Lansing School District Board of Education Regular Meeting 9-7-23

001foreign all right good evening it is 6 p.m on Thursday September 7th and I would like to call this regular meeting of the Board of Education to order and ask that everyone please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance thank you and I want to make sure that I am honoring our um our board are bored um recommendation which is that we will read our mission statements at the beginning of our meetings to sort of Center us and remind us why we are here except I cannot find my it's on the bottom of your agenda perfect that's why I can't find it oh okay so that we were remind ourselves that we are here to provide a high quality education in a culturally safe and nurturing environment that supports all students to live purposeful and fulfilling

002lives it is my goal that by the end of the year I will have that memorized okay will the clerk please call the roll Dr body Dr Kavanagh president miss little G Mr Lopez president Miss Moore Dr Rodriguez president Miss Williams Miss Willis present performance present thank you we have um I am aware that Miss Moore was going to be unable to join us this evening as well as Dr bodies so we have the members present today that are available that brings us to public in addition to the agenda C9 that brings us to public comment on agenda items we do have several members registered for public comment I do have um a reminder for folks to please join us here at the podium you have three minutes to address the board the board does

003not typically respond to public comment but if you have any issues that need follow to be followed up with I will ask the administration to do so um and so our first public comment guest this evening is Erica Lynn I would like to invite you to just board for three minutes and Erica you will be followed by Michael thank you hello uh Erica Lynn I'm a lifelong Lansing resident graduate of Lansing school district and tonight I just wanted to come in support of a resolution that's on the table I know that's been presented by Mr Carlton Evans and the North Star Alliance For Justice I had the pleasure of getting to know a lot of what's in this resolution I'm the co-founder of the village Lansing and he was able to come and give us

004a presentation as well we held a community kind of meeting get together Fellowship in order for us to get to know what these goals would be the strategies involved in it I'm wholeheartedly agree I also wanted to say that I had the pleasure and the responsibility of serving on the racial Equity task for our committee a couple of years ago for the Lansing school district and that was where we created an equity plan for the Lansing school district so I wanted to point out that the following definition by this body that I served on was created um as equity for the Lansing school district Equity is the removal of systemic barriers and the creation of policies practices and cultures that achieve fairness Justice and Liberation for marginalized students families community members and Educators in our

005educational system so I urge you to vote Yes on that resolution I think this resolution absolutely would honor and serve to meet the goals of that definition thank you thank you next up we have Michael Lynn followed by Ann Paget Howard Michael Lynn from the village Lansing as well and as Erica stated I also was uh in attendance when the North Star Alliance came to speak on this agenda item that you guys have in front of you um I was actually witnessed bear witness to the whole you know all the hours that Erica put into that task force that the shoe was on and I was uh I felt jealous that you all took that much time away from me but it was really important work and what came out of that was really important

006and it really kind of just showed us what all the issues that we have in our city and excuse me in our school district specifically that we kind of all knew those who attended school there and who have kids that went there me being a parent that took our kids out of Lansing schools because of some of the things that they found um when uh Carlton you know hit us up on this I was excited that somebody was going to be taking action given our hands are full with everything else we do but with that being said um I obviously am in the support of the resolution uh and for these reasons an important part of educational Equity is making Multicultural Multicultural education a standard component of K-12 education as it exists now students of

007color seldom see themselves reflected in the teachers before them and hardly never in the lessons taught except during National and American Indian Heritage Month National Hispanic Heritage Month or Black History Month the lack of representation produces a lack of self-esteem and performance in the students of color I think I want to bring back a quote that was stated one day when I had a meeting with some very important people from the school and they said that Lansing doesn't really have a vision or our people may not know their worth uh this may be the reason why so again I think it's really important are these great racial groups deserve recognition all year long and not just one month a year the history of people of colors in American history as you all know I'm obviously

008a huge proponent and advocate for the black and brown community in Lansing I feverishly fight for this type of stuff I think that the stuff Lansing could be a springboard for what um the county but the state and the region should be moving towards as far as educating our youth on issues and and things that are really important to their culture and them themselves one of the main things that I tell young black and brown children when they come into my programming is that I want them to recognize that they are black and brown um and the reason I say that is you know this speaks about self-esteem but um being a victim of racism them obviously being a black man for 41 years but also uh you know in in the corporate world that

009I was a part of and so on and so forth it's easy to internalize racism and not understand that it may be some external factors that are happening to you and so the reason why I educate the young people that they are black and they are brown and this is what that may mean when you walk into a room full of maybe non-people of color and so they don't internalize that and they don't believe there's something wrong with them they don't think that I'm the reason why these people are microaggressions are happening to me and so on and so forth and if we can educate them at a really early level about the you know the dangers of being a person of color in the world is not really set up for that I think

010it's really important so again in support of Carlton Evans the North Star Alliance and the resolution of funny thank you thank you I would now now like to invite up Ann Pekka Howard followed by Dr Rubin Martinez good evening my name is Anne Paquet Howard and I proudly taught as an elementary teacher first through third and as a multicultural educational teacher for a time with curriculum which I developed for kindergarten through fifth grades while teaching in the Lansing school district for 40 years I'm old and healthy but anyway I support the resolution being presented by the Lansing school board this evening based on my experiences while earning my teaching degrees and that my positive experiences with my parents my students while teaching in the Lansing school district and so both Lansing Community College and Michigan

011State University in the late 60s and early 70s had teaching degree programs where if you were selected you would be a part of a diverse group of students also seeking educational degrees I applied for and was selected be a part of a two-year program at LCC and at MSU while study we studied together this diverse group we always study together we fulfilled all the requirements of the LCC and MSU teaching degree program but in addition we had diversity and Multicultural requirements in our degrees having additional diversity in Multicultural curriculum being with diverse students professors and other peoples people I learned both academically and personally a lot about multiculturals in America and Multicultural histories then when I was hired by the Lansing school district as an elementary teacher with the beauty of diverse students in my

012classroom I began researching finding and teaching Multicultural history appropriate at the age levels of my students another reason why I taught Multicultural education after all the research because it wasn't in the curriculum really back then so um multi-chistory Multicultural history is American history throughout all my years of teaching Multicultural history and having Multicultural education as part of my curriculum all my students were valued they were engaged in the lessons and treated fairly my parents and caretakers and my students were very supportive in fact some of the my students came back to me when they were in high school and said thank you I really it really benefited me to learn about Multicultural history that you taught us additionally some of my parents of my elementary students came to me years years later and said they

013and their child benefit so it's not about me it's about saying that like listening we Caucasians need to learn and be taught and we and we weren't it was like you know I was fortunate to be in these programs so I'm I um again I support the resolution presented by the Lansing school board that is creating a task force to have a district-wide multicultural education program throughout the district and fantastic and I hope and I urge you to vote Yes and I hope that my Decades of experiences are a testimony of how supported and beneficial it was to my students my parents and to me also I support the resolution to better prepare our students for the diversity and pluralism of America to educate them about and to honor all the cultures that contributed to

014and were a part of our diverse American history thank you vote yes thank you thank you next day I have Dr Ruben Martinez followed by Carlton Evans evening president Willis members of the board superintendent show Diner thank you for the time this evening I'm going to speak to item 10c on your agenda uh and I think what uh you know I've presented here before and I want to reiterate that improving the academic performance of our students here in this district is of the utmost importance everybody knows where we're at these days we the members of the North Star Alliance For Justice and Myanmar firmly believe that every student can learn but a diverse student body requires a multicultural learning environment so that all students enjoy learning all students find the curriculum relevant all students experience

015an intellectual Awakening through the educational process for decades public education has been the target of political ideologies political struggles and reactionary movements often to the detriment of the academic performance of our students The Melting Pot ideology of the last century is obsolete yet we find elements today in to in the movements that seek to censure public education and that seek to ban books and to close libraries we're seeing that happen across the country like the boarding schools for Native American of yesteryear the Americanization School movement of the last century did more harm to students than good today we must accept that diversity is a social force it is with us it will continue to be with us and it can it will continue to enrich the cultural diversity of our country and across the globe

016we should not fear cultural diversity instead we should embrace it and celebrate it recognizing that it is the higher values of democracy of equality of freedom and Justice that bind us it is not the differences in in culture that divide us but rather we should focus on the values that bind us together adoption of a multicultural initiative in the Lansing school district will benefit all students and will engender a model for all school districts not only in the state but across the country I commend the members of the board for embracing and considering the Multicultural initiative that is on your agenda today and assure you that all students will embrace it will welcome it and that they will experience an intellectual Awakening that is sparked in them through them through a multicultural learning environment it

017will benefit their lives it will benefit our communities it will benefit our state and it will benefit the nation the full resolution is on the last page of your packet I hope and pray that tonight you will adopt that resolution thank you very much for your time thank you or like to invite up Carlton Evans followed by Dr Eunice Foster hello folks my name is Carlton Evans I'm the co-founder and chair of the north style North North Star Alliance for for justice um being here hoping that you vote for this motion is a culmination of four years of work and it pleases me that this is before you now the systemic Equity review performed by West Ed indicated that racism is a problem in the school district adopting a multicultural initiative is not a magic

018wand but it would go a long way in curing the negative results of racism social justice change is binary change happens or it does not it's that simple it is time out for words it is time for action please vote Yes on this motion uh part of the work that we do is going around the community and trying to explain different issues to them and the community speaks back uh everyone that I talk to in the community supports this resolution and this is just some of the comments that they gave to me uh the Lansing Community is filled with diverse and knowledgeable community members ambitious students and compassionate parents as the lead of the proposed task force how will the superintendent and District prioritize Community input and planning implementing and evaluating the proposed Multicultural curriculum

019initiative I understand you're not going to answer these questions I uh I've I've typed these out and I can give them to you but you can look at them for further thought in the future how does the district plan to incorporate Community input in developing implementing and evaluating the Multicultural curriculum initiative how will the district utilize the expertise of indigenous leaders from the Lansing Community what specific Community identified metrics will be used to measure progress and impact of the initiative and what role will the district's Equity task force have been developing and ensuring accountability for the Multicultural initiative task force as I mentioned earlier social justice change is binary change happens or it does not please vote for the resolution thank you thank you Dr Evans please don't please don't leave without getting us a

020copy of those questions I'd appreciate it um Dr Eunice Foster good evening I'm also speaking on behalf of Multicultural education in the winter of eight of 1894 and 1895 Florida saw one of the worst freezes in its history and it lost many of his Citrus Groves the Citrus industry in Florida was saved by man a chinese-american named Liu Kim gong who had immigrated to the United States by himself at the age of 12. so he set about conducting research that saved the Citrus industry in Florida and we all benefit from that he is called the Citrus wizard of Florida we all need to hear about him and others like him who contributed to our country but who by whom we know nothing about his conviction to do lasting good changed the Florida Citrus industry and

