you know they get in fight sometimes a lot of times and really it's parenting at its best like when I'm at my best when I feel the best as a parent I'm not kicking one of my kids out of my house for three days while the other one sits wondering what's going to happen when he comes back when I do parenting at my best I sit down with my two children we talk about what happened and we try to make it right and that's really what we're trying to do in the middle school I want to be clear though it doesn't mean that we're void of of punitive consequences as well because there
029is still a place for that and a and a balance for that but when the conditions are met this is how we prefer for for students to be accountable to one another I think I'm passing it to you okay all right all right so that's kind of what what RJ is and as I said this is a great opportunity because I think one of the pieces that we feel along this journey that we have really been missing is the education explaining what RJ is to the community and to our to our families when we talk about using RJ and often families and and understandably families will come to us uh very angry because their child has been harmed and they are the victim and they want to know what's going to be done to the
030other student and of course we we can't talk about disciplinary uh measures with other families but when we do talk about restorative justice as a means to repair the harm sometimes it's not quite fully understood so we're excited about this opportunity so that we can give our community a little bit more information about what it looks like and how we are implementing it at the middle school so just a history of MMS and uh this is predates me to becoming the principal of the Middle School um so from 2008 to 2016 RJ was kind of just somewhere in our building um it wasn't part of it wasn't ingrained in our community um the school Community it was outsourced to from a private company so we had a private company that came in and conducted circles
031and um it was kind of just some where down the hall I wasn't there it was my first year was I was a little bit a part of that but um a few staff members kind of understood what was what it was about but it just wasn't part of just wasn't part of what we did um it was separate so it was kind of like yes it's a great idea but nobody in our building really was was totally ingrained in that so that was 2016 that was the end of my first year um and then in 2017 the law changed uh so Zero Tolerance guidance changed from the state of Michigan and restorative practices uh became one of the seven factors that we must consider when we are considering exclusionary uh measures for students and
032discipline so 2017 I'll never forget I told John I said wouldn't it be awesome if we just had a year and we never suspended any students he's like yeah that would be great um and that definitely came back to um bite us pretty hard um with that because we were really leaning on RJ as our main way of trying to um hold our students accountable and and while it is great um but not on its own um and that we also lost our contract uh our contractual employee RJ specialist so it was kind of John and I just doing it on our own and I will tell you one thing um about restorative practices and restorative justice if you're going to do it and going to do it right it takes time it takes a
033lot of time and at that point uh we didn't have the support that we currently have in our building right now which we're going to talk about in a minute um but really what happened as a result of that like oh we're not going to suspend any students we're just going to do RJ um we really kind of ended up in that permissive um part of this uh diagram where we had a very high level of support but not holding our students um accountable in discipline and really setting limits for our students so we ended up in that quadrant which isn't the worst but um it certainly we had to rethink how we were approaching student discipline and holding students accountable um for Behavior then in 2021 22 um in 22 and 23 so two
034years ago last year uh we had uh the return of our contracted RJ specialist and uh full-time so previous years we had part-time RJ Specialists that would come in so a conflict would happened on a Thursday and the contract or the contractual employee didn't come back on Tuesday and if you know anything about middle school kids they've moved on from Thursday to Tuesday and it's like What conflict so uh wasn't very wasn't very impactful um we did the best we could with when we had certain situations and certainly um took advantage of that but um in in the last two years and we've had a full-time person it's just been um it's made a world of difference and conducting these RJ circles PE circles um we've also Incorporated classroom circles and just really having some
035deliberate ongoing work with our students and working with our school community and this is what we do it's part of who we are and what we do another big thing too is that we also have staff but also making sure that we are intentionally making sure that conditions are met for um an RJ for an RJ to occur so we certainly um if we have students in a situation where there's an imbalance of power between two students um we're certainly not going to put two students together who um would not be comfortable and and if we felt that there wasn't true remorse and and wanting to make things right with a student we would never do that for our students so that's the last couple of years and then this year uh 23 24 I
036will say out of my nine years this has been the best year um in McDonald Middle School by far um we thank Dory we thank the board for approving uh three positions that we have um we did have Miss Addie last year she was a contract she was one of our contract employees and she did such an amazing job that we advocated to Dory that we really needed her to be an elps employee because she deals with probably I would say 75 to 80% of our Middle School drama and the kidss love her and so um she's young and she's um super you know she's she's fun and the kids really relate to her but also the work that she does you're going to see in our student outcome data and then uh we also
