LIVE BOARD MEETING

001and helping them uh live out their dreams. So just very proud of all of you. >> Thank you. Uh good evening. Tonight it is a privilege indeed to recognize and celebrate the students who have entered scholarships, earned scholarships through the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Commission of Mid Michigan. These awards are not simply financial support. They are a powerful affirmation of character, leadership, academic commitment, and service. The students we are honoring represent the very best of what Dr. King called us to pursue. Excellence with purpose, education with impact, and leadership rooted in justice and compassion. What makes this recognition especially meaningful is that these scholars come from different grade levels, different stages in their educational journeys. Some are preparing for college while others are continuing their growth right here in our schools. Regardless of where

002they are in their path, they have demonstrated a commitment to learning, community involvement, and the pursuit of opportunity. Dr. King reminded us that intelligence plus character, that is the goal of true education. Tonight, we celebrate students who embody both. They are thoughtful, engaged, and determined to make a difference. To our scholarship recipients, we are incredibly proud of you. Your hard work, your voice, and your leadership inspire us. Lancing is stronger because of students like you. Congratulations and keep striving towards the dreams you are building. Each of our students will be reading an excerpt from their essay tonight. We'll start with Gavin Knap. Um before Before I begin my speech, I would like to just thank my Spanish teacher, Mr. Morales, for some editorial advice that may or may not have contributed to me winning. Who

003knows? Um, so I'm just reading an excerpt, so not the whole thing. Okay. Okay. Um, it is not active. It is not that active evil is the ultimate enemy of good, but rather apathy is the ultimate en enemy of righteousness. It is far too e easy to be apathetically too easy to look away or claim one is too busy to pay any mind. It is insufficient to meet the bare minimum of not evil. Instead, we should put in the work and aspire to be truly good. The German theologian Dietrich Bonhaofer who gave his life to stand up in the face of oppression just like Dr. King beautifully captured this sentiment when he wrote in a letter, "We are not simply to bandage the wounds of the victims beneath the wheels of injustice. We are driven.

004We are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself. It is not enough to make up for injustice, but the system creating the injustice must itself be fixed. A society can endure war, poverty, and racism, but it cannot survive through a total lack of care among its population. It was apathy that allowed Hitler to take power. It was apathy that allowed racism in the South to go unchallenged. It is apathy today that allows the less fortunate to suffer. It is apathy today that allows the marginalized in our society to face oppression. Let us not turn our eyes from injustice, but rather face it head on. Justice cannot be enacted passively. Thank you, Gavin. Next, we have Zakyra Thomas. Hello everybody. How are you guys doing today? That's good. I also would like to thank one

005of my teachers, Dr. Savage. Thank you. Along with Miss Ellis, who also helped me revise some of my essay. Justice down in streams pelting the balancing scales of self-righteousness. Melt dreams that hold mighty waters of society. Cool. Welcoming pools of deflection cover rocks formed by misinterpretation. Who are we but humans that crave simple rights? Humans who are indecisively unknowing of who is considered to be equal or not anything at all. Leaders of justice and dreamers who invoke the passions of others. Dr. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is a man who pushes the dream that justice should be a automatic function we possess. Gears are never squeak from overuse. Clocks that tick as justice is never late but always right on time. God-given equality picked for all to get pocketed and traded for green bands of

006greed. Smooth alcoholic paper sheets monopolized for basic human rights. Filthy manipulated bills striking to possess eyes like a breathtaking mistress that feeds desire and one's sweet deception. Yet ladies justice blindfolded and forgiving knowing that time has always has a way a spilling too far sweeter than lies that could seduce you with my first lesson with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. A story of a voice that will remain unwrabled even to those who threatened his cause. Years as a high school student rooting me in a system of government with class selections and class elections leading me to executive treasurer with no knowledge of this actual transformation. Ladies justice influences flow to keep Odo along with true democracy with it only a voice and a few such spreadsheets. This elected position has taught me more than what

007textbooks could. Being a leader takes self-discipline, responsibility, and confidence. It's the mindset of being heard, which st starts with hearing others first. Eyeing the clocks, wondering if I'm doing the right thing with millions of mistakes bumbling in me. Spine chilling doubts silence with actions from others that lift me from my sinking place. Experiences. Dr. King Jr. felt at peace by not knowing by not allowing all absence intention to pull him from justice's presence. Tear gas discriminated arrested Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has charged was charged 29 times for dreaming of equality. Evoked flames of hope and money could not ex couldn't extinguish community that couldn't extinguish the communities that formed together engulfing cities with Lady Lady Justice's strength. Standing above inclusive inclusivity, segregation, and stopping seduction from wealth only waving unbelievables. Neville swaying those with

008dreams like do Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. whose destined path aligned with equality. Dr. King Jr.'s life may have been ended by bullets of melted gold, but his message spread quicker than the trigger that was ever pulled. Millions adore and celebrate his legacy as peaceful freedom activist and black community rises. Pushed by his character and determined to pushed by his character, I'm determined to spread service to others by through his ideals. Justice could not roll down. Justice rolls down like a river. As the prophet Amos told us a long time ago, we must decide to flow with it. Thank you, sir. Congratulations. Next up, we have Elijah Bond. All right, hold on. I would also like to thank uh a few of my teachers, Mr. Boore, for helping me get some words out of there.

009I I I had a trouble uh I I wrote a lot. I wrote a lot and my dad was also a help of picking some words out uh to really refine it and I think the product uh definitely paid off. So I just want to thank them and all right my poem is entitled 10 gods came king's death the waters dried up America you have killed your prophets Hoover hidden behind paper throne spun webs of surveillance a paranoid king bull unleashed dogs and hoses attempting to command the very elements Wallace high priest of segregation planted himself in the doorway missed hook his shadow for law Now commander-in-chief Vatican in nature proclaims faux freedom. A false Moses descending from the mountains with flaccid tablets rain soaked and frail. They crumble before his feet before he reaches

010the Israelites. Before you know it, he's melting the golden calf, putting his statue in its place. A false idol for a false idol. A false prophet to a false god. America, you have killed your prophets. Having escaped from Egypt, we are establishing a new desert empire. A new oppressor has risen with the same cracked voice of false authority. He stands not with dogs or hoses but with decrees and detention centers. He stands not in schoolhouse doors but at borders lined with steel bones. Tools have changed but intent has not to stop the flow to choke the river to river to to stall the march of those seeking breath ground and belonging. America you have killed your profits. 10 gods construct steel dams and the greatest trick they played upon us is convincing us to build

011them. The old oppressors built dams of segregation. Today's erect dams of immigration. Different waters, same violence, different stones, same wall. We will tear down these dams until the waters of justice, until the waters of righteousness, until the river of freedom overflows to create a grandiose fountain. And the glister glowing of that fountain flowing shall shine an unwavering and generational doctrine detailing the foe, the fight and freedom obtained out of omnipresent oppression that looms over us no longer. Thank you. >> Sorry. >> I'm sorry. I'm still catching my breath there. Uh we have a fourth recipient uh that could not be here tonight, but still want to acknowledge and congratulate Ariela Anderson. What do you want me? No, you have to Perfect. >> There you go. Nice big smile. One, two, three. One, two, three. That's

012a picture. If I can take a a moment, >> I want to um give uh Principal Kathers another round of applause for school. Please stand. >> I think our future's pretty bright. I don't know how you all are feeling, but that was incredible. Well, I got chills. So, awesome job, everyone. We have our next uh set of awards that we'd like to give out. Um, and this is to our hardworking staff. We have a staff that um comes every day and gives their heart to our students and gives their time and we are really proud of them every single day. Um, one of the things that they have worked really hard on and is really it is really working hard on is being national board certified. It is a long process and many of the

013teachers you're going to see tonight have maintained that for over five ten plus years and it's an incredible feat and what that means is that they've spent a lot of time putting things together for students putting things and pouring into their profession which is teaching which is one of in my mind the most admirable profession. I'm a little biased because I was a teacher. Um but we're really proud to have them here tonight. And I'd like to invite up our senior director. Let me see if he's Oh, Kim. There she is, Kim Johnson Ray, uh, to come up to the podium and she's going to be giving the certificates out this evening for our National Board Certified Teachers. So, welcome, Kim. >> Thank you. >> Good evening. Tonight is truly an honor to recognize and

014celebrate our National Board Certified Teachers. This distinction represents one of the highest and most respected professional C certifications an educator can achieve. and it speaks volumes about the caliber of professionals we have serving students here in Lancing. National board certification is not simply an award. It's a rigorous voluntary process that requires educators to demonstrate advanced knowledge, deep content expertise, and a profound commitment to student learning. Candidates complete an extensive portfolio that includes detailed lesson plans, student work samples, video recordings of their teaching, and thorough written analysis of their instructional decisions. They must show not only what they teach, but how they assess, reflect, adapt, and continuously improve to meet the needs of every learner. This process can take one to three years to complete. It demands countless hours beyond the school day researching, writing, analyzing

015data, and reflecting on their practice. It's a true demonstration of professionalism, perseverance, and dedication to the craft. What makes this recognition even more meaningful is the impact. National board certified teachers are shown to positively influence student achievement. They raise the level of instructional excellence in their buildings. They mentor colleagues. They model reflective practice. They strengthen their entire system. As a district, we are incredibly proud of these educators. Their commitment to growth mirrors our commitment to excellence for every student in every classroom every day. To our honores, thank you for your leadership, your persistence, and your unwavering belief in our students. Lancing is better because of you. Congratulations for we are so we are proud and to celebrate you tonight. So, I'd like to call up UH KATHLEEN DIMMER. KATHERINE SHROCK, Sarah Miller, Jay Crefman. Congratulations

016and Robin Lindell. Would you come and tell share what school you're from? >> Hi, I teach third grade at Gardener International. >> I teach preK at Guyer Park. Hi, Sarah Miller. Universal PreK at Lions Elementary, >> math at Eastern High School. Go Quakers. >> School counselor at Eastern High School. >> Thank you again for your service. Can go here in the horseshoe picture. Okay. We've already made that joke very loudly. It's a >> picture. Okay. So, um, let's give this teachers another round of applause. >> We do have three teachers that were not able to come this tonight uh that were also earning the honor of uh national board certification and that's Regina Bloomline, uh Rachel Eel, and Elizabeth Perez. So, if we could give them a round of applause. So, Madam Superintendent, you're still