021broadened the seasonal range of many Orchard grown trees similarly Inez Mejia in the 1920s was a woman who went about a profession that had very few no women really got her her degree in night at the age of 51. throughout her excursions she collected over 145 000 specimens 600 new plants and 60 of which are named after her and many other contributions we need to know about her why don't we know about her and read about her in his our history books now one that gets to all of us is Dr glad all of these get to all of us but another one more recent Dr Gladys West in the 1970s and 80s programmed a computer to come up with a super accurate model of the Earth accounting for variations in the planet's shape caused

022by gravitational title title and other forces this model laid the groundwork for the global positioning system GPS that's ubiquitous in the military smartphones cars today and everywhere we go she was inducted into the Air Force Space and missile Pioneers Hall of Fame in 2018 but her work and she laid the groundwork for the GPS system in use today we need to know about us her all of us need to know about her we also need to know about people such as Dr Robin kimmerer who's a planned ecologist utilizing the wisdom of indigenous and scientific knowledge for sustainability our students need to know about this all of us need to know about this for decades I have called the history that we learn about in schools pseudo-history false history because if you don't know all the

023history and how it's woven together you're not teaching and learning history you're learning pseudo history and our students then are receiving pseudo-education we need to know about each other our world depends on it all of us have made this world what it is the good and the bad unfortunately in many different areas we need to know about all of it or else we're teaching pseudo history and we're providing pseudo-education and that is not what we need today certainly to solve the many problems that are existing in our world vote Yes for this this is for our children my grandchildren my great-grandchildren our future in our world thank you thank you Dr Foss Foster and our final speaker on agenda items this evening will be Dustin Howard oh okay for non agenda okay no not a

024problem all right so we will go on into our agenda this evening so next up is our presentations um and our first presentation this evening is with Dr Sue wheeler for our health and wellness update yes well it's always a pleasure to be with you and especially this evening as we embark on the new school year there's always a certain excitement in the air when our students and staff all return per usual let me start with a brief update on our covet status over the summer we actually reported no student cases and only five positive staff cases this is probably related to seasonal changes in covet and not reporting during the times that we are not in school since returning to school last week so in the first six days we have had 14 staff

025positive cases reported this is not too surprising since we've had hundreds of Staff return to full-time in-person work and the associated reporting requirements also unfortunately Across the Nation we're seeing an uptick in covid with both weather changes and changing variants largely to blame in the same six day period we've had 25 student cases reported across 11 schools again pretty consistent with what we expected our covet management guidance has remained unchanged from last year in compliance with the CDC and the mdhhs guidelines we have distributed this new covet protocol graphic following the mdhhs model we will continue to provide close covid monitoring and contact tracing and also provide free testing available for students and staff within their school or work site our covid mitigation strategies are also ongoing summer when we were apart from each other

026the student development program was in full swing we provided a safe welcoming space for students to engage in physical activity receive tutoring Services enjoy a hearty lunch and develop social and emotional skill we averaged about a hundred students a day in the program in the summer tutoring was provided by Lansing school district teachers and we developed a new partnership with the Greater Lansing Food Bank and became a food distribution center in addition to the snacks and lunches that were provided by our Sodexo partner the Greater Lansing Food Bank also provided a hot home-cooked meal for our kids each day all summer long we also began the summer of clothing and personal needs closet at the center which was well utilized by students throughout the summer this fall We are continuing Our Community Partnership development intentional

027and data-driven training academic support with our Eastside Community Action Center tutors returning and an increased interaction and connection with the athletic department in the district a priority goal is to increase student participation to 150 students a day or more as a preview of the coming year I look forward to updating you monthly regarding our ongoing covet management and our broader health and wellness programs and initiatives currently under development and in progress our school nurse team is instrumental in developing emergency care plans daily health plans and training staff to help keep students in school and on the path to graduation the office of school culture team continues to form meaningful Community Partnerships and Innovative programming to support the overall health wellness and academic achievement of our entire School community last spring I shared the origination of

028the Everett peace and inclusivity Garden project with you just a few months later I'm happy to share the visual outcome of that project with you the secondary gain of shining a light on peace inclusivity and teamwork is what you're really seeing here thank you for your continued support and commitment to Health and Wellness in the district thank you thank you it feels weird that we went a couple months without having this as a standing agenda item but I missed you all summer yeah I missed us all summer I do just have a couple questions for you so we know that there's a new variant and they're working on releasing a new um booster and we're getting into flu shot flu season and all of those things um one of the things I've I've also seen

029in the news is that our reporting numbers aren't quite um as high as they were because so many people are vaccinated and boosted that even when they're ill they're like oh this can't be coveted because they just imagine and then they happened to me a couple weeks ago I was like there's no way it was coveted and turns out it was um and so we're not testing ourselves as regularly I was curious about how the district stands with access for tests to make sure that we are able to test staff and students who may believe that they are ill or exposed yes I share all of those concerns and one other is people feel like kovitz just around so they're not necessarily testing which is we don't support that we have just received a new

030shipment of tests we have plenty of tests we are engaged in a testing plan and program and that's part of our HRA Grant is that we maintain that testing program great days wanted to make sure we were able to share that and we are are we still allowing for um some of the same sort of supports that we had for students who need to be absent when they are testing positive for Coven in the event they test positive yes absolutely absolutely any other questions from board members um Schoology I love the Don Johnson field house and I love the student development program I think it's great as a board member but also watching my own kid go go there all summer and after school it's so great the question I have it may not be

031for you it may be more of a Cordelia question I was there earlier this week when it was so hot and of course all the doors are propped open and there were people coming in and out and I was like who are those people and one of the coaches was like oh there's you know other there that's an AAU team that's practicing in here and I was like do we know them like do we I just got a little bit nervous about the security of the building and how you know I'm pretty used to like the super great security that are like our renovated schools is way different there at Don Johnson um so I guess it's not really a question as much as just a a thought that I had when I was there

032and wanted to wanted to tell you uh you know this is uh somewhat of a challenge with that space it's a public space so when we have sporting events that are going on we have one door open on the end so families might come in and use the restrooms or get water that sort of thing so there may be other people that would come in on that end of the building but it's something we are and when it's hot and when it's hot it's all the doors are open because it's so hot you know but the chat was the person the day it was like the doors in the gym were all open and that's where I saw like lots of people just coming in and out in bigger numbers than I'm used to seeing

033thank you thank you and I will say a note on that as we're seeing unprecedented heat waves across the country I actually was thinking about our superintendent here because New York is one of those large districts that is being hit um very hard right now with the heat without having with older buildings that aren't air conditioned um thankfully our district has been afforded the opportunity to begin our Renovations and to our buildings to get air conditioning but I did want to just mention that we to rest assure that we are continuing to watch those We are continuing to watch those numbers and certainly the superintendent um holds the describe the discretion to not hesitate to to make a safety call if it's going to jeopardize the health and safety of our of our kids because

034of the temperature in the classroom I think we in the midwest are nearing the we're cresting down from that heat wave as opposed to some areas in the country but um well that is something we're aware of then we get away with it for a little while then around may we start having this conversation again so um hopefully we will we have a lot of um facility upgrades that we're going to continue to work on so that we don't this will become a thing of the past one day about worrying about how hot it is in our buildings so thank you and thank you for bringing that up any other questions prior to the meeting I was talking to so um because I I enjoy the fact that we do have the bipod closet but

035with the current homeless situation and the things that are going on Sue and Rose tap have can only do so much um and I asked her how would we be able to open it for everyone that needs it including parents because they need to know that we're supporting them by all means I mean they need things as well I I had a phone call from a parent there they couldn't get to school at two o'clock this morning because their phones were off so they were merged so texting me through Facebook and we made things happen but how are we going to do that if they don't have phone services what type of resources do we as a district have to help these people even further because transparency here I think everyone know that I sit

036on you but my family and I've been displaced for nursing circumstances I've owned and I'm okay but nobody reached out to us so I don't think they feel comfortable enough to be have people you know so how are we going to be able to let them know that this is there for them everybody's not watching the meetings they may see the but again that connection that comfortable piece to say hey is this transparent is this going to be something that nobody necessarily has to know and do we know the full number of how many people are being impacted right now thank you that question um I will yield to our Administration team to you know come up with what are what are our opportunities um to to expand and have access to resources Beyond just

037the students receiving in school we talk I think about that frequently about you know we are a gateway to a lot of things and we can have the opportunity to provide access there so a question any other questions Dr Kavanaugh Dr Wheeler I love the garden and I have some questions about the garden is it a Flowers Garden or a vegetable garden as well it's both there's a great section that's flowers and vegetables I wonder if there are like tomatoes you should swing by and you can pick them up I wonder if there are possible tie-ins we can make with the vegetables grown in the garden too for example the culinary program at the new technical school or to the food that's provided at the Lansing the Don Johnson Field House and so I just

038wonder since we're growing food anyway which is awesome I wonder if there's ways that that food can be used you know for other programs within the district at this point we've been offering it to people in the community you know tomatoes cucumbers Etc but I love that thinking and that's something we'll really look at thank you see we missed you over this I had lots of questions for you thank you next I would like to invite uh Miss Benavides who is going to introduce us to our new principals for this year good evening it's an honor and a privilege to be here this evening especially when we have wonderful new employees to introduce to the board and to the Lansing Community I'd like to invite our four newest administrators up to the podium with me

039if you want to join me please can come closer it's okay all right we actually have uh five new principles to our administrative team uh one was unable to come and join us this evening and that is Dominic licola from Sheridan Road we're really excited to have him he was an assistant principal at Eastern High School and is absolutely thrilled to be a husky so we're really happy to have Dominic licola as the principal at Sheridan Road I'd like to introduce to you the team and then I'm going to invite them up just to say a few words about themselves to the board so we can get to know them just a little bit better first we have returning to us yay Dr Nicole beard and she is at Willow at Riddle our school for

040pre-k4 and then I also have Stephanie Quaker she is joining us at North at our K-8 newest magnet and we have Nicole holiday she is joining us at Mount Hope school and last but not least we have Steve chartier and he is at Luton Spanish immersion I'd like to invite them to the podium one at a time just to tell them a little bit about yourself themselves or just say hello no pressure I told them so good evening I just want to say that is an honor privilege I'm humbled to be back both like I'm back home and I'm ready to do some great work so thank you good evening again my name is Stephanie Quaker and I'm the new principal at North I've been in education for about 20 years and I spent the