037have a dean of Student Success Mr White and he has been an amazing addition to um that position and so he was a previous PE teacher and has stepped into that role and is doing an awesome job and then um if you haven't heard of a gentleman named Mr Andy Wells um he is our student advocate in this position at the middle school is right up his alley um he's doing such a great job for us and uh we called them our Dream Team because we could not do the work that we are doing at the middle school um without these three individuals and it's not just the positions but it's the people filling the positions that are making the difference so thank you for that support so now we can talk about about kind
038of the trends that we've seen the last um couple years and I I actually forgot to mention I told you I was going to give you an an example of restorative justice or where it may use members of the community um we had a a pretty big incident last year that resulted in our kids being sent home when we had a a flood inside of the the building that was you know caused by um the fire alarm being set off in a in a district that would use traditional discipline that likely would have been brought to to you all to make a decision over um it was a pretty serious deal but instead the thing that happened is that the community came together around the individual responsible and it wasn't just um members of the
039the school community that were on that were sort of Justice team but the um local fire inspector was on that um Resort of justice peace Circle and the resolution was beautiful you know that that that kept the student in school um with us and finding different ways to make things right so that's an example kind of on a big scale of when you use restorative justice instead of um just punitive um and because this is a district that allows us to do this we probably save 90 days of suspension from a school or from a student possibly I mean it is just that's the impact that it has it's a very real impact so sorry I meant to give that example earlier so we'll talk about some some Trends and this data that we're talking
040about right now this is just miss Addie okay Miss Addie is our full-time reor of of Restort of Justice um coordinator but I want to make clear we all do Restort of Justice every day all day long but this is kind of the data of the work that she is doing just to kind of give you an idea of how much is being done just by one person and this data is just as as of right before the winter break um so she had had 315 formal restorative justice meetings um um up from from end of August until then and those were peace circles classroom circles small groups um we had some staff conf circles that were um that I actually participated in in in one of those as well um her things aren't just
041the things we do restoratively they're not just responsive to incidents but they're preventative as well so for example a restorative justice person is is helping to run our um tier 2 Trails um social emotional learning um curriculum small groups and we're on the second cohort of that so we had one cohort in the fall starting um a second cohort now um we have calculated or I should say she has calculated um that as of that date that there had been specific 30 days of of out of school suspension suspension saved because of the use of restor to Justice either by completely eliminating the need for the the the suspension and what that would look like would be at the end of the meeting you know when we talk about healing as much harm as possible
042that really at the end of the Restort to Justice meeting with members of the community that the whole circle as a whole were saying no we we've got this figured out out okay then we want you here right sometimes it's to eliminate um days of suspension um but so far as at that point have been 30 days of out of school which is just amazing this is just kind of a little I say don't worry I've already argued it with the students I put that up because I'll get that often when I'll get a phone call from a teacher the middle of the day hey Mr Akins I need to let you know that this happened during passing time don't worry I've already rjed it with the students and I put that up there just
043to indicate that it is part of the culture of what we do in the school and it's part of the culture of what everyone has done um and another example what if um some of our teachers utilize this if there's sometimes the Middle School classes can get disruptive I'm shocking I know shocking and sometimes when that happens or if there's been an event that's taken place in the classroom maybe that was traumatic the teacher will say Okay Circle up Circle up and the students know what that means it took us I think 16 years to get to this point um and and specifically the last two I think you're back off yes I am you got the good stuff I have the good stuff all right this is some student outcome data that Miss Addie
044has collected uh these are Anonymous surveys and they're voluntary so not all student we don't make students complete these surveys but they are Anonymous um and voluntary and specific to P circles uh so getting students together to formulate that plan and how are we going to to um heal the harm that's been done so 30 responses do you feel the problem is fixed 93 over 93% yes you can go the next one RJ helps me feel understood and respected 100% of the students agree to that RJ helps me understand others 90 almost 97% of our students agree with that RJ can help solve other conflicts 100% agree with that and if you answered yes the last question has it been easier to focus on academics since fixing the problem and 97 almost 97% of our