017>> I'm still on. >> You're still on. >> All right. >> I love the celebrations part. This is my favorite thing. Uh, so tonight it was our honor to have our high school students here for our MLK scholarship award winners and of course our national board certification. And what that comes in culmination of is all of the hard work that is poured into the Lancing School District every single day. And some of the culmination of that work is on our boards here in the um our visual learning boards here in the boardroom. We celebrate this once a month. So if you um would like to join us, we would love to have you here every month to celebrate all of our students here this evening. Uh we have I want to make sure I don't

018leave anyone out. We have our boards from Eastern High School tonight. Lions North, Wexford, and Willow. So if we can please give them a round of applause. It's hard to do that at the end. If you haven't been here for our visual learning board celebration, how this works as we have each of our um students, administrators, and teachers that are assigned to each of these schools to stand by their boards and us as audience members get to go and rotate through the boards as they tell us about all of the amazing learning that's happening here at their schools. We take about two to three minutes per board so that we able to see all of them and then we rotate through. So it's kind of hard to hear. You'll have to listen when we say

019rotate, but that way you'll be able to get to see all f five uh schools this evening. So if you'll please join us with our visual learning boards presentation. We invite all of you that are here to present this this evening to go to your boards and we'll be joining you to see your learning. Thank you. We're doing the rotations. Yes. Counterclockwise. Love you. Good job. Madam superintendent, >> again, very nice presentations. >> Thank you very much for coming. We appreciated all of you being here tonight. >> Yeah, that's my class. I don't think the children want to leave. >> They're uh they're still looking at their presentation. They love it. >> There are some really interesting um presentations by the by the children themselves. Yes. Yes. Um we we're continuing with the with our

020meeting presentations. We have the budget amendment number one. >> I'd like to invite up to the table our uh assistant superintendent of budget and finance, Kim Adams, who's going to be doing the budget presentation for us this evening. Welcome, Kim. >> Thank you. Good evening. Tonight I am very pleased to present budget amendment number one. Um, you guys are probably tired of hearing me say this every time, but this is a great amendment and it'll be even better the second time around. Oops. froze. So, a reminder of the context, we make assumptions in April through June for fiscal year 26. We made assumptions about what our enrollment projections would be, what our state aid and foundation allowance would be. We estimated staffing, and we estimated our grant allocations. actual fund balance changes occur between April

021and June. And just a reminder, this year things were a bit delayed. Um the Michigan legislature passed our budget October 3rd, which is generally a little bit later than we usually expect it to be approved. Um Governor Whitmer signed the budget into law on October 7th. The audited fund balance from prior year is finalized in November after the fisc year 26 budget is approved. Budget amendment number one reflects changes as of January 31st from our approved budget in June. And these numbers somehow got all messed up when I sent the PowerPoint forward, but if you have a hard copy, they're printed correctly. Um, our approved budget, we estimated the fund balance at 39.6 million. The audited fund balance showed an increase to that of $980,000, bringing our fund balance to $40,599,520. We also had an

022increase in revenue of $3.1 million offset by increases in our expenditure budgets of 2.4 million. The net between the 3.1 increase in revenue and the additional cost of 2.4 million is a better than budget of $765,000. So therefore, our amended ending fund balance at June 30, 2026, estimated at 40.5 plus the $765,000 is a ending fund balance this June of $41.3 million. What were our revenue increases? Well, we had a total increase of 5.4 4 million in our revenues and they were comprised of 1.3 million in state aid. Just a reminder, we were very conservative when we budgeted for this year. We estimated an increase in per pupil funding of $300 per kid and what actually came out was $442 increase. So $142 per child that we hadn't accounted for. So, our foundation increased to

023$10,50 per kid. We had an increase in property taxes of $775,000. We've estimated our solar lowinccome refund at 1 million. This is low, but that is um the estimate for the general fund. The rest of the solar was completed using capital projects and syncing fund and that's where the return on our investment will go. We also had miscellaneous revenue, rentals, and refunds of $165,000 more than what we budgeted for. We're estimating our USF rebates this year at 200,000. And then ISD taxes Medicaid hold harmless increased by 1.8 million. And then our food service indirect increase by $146,000. So those are our total increases in revenues of 5.4 4 million which is offset by some decreases of 2.2 million for MIPERS. The net increase in revenue therefore is $3.1 million. We also had adjusted costs to

024our adopted budget. We provided additional funding for special ed staffing. Our negotiations, if you recall, we adopted the meet and confer contract um and teacher subs. We had an issue where we needed to provide additional funding for teacher subs. We also had program investments, our schools and departmental carryover from prior year. We provided additional funding to schools. We provided enrollment adjustments, funding for the schools that have advanced placement. We provided them $10,000 per AP class. outgoing transfers to the capital projects, the second street flint learning hub and the ISD tuition and SE transportation. So altogether those increases plus program savings of 3.2 million showed an increase of 2.4 million in our expenditure budgets. So, real quick, a summary of budget amendment number one. Our approved fiscal year 26 ending fund balance was estimated at $39.6

025million. We had the $980,000 fund balance increase, bringing our estimated fund balance to 40.5 million less the increase in expenditures of 2.4 4 plus the increase in revenues of 3.1 brings us to our estimated ending fund balance June 2026 of 41.3 million. This is a really good place for us to be. >> Thank you. >> Excellent. Excellent. Uh >> we'll just give her a hand. Okay. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Yeah. Um questions. Dr. Rodriguez. >> Thank you. Thank you very much. >> You're welcome. >> You can allow to smile. But I want to know about the second street Flynn Learning Hub. Are we spending or we are revenue? How what is the situation of that program? >> Sure. So the second street Flint Learning Hub um we are using general fund and 31A funds

026to pay for that contract. the um students do provide a increase to the district in state aid revenue. We get to count those kids in our enrollment. So we do get the $10,50 per each child there. >> Then it's a let's go to ter in business terminology. It's a business. >> Yes. >> We are making money in that program. >> Miss Jess. >> Yes. The contract that we have with them provides uh education to students uh for in Flint for um online schools and that money is of benefit to the um general fund. So it increases our fund balance um because of that contract. Yes. >> Uh Trusty Moore. >> Yes. I just could clarify what stands for >> universal service fund. So our technology projects, some of them qualify for rebates under the USF.

027>> You're welcome, >> Trusty Williams. >> So along So I have a question because I remember at some point we were also talking about having a Detroit site similar to the Second Street site in Flint. Do we have that right now or negotiating that? >> Um I don't think that's going anywhere. >> How many students do we have at this site? Do we know? Um, Miss Jess, >> I'm gonna have to get you the exact number. I think last count um that I was aware of was 62 students at the site, but I don't want to quote that as the actual number. We do have our spring count right now and so I can get the exact number um after this meeting. Thanks for the question. >> Thank you. >> Any other questions? Trusty Strode.

028>> Thank you. I always appreciate uh this presentation. Um, the one question I did want to go to is the estimated solar uh, refunds. I know you mentioned the funding source, but I did believe that at one point we were getting some grants towards that. Can you clarify that that was included in that conversation? >> I'm not following what it is you're asking. Sorry. >> Are there any Oh, Dr. Cabinet, go ahead. >> So, this is our tax refund. Uh, is that correct? Yes. Yeah, this is our tax refund. So, the solar panels have already been paid for and that did include a lot of grants. Um what this is now that and that was already done like in last year's budget, right? Um but now this year is the year that we're eligible for

029a tax refund. Um and so that is the estimate there. And you might remember in last board meeting when I gave um the report out for the finance committee um part of one of the expenditures that we approved was to um hire um a firm to make sure that we get our full uh refund which is actually estimated to be more than a million dollars. But um Miss Adams as always is being conservative in her estimates to make sure that we're on track. Thank you. >> Thank you Dr. Kavanagh for >> answering that question. She knew what I was trying to ask. Um so I appreciate that. Thank you. to clarify that piece. Um, I'm not sure on what that timeline looks like. >> So, when we submit for the credit to get paid and

030when the government pays us, I I don't know. >> Trusty Williams. Um, so along with the solar panels, are we going to be budgeting the energy into our budget that we are giving other people that the board of water and light is paying us for? Are we still working on that? >> I believe we're still working on that. But one thing I think you can count on is that there will be savings in our utility bills. And in fact, I think we've already seen such happen. Um, so next year rather than having a 10% increase, it will be offset by our expected savings. >> So just a quick little point to that, since we've enacted all of our solar panels, we've generated over 600 megawatts of energy, which is extensive. We use we use a

031lot more energy that than that districtwide. Um, but that's great great numbers. And then we do have an agreement with BWL that if we are overgenerating power at our buildings, um we are selling back for 7.5 cents a kilowatt. Um so I think we're going to really start seeing that in the summer when we're using our buildings less. Um you know, shutting down lights in rooms and just not needing as much power, not running the air conditioning at full power. Um and we'll start to see some of that really kick in over the summer months. We haven't seen it yet because we didn't really turn on our solar until the end of summer, beginning of fall. So this will be our first full summer having all of our panels up. >> Any other questions? Otherwise,

032thank you very much. >> Thank you for your work. Uh moving on the agenda, we we're now to reports uh from officers, a report from the secretary. Trusty Tro, >> thank you. The February 19th, 26 uh secretary's report is as follows. We have a few invitations, communications, and announcements. On February 25th from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m., there's our preschool and kindergarten enrollment event. Location is prek and K schools. On March 4th from 5 to 7:00 p.m., Lancing Technical High School has an open house. The programs in computer science, culinary arts, and health science 2026 LEAF and local scholarships. The due dates for these local scholarships is Thursday, March 26th, 2026. If you have questions or need more information, contact your high school counselor, the Promise Pathfinder, or Miss Baronito, Promise Leaf Scholarship Director at Ber

033O at lancingpromise.org or you can call 517750094. March 20th, there is a PD day of no school. March 27th, no school. Spring break, March 30th through the 31st and April 1st through the 3rd. Our next board meetings are as follows. February 28th, we have a special board meeting. March 5th is our regular board meeting, and March 19th is our regular board meeting and information study session. This concludes the secretary's report. Thank you. >> Thank you. Now we go to the superintendent's report. Good evening everyone. Uh each month we hold our family parent roundt at the Hock Center. It's from 6:00 to 8 once a month there and we often have several of our trustees that will come and join us at the round table. It's a really special place because it's parents that are committing