041past four years working in Plymouth Michigan as a school leader and I actually LED one of the highest performing schools in the state of Michigan so I'm super excited to bring what I've learned to North and I'm really excited to see what the students do this year and I hope everyone is surprised good evening my name is Nicole holiday and I'm the new principal in Mount Hope I am very honored and I am really full of energy and excitement every time I walk in the doors of Mount Hope I say happy Monday happy Tuesday whatever day it is and I'm really excited about helping our students meet our district goal of excellence in education in making sure that we follow all the expectations I also want to make sure that our school and our students

042meet the expectations so that we can have a culture Norm you know a culture that is normal where our students also follow the expectations where it's normal for students to act the way they're expected to act so when they grow up they would also follow suit and Mount Hope We want to make sure that every opportunity or every challenge is an opportunity for growth so we are ready we're ready for all the challenges and every day we take it one day at a time I love my students already and like today I had a student who wanted to come to my office to sit for a few minutes have a chat and go back to class and this is what we want we want our students to come in feel safe learn and be lifelong

043learners good evening I'm Steve Schartz Here I Am the principal of Luton school I don't know how I'm going to top all of that this is my 27th year in education and it is a true honor and pleasure to have been selected to lead the team at Luton school from the interviewing process to the present moment I felt nothing short of warm Embraces and strong support of all of the Dynamics within the district it is a true pleasure to be a member of the team and like my colleagues I am looking forward to an amazing year ahead in years that follow Luton is an amazing School a very special place I've been here four weeks and I already feel like I've been here for many many years because of all of the warmth that the

044community has shown the welcomes it's a true blessing and thank you so please get please give them a warm Round of Applause and welcome them to the Lansing family I would be remiss without acknowledging Kim Johnson Ray who's here if you'll stand up Kim Johnson Ray they didn't know I was going to do this and Arielle Rodriguez Pena these are the senior directors at overseer Elementary in Middle years and they are really true champions of our principals with amazing support and when Steve talks about the wraparound support I really owe it to Kim and Arielle for all of their tireless hours and their commitment really to Lansing and to our principals so I'm really pleased to be here this evening I know we have a couple of other administrators we do not want to think

045that we were leaving them out but they're actually in our other Deputy superintendents purview and so we will have a part two to this in the coming weeks thank you thank you it's always exciting to meet our new building leaders welcome back to the full Dr Beard it's we love to see our principals here on Happy occasions good occasions so we like to see at the beginning of the year and the end of the year for really good reasons and so we're looking forward to seeing you all in action as the year unfolds and then we also look forward to our part two of our our non-building leader administrators that will be introduced to the board as well um that brings us to our next presentation this evening which will be Cordelia black giving us

046our updated student handbook for the new school year good evening [Music] so I'll just leave it alone before I drop it okay um you know you all know this is a annual presentation I'm always excited to share with you um the new handbook and um the changes or edits that we've made for the year before I get started I just kind of wanted to hold up um last year so the last couple years the cover of the last couple years in the New Year I hope that you find it uh much more bright and colorful and I think that this is a really um nice edit to this year's new new manual and I hope that moving forward um it continues to be foreign we're going to talk about the purpose of the handbook we're

047going to talk about the culture and climate definitions of the role of the handbook we'll review the edits that were made and how we came about uh making those edits we'll also talk about how the handbook is delivered to students in the languages that are that the handbook is accessible in the purpose of a student handbook is really to guide to really just be a navigation tool for families for students it offers transparency and expectations our discipline processes and many other very informative topics such as your expectations for bus bus driving um district-wide dress code we have some very useful information on page uh three four and five the district calendar the framework for Great Schools and what we're all being held accountable to and so really this manual is all about um it's called

048student handbook but it's very useful for staff as well in 2013 our uh secretary Dr Nino Rodriguez led a committee to talk about and really to establish some culture and climate definitions for the district I won't read them to you however I think that this is all about what this manual is about the handbook really just kind of AIDS in um contributing to the culture of schools and so it's not the uh it's not the the cookie cutter but it is an aid that contributes to establishing expectations and traditions and relationships Etc the role of the student handbook as you can see the student is at the center as it should be um our policies and practices expectations culture climate and Norms conditions for learning are all and should be parallel with our framework for

049a great schools as the student is in the center of that framework as well and um the most Inner Circle is all about supportive environment and so when you look at the role of the handbook it really should be a support piece and tool for families students and staff the edit recommendations um every year we look at grammatical typos grammatical Corrections typos which I really try to focus on bringing um more Graphics uh to this uh manual and and kind of move away from it being such a text Heavy uh manual um make it uh just reader friendly for everyone easy to find what you're looking for and then we also focus on updating laws policies and procedures as it pertains to what is in this book of course you all know most of our

050policies are board policy driven and they are located on our website but there's also board recommendations too last year I highlighted uh our president Willis this year no this not this year not this year we we I didn't want to I didn't want to do that to you um on pat on the first page we have uh just obvious uh Corrections or edits uh with the Board of Education new members executive team new members um and it looks like I have a typo right there because persistent misconduct should not be there uh and so I will point that back out to uh the page that that should be on but it should not be on page zero so I apologize for that uh on page one if you flip the page one we've updated some

051um executive team photos uh fresh off the press as of this morning and so that's a really nice change um if you flip to Page Six we uh just wanted to confirm that all the phone numbers and addresses for this lovely um tool again for families and staff uh just making sure that they're all correct and making sure that the information if and when needed um they our families can gain access without running into phone numbers that are not existing uh this uh was added on page seven we added the vaccines required for school entry in Michigan um and speaking with our director of Health and Wellness I think she's gone now but uh Dr Wheeler um we together thought that this was an excellent ad um for families to just kind of keep up

052with what vaccines are required for uh what which age group and so it's all there for what exactly what dosage they need the exact uh vaccine Etc on page eight we have added our pcac information uh treasure little G you should appreciate that at least I hope you do we uh try we're trying to um promote our parent Community advisory Council as much as possible as we love to see new faces and more faces and so please take note of the uh dates for this school year and they are also publicized on our website on page 11 a couple things that we wanted to highlight uh that's new to our student handbook one we wanted to point out the um care Solace so care Solace is a um uh a service that we're providing uh

053this year starting this year it's more or less a concierge service to mental health so basically this service is available to families students and staff and it kind of takes the um you know the chaos out of trying to find a caretaker or someone to see they do all the work for our students and families and staff members in regards to locating a professional licensed a caretaker um based on the preferences that they put in the chat uh that they discuss over the phone there's a few different ways that you can go about being connected with a mental health caretaker I also wanted to highlight that we added the man on page 11. so that's a nice uh um Edition and also that we wanted to highlight number one that Monday's uh our mental health

054Wellness Wellness days we encourage we're wearing green to support mental health awareness and the rest of that information is again the contact information to care solids and we're going to hear more and more about care solids as in the in the very uh soon coming days on page 15 [Music] we wanted to do um some promoting of Fort to board member Williams's point we're really trying to advertise as much as possible we felt that this was a really good place to um you know put our QR code out there our phone number out there for families to um to reach us at any time we do have a helpline hotline uh whichever way you want to call it but um we're monitoring those lines all day uh in addition to uh this um in the

055in the student handbook we are out making uh contact with various Community agencies uh Athletics we're doing presentations to athletic the athletic department with all of our Sports coaches with all of our um LPD the Lansing Police Department we've had presentations for them we've conducted presentations for faith-based associations and of course District staff we have a presentation coming up in October for all of our school administrators just kind of refresh their minds and memory to to what fort is and our numbers are because of that I think that Rose Tap House and Jennifer wesses has done a phenomenal job and our numbers are increasing as a lot of times folks just don't realize the the definition for families overcoming rough times is quite different than what people realize on page 28 this is where persistent

056misconduct belongs how I got it over on uh page zero I don't know I apologize for that but this is where it belongs on page 28. uh we removed a persistent misconduct from our um definitions of um behavior that could lead to discipline simply because we felt that it was um duplicated in many cases uh if for instance a student was into you know a fight I'll just use that for an example uh and it happened twice they would write them up for it's possible that they could be written up for misconduct instead of uh just a second fight and so um we felt like it was uh redundant in many cases and it showed up in our data uh and so we just wanted to kind of remove that enforce uh teachers staff administrators

057back to marking exactly what students uh what the exact Behavior was on page 37 levels one and two teachers staff interventions and administrator or excuse me administrator directed interventions we increase the number of options so we went from about six level one teacher staff directed interventions to 18. and these are just ideas uh again this this is not a cookie cutter type manual but just ideas for staff to use as interventions and again level two is the same way we went from I'm sorry level one we actually went to 22 and level two we went to 18 and there were both about in both sections there are about six uh options initially so we feel it that you know the more options they have um sometimes uh you know they can just see it on

058paper it's easier for our staff to implement and the matrix by grade level is actually on page 39 and 40. the change here is number one we took out persistent misconduct and also um after speaking you know thinking long and hard about this but then after speaking with um Jessica benavidez in regards to the uh disciplinary interventions by grade level we felt that it was necessary to have all of our k-8s on the same metrics whereas in in previous years it was grade 7 through 12. and so just to make sure that we were Equitable across the line and by grade bands we regardless of what school they went to high school and or k-8s we we felt that it was best that all K-8 students um fell in the K-8 metric and then 9

05912 for uh High School the process of edit recommendations are of course um student voice School administrators Central Administration we did have a long conversation with Equity committee representative of course the executive team talks about this throughout the year as various situations arise and I am always open to your feedback as the Board of Education and um that's how we process the um the the edits and what we should be doing and what we shouldn't be doing I don't make the decisions uh by myself um so that is the the point that I want to drive home there um how do we deliver the handbooks how do how how is it that the handbooks get into the hands of our families our students and our administrators and staff even we send out printed copies to

060the building uh for parents to pick up but then they're also delivered and did in a digital format and multiple digital formats uh this year we're going to push out well first of all it is lived on the website for for a long time teacher View and parent view it has always been there uh we are going to increase our delivery through all district mailboxes this year uh we are going to push out the link to the handbook through our superintendent's newsletter as well and we're also going to push out email and text messages to all parents which is which is new um and so we're hoping to further our reach with the with the new uh delivery options language accessibility uh there are about eight languages that we in 2021 added um whereas in

061previous years it was uh English only and we felt a need to provide make the make the handbook accessible to um many more families in regards to their native languages and so I have covered the purpose of the handbook the definition of culture and climate the role of the handbook we've reviewed the edits that have been made and recommendations uh the process of which those recommendations come through and we talked about the delivery and the language accessibility do you have questions and I know you do doctor this is always the fun part thank you thank you thank you for the presentation you're welcome um you did very similar presentation last year but I had two of the United I say I remember I said last year the name Hamburg still in Hamburg is not representing

