001uh hello welcome to our school board meeting I'm going to call this meeting to order at this time and start with the Pledge of Allegiance one nation okay Michelle would you do the roll call please I'm Miss Hamilton present this is brown Mrs Mitchell here this is Zachary present Miss hunt here in Mrs Fitzgerald here at this point I would like to amend a call for an amendment um of the agenda after our last meeting I spoke with other board members as well as members of the public the general consensus was that we should keep the five-minute time limit policy as written as president I will still be able to shorten the time whenever necessary just like right now in addition at the beginning of public comment I will ask the participants refrained from negative
002comments about other people and keep their topics to agenda items or other board business law personal tax so at this point we're still looking at a five minute time frame for public comment so I'd like to pull number 90 from there that's 89 no no it's 89. 22 23.89 oh that's old agenda I'm sorry okay 90. motion support thank you very much any discussion yes some discussion so um I am not opposing us pulling this from the agenda um actually I will be opposing this Holiness from the agenda um part of the reason why I would like for us to keep this on the agenda give me a hot second so I can pull my notes out we need to have discussion around this this topic of public comment um anyways so um here I
003am all right so um like I said I'll be opposing us pulling us from the agenda um we are so I'm glad that we've decided to keep it at five minutes um because we definitely need to moving into the three-minute time frame is moving definitely in the wrong direction um had we been continuing on in that direction so thankfully we're not but most of us did campaign um on um more parental involvement and our model here at the school is where Community comes together so just for the community's sake the reason why I wanted to have comments is Because unless an item is on the agenda this board doesn't want us to have any discussion on it um sometimes getting items on the agenda is difficult we don't have any set parameters or set of
004specifics as to how to get items on the agenda so when an item is on the agenda it allows us an opportunity to be able to discuss it so that's why I wanted to have some conversation around at least with myself um so we we um like I said we our our motto is where Community comes together what we need to be doing um in addition to keeping the five minutes is also adding opportunity for the board and the community to actually dialogue together there are many school districts across the country where they offer these Community forums where members of the community can come and sit in a room just like you are right now we sit in the room at the same time you all sit at the table and we actually dialogue back
005and forth what you notice right now in our district is that the only way for you all to have a conversation in a community type Forum um is to do it in this one-way dialogue there's never any real-time conversation going on which we could actually have that um sometimes you all are sending emails we get oftentimes people are sitting at this table and saying No one's responding to my email except one person a lot oftentimes that's myself who they're saying who's responded to their messages um that's that's a problem if communities coming together and we're having and we are saying that that's who we are then we should actually have that as our practice as well um so what I would like to see and like I said and I know this is probably going
006to be pulled today which is you know it is what it is but what we should be looking for and with the community I want you all to know that we could have we could have Community forums we could come and sit with you all once a month once every three or four months and actually dialogue back and forth with you all you could actually tell us that you could you could send us your emails and we could have a um a board Norm we could actually have a board Norm that says board members will respond to um to members of the community not just those that they are in agreement with we could actually have those types of things so I did just want to put that out there that I'll be saying no
007to voting this off of the agenda because what I would like to see us do is to expand our public participation and again unless it's on the agenda that's the only time we can have a conversation about it thank you motion any other discussion okay all those in favor aye leave it five minutes yeah all in the favor I'm in favor aye lip oh yeah but that's not on the agenda that's going to happen that's important and Keisha so no again for those reasons that I already mentioned okay thank you motion passes um at this point I would like to um ask for approval of the agenda so moved so thank you all in favor aye aye opposed thank you thank you at this point I would like to turn the being over for the
008superintendent's report to our superintendent Jeff bill thank you very much and welcome to the month of March um if I could I want to I want to take just a couple minutes and um I'm going to ask for a moment of silence for Allison dulos Allison was a high school teacher who was has unfortunately passed away and um last week it's been a difficult Journey for our staff and our students Allison was a tremendous member of the Viking family for those of you that don't know she's been with us for three years she taught 10th and 11th grade English but she sponsored NHS she worked I believe on another club she did after school tutoring she worked out at scmv she was an Adjunct professor at Jackson college she literally was everywhere and she was
009one of those teachers that built relationships with kids and her impact goes far beyond her content manner last week we we called our crisis team together and we have some phenomenal counselors throughout and worked with our our staff and our students and then yesterday we had the opportunity to go to the the memorial service about 50 students and and a host of Staff members were able to attend I spoke with the father this morning in in the outpouring from Jackson Public Schools really speaks to the type of person that Allison was and the impact that that continues to Ripple throughout our community so at this time if I could I'd ask for a moment of silence to honor a Alice and doulos thank you everyone um first up on the superintendent's report Maureen Keane is
010the special ed director at the assistant superintendent for special education for the Jackson County Intermediate School District and Casey babineau is the communications director for the Jackson Intermediate School District and they are here to talk about the special education millage renewal coming to the ballot this coming May I'll speak to it if you need but ladies the microphone is yours please come and share um what this is about so that our community and our board understands uh thank you for having us tonight so as Jeff mentioned the special education millage renewal is on the ballot for the vote on May 2nd this is a five-year 1.54 mil property tax um millage that was last voted on and approved in 2017. so this renewal is very important to all students in Jackson County I know it's
011a special ed millage and that's how it is um it comes out on the ballot but a hundred percent of the revenue generated from this millage goes back to our local districts the ISD does not receive any of any of the funding from this district and it is used for um to pay for the mandatory special education costs at each District's incur that are not reimbursed by state or federal government so without those without the millage those expenses still exist they're still mandatory we have to provide them but the money would come blankly from the school district's general fund and would impact programming for all kids not just special ed students so in this millage renewal no new taxes are being proposed it's really just a straight renewal and if it's approved it will generate
012approximately 8.8 million dollars for our County distributed back to all the local districts for the that's just for the 23-24 school year um this year alone the ISD will reimburse 11 million 293 468 thousand dollars to the school districts uh this approximately currently 73 are just under 73 of the total unreimbursed costs so districts uh put all their costs on there what's called the 40 94 and 4096 reports send to the state the state reimburses a portion and then what's left is the unreimbursed cost so right now we're able to reimburse almost 73 percent of those costs um go ahead I'm just going to point out we have an example here of how much your District received from the reimbursement that millage was not in place that number would have looked like 797 000. so
013you can see the difference is substantial in terms of um what the millage brings in in terms of covering those expanding sessions your District already has some information on your website thank you very much for putting that up we this is a very worthy cause like we said for all um students and we are happy to answer any questions you might have so is this kind of EX just extending it is like we're asking for a renewal for five more years so if we didn't extend it with the property taxes go down well theoretically costs would go down yes but the cost to the districts would go up if that makes sense so yes individual Property Owners taxes would decrease some but it's not significant and actually I mean it's significant I don't want to
014say that but uh with a home with a market value of a hundred thousand dollars you would pay 77 a year or 642 a month so yes it's costs thank you yeah that's thank you this so this is not a um something we vote on as far someplace else that like is this uh second um countywide body in Jackson County on that and you you what do you what did you want the board to do what I mean what are we just supporting the information well I hope you support okay I don't know if there's something okay okay thank you nope but I'm happy to answer any questions in case you're asked about it actually I do have one more question for you is there do do we ever have um conversations with individuals who
015are um who benefit from this uh millage has there ever been any like Community conversations from our special education Community around the benefits of this or is that something that they propose to Garner support or well we do talk through it with our parent advisory committee um but no we've never had like a recently haven't had a public forum that might be a good idea all right thank you very much appreciate you being here all right uh Jeremy Patterson is not with us so we'll bump his secondary uh update into the month of April and Julie Baker I'm gonna give you an opportunity to speak uh to the elementary schools good evening everyone um we are in one of the most exciting months for um elementary schools because it's reading month and so we have
016each of us I know have had an opportunity to go into classrooms all over the district and we have community members from all over that are coming in and our celebrity readers in the classrooms so some really interesting cool things happening around that lots of Book Fairs happening in classrooms right now and some other really exciting things so looking at different schools we have a continued effort to implement PBIS at Cascades and they are following the Three B's which is be safe be respectful be responsible and then also really focusing in on building Healthy Communities so student health is is a big Focus for them lots of reading month activities and um they had the ISD Math and Science consultant come out to professional learning communities to talk to teachers there to just talk about
017the things that are available to them and how she can support them so they are building their knowledge base around the the resources that are available in Jackson through the ISD for students in their classrooms they're also doing a lot with their site-based leadership team and that's the shout out for the month from Cascades there are quite a few teachers that have elected to be part of that and they're building a very strong welcoming climate and community at Cascades so a lot of hard work going into that at Dibble they had the Parkside jazz band come in I didn't get to see that I'm kind of bummed about that again working on their Healthy Communities building the healthy communities they have an after school club and they are still doing their extended day program after
018school um they did there or will be having their students their fifth grade students to our park side this is a really another really exciting time of year in the spring for our families and our fifth grade students to put their eyes on Parkside for the first time some of them and really get to know what is available there because a lot of times you know there's there's sort of a you know a talk on the street about what Parkside is but until you go you really don't know how exciting it is to be at Parkside there are things there that students have never had an opportunity to do their first you know their first push at having organized Sports and being able to do that after school and just so many other opportunities for
019them choir and gym and band and just great opportunities so we're always we love that you know it's spring and we get to send our students over to sign up for their classes for next year and also take a tour and really get you know their first glimpse of what next year will look like for them so that is something that all of our our buildings are working on lots of guest readers they had an author come through named Leah Henderson and that was a really well attended great opportunity for them and that something that Dibble does every year they bring an author in who talks about the writing process and then works with classrooms you know talking to them about what it means to be a writer or what it means to be an
020illustrator great things happening there they're giving away bikes and that's something that the Jackson Kiwanis Club does for us when we talk about our Community Partnerships they always donate two bikes to each building as an incentive for the reading program and so right now students are working on getting their reading minutes in or their or their books in for the month and getting their tickets put in for that drawing so we'll see some pretty exciting drawings happen this week um they're also giving away Kindle Fires lots of really great decorated doors most of them will have a focus on a favorite book for that classroom so if you walk through right now you'll see that at Dibble the firemen and the policemen are the judges of those rooms and you'll also have seen a lot
021of our principals have been to JTV this month they're gearing up not only to share about reading month but also because we're heading into our Roundup Kindergarten Roundup coming up in the month of April so um all of our buildings did active I'm sorry that's not true this month Dibble did active shooter training and it was very uh it was it was a wonderful training that was provided by the Jackson Police Department and um they learned quite a bit and they saw that they really need to make sure that they're making time to revisit this every month as a staff so that they stay well versed in in what's happening um and you know what they need to do in the case of an emergency um their call outs are Mrs Anderson Mrs Rose and
022Mrs Wright they do a fan fantastic job with their students and they work in her absence in Mrs kuhn's absence with students and staff and parents so they are the people that are in charge when she needs to go to an admin meeting or she needs to go to her own training so some really great teachers in charge in that building um at Hunt they also were lucky enough to have the Parkside jazz band come in they did a countdown or a count up sorry it's count count day um and they were up by 19. um and they do um lock-ins they do them regularly and they're a really fun activity for our students I think we've talked about those before but it's an opportunity for kids to come in and do something really fun
023uh without their parents while their parents have a little bit of extra time um Summit Orthodontics came in and presented to third grade classrooms and the Jackson Mayor came in and spoke to the young five through second grade students lots of great things happening there they have decorated doors also um and let's see oh I don't know if you saw the videos but Russell Davis has come in to be a one of our readers in the classrooms and he's a book rapper and he is fantastically talented I I just none of us want to read after he's been in there because it's not going to go well there's no way to measure up so lots of guest readers coming in uh the Jackson Symphony Orchestra is getting ready to do a concert for the students
024at Hunt and everybody's very excited about about spring break coming up they're call our call outs are Mrs Smith Lori Smith she is in the tutorial and detention room um she goes above and beyond to work with students to help them de-escalate and get back to class and then Jordan I'm not going to say it right phobi Phoebe I think it's Foley she is a third grade teacher at Hunt Elementary and she is in charge of technology and so she's their tech liaison and she is I hear nothing but good things about her um really going above and beyond to help make sure that everybody is working um Montessori is they've got Smiles on Wheels they have shot Brits that came in and that that is a program that has been at Shark Park for
025a while so this is a first year for them to have shop rates come in they do coding and Robotics for third through fifth graders some great opportunities for college to Career things happening there for our younger kids and students are graduating some of them out of the after school program so they don't they're not they're not meeting those requirements anymore because they've moved up so we've got some successes happening there um so the Lego Club is still going strong through the Kiwanis Club and they are Mr Campbell also had an opportunity to go to JTV for the Kindergarten Roundup now he's been there a few times but we've got a few I think Mrs Jones it was her first time going on JTV and there's always a mixed reaction the first time you go
026because there's that nervousness but he's wonderful to be with so they've got mileage club starting up and then their call outs are Chandra Howard she's in charge of the PTO she does work tirelessly I can attest to that having been a previous principal there and she's been there for a long time Alan Burnham is a building sub and I hear his name constantly he jumps in whenever needed and then Kristen Benson who's working hard as a coach between two buildings there and John R Lewis at Northeast we have a before school club happening with our building Healthy Communities the Center for Family Health is reopening at Northeast and they had a wonderful literacy fun night the name are this last over the month here um they also did their fifth grade Park Side tour um
027and they're working really hard on their school-wide Essentials for literacy in that building um their call outs are bar palsy and Amy Du Bois they are coordinating their professional learning communities which happens at least once a month and they look at data and they do planning together collaboratively Dave salcida is their school social worker he goes above and beyond to make sure that he's doing the best for students and he helps them he was a part of the the crisis um work he pushed in at Jackson high over the last week when they received the sad news that they did Lindsay Adams runs restorative circles at Northeast and we know that that is something that works really well for our students learning how to handle conflict that that happens um lots of Staff jumping in
028to help with classroom coverage as needed Alexis harbottle Jordan Wallace and the reading month committee you could see they put together a lot of really wonderful activities for students and families there and then the board members and Reynolds admin who read that month this month so we probably passed each other in the hallway over there Sharp Park as usual has a lot of great things happening they have the shop Ritz they had Summit orthodontic come in and they also have that after school program for building healthy kids or communities I know that they are getting started with a running program for students and one North kitchen provided lunch for the fifth grade classroom they reduced the number of Iris that haven't they that students have in that building so for grades one through three they
029went from 45 eye reps and an irip is an individual reading Improvement plan or instructional plan and it's for students that are that are reading below grade level and it's an intervention that we put in place the plan that we put in place for students who are at risk of being retained in third grade due to the read by three grade three reading Law and so they went from 44 students that needed that plan to 22. they cut it in half so that's fantastic they also had a visiting author Aaron zens for March's reading month they had a book fair and they pulled in quite a bit of money and Art In Action that program that is completely run by by parents and that building is still going strong their call outs are Emily killhorn
030she is the parent volunteer for the book fair who's just gone above and beyond Katie Bradley another parent volunteer who does art in action and then Jennifer Murphy is a special education TC who is doing an amazing job at Sharp Park and last but not least we have Lewis Lewis did their Dei student Forum so we um so Dr Johnson and and Company came in and met with students and listen got you know collected information from student voices in that building they're continuing with their monthly perfect attendance award and they have a magic bus um School sorry Magic School Bus field trip um they participated in Napa this year or or this last month and a culture family event that happened around that as well and then of course they had their Valentine's Day parties
031and other fun things happening in the building so lots of lots of great things happening we're still working on our attendance in in all of our buildings trying to make sure that the number of students that are not considered chronically truant is falling and we're seeing our number come up just a little bit in our daily our daily and week amounts or our monthly rates and then also working on finding all those alternatives for suspension for students so really helping students that are working on identifying and regulating emotion and helping them to reset when they they have a bad moment so they can get back to class lots of hard work happening in elementary any questions um thank you for the update Julie can you just speak to the eye ribs again yes um you
032said it went from 44 44 to 22 yes students students what happened differently what new initiatives were they presented or provided um in that building and we do what's called what I need and in all of our elementary buildings but they are Mrs Lusby and her instructional coach Jennifer Slatt they work very hard to pull data on a weekly basis on every student and and it's something that you know we're we're working to implement at that level in every building but they get down to the standard level with every student and um and they see exactly where they need help and they provide lessons on that specific standard and then they check back again to see if they have mastered it so that's happening um and they're and they're just very intentional about the way