034each month to coming out and supporting really the district and their students. They give us really great ideas. They give us feedback. They tell us things we're doing well, things that we're not doing well. and it is all in the spirit of getting better for their children. Uh this month we had guest speakers focusing on student achievement and school funding. These were topics that were requested by parents and so we try to deliver that information each month to them. We really hope that people that are out there listening that you come and join us. We really need to hear your voice. uh we need to be together as an entire district to serve our students and the only way that we can do that is by hearing all of the things from your perspective. We

035have great plans. We have wonderful staff. We have wonderful people that care about children, but we really don't know how that's landing until you tell us. So, we are hoping that you come out and join us for our parent round table. We have a a very committed group of parents that come each month. We've had over 40 people at those meetings at a time and so we really want to hear from each of the schools. So please come out and join us. I deeply appreciate the participation and cander of the group and their voices are not only heard but I feel that they're truly valued. The feedback gathered during those roundts directly informs our thinking and strengthens our work as a district. And as we know strong schools requires strong partnerships and we really feel

036that this group exemplifies that spirit. 10,000 of our families every single day choose the Lancing School District. We also have over 1500 employees that choose the Lancing School District. Of any place that you could be, you chose here and we are really honored by that choice to be in our school district. As many of you may have read or not in my superintendent newsletter, it's really time to show our pride as a district and it is time to get the entire city of Lancing behind our students. They deserve that kind of inspiration. They deserve that kind of support. And so many of you may have seen tonight I had my banner out for proud to be LSD. You're going to see that a lot. Um we have many things to be proud of in the

037Lancing School District. And though we have a ways to go and we definitely have things to improve upon because we're not perfect, what we are perfect for are you, your students, and your families. And we're just so happy that you chose us. So, please join me in our movement for proud to be LSD because it is a proud moment to be here in Lancing and we hope that we just keep improving and making this a fabulous place so that our light is so excuse me our light is so bright that no one can ignore us. And so with that, that is the end of my superintendent report. >> Thank you. Uh yes, uh questions or comments for superintendent report? Uh trusted Williams. So first I I do attend the family round table but I attend

038as a parent not as a trustee as a parent. So and I will say this week was so energetic. So we got these stickers you guys will get them later. I got mine on Tuesday when I was at the round table and even the parents so I think it was either our communications or either the superintendent but they just simply said I'm proud to be and all the parents instantly said LSD. So if somebody walks past you in the community, are you hearing me? If somebody says, "I'm proud to be all we want you to say is LSD because that's who we are." I really applaud the superintendent for giving these to the parents on I mean the whole energy change. When we were taking pictures, they were hilarious. But again, these roundts are very,

039very great to be a part of. When I say they go, we go into think tank rooms according to schools and things of they are hearing. If you're seeing your parking lots changing, it's coming through the round table. The student achievement stuff, while we have a committee that is the arm of the board, the parents are saying, "We want to see this is what we want to see." The superintendent made herself very transparent this week and said, "What do you want to see within the next year to move our district so you come to these meetings, you are being heard, please, the PTO's are up and running because of the uh parents coming to these meetings." So the superintendent and her team are doing a great job. We just need you. So kudos to you

040this week. I'm so excited about the energy that we're moving forward. So thank you for that this week. >> Any other question or comment? >> Okay. Thank you, Madam Superintendent. We're now to new business. And the first uh item of business is uh the 2026 refunding bond ratification resolution. Um the information was in your packet. Um, do we need to know anything like a brief on this? >> Of course we do. We don't want to keep anybody without information, right? Uh, that's kind of our job. So, um, as you all might know, we had a bond in 2016. And what this is is a refinancing of those funds. So, the refinancing applies to bonds originally issued in 2016 for the school building and site improvements. By taking advantage of better interest rates in the market,

041the district was able to lower borrowing costs. So, basically what that means is a $5.8 million savings over the life of the bonds, which is wonderful for our taxpayers. We um I was there the day that we did the uh refinancing of the bonds because it's a live um feed that we get to watch on our computers. And we sold all of our bonds in less than an hour, which is really a fantastic thing. And when we talked with a company that did the refinancing of the bonds, they really said that one of the reasons that you had so many biders on your bonds was because you have an A rating. And that is a really difficult rating to get um for our bonds. And so that means that we've been really good uh financial

042stewards of the money and we are just so happy that the l that our lancing community really has supported us in those bonds. So um I do want to point out behind me is a little shameless plug or not um but some of the projects that your bond dollars have given to us are behind us. We have Luton School in the first three panels behind us and these are the renderings of the new Luton building. It's a really innovative place for our Spanish immersion. And then on this side and that is opening in two years. And then over here we have our Willow School and that will be opening this fall. So again, thank you to all of you for your support in our bonds and certainly we're really thrilled to be able to have

043this savings by being able to refinance those bonds and this is the ratification board that you have in your packet tonight. >> Questions? Dr. Trusty Rodriguez. question but I am really so exciting and happy and see the new future home of these bilingual students and the bilingual thinking in two languages and many languages and the parents and the community is going to be so proud to see that one. I hope the community can see it and thanks for not only for Luton but also for Willow. I go out around Willow every day and the students are going and the family are going to be receiving the best what they were talking about the best education and welcome back or come back better yesterday than tomorrow. Thank you. >> Any other question or comment? Okay, if

044there's no other comments, can I have a motion to approve this resolution? >> Yes. I move that this board approve the verification resolution prepared by council and presented by the administration. >> Second >> has been moved to second discussion. I just want to point out that uh since our since my time here on the board when we first uh passed the 69 million dollar bond, um we made a um a promise to our our um constituents that we would finish on time and under budget. and and that is because when you resell these bonds, you know, you gain you gain uh in terms of less interest, so the the community pays less in taxes. So, this is what it's all about. And we still are able to to accomplish what we promised we were going

045to build. And just pictures, you know, are or um examples of that, you know, the uh Pentinguel now Eastern High School that was built new and and all the other buildings that we upgraded with the first initial bond. So I think every every board that has come after that has made the same well has kept to the same pledge that we will do our best to be uh uh good with our money that belongs to the the community and that we will spend it in the best way as we promised and and come under budget and and or not ask for more on that. So uh I just wanted to share that with you. Any other comments here? None. All those Oh, we need to uh please call the role. >> Dark Cabinet. >> Yes.

046>> Miss Lemma McKisk. >> Yes. >> Mr. Lopez, >> yes. >> Mrs. Moore, >> yes. >> Mr. Niski, >> yes. >> Dr. Rodriguez, >> yes. >> Mrs. Strode, >> yes. >> Ms. Williams. >> Motion passes. Thank you. Dr. Kavana, >> yes. >> Miss Lamia McKisk, >> yes. >> Mr. Lopez, >> yes. >> Mrs. Moore, >> yes. >> Mr. Niski, >> yes. >> Dr. Rodriguez, >> yes. >> Mrs. Stro. >> Yes. >> M. Williams. >> Resolution. >> Mr. President. >> I make a motion that the board of education approve the MHSA resolution for volleyball as presented. >> Second. Dr. Kavanaaugh. >> Yes. >> Mr. Sorry, Miss Leia McKisk. >> Yes. >> Mr. Lopez. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Moore. >> Yes. >> Mr. Nisque. >> Yes. >> Dr. Rodriguez. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Strode. >> Yes. >>

047Miss Williams. Thank you. >> It's been moved and second that we approved the for first reading of these policies. >> Mr. President. >> Yes sir. >> I think the the chairperson of the committee knows that very well. Then this policies are all all following legislator regulations. Then we didn't had too much choice there. Okay. Yes. >> Oh, we're in we're uh comments on the on the risks. Do you have any? >> Go ahead. >> Thank you. So I will note that uh during the year of the 2025, the policy committee was part of revising, editing, and rescending and recommending board approval for a total of 62 policies. The policy committee did hold our first meeting on February 10th at 12:00 p.m. and the meeting was adjourned at 1:34 p.m. The following board members were present,

048myself, Dr. Rodriguez and Trustee Herd. Um during our meeting, the committee reviewed the policies for first reading regarding the Niola fall updates and as Dr. Rodriguez mentioned, a lot of these are uh in fact the law and that we don't have a opportunity to challenge which we will not do because we are always going to follow the law. And so the uh first reading that you have before you did go before the policy committee and we are all in agreement to move forward um with the first reading and I just wanted to make sure that I give the board uh proper notice that we were able to review these items before coming to the dis and our next policy meeting will take place on Tuesday February 24th at 11:30 a.m. to 100 p.m. and we

049will further discuss. Thank you, >> Justin. >> Yes. I believe in the folder when I opened it, it looked like there were two different drafts for policy 5460 on graduation. I don't know if other people saw that same one and they look like different proposals. So, I was wondering if you could clarify. One added some additional requirements around FASA and one just authorized the superintendent to provide a notice. Which one should we be? Do you know >> I can get back to you on that. I know Sergio is out today, but he would probably have more of that information regarding that. Um, but I think we could proceed with the first reading and I'll make sure that we address it at our next meeting. Thank you. I move, Mr. President, I move that the board

050of education accept the Care Hawk intercom system purchase recommendation as presented. >> Second. questions. >> I'm gonna actually turn this over to Christina Tokar to tell us a little bit more about >> Sure. Um, so this is our PA system. So all of our schools have PA systems to do be able to do announcements in the hallways, classrooms, gymnasium, everywhere around the school. Um, Sexton has a system that is decades old. Um, and we can no longer repair any parts because they don't make them uh for that system. So, it is time to upgrade them to a new system and get them into the 20th century. So, that's what this is. I >> Mr. President, I move that the board of education accept the charger maintenance contract as presented. >> Second. >> Questions? Wait. Uh,

051this is the only one we have. >> Okay. It's um, Chimerian um, Blocker. Excuse me if I mispronounce your name, but you have three minutes to address the board. and we don't um we don't have uh answers for you, but we're gonna listen to what you have to provide for us. >> All right. Hi, I'm Kamaran Blocker, a 2025 graduate of Sexton and a first year student at the University of Michigan. Uh I talked to the superintendent about this idea and getting it implemented into the Lancing schools. I have came up with a financial literacy game as you can see right here and I have been testing this out in the Lancing schools this week. I've went to Everett and I went to Sexton and the kids love the game as well as the teachers.