045students who responded said yes and then this is just looking at our Trends marking period one from the last three years um you can see the trend not only uh total days of suspension going down but also that closing of the Gap um and this is really due to our Dream Team and their work and focusing on um looking at different ways of um not just utilizing RJ well utilizing RJ but also um looking at ways and John's going to mention just an idea of how we utilize RJ and traditional U traditional form of consequences for students and how that is helping us close that Gap so because of the supports that we have received specifically within the last two years um we really have been able to finally land and that upper right hand
046quadrant because the level of the level of support has always been there but because of the systems that we're able to put in place because of our three positions we were able to make sure that communication that there is follow through that there is follow through with the students as you see that the the outcome surveys are done two to four weeks later to make sure that the problem is still solved and we are able to do this specifically because you all provided these resources to us so we'll need them next year too um so we're talking about you know that accountability and this kind of balance of restorative imp punitive because we do have to live in depa of sometimes but I want to tell you what that looks like too before we wrap
047up and um and let's use a a student like a fight which we haven't thankfully had a lot of this year but we have had some so in the past if a student was in a fight at the at the middle school um pretty typical middle schools in in the area be you know probably around 3 Day school suspension um now when and we're talking about a fight like you know we may treat an assault would be different we're talking about two people getting into a fight reciprocal kind of situation now what we do kids get into a fight at at lunchtime when you're getting to a fight that's a pretty intense situation the emotions are high I mean and the capability of being able to go back to the classroom are non-existent so we
048say when the fight happens okay we're assigning you a 3-day after school suspension that's what our um you know our practices are going to be however you're going to go home for the rest of the day because you all need a minute to cool off okay you're going to come back to school tomorrow and you're not going to go to a classroom but you're going to go to our in school support room and you're going to meet with Miss Addie or Mr White or Mr Wells or Miss Martin or myself or a combination of those and whoever else might need to be in there that was you know impacted by the conflict that that had happened the day before and you're going to do a restorative justice Circle there's going to be an intake with
049each of the individuals so that you know that the person leading the circle has a full understanding of what happened prior to meeting together at a circle and then they're going to meet together formally in a circle to try to heal the harm as much as possible and I've seen that process take anywhere from an hour to three hours because some of them are more more complicated but the cool thing is this if they go through the circle and they come to agreement they get to stay in school they don't necessarily go to class they stay in in in in school support room where they're able to receive instruction they're able to receive their um um assignments for the day um we have Mr Wells Mr White teachers comeing to help them to make sure
050that they don't fall apart fall behind on their on their schoolwork and unlike other in school suspension type situations and in school support we don't want them to sit silently looking at the board all day we want them talking to each other so they've gone through this process of healing the harm with each other and then they spend the rest of the day together in a room with adults of course that are that are there solidifying that they have healed the harm between the two of them and then we knock that third day off go what what would that serve any anyone to keep a student out of class any longer so when it works the best that's what it looks like and it just has a one of the coolest moments that I saw
051this year when we really were able to start this process and we're and again we're we're able to do this because of what you have given us it was one of the very first ones that we did this there with and actually the Bight had to happen out after school but um it was still on school property so they they were going to be receiving an out of school for three days but they came back the next day and they did restorative justice and I actually got to lead that Circle and um I left them in the in school suspension room and thinking that felt like a that felt pretty good and I walked by about 30 minutes later and here these two kids are they're sitting at a table playing Shoots and Ladders together
052it was their idea you know hey let's play a game together and it was just like that's exactly what we want to have happen so instead of these two kids staying home for 3 Days missing 21 hours of instruction times two they're back in school not worrying about what's going to happen when we come back because they fixed it they're playing Shoots and Ladders and then they don't fall behind on their instruction that when it looks when it when the conditions are met as how Restort of Justice looks and that's why we do it the end thank you for listening to us ramble on about restorative justice but I hope you get a sense that we're pretty passionate about it and we hope that we can continue the work and like I said jna said
053um we appreciate the staff that has been able to help us with the work so questions for us are there any questions for Miss Martin and Mr rinson yes um first I appreciate that you acknowledged that um you had a a rock start and that you were able to to course correct because I think that's really important for the community to hear because you know people have had different experiences and they may have felt like their experience didn't work well so it's great to hear that you you're aware of that and you've um taken steps to address that um I was just curious um what I have a couple questions but one of them is what's the most challenging element of restorative justice so when you transition from a traditional discipline to restorative justice what