033that they do it they're very targeted and they're really I'll be honest missing the um oh gosh the assessment that we used to do they missed their inspect assessment because it really gave them that data and so we're looking at what we can do to make sure that we give that back to them but that's the kind of data that they use above and beyond nwea where they can see of this standard what pieces of this does this child have and what pieces are they missing and then they they she her she herself and Mrs slat will go out and find lessons for those students and get them assigned to groups and make sure that they're focusing on those specific standards so just a follow-up question thank you how long are the students assessed or
034evaluated to determine um most of what we're looking at are formative assessments that happen as they they teach the groups they'll finish up by checking to see if students got it or didn't get it some of that information will come out of end of unit tests end of week tests and then sometimes they'll they'll do another running record just to see if they've if we've moved up in terms of comprehension or something else but they'll check back in again to see how successful the lesson was and then use that information to determine next steps for students so it depends I mean if they're successful and they're able to do that and two or three lessons then that student moves on to the next thing that they need to do sometimes it takes longer than that
035sometimes we have tier three students that none of that is working and so we try some other approaches so it's an individual Journey absolutely everything is very differentiated at the elementary level because it just has to be we're all little flowers that were blooming at different rates so Julia I had a question come to me from a parent and I'm gonna I was I'll take it back a little bit so I'm going to take you back a little bit um what is the biggest challenge your elementary schools face if you can look at all the things we talk about like attendance and just Health in general and reading and do you have one kind of overwhelming issue the Elementary's office I would say that it really it comes down to what I would call access
036to the curriculum and and that that's an issue for two reasons it's an issue because of attendance which has been really really um it's been heavily impacted by covet we're really having trouble getting students back to attending in person the way that they did prior to covid and we're working very hard because we know that that isn't just something that um you know that is going to be taken care of you know by referring somebody for punishment we know that it has to do with student engagement wanting you know having students want to get to school right so we're working on those things and the second piece of that has to do with student mental health and student Behavior which it has a double impact students that are struggling with their behaviors because they because
037of mental health issues or because they would like to go home and and are acting out or acting out because they're just having trouble regulating their emotions they miss instruction when that's all occurring and every time you know we have to address some some pretty significant behaviors and clear a classroom or just stop to address those for any period of time everyone else is losing instructional time those are the things that we're really working on right now and that's why we are having everybody do CPI classes that's why we're looking at having everybody receive restorative practices training and why we're also looking at having people get trauma-informed certification because those pieces once we get them in place we have excellent tier one instruction we that we'll always be tweaking It's always important to do that
038every year you have different kids you need to change your instruction and tweak it to fit their needs but we've got to increase their access to the curriculum thank you that warmed my heart that you guys are all aware of that that's been a continuing problem a concern is the behavioral aspect and how to fix it but how to help there's no question that our little people are they're struggling yes it's been a hard recovery from covet thank you very much Julie I appreciate that some more questions for you Julie um the I rip you might have uh mentioned what that is what is it exactly it's called an individual reading instructional plan and it's something that's required by the read by grade 3 legislation so no that's been I think it was 2014 I'd
039have to look for sure when that when when that was actually enacted but it's been in place for quite a while now and it requires retention in grade three for students that don't hit a certain cut score and so um unless we you know as a district come up with something else so and so sorry Julie just because I have a specific question so the the information around I rip you're telling us just so I can understand I just have to process it we're getting um we we're understanding what I rip is the information that you shared is the response that we were given it's another piece that's required that students that meet the requirements which are established by the assessments that we give in the district and other pieces of data students that qualify
040for an irip they um they we meet with those parents and we put a plan in place for them for small group instruction individual instruction in whichever areas they're struggling in so question for you Julie I don't want to cut you off but I just want to get to a specific question just because I'm trying to understand because I could be confused right now was this the this is what lesbian is doing at Shark Park is that what you're saying is that the receipt it's required just or actually Statewide so everything I might be mixing up what you were talking about is she the one with the 44 down to two yeah over the iris she's just she what she did in her report was to share some successes that she had so we we
041and we usually will add our kindergarteners in because we mostly have non-readers the first part of the year they start reading about halfway through so we add kindergartners on so you know we usually see an increase around that time but what she's size is the the work that they've been doing for the last few years in getting this this process and the system in place paid off to the point that the students that have had in Ira since the beginning of the year half of them no longer qualify for one so the IRA according to legislation just because it sounds like you know you're just telling me that it has been around since 2014. I believe what have we been doing prior to what we've been doing Ira since it's been what would have been
042our responses it sounds like she's had a great success with this response this this is a new response sound like what has been our responses prior to it's it's similar to what she's doing but she's very she and her team are very targeted because she's been so insistent upon things like in the inspect assessment that are looking at things down to the standards-based level so that if I if a student is having trouble with figurative language but they they they have a good handle on similes but we found out oh um let's metaphors are the issue then we then we can Target metaphors only okay so she's just very targeted in what she does we have some excellent things happening in all buildings part of our response also were the lli kits that we purchased
043um so those are used by teachers in all the buildings the the learning let's see literacy learning lab kits that we purchased it's been a couple of years now but those are an intervention kit that we purchased like a reading kit for the help yes yep so and that looks at the actual reading level of the student do we have data around how those are are been or you know benefiting our students um they we're seeing good things happen with them but we don't have official data back on them we're we see good um we see good things happening when in every building with Iris but moving 50 of the kids off yeah is is um is exceptional it is yep it's great stuff okay more questions for did you have somebody I'm sorry no
044okay sorry I got another question for you um the covert attendance um you mentioned and I might have some more about the the other the elementary students I just got to open my phone up but um because I take notes in my phone so just if you see me writing folks I take notes in here and on here um the code with attendance do we I know that we're having a lot of you know I'm still trying to pull them back in et cetera do we have we ever compared what the numbers look like before covet to the numbers afterwards what's that look like um well just looking at um our our chronically truant numbers uh we are not out of line with the rest of the state of Michigan there are there are districts
045that have much higher numbers but right now um and actually I've seen numbers from last year and I think we were at 48 of our students would have qualified as chronically truant which was over 10 absences for the year so it's a low bar but we had you know over half of our students met it and went way over it in terms of I'd be happy if we were only missing 10 you know we're looking at 30 50 100 days of absence that we're seeing from some kids um but um prior to that we were nowhere near halfway we were looking at we may have had 70 percent of students that qualified and that's what it looked like Statewide the numbers don't look much better at the state level in their districts that are looking
046at 68 of their students are chronically truant we don't want to be there we want you know we want to get them back in we know that they have to be here to learn I wonder how much that you know how much the illness of covet itself also might be impacting you know it might not just be not wanting to be in school it might actually be there sick and you know I mean that's probably some of that in there you know that data you know yeah they they do we call home at the elementary level they're calling home to find out why they're not there and if that's the case that's you know that's different than what we're seeing a lot of times we're having other issues you said John Lewis they have the
047Dei student voice do we um this is is this the first school that they've done that in no actually Dr Johnson is going to all of the schools and doing a student Forum okay so at least that's my understanding he's been to several of the elementary schools this is just the one that he did most recently okay what's that look like this is pulling all the kids in like the the gym and they they I think that they mostly focus on third through fifth grade students and um and they'll pull those students and just ask them questions about their school experience and collect that what are we doing with that data we'll be studying it as soon as we're done with and then probably trying to implement something different or oh yeah yeah looking at
048how we can change programs based on you know what we're hearing from our students this is for Jeff I'd like to see that data when it's done you know um you know just some some data around that you know I'd like to see I know you have to probably uh you know summarize it but I'd like to see that um more questions for you the opportunities that we have at Lewis um what parent opportunities are available at Lewis um you know to kind of help even with the Sharp Park I rip type stuff is there are there opportunities for parents to be able to support that at John R Lewis I know we've had some some issues with uh the scores that Louis as far as State uh the scores that Lewis are pretty low
049are there opportunities at Lewis for our parents to maybe support the irip uh situation I'm sure she would welcome it in all of our schools when we look at those irip interventions for the most part they are being done by parapros that have been trained by retired teachers that have been trained I think that we would welcome any kind of volunteers that we could get and and that would be true in any building thank you one last question for you and this might be for Jeff as well um so some of the we talked about this uh sorry Julie I was drawing a blank we talked about this I think in November December but um a lot of much of our reports are you know all the good things that are going on um or
050how we're you know um you know taken from 44 to 22 which is excellent information that we definitely want to hear about um I would can we hear more of that more of you know this is what's what's going on this is you know these are some of the challenges that this this school is having maybe one from every Stu every school this is a challenge that this school is having this is the response that we've given we'll let you know how you know in the coming months how the data plays out on whether or not this is working versus just you know we definitely want to hear the good stuff you know we also want to hear what what are we actually doing about because we have a lot of challenges our data you
051know says some some pretty serious things and um sometimes we don't hear how we are addressing that data directly so it'd be nice to hear some of that okay thank you thank you Julie at this point I would like to move on to the consent agenda do I have a motion for approval thank you moved and approved everyone in favor say aye aye opposed the same thank you pastors okay at this point we are going to have citizens address the board and I have five and I would like to read you off in your order so you kind of know where you are and I have to keep stopping and trying to figure out who's next uh first we have Cheryl Simonetti then Danita Bentley then Leland Snooks than William Hastings and Johnny orendello Joni
052orendello Johnny Johnny okay that's our five so Michelle will keep track on our timer here for the five minutes and let's start with Cheryl Simonetti thank you um I would like to address a false narrative that is being communicated to our families in Jackson Public Schools excuse me families are being told on social media that they are giving Jackson Public Schools at least nine thousand dollars per student to attend and while it's true that Jackson Public Schools receives about nine thousand dollars from the state part of which comes from income taxes and property taxes which parents may or may not be contributing to but the false impression that parents themselves are paying nine thousand dollars per student out of their pocket is very misleading parents are obviously choosing which district the state allocates their money
053to which is much different from the message that they are getting I would expect that a school board who is demanding transparency from their District conduct themselves in the same manner and give accurate information to their constituents you have parents thinking that if their kids were not going to JPS they would have an extra nine thousand dollars in their pocket and that's just not true shame on you and I also think it's a shame that you have board members telling their constituents that they represent a district that does not value each student really thank you Cheryl donate a Bentley for reading month um so Donita Bentley hi I'm back again um I just wanted to come and check in again I appreciate um as I've been coming to the meetings that I'm hearing more and
054more questions um and some more and more um demanding of information so I appreciate that that makes me feel like I'm being heard because I know others are asking for it as well I also just wanted to say you know I've said before and I'm here before that I know this district has a lot of great things to offer my own children are in this district and have been since kindergarten I teach in this district and I love this District which is why I'm here because I believe if you love something you fight for it and so I just want to continue to urge all of us who have the power to do so to continue excuse me continue down the path of making us better which means being willing to address the things that
055we need to work on last month I compared us to a dysfunctional family um a lot of families most families are probably dysfunctional to some a point but the only way to heal and get better is to admit where the problems are and to be willing to work on them I love hearing that we are going to hopefully be getting trauma training for the Educators for teachers I would love that I've had some I would love to have more I know we have opportunities right here in this com in this commit and Community for free trauma training I would love that for that to be a place for us to start but I think that's crucial for every teacher every administrator to have that so that we can adequately serve the population of students that
056we're serving so I'm excited to hear that that is being talked about and hopefully going to happen and that's actually one of my passion issues my other area that I've talked to you about is Dei I think for us to be truly impactful with our Dei stuff we need to have some kind of plan of action which probably should start here with you and then come down we probably need some kind of committee that's made up of board members administrators uh teachers parapros as well parents and probably students as well and they need to be on one committee that's able to look at the whole district and start coming up with an entire plan we've got a good start we're training people and that's a place to start but if we don't make a plan
057to go further we won't go further we'll train people will be done and that's not going to lead to the systems change that's actually going to get us to serving students equitably and if you're serving students equitably that means every student who looks in every kind of way who has every kind of educational need will be getting what they need that's not happening right now we're trying but without a true Dei plan we are not going to get there so that's another passion of mine as part of both Dei and the trauma training I really feel like our district needs to do better on restorative justice I know that we don't like our suspension numbers and we want them to be better restorative justice is the way to go these kids need to see that
058my actions have consequence sequences but I'm still loved and I'm still cared about and my needs are still going to be met and I know that sometimes we have no other need but or no other option but to suspend but without a true restorative justice practice that's district-wide that also is embedded with a good Dei plan the schools can't meet the needs of the students in the ways that we need to so those are three of my big passions and I hope that we can continue to move forward on those and we can't move forward on any of those unless we can continue to work to become more and more transparent and admit that we don't have it figured out that we are trying to do better and that we need help and there is
059plenty of help right here in this community to help us with restorative justice to help us with Dei and I hope that we tap into that and I hope that we do better like I said I do love this District I'm here to fight for this District because I love it and I hope that we can continue down that path before I run out of time I want to say that when I was here last month I followed up with an email to all of you I heard from three of you two of the ones that I've heard from I have personal relationships with and they're probably the last two that I need to meet with so I'm disappointed that I didn't hear from more of you it doesn't say much to me about how
060seriously you're taking your position you were elected by us to serve us I sent you a link the email and I didn't get one peep from most of the board and that's really disappointing for me thank you thank you now we have Leland all right so I sent you all an email with an Excel spreadsheet in it which I'm sure you have all been diligent as school board members and pulled it up looked at it and familiarized herself with it I'm going to piggyback off that I also emailed numerous board members and did not hear back but from one so thank you I appreciate that so looking at that data table I broke things down by math and English language arts reading scores for Parkside and JPS and I wish that uh Mr Peterson Patterson
061whatever his name is was here so that he could hear some real numbers I got this from the State Education website and mischools.org so if you want to notice the majority of your students and the percentage did not have a passing score since 2012 in either of those categories so I think you want to ask your administrators about some facts so you have them before you those were purported or so reported to the state and as you can see most of those who are underserved and not passing or of the color to community black and Latino so I think that our community needs to be aware of that they need to be able to see that directed towards it and I think our Board needs to do something about it there are people here that
062do care about our students me one of them I do love education that's why I'm getting my doctorate and I want to emphasize that and on that note I think it's very funny that you're going to have or pull someone from subbing in the district me after last month's board meeting after Ira's concerns about gaslighting and whatnot and when edistaff tells me that there is no reason given for this action by the district makes no sense and terrible no sense that is a disgusting practice you are hurting for Subs you have parents students and teachers asking me personally to be sub and you're going to pull me for no reason after I bring some things to light after a board meeting coincidence no that's not the case HR and the superintendent make that decision also
063I've had many lengthy conversations with previous teachers and current teachers in the district they've left for lack of support they don't feel like there's current support and I want you guys to know this because if we can't support our teachers then we can't they can't support the students so do we really have the child's best interest if we can't even support those that have the child's best interest come on now so here's the challenge to the board I agree this was set by a board member let's talk about the negative things and the solutions to those negative things ask how many children were sent out of their classrooms that day ask how many students were sent home per week ask how many students were suspended and why per month you got to have these hard
064talks if we want to move forward and I hope you utilize your resources that you have here in the community some of us are assets and do want to help and it would start by not pulling them from subbing from a district thank you so I'd like to say that I'm surprised that a member of the school board specifically trustee Hamilton has never heard about a Landmark Education law in the state of Michigan that requires students to know to how to read by third grade or they are not supposed to move on um even before I ever came to a single board meeting I was aware of that law you seem to have a very basic level a poor awareness of Jackson education law no I'm correct I'm right and I would no I'm absolutely