062everything this in this book and you mentioned that several times today maybe it's a lunch in a school district height or whatever what else we can find out that is not only for the students it's for many many other people in the Lansing school district in phase two you got the superintendent school should have ultimate responsibility for administering the handbook well the superintendent is not in every building every day then then I think that before the superintendent somebody else should be there is responsible for administering that before he's coming to the superintendent I mean it is the principles responsible for taking care of this handbook who is the superintendent I'm sorry Dr Rodriguez do you mind pointing out to me where you are on page two page two the last paragraph oh I see I

063see yeah I see okay representative whatever but you know it's before coming to him we had people they are taking care every day and to that point we do have um out of my office we was with uh folks out of my off schools in classrooms um what we're going to do is we're going to take this handbook and create lessons out of this handbook to deliver to students to make sure that they're getting this information but to your point I've noted what you have okay I ensure that the one of the roles is that everybody knows about this it's taken weeks sometimes that we spend with the students explaining what is here because we don't want to give surprises to the parents or to the students but I think before the superintendent or he

064represent or his represent that it should be incorporated to the responsibility in administering this book um I am glad that you put the definition of our culture and and climate I think that we are going to be talking about that later on today then thank you very much and and I am glad to some of the changes that you made from last year and your team thank you you're welcome Madam president and it Miss Williams um same spot versus I like the way it said but I think making it inclusive where it's the community the family the teachers making everybody accountable so maybe if we can reword that to include everybody it's all inclusive not just the teachers not but the family the community it takes a village so if we can change it to

065that summer fashion um also I really do like this but we also have our um annual report is there some way we can incorporate that into this so instead of us getting two different brochures or two booklets all of this can be included in one I will note that for uh it's a recommendation I would have to um I think take it to the executive team and we can talk about where is that exactly what we want that to live um maybe because it highlights everything that we do and brings all of this together that's the way that's the way I was thinking I mean if you remember the small overview that we got the small booklet the little highlighted one it was a condensed version of the annual report oh yes yes that's what

066I'm talking about all right or at least maybe that centerfold information that is our demographics and our goals right um so I do think that um an opportunity there is to highlight our district priorities in there and incorporate that um if not the entire context that's that's what I was sure yeah I was picking up we were thrown down um Miss lilji thank you for all of your work and to the team I know it's a collaborative effort and it's kind of fun to see it's like a work of art it it you know grows and shifts and gets better every year so I just wondered if we could put the mission statement in here somewhere I think so I think it should be in here okay just not to I know we keep adding

067and adding and adding but um might be fun to have that as an inspirational piece somewhere yeah probably what the first couple of pages yeah right there or on the front page yeah it could just be yeah I think that tying um there are several times to Dr Rodriguez's point where you know the name student handbook doesn't necessarily give it the title we it actually references guidelines multiple times in here it says that these are guidelines um and incorporating our district um mission and goals which should be which is you know that's why we read our mission statement at the beginning of our meetings It Centers everything around that and our our guidelines should be centered the same way um any other questions Dr Kavanaugh hi thanks so much for this presentation um first I

068was wondering if you could speak a little bit more to how student voice was incorporated into the revisions sure so we we listen to students all year right students are coming to my office all year and anytime that they feel um you know that something needs to change um or that uh they've been mistreated in any kind of way as as the handbook is written we note that I know things I take notes all year long so I have like a written um a working document rather and and so it's not like I I don't do groups or anything like that but I do talk to kids on a regular basis about the student handbook in previous years I have done that this year I just did not um last year what I ended up

069doing was using some high school mentors that worked on an aim high program uh and so this year what we did was we we sat down and talked to kids and families uh when they come in uh on Tuesdays I meet with families every Tuesday and so I have they have an opportunity to voice their opinion we we often go over the handbook definitions and so that's for the most part where their voice is um um you know put into into this book is is it would be page like 37 um is what they would typically look at and the Matrix okay um I wonder if in you know future iterations in future years we might consider having a more formalized means of incorporating student voice um then I have a few really granular questions

070about discipline you know I was going to ask about discipline um so speaking of page 37 um under level three which is in school Alternatives number 11 which appears on page 37 um is snap suspension can you explain what that is and how that's a in-school alternative sure so snap suspension um is uh the full definition and I'll explain it as I know it I might have to turn this over to our superintendent to get a little detail more detail and maybe even uh Miss benavidez but if you go to page 33 uh It is Well explained on 33 uh and basically I'm so sorry you're right that's okay that's okay basically uh it's a snap suspension is when uh teachers are able to have a student removed from their classroom uh they should at

071that point um make contact with an administrator uh and that's for the hour not the day uh but for the hour uh make sure that they contact their administrator they the parents have to be contacted and essentially uh the teacher is requesting a parent conference before the student can return uh to talk about the detail of uh the snap suspension um and I am going to ask our superintendent to speak a little more detailed on that if if I missed anything no I mean you know one of the interesting things is that there are certain parts of the discipline code that are mandated by the state of Michigan and snap suspensions is one of them and so not that I want to bore anybody with this but on page 33 you'll see it's actually part

072of the Michigan code of conduct and the mde model code it's actually MCL 380.1309 I'm sure you're all going to remember that but the the idea here is that historically sometimes teachers don't necessarily feel empowered uh and so there was a move by the state of Michigan to empower teachers to remove students in a snap you know in in cause but what of course we have found and this it goes into an equity conversation is that at times that power is misused shockingly and so what we're trying to do is absolutely respect the right of the teacher and respect the right of the educator but also making sure that that child is is treated kind of appropriately and so the snap suspension here on where it says teacher snap suspension is kind of explained through

073the legal guidance and then we have guidelines as to how we're supposed to help with that child and that's why if you look at in-school Alternatives the idea here is that you can be removed from the class but it doesn't necessarily lead to removal from the school so you can give support and understand et cetera et cetera but I'm happy to continue on this but no that's fine that's my mistake explanation um but the superintendent does bring up my my last question here which is um is there a means and Cordelia you might not be the person to answer this but is there a mean means through which we are making sure that uh biases especially racial ethnic biases on the part of the decision maker are not entering the decisions because what I'm seeing

074here is a lot of opportunity for discretionary decision making which on the one hand is great we do want to empower teachers to react in the moment in the best way possible but on the other hand anytime there's discretion There's an opportunity for bias to enter and so I'm just wondering where those conversations are happening is that something that is appropriate to exist in the handbook or is that a conversation that's better housed elsewhere maybe this is a larger discussion but I just want to raise it as we're speaking about discipline yeah I think it that it is a larger discussion I think number one we look at data every every month disciplinary data we talk about it we can see uh pretty much what teacher is suspending For What and all of the ethnic

075uh racial uh um you know backgrounds of the students that are being disciplined and so um sure I think that what happens is we take that data we have uh you know kind of a conversation about it it at that time goes to the office of schools and then uh Miss benavidez and her spots take a look at it and they have those critical conversations uh with principals and administrators for how they can support uh principals and teachers and um you know who has the most uh um disciplinary office referrals Etc et cetera so those conversations are having are being had excuse me but I think that you know to your point um it there there probably could be you know some more conversation about um in detail about uh what you're asking right and

076I think the reason that it's Salient to me now is because as you mentioned this new draft of the handbook has many additional options compared to the last draft which on the one hand is great but those are you know we're introducing more opportunities for discretion so I'm glad those conversations are being had I appreciate it right but I do want to point out that the additional options that have been put put forth are all about um uh keeping kids in school and positive interventions uh not negative in an intervention so I just wanted to throw that out there um as well thank you I have the superintendent has a comment related to that yeah if you don't mind I I just want to really support what Dr Kavanaugh is saying in and I'll say

077this a little bit in my my statement this afternoon or evening I guess now um is that when you look at the new guidelines the equity team as well as the office of school culture really tried very hard to give jurisdiction to the department to do positive work but you are of course correct that by giving any sort of subjectivity it's you know and so to to the point that Cordelia made you know we do look at not just uh you know racial and ethnic breakdown and gender breakdown and grade breakdown but we also look very specifically at specific teachers um probably not appropriate in terms of the guidelines on how we do that but I think by just stressing the fact that the framework for grade schools puts Equity at the Forefront that we

078talk about the the ways that we're supporting our children is important but I think what maybe the board would request not that I'm going to put words in the board's mouth but when we at the end of the year maybe go over disciplined data we can really kind of elusive date on how we're doing because if we remember everybody at the Horseshoe certainly does and those in the audience is that one of the real critiques of the equity committee was how discipline was meted out on our students and so I think using this and all the extra things that we're doing as restorative practices will hopefully see a change but that will be you holding us accountable to that data you will right Mr Lopez thank you thank you madam president um I look at

079this handbook and um I think that we should rename it somehow student and parent handbook because a lot of this stuff the parents have to know and I don't know that that we put them that much emphasis I think we're doing better now but it would describe this better and when I look at the handbook there's um introduction expectations disciplinary action disciplinary guidelines disciplinary intervention so this is more of a negative than a positive information booklet to parents at least on his face so I'm thinking of is there an other words that would that would make it um more palatable I guess maybe corrective action proactive action disciplinary action because the discipline that we want is to correct Behavior to help students not just to discipline them necessarily but to help them do better and

080correct some behavior that they may have that that we you know we have professionals that that can help them do that so I'm just looking at the negativity of certain words that could be replaced and then look at how they fall in you know with the guidelines but I that's that's the um the media reaction that I have to this it's more about discipline than really help for students yeah yeah thank you madam chair president thank you no problem I did have a couple of questions this evening this is just minor I'm just wondering if this was just for illustration purposes on the table of contents we have some items in bold and some items and regular face I just didn't know that meant anything not to me okay let's just I will find I

081didn't know that was the things that we I'm not gonna sound like but not to me okay I just didn't know it meant anything um and then just doubling down on that um on that neat on that desire to have Fidelity and application um and so as many opportunities as we have for training support you mentioned creating lessons for students that they understood how to role playing scenarios I think that would be critical for our teachers and administrators as well as you talk about that data that we are looking at who's disciplining for want I'm thankful to see that we are removing that persistent misconduct because we're saying okay if a child's doing something repeatedly what are they doing repeatedly that's the issue not just saying that it's persistent the uh Equity committee Recreation so

082yeah so I I really I really appreciate that so definitely looking forward to seeing the skin I'm going to stop before I end up in next year's clip um of student handbook recommendations are there any other additional comments or questions we do um no okay that's it all right any other comments questions all right thank you so much Miss Black thank you all right I think that as approved well we would need a motion to approve I know that's what I was looking for to see if we had a motion too on our agenda and we don't um so I will take that back up with the superintendent okay okay I'll talk about it and get back with me okay we'll clarify for you what's needed no problem um I was just gonna say I