054do you think was the most difficult thing to overcome I would say the very beginning of my time in at McDonald Middle School I would say a little bit was buyin especially from some staff members who want to know what's going to be done to this student um that has harmed this other student so I think I think over time we have spent a lot of time training our staff and getting that buy in but I think sometimes for some staff members it's just getting that buying initially but then it just becomes part of who we are um and over time some of those people have decided maybe this isn't the place for me and we want to go somewhere else and this is just part of our culture here at McDonald middle school and
055I would say in our district than speak to that too the hardest part that the most difficult experience that I have with fortive Justice this doesn't happen very often is when you believe that the conditions were met you know you believe that all parties involved are ready to enter into restora to justice that it really at some point is a sub subjective call you know as as a person as you know us having Collective a lot of experience at the middle school and then when you bring them together and then you you find out and you usually find out quickly that maybe one of the person doesn't have the buying that you thought either side you know whether it was a person impacted a person who you know caused a harm and you can imagine
056that imbalance of power that can happen so for me I agree with Amy about systems that was the hardest part I would add with students too you like making sure that the students is a whole new what we sted with Justice was but it part of the practice is just you you have to make sure that those conditions are there because if you do that you really risk um victimizing um you know uh someone who's already been been been harmed so um you know that's that doesn't happen too often though but when that does happen that's that's a tough one just to be upfront and I think our students too previous to having Miss Addie who's been there full-time where they have relationship with her and we were doing circles as administrators and as counselors
057but I think having her present and being such a part of our community on a daily basis that question of oh nothing's being done I think think the students really realize there's a lot that we do with students and holding students accountable because I think students look at what did they do what are they going to get you know as a consequence and we've just really worked hard in shifting that mindset not only of our you know not only of our staff and how we're handling discipline but really our students too do you this is uh pretty new stuff for me so I appreciate the education um how do you find that it is with students that are getting into the same trouble over and over so with traditional discipline we see a lot of
058the same kids um going through sort of the same motions repeatedly have you seen any difference between um restorative justice and traditional discipline in that regard like in terms of someone doing repeat behaviors yeah so just to be real you know that's you know when we talk about the balance that we have had to found find in a school um that's someone where the conditions are just not being met you know in terms of being able to offer restorative justice and that would also be one of the hardest parts is when you know you do restore to Justice and then and you see our data is very good but it's not perfect right I was like 96% the problem has been solved so that's still that 4% where the problem hasn't been solved and it's
059you know happening again and those are the ones that you have to do um probably move into more traditional um discipline and Contex quences um still restoratively you know you know you can you can do consequences with a restorative heart and and understanding one another and you know their circumstances and the other factors um that they may have to make disciplinary decisions but um you know students although students are always eligible to receive restorative practices from us they may not be eligible to receive a peace Circle um any longer if they're continuing that behavior especially directed towards the same person okay thank you yep um I appreciate you sharing kind of the journey here of um you know where we've started and kind of some of the wrong turns misdirections Circle back um to where
060we are now and um I know Resort of justice is kind of like um getting a lot of attention these days um but this is a journey that we've been on for quite a while and um one of the things that I think is maybe so useful for for people to hear here is um just how there is the the the way Restort of justice is supposed to be done the experts will say you know when it goes wrong A lot of times it's about well what were you really doing restorative justice it's that Implement implementation piece and I think what is so um useful about the narrative that you just shared and the journey that um our district has been on is that there is this education piece about what it's supposed supposed to
061be and then meshing that with who are we as a district how is this going to work for us what's the right team that needs to be involved there's not a right there's not a right way to do this right there's not a pull it off the textbook shelf and you put these three elements together and Bam that's how you do sort of Justice there's an aspect of well but what is the right element here for us and I really appreciate that you all have not thrown away over sort of just this doesn't work that you've kept at it to say no okay like we got to bring the right people what resources do we need oh we found this person that's working really well what else do we need to add to this okay