052I want to thank Dr. Scott, economics teacher at Sexton for helping me make this game and giving me this idea. And I want to tell you a little bit about Economy. So Economy is a stimulating and competitive game that teaches financial literacy through hands-on gameplay. Players must earn, trade, and spend their way through the game, survive, and thrive, climbing through the inner and outer socioeconomic layers of life. The one at the top wins the game. In this game, there are many ways to make money. But as easy as it is, be careful as the government is always watching. So ask yourself, will you play fair or will you play to win? This little gist has gotten a lot of schools interested around Michigan. I have been partnered with the center for educational outreach at the

053University of Michigan. With this game as as long uh with this game also comes learning objectives. I have a list of I can statements that come with this game and I seen the students at Sexton and Everett connect this game with the classes that they are taking now and understand uh a little bit about equity and and APR when it comes to loans. and they honestly go wild over this game. Something that I've never seen and a lot of people I know who really aren't that ver uh vable uh ver verbal uh at these schools have just exploded over this game. So I think this is something that you guys should look to implement into your schools. >> And that's it. >> Thank you. Thank you. And I think the superintendent has spoken to you

054already. So continue talking to her. Thank you very much. Okay, we don't have any other public speaker. We're going to go into our information study session presentation. But before we do that, I just want to inform the public that our trustee was unable to be here because he's taking care of some family matters. So hopefully everything goes well and we'll see him here at the next meeting. So, >> all right, without further ado, we're going to get into our uh human resources information study session. And I'm bringing up our senior director of human resources, Clayton Ross. back to work. I can test the mic right now while we're waiting. Um, I can actually get a couple housekeeping things out of the way. What I just passed out is the overview. So, you can keep those

055out. Oh, there it is. You can keep them out in front of you so you don't keep flipping along um as you're following the slides because there's pause points in there for each topic where we're going to stop and unpack what data we saw or what um information I presented. So that way you can kind of follow along. There's a ladder of inference that I stole from a previous job. Um, and then you can keep referring to that. So I'll explain borrowed borrowed borrowed from another job. >> All right. doing. Yeah. Here it is. Okay, let's let's take a five minute recess while we get our technical uh stuff in order. Okay, five minutes. Yep. I'll grab it. See if he brings it up. Okay. >> All right. Attempt two. All right. Um, >> we're

056back on. >> There we go. >> Thank you. Go ahead. >> Thank you. Um, all right. Thank you for having me here tonight. Um, and I hope uh I'm trying to do something a little bit different with this presentation than I did last year and then I think other ISS presentations are. Um, so I hope to leave here tonight with some questions to answer, some maybe some more data to get and um definitely is not a a sitand get situation. I want to pause, have you look at some data. I'm going to do my best to not interpret it and tell you what I think um until I uh till you get a chance to weigh in and ask some questions. So, I hope that I have some tasks leaving here tonight. That would be

057okay. Um but maybe we want to look at different data, slice it differently, you have some questions about what it might look like if we had some different different uh variables and different things we're looking at. So, um that's that's going to be the plan. you have that overview that I just shared with you. Um, you can keep it in front of you because those are the stop points. So, the first thing we're going to look at is teacher experience and years of service. Then we're going to look at educator demographics, educator retention, educator pathways, perception data, and then some processes, a couple processes in HR that it might help uh clarify. Uh, it might also bring up some more questions. So, um, this ladder of inference, as I mentioned, I borrowed. Thank you, Trusty

058Williams. Um, I borrowed this from a previous job um in Providence where we went into classrooms, it was instructional rounds and they would always tell us to stay at the low levels of the ladder of inference until we gathered enough information to make the an appropriate interpretation. That's not the case tonight, but I like the idea of thinking about it in that ladder of inference. What do we see first? What do we observe? What might that story tell? And then what might we do about it? So that's just I'm going to keep those up there on those stop points in the slides to have you um think about those those questions. So that's there just in front of you for a guide. So the first thing I want to discuss is um some of the

059experiences I draw from. I mean some of you might not know anything about me other than I'm in HR here and you've had some conversations with me. Uh so I began my educational career in Benton Harbor teaching and then I moved over to Lake Michigan College. I moved to the east coast. Uh worked for Providence public schools and then Rhode Island Department of Education. And up there is kind of the main bucket of work that I did. So it's it's kind of spread across different elements of K12 and some higher ed, but you don't see HR up there. And I think that that's important because I bring I have lots of people who know FMLA and know a lot of things that are HR world. Um but when you're dealing with teachers and you're dealing

060with educators in the field, I think it's important to have that perspective. So I wanted to bring that and frame this as I bring all of these experiences into this role into this um this position and I keep in mind that teaching experience and a fun fact two of our administrators in the district currently taught with me at Dream Academy in Benton Harbor. So in 2009 and then in 2014. So truly is a small world. Um district at a glance like to start with this because it grounds us in how many students we have, how many buildings and how many employees. So the employees are as of last payroll. The the students are GSRP plus our count in October and adult ed. So that's our total count for those students. Those are what we pull

061internally. First slide we're going to look at is years of service in Lancing School District. These are just teachers. And I'm going to pause to have you take a look. And notice it's quite skewed in one direction. And I will add these are in Lancing School District, not years of service teaching or total. is with us. All right, the next slide is teacher experience. I'm I'm interested in how experienced are teachers, not how long have they been with us. So, if somebody taught for 20 years in a neighboring district and we recruited them over, that's great. They're coming with experience, but they have one year with us. So it counts as one year of years of service, but they might be 20-year veterans. So one way to look at this as a proxy for experience

062is steps. Steps are awarded for years of teaching experience. And so when you look at our steps, you can see step three up to step 25. That comes from the last LSEA contract. Step three is our new step one. Essentially to make that clear, it's steps one, two, and three all begin at step three. So you start at step three if you come in as a first year teacher. That's why you'll see step three as our starting point. On the right you'll see buckets where I put them into kind of bins of less than four less than 5 years less than 10 years less than 15 less than 20. And you can see that we have a lot almost onethird of our teachers are less than five years in terms of steps. So that's a

063we know we have a lot of new educators. And then this is that overlay where I've put years of service in LSD compared with steps. And what you'll see is steps one to four. So less than 5 years of experience. Years of service outpaces steps. When you get into 10 to 14 and 15 to 19 years, what this is telling us is we have some teachers with experience that are new to the district or started with us after coming from another district with years of experience. So, you can see with when you look at steps and years of experience, it really levels out a little bit more and it's not so um early career heavy even though it still is majority early career. You know, still not a lot of new teachers, but um it's

064not as stark. And here's our first pause for reflection. Any any questions? Any observations that you have about teacher experience and years of service from what we just looked at? >> What were the years? >> Years years of service is 5 to9 and then the Plus those two on your on slide right before the slide just before shows that they're kind of the same where it's 17% of step and 16% of years of service and then 14% step and 15. So they're kind of right there together. What what are we seeing about that? >> Is is this a slide you're okay? >> Because those are the only two groups that seem to be consistent. What what's happening in those making what what did you see? I guess that's the question. What what's the trend in

065those two groups? That's Does that make sense what I'm asking? >> So, I mean I I'm Are you asking what is the like who are these educators? What are they here? I I'm trying to because it's I mean it's >> Okay. So, I'm trying to those two groups are pretty consistent. So what it about those two groups that's because I noticed after that it kind of goes down as far as steps and compared to years of service. So those two categories are consistent. What are we finding about those two categories? Does that make sense now? >> So the the only thing this tells us that we can interpret right now is that this is just the percentage of people with those years of experience. So that's why I was asking is it if if you

066want to look at who are they like we can look into individual like let's look at them as a group and then we can say did they you know are they particular subject area are they are they all elementary like so that's why I was asking about is there is there some pattern to them right this information doesn't doesn't have that data so I I'm that's actually a good interesting point to look at are these are 15 to 19 are they all elementary or are they all high school or is there a pattern within them. >> Yeah. >> Trust. I I don't know if that is right or not, but when you use the word teachers, >> you are talking about certified teachers or anybody who is in front of the kid regardless is certified

067or not certified. >> Anybody serving as teacher of record. So if they're on a permit or or a cert and we'll there's a couple slides later that has the distinction between those but if they're serving as a teacher of record they count in this. So there's there's people in this this data set here that don't have a cert yet or have a permit or have a daily permit but they're teachers pursuing aert or they are teachers that are veterans. Right? You're not going to be well to be clear you're not going to be a 10-year veteran and not and not have a cert though. Right? But we need to understand that >> I think we have aware. >> No, that's a good question because I I there is a slide later with percentage that have

068CSS and don't have SS. Right. So that's that's a good question. >> Trust Kevin, >> I just want to take a step back um and maybe uh summarize how I'm reading this slide and you can tell me if I'm reading it correctly or not. I think that that maybe would be helpful. Um, so the way that I'm reading this here is the green bars represent how long people have been with us and then the blue bars represent how long they've been in the profession. And so what this is telling us is no matter how you slice it, most of our teachers have not been with us or in the profession for very long. However, the reason that we see those the the green bar kind of going like way up and then like way down,

069what that means is those are teachers who are starting with us. Um, and the reason that we see the blue bars kind of sloping down a little bit more gently is because these are teachers that have come from elsewhere who are now with us. Is that a correct summary? >> That is correct. >> Thank you. >> I appreciate that. That was succinct. Very helpful. >> Trusty. Um, >> something I noticed is that, you know, we we've already talked about the number of teachers at the kind of the initial years, but then also sort of a bump at the higher end of years, teachers who stayed in the profession. Does this seem to track uh with uh national statistics? My experience is that most teachers who do leave the profession do so within the first five

070years a lot of turnover, but those who stay then stay long term. Does that track? >> It does. There's a there's some slides coming up with five-year retention rates in comparison across dis comparable districts as well as a state average. Yeah. >> No other questions. Go ahead. Okay. So moving on to educator race and ethnicity. What we're going to start with is there are a snapshot of our students. This is from 2021 up to 2025. So last school year. It's fairly steady. There's not much change, which you wouldn't expect a lot of change with a K12 with graduating classes and new people coming in unless there was some reason to. Here's our teacher race ethnicity over the past four years and then a snapshot of where it's at right now internally as of January 15th.