083think that we are working we keep trying to set our records for how late into the meeting we are before we get to our superintendent report report from superintendent but that is where we are in our agenda I will turn it over to you wonderful uh good evening everyone uh it is really a pleasure to be here uh this is the first time we've had a board meeting since school started and so that's really amazing I want to thank certainly the board and everybody in the audience uh The Advocates that spoke typically a superintendent does not urge his bosses to take action uh but I think they might be okay with me saying the following things which is it was wonderful to hear and see our friends uh our Advocates who are supporting the Multicultural

084language on the work um I've had a a real privilege of being able to work with many of the folks that spoke and I think anybody who knows me this is something that I hold very dear and I'm really happy to know that after the years of work it's on the table for the board to make a decision I think it's really wonderful there's also a lot of folks in the audience uh you know there's supposedly a line that Churchill said who knows if it's true uh democracy is the worst kind of government except for all the other ones um and so it's really wonderful to see so many people in the audience uh some of you Advocates I see a lot of organized labor it's wonderful to see you both from Building Trades as

085well as our Administration Union uh it's really it's really wonderful to have the the room packed this is now my third year as superintendent and there were many many weeks where it was us and the Hoven Camp family and uh though I love them dearly uh I think there is uh something to be said about having a robust uh Commons so to speak in our um in our midst um and again you know whatever the community says is important we have to take uh everybody's voice is valid and understand deeply why uh they're here um I have a couple of things that of course I always promise one is to give you the transportation update uh one day I might be able to not give this but uh we are still there um the gas

086cards we have over 2 000 have already been assigned which is really terrific there's 26 that are requested the reason why you have 26 is that came in this week one of the things that I have to really commend the um the CO's office and the facilities department is that um anybody who requested Transportation during the timeline has been granted their their gas cards their catech cards or their Dean routes and so that's really a very big change than where we were when I got here but of course it's because we've created these new ways of getting to school so 2011 gas cards and 735 cata assignments with one uh requested uh the catech cards are being distributed through the schools so there is sometimes a little bit of lag but again if you had

087requested it during the initial timeline they were ready and you know with Dean uh you know I've been at I think almost every school in the last week or so and uh tried to get to opening as well as dismissal with now only two tiers or mainly two tiers by having more than 2 000 families with gas cards and almost a thousand with Kata we've been able to really help out the transportation and so our buses seem to be running on time uh they seem to be picking up uh full routes which is is really a very big change and I want to thank everybody who's been a part of it we do have 492 families on the request list but that's because those requests came in in the last week or so again we

088did have a request that was done in the summer and we were able to fulfill all of these but again we are moving very very quickly through the request line so we have over 27 uh 196 students on Dean currently with 492 requested and then a 29 on wait list again the folks that might be on a wait list those might be for very individualized reasons uh to have a wait list below 50 is kind of where we're heading that's what we're looking for with 10 000 families and of course about 6 000 families that are able to be routed uh we're trying to keep the waitlist under 50 and then we will work with each of those families individually but again from this standpoint going on the end of the second week we have

089not been in such a good position in terms of Transportation since we opened back uh to school but the good uh work doesn't end and certainly the good news doesn't end because this is the first time I'm able to address uh those in the audience and amazingly enough the hundreds of people that listen to these board meetings at home uh hello everybody uh is that we do have some really good uh information to share but one thing I did want to say today is that you heard the folks uh spoke about the Multicultural move we've talked about Equity one of the things that's been really important with the handbook and uh Cordelia has talked about this is so much of how Equity plays out in a school district is how you deal with discipline and

090the more that you think of discipline as a restorative practice as a supportive practice as a way to actually work towards better outcomes the better the school district will be writ large and so a lot of time was spent this year with the equity team the equity committee as well as executive team really thinking about language that's in a discipline code typically it is very punitive it is very angry it puts children not in the center but it puts punishment at the center and one of the things that you've seen as a Evolution with what we've been doing is trying to really rethink how we do that and what we've of course found is that if you create a structure where a child understands that their behavior was not good but then will make a

091change in their Behavior because they feel supported because they understand the restorative practices that actually makes it so there isn't that recidivism whereas when you just punish children uh that's something that doesn't really translate and so I want to commend Cordelia her office the equity team their work many of the board members were on those teams the entire board has been very supportive but just really understand that Equity isn't a phrase it isn't just some poster on the wall you have to understand how it invades everything a school district does as well as really a community does so I'm very happy to see the changes uh in the handbook occurring uh now some other really great highlights you know we're we're looking at they're not audited yet that happens really in January but the fact

092that already our preliminary graduation data has us over 70 percent which is the first time really in I wouldn't say recorded history but it's the first time when mde has run cohort numbers that we've actually passed 70 percent that is incredible that is a really big change for how we're functioning as a district there is a chance I want to stress a chance we might make 75 uh we're still processing the summer school graduation as well as some of the uh students that kind of came over the line uh at the end the other big number of course is attendance uh this year we raised our attendance rate I would love to say five but it is 4.97 percent I will round up the idea that you can raise attendance rate by five percentage points

093in one year is almost unheard of a lot of that is thanks to uh really what we've been doing on the school level as well as through ET again why am I mentioning graduation rate attendance rate because if everybody who's been paying attention since I got here we have three District goals increase graduation increased attendance and increased enrollment and not just increase we have a number we want to get to 85 percent High School graduation we want to get to 90 percent daily attendance we want to get to an enrollment of 11 500 and again why those three those three because graduation is the kind of the the ultimate it is the the culmination of the work of a child and of the district and of the teachers and everybody else uh attendance is a

094daily barometer of our children choosing to come uh certainly the five-year-old usually kind of has to come but that attendance is based a lot on things like transportation and so are we doing a good job there and certainly the older the child gets the more um Authority they feel that they have to choose to go to school or not and if you're increasing attendance rates in places like high school it means that the product that we are putting in front of them is better and then the last one which I'm going to speak about is enrollment uh anybody who's been part of this district for even five years uh but many of you in the audience and certainly many of you at this table have been in the district for a couple more than five

095Dr Rodriguez um is you know five and a half years from my good friend um is that this district has been on a enrollment decline uh really pretty consistently for about 30 years uh every year uh the the district has kind of lost students and I can't make any promises because it it still has to be vetted but what we're seeing in the first couple of weeks that that possibly for the first time in years we see a true change in that trajectory um I don't know where the final numbers are going to be but one of the things that we do uh a lot of this District talks about count right there's count day and districts are attacked of oh you only call me on count day you want my money you know why

096are you doing that well that could be certainly that's certainly the farthest from the truth for us we treat every day as count day um even day one is Count Day not because we care about the money it's because we want kids to come to school because it's pretty hard to learn if the kid's not coming to school and so even this week we have been running it as if it is Count trying to see and highlight how many students are actually showing up every day and who are on our enrollment and So currently we we are seeing a big change an increase of students which is tremendous I don't want to give numbers because a I mean not that I'm I don't want to jinx anything but but the idea is that we are

097seeing some tremendous growth um but the ones I want to highlight is to defend and to understand some of the changes we made this coming year one of the things that this district has really seen was we saw a precipitous drop from third grade enrollment to fourth grade enrollment we typically saw about a 800 ish I'd say 850 we would just call it 850. students in third grade and then we would see about 750 students in fourth grade why well we had typically Pre-K 3 schools and families didn't particularly like our junior high schools they didn't particularly want the students to then change over to new schools and uh our families voted with their feet and they left the district and as we know I've said this a hundred times you know we have 10

098000 ish kids in the district but we have six thousand kids that live in the district and wake up every morning in Lansing and go to another school district one of the big changes was third to fourth grade so one of the things that we did was we merged schools so that we would have k-8s rather than these Pre-K threes and then these kind of four eights or four sevens whatever and this year what have we seen we actually have more fourth graders than third graders in the district that's wonderful but what that means is that the call was right is that we we because we listen to the families because we actually do pay attention and Care is that by creating these K-8 schools we were able to create these kind of communities and

099these families and the families are staying with us and they seem to like it and that's been really really terrific um the other thing that we've done is for some of our Pre-K threes we've just added a fourth grade and what did we find the kids stayed and so the more that we are putting the center the student in the center the more that we're listening to the families the more that we understand what they actually want we're making decisions that really are turning out uh to be quite good for the community but that doesn't mean that change isn't hard and we've certainly had to go through some of changes which I'll talk about but there's another piece of of information I want to share which I rarely talk about and I rarely talk about

100test scores because as a former academic I have some issues with standardized test scores but at the end of the day I think when you talk to a family when you talk to a kid when you talk to the community the idea of test scores going up is a good thing uh the m-step scores were just released uh really I think last week but they were kind of made public on Monday and I can report to you something that is really incredible which is that our m-step scores in the district went up in every grade in every subject that's pretty amazing the fact that it went up in every grade in every subject but because it's me we did start very low so I do want to be very honest here and say it's not

101like our scores are terrific but what it is saying is that the path that we're taking seems to be translating but those that path that we're taking uh does come with you know change and I do appreciate that change is hard and so there have been some things that have kind of been brought up that I want to really make sure that we understand is that when a district is putting the student at the center that does mean that we have to change some of the Dynamics of the district if those who remember the the board you know in a difficult conversation in a difficult decision uh had to basically uh get rid of two administrative positions at two of our schools why because of the way that student enrollment worked we have to uh

102follow our kind of Union contract and we uh had to be sheer math uh remove and change the assistant principal positions at two of our schools but one of the things that I've always been promising the district and promising the board is that we're always going to try to treat our uh our members correctly and what I am really happy to say of course is that both of those assistant principals are still assistant principals in our district just at different schools or one was uh re reinstated and another one went to another school which I think is just a testament to the fact that this board has been able to make the right decision for children at the right time and the district has been able to be good to our um our our employees

103trying to make sure that the best thing uh can happen for them too and you know because I see them in the back the lasa union which is our Union of Administrators uh they are they're strong uh they hold us accountable they make sure that we do our job which I appreciate um but we're always trying to make sure that we're making these decisions that are right by kids uh but also right for our adults and one of the things that did change and Lassa certainly knows that is with our creation of our K-8 schools that meant you had to merge two schools you had to merge a Pre-K 3 with a four eight and it meant that you had to go from have having two principles to one principle that's just math now that's

104also better for the kids and it's better for the families and it's better for the community because we see now that our fourth grade is actually higher than our third grade but one of the deals that we made with Lassa because again we care deeply about our uh employees is that we actually kind of redlined the both administrators protected both administrators even though we didn't have to and this isn't a like oh you know thank us so much but because we're always trying to make sure that the decisions we make for our leadership for our teachers for our folks is that we're thinking about our adults as well as our kids and so even though we had these merged schools and I want to make sure that we're explaining this is that two schools had