065correct and moreover so the whole discussion about irip is going to be irrelevant because the the we're okay we're not going to do this folks folks we're going to keep our conversation civil but the whole the whole notion of Iraq is going to go away because as an addendum the new legislature is in the process of repealing that law so there you go so the results for the annual education report for JPS for 20 21 22 were posted on February 14th may I please could I please see a show of hands from anyone on the board who is actually closely read and scrutinized this information okay William I've read not scrutinized there's a lot to it I mean it's it's 90 90 pages so a positive thing about this report it does include the previous
066year's results okay to compare to the current rules result which is better than nothing but what is truly what is truly needed is a rolling five-year compendium of data that is well organized and easily accessible to parents because we're always talking about what happened before there was covered what happened before covid two data points two using just two years as data points back to back this really isn't enough and I I do believe this the school this district has the resources to do this fairly easily so the executive summary of this AER data is that basic proficiency Proficiency in math and English declined once again albeit mostly in line with Statewide declines there's lots of oddities and anomalies in the data and I have many questions so black proficiency for reading in the third grade
067clocked in at just 11.6 wow that is far lower than the reading proficiency for economically disadvantaged students 20 students with disabilities and ESL students or students whose parents speak another language at home so after two and a half years of a critical race Theory Queen and Dei devotee sitting on this board hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars a year marked for Dei initiative upon di initiative and black lives matter activists welcomed as hallowed guests into JPS during Black History Month there's literally literally nothing you look at the bottom line cut away the BS the bottom line is proficiency there is literally nothing to show for this arguably there's less than nothing since a hysterical focus on racial grievance and stoking racial hatred seems to hurt the students that we are all solemnly told that
068di would uplift the scores continue to drop Dei is a failure that needs to go imagine a business plan that promises specific results and not only does not move the needle forward even a fraction of an inch but delivers only worse and worse results over time instead if Dei work business plan it would be laughed out of the Executive Suite of every minimally competent business on planet Earth it's high time this board performs its due diligence and removes Dei completely from the Jackson Public Schools is there any reason as a board you are not doing your jobs in light of years and years of data showing unmistakable drift and decline in basic basic proficiency it's time to call a spade a spade and call Dei what it is an expensive distraction that benefits no one
069is destructive of race relations and divides student against student student against parent and rips fragile social bonds to shreds do you remember when an out-of-town rent a mob of black lives matter thugs came to Jackson to intimidate harass and assault JPS parents at a board meeting in January I certainly do yourself jerk the only beneficiaries of di are unprofessional make-believe diversity Consultants like like kaisha and her dear dear friend Nathaniel who who I'm not sure has been seen in in public since the day those mysterious proud Boy Flyers were dropped in the JPS parking lot hmm still waiting for the film of that to be released pictures 11. thank you Joni foreign thank you first I want to start out by saying thank you for updating the location I noticed that you added the media
070center and the second floor so that was really nice the only other thing I would ask is if they're signs because again walking down the floor is really blank but I really do appreciate that the location was updated um the other thing that I notice is in the notes all of this paperwork while sitting here going through it is that on the board Norms you cross off a lot of the things that were updated to it um and those the red that was crossed off it actually looks like that would reflect a board that reflects this community and allow the board members to participate in the way that it would be reflective of the community members that have voted them in um the next thing I would like to say about public comment and reducing
071the time is that not everyone is trained in oral advocacy like I am so three minutes making my public comment it's a lot easier for me but by reducing the time and releasing the agenda so late um a lot of people don't get the agenda until they're here and they're flipping through it and writing down their comments I mean I wrote down my comments and I can articulate it fairly easily but I'm a lawyer you guys are public servants you're politicians technically and there's teachers here they can do that quicker but essentially by reducing the time that adds anxiety it makes it harder for the people that are already afraid to speak to come up here and speak so essentially it's kind of like hushing the voice of people who may want to comment um
072so I just wanted to make you guys aware of that so I think the five minutes would be better um I put that I wanted to make a comment on the minutes and this is something that I noticed way back when I started paying attention to the boards because I wasn't always able to attend I made it more of a priority now but when I'd go back and look at the minutes they were very short it didn't really give me any insight into what the board members were commenting so when I looked at the minutes from last meeting it said that um board member Dobies had suggestions for the board Norms but that's all it said so that doesn't give me any context it doesn't give anyone that was missing those meetings any context um
073so one thing about the last meeting is that you guys talked about South Central Michigan virtual school and about expanding the location so that they can provide more tutoring services I was very upset about that because my daughter who is actually here today was harmed a lot by South Central Michigan virtual we transferred her there because she has an anxiety disorder and she was having a very difficult time in school we heard Julie talk about how there's a lot of things that happen with covet and my daughter she had a 504 plan she was in an IEP and then she worked her way to where she could manage and got down to a 504 when she was transferred there they didn't do any review of her 504 plan they did give her she talked to
074the counselor after I pushed and pushed and pushed so that she could do her classes until the end of June but there was a board policy and you guys still have not reviewed that board policy that kept her for walking for graduation and she didn't get told that until a week before graduation so my daughter who graduated and overcame all those obstacles did not get to walk on her graduation date with her peers and she it was justified because they said she'd get the walk next year which would be this year and she didn't take one class in this year and she finished on time according to her schedule so expanding that school I want to know why is it growing what is so special about the school there's zero instruction time the kids are
075doing a course where they go through for three weeks there's no special attention for kids that have special education I just found out that there is a contract I do restorative practices I help train for restorative practices what restorative training is being done at Jackson Public Schools I heard that they're getting trained in there but every time my organization Southeast dispute resolution Services come in and do a restorative practice I offer training and it gets turned down at Jackson Public Schools so what training is being done if it's star Common Wealth star Commonwealth service different types of children not children that go to Jackson Public Schools I don't know if you guys talk to the community but with it being at the Crossing my daughter my nieces that switched to the virtual school did not
076want to go in there for any tutoring Services because they didn't want to be seen walking into a school at the mall so they avoided it my daughter talked to a teacher one time one instance the whole time and if she had an assignment she couldn't complete she couldn't move forward so she was stuck she couldn't complete the class and she didn't get us into another class until she finished that class so that is a big thing for me our suspensions being avoided by moving kids into the virtual school is that why it's growing I don't know if there's any data that's been released on that so this is a big thing for me it really bothered me at that last meeting and I don't know how if it got approved or what's going on
077with that when I looked at the budget it looks like it was for discussion only and you had your attorney reviewing the contract at least and it's 10 years you're going to be locked into that I've seen my kids get kicked out of school because of their behaviors my personal children because of their behaviors that were viewed as children acting out when it was actually their disabilities and that's a big thing under the special education laws there's protections for that and if they're just being moved to another school those protections might not kick in and that's a lot of the kids I represent thank you hi everybody I just wanted to let you know my daughter is in the special ed classroom here at Jackson high and they did just a wonderful job on March
07815th with the basketball game here so they invited the folks from Lyle torrent to come down or kit young I think technically to come down to the gym and they played against them and they had everything from cheerleaders to concessions and so it was a normal basketball game and my daughter has not always wanted to be up front he has had a lot of things when you're a special ed parent you have a whole another Journey and so there's a whole journey behind this but she is now a junior here and she wants to come to school which was not the case when she was someplace else and she gets excited and she loves her teachers and what jonelle Hasselbeck is kind of the one who's leading that in her Circle and she's nominated this
079year for Jackson magazine's top teacher and she just does a wonderful job and so my daughter specifically you know she hasn't wanted to be up front she didn't want to play on the team last year and this year jonelle convinced her to sing the national anthem with her daughter and it was obviously as a parent you're just like oh my gosh and it doesn't matter how it sounded or what it looked like the fact that they gave her that opportunity it meant a lot to me and I was so proud of her and then she played on the team which she never would have done prior to this experience so that was really beautiful I don't know who the ref was if you could find out who the ref was I'd love to thank him
080because it was so fun to watch him kind of like position himself with the better players to give the other kids a chance with the ball which is basically the whole game and he just did such a beautiful job of just making sure and the kids looked out for each other and it was a beautiful experience so I came in I saw it last year too and it was awesome last year too but this year I decided I just needed to speak up and let you guys know it means a lot we chose Jackson high because my daughter's in special ed and my my son's in AP classes and on Robotics and on the soccer team and Jackson high was able to meet that variety of skill set in our family so I appreciate it
081I think the suggestion for a parent advocacy group with the special ed millage is a really great idea I'll look for that and see if there's opportunity because it's really it's such an important slice and I know it's a small percentage of students but I really appreciate it I appreciate the attention to that that population needs that's so different and Jackson Public School specific response to covid was different for the special ed students and that really stuck out to me it made my daughter's experience so much better she could not succeed at home with me for five days none of us were being successful in that environment and so the exception that was made for the special ed students to be able to come in person when maybe that wasn't appropriate to bring hundreds of
082students together I just really appreciated that individual attention so thanks everybody I need to introduce myself my name is Michael Young um I was kind of sitting back there trying to figure out whether I was going to say anything tonight um but what we just saw brings to like what I wanted to talk about anyway and we all swim in racism we're all involved in racism we all have a relationship with racism and whether we want to admit it or not we all do we have to decide what that relationship is going to look like so for me I come to understanding after long years of work and having took my own stuff and my own racism that I was brought in my dear grandfather dear grandmother my dear father and mother were raised in
083the same racist system that I was that's a very very difficult thing to admit but it is and so what I've come to understand is we interact in that in four ways we're either the white supremacist and racist who look at the world with that world view or we are complacent in that world you end that racism or we are anti-racist or we are being killed and maimed and oppressed because of a white supremacist racist system and we have to make the choice of who we're going to be and what we're going to do within a system that is racist and how are we going to interact with that system so what happens is what we saw tonight is is we were complacent in that racism so I apologize for my outburst I used to
084be a baseball coach and a football coach I can I can tap into that voice when I need to so I apologize for that Outburst except that I will challenge but when a white man steps out to microphone and questions the education of a black woman it is flat out racist period so when you're talking about board norms and you're talking about not personal comments you have a responsibility to call someone out when they're acting that way so when nobody said anything there was complacency in racism whenever someone steps up to the microphone and questions the education of a black woman a man a white man steps up and questions her education it is flat out racism and that's why spoke up and that's why I decided to step up to the microphone because we
085all need help in understanding how we white folk are going to interact with this system that we're involved in and we're going to decide to either be anti-racist or be complacent in it we must realize and we are complacent in it we uphold the white supremacist racist worldview now for the Board of Education what does that means if you don't realize that you're not looking at the data that black indigenous people of color are not receiving the same education as white kids the dad is there that's not this state that's not this County that's not this school district that's the system and we in Jackson County have to figure out what we're going to do about it we have to figure out what we're going to do in response to that system it starts at
086the stake it doesn't mean you're a bad board because of those outcomes but does mean you get to decide what you're going to do to go forward once that data is known that data has been known for a while and I'm sure it's been shared so you as a boarder we as a community have to figure out what we're going to do about it but the more we are complacent the more that racist and white supremacist system is ruining not just black people it's ruining our entire community and it's ruining our children and if we want to raise children that are going to be in this world you have to do difficult work and ask ourselves each individually what are we going to do about our own racism are we going to deal with it
087or not and are we going to ask ourselves the question how am I interacting with racism today so I challenge you to ask yourself that question and I also implore you I don't know if I could put an exclamation point on the end of that word implore make sure that you stand strong with Dei because that is the basis for how we continue to work and break down that racist system it is the only way that we don't be a racist school system this is dive deep into Dei and do the work it's difficult working it's not easy thank you [Applause] we got to get discussion items at this point um Community eligibility provision that is Marcus all right so as part of the healthy hunger free kids act of 2010 is included the community
088eligibility provision for school districts what this does is it allows school districts with a population of 40 or more that are directly certified to participate the program which means that that will allow school districts to offer free lunch and breakfast to all students within the district so this is something that the district APS has participated within since about and again this is something for discussion tonight with something that we authorize or reauthorize every year as part of our Consolidated Food Service national school lunch program grant that we apply for every year currently all of our JPS buildings are included in the program and this is we're allowed to do this for five years and then we need to reauthorize or look at it apply for it again we're in year three of five right now
089and again we look at the direct certification numbers every year to see if we need to reauthorize it before year five to kind of restart that clock which just gives us a longer line before we need to reauthorize it again again there's no cost to participating in the program it's only benefits again so we're saving not only our is everybody eligible for free meals throughout the day in the schools it saves time and uh delivering the the meal so we don't have to spend time checking people's IDs and balances to see whether they're a free or reduced or paid students so it's an efficient way to serve food as well so again this is paid for through meal claims that we are reimbursed through the USDA and again no action is required today this is
090for informational purposes we'll be back next month's officially approvement are there any questions about this did you get my did you get my email could you do some more explaining that for me pardon me yeah I did um I guess I Miss Hamilton if there's something specific so we have participated in the community eligibility provision uh for well since 2014 2015 and um we had It's A Five-Year Plan program we reset it every year by reauthorizing it so we come before the board and we're going to ask you next month to reauthorize um participation and that way we will start again with another brand we'll just keep that rolling five years if that makes sense so it's not it's not like the work has to start over this just allows us to extend the end
091date uh um Ms Hamilton you had asked and we'll talk a little bit about the pre-introduced lunch in the next question so I may be getting a little bit ahead of this the community eligibility provision and the free and reduced meal price provision are the the money comes from the same pot and both comes from the USDA but they are two programs um and we only participate in the free and reduced lunch program for sites that that offer that so we don't so for the bulk of our schools which is to say all of our physical plant buildings all JPS students receive the free lunch through the community eligibility provision however JPS serves food to other sites that Lyle torrent is an example that we used earlier today where they don't qualify or or meet
092the community eligibility provision and those students are qualified under the free and reduced lunch so it's a little bit of both we don't actually collect the the reintroduced lunch application as such the community eligibility provision doesn't do that instead we're using we follow the state's 31a at risk form and so that that information that household data is collected at the beginning of every year and that's important to us we we bang home the drum on making certain that we collect that information from our families because it's not just the the the community eligibility provision it's not just free lunches that we're talking about um it actually impacts us much deeper with at-risk uh funding so we see a lot of other state funding tied to those at-risk numbers and so when those applications don't come
093in we see a significant you know that that can significantly impact uh are at risk and I think if you go back to 2016 so this was the second year of the community eligibility provision so in the first year we said hey it's we qualify for the community eligibility provision the second year we didn't collect as weren't as rigorous in collecting that data and State reduced our available funding but by about 450 000 because there were not enough household data submissions so we're we're pretty diligent especially and this all happens in September we're pretty diligent about collecting that information in the beginning of the year because it ripples out and I mean it doesn't just touch the launch program it touches our tutoring program and our our education programs that are that take did I
094answer because I'm there was a lot there and I'm I'm hoping that quality yeah that definitely helps um so the seat cep that's for us we that's our district is the entire District gets that because of the the social the economic demographics of our district right yes that's correct okay so we're because we're under 40 or did you give me a number did you give me a number I can't remember I think it's over 70 percent of our district qualifies for basically free reduced lunch which is what the cep is correct and a free and reduced um forms because I got one and I'm like we're still collecting this data but we're not actually it's for the well one the frame reduces for allow torrent and then the data those forms are for other at-risk
095categories that's great thank you that's very helpful thank you thank you so we got it all right thank you Marcus I think I stole your thunder but I'll so this was a discussion item and we're going to come back and ask and these are you're going to see this by the way I know I got some new members you'll see cep come before you every year so next year right around this time we'll we'll bring it back before you will put us for discussion and we'll have a vote on it in April um this allows us to to again reauthorize for our Our Food Service program um but uh I guess before I move on or Marcus moves on is there any other questions on cep and then I like I said I don't know
096if I covered your pre-introduced lunch Marcus but yep we can go through the frame reduce real quick what you didn't cover um so again every year we must approve our participation in the free and reduced meal program so the USDA publishes reimbursement meal reimbursement rates for meals served the district's reimbursed for those rates however we also serve meals to paying adults visitors staff members so forth we do receive a reduced reimbursement for those meals as well so to be fair we do have to publish and charge meal rates for adults and visitors and the like so this item again will come back next month for approval just gives us an estimated pricing structure for those adult meals and and you notice the milk one some milk comes with every lunch but if you wish to