062let's keep working at it I so appreciate that you all have kept going and tried to figure out and you know I'm sure it's still not quite perfect we've got some good data that shows that we're moving in the right direction but um you know it's also Middle School right like there's I've got a middle schooler there's a developmental aspect here here and if you guys had cracked the code I would feel terrible as a parent because there are days where I'm like didn't we just have this conversation yesterday didn't we just have this exact same conversation two days ago right like so you know like there's a developmental aspect that I have to remember too as a parent that like you know we're still figuring a lot of things out um and that's just
063going to take time and we're going to just move through that as they just get a little older and You' got a whole building full of them um related to that I just wanted to say anecdotally from our own experience in our household um you know lyxen has participated in a few of these circles and just him feeling validated that his voice is being heard and how um powerful that has been for him that authenticity of like no I really feel like they heard me and he will make sure that his voice is heard when he wants it to be heard um and if he didn't feel like it was really being cons considered um he would also let that be known um and so I appreciate that this isn't something that's just being done
064because it's in Vogue or you know like we feel like this is something we need to check some boxes at least for my you know n of one in the chambers's household there are at least some um additional factors that are letting me know that um and his little friends that these kids feel like they're being cared about and I appreciate that so thank you so much for all of your efforts and keeping at it and even when it's hard and it feels like I'm sure there have been many I know there have been times where it feels like is this even working um not giving up and continuing to stick with it so thank you so much for all of your hard work any other questions or comments for our presenters yeah I guess
065there wasn't a question in there sorry just a quick question how many staffers are usually involved in the circles when it's between say two two students it depends circles can really range in size you know if they they can range in size from having you know two staff members and you know two two students all the way to I mean I've been in circles with you know you don't want to really get above you know seven or eight people but sometimes it takes that many um one of the things that's the nice part of the process you know like my rule my title assistant principal you know can take certain connotations and so sometimes I make sure that um a student will also have a an adult Advocate with them so whoever they decide that
066is so that there's an adult in the room also even know that I know I have their best interests at heart but they may be skeptical because I'm the discipline guy so that we make sure that there is you know someone there that as a support to that person so it it really can vary but you don't want to get too high because it's it can get complicated as you can imagine great thank you I also have a quick question so I'm really thinking about your your dream team and um the importance of like student voice in the dream team is there space to have student voice as part of that dream team I I don't know if I know there isn't there like a student committee that or something that could pull from I
067just I'm thinking about students you know again there's I know that you have you said that you have a staff advocate for the students but who best advocate for the students you know yeah we yeah also yeah friend Advocates can join as well yes you know that would ALS it's not just limited to having an adult person with them but also a a friend who would be a support as well as a voice for sure because often they're impacted anyways by what happened you know thanks for asking well uh Mr ainson answered one of the questions from the board with a phrase that I'm very familiar with as an attorney it depends and what I what I love about that Mr ainson and Miss Martin too is that it shows that youve really engaged with
068the needs of the students and the community and it goes to something Dr Chambers said there's no off-the-shelf version of this programming and this is something that you have to know the kids you have to know the people that are involved you got to meet them where they are and it seems like you've gone to Great Links to do that I'm really impressed and I hope that you're able to continue with this success story all right thank you both for being here thank you thank you so thank you the next item on our agenda are a few act or one action item that contains a number of subaction items I think that with these policies we can probably do it in one motion wouldn't you agree Dr Chambers I think that is very much the
069case yes okay can I get a motion I move the board oh man okay Board of Education I just realized what this means um approves the revisions to the following board policies as presented policy 4108 Union activity and representation 2 policy 42073 party Contracting three policy 442r assignment and transfer policy 4403 R Performance avaluation effective July 1st 2024 policy 4404 performance-based compensation 6 4405 R reduction force and recall effective July 1 2024 s policy 4407 discipline 8 policy 448 termination 9 policy 4409 R non-renewal effective July 1 2024 there are a few of these that won't go into effect until July uh 10 July uh policy 44 4503 are performance evaluation effective July 1 2024 and 11 policy 4504 Performance Based compensation for administrators supervisors I'll second that right the motion was made by truste