105two principals of course now the merch school has one principal and one AP but even though we didn't have to keep that person as an AP we did because we wanted to make sure that they would be supported and so I appreciate that change is difficult but when you put your kids first you're making the right decisions for your kids but then you're also making sure that you're supporting your adults and your employees you really end up seeing positive results and that's where we are right now now can we get better absolutely am I happy with our m-step scores not at all am I happy that we've stopped the bleeding when it comes to enrollment but we're not at 11 500 of course not we're going to get better am I happy that we're at

106over 70 maybe 75 sure do I think we need to get to 85 absolutely but all the decisions that the district has made with the support of the board and support of the community is really about uh doing right by everybody and so you know though this is probably one of the longer times that that I will speak to start the school year by applauding the folks that have been making these decisions and making the actions applauding the Educators the principals the teachers the aides and secretaries all of the people that are doing this work we're starting to see some really good change graduation rates going up by a minimum of 12 years into 12 points in two years attendance rates five points in one year which is pretty much unheard of increasing enrollment not

107decreasing enrollment changing the the landscape those are the kinds of things test scores going up uh you know I will say that there is a a person on that wall uh who is not Sam uh once told me don't ever try to raise test scores you can't well yeah you can and and you can because you put the right people in the right position and you make the right decisions and so I just want to really start off this year and thank this community for being willing to go down this road with us and you're starting to see that change and that trajectory we are not there yet we have miles to go but every facet of when you look at a district is actually getting better uh in the last two years and so

108that is really really special and I think everybody in this community should be really proud of the incredible work uh that that we have been doing and when I say we I mean all of us this does not happen just by a superintendent just by a board just by an ET it happens with everybody in the community so I want to thank you for that okay that was really long I'm sorry so uh however because you'd rather see young cherubic children on uh screen we actually do have a did you know so I will turn it over to uh Jenna to hit the tape all right thanks Ben um as you know it's the first week of school last week and we had a lot of open houses in the previous week and we were

109able to go out to one of our new magnet schools North and we did a quick video of their um welcome back uh reopening ceremony I just want to tell you how proud I am of our co-princibles of our staff of our board and of our community for believing in what we're going to do here at North North is an amazing school and it's going to be even better a full K-8 school with Incredible resources and incredible building when you walk around you're going to see how beautiful this place is all of the Investments that your tax dollars have brought I want to say thank you to everybody for being here it's because of you and your families and your belief in North uh that we're here we are a magnet school now now and

110if you know anything about Magnus scores you know that they bring a lot of great ideas to the district North's focus is Environmental Studies we're also bringing a leadership piece that we had in Kinder so if you see on our shirts it says North environmental leaders our goal is to help our children really develop the skills the mindset in order to become leaders that are going to help and prepare for the future so as you look around today you'll see pieces of that but there's lots lots more to come so instead of having a ribbon cutting to support our environmental theme we're going to have a planting and as you go around to your students classroom everyone will have the opportunity to begin Our Roots of success and we are building a legacy that will

111be long lasting and forever in the minds of our students and in the hearts of our students [Applause] we say North you say all right I love it thank you and and with that uh I turn it back over to the president thank you thank you so much and this is you know we're getting back into the swing of things kids are back in school we have a new rate uh Rhythm and Cadence of things that we have to to talk about and it's always exciting to get a very very thorough update from our superintendent so thank you next this evening we have our routine matters in Old business and so first we have our first uh committee report this evening will be our facilities committee update for Mr Lopez just noting uh for the

112group we have quite a few um uh quite a few bid recommendations on tonight something quick no problem will be some somehow quick uh thank you madam president so before going to the to the bits for Mount Hope I just want to inform you that three other items were on the agenda for our meeting held on the on the fifth so the other uh item was uh solar solar energy updates we will have a ISS presentation on that so it's just information the sinking fund summer project updates most are done just punch list items at North that were left as of the fifth so the um those projects or basically complete right yeah okay and the other item was a extension of contract for Mireles painting they are on the job but District foresees more

113work in that area so they're extending we bring it here because it's more than ten thousand dollars so we need board action to approve the extension and the contract is is in your packet okay so those were three other items besides the manhole recommendations okay um buckle up the items are listed in in the um on the agenda so you can refer to that but I'll just very quickly go into the first work category which is earthwork and insight utilities we had four contractors and the um the selected contractor after interview was for Linden Construction Incorporated recommend that their bid was 1 million 184 uh 140 dollars so that's the recommended bid for that our second item was the category five site concrete curbs and Paving we had three bidders on that project more Prosper

114ET McKenzie and fester Bowman more Trosper was a low bidder and is recommended in the amount of 580 thousand dollars item category 8 landscape we had five bidders in this case the lowest bidder was not was not selected because if you can see the the most responsive bidder was ninety thousand three hundred dollars and the lowest bid was 39 000 which is really they didn't need the the um requirements of of the bid process so the recommendation is lawn sprinkler sales services in the amount of ninety thousand three hundred dollars um category 10 structural concrete we had five contractors bidding on it Choice Concrete Construction Incorporated was uh was interviewed along with the Algos and was selected and is recommended for this work at 900 90 520 dollars next item is category 11 11 Masonry

115we had three contractors the lowest bidder was selected it met the requirements Davenport Masonry in the amount of 000 dollars structural steel Tech stain stairs category 12. we had six beaters the bitter recommended is Builders iron Incorporated and the recommended amount which was their bid is uh one million seven seven thousand eight hundred dollars and by the way this is all school bond okay this is Bond money just so public knows um category 13 waterproofing we had two bidders uh grit industry services and REM Construction the low bidder uh grid Industrial Services is recommended in an amount of 143 thousand dollars category 14 Roofing and Sheet Metal I've got eight eight bidders the the low bidder has been recommended versatile Roofing Systems Incorporated in an amount of one million 460 dollars category 15 metal siding

116and Roofing we had eight bidders again this time Wolverine enclosures Incorporated was is being recommended for an amount of 580 170 dollars for that category uh category 18 glass and glazing we had two bitters lensing glass company and Aaron Glass Company both of Lansing the recommended Builder is a lensing glass company in a contract amount of 792 929 dollars category 20 General trades we had five bidders and the selected bidder was Trumbull Group LLC and they will be recommended for the contract amount of two million 197 dollars 300. category 21 walls and ceilings and five bidders Grand River interiors and plaster was a little bitter and then it's been recommended for a contract amount of 722 thousand dollars category 22 hard tile they had five bidders the the lowest bidders Superior Floor Covering was is

117being recommended in an amount of 131 998 dollars category 23 carpet and resilient flooring five bidders again and this case Superior Floor Covering LLC was a little bitter and it's been recommended for 370 seventy two thousand dollars almost there almost there uh category 26 Fire Protection again um the lowest bidder was not is not recommended but the recommended bidder is Brigade Fire Protection which the most responsible bidder for this category and there contract amount is 258 718 dollars uh category 28 electrical systems there was three bidders and CNR Electric has been recommended for an amount of three million twenty thousand four hundred dollars those are the those are the work categories the total amount of of money 20 million 109 000 776 dollars and and that amount compared to the projected cost or the estimate

118is for 152 810 below so so the bids came below um the uh projected or estimated cost so that gives us a little bit of breathing room and just one other item is that better location 59 were located in Michigan but other areas other than the Greater Lansing area 41 were from the Lansing you know uh Clint Newton and income counties so 41 59 and just to remind you that based on state law any anyone in Michigan is is a local bidder so that is my report Madam president thank you sure Mr superintendent yeah so first of all I think everybody can see the quite uh extensive number of uh bids there's a couple of things I want to point out but I just want to turn it over to to Christina to explain a

119couple of things and there's one thing I want to explain yeah okay great thank you the one thing that I wanted to talk about was the expansion of the CSA for the Marella's painting company so we already approved a CSA in a prior board meeting once we have a CSA and we put a cap on that dollar amount we can't exceed the cap unless we issue another CSA this does not mean that morella's painting will be do all be doing all of the painting in the district so I just want to be very clear about that what we're doing is raising the cap on their CSA so that when we go out to bid if they are selected for that work then we have the CSA in place to allow to continue to pay them

120without issuing a new CSA so I want to make that very distinctive difference just because we're raising the CSA does not mean that we are having them paint for everything we will go out to bid as we normally would do for any projects over ten thousand dollars thank you um and the other thing that I want to point out and this is I think important for the community to understand is when you go through these bids you know typically as you want to be good stewards of the money you're going to go for the the lowest bid but that doesn't mean that you have to right and one of the things that we've been looking at very deeply as a district is to think really critically about how the community responds to the work that's

121being done uh you know are they local as was said Michigan is considered local but there are ways for us to think more about what really local looks like there's some argument to be made that hey if folks live in the area and are paying taxes in the area maybe there's a a way or a thought to actually support uh the work that's being done in addition the there there is a way to really work with organizations that are supportive of the the district and so we're looking really hard at creative and thoughtful ways for the district to be really really good Shepherds of our tax dollars but also to understand that there's ways to support our programming as well as our district at last times board meeting a gentleman came up and spoke of

122some creative ways of thinking about when we're looking at bids when we're looking at action being taken by the board that we would take into consideration a kind of more holistic way of thinking and that's something that we are really looking into deeply and we're going to share with the board facilities team soon as well as the board as a whole because you know when you're thinking about a school district you want to think about how do you and I mean anybody who's ever heard me talk the shepherding of the tax dollars is hugely important you need to make sure that you're you know going to bid or even under bid which is awesome and saving money but we also know that the folks that work in our schools and the folks that support our

123schools can be one in the same and so I want to make sure that um I'm being very clear today that we as a district have to think critically about our current rules that we have to follow and uh ways that we can think of new rules to better support the community that is supporting our district so thank you thank you so on category five we approve more stress per but in category 10 and category 20 we did not is there some way we could actually go back to them and maybe modify a couple buying all three Biz and decrease the number possibly so actually through the public bid process we're not allowed to have people change their bids to make their bids lower or modify them so once we open up the bids we

124have bid opening processes here right in the boardroom when we do everything we open up the bid packages the bids are the bids of course there are things and they're like voluntary alternates and things like that that might change things but we're actually not allowed to go to them and say hey if you give us all a package can you cut us a deal that's against the rules so we're not allowed to do that state law you're welcome Dr Rodriguez thank you and thank you very much for the great presentation but um it's going to be 22 million 17 different organizations maybe one year one year and a half of working there who is going to control of this what is the management style who is going to Quality Control what is what is the