097purchase an extra milk you're able to do that so that's why that's on there as well so again just to piggyback off of Jeff this would be the same thing then we'll come back next month again for information tonight okay now we're on to our next uh 22 23 86 taher contract renewal markets all right so every year we must uh renew and look at and renew our or approve our next year's Food Service management contract with uh annually by the board so we did bring this to the March Finance facilities meeting uh last week again no action is required tonight as this is for discussion next month we will come back for an approval we do have a copy of the contract renewal in the agenda you'll see a few columns there the very
098first column is a mandated through MDES a two percent annual increase it's just part of the program and then we're also allowed to negotiate if we wish any additional increases we have we were asked by our company taher and so we did negotiate an additional two percent increase and again these are all paid through the Food Service fund and as you can see the costs the increases are minimal you know about a hundred dollars a month for the administrative fee would be the additional cost um so again for information tonight and we'll be back again next month for approval of their contractor now any questions I have a couple questions um so um this is just our they're the ones who make our food basically they uh so we contract Food Services through Tahoe they're
099our food service management company how long have they been doing it oh 2000 so a long time okay how do we um how do we assess their performance do we assess their performance not per se well obviously it's centered around our our fund balance our our as far as food service is concerned um so it I would tell you that that's probably the the most direct but we we certainly been pleased to a number of if they're bringing in guest chefs they're exposing our students to food and cultures from country so you know kind of this is one of those where we've been very pleased with their service and simply would be the recommendation to continue with that relation ship just to piggyback off that so every five the contract is a five-year contract so
100every five years we have to go out to bid our food service contract and we'll do an RFP I think we're in year four so next year we'll be actually bidding this contract out so we'll have proposals from many food service companies and over the years like Jeff has said we've we've been pleased with the service so we've stuck with them so I guess that would be a good measure as that RFP process um um so you know I understand this is just discussion right now um it if we've had them from since 2000 and I don't know if they're how how many rfps we get I don't know if it's like 10 or two or three or you know um but it I would like to see um an assessment of them so I
101understand we're pleased with them you know I don't know how what how we determine being pleased with them I don't know if it's you know if we're hearing from students if we're hearing from teachers if we're I don't know what how we're you know if it's just that you know all the food gets Disturbed on time so we don't I don't know what the measures are that says we're how or why we are pleased with them it'd be nice to know that especially since they seem to consistently get the uh the contract and even though we're having RFP process it's probably pretty um performative at this point since they've been getting it since 2000 this is two you know 23 years later it's probably just a performative process um so it would just be nice
102to hear you know what what our measurements are to say these these folks are why we continue to stick with them and you know um because maybe we shouldn't be I don't know not I don't have any issues with Tyler just so we know but I would like to know what is how we're measuring that because them having it for 23 years means that they're at least what four years out of those 20 or a five-year contract that um we're not um probably uh authentically engaging rfps you know because we don't because we're just you know because we're pleased so it'd just be nice to know how we're pleased and why and you know how we're measuring that so I can try I can't promise I'll find anything I can try to look back to
103the last RFP it predates myself so I'm not sure that would be and see if there's any notes or you know what would be there um we might need to create a process of you know of you know what you know of assessing them you know we should have that type of data this is this is why we like them you know this is you know are are there any complaints you know have we checked you know are we following up on any complaints you know that type of information should be assessed because again 23 years now they might be perfect you know they might be but they might not be and if we're not looking to see if we're not asking those questions then we're continuously using someone who might not be perfect again
104I have no issues with them but I just like the idea of us you know knowing that we have good reason to be pleased thank you yeah we can definitely look at something Marcus this is kind of like if you go to a restaurant you don't really have data but you have experiential data and those are kind of that's the kind of um decision making is on what they have done what they provided and they go so far out of the way and many of us have been in other districts and had other food service companies so um I just I don't know how you would get a hard data on something that is experiential I think I mean it's I mean we can look at a few different things right we can survey the
105buildings the principles and you know feel how the workers are you know I think it'd still be experiential though it's part of this tangible part of it's not right like so some of it's how they manage our program and how our fund balance how healthy our fund balances and as we talked about we have an access fund Council we're able to make a lot of improvements and some of it's not so we can we can look at a few things but when we look at upgrading Marcus to that point when we look at either renewing their contract or if we want to improve our food service outcomes if I want to I'm going to say this make the the meals more desirable and I recognize that school lunches have to meet a very strict federal
106guideline as far as the serving portion salt content size Etc um that uh but but I think there's opportunities to authentically engage with our student population and hear some student voice those are the the active users right like if as Pam said you know that that's the experience I don't know that it would be much more than that but we we could certainly look at that the data regarding the business end of it I don't think we wouldn't be recommending them if we had any concern we've seen a lot of retired however I certainly there's some ways to engage our students into take into account student voice so um I think that's something that certainly can be worked on I candidly it probably will not be ready before next month but certainly something that we
107would prior to to our RFP a year from now does that make sense thank you yeah I think uh I think maybe the process we would start maybe towards the end of this calendar year as we get look towards creating that RFP and and looking at some of that stuff at that time because we I mean qualitative data that's this experimental you know um portion that Pam is speaking about um it's as valid you know as quantitative you know I mean we can actually you know set a bar and make sure that they're reaching it you know I mean if we're not setting a bar if we have no bar if we have no expectations of them then they're providing mediocre service and again this is not Tahir because I don't know what they're doing
108that I'm not against them but they could easily be providing very mediocre service and because we're not assessing their their service they're providing you know um we don't know that you know maybe we should know that we should be we should have data about everything as a district so you know I think it's it's worth you know questioning that and finding out thank you okay Marcus this one I'm interested in is coming up after my husband's probably more interested in it he's asking me questions all the time the um at this number to the next question this is the the electric vehicle right yeah okay yep I figured this would be some of some interest tonight so as I know we've discussed this at this table and at the finance committee and for the last
109few months it seems like we applied for the epa's electrification bus rebate program and we are awarded to convert up to 21 of our diesel slash gas buses to Electric and so what we did is we've partnered with our energy advisors that Guaranteed Clean energy to help run this process for us we put out an RFP for what we're looking for and received several different types of responses so we received responses for just buses just infrastructure we receive responses from comp full service companies that would um kind of an all-in-one all-inclusive sort of package and we've reviewed them with with our partners at GCE um so at this time right now again tonight is for discussion we are the the proposals for just buses and infrastructures those are pretty easy to go through it's just
110clear-cut numbers we're right now working with our partners at GC and Highland electric one of the RFP submitters which is an all-inclusive service provider for this program meaning they would be in charge of procuring the buses the infrastructure all the engineering the construction that goes into converting part of our lab to accommodate the charging stations as well as managing the software that manages the charging of the buses it includes all of the electricity costs for the next 15 years so it's kind of a hedge and utility cost which is a nice little deal here so what I've done is I've actually invited we have two of the officers from Guaranty clean energy Colin and Andrew Bitner here to help with the discussion and if there's any questions that'll probably be a little bit more Technical
111and above my head so I would invite them to the table if there's any more discussion and questions to at this time any questions yes thank you Marcus I have questions yeah did you have a presentation too I don't know if you had a presentation first we have no presentation we are here at your service okay go ahead Marilyn so is Highlands the only quote that we got certainly not no we received several quotes I'll give you some specifics on that um and and first of all I'll just introduce myself real quick just so I can have an opportunity to look you all in the eyes and say congratulations uh my name is Andrew Bittner I'm the CEO of Guaranteed Clean Energy we're a sustainability-minded firm we're specialized in helping with school districts and so
112we're extraordinarily excited to be able to work uh with you guys but I will honestly say that we were extra extraordinarily uh happy because originally we were going to apply for three electric buses for your school district and we said you know what let's go For Broke and let's apply for everything and see what we can get done and we won 8.295 million dollars for this school district to make this conversion so not only are you going to have probably one of the most electric vehicles in Michigan but you've also been leaders in Energy Efficiency and in solar which is coming soon and this school district in Jackson is going to be likely one of the most sustainable communities in the state of Michigan if not in the country for a public school district your
113size we are incredibly proud to sing that from the mountaintops and have you guys be leaders in every area and so we are also taking this process extremely seriously as you can imagine so we just wanted to say thank you to the board for the opportunity to serve you and the public on this and Colin Bitner is our chief operating officer we have the two highest officers in our company on this project if that tells you what we care about this for your community so that being said you know 8.295 million dollars of of government money that we're able to directly put into your community is what this bid was around you would ask a great question there were four bus companies that came back in the quote we wrote intentionally in RFP around inclusiveness
114of all the different bidders because electric vehicles is a new type of transition for school districts and so we didn't want to pigeonhole as sustainability advisors that specialize in the space we didn't want a pigeonhole just a bus company or just a electric charging company or a turnkey solution we wanted to embrace all options so that all of the deals were on the table so we had four bus companies that came back two infrastructure companies and two buses as a service companies so we had eight separate types of responses to this project actually where did you win the money from you won it we want it so from the EPA we wanted uh Marcus submitted it um from the Environmental Protection Agency yes A specialized program around conversion to electric vehicles this was the first
115year this program existed not many communities knew about it of those that applied very few were awarded what you guys were awarded it was a top 10 award in the country that gives you any perspective of of the work that was done here by your Administration so since electricity is still um it's fossil fuel fuels that's how we get electricity still right yes right from a national scale uh Renewables is growing but I would say fossil fuels is unfortunately still a large part of our natural transition yeah so I was just worried about Heights in what perspective will we be able to still run the bus fleet I mean is there enough electricity to do all this that's obviously a macro yes question yes it is I can answer that from a macro perspective briefly
116if you'd like Okay um we obviously look at a lot of the different things that happen in the electric markets although I'm the CEO of a sustainability company I will tell you I love every little bit of sustainability and converting our economy to clean energy it will be a gradual transition uh our best friends in West Virginia down south are still running the Economy based off of coal and we need that as a transition over the next 10 years it pains me to say it but it's real and so we have to have those types of discussions but on the drive here I passed solar array after solar array I passed wind it is happening the specific way that this could affect this community if we have a significant amount of the fleet which is
11721 of the buses of over 50 buses we made also the decision to not completely convert everything all it wants to be conservative in a reasonable transition here but if we have rolling blackouts and we don't have the ability to charge the buses it's also likely that we're not going to have school [Laughter] have to worry about picking up the kids thank you the the one added bonus that we have there is that these are batteries that run these and so we will have them charged up you charge the buses traditionally at night it is when the cost of power is cheapest and traditionally your blackouts happen during peak times or in in the middle of storms which traditionally is less risk for charging the buses okay so like if a bus gets damaged is
118it and the battery gets damaged what happens then because a lot of times it's not you know replaceable the batteries are pretty there are significant risks to new technologies yes and so that was also one of the reasons why when we did the RFP we wanted to look at both Jackson owning the buses and then having other companies that specialize in this conversion to be able to show the benefits and risks associated with Jackson owning them versus not owning the buses there are certainly Financial risks that's part of the analysis that we're doing with the internal administration at the end of the day there's always going to be a reason for both we'll make a decision and a recommendation from our end ultimately you guys get to make the decisions where the advisory Services here
119but realistically I think the the biggest thing is that we're looking at the entire macro picture your Administration is doing this in the most intelligent way that I've seen any other District approach it there's been a lot of people that got these funds and a lot of people just ran low bid construction give us a bus this is how much the EPA gave us give us a bus your Administration chose to look at it from a much more holistic perspective realizing that this is a tremendous transition and I applaud them for doing something so our name will be on the map overwhelmingly so and I will be I will be preaching it myself uh as a tremendous opportunity for for showcasing uh it done properly can you briefly speak to Highlands proposal there are some
120things unique to that proposal that that I thought benefited Jackson Public Schools and would give us the capital moving forward so that we when you receive 20 one buses uh you know there's it's a significant investment in those buses will ultimately have to be replaced and so as we look future forward can you talk a little bit about Highlands proposal and what that might look like I think the board probably needs to understand yeah when we talk sustainability you know we're looking at and and recognizing that these buses will outlive you know most of us sitting here as far as serviceable time um given that they typically are going to be in service somewhere between 12 and 15 years but but that being said if you could just talk to that certainly so when he
121references Highland that is the name of Highland fleets which was one of the uh bidders that came in as part of the request for proposal and the unique thing about Highland is they they look at it more from the holistic perspective and they manage fleets and electric vehicles as a transportation service um they're unique in that manner because they're able to capitalize on a few things number one experience of having these uh in their Fleet we did extensive research on them in their projects and their references as you can imagine going through the process uh all of which responded very strong the unique thing with a holistic approach too is that you then get to tie in incentives and as you just heard you won 8.3 million dollars for the buses but there's also other
122infrastructure that goes along with these types of projects you have the charging infrastructure you have to repave some of the parking lots there's some design and Engineering work and so we also had to tie in other different incentives and different ways to do this the way that we did it and again your Administration has been very strong in working with us to be collaborative we're still zero money out of pocket on this to be able to make all of this conversion which is tremendous but Highland also also is looking at other incentive programs because they are a private entity partnering with the public there are tremendous tax incentives for doing so that also are out there normally public entities are not able to take advantage of tax incentives because you're you don't get taxed thank
123goodness so by partnering with a private entity you're also able to essentially double dip into millions of dollars in tax incentives that Highland fleets would be able to recognize it as well so those are part of the package that we are evaluating I think personally from my perspective Highland has been very impressive in being able to combine a lot of that data and they've got a very compelling story but at the end of the day our job is to be as objective as we can give you the data and let your Administration choose what really makes sense because you also have much more perspective internally compared to just Apples to Apples numbers that we may be able to prepare for the community what what are we not asking you know so this is just new
124information for me so what am I not asking what is what information should we know that you know that we should be asking that maybe we're not because we just don't have as much information as you is there any are there any questions that we should be asking Keisha I will honestly say and I do serve the public interest often and as the CEO get an opportunity to work with a lot of communities I'm not saying this because he's here I'm not saying this because I'm at your community in front of your board your Administration is asking the right questions Marcus is tremendous Todd Frey is tremendous they have been working with us uh we take constant calls and they're asking nitty little gritty questions that it takes to get there but I will also
125toot a little bit of our horn as well they're not trying to handle this themselves if Marcus is handling a hundred other things he's had us handle the brunt of this which was intelligent had he done that and tried to do this on his own for example we found an additional 1.4 million in incentives last week that happened because we made upwards of 19 phone calls over the last seven days between CPA's attorneys the department of energy uh and our office you just can't put that type of effort in without having a strategic partner I assure you you're paying us way less than that so I should I should have clarified him and forgive me because for not being clear sure what questions should I be asking so I I imagine that you know Marcus
126was doing an excellent job I believe that but is there something that we should be asking just as board members some information that you know maybe the community might want to know or need to know that you know I just don't know what to ask but I want to know you know yeah I'll throw out something right there and um uh Maryland touched on it a little bit talking about how electric vehicles while our current grid is still um you know energized by fossil fuels when it comes to education uh diesel buses has something called particulate matter and there's a lot of studies out there from the EPA environmental from a school district standpoint that child development exposure to particulate matters actually causes health issues asthma increases on that so when you're asking about kind
127of some of the questions you don't know these clean buses are going to be beneficial for the health of the students across your guys's communities and understand that it's based off of where the emissions are done diesel buses have a lot of emissions around them and that's what you're breathing in as students riding on those day after day clean buses do not have that so that's one of the big benefits that you'll see there as well as one of the other things that diesel buses are they're kind of analytical they're kind of you know the mechanical structures electric buses are actually computerized Vehicles so you see the Teslas with all the great displays what it kind of benefits for you guys a school district is you big on reports it'll tell you exactly where a
128bus travels how far it travels how much energy it uses per travel and all those nine yards so understanding a lot of the analytics behind it and understanding all that on the other side and then additionally one of the other sides is that Marilyn you mentioned brownouts this is something that is a little it's not even something that consumers energy does but we're working with them regarding a pilot program for the area vehicle to grid is something that is going to be seen a lot more often and understand that school buses really operate during the school year they're sitting all throughout the summer when grids have brownouts it occurs during the hottest times of the year or the coldest times of the year and what this allows us to do is you where to work