071In the box in the left upper left hand corner that's the statewide demographics um of the state of Michigan as a comparison. So I'll give you a minute to take a look at that. The next slide we have here are principles and assistant principles by race race and ethnicity over the last three years. These are um these are the school these are building principles and APS. These are the school facing admin. Sorry, the student facing admin I should say. The next slide is race and ethnicity by bargaining unit. What I've chosen here are all of our school-based bargaining units. So, CCLP is public safety. They're in our schools. The secretaries, these are school secretaries. LEA assistants, again, in our classrooms as instructional assistants, and special education aids. Um, all LSEA, this includes deans, behavior specialists,

072uh, speech and language paths. These include all people that are even nonclassroom teachers. And then last, those are school admin from the slide you just saw. This slide looks at new hires both last year and this year as well as resignations disagregated by race and ethnicity. I think it's important to look at to see if there's any disproportionalities between hiring and resignations. It's always good to examine these things. And here's another chance to pause for reflection on educator demographics around race and ethnicity. >> Any questions? >> It's me again. You know, if I see a graph, you're never going to give me to shut up. Um, >> I just hope it's not wrong. >> Um, so I I just kind of want to Could you go backwards to the teacher race ethnicity slide? >> Yeah,

073>> there. Thank you. Just want to make sure it's up there. Um so I think that we kind of can all see the disparity right between the race ethnicity of our teachers um as relative to our students. Um two things I want to point out. One I am really heartened to see that we seem to be moving in the right direction um as far as the proportion of African-American and to some extent Hispanic of any race. Um those have both been increasing. That's great news. Meanwhile, the share of white educators has been decreasing. um which is more a reflection of um the population of Lancing. I really appreciated that you included the statewide demographics. Um however, I uh just looked up the city of Lancing 2020 census demographics. Um and actually we are um kind

074of a better match for the city of Lancing demographics than we are for the statewide demographics. So, for example, um our statewide demographics for African-Americans is 8%, but in the city of Lancing, it's 22% and our um African-American teachers are currently at 15%. Um so, we're higher than that state average, but we're still a bit below um the city of Lancing. Uh similar pattern for Hispanic of any race. Yes, statewide that's 1.6% uh and we're at 7%, but in the city of Lancing, uh that's 12.9%. Um, so I really appreciate the Oh, and then I guess I should do white, too. Um, so for white statewide, Michigan 89%, we're at 72%. Uh, but in the city of Lancing, um, that's 53%. So, I want to to point out that, um, while we are clearly making

075progress both as a reflection of our student body, um, we still have a ways to go, um, not only to reflect our student body, but also just simply to reflect the city as a whole. Um, and so I I just wanted to uh add those figures to what you're seeing. >> I actually think Thank you for pointing that out because this is a lack of clarity on my end. The graph and labeling statewide demographics are teachers, not population. So that's the teacher demographics. Again, labeling of graphs is important. So thank you for calling that out. >> Okay. I appreciate that. Yeah. That way it helps you. >> Stop me before I got a whole ramp. >> I was No, cuz I I was You may have been going somewhere and I may may get there.

076>> Clearly going nowhere. All right. Well, I take it back. >> I started out saying I hope it's right and then turns out I was wrong. >> I think I said that before during the last few year few years, but definitely one of the one is not represented properly is the Latinos teachers and personnel working in the district. We had 75% student is 21%. Then we have a lot of work to do that. Mhm. >> Um I applaud everything that we are doing but we cannot let anybody behind. Then I hope that we have a plan to change that. Trustice wrote, >> thank you. I am not going to uh cause any more fires. I'm going try not to. Can we go back to the teacher new hires and resignations by race and ethnicity, please?

077Um, I do appreciate everything that you're doing in this space and I do appreciate the reflective space to allow us to ask questions during um because it is very helpful that we're not like bombarding you with a whole bunch of stuff at one time and then it's fresh on our heads when we're in the space at this moment. So for me, I just want clarity when we look at the new hires for African-American for a 2425 school year, we had 9%, right? Then you go over from that 9% that we're high we hired 9%. But we were not able to retain 11%. But that's not necessarily indicative of the 9% that were hired are not resigning within that year. I just wanted to make that parallel for myself and colleagues. Correct. >> That's correct. >>

078Thank you. >> Yep. And if they were, that's something you'd point out because I think we would need to be concerned about it. >> Yeah. I I just wanted to add and add some additional clarification as well. The 11% is the 11% of the resignations that happened, not 11% of our African-American staff resigned. So, I just want to make that point of clarification. >> Now, I'm confused. Okay, >> pause. >> Okay, >> it says here resignations for African-American 11%. So that's not 11% of our African-American educators. >> Correct. It is 11% of the employees who resigned were African-American. It is not 11% of our African-American employees. >> Thank you. >> It adds up. Perfect. Thank you. >> Yep. And same for new hires, right? That's the percentage of new hires. Whereas that percentage the percentage

079of people who resigned it. That is the demographic breakdown. And I also appreciate the reflection of this space because this board has specifically asked questions surrounding race and hiring and resignations, especially for the people of black and brown skin like myself. So, I just wanted to be clear um for those listening in the audience to clear up any rumors or um any uh areas of concern that comes to us when we're not in this space um that we're not losing all of our African-American teachers. Can we repeat that again? Thank you. >> Proud to. Um so of the percentage of resignations that you're seeing um when we see that 11% or in 2425 or 7% in 2526 this is the percentage of people who resigned not the total percentage of staff of that race or

080ethnicity that exists in our district. So, for instance, if we had 30 people resign, it would be 11% of the 30 people were African-American. It is not the total number of staff we have in the district. >> Uh, Trusty Williams. >> So, I I want to make sure that we are all on the same page because it says teacher new hire and resignation by race. So, correct me if I'm wrong. This on this where it says new hires, those are just teachers. >> This is teacher new hires. Correct. This is teacher new hires and teacher resignations. >> So it is teacher resation. I because the it didn't sound like that when you were saying that. So I was just like is it all staff or is it >> Nope. I'm sorry. When I was saying

081all staff I meant all teachers who resigned. It's 11% or 7% of teachers who were hired 9% 17%. So this is just those baselines. Um those numbers are just of those categories. So, not all teacher staff, just those who were hired and those who resigned. >> And my second question is, I'm looking at multi-racial. Um, is it because people are choosing not to answer if they're multi-racial or not? Because it seems like we had seven high hired 7% in 2024. We didn't hire any this year and then they're all gone now. >> No, I will say one of the things and we we've spoken about this well and I I'll let Clayton add to this as well. the way that the state of Michigan and the federal government collects data um one of the things

082that they changed at the last census um was how they kind of collected race and ethnicity. So the very first question that is asked is if you're Hispanic or Latino and then you're asked what your race is. Um when you answer that question, if you answer yes to Hispanic or Latino, um that's why we have Hispanic of any race. And so what we saw even 10 years, you know, at the last census, what we saw happen at that time is we had quite a shift fall out of multi-racial and into the Hispanic Latino category due to the way that the government now tracks and has us report that data. Um, so we've seen that shift a little bit more. We absolutely have staff that are very proud to report that they're multi-racial and I don't

083see that being an issue. Um, Clayton, if you want to add anything else. >> Yeah, this is self-reported data. So if somebody if you look at the multi-racial in 2425 new hires 7% black or African-American 9%. And then you look at the next year at 17% black or African-American zero multi-racial. So if somebody is coming in they're not selecting I am white and black or Asian and black or you know they're just identifying as black or African-American and not another category then they're not going to fall into multi-racial. So you're not going to fall into more than one bucket up here. You're only going to fall into one category and it's selfidentified. So we collect that information and report it as they identified themselves. Then my final question in the resignation part of it is

084it those people that are terminated, those people who were displaced or didn't find an after. So is all of that included in that number as well? >> These are resignations are people who no longer work for us. So whether they were terminated, resigned, it's not layoffs who would work who are still with us uh for 30 days or or that kind of thing. This would be resignations who no longer work for us. And after a certain time, you would no longer work for us after that layoff period ends. >> Okay. >> Uh Trusty Kavanaaugh, >> I'm good. >> Are you okay? Trustee. >> Uh, I just wanted to lift up an observation based on what Trustee Kavanaaugh did share about our student population and how it doesn't match the demographics for Lancing. I think that

085this is an HR presentation, but looking at that that our student body is not matching our our actual population because of where students are choosing to go outside the district is an important topic for us and then how that impacts hiring and staffing as well. >> Thanks. Any other comments? Uh, superintendent, >> can you take us back to the teacher uh demographics, please? >> Excellent. So, I just want to point out on this slide, and I don't have the slideshow in front of me. I've lent mine out. Oh, thank you very much. Uh, one second. There it is. So when we take a look at this slide, I just want to point out so we have for example in our district um I'll take this year 15% of our teachers identify as African-American and in

086the state of Michigan 7.8 educators are African-American. So what that means to me is that we are drawing stu we are drawing more teachers to the Lancing school district than the state average. What this also tells me is there's not a great pool of educators of color in our state. So, I know that you'll get to this slide about recruitment efforts, but I think it's will that we really need to point this out. I'll also point out Hispanic of any race. In the Lancing School District, 7% of our teachers are Hispanic of any race. That's how they identify. And in the state of Michigan, there's only 1.6 of those educators are Hispanic. So, again, we're drawing more than the state average. And so I just think that's important because when I talk with educators or

087even with administrators, they really do find a home here in Lancing. And I think that though we want to see these numbers even higher to match our student population or even our city population, I do think that this is something that we're seeing as a trend across the nation where um our individuals of color are not going into education and therefore it is our recruitment efforts have to take a little bit of a different tactic because there's just not the pool of them in Michigan. So I just wanted to lift that because though our data is not where we want it to be, it is very promising in comparison to the state data for educators. >> Okay, any other questions on this pause for reflection? If not, let's move on to the next. >> So

088we're going to look at educator retention and these are the classroom teacher vacancies. again classroom teachers um over the course of the last three years and where we are today well I I stopped at January 15th was our cut off for this data collection um well you can see we had some struggles in 2324 uh that's when I started um trust me I did work during that year it doesn't look like it but we did some work uh improved things over the summer got our processes in place and then we've been headed in the right direction since um what I'm happy about is the stability of this year. When you look at that hovering, there's no spikes. We didn't have a massive influx after the break. Um that's promising to me. We're going to look

089at educator retention rate yeartoear for Lassa instructional assistants and then teachers. This is one way to compare if and if I'm happy to hear other ways to compare this. I'd love to be able to look at this data. I just don't want to have 15 slides of the same same data. So I picked two ways to kind of slice this and one of them is what percentage of our educators return to us from one ac academic year to the next. So who finished with us and who started the next year with us. So that's what this graph represents here. And at the 25 26 is is accurate. This is who started with us. It's not as of the 15th. It's or uh January 15th. This is as of the beginning of this year. The next