125role how we we find out in size of the distance outside the management of the whole process of building this 22 or more Millions dollars no it's it's a great question um I think that I probably spend more time in this room uh in those meetings than uh I thought I ever was I know certainly Christina could probably just live here and still miss a meeting or two um the oversight of the entire project of course is with Chrisman you know Chrisman is the large entity that is overseeing the construction we also as a district have a bond rep who is a a company um but is uh represented I guess by Mark Alexa they are um really a terrific you know so the district and not that this is going to bore you but

126I think this is probably really important because I appreciate the question 22 million dollars is a lot of money building a big school building is takes a lot of uh effort and work and so we have plant Moran which is a large entity and they're represented by Mark Alexa as the bond rep so we pay a company to make sure that our we are spending our money wisely and I can tell you that it's already paid dividends what will happen sometimes is you know a builder says oh I can't do this or I can't do that and then the bond rep says okay fine but then we need to take money back or we need to find you and so plant Moran does that Chrisman is the the CM I mean they're the they're the

127contract they're doing the big the big work now then we of course have an architect right you've got c2ae they and so it's a a lot a lot of people so in this room those tables are there and then those tables come in we usually have 10 to 15 people all around the table uh working together but at the end of the day that's why we bring everything public we make everything uh really really clear and we're trying to do the best by the district so I know Christine if there's anything you want to add but that's kind of how it works is we have a bond rep we have the construction management and then of course we have the executive team as well as the board and those in the public to check that

128we are doing right oh in addition um before the things come to the facilities committee they have already been vetted by this group and so the group the entire group you know has to say into what's going to go to the facilities committee obviously it's the superintendent's ultimate decision what to bring to the board and the committee then agrees to to bring it sometimes a committee has said you know I think we need to do some other stuff here from the perspective of the board and then it doesn't come until those things are resolved but General things like this you know it's uh they've embedded come to the facilities committee we look at it again and if there's any additional questions fine if not you know bring it to the board recommended to the board

129that's the process so there's a lot of layers Dr before it comes to thank you to the board no thank you very very much but this is a lot of money it's a it's a building I don't want later on I said but we want it that way but they're building it that way that happened before this floor should be that level but it's going to be different level before we regret bad things happen for liquid building preventing this kind of things is what they're looking for as a board member because you don't maybe we don't use the money right we abuse the money but we don't use the money right and that is another concern then then I think mother president that maybe we we need to have this kind of how the building

130is going every two or three months and that we we without controlling anything but knowing that that we are doing the right thing absolutely I think we are behind time to do a Bonds in motion um meeting and tour and I know that just makes me recall Dr Rodriguez your call in the first Bond iteration and we before the schools open the floor is already repealing and we realized that we needed to go and redo all the floors so we have definitely learned from mistakes and don't want to do that again I'm also thinking to myself this was just about hope we still have willow that we'll need to see a couple other spellings that we'll need to see all this for so I'm thankful that so far we have come in under budget um

131I do have one clarifying question I'm looking at you miss Tokar regarding the Morales painting contract can you just um just to clarify we have an existing contract service agreement with Morales painting what is the amount roughly of that I put you on the spot okay I think it was it was under 30 000. and then when it was over the board we're expanding up to a hundred thousand dollars just knowing that this year we're going to be doing a lot of internal which is an exciting update we're going to be doing a lot of internal painting in a lot of our schools okay and and so we're but anything that's ten thousand dollars or above we will go out with our normal process of three quotes go with the best qualified quote and go

132from there can I rephrase this a different way this is essentially like a pain or retainer that can do smaller jobs correct our bigger jobs would go out to bid like a regular absolutely yes the very large bids would go out the other thing is too is as we continue to work with additional painters in the district that are doing smaller jobs unless you will see csas come forward perfect for them as well and it'll be the same type of process for them that way we don't have to come to you every single time we add a new painting job correct okay perfect thank you that was very helpful um and understanding that any other questions from board members just remember we have I appreciate the preamble to that Mr low best to Buckle in

133because that was quite an extensive um set of bids for us to review this evening next any other questions sorry um next we have our Personnel committee report I will do a brief report in the absence of Miss Moore um in your packet this evening we have um your board Personnel report which will include resignations and retirements as well as two pages of hires new hires of both non-teachers and teachers as well as two individuals up for tenure and one individual with board approval for leave of absence so we have all of our new building principles on here our new LSA members our new Lea members and we're really excited to see the hiring process continue we know from our weekly updates from the superintendent that we still have vacancies that we know the district

134is working very diligently to fill especially in the situations where we have full-time Subs in built-in positions so just wanted to note that we know that that's something that's continuing um and continuing in process that's it the Personnel report is on the consent agenda for this evening does anyone have any questions for Miss Tokar um I have no question okay Miss Williams I have about four questions okay so I've been trying to go through this report for three days so I'm asking if possible if we can get a cleaner presentation of the personal report may be done by unions maybe bargaining units since then chronological order because as she was introducing the principles I'm like wait where's that one where's that okay so that's my first question um also I've seen a lot of staff

135that was repeated on the Personnel report from the last meeting so if we can look at that and then the administrators that's been laid off have they been interviewed and assigned to other positions and my final question is can we get a list a roster a list of who the principals and assistants are and at what schools and then dare to say can we break it down by demographics gender and all of that sure so happy to move forward with several of the things that you just brought up thank you for that um we'll definitely make sure we get them in chronic chronological order or in Union order you just need to let me know what you prefer um happy to do all of that one of the things that I did want to point

136out is we did have 57 resignations 51 of them require Replacements but we did have 97 new hires so almost double double new hires instead of resignations um gender ethnic breakdown happy to do that I do do that once you know during our ISS if that's something that we would like to start reporting out monthly for the Personnel report happy to provide that to miss more and that's something that we can that we can provide out before we you finish um point of order side note I sent you cardelia and the superintendent email I'm going to apologize it didn't it didn't mean to sound the way did it sound so you all know what I'm talking about we'll leave it at that but just know I'm apologizing openly any other questions comments Miss Lil G

137I just leave the president thank you when somebody moves when somebody makes a move or a promotion is that reflected in new hires on this report no it's just not reflected these are these are new people new to the buyers to the district okay thank you you're welcome Mr Lopez yeah I'd just like to um on the retirement resignation page we have teachers with 28 29 38 years 24 who have retired 25 26 so we'd like to thank them for their service and hope that they retire nicely and uh still come back to our buildings and volunteer somehow but thank you for their service and and I'll turn this over to Christina to give some more uh additional information but you know one of the things that happens you might say to yourself wait a

138second this person it's effective June 30th you know it's already September what's going on a lot of times that's because of either paperwork or understanding or you know is this actually going through and so you know what I really appreciate about uh what board member uh Williams asked is we can kind of put this in any order you want just so that the it makes sense I know sometimes you look at these names and you're like what is all of this um I think you know a lot of it can kind of build the story of of what's happening so you know somebody who was teaching for 38 years which is incredible uh their retirement is effective 8 22 that might be because of some pension thing or it might be because of the way

139that it's timed stuff like that somebody else might be June 20 27th but we might not get all the paperwork in times you might say oh why didn't we do this at a previous uh iteration it it's amazing how much paperwork uh resignations retirements all that kind of stuff happens but I don't know if and just the only thing that I'll add on is sometimes you know when people are making their life decisions to go ahead and change and move on for whether it's a retirement or a resignation sometimes we find out things a little bit later and they back date you know the time for when they're they're deciding to to leave the district so sometimes that's why you'll see the dates that seem backdated as well but happy to put it in any

140order the board prefers to see it in okay any other questions thank you and thank you Miss Williams for your questions I know I um I go back and forth between whether I wanted the effective date which is the order we receive if I went in alphabetical order which I don't know if that'll be helpful or the union order so um Broken Out by Union I think that but we can play around with it so thank you um next we have our isoa update from Dr Rodriguez thank you mother president angle to be church and I attended the meeting last Tuesday was a long meeting and the first thing I want to announce is the school cannot do it alone speech there's going to be an October 2nd in the high school on hold then

141you had I sent you the minutes and you had the registration form and everything for you to attend this and I will be announcing this speech and then future meetings also in the whole meeting we have the report from Michigan Association School Board by Jennifer Smith they've told us how much is going on or how is what is going on and the legislators on how the legislatory already passed so many things that we already know how they support education in the last budget but also there are other laws they are going to be voting on or they already vote one of them is going to be evaluation they were talking about um and the thing is the legislature laws or bills and the contract we have the contract for five years and now it's coming

142new laws they are going to be maybe completely different than what we have in the contract then maybe the superintendent can give us some Vision on how how that works absolutely and since there I see you know Union representation in the in the room certainly uh they can correct me uh if they would like to um one of the more interesting things that's happened uh this year in the State House is that really for the first time in years education was a primary focus uh extra money was given extra support was given and new laws were passed to really support Educators uh which is a wonderful thing some of those laws go into effect later some of them go into an effect in different times but a collective bargaining agreement typically supersedes those kinds of

143things and the way that the state has passed a lot of these laws is that it is taking things that used to not be allowed to being allowed to be talked about not that they are forced to be done so to Dr Rodriguez's question um there are some things that the state passed that allow for conversations to happen between the district and the unions and in fact one of the things that we put in the teacher's contract or the Educators contract lca's contract is that if state law changed we would uh be willing to have those conversations the same would apply for any of our bargaining groups but I do want to make sure that people understand that the way that Michigan Works is and many states do this as well if the state approves

144it votes for it it doesn't immediately always go into effect and so many of the laws that were passed in the session do not go into effect until later and so we will talk to the community about this and maybe even do an ISS I mean depending on what's needed but that we have a contract with all of our bargaining units and we follow that contract and of course if the contract was ever against the state law that would be different but that's not really what's happening here so I appreciate the question and I look forward to the next couple of months as we see what this legislature does moving forward thank you the superintendent from East Lansing also were present and she informing a few things you can read that in the in the

145ministry I send you the first one is the distance now they can start a school year anytime before label day after Labor Day now you start before Labor Day you had to have a waiver no anymore you can we can start anytime Bill 2018 is going to create a policy and health that will require a dental screening before kindergarten encounter in Norman and that is another big big issue for us that we need to see how we are going to work on that a modified teacher administrator evaluations also they are modifying that those group and then they already talk about that and um the the other things that we were talking about is what every school is doing and emphasize the man hope it's underway and we can see 22 million dollars I didn't tell

146them how much but that is what we are doing that this is approved five years contract with the teachers on the first day of the school went very well and I can say that because I was in Eastern High School and I told them the sister high school football team has been on winning streak for two games and I didn't mention them the schools that we built thank you very much president thank you so much Mr Dr Rodriguez and I always appreciate you taking one for the team and going to that 7 A.M meeting for us um okay next on our agenda this evening is our consent agenda this evening on our consent agenda we have um the approval of the August 17th regular meeting minutes the August 28th special meeting minutes and the receipt