129with Consumers Energy even apply for additional grants and send them some rebates out there for improved infrastructure where you guys are able or working with Highland we're able to utilize the power that's stored within the vehicles themselves on a weekend and stabilize the grid and so that is part of an incentive program or an overall or a larger holistic approach on why this is kind of a valuable for not only us the school district but the community and the utility as well thank you that was I was trying to find my notes the vehicle to grid I wanted you to speak on that so thank you yeah buses are giant batteries and when you have 21 giant batteries that can be very beneficial to the grid and to the pocketbook of Jackson schools when utilized
130any any other questions while we've got the gentleman here um I really appreciate you coming and uh what I would say is you are correct Miss Hamilton this is this is all new to all of us and so sometimes questions may come to you later somebody may have an expertise out in our community and they may want to hit you up about if that happens what I would ask you to do is uh send Marcus that question as always he will provide you with that answer likely consult with our our friends from GCE can I ask just one more question is it a is it difficult for our maintenance crew to take care of these buses is it something real new uh So within the EPA program and also conversations we had with everyone involved
131the oems or the manufacturers of the buses they do have responsibility in ensuring that the Staffing of schools that receive funding under the EPA are properly trained on how to maintain the system understand that is for the low voltage systems with these electric school buses there are specialized technicians that must handle the high voltage side of things just because of how dangerous it can be um from a standpoint but everything within this should be included to educate and train all of the staff members on jps's and that's when we would send the book yeah the high uh the high voltage ones will be handled by the manufacturers themselves correct thank you very much gentlemen and this this will be coming back before the board next month with the recommendation at that time it's our first
132action item Oh I thought that came before oh I'm sorry we got an update on our agenda okay now we're going to board norms okay tonight is board Norm discussion again to make sure that we're all on the same page um I'm going to go line by line and discuss each piece and then ask each of you to let me know which of these we can agree to which we cannot agree to and why what can we live with we need this work and we need to get this done so this is where we're at at this point the first and you those of you who are at that seminar that training we had are going to recognize this anyways but assume positive intent now what that means is that we come into a board
133meeting or come into a work session or wherever we're doing together we walk in assuming that everyone there has a positive approach that they want to work on for that particular whatever the issue might be we go in assuming that Shalonda is positive and not being a yes or no I'm talking positive in the sense willing to work on things willing to compromise when necessary to get the work done okay number one um I think I'm gonna start with me assuming positive intent is this a norm that you can live with yes Yolanda yes yes thank you got one right there okay we will not go on listen to learn now this is something that I'm going to say we all do I know I do it I know my husband does it sometimes we
134listen and that's in quotes and we're really just waiting for the conversation to get done so we can interject we want to say next we need to listen to learn not listen to see what we can respond to so listen to learn that's the second one now can we commit to that being one of our norms Pam yes I think for this one listen to understand to learn and understand I think that there's going to be some difference and opinions perspectives I would like to see um understand and it absolutely good good suggestion I like that too Shalonda okay yep Keisha yes okay hold on guys we are just rocking it here did we did we pass no surprises did you take that off no that's the very last thing that's what they said to
135make sure at the top okay okay yeah they're all okay three treat each other with respect no name calling personal attacks just treat each other with respect number three yes yes with a caveat I would like for us to Define what respect means for each of us respect could look different and mean something different for me um I think it's respectful if I am allowed to speak freely and to not be interrupted being respectful is um not dismissing my feelings or my perspective my thoughts and the list goes on but that's just a couple examples okay it's really good speaking freely uninterrupted and conscious of other people's feelings or their beliefs or whatever okay I'm in agreement okay the same here oh absolutely that's one of the examples when I was talking to MSB people
136they said that you're not going to all agree sometimes you're going to be in the minority sometimes you're going to be in the majority but what they tend to encourage is can you live with this you might not like it but can you live with this and that's the oh that's the next one okay let's finish the treat with respect thing so I'm with Shalonda um we definitely need to define respect for each of us need to Define that so that we can know what that looks like to each other and like she said as well I wrote the same thing I do not like to be interrupted oh you're interrupting me here we go um so I have that so I don't like to be interrupted um when I'm speaking um other ways that
137that respects what it looks like to me is answering my questions allowing time for dialogue and then actually dialoguing you know um sometimes we just each give a uh our opinion which is you know but sometimes when we can dialogue and ask questions of each other you know making that part of our practice then we are able to find um you know those places where we can you know uh agree at you know I mean we can uh you know not only we have to listen to learn and understand you know which is good but sometimes being able to ask questions for clarity you know I I like to do that that's respectful to me when I'm having when I'm trying to make decisions sometimes I want to know more about what someone is saying
138I want them to explain more but a lot of times we feel like at this table that um you know dialoguing is not allowed you know that we need to be succinct we need to be quick we need to be you know and so that's disrespectful to me so respect to me looks like all those things let's dialogue let's feel comfortable at this table to ask questions since we're assuming positive intent be comfortable with having those questions um so that we can you know make decisions that are well informed those are some of the things that respect looks like to me so if we can do it with all those things in mind then my answer would be yes to that one okay I wrote those things down we just make sure that it's there
139what you're talking about when you get to the final vote on them next month make sure it includes the things that you well it should I just wrote them down so okay um can you just repeat those further yeah now so we got to speak freely and uninterrupted being conscious of feelings answering questions and dialoguing with one another thank you Michael okay next one agree to disagree sometimes it's important to present a united front even when we don't agree like parents um you go to one parent says ask your mother or whatever I played that hard when I was a kid I went to my dad and I'd ask him something and he would say well if your mom says it's okay it's okay with me so I go to Mom and I say dad
140said it's okay is it okay with you so they're not going to try to usurp each other so the consensus here might not be that everybody agrees in the same thing but we present a united front knowing that the answer has been a minority vote of whatever happens to be majority oh yeah okay number four agree to disagree I can live with that yes I can live with that it's fine yep so no um we can seek places to agree we can assume positive intent we can listen to learn and to understand but no we are not going to agree to disagree particularly because when we're saying agree to disagree um and that when the way that you describe it um it's it's eliminating voice that needs to be there oftentimes you know again the
141culture of this board is that we do not have these kind of understanding we're trying to see this come up but you know after two and a half years of being on this board um you know I need to see that we're actually going to do these things before I can say that I agree to them um so no agree to disagree we'd have to seek places to agree we'd have to recognize that um the the necessity of having those conversations we need to have um we need to recognize a systemic racism allows the majority to agree on something um so yeah no um in the context that you're giving as far as uh you know once one voice is out there the the votes on our on our agendas and our minutes they describe
142to the community what the majority has said um that's not the the unified front is in that vote that's in the the final vote we do not have to in the context that you're saying I won't agree to um agree to disagree not in that context five things I'm discussing is the sense that um four or five agree with one thing two or three have a different opinion we simply don't come in here and argue over it at that point we realize we're not going to all agree on everything but presenting a United vote that we're going to move ahead as a board with this um that's what agreeing to disagree we're not going to all agree all the time but we're going to move forward with what's decided that we're going to do whatever
143that happens to be sometime I agree to disagree so Pam um with that definition as well you know the way that we are set up legally to operate as a board we shouldn't come in here already decided on something that we're going to be voting on that's illegal for us well that's the discussion goes so let me finish I'm not done um so we shouldn't come in here already decided that's one thing um and then two when we come in here and we decide the purpose of us sitting here the reason why we are elected into these seats is so that we can vote we recognize uh and the community recognizes that whatever the majority says four out of five a minimum four out of seven at minimum of us who vote on an issue
144if we agree on it then that's what's put out there um so that's a given those things are given I'm not sure what agree to disagree that you're referring to right now what what the difference is like those things are given the majority is going to the you know arguing the fighting that's not what happens if we can dialogue let me finish we can let the community know where we disagreed and that's the purpose of having the conversation right so again in that context and you keep cutting me off in that context that you're describing as well I won't agree to that to that okay challenge ideas not people number five challenge ideas not people and that simply means you don't attack the person you attack the whatever the idea is that's working or not
145working or whatever but not the that kind of Kill the Messenger thing um don't attack the people attack the idea attack the idea itself with whatever opposition there is whatever challenges that there may be but not put that into people into ideas himself yes I can be okay with this if there's situations that warrant dialogue and clarifying questions well that's the challenge ideas part to me that seems to go along with agreed I'd agree with you yeah I think the difference here when we were did this initially was the ingredient disagree simply means that even though you may not have gotten the result you wanted as a board will still move forward with the majority whatever it was whereas challenging ideas is dealing with the idea itself not the people that are bringing in the
146people that are on what side and but then I'd agree with that okay I'm fine with us okay so this one just from that last explanation that you gave after Marilyn is a little confusing to me now um challenge ideas it sounds like that's just part of us um assuming positive intent listening to learn you know um treating each other with respect in the way that we describe to treat each other with respect um and that just just that would be okay with me but whatever you just said to Marilyn as far as we keep coming back to the the roles that we have to do here at the board and that is to vote once we're done voting we recognize that that's what goes forward I'm not sure what this I think this when
147we put these on the board when we were doing the Workshop I think that was mainly to understand that you can challenge an idea but not well you're such a blah blah blah because you like that's what the dialogue sounds like well I just don't want people attacked that's what I want I want the idea okay I can I can agree with that okay okay number six employ a racial Equity lens when looking at new policies or programs so I'm gonna start to jump into that one when you get done explaining it did you want to explain it because I I'm the one who added that no go ahead yeah I need it go ahead so when I added this and I don't know if somebody else added it as well but I know I
148was specifically the one who who brought this up um mines was not new programs it was period so to employ a racial Equity Dei lens when looking at all everything not just new things um so I'll get behind this one if and in your emails right now I'm going to read you all um something that I got from Ferndale um School um so when I went to masb in November Ferndale Public Schools um they had a breakout session on how they were implementing diversity conclusion in their districts and they mentioned and we and I referenced this in uh December November December when I came back that they have a piece of paper that they have sitting with them at the table every time they sit at the table the paper that they have you have
149it in your emails right now if you want to read it it comes from nasb so the National Association of school boards is where they got this paper because when they went to the National level they found all these districts across the country who are actually doing uh Dei correctly which we're not seeing here in Michigan which is another reason why we should be attending at the national level but this paper that they have that they look at every day it has five questions that they ask themselves for any policy program practice decision or action that the board takes which is if we're talking about implementing something like a racial Equity lens so the first question who are the underrepresented groups affected by this policy program practice decision or action what are the potential impacts
150on these groups and based on these questions that they asked they then make the best decisions so that these groups are not further harmed that's what's up that's what applying race Equity lens looks like so the second one says does this policy program practice decision or action worsen existing disparities or produce other unintended consequences three how have you intentionally involved stakeholders who are also members of the community affected by this policy program practice decision or action can you validate your assessments in one and two those are the points one and two having considered this stakeholder reaction for what are the barriers to more Equitable outcomes um you know the mandated barriers political emotional Financial programmatic or managerial what are the barriers that you know to more Equitable outcomes based in these categories and then five
151how will you mitigate the negative impacts and address the barriers that are identified above so my concern with employing a racial Equity Dei lens is one you know um despite the the the um Limited work that we've done as a board around understanding this implementing something like this could be detrimental because it would just be performative and performative measures further just uh disenchance these communities who are expecting us to actually do something so I don't want to be a part of a space where we're saying yeah we're gonna um we're going to adopt these board norms and they're not actually do something with it so if we don't have an action plan in place such as having this here asking these questions which means we'd have to have data which means we'd have to do
152a lot of more prep work prior to coming to the board so we can have the data that are addressing how is this policy program practice et cetera how are these things impacting these these communities in these kind of ways have we gotten stakeholder boards have we talked to the teachers the parents the students the admin the staff are we having these conversations we have to do the work and if we're not willing to do the work so clearly I want this here but if we if we're not willing to do the work then I would not be supportive of that because it would just be being performative okay I have two things to say to that number one assume positive intent and number two we can't avoid it or not put it in because
153someone might not do it right or enough I think the idea is to assume that we're going to follow our own board norms and if we don't then we call each other out on it so I'll let me just follow up on that one then um um assume positive intent is is one thing somewhere else when you're talking about diversity Equity inclusion anti-racism work you have to be intentional there is no assumption if we assume we're always going to be responding through a systemically racist perspective that's just that's just how it's designed that's not directed at any one person that's the system that we are in and the outcomes always favor an anti-uh uh white supremacist system it just always does so no we cannot just assume so if we're saying that we're going to
154do this and I would like us to say that we're going to adopt this paper which again is in your emails right now that we're going to adopt this and this is how we're going to do that we're asking ourselves you know what does a positive intent look like to you what does treating you with respect mean to you what does that look like it's important for us to build these out because if we're not building out and saying hey look this is how we're going to do this you know and if we say well we'll get to that later we'll never get to it Dei anti-racism work we never get to that work so unless we're saying employ a racial Equity Dei lands when looking get all new policies programs practices Etc based on
155these questions asking ourselves that when we are doing this then then yeah we can we can then yes let's let's add it in but if we're saying just assume positive temp it won't happen it just will not happen so this one and on these for me oh and on these Norms completely is these are what we're agreeing to work toward now no one is going to come in and like Bewitched and blinking is just there we have to do the work but if we don't have that as one of our plans and one of our Norms there'd be no incentive to do the work that's going to be required here so we can add that paper then to this you know like all of us have been giving our I don't know if I want
156to talk about them let me finish um like each of us are giving our different ideas about how we can agree to these things what that looks like to us what employing a racial Equity Dei is looks lens looks like to me is having questions at the table that says we're going to be asking these questions we're going to be intentional about saying how is this impacting um our students of color how is it impacting them harmfully and and then saying okay maybe we have to wait on making this decision because we've asked these questions so that's how we could do that okay I understand what you're saying what I'm telling you is these are not the road map to it this is the destination we want these things I we can't possibly write in
157on every one of them how we're going to do them just that we are going to commit to them being a board norm and if you don't want it there I can take it out that's not to make a deal but I don't want to try to take each of these and break down how we're going to work toward them yes but that Marilyn yes you definitely can um let her talk she can but I'm not done yet before she did Pam I understand that you're saying the way that when we're doing the work at that time we'd have to figure out what the work at that time looks like right now we are establishing you know um that being a foundation I mean uh structural ideas around how each of these would play out
158we are establishing that which is why we say it you know what does it look like to you to um to agree to disagree what does it look like to you for respect that so we we're giving foundational um the structure of so for me I'm saying don't interrupt me when I'm speaking and then I keep saying hey look I'm speaking to I'm giving you the the road map to that and now as it plays out then I'm saying hey look Pam you're interrupting me you know now now we're getting into the details of that so we could very easily say these are the things that we're going we're going to ask ourselves these questions and then when we get to asking ourselves these questions you know then we have to get into the details
159of it but we could establish that if we wanted to Keisha when you say that I'm interrupting you you really cannot usurp everybody's talk time we've got to get through these and get these done and we pretty much know what your what your concern is but my ask on this right now is this a yes or no for you I want to comment on this um so just to Echo some of what Keisha is saying um I do agree with the fact that we are creating that foundational uh knowledge of how we would like to embrace these board norms because Dei has been tossed around um for the two and a half years that I've been working I mean sit it Seated on this board I do think that having those questions will help guide
160us with the work that we are talking about I don't find that there's any harm in having those questions um sometimes we we individuals I'll say lose sight of what direction we're actually going in and I think to have a tangible list of questions to help um guide those narratives would be um beneficial I think that I think the Ferndale thing sounds like an excellent thing but what I don't want to do is get mired in detail of this is what we're going to do but how are we going to do it I would think that maybe sometimes the circumstance of what it is would dictate that but I think that would be a tremendous asset I think right now we're making suggestions and I would appreciate if those could be noted okay I've got
161that on number six right now so the word employee is perfect you know because it means to use or direct toward a particular goal so you know as we work towards something I think that that's a good word to use boy okay okay so what we're looking at is ferndale's question sheet to be our guide for what it looks like to look through an equity lens right am I on the all there okay um yeah I took the new already I put policies programs or practices that's what Keisha used did you keep in the word all we're looking at there wasn't at all but I can put all of us to the new mine says off at all new programs and policies oh they just take out the new just take out the new yeah