070Chambers seconded by uh truste Holbrook is there any discussion on these policy revision I'll just say and um former policy chair trusty edel is not here but these are all I believe all of them are um just fairly minor changes to existing policy that are coming from trun um related to just making sure that our policy uh manual remains updated and um in alignment with the law many of them are connected to the new legislation around um no longer prohibited bargaining subjects that uh was passed as part of um the last budget some of these will go in effect uh not till July 1 and some um before that so these update our uh policies to now be in alignment with the new legislation um around prohibited bargaining subjects that are no longer prohibited I
071think it's safe to say that we are that these policies are just another manifestation of the benefits we get from subscribing to the policy service yeah with trun because these are probably the types of things that would slide through the cracks in previous regimes um so uh I'm grateful to the policy committee for their work on that over the past several years yes thank you thank you are we prepared to move to a vote on this topic I believe so all right all in favor of the motion as presented I I any opposed the motion carries unanimously the next item on our agenda is committee reports I know that uh our committees became final a week or so ago and there's been a lot of action trying to schedule meetings I don't know if we've
072got any scheduled but I'll start with academic and Technology I believe that's trusty Lions um I have not been back in my email this until I think I sent anyways uh we don't have a date yet um it should be coming up soon um I'll check my email I'm assuming there's some emails in there oh yeah girl there's all right there's a lot of emails okay good I mean I have I've been in there I just haven't been in there this today last three hours all right thank you trusty Lions um next up is facilities trusty feris Highland yep same we're working to coordinate the meeting so yeah we'll we'll get them in the books very good thank you uh the next on our list is the finance committee I know truste edil is out
073today is there a scheduled meeting uh Mr Pew January 29th at 1 p.m. will be the next meeting for the finance committee next on the agenda is intergovernmental relations trusty Torres we're working on that getting that scheduled and um I'll talk I have a suggestion after the Mee and we can talk about oh great thank you um Personnel committee there is uh no scheduled meeting and I won't don't anticipate any meetings for some time just because of the nature of that committee uh the policy committee trustee Chambers yeah we are working to schedule some but I did want to make one comment related to um public comment um we do not have a current um policy related to Dei but we are we have been working on a racial Equity policy and that's on the
074agenda to continue working on we hope to have that passed soon um but yeah we we're working on a racial Equity policy specifically a racial Equity policy thank you for that uh trusty Chambers uh announcements uh there's a couple things first up our next regularly scheduled meeting will be Monday February 12th at 7 pm so look forward to that uh trustee or sorry superintendent L you said that we have a photo coming up uh the second meeting of February we just are scheduling it just today so that's why I didn't even make my updates yet um but it'll be on the right before the meeting on the 26th very good yep I'll get information out have to schedule my my hair due right before the 26th yeah uh the other announcement that I wanted to
075bring to everybody's attention the city of East Lancing is hosting a parliamentary training that I emailed folks about uh last week um we should probably let uh Marie Wix know in the next couple days if we plan to attend I know I'm planning to participate and a couple others at the table have have expressed interest so um if you'd like I can ask for us but obviously you can RCP individually as well are there any other announcements I just wanted to um comment too on you know our ongoing efforts to diversify our teaching staff um you know my son also went to Glen Karen and um had two black teachers when he was there and both of those teachers are no longer with our district for various reasons and it's been an ongoing challenge I
076know are all committed to um doing what we can it's not just an East Lancing issue I work at MSU on our teacher education program our cohorts are increasingly incoming teacher candidates are increasingly um white and women and so it's a it's a pipeline issue that we um need to figure out systematically and still we need to not let that has not stopped us we're doing really great things to um diversify by our um Administration and our principles and um we've done really great things there but our our teacher and staff diversity is lacking we know that um I appreciate efforts that we have been doing in HR to address these things and be more proactive and you know and yeah we still need more black teachers I agree with you it's been and it's
077um when I think about my son's experience and the two teachers that he had and the profound impact that that had on his experience you know it's just it weighs on me it weighs on me so we've got work to do weighs I know it weighs on all of us not just me well and again thank you chy Chambers I think that's really important to be said so thank you anything further all right so I want to try something new um just my little my little piece of flare to add on to our agenda so rather than me adjourning the meeting I'm going to ask for a motion to adjourn in a second and see if we vote because sometimes we're kind of sluggish with our motions and seconds but I think that on this
078particular motion we might not be sluggish so uh can I get a motion to adjourn moved all right we have a motion to adjourn from trusty Chambers is there a second oh all in favor say I all post we are adjourned thank you thank you all