090way to look at this is who starts with us on day one and who finishes the year. So who does not quit mid year? Who retains over the course of that year? There's one outlier there that I left in um when I was looking at the data. I had discussions with uh Miracle who was our data specialist and I said how can it be 101 that doesn't make any sense. Um and she said let me dig into it and then when she told me the explanation I said I'm going to leave it in and just atalicize it. Um what has happened there is when she pulls that she's talking she she her query is employees and if lunch assistants they're not instructional assistants but they're still our employees move into those roles like an LEA

091instructional assistant or a special ed assistant they're now counted. So what that 101 represents is we have actually moved people from an from a different position a lunch assistant into an instructional assistant. So it tells a story of upward mobility within our district of moving people from a 2hour day or three-hour day job into a 7 8 hour day position. So I don't want that to go unnoticed. I think that those things are actually success stories for us. And this is the five-year retention rate. Um, this is just straight from my school data. It's a screenshot and it is our district compared to the state average. You see, it's pretty comparable. Um, there's nothing remarkable about us compared to the state. It seems pretty close. Uh, so what I wanted to look at is how

092do we compare to similar districts? So here are five comparable districts compared to us. Kalazoo, Jackson, Battle Creek, Wayne, Wesland, Grand Rapids, and then us. And people look at 5year retention rates and see, boy, that doesn't look good. I just want to highlight we're in the same boat as everybody else. Statewide, comparable districts. There's nothing about our five-year retention rate that's alarming comparatively. All right, we'll pause there. >> Educated retention. Moving on. Okay, next area is certification pathways and partnerships. This is who holds certs and who holds permits. Permits mean they don't yet have a cert. So Dr. Dr. Rodriguez, this was your question earlier that I think is important to look at who is who is doesn't have yet certification and is in a classroom and that is very my concern about not only

093to have the certification but the teachers the certification coming from the universities with a school of education they has a kind of they should has a kind of educational training the other people that didn't go to that process to be teachers lack of and my question is how we can help them to have the culture of a good teacher and that is why my concern is because I I don't want to say by experience But let's go to say it the the teachers has the seocation. It's not just a job. It's more than the job. And we can have the culture to other people didn't go to that training or many people knew from elementary that we saw their kids here and they saw their teachers. They want to be like them that they went

094to a process to be good teachers. Not all of them are or we were. But my point is I don't want to have two kind of different preparation for our students. That is all my concern is >> maybe maybe we can do something about that and and preparation and training and find out they have the special reward for them if they are taking a special classes for that or whatever. Thank you. I I totally agree and I think that there's something to be said about traditional pathways. I went through one. I did my student teaching. I like I see the value in it. There's also the other side of it of we don't we have 20% of our teachers who didn't do that. How we don't want to lose them either. How do you support

095them? And we're going to see some exit survey data and we're going to see some concerns that I think I'm going to show you what what they're telling us and what we need to do. And there's some great work that um that Jessica's office has partnered with us on in the new teacher project that's really focused on how do we help those people who lacked those experiences training prior to the classroom >> and that is a new reality. It is reality for several reasons. >> One of them we didn't pay them and etc. But um we we can we cannot have this goal without doing as much we can to be to make them ready to go to the students. >> The second half of this slide is the alt the alt route or alternative

096route programs uh that we we have offered in the past. Um, we have 25 enrolled in Central, 13 enrolled in Davenport, and then 81 enrolled in either Michigan, uh, #te or teachers of tomorrow. The ones that are Michigan #teache and teachers of tomorrow, those are self-paced modules. Um, they are not university credit bearing, right? They're they're certification pathways only. Um, and it leaves the the task for us is to support those teachers with the quality professional development and resources that they did not get prior to the classroom. >> Yes. >> Go ahead. >> Is this part of your >> It is. Go ahead. >> Yeah. And so here's a here's a slide that just just lay out the differences between certification and permits. Sometimes people uh you know it is it is not an easy

097world to navigate about what what you can do to get certified, what certification you need for which classes. The trying to understand that is not something that you just look up quickly and and and digest. So I do want to lay out the difference. Teaching permits do allow you to be the teacher of record in that class. You do have to do something to renew it. So you do have to be pursuing a certification. You have to take the content test. You have to take action for that to be renewed. We have to renew it as a district. The educator doesn't do that. So they have to be assigned a mentor. There's there's steps in place. However, it's temporary. It's not indefinite. Somebody cannot be on a permit indefinitely saying, "I'm good. I'm a great

098teacher. My principal loves my classroom management. I'm just going to hang out and not do the work." They can't do that. Right? Ultimately, the goal is teacher certification for all of our teachers. So, this is more of an informational slide just to clarify that for everybody. And here's a snapshot, just an anecdote of what we're actually looking at. So, this is an example of someone who was hired at the beginning of the year. Um, we were looking at applicants. This is um, you know, Dr. Dr. Beard. Um I I wasn't on this interview, but um but I remember afterwards they're like, "She doesn't have a bachelor's degree. She's finishing up a program." And I said, "Does she want her? Does Dr. Beard want this person?" She said, "Yeah." And I said, "Well, then well, we're

099going to make it happen." Um and this is an example of when somebody has experience, somebody doesn't have the credentiing, do they have the will? Do they have the do they have what it takes to actually teach our kids? Um we don't want to have a barrier in place. We don't want to, you know, the paper ceiling of of credentiing to get in the way of the right people in the right classrooms. And I want to keep that in mind all the time. So, if our if our rates of of permits go up and our teachers are successful, I don't really care. I want to make sure that we're moving the right direction. So, you know, that's something we'll have to deal with. They'll have to get certified, but I want the right people in

100the right classrooms. >> I And I actually read this article and I And I love what we're doing. But we also I think now that we're moving in that direction, maybe our PSA or something we need to put out there that hey, if you want to teach, we're willing to help you because again, the connotation was not presented the way we know it's meant to be. The community took it a different way. So, we now need to change that narrative. I say we use that same piece and say, "Hey, she wanted to teach. she know we're helping her grow her own. So, we have to start I mean even if we do a PSA, hey, you need a job, you want to teach, we have these programs in place and that's another way of recruiting.

101>> You're welcome to stop by my office and we can plan that together. >> I appreciate Trustee uh Williams for lifting that. I too have heard rumblings of the space of a negative connotation that we are putting people in classrooms who do not qualify to teach. And so I like that this is happening. I like that we want to get people in the right spaces and help them get there. And I go back to where we just spoke earlier in this presentation regarding getting people to teach or getting people in certain populations interested in retaining that as not a lot of people are choosing education as a career space. And so if there's an incentive that is in the way of I'm passionate, I love kids, but I've never had the right opportunity or I

102don't know the steps to become certified or to get the education to do it. And so what this narrative could create for us is a space of opportunity if we flip it and allow others to not hear. We're putting people in there that aren't qualified. We're pairing with them and educating and molding them to be what our school needs while helping them get the certification at the same time. That's two different languages here. And so I feel like the language barrier in this specific space, we can now utilize it as momentum to feel the data that we do have surrounding the lack of people going into the field. So that's my long presentation of saying my ask and I'm asking my colleagues here because I'm only one person is that um we find a path

103forward with utilizing this as an opportunity for promotional purposes of getting people into the field of education. Thank you. We're at the pause and reflection. >> Trust in the whiskey. Uh >> yeah, a couple of questions. Uh this would go back to the teacher vacancies and the certifications. Do we have any benchmark either comparison districts or statewide to see how our numbers relate to those in these areas? Um, no. I I did look at Grand Rapids earlier this year and some we had some discussions, but I I definitely could look into putting together some information to share like the personnel committee meeting and I think that that would be useful to look at how many people are inerts at other districts. Um, yeah, another thing I I am looking at is are if you're on

104aert, does that impact your uh the the um resignation rate? And so right now just the snapshot of this year is 30% of our resignations are people who don't hold assert. They only are reflective of 20%. So it's disproportionate which you would expect. They're coming in unprepared right or underprepared. My second question kind of going along that same line of narrative be is there any data that we're collecting or that is in research in general that looks at the educational outcomes of students in classrooms with teachers that are certified versus permits or even within the certification those who took a traditional path versus an alternative path. Because we can say that's the preferred thing and the certification is best. But if the research actually isn't showing that that perhaps people coming with permits who are

105passionate about this are doing better for our kids, maybe we need to share that. I don't know what if we have that data or if there's research along those lines. >> I am working on building out a database with the information on a bunch of variables. I brought this up to Dr. Kavanagh in the personnel committee. I would love to do more rigorous analysis on what variables matter, right? Um we've seen we I you know I come from a traditional ed prep background where TFA on the east coast was great in some circles and persona nongrada in others teach for real was the motto in a lot of places you know it's like don't come here with your alt route programs and you have six week and then you look at you go in those

106classrooms and you think how are they doing comparatively to their to their peers who went through all of the ed prep training and there's mixed results out there, you know. So, I think that that's very important to think about building out our ways of knowing that like we don't just want to speculate with some graphs. I think it's better to have have some um robust data. >> Rosie Stro, >> I think you just mentioned too mentioning a roll out to the um personnel committee that Dr. Kavanaaugh is on. I just ask that of course if you're rolling out that when you talk to that committee, uh, utilize her in the great space of data that she is in. Um, and I I'm not charging her with anything, but I'm just throwing that as a plug

107here. Um, because she she loves data so much. Thank you, >> Trusty Kevin. >> Thank you. Thank you, Trusty Strode, for pointing out that I'm a freak. Um, I have great news. Um, which, you know, we didn't do our committee report outs in in this meeting. it would happen in the next meeting, but we did have our first personnel committee meeting of um of this year and my first committee meeting as chair of that committee. Um and I basically steamrololled in there and I was like, we're changing all this and we're doing data. Um and so I have already had extensive conversations with Christina and the HR team about what that would look like. Um this is a preview for we're just totally spoiling my personnel committee report, but that's fine. Now it's relevant. It's

108fine. Um but uh but yeah so a big initiative is you know the personnel report that we get um every month as part of the personnel committee is not very actionable to my mind. Um and we as a committee agreed that it is not super helpful to have this presentation just once a year and then get that less helpful information in our monthly readouts. Um, and so we are going to change that system up um, so that we have more actionable data on a month-to-month basis so we can see how things are evolving in real time. Um, and I have talked extensively with the team about ways that we can do more rigorous data analysis, what it would look like to collect that data. Um, and so we'll continue to have those conversations, but yeah,