162thank you and number seven remember that positive public relations will be expected of each board member for example negative accusatory racially charged social media posts may not be posted on the site that identifies the author as a JPS board member freedom of speech and this comes from the attorney at masb freedom of speech does not include postings that appear to represent the board itself yes does this is this the one that's crossed off on our paper nope it's crossed off to me it's crossed off to me it's crossed off on on I see a cross up on Libby's as well just in red and it's crossed out okay this is the final one and I did go through when did the final one come out because uh Michelle yeah has crossouts on it yeah yeah
163at the back table Michelle just gave me this it's crossed out thank you and I kind of wondered when you said that yeah yeah that's good do you want to limit it you want to lower it to that or reduce it to that well we can cross it out all together like it was you know you know the whole thing is crossed this one says demonstrate positive public relations Miss not crosstow okay so that's not all mine when did that when did that one come in oh you're you're on a diet you're on a different one Pam but she read both of them yeah she read the remember the I'm better I've got it right here what if I make copies of that yeah you read the really long one I don't have any numbers
164on that one okay agree to disagree challenge ideas that people play racial I believe that's like a new all programs analysis demonstrate positive public relations so for number seven do you want to simply be that simple demonstrate positive public relations okay to describe what that was for you Pam what that means that's something different than the other one you read demonstrate positive public relations what does that mean that means pretty much what I said longer when I just read it um because I gave examples what I wrote initially is remember the positive public relations we expected of each board member and that freedom itself does not include postings that appear to represent the board and that um posts may not be posted on a site that identifies the author as a JPS board member for
165that very reason because it looks like it comes from the board okay so we're again you have put two of them together that is crossed off that's the one that Derek was having a lot of issues with last month that's crossed off on all of ours everybody in the audience and minds and these Libby's looks like a anselors is too that's crossed off so you put two of them together we need to separate them and know which what are you referring to because that's crosstalk now I didn't cross these out so I don't know exactly where that came from but I think if we just write what we mean we'll be all set so if you wanted to go with that shorter one that's fine demonstrate Public public positive public relations so the the only
166problem with going with the store the shorter one is that you keep adding it to the other one and as if that's what you that's what you're expecting no I didn't add it you asked for an explanation what respectful meant that's what I was reading you so let me clarify it Pam because I don't want you to feel like you're under attack because that's not what I mean um you're describing demonstrate positive public relations and at and with the description that you're saying you're talking about the part that's been all crossed off so I just need to understand what exactly do you mean by demonstrate public what are the public relations it should that one be included in the part that's all crossed off because that's what I mean by that is that we should
167never ever have newspapers from all over the country contacting the president of this board and receiving 712 emails blasting a post on social media that was could have been and was believed by all those people to be extremely negative and honest site that identified the author as the JPS board member that put the board in the spotlight unnecessarily that's what I'm talking about absolutely exactly okay so that's what is crossed off and um with that in mind since that's what's been crossed off I agree with the crossed off part because we you know we don't have any jurisdiction over what we as board members do outside of this space as long as it doesn't have it oh you're cutting me off again you know we have no you're cutting yeah but you're cutting me off
168you're you're talking about I just said we need to be able to dialogue yep and in dialogue that means that we have to be able to say what we're saying you can't decide how much time it takes for me to say something before you get to jump in that's cutting me off you can't do that that's that's disrespectful to me it's just disrespectful so now if we're going to dialogue if I'm going to understand what you're saying and you're going to understand what I'm saying if we're going to assume positive intent if we're going to listen to understand then you can't keep cutting me off you just can't so now I'm going to go back to what I was saying and I'll let you stop talking so that I can continue talking if we're talking
169about um posting on public sites that identify us as board members as board members we have no jurisdiction over what we as board members do outside of this table we have no jurisdiction if we're saying you got to demonstrate positive public relations and we're also saying that you can't identify yourself as a JPS board member as the way that you're identified as the way that you're demonstrating these public positive relations we have no jurisdiction over that there's no follow-up there's no there's no punishment there's no there's nothing we can do you know the and if we're saying that you know to demonstrate you know to put when you put the information out there it has to look like it comes from the board that's what the the board president and the superintendent are supposed to
170do there's they're the ones who speak for us and we know that so when when they speak they speak as personal board members we have you have you have no jurisdiction over what we do um and we're gonna I'm going to continue to do what I do in the same manner that I'm doing it in so I will disagree with these okay then you'll have to be a no vote on this one thank you I won't be a no vote I'll be voting no but okay any voting no okay so I'm not clear is this no to the short one and no to the one that's in outlined in order well you know what the last one I wrote and I sent let me read it to you because the last one I wrote and
171I signed remember that positive relations will be expected of each board member for example negative accusatory or racially charged social media post may not be posted on a site that identifies the author as a GPS board member freedom of speech does not include postings that appeared represent the board itself who did you send that to and it could be just demonstrate positive populations I mean who did you send that to Pam Pam right here who did you send that to um Michelle so why didn't we get that one because that's crossed off on ours all of ours are crossed off and that's the one with the community got why is that crossed off for all of us but not you well I have my own copy I did why is why is all of ours
172not crossed up maybe that wasn't my decision so the the cross-offs represent the conversation from last month so you're correct that Derek made changes or made recommendations so so that was the recommendations that Derek had brought forward so again this is a discussion topic for so we don't have to have a the final end and I understand we're kind of doing some yeses and no's but I think the reality of this is this is this is the the hurdle that we and I'm not going to speak specifically to a norm okay because I'm not I'm not I'm not wordsmithing this I'm not trying to get in the middle these are the board's norms but I think that the conversation here really needs to center around this work this is the important work that this board
173is doing and the conversation here is we can Wordsmith this and I hope that we do committed to to working through this particular issue and and Pam's got a draft that she's presented that she brought that said these are my new and updated thoughts but the the packet reflects the minutes from last month but this is not a we've adopted this where we are adopting that but I think the conversation Pam and I want to make certain that I I don't overstep because these are not not mine arms these are these are your Norms um as a board I think that there it sounds to me like there needs to be a significant amount of discussion around this particular topic and if that's a that that at least again I'm I'm hearing I'm trying to
174listen and and and understand where everybody's coming from and so I believe the the conversation here is what does this look like and and we don't have to to say we're adopting this or not adopting this tonight but I can hear that we are this is going to be one that's going to take more time and so let's do that let's uh lets you use the number seven as the last thing excuse me we go back to and try to get through the rest of them so far we're doing pretty good but you're gonna need to read from the other copy that's that's what everybody's looking at um okay be respect before we move on and again I again none of this has been decided I would encourage because um Pam needs your input into
175into these Norms she needs your your valuable contributions for exam s in Ferndale or for example Miss hunt some of the the word smithing and and what I would recommend is share your ideas with her so that she can then come back to the board these are the ideas that were shared with me there's no decisions being made but these are our ideas does that does that make sense effort to attempt to move forward so um we're sharing our ideas right now um and Pam doesn't only she's not the only person who needs to know what we're thinking we all do because we're all going to be deciding on these um the next point that I'll make as well um again like I said we're having a conversation here so she wants to hear them
176again you know she can listen to the recording um it would be nice also for the community and board members as well to have the most recent copies of this information and Michelle I'm not saying that this is an issue that you're having I don't you know I'm not saying that but it would be nice for um us to have even if it's last minute updates Michelle and then I don't know what that looks like for for you but for us to have the most recent data so that we can come prepared that's what this is in my world that's what this discussion is for as we go through these I've been adding taking out Etc adding your thoughts that you wanted in so then once it's all done I can send it we can
177vote on it next week or at month or we can have a meeting and talk about it or we can just finish it here but I don't want to let this go again we've Let It Go way too long to be stuck on just one thing to go on to the next one be respectful and conscious of time parameters for board comments and that just means you know for us to remember that's the end of the night and be respectful of time parameters number nine is pretty are we given input on that oh yeah go ahead like so um in this be respectful and conscious of the time parameters we need to Define what that looks like you know and I understand that you just said that um it's this idea that we're at the
178end of the night so part of my my concern with this one is being respectful and conscious of time parameters for the board Commons that's these comments that the board members give at the end of the meeting just so you all know um before we can adopt something like that as board members we don't have enough structure in place to make sure that we are able to have the conversations that we need to have for example um if there's something that we want to be able to discuss some information that we want to have we're asking about these things we're expecting to to receive answers to them and a lot of times you know too often I'll say I won't say a lot I'll say too often we're not receiving that information um sometimes conversations
179that we're asking about they need to be had at this table so we need to have a structure in place that we can add things to the agenda we need to make sure that the information that we have present like we're having this problem today that it's actually up to date so that we can come and we can be prepared um um so once we get if we get a structure in place then we wouldn't have to use our board comment times for a lot of the concerns and things that we may have and then the next thing is um some of us have longer comments and we're going to make those um if we had a second meeting some some communities uh Ferndale they have a they have what is called a um give
180me a quick second it's called a community they call it a community work such it's not a community work session but they have this type of meeting they have two meetings a month they come to the boards they have a board meeting and so it goes generally rather quickly because they have this other meeting a month where the war comes together and they actually spend time discussing and working through a lot of the things so that when they have the board meeting it can go quicker because we're doing everything at one meeting all our conversation everything that all of our all the thoughts and things that we have built up over one month um and we don't have any other outlets from that it's hard to tell a board member to to to you know
181be be time conscious of parameters this is the just the board business so unless we are willing to um employ some other ways for us to be able to have these conversations to be able to dialogue to be able to get this information out there that we want that we need from each other then um saying that we need respectful time parameters that again are not uh well defined that's something that I would not get get behind because again it's not well defined and we don't have other ways to communicate and and forcing board members to you know have sound bites that's just that's just unfair that's not so now okay that's fine um I was going to say that I went to that County Board Association thing last Saturday and I found it fascinating
182there were several uh Community or school boards who meet twice a month the first month the first meeting is all the Committees and all the discussion so rather than meet as a committee over here committee over there we don't have to use it that way we could use it to be a time for discussion of specific items and the open meetings act thing is coming up pretty soon and that is not considered a problem is people just don't come to those they don't care what you're going to argue about or you know try to uh come to agreement on but that was a very common thing and I thought that was kind of interesting but then I didn't know if everybody would want to do two meetings a month anyway because you still got your
183committee meetings but I think that's something we should look at I feel very very handicapped by not being able to have a time and place to hash out things um that come up so I just found it they called it a committee of the whole yeah that's what that's what Ferndale their Committee of a whole the the public is allowed to come yeah there's a lot of conversation that the board is having so I would be willing to have a committee of the whole and I don't know that we could discuss all of our different uh they have they have different um topics of their subcommittees and I don't know that they don't do all of those in one I think there could be the whole so we could discuss how that committee the whole
184looks like but I wouldn't want to have that as the one meeting that everything because that would be like a five hour meeting you know um you think so that's what I thought so but yeah I would definitely be willing to have a committee of the whole type uh second meeting where the public is still able to come in and hear from us and hear the dialogue and be able to um you know still be able to understand why we're making quicker decisions maybe at the board meetings that's a possible thing I was real impressed with the way um Columbia handled that um they do it differently than what we're talking about doing right now but it was good so anyway back to be respectful and conscious of time parameters for comments um that can
185be written on however you think that would work nine is be prepared prior to all meetings if we have questions never hesitate to ask Jeff or ask me or we'll find an answer or whoever that might impact your your answer question that's number nine be prepared for all meetings ask questions prior if you have some some questions others might not need to you know have the answer to or whatever and I'm going to say yes be prepared makes sense to me yes yes so again unless we are having some other way to have dialogue um then I'd be a no on that so I come prepared for every meeting but there are questions that I have that I'm not able to ask prior to for whatever reason um you know this is a volunteer position
186that we have and we get the the information on Friday and they're expected to come here on Tuesday ready and for the most part we can and do but there are questions that come up here at this time um you know real time and I'm going to ask those questions you know um so if if that still allowed recognizing that you know there will be questions that come up real time and I'll still be asking those if we're adding that in then I would agree to it okay so the be prepared for all meetings is something that I just think it needs to be understood that you have that opening to call call me call Superintendent send a text whatever I don't want anybody to think they have to wait until the meeting that was
187the idea okay um this one is when evaluating the superintendent board members must State a reason and give an example for any score given if oh that's not on okay oh board members makes succinct comments that was that one the one about the okay so was okay where are we at now one quick question okay Pam so board members make sustained comments that's similar to be respectful and conscious of time parameters for board I think it's instead of instead of I think that could be absolutely okay okay so how about that that is oh yeah yes okay I'm a yes on that makes us think comments yes yes yes um makes succinct comments means not to go on on and on and on and on and on and on where nobody else has a chance
188to talk or there is no real dialogue there's no back and forth It's just succinct just means not to go on and on and on yeah that was a person's names too means to really explain what they're absolutely certain positions so that's why I'm not sure that wouldn't be better in a discussion area where if we're discussing a thing rather than just the board the board comments have traditionally been acknowledging a specific program or thanking someone for doing something extra for the district or did you know we won the you know National Championship or whatever that kind of stuff it's usually that kind of thing and it was just a matter of making succinct comments I remember oh yes because everybody's difference to me that doesn't sound like anything at least but well the definition
189is um you're making a clear precise expression and few words okay that's the sink right here I feel like each board member should have the opportunity to deliver their full of thought if that is considered then I'm a yes Mas yes I only support it if you know we can deliver our full comments I appreciate that um uh way that Shalonda mentioned that um sound bites are not I don't think that's the oh you keep cutting me off okay so dialogues back and forth are not um conducive and and so that that's that's a part of and you know that's a part of um culture too Pam um you know you like to cut us off in the middle of what we're saying because you want to answer something that you're hearing that you're hearing
190but that you're not listening to um you hear part of it and then you want to answer it and it's not fair to the person who's speaking because they haven't delivered their full thought so it's not a matter of somebody trying to hog the mic to to talk but they're trying to finish their thought but because you've only heard a portion of it then you want to respond to it that's part of cutting a person off and that's part of disrespect and that's also um why we can't say just deliver succinct comments or or be mindful of time parameter it's unfair we and it's also not listening to the person that goes back to listen to learn we're not listening to learn if we hear a portion of what's being said and then say I
191want to respond to that and then look at the person who's talking you know and say well you're not letting me respond hold on I'm not done talking you've got to be willing to hear my full comment my full thought before you can respond to it which means that you're actually listening to me you're not listening to me if you want to just cut me off so again I would not be supportive of this unless we are acknowledging that the full thought is going to be received that we're listening to learn you know and understand um otherwise no you know but if we put that in there that we're allowing for the full thought then yeah we can have that okay that's what I wrote while you were just down make full thoughts and statements
192as succinctly as possible yes I'm not going along with the succinct because I'm not succinct but you know full thoughts yeah but then there's no sense of saying make full thoughts and statements that's not a board Norm that wouldn't be anything that we were trying to establish is we can take it out protocol we could take it out content or thoughts guys discussion I want to be heard when I speak Rich talking board comment part though we're not talking like when we have discussion so delivering my full thought is important succinctly or without sustained without succinct we're making full statements that doesn't need to be even a thing but I also want to get through this one person talking all the time I do think that this dialogue this conversation that we're having we all
193have a clear understanding of what succinct means sustained inadvertently puts parameters in place and we're asking I'm asking that at this governance table that I am giving the opportunity to deliver my full thought regarding all district initiatives okay now this is just the board comments part what about this even at the board comment because prior to the board comment is board business and if I have um messages that I would like to deliver to the community to our audience I think we should have that opportunity that space but come prepared to deliver in a timely manner timely man how about timely manner lib timely manner we are so not gonna go that far Libby we're going to end up saying well you can say foreign and that's it oh there are no surprises though that
194was part of the um interestingly enough everybody was there at that meeting this last week that I was talking about the board meeting they all have the no surprises one in it no surprises a public board meeting will not be used as a place to bring a new concern to the board for discussion the agenda will continue to dictate topics for discussion and that is just um just follow the agenda and anything else or go under a new business when you know would be on the agenda So Below this you'll notice in order to have an item placed in the agenda it must be submitted to the board president no later than Wednesday of the week preceding the next board meeting we don't have that that's not on ourselves okay well this is what that's