109that was basically the only thing we talked about on personnel committee. So, um, we are on top of it. Thank you, >> Justice Strode. >> Awesome. I I did not know that information. So, I do apologize for uh stealing the thunder of of asking for it early. Um but that just shows you that we are more in alignment as a board and where our thoughts are. Um considerably, I know how passionate Dr. Kavanaaugh is about this work, but also I believe and this is me speaking for myself knowing that she's in that space and leading that with the background and knowledge that she has from a board perspective. I think it's something we've been asking for for a while from the board, but we have the right people in the right spaces to get it

110done. So, I just charge her and you all to rock that out and uh keep it simple for us folks who don't like the data as much, Dr. Kavanagh. Um, and not read 29,000 reports. Got it. >> I thought I was doing the charging here. >> Well, >> it's okay. We're all working for the same team. Uh we're done with reflection on this section. >> Okay. Um now we're going to take a look at some uh perception data. This comes from our exit surveys. Um I don't have this up there, but we revamped our exit survey process questions, all of that in September of 2023. So this is the results of that. Um I really would love to revamp this again. Um, the goal is to I just gonna point out the first question. Pursuing

111the same career path but in a more stress-free environment. I don't know of a more stress-free environment in education doesn't exist. There's not more stress free. There's not stress free anywhere. There's just levels of stress that you have to deal with when you are an educator. Um, if I want to reframe this so it's what specifically is it driving you away because stress is is a is a nebulous thing. Um, is it student behaviors? Is it lack of uh curriculum? Is it your colleagues? Like what is the specific thing? And I want to revise this to be a little more actionable data. So um what we have here is the list as described and you can see the highest one selected was pursuing the same career path but in a more stress-free environment. That's code

112for I'm going to a different district. I'm just going to tell you what the letters you get. That's what it is. I'm going to go to or I'm out of this education's not for me. Right? That's what they mean by stress-free environment. It wasn't for me. I also will couch that in couch this in these are people who left us. Sometimes people leave and they're angry. Sometimes people leave that, you know, it wasn't for them and they're going to reflect that in this data and I'm going to present it as is. I mean, you have people that did not like it here and I'm sure their students didn't like them as teachers either. So, that just happens. Um, we're a large district, you know, and I just want to be realistic about who's leaving, right?

113I don't want this data to reflect our current teachers. These are people who left us. Next slide is broken up by LSEA and nonLSEA. So, this is a way of distinguishing between teachers and non-teers. teachers are disproportionately selecting stress as their as their uh driving factor. That's the one that stands out. There's a field that's in your own words. So, it's an optional field you can type. And I have coded these based on common themes. So, I looked at them. We have 70 responses from LSEA members, nonLSEA, 69 responses, and personal and family reasons, leadership and support. You see that typically that aligns with student behavior as well. And those are the two uh highest response rates there. in employee experience. There's not a lot that really comes at me on this, but other than

114these are people who left yet personnel, colleagues is highly favorable. And I think that this is something we can really lean on. I've seen it in a couple buildings. The building may be struggling. There may be behavior issues, but when you talk to them, and I've had a chance to talk to a lot of educators this year, when you talk to them, they say, "This middle school team is fantastic. If it wasn't for them, I'd be out of here. And I think we need to leverage the the actual relationships that teachers have, their mentors, the support networks to keep them engaged productively. And so if these are people leaving us saying, I have favorable colleague experiences, I think it's something to keep in mind when we're talking about the type of support we're going to

115provide. This is moving away from those who left us and those this is surveying those who are still here. So, LSEA put out a survey uh to their members and 19 this is out of 189 responses ranking. So, I didn't design the survey. This is this is done. I'm just using the data because it's out there. Um you can see that uh behavior support systems is still something that we really need to address. Um it's something we've been working on. I think if this survey was last year, it would look a lot like the um the uh demographics data. It's headed in the right direction, but we have a lot of new teachers and we have a lot of work to do around getting them prepared around CRPBIS and those systems. We have >> thoughts,

116questions on the section, >> I'll just lift up as an observation um looking through the couple of different charts that that pay is listed. It's not the the top reason, but it is an objective one that we can control. And so some people are are still finding other places compensating them better than we are. And so I think that's something for the board to consider in connection also with the number of vacancies. If we we recognize the teacher is the most important factor in student achievement and that's a top goal for us, we may have to make those decisions to say like the owner of a team would or whatever, we've got to compensate our employees, particularly the ones who are in front of students. So, just something to consider. >> And when you look

117at the the pay for nonLSA, you have a differential there too, right? Teachers versus non-teers. And I think that when you look at the pay for that, >> I guess to follow up, what may be helpful for the board would be to have a comparison of our current pay rates versus the geographical area and our comparison schools so that we're aware where we are in that in that comp competitive marketplace. >> Trust Kevin, >> I just have a brief clarifying question. Um the survey of current teachers I see that our N so that means the number of people who responded was 189. Um but I think we have something like 650 teachers in the district. Um was this a select group or does this just respect or does this just reflect a poor response rate?

118>> This was a select group of schools a cohort of schools. So I I didn't send out the survey. This I just I was sent this by the LSEA president and I said great when people are doing survey data I will just it's it's one less thing. I'm going to take it as a Totally. Absolutely. So, this this were this was broken up. I think this was 11 or 12 schools. >> Give me some idea. >> Okay. Gotcha. Do we Do you have any idea which 11 or 12 schools those were? >> I do. >> Okay. >> Which ones were >> I don't have it in front of me right now. Um but I I do have um I can get that to you. Yeah. >> Gotcha. Okay. Thank you. >> Any other question? Okay.

119Moving along. Okay. Um, this is something that's been in the last two presentations. I just want to reiterate that we now when somebody somebody enters our applicant pool, we we put them into the pool. So, you are eligible to be a teacher at any school here or any position you qualify for. There's a um there's a couple teachers this summer who interviewed, met, toured, interviewed at least four different times or with four different principles, I should say. Um and then interviewed again, visited and finally a principal was like, yes, that's it. Passed on, you know, they just were like, I I don't they're young, they're new, they're and eventually it's like, great, next. Do you want is are you interested? Like I'm not the one deciding on who's going to be a best fit in

120your building. You're the building leader. you make those decisions. So, it's not a I interviewed and I'm done. It's there's a lot of openings. We're trying to staff for the beginning of the year. You're the principal. You get to decide is this the right fit for you. And we've we have I mean, we have done this over and over in the summer like what is it that you like? What does he don't like? And we having engaging with principles daily. Alex's calendar is there's two days a week he does basically nothing but this. Meets with principles in 15-minute blocks about staffing. So, we've really got into we've gotten ahead of what's going on at your school. I'm finding out, you know, a month later, we're finding out in real time what the concerns are, what's

121happening, what the needs are. So, that's that's a change that we've kind of implemented mid middle of the year last year. And I think it's been they've been well, I won't speak for Alex, but uh they've been the the principles have been responsive. And then the final thing I want to leave because again there's a there is a this kind of lives in behind a curtain sometimes right we we look at how do people how does discipline work how do people get get uh fired and how like my job is to make it very difficult for you to be fired if I'm doing my job well I that's my I think one of my main roles is to say you have to do something pretty egregious repeatedly because we're going to intervene we're not going

122We're not going to wait, you know, oh, they've been doing this for years. We're going to at this point, we're going to stop and say we're going to have a factf finding meeting because that person might not know what they're doing. We don't want, we're not trying to make book behind the scenes so we can get them out. We're going to address that behavior, that concern, and we're going to do it at step one, a factf finding meeting with their union rep. It usually resolves in that situation. They made aware and then we move forward. Um, we don't jump to disciplinary. We don't we don't meet with people without their union reps. Um, and I put up there the proponents of evidence standard is what we use more likely than not. We don't just say

123because somebody said something. We we go we interview students. We talk to any staff. We look at video. We make sure that we're doing our due diligence. And then we meet with union reps regularly. I have great relationships with them. And you know, we I I like to say to them, I'm trying to keep your employee here for my own reason cuz I think that they have they're they they just need to change this behavior, right? There's a thing they need to to correct and they're going to be great. I don't want to hold people accountable for their worst little thing and and and disregard them. So my goal is to make sure that it is difficult for people to get terminated or disciplined because we intervene early and we involve the union and we

124try to make corrective measures progressively. Um I I if I'm doing my job that is what happens. Um, and I'm happy to talk more about this the process, walk through examples and scenarios with you and and uh just I will not divulge specific examples of course but I will use hypotheticals and we can talk through processes if you wish but I want to make sure that people are aware of how this works. Okay, any questions? >> Oh, I thought you were going to your next slide. >> I am. I I'm going to wrap up with this and then we can pause for questions. We this this kind of goes to the support we need. Um this is something that uh Becky Stevens uh I would say created but she admitted it's it's a notebook uh

125notebook LM uh AI generated but I said let me borrow it for this presentation because I don't want to recreate something. Um what we are doing is trying to provide support for new educators whether they came to us from another district or whether they're brand new to the profession or they don't they've never taught before and they don't have a certain boat they need to know our systems what is synergy SPM our behavior systems how does the sit team work they need to know all of those things and currently there's not a systemic way that we can do this we're we're we're relying on admin and I think that that's my obligation and my failure in this in this regard to say we need to let admin run their buildings and not put more things

126on them. They have enough there's lots of tasks and things they need to do. We need to guide them into support their teachers. So, one thing we're going to look into doing is creating this two-day lag where they start on a Monday, but they don't get in front of kids until Wednesday. There's an onboarding checklist here where you come in and do your I-9 and all the stuff that you have to do that's very checklist oriented for actually starting employment. But when you get into the school, there's lots of things you need to know that you don't even need. You don't even know you don't know. Um what happens when a student does ex what do you do? I've talked to teachers, it's months in and they say, "I don't know how to log into

127this or I don't know how to access that." And it's not the teacher's fault. It's not the principal's fault. they've been trained, but they're just overwhelmed. And I think that it's our job to make sure that they don't get to that point because then they get then the burnout happens. Um, so this is something that we're going to start with something very concrete. Let's do this. Let's figure out what those two days look like. Let's try to help principles not have to do all the work. They can just sign off, checklist, check in with people, um, and see if this helps make that first day with kids better. And then of course there's a whole bunch of things 30 60 90day check-ins all of this progress monitoring that that the uh the larger team is