195what let me read I would like to talk about the agenda items I told you guys last month that I would bring this month the protocol for getting items on the agenda because that was a question that a few people asked in order to have an item placed on the agenda it must be submitted to the board president no later than Wednesday of the week preceding the next board meeting so this is now Tuesday have been last Wednesday along with the item requested a board member must identify the purpose in history or whatever of the requested topic only in an urgent or time sense of situation will either be accepted another time and this happens that urgent things come up and all of a sudden we get a due date on something or we have
196something happen in our community or in the world or you know whatever that um needs to be discussed and maybe have a plan for that wouldn't apply to things that come up that are off time time or urgent what happened to uh given your ideas for agenda items after the first we had talked about having it after the first uh like the roll call or the yeah in the last minute we talked about we talked about um re repealing them but as far as putting a new one in um that's what I said I would come with what we've pretty much done a protocol has been but I'm not that sure that it's written anywhere yeah that's that's important to note as well because um to to decide that this is how we're going to
197do it without us agreeing to that is unfair to us um we need to decide as a board what that looks like as far as putting things on the agenda because we don't have anything set up this is just something that you you know that you're coming up with from you know it sounds like uh practice but it's not really it's not even really practice this is a recommendation so that's why we're here it's a discussion item but who's recommended so who's recommending it do we know uh who recommended it was we had a discussion about it in our County meeting and I thought that makes sense and then I asked Jeff when Michelle needs stuff and so that Wednesday made sense because in the previous week um and that's here for us to discuss
198that's why it's on the discussion I think that makes sense I mean I don't think there's any way you can come the evening off the board meeting and ask for something to be put on the agenda we won't have time to purple okay what do you think lib I had understood that that you would bring them up at the beginning of the agenda and that they wouldn't be discussed till the next board that's the thought that I got oh that's way early then you're thinking about a weight early here that we'd bring it up and go on the next month's agenda oh I see what you're saying well you're way ahead of this then you're getting yours in way ahead of this so we it sounds like we have two different conversations a little bit
199going on we have no surprises and then we have how to add things to the agenda it'd be nice if we could separate those so that we can kind of discuss them but since we're on the adding things to the agenda we do know that legally we can sit at this table according to Robert's Rules and make a motion and if someone else supports it we can add something to the agenda in real time clearly if we all don't agree on it then it doesn't get there but we that that is something that we can actually do um so we're not taking that away from us as far as adding things to the agenda um there are times when we get information and that's part of part of the the problem with this no surprises
200um we're often not we're often not working from the same information all of us um and so that's a problem you know because we might find out about it at the last minute like I did last year around the um the tardy policy that we found you know um I I saw that as an emergent need something we need to talk about right now because we're not following uh you know we're not following our own uh charity policies we're just you know and we're harming students of colors particularly our black boys at the time that was very important to me very necessary that we had that conversation we put it on the agenda I was able to get it onto the agenda um at the last minute because I did do that in the last
201thing because I found out about it at the last minute that's the part about the urgency so the um so the the no surprises I'm sorry so the the conversation around adding things to the agenda we do need to have something that's well established and we also need to acknowledge that there are things that come up at the last minute and be willing to add them in at that time okay Keisha this is not the same thing you guys have but that no surprises has nothing to do with the agenda item it's just the next item so DSA we had two different conversations going on we went from right but nothing was agenda and so that's why I was talking let me finish my thought Keisha no because you cut me off you know no
202surprises has nothing to do with the agenda items that was just the last of our board norms the agenda was completely separate and it was simply a time frame and it allows for Urgent or time-sensitive situations at any other time so I said that um two different conversations going on we had no surprises and then we had the board agenda in the board agenda conversation I focused on that because that's what we had ended up going to in that conversation we need to establish that um you know how how to add things to the the agenda and then acknowledge that it could be at the last minute and that let that be okay ah excuse me thank you and the agenda items section it says items will be accepted only in an urgent or time
203sense of situation and if you just found something that we have been trying to address and deal with I consider that urgent before the meeting starts we just don't have the same information that's another part of the problem we don't have that on our forms you do I know and you will I can send it to you all you guys I did it on mine just so that I had everything on with his paper so how are we going to do it do it it's not it's discussed today and we'll vote on next month oh you want to add an agenda item then you just submit it just so that it could be talked about yeah I'd like to go on the agenda for next month yeah so should I do it tonight if you
204want sure okay can you read off what we've established for adding agenda items okay let's see in order to have an item placed on the agenda this is regular old item it's nothing you know it wasn't a hurricane or anything it must be submitted to the board president no later than Wednesday of the week preceding the next board meeting so today's Tuesday would have been last Wednesday along with the item requested a board member must identified the purpose and background history the requested topic only in Urgent or time-sensitive situations will either be accepted at other times and urgency I would I would say that your particular thing was urgent so so I have a concern with um and again I don't have the language in front of me which is a small you know barrier
205here um adding things to the agenda on that Wednesday also requires that you have what are the three things that you mentioned on there there are three different things we have to have before we can add it on the Wednesday before just why you want it why and what does it come from where's it coming what's your you know you if I wrote down something um with just an acronym or something and you want that on the agenda I would need to tell you what what is that you know what is that thing that's what I'm saying what is that thing can you read those three things ma'am yep um there's probably only two okay identify the purpose and the background or history of what the topic is what does background or history looks like
206what's it come from where does this come from so we're not needed to bring you two or three pages of data oh okay now just to put down you can put down um rough failure Cascades and you say you could say or just put Cascades and then for your purpose or background the rough fell on because it was shoddy work and what are we gonna do about it okay okay that kind of thing so so I just want to clarify and I apologize because I don't I don't want to muddy the waters Waters this sounds spot on correct so yes you may add agenda items the night of in time sensitive urgent matters I think the respect piece that would be helpful is if you want to add an agenda item yes Libby you can
207do it at the previous meeting or really any time up to the Wednesday before now why are we talking about the Wednesday before because we are putting the board agendas together we're organizing all material lots of times you you would like information or you might like the district to pull together background information for you to be able to make a conversation or have a comment about so that's the particular reason we have used and again I'm not I'm not speaking to the what what Pam has written what I'm talking about is why it has been this way this would pass is that gives the district the amount of time to be able to put it on the agenda post the agenda and provide the board with the information requested so it's it's simply for purposes
208that way and again not trying to muddy the waters I think this is a discussion topic it's not nothing exact is for action but miss Hamilton you are correct we do on occasion both sides the the district and board members add things there are a few times a year where something comes up a very time sensitive issue so we want to make certain that we have the again these aren't aren't my Norms this is simply your your norms did we make it through the board Norm conversation yeah and it might and I'm I'm going to say this is only again I'm I'm separate from this these are there's a lot of good discussion and and candidly the even the discussion is something that that is moving us forward that we haven't had for for a
209couple of years and so I'm just going to say I think that this board can move these things down the road I don't know that we'll be ready in April to say yes this is us because I think that that Pam still needs to hear from all of you and then we need to share out what everybody shares right so um that discussion probably would need to happen again next month um that would be that would be my recommendation and again I'm not we're not calling the vote would be to potentially put this on next month's agenda again as a discussion item but that gives everybody here an opportunity to eat it okay they've had a request for a 10-minute break so let's do a 10 minute break we'll do recess all right and so
210it is 8 26 we'll see you back here at 8 46 8 36. don't get me out for 20 minutes 8 36. foreign okay now we're back in session where we left off action items okay non-unit employee contracts Mr Bill um again this is something that comes before the board uh every February and uh action in March non-unit employee contracts and I was asked this question earlier today just to to make certain that I could clarify this non-unit rep refers to a number of employees that do not fall under a particular bargaining agreement they may work in sensitive areas or with sensitive data or simply not have job description that is in a unit that collectively bargains the recommendation is for a one-year renewal so this would add one year to their contracts uh spire
211June 30 of 2025 they currently expire June 30th 2024. this would wrap up represent a two percent raise and a one percent increase to their annuity where applicable and the fiscal cost of this is ten thousand nine hundred and seventy one specifically and you guys have all of the the contracts in your packet but this speaks to Julie Baker Milton Barnes Alex Bono Crystal Brinker Jessica Carter Scott Coons Lois Dunning Sarah ebersol Christianity Rachel Henry Jillian Jones Marcus Leon Lori near pass Michelle Oxley Jeremy Patterson Caleb Reed Nicole Scott Diana Stewart Jessica southwell Carrie Tynan and John Wright and it is the recommendation of the administration to approve these contracts as presented it's almost support all in favor oh sorry discussion first we have a discussion no all in favor aye opposed the same okay
212passes thank you okay superintendent BL foreign tax collection Marcus Leon all right so since 2002 the district has collected 100 of its taxes in the summer which helps improve our cash flow and reduce any potential borrowing needs and interest costs our current tax collection agreements with townships of summit black men Napoleon Liberty expired should read 2022 sorry since we intend to have a summer tax levy again in 2023 we must agree on terms of collection or the city of Jackson specifically does not charge for this service just the townships the rates have not changed this is the same rates year over year number of parcels TENS for the most part does not fluctuate so this is a pretty similar number to past years that we're able to budget for so at this time we would
213recommend improving our summer tax collection agreements with the local municipalities motion proof I'm sorry second it's getting money I mean dirt motion by ladies support okay now discussion is there any discussion about this one why doesn't the city charge that's an excellent question I hear that okay let's take a vote all in favor I suppose the same okay it passes okay now we're on the budget moment 2022-23-2 budget amendment Marcus all right so this is our second of three budget amendments that we go through throughout the year if you remember back in December we took our first look at revenues as enrollment numbers and State or finalized so this time around in March we took a um and as you can see from the attachment we are looking right now to add almost three million
214we'll just under 2.8 million dollars to our current fund balance which again is this is a look and time at a particular date which happens to be this week um because where these numbers lie um so again if everything held for the rest of the year we would be looking at it in almost 20 percent fund Bales at the end of the year of course we will take another look at this at the end of the year as more most of our expenditures will be finalized at that point and we'll have a better number of where we're a better idea of where we'll land at the end of the year some of discussion is um Marcus as far as other school districts are concerned that our size how much do they have in their fund
215balance is it close to ours or not I would have to do a little research I know when our Auditors came in the fall they kind of have some of those comparison graphs as to where fund balances in the state and I think in peer districts I could look that presentation up and get that information for you I don't have it right now um the fine balance is that also the general fund is that the same one in the same it's the fund balance for the general fund so each of our funds will have their own fund balance this is the general fund is what we're talking about right right oh did I exit did I not ask the right question the fund balance is not the general fund that's correct they're not there's a
216fund balance for each fund so the the fund balances and Essence the difference between the revenue we're collecting and the expenditures that we're putting out it's something that accumulates over time but this is sorry this right here represents the vast majority of our funds and so this is the one that we amend multiple times a year and when you say general fund that is correct we to Marcus's point because I don't want to get lost in the weeds we do have general fund Surplus in food service and as an example on here later we have an obligation under the state to spend down that particular fund balance and we'll talk a little bit about food service fund balance but to your point Miss Hamilton yes this is the general fund thank you yep sorry I
217didn't want to get lost in the Weeds on that so those support services that went up is that just maybe salaries and under like the March 23rd amended well there's there's a lot of different things that contribute to it for example um due to inflation other things you know a utility costs are in there right I think we had to add almost a half million dollars to utility cost and that's one of those support functions the other the other piece that you might notice is some people's support or instructional staff and that went up largely because we are already in process of adding staff for for knowing that those employees may not be available in fact you hired some tonight so you'll see the the budget reflect us pre-planning again against those layoffs are against
218against the need over the summer so that we're not hunting up new employees come August is really the goal but but that so when you see it you use you see a couple of line items specific pupil support or instructional Staffing and and those would be areas where new hires are when when you see the hiring that's how that impacts that all in favor aye aye opposed the same past thank you okay now we're going now we're going on to the sale of Wilson School Mr Beale please all right we've we brought this before you and I if you remember right uh Jonathan Green the city manager came and spoke with us um at our November 30th workshop and um they had originally proposed a purchase price of a hundred and eighty thousand dollars to
219use the property for um to service homelessness within Jackson this is a city initiative that that is hoped to take a a turn with public or private sector um Partners but we looked at this we had a conversation about it in December and we the board authorized me to enter into negotiations on that behalf um last month they came to us right around the day of the board meeting and said can we reduce this price to 150 000 versus 180 000. now candidly um the thirty thousand dollars while important isn't the the big picture we we certainly still want to help the homeless or or create solutions for homelessness within Jackson um the city has also been working with us on providing some additional lighting out on Wildwood if you've ever been here in the
220morning what you'll notice is that the the street lights are all on the north side of Wildwood and and there are no street lights on the south side of Wildwood we've been in discussion with them for several years to to make this a reality I've had the opportunity to speak with with Daniel Mahoney about it I've had the opportunity to speak with Jonathan Green about it and in exchange for the thirty thousand dollars they're going to put nine street lights out here to to increase visibility and safety for our students I think it's a win-win and so it is the recommendation of administration to move forward with this agreement as presented some of Jeff can you um share with the board the cost the estimated cost for the lights the individual nine lights that are
221looking to be installed you know I I I don't want to get that one wrong can I get you the the cost on individual lighting I I just they're the same lights that we've got out here on the north side of the road and I wanna I wanna say they're roughly 800 900 a piece plus the installation but I don't want to be wrong so that's that's as close to my recollection as I can get and again I wasn't I wasn't banging the drum on the 30 000 I recognize the city will will be able to use those resources to additional to be able to to fund the property I think for us this is an opportunity for us to to again provide for some additional lighting around here but but miss hunt I will
222get you and I'll send it out to everybody the cost but they should have those installed and they tell me they can prior to the start of the school year in 23-24. foreign what's what's the delay for the installation is that a process procurement you know it's it's they're going to have to to procure the lights they're going to have to to get it scheduled to set up so um that that to me when we look at our construction across the district that actually sounds more like a reasonable timeline by the time they get that done if there's in first Etc all of those pieces take time to arrange and so um I while I would love to have them tomorrow I would have loved to have had them yesterday and at this point I
223think that's just where the construction of it goes but great question thank you any other conversation discussion questions okay all in favor say aye aye oppose the same okay message passed I did want to mention one thing I talked to Dan Mahoney about the sale of T.A Wilson and he was concerned that we didn't want to sell the building and I always leave that concert I said no absolutely um The Legend I brought up was that who's going to be in charge you know who's going to make decisions about who stays there who doesn't uh do we fix this tire or that furnace I mean you know that sort of thing and he gave me the impression that they are going to purchase the building they are going to get it all up to snuff
224like it needs to be and then there is one or more um non-profit organizations in town who will take over the the running of it so I did feel a little bit better about there was going to be a who's the boss person you know who's going to be in charge no what one you know I've wondered about them being involved all along but so far nothing's met from that and okay let's see Sharp Park electronic Montessori cafeteria tables in this one montessor cafeteria tables again that's Marcus all right so our cafeteria tables at JPS Montessori are saying one or two of them are broken at this time so we went to get a quote from NBS commercial Interiors who's provided us cafeteria tables throughout the district like at Cascades in general Lewis through a
225bond projects so we have a consistent project or product throughout the district they sent us a quote the amount of thirty thousand four hundred fifty one dollars we did discuss this last week at the facility finance committee meeting so we would recommend approval of this quote which will be paid for from that excess food service fund balance it's an allowable expense and as moving forward and then over the next few months you'll probably see more of these for a few more buildings that we just need to replace as they get older so move support hi hi what was the same okay now we have okay it's not the skin the walk-in cooler freezer at Hunt School all right so I mentioned that spend down plan for our access Food Service fund balance as you know
226last year we redid the walk-in cooler at the operations center so we're moving on to the next building that needs a new walk-in cooler freezer which is at Hunt we put out an RFP and bids were received after reviewing the bid RMS was the lowest responsible bidder at 79 971 we also discussed this last week at the facility meeting and are looking to award the bid to RMS in that amount okay anybody we have a motion support support any discussion any questions why is it that we even have electronic signs oh sorry I'm looking at something else I'm so sorry no all in favor aye aye opposed to say vehicle purchase authorization this one should be on your table in front of you we have done this I think about three different times so I
227apologize that we keep bringing it back in a new format apparently buying Vans is um more complicated than one might think so we we first initially brought this to you guys a year ago and this was approved um at that time the problem then became procurement and there were no Vans to be had um so then we brought it back to you again in the fall and we said and again it was passed and the state of Michigan the and Marcus I want to get the name of the site wrong the the purchasing group that we purchased the Vans through is only selling right now to municipalities and there's no vehicles available for schools so once again we are back before the board and this was brought again before facilities of Finance last week the
228The Proposal is to spend no more than two hundred thousand dollars on three vans the the price of these things Marcus's forty five thousand fifty thousand in my right and uh that was probably the price maybe last week I don't know because the prices are changing so fast and that's really what what this is about right so when we go out to bid for a vehicle uh by the time the bids come in and then you know depending on when they come in between that time and when we would see board approval the vehicle might not be available anymore so what we're looking for is almost a blanket authorization up to that ceiling amount to be able to make those decisions when the rfps come in right then and there secure that vehicle for us
229so we do have a few both in food service and in the maintenance departments that we are looking to replace so again some of those will be paid for through Food Service dollars and and the other one through the general fund and this would be budgeted on next year's budget given timelines on taking delivery on vehicles I wouldn't expect to receive these before probably this time next year hmm so what what we're asking for is the uh authorization and before with bus purchases but we recognize how difficult this has been over the last year so we're not bus van purchases thank you so what we're asking for is a do not exceed number of up to two hundred thousand dollars you're going to see the individual van prices you're going to see the individual RFP
230responses but this this authorization gets us out of the we need to come back to you and ask it again and need to come back to you and ask it again and our inability to purchase a van thus far has been unfortunately challenging support hi hi opposed the same passes oops okay you're all set all right um sharp part okay Sharp Park Electronics sign Marcus all right so as we are working through the remodel project at Sharp Park just as we've done it all the other buildings so the bond we are looking to purchase an electronic sign through Johnson sign to be purchased with non dollars Bond proceeds this would be the same type of sign again that you've seen throughout the district at other buildings so we would recommend approval of the quote from
231Johnson sign in the amount of forty nine thousand nine hundred and seventy five dollars sumo discussion questions so is it to drum up my business or something why do we do electronic signs and personally just I think I'd like to answer that so um part of the electronic science is really twofold one it is a vocal I mean a visual piece for people when they drive by our school to take a look at our building at least and see what's going on and secondly since we are about communication it is one place where we can grab attention of our own audience in a way that makes sense so where it's uh where it makes sense to have the bigger signs that sit out by the road where we're going to have a decent amount of
232traffic pass by and we can brag about Jackson Public Schools we can put things about our schools on there draw attention to our schools we do those signs but at the smaller schools such as John R Lewis and Northeast they sit so far back that it doesn't make sense to put those on but still very important for the audience that comes there every day to be able to find out the information that's going on at their schools so we do things like celebrate our students on there we celebrate different months on there we try to put as much information as we can on there as another form of communication so what we do know is many people get different forms of communication in a lot of different ways but what we also know is that
233if you don't see our schools then you don't think about them and so a flashing sign does a lot to help you do that so I personally when we came on to do the bond it was one of the most important things I thought we needed for our district not only for our own audience but for our community as well to make sure that you are think JPS that you see JPS that you look our way and that you understand what things we've done for this community and how we are part of this community and want to make sure that we we are in in contact with all of our residents as well as our own audience on a regular basis so I personally one of those things that I have thought that has been
234a bonus for our district and for our parents and a lot of the information on there is very pertinent to things they do in the school so it's just a one-time purchase and then we just keep us up correct they're the only other cost associated with it we just recently upgraded to the cloud for our software because of the security breach so that was kind of important we did that also because then we have the access to it where we didn't before they were stationary computers where we couldn't update science on the Fly those kind of things so we we did upgrade to that but it doesn't appear that we'll have to upgrade those signs again in any significant time yes two questions the bond money that's that we allotted for or that we you
235know took in um do we a lot for different schools or are we is it just in like a bowl and then we're just taking it for the schools as we need it or do we a lot each building had a um a budget depending on what the projects that were going on at that building so did have a predetermined budget um and I do know that there was money allocated to each building for these signs at the beginning of the bomb as well is this second question thank you for that um is this a normal price I was looking at the price like my goodness is that normal is this the average price right that's what I want to say is that average it it is in line with the other signs that we've
236purchased so there's I I've seen two different ones this happens to be a double-sided sign just because of where it is and there's a different price if it's uh a building mounted sign like Chris mentioned at General Lewis and Northeast so this is pretty average though thank you oh we're just voting I'm sorry all in favor opposed okay pass thank you okay now we're on to board comments oh boy so evaluation all right okay we're going to have to do that um under old business we have the board evaluation and that's our board evaluation uh pretty much of ourselves and masb really strongly supports this but they also have a tool we can use to do our to do it you know ourselves so we're going to have to if you want if you're interested
237we're going to have to set a date to meet and just discuss our evaluation and what areas will be evaluated and this is no this is a tool kit from masb so this is a probably a weekend training probably it's a long evening session but uh this will be a board self-evaluation it's a tool from masb and I think Miss hunt you might have brought this up at our January meeting they will come and do this training with us so it's not something we have to do on our own and Shalonda was that your intent I believe when you wanted to use masb yes so asking that we secure a facilitator from masb and they will gather the data it's Anonymous information and then distribute that information back to us okay that's not what I
238was talking about at all so yours is much more concise so the question I guess before the board at this time is is there is there interest in moving forward the board self-evaluation through masb yes yes I think we need to do it yes and I don't I don't need a motion uh this isn't we're not I just need to know what you guys want me to do so so that was gonna be my question is this coming back up for discussion and action is that what happens next it's kind of been sitting on this isn't really an action item this is more board training do we want you to approach it so you just need to give me give me it's been hanging out on our agenda we just I'm trying to get direction
239from you guys and Michelle will help coordinate that if if that's the direction the board would like to go so um I remember going through a um obsession with them in the spring of um 2022 was that last year yes um and they talked about the benefits of the board um self-eval so I'ma go for it yes is what I'm trying to say it sounds like we got everybody's good then Michelle will reach out and try to get a get a couple dates and she'll work with masb and set that up for you okay now we're down that's right okay board comments who would like to begin I will okay so the Robert Inman Foundation was formed by his granddaughter Amber lazowski in honor of his contribution serving on the Jackson Public School Board from
240July 1st 2008 until December 31st 2012 and again from January 1st 2015 until December 31st 2020. so Amber Orchestra orchestrated a code Drive last August in his honor and distributed coats hats to Cascades Elementary Hunt Elementary John R Lewis Elementary Northeast Elementary the Middle School at Parkside in Jackson high school so I just wanted to recognize her tonight for continuing the legacy of serving others in the community like her grandfather that is really really a nice thing for her to do several of us worked with Bob Inman he was on our board for a long time and he was just an amazing guy and we lost him just you know about a year ago I think something like that so to leave that I had that Legacy go on like that for his daughter granddaughter
241to do that that's just amazing thank you who else sport comment I will go um I would like to give a big shout out to Tammy gronsky and Eric Baldwin at Parkside for organizing a very successful ski trip earlier this month the kids had so much fun it was a great experience if kids had never been skiing they offered lessons and they were there the whole day and it was just so great and it was just I feel like another example of how Jackson Public Schools offers great opportunities for kids so thank you to them I appreciate it thank you lib should I talk about what I want on the agenda now yeah okay one thing is new business I'd like to see a policy written by the board in terms of a second I
242just lost my train of thought okay in terms of no I'm not okay um a policy that that would be written in terms of teaching students as far as the curriculum is concerned teaching students um for example African-American history I see that that in Florida you know they've banned African-American history any teaching of it in schools I would like to see us be proactive and you know act ahead of of things and maybe write a policy that would not discriminate against color um religion or sexual orientation whatever and so in our curriculum I'd like to see all those things included because all of this is part of History I know that some people feel that by including a lot of this black history that white people would feel offended well you know um black people
243have felt offended for years so I'd like to see that included as new business curriculum curriculum inclusion of African-American studies as itself not just as part of a bigger piece well African-American studies is is already you know a class here but African-American AP African-American oh absolutely has not been included and you know there's a big fuss about it in other parts of the country and I would just hate to see us get pulled into that thanks lib I really appreciate what we can include any additional class but that's especially important okay anybody else I had one more thing oh go ahead um as far as old business is concerned I've had a lot of people question me in the community about um the superintendent's salary and I know that we already voted on it but
244there are a lot of unanswered questions that I wish we could address so that they would feel satisfied in knowing exactly what happened with this position that's another agenda item is that what you're saying that I would like to yeah present item but it would be old business so Olivia I'm happy to talk about my salary anytime but I I think this question I'm going to be candid has been asked and answered and voted on by this board so I will certainly put it on the agenda for a discussion next month and this board will have the opportunity to decide yet again if they intend to bring it up this conversation has been has been had publicly multiple times foreign so um I'm going to add a little bit to what um Libby mentioned just
245to add a little more to it um the conversation I think and let me correct me if I'm wrong I think the conversation around um making sure that we're not that we are proactive and uh not being discriminatory to our people of color black people and our gender fluid communities is a policy I think that Libby was referring to you know let's have a discussion around creating a policy that says that we won't be discriminating on these groups so that we don't have to look at something like what's going on in Florida so that that conversation is a policy that I think Libby was um suggesting that we add to the agenda since we know how to add things to the agenda the so that's one thing the second thing um it's so as board
246members um when we want to add things to the agenda I'm not sure that um extra commentary is necessary um as far as what's been asked and how it's been answered and whether or not it should be um you know because of that I'm not even sure why that conversation comes up um I think it's important to respect the board members that have been elected when they're suggesting different things um such as Libby suggested tonight to add this conversation around uh Jeff's um his contract we want to ask questions and if we still want to ask those questions I don't think it's necessary for the conversation to come back when Libby an elected board member by this community says I want to ask these questions put it on the agenda as we've established tonight I
247don't know that we need to hear as a board from you Jeff saying this question has been asked and answered but I'll put it on the on the agenda I think it's just put it on the agenda and then let's move on and and let the board have that conversation at that time um the next thing I'm not done Jeff okay um the next thing that I'll say because I'm gonna finish my comments is a thank you to the community we've had a long discussion tonight um it's 9 13. we don't usually have meetings this long so thank you all for hanging in there with us I want to even say to this board um when we were discussing the board Norms you know being able to dialogue with them tonight was very refreshing for
248us to be able to establish some some uh you know our different perspectives on what these things look like we could we talked about what respect looked like we got to see some real time um dialogue at least between myself and Pam about what it looks like to be disrespected and what I what it looks like for me to feel to be disrespected and um what respect and disrespect looks like so I'm just grateful that we got to have this conversation I'm grateful to be able to serve uh Jackson I'm grateful that you all sat here with us those of you who are online um I'm hopeful that you know so I don't want to hope that we have long meetings like this but if we have long meetings like this because we are engaging
249because we are you know gaining Clarity from the conversation because we are better representing your voice then I do hope that that continues and if that means we have long meetings um thank you for you know giving us the time to do that um again when we're talking about Community voice when we want to you know I'm constantly that person you're going to keep hearing saying you know I want to hear from the community I want to hear from the community with the purpose of making sure that I'm representing that voice here we've got to be able to have that dialogue so you all giving us an extending you know uh your grace to us to be able to have the conversation just thank you I really appreciate that thank you I I just want
250to say that Jeff has every right to say something it's his contract it's his salary and we've been over it and over it and over it so I don't know what new information is going to be said I mean I listened to the first two times or three times it was talked about so thankfully it's going to be on the agenda and actually you can just get it from Michelle get what for Michelle get what from Michelle we have questions about us but we don't have to discuss it it's just on the agenda so well I think to the point and and you would like me not to question the board or ask the board and I don't think that that's the the role that we have I think we have a conversation um back
251and forth and so if Libby asks questions I think it's important for us to be able to respond to that especially since she's asking questions specifically of me but I make no disrespect you you you want me to respect the decisions of the board and I would tell you that this sounds very much like you are disrespecting the votes that were cast by your peers simply because you did not get the correct answer or the answer that you want and so your hope is to bring it back before the board every month simply to maintain this level of dialogue and I think that the board has actually voted on this already so my contract will be up for for vote again next year and we can have another discussion we can have a discussion on
252next month and Libby I'm happy to sit down with you at any time and you know this we've talked about my salary or my contract but um it will be on the agenda next month I have no issues with that conversation but I think that it it is a free flow of information back and forth and so Keisha I reject your commentary that I should not have the ability to request or to have a conversation with anybody on this board so to clarify because I don't want you to think that that's what it was um I think you know if if there's one person on this board and I'm not the only one but if there would be just one person who wants the dialogue and it's definitely me but again like I said I'm
253not the only one um it's not a matter of you not being able to express yourself we just established tonight that the way the board members get something on the agenda is to say I want this on the agenda to then talk about how we shouldn't have it on the agenda because it's already been established that to me was unnecessary um so that's the part I'm talking about we are the elected board members and if we as elected board members say after we've established this is how you put it on the agenda then we put it on the agenda I'm not sure that there's more conversation to be had if we still have questions as board members if we still have questions we recognize that um there's a vote that has been taken and that
254there's you know as a board we're moving in One Direction but if we still have questions we've just established if you still got questions you want to put it on the agenda do that and then we'll have those questions answered it it's not like it's something other than that we have questions we want it on the agenda it's on there I don't think there's anything more that needs to be said after that okay I've got two things first of all School Board people these are so important the CBA classes on May 20th we're going to have four of them held in the morning there are two basic School law and board operating procedures I thought that would be of interest to many of us and I would love to have someone besides me go um
255with me or sit with me or just be there where I could see you and then the open meetings act I am really interested in this because one of the things they talked about when they brought these up was that there have been some changes and some lawsuits that have gone to court to get a supreme court opinion I know I make sure that we're on The Cutting Edge of all these and the next thing is um excuse me where is this um let's see the career center oh right here right here in town yeah Basic School law and board operating procedures will be in the morning 9 to noon and then open meetings act and effective board meetings will be wonderful 20th we'll make sure you get copies of this May 20th but I
256thought all four of those things we have talked about now for years and I think it'd be ideal to have them especially the latest thing okay and my second thing to say is that I think and you hear me say I think not the board I think that I I really think that Libby you would do better with you and Jeff talking this through because I think what happens is too many people get involved in trying to clarify to you or clarify to him what you're asking and clarify you what he said and that kind of thing because we have been through this a number of times the whole salary thing and if you wanted to be on the agenda that would put it back into the public like we didn't already resolve it what
257they're going to say they talked about that twice already um would you feel comfortable talking to Jeff people in the public were the ones that were asking me the question but you'd have the answer if you told him what the questions were and then he could answer and you'd be able to explain to him and that's up to you that I'm just suggesting that it might be more productive to be real specific instead of having all the input from all the rest of the people on the board but this is up to you it's up to you and Jeff but I just thought that if I had something I wanted to talk to him about that already had been established and we'd already gone through it a couple times and people were asking me about
258it I didn't have the answers that I would want to talk to him just specifically so that we get the um would be going off bird walking in different directions but that's up to you I'm just suggesting that I think it's a little bit less confusing if you have just yourself and the questions that those people wanted to ask because they may ask questions that we never thought about you know you know um see um I'd therefore I'd like to have it on the agenda oh okay and and you can do that that's not a problem at all it's just that it won't make any difference you know our vote won't make any difference after the fact so okay anything else I could love to hear a motion for adjournment I'm so moved oh the
259what sorry I missed the calendar I got so excited about my other calendar with SCBA classes okay our regular board meeting will be April 18th at 5 30. for April May 16th in the JHS Media Center again commencement details those will follow but the commencement activity is the 26th of May that's always Memorial Day weekend and so if you're looking for the whole it's that week you'll have Baccalaureate you'll have honors assembly and then you'll have you know the graduation ceremony that week and the retirement dinner we have some retirements this year that I can't believe retiring Joel Shaner is one of them I don't know how we're going to survive I don't know how the walls will stand up without Joel being here but Joe Shaner is one of them do we have a
260list yet of retirees not finalized yet okay but that's going to be at Cascades Banner at 5 30 on the 6th of June the JPS retirement dinner that's a that's really a nice a nice event if you get a chance to participate okay now let's get emotion going so far all in favor aye opposed thank you and thank you people for staying and listening and