128going to do but I think there's some real um just kind of low hanging fruit in this that we can we can support that we haven't done that we're noticing is necessary. >> So um a question on due process does this process comply with their collective uh bargain agreement? It does. And this is actually what we did for the meet and confer. We modeled it after all of the other bargaining units. Um, and so this this matches meet and confer now aligns with what we do with other bargaining units. >> Okay. Because just just clarification, this is not HR thing. It's a >> collective bargaining agreements compliance with and all that. >> And and it's an understanding of past practice with the bargaining units as well. So if something's not like clear steps in a

129bargaining unit, you you rely on past practice. How has this been how has this been operationalized in the past? So this is this is a lot of times this is past practice in terms of terminology. You won't find factf finding meaning in the contract, but it's how we process how due process is defined in past practice. So we've tried to model this for all bargaining units. That way it's just employees have a chance to go through this process and not nobody's treated differently in in due process or in progressive discipline. >> Yeah. Because we don't want to be in in non-compliance and then get sued for for not uh adhering to to our contracts. Yeah. >> Okay. Questions? >> Trustee Lemieux McKisik. >> Yeah. >> I was just wondering about the interview process. I know

130you mentioned that you allow like the principles to make decisions on staff based on their school environment. Is there a standardized process for that once they get to that point with the principles? Are they asking like the same set of questions or is it kind of >> and is a HR staff member like present for those meetings as well? >> Yes. So we the way that we divided up the task is HR HR ensures that the process is fair and uniform. The principal is the one assessing the content knowledge the judgment of that person. So the I don't expect my team to look at the lesson plans and really unpack like oh yeah that's really what we're going for that matches the workshop model that that's not what our >> we we've actually stopped interviews

131saying that's not nope because you've asked totally different questions. >> Yeah >> like that the other candidate didn't have them. We've had to redo interviews for that very purpose. Okay. Yeah. That's a great question. >> Anybody else? Uh Justin. >> Yeah. I wanted to ask about the bridging the gap. Has there been any thought to potentially bargaining for pay for a preparation period more than those two days? You know, I mean, it it seems important and we have such a high proportion of people coming to this. Is there something that perhaps we could discuss with the group to say there's a strong rationale that we need to pay new employees for a week or some period? um not necessarily as a bonus, but to actually do that time and be compensated and then to compensate

132teachers in that 1 to 5year range for the steps that they should be taking outside of the day, recognizing that if we invest in that, we may be able to retain them longer as a profession. So >> So during this during this two days where they're at the school, >> they will be they will be paid. You Yeah, you don't get paid for your onboarding here where you come in and do your background check and that because you're not in our system yet. But yes, for these two days, they would be paid. The reason that we're we're starting with two days is the LSEA contract allows for somebody moving from Sexton to Everett, they get a two-day transition period. And and to think that our veteran teachers been here 20 years, I'm moving buildings gets

133two days, but the brand new teacher you start Monday, the difference isn't doesn't seem equitable in that situation. So, >> so just uh to expound on that just a little bit, we have a week-long onboarding for all of our new teachers, but it's in August. And so, if you are not a new hireer in August, then you miss out on that full week orientation. And so, these two days will help to kind of bridge that time. But those are paid days for our staff to be able to come in. They meet with our instructional directors. They meet with HR. They do a CRPBIS and classroom management day. And then they also take a bus tour on Friday to kind of learn about the city, especially if they're not from here. So that's a week-long orientation

134that we do in August. But again, if you're not hired at the beginning of the school year, this is when this two days especially is going to be very important time because again, if you're hired on a Monday, we don't want you starting on Tuesday with students right in in, you know, right in front. What about our professionals? >> We don't. Um, but the one of the reasons that we're starting with teachers is the responsibility level. The pair of professionals come in and they're actually taking the lead of the teacher. There's been a sub in there. So, we're starting with the teachers that are stepping in, having be teacher of record day one. That's the biggest challenge. I don't I don't that would be a great idea. And I think that we should work towards

135that. Even lunch assistants, you come in, what is your role? What does that look like? Even though everyone seems like it seems to make sense, you monitor the lunchroom. Well, it's not that simple. When you get some kids in there, it's one of the largest rooms and you are one of the only adults. That should require some training, right? I I think that that's not that's not something that's lost on on us. But right now, this isn't happening. So, we're trying to pick something and start that. Um, >> I would love to for our support staff, especially special ed with very specific needs. When you come in, there should be some, you know, you're coming in. What is it the job that I'm going to be doing? What is in the student's IEP that I

136IEP at a glance? Those kinds of things. Definitely special ed doing a great job supporting, but there needs to be something as a system. This is the process we use. So you don't have right now. >> You're asking for a strategic plan and I think that that's not that's not uh that's not too bad. It's not a bad ask. Um I I think that that's um that's doable. I think we need to take this your feedback and figure out what next steps are and that very well might be it. I also think there's some really great models out there. I know that um Ariel Rodriguez Pena who's our senior director for K8s, he has a robust kind of um onboarding program for pair of professionals and so he has been working with individual um principles

137to do that. But I think that that's a model that we need to take districtwide. So I do think it's very specific schoolto school at this time and so systematizing it like what you're talking about is really the next step that we need to take as a district. Any other question? >> Well, I would say um thank you for your work, but as far as teacher retention and teacher recruitment, until we get money to pay more, we're going to have this problems continue. >> And uh just as um as an example, teacher starts at how much in this school district? >> Uh 40 about 49. 49. >> Step three, it would be about 4849. >> Okay. A teacher starts 4849. In in 10 years, where will they be? >> I'd have to look at the

138the steps. I'd have to look at the the steps. I can pull it up here. >> That's it. >> In probably 58 to 60 >> In 10 years in 10 years, maybe 63, something like that. I'd have to look. Yeah. >> Yeah. That's >> it tops out at at 95 at step 25 with a PhD. >> so those those are the things that I'm looking at. You know, we >> we can try and and we should try everything, but the the the bottom line is that teachers leave the profession because they're not making money uh to take care of their families. And with uh all this AI coming in and teachers being smarter than anybody else, they can go and make double what they're making as a school teacher. And but again, you know, teachers

139are it's it's it's not a profession. It's it's a um what's the word, doctor? It's a vocation. and and so so we have to find out who who of those students have a vocation not a profession you know kind of mindset uh uh for being school school teachers so on and so forth anyway thank you very much there's oh there is a question trusty >> Dr. Is any contract that need to be changed? Anything in any contract to facilitate any other thing that you want to do? All the contract are fine. Okay. Or is something that maybe this board need to to see or how we can the contract help your office to run this school better? >> One. So the I don't run into much barrier with the contract. um even when we have

140to create something like last year where we did the um turnaround teacher uh we created a 1.2 to, you know, that wasn't in the contract. That's going above and beyond. That's creating an exception for a specific purpose. A lot of the the unions are willing to to work with us on that. Um, but what I would say is what I I will pitch as something I would like from all of you is I think that everybody in the district has a role in being part of recruitment. Um, and when you when you are when you're thinking about as is that part of your role, I need to know what organizations who I should be meeting with, who I should talk to, who I should engage with. I I want access to all of that because

141this is how you get people that live here to know about the opportunities that we provide. Um, that would be something I would find very useful. And I think that they could we could even set up something um in a regular basis to say there's this meeting coming up. I mean I'm in talks with um the associations and their their uh retirees to come in and support with teacher fairs with rec uh retention mentoring student tutoring. Like there's lots of resources that I would not know about if they were not presented to me cuz I'm not I don't have a social media presence. So the pulse of things I'm just not part of and it works out in my favor most of the time. But sometimes I need you I need to be plugged in

142and and intentionally included in things. So I would love to be part of anything you would find you think that I should be or would be helpful to to recruit people and talent into our district. >> Thank you, sir. >> Appreciate it. Thank you. Okay, we're going to uh move on to our last item is comments from the board. >> I I want to start with Yeah, you have any comments? >> Okay, doctor. Thank you very much. Um, I think we are in the African-American month and it's um it's painful to say the Reverend Jesse Jackson died two days ago. Um, I think that he was um I had the opportunity to be close to him when he was running for president and he was here in Michigan and Joe Ferguson was the leader of

143the his campaign. But more than that all he did following Dr. M Lut M Kim vision and mission for this nation he is the one who was so much for all of us and I think we had to honor him in this particular month with all our heart. Thank you him for he fought so much for equality to all of us. And also I want to if we can to have a minute or reflection about what he did for all of us for all these 84 years of his life. Thank you. Cross his throat. Cross his throat. No. Okay. >> Dr. Lewinsky. Um, just going on with that comment about opportunities. The Lancing 360 is still meeting weekly. They're about to return to in-person meetings at the beginning of March. Uh, one of their initiatives

144is a cradle to career initiative and that was some focus of the last meeting that um, fortunately the law enforcement were able to report two weeks without any gunshots fired in the city that ended this last week. There were some incidents that were discussed, but um the reflection was that the the work being done by Advanced Peace and many other partners in the community is really working and some of our young people are making choices not to result uh in gun violence, but they're now at that point of saying in order to sustain that, they need to find jobs. They need to find what's next in their life. And so um that is an opportunity. Several of the district leaders were there to talk about, you know, just to share what the district has to

145offer as far as adult education, GED completion, but then there may be an opportunity to think about the Lancing promise and hiring people who are looking for work and particularly um our ability to work with people who have a trauma background and the particular needs that they have. And that may be through some of our contractors as well, not just our direct employee groups. So that uh initiative might be something to plug into along the conversation of HR. >> Thank you, Trusty Moore. >> No, Trusty Williams. >> Um I guess I'mma be Trusty Herd today since he ain't here. So uh you guys, I know you every saw everything that has happened tonight and I think you've seen a lot of good things. Congratulations to our Eastern students, our teachers that were given all the

146awards and everything. So when you're thinking about where you want to send your kids to school, come on back to LPD. We we we're always open and ready for you. So bring your children back to us. Thank you. I just want to report that I attended the postto program at at the Eastern High School last night, the night before. Anyway, it was really really great to see all those that the the family of the auditorium was almost full really and uh those children were were were were excellent. They were really nice to see the participation and the support of the community that showed up. It was really nice. So, uh if you have a chance to attend this this uh concerts and programs at the various schools, uh it's uh it's good to see them,

147you know. and then eventually we'll see him graduating from high school and walking down and receiving their diploma. So, just want to report that. Thank you.