147and approval of the Personnel report may have a motion Madam president Dr Kavanaugh I moved to the Board of Education approve the consent agenda as presented thank you it's been moved by Dr Kavanaugh supported by Miss Williams all those in favor signify by saying aye aye oppose same sign great motion passes 6-0 next we have our action items and I would gladly accept a single motion to approve all of the bids before us this evening Madam president Miss Williams I I'm gonna make a motion that we accept everything that has been presented um the increase of the Rigo Morales by Miss tolkar and all the building improvements um for development the resolution for the creation of the task force did that cover everything well just the bid recommendations okay items A and B okay so

148items A and B thank you it's been moved by Miss Williams supported by Dr Kavanaugh that the Board of Education approve items A and B in our in our in our packet as presented are there are there any other questions all right seeing on all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye opposed same sign great motion passes 6-0 next this evening oh Madam president Mr Lopez yes I moved that the Board of Education approved the resolution as presented for Multicultural task force second oh thank you he wanted to make sure we got ahead of that I'm going to give the support that we're gonna let's get the motion on the table um it's been moved by Mr Lopez supported by Miss Williams I was going to yield the floor to my colleague Dr

149Rodriguez who will humbly say that this was a joint effort but I have to give the credit and persistence to Dr Rodriguez and wanting to make sure that this resolution was not only seen by this board but supported by this board and adapted by this board and so I'm going to yield the floor to Dr Rodriguez to talk about the purpose of this resolution and then we will open it up for questions comments and take it for a vote thank you madam president and um thanks to you for your leadership and for put this in the agenda tonight thanks to the superintendent thanks to the team and thanks to the officers and their let's burn all the board members because that has been in conversation for a long long time thanks to also people in

150the community that they wanted that we are in cooperation and collaboration with everybody this should be done 60 years ago it's actually this is part of the I dream that we celebrate a few days ago this is far also of the culture that we celebrate every year different days now is going to be part of all of us all the time all the places this is a vision and also a mission and a plan there is not going to be done in one year maybe it's going to take more because this transformation is a transformation and what we are have been doing for so many centuries to a new vision and what we want to go it's a dream but this resolution has also a plan that we are going to continue working together um

151it is very positive we are not taking anything from anybody is adding to every person as much we can to achieve the best that they can be it's a new vision for our school our city and maybe our nation with somebody said a few minutes ago but I congratulate the board by the work is going to be done but all of us but especially by the administration I'm the people who they will support them it's going to require money by the president but I don't think we choose to wait for anything to be successful in that then we need remember when we pass the Dei I said we have in every board member to talk about that I think we need to continue talking about cultural and Multicultural education because we don't talk who is

152going to talk if we don't move who is going to move that we had to be leaders and work hard for for I celebrating today to one person that maybe some of you remember I remember very well Bill Richardson die about two days ago he was governor of New Mexico and also Ambassador and then United Nations on and you know he was a person who were the last few years and being in Americans they were in other countries to to United States that that is the spirit of this the solution the spirit of the leaders all kind of leaders that we that is what we can do not what our country can do for us but what we can do for our country thank you very much Happy president Madam thank you Mr Lopez I'd

153like to read the resolution for the purpose of everybody knows what it says so resolution States corresp the Board of Education supports the mission of the district which is to provide a high quality education in a culturally safe and natural environment that supports all students to live purposeful and fulfilling lives whereas the district strongly supports Multicultural education and believes that creating a holistic Multicultural learning environment is important for the academic achievement of our students and whereas the development of a multicultural learning environment requires a broad-based multicultural initiative that transforms the culture policies and practices of the district therefore they'd resolved that the board authorizes the formation of a multicultural initiative task force by the superintendent comprised of experts to develop and design a multicultural initiative by October 17 2024 that when implemented achieves a multicultural

154learning environment throughout the district thank you thank you for reading that for us Mr Lopez I will point out in some of the conversations that Dr Rodriguez and I had in drafting these Dr Rodriguez really highlighting the importance of making sure that that there was an elevation of this work as a standalone priority area that needed a significant amount of attention and so that will include finances and support from the board I those of you that are familiar with me know that I am not of a fan of pro forma resolutions I do not like them unless we are going to put our money where our mouth is and actually have action behind it and so I appreciate um Dr Rodriguez for continuing to push to make sure that we did something and that we

155came up with wording that met that need of both out of elevating and highlighting the importance of it and creating an action expectation around it um any other questions or comments from board members all right seeing none may have a roll call vote please Dr Kavanaugh yes miss little G yes Mr Lopez yes Miss Moore he's absent Dr Rodriguez yes Miss Williams yes Miss Willis yes wonderful motion passes 6-0 thank you so much everyone okay that brings us to our next item this evening is that the board does need to convene into closed session may I have a motion Madam president I'm moving we want the closed session all right I am going to read that the Board of Education recommend recommended that the Board of Education convene into closed session for the purpose of

156considering material exempt from discussion or disclosure to the state we have a written opinion and letter from an attorney may I have a second it's been moved by Miss Williams supported by Dr Kavanaugh questions comments seeing none may have a roll call vote please Dr Kavanagh yes Miss little G yes Mr Lopez yes Dr Rodriguez Miss Williams yes Miss Willis yes was that it okay I'm sorry motion passes 6-0 and at 8 24 we are in closed session foreign [Music] foreign all right our cameras are back on so we are going to go um back through our agenda items we just have a few items left this evening um we did go into closed session for consideration of a legal opinion and so I do need emotion please Madam president Mrs Williams that we adopt

157the resolution to the changes of the superintendent contract as presented thank you it's been moved by Miss Williams supported by miss lilji that the Board of Education adopt the resolution to execute the amendments to the superintendent's contract as presented uh any questions or comments seeing none uh let's vote and then I will can I have a roll call vote and then I'll make my comments sorry sorry Dr Kavanaugh yes Miss Lil G yes Mr Lopez yes Dr Rodriguez yes Miss Williams yes Miss Willis yes bless you bless you great motion passes 6-0 um what I was going to say is now that we have the adopted motion um I just want to publicly thank the superintendent for all of the work that he does and I hope that same as I felt about the teachers

158about like that vote of confidence of showing um that we are supporting them I hope that this extension to your contract gives you that vote of confidence that the board has in you it has been a wild ride and we have faced a lot of challenges and we know that we have some yet um to come but you said something just in today's meeting about you really can achieve anything when you put your goal to it there is nothing that we can't achieve um and so I really appreciate that you have that that Outlook and support of our students and family and everyone in this District so just wanted to say that thanks all right next we have a report from secretary and announcements thank you president um we are in the schooling session and

159the Board of Education and welcome back to all the students parents the community and the teachers and everybody who work in London School District we wish that the best year and am very productive for all the preschool starts September 13 next week the preschool starts next week September 13th High School football after two great victories and ranking number 10 in their division no school November 29th District Professional Day national school districts we need you we want you join us and we will be all happy thank you a next board meeting will be information study session September 14th on September 21st regular board meeting and also I had the policy committee meeting September 20th at 12 o'clock there's concludes my report on another president uh doctor that was J dubs thank you thank you thanks just

160the two two things to note September 13th will be my daughter's first day as a Pre-K kiddo at Cumberland elementary school that pulls poor teachers um very much looking forward to that and then I also wanted to note to my colleagues on the board next Thursday um we is the day that we have slated for our board vacancy interviews so we will be doing them very similarly to how we've conducted them in the past they will be a structured interview with structured questions so far we have received six applications for the vacancy there is still time left for anyone who's interested and desires to apply the applications will close promptly at 5 PM Tuesday September 12th so they will have been open for a week at that time if you have any questions feel free

161to reach out to me rachel.willis lansingschools.net is the best way to reach me um and I also want to share with my colleagues that I will not be here next week so I will leave you in the next Thursday so I Leave You In The Trusted hands of Vice President Moore who will be running and conducting the interviews the benefit of us having those as structured interviews is that I will be able to still review them and weigh in at our deliberation meeting on August I'm sorry on September 21st and I also wanted to note that trustee Williams has also informed me that she will not be there as well so we didn't expect Mr Richardson to resign and we had some things that were already scheduled and planned and for those that don't know

162we are on a 30-day time frame in order to move forward with the party in the vacancies and so I did not want um there to be any delays on my behalf because of my pre-scheduled absence for next week um sure Dr Rodriguez thank you um do we have the kind of the processing how we are going to do the interviews or we need something about that or you will send something in writing to us that will be a good preparation for us absolutely prior to the um prior to next Thursday's meeting a matter of fact on the 12th all of you all the board members will receive um all the board members will receive the packets of all the applicants so you can see who has applied you will also receive the blank copy

163of the questions so that you are prepared for Thursday's interview I also will will note I'm going to send you guys a revised version of the questions that we use it believe it or not it was only April of last year when we appointed Dr Kavanaugh so our our questions are still pretty relevant I did make one tweak to one of them that I don't think we need anymore please take a look at that and if there's a critical question that you want to make sure that we ask our candidates we'd be happy to add that keep in mind that we do want to try to keep our interviews to roughly 15 to 20 minutes per candidate so that we were able to conduct them timely that is going to be our only agenda item

164at next week's meeting pending that there's something of an emergent matter that the superintendent needs us to take action on next week um thank you for that Dr Rodriguez okay so next this evening we have public comment on non-agenda items same rules as agenda items please join us at the podium you have three minutes to address the board the board does not typically respond to public comment um the first Speaker this evening is Nicholas Sandy hello uh this thing on thanks um so first time I'm speaking of these things so I'm Nicholas Andy typically I uh do public comments at the at city council meeting so this is kind of new to me but I want to speak clearly on the um on some recent news that um president uh Willis uh brought up and

165that is the vacancy left by Mr Richardson um I'll make my statement very clear as someone who did up who was one of those six people who did apply for it I am uh though I'm pretty sure many of you already know um I hope that this um whole thing is structured very well and that it goes and so I'll so now I'll go over to what I would do as a as as a member of this board um in terms of the uh the uh multiculturals Multicultural learning I would very much support that as well and for stuff that I would consider supporting and that is um protections for non-Christian students because as an atheist myself um many non-christians have been mistreated for a lack of better term cons in many ways worse than

166the other and atheists in particular don't get that much representation in governments or in really anything at all and most of those who do get elected is atheists don't really like to declare it that much so um I think that we should consider uh protections for non-christians as well as non-religious people in school as a priority um to be sort of like amended to the Multicultural learning thing um also I would um I would also be among the youngest and I think that it should be made easier for kids to go into college because transitioning from high school to college is not a very easy thing and while I was impressed by the um recent changes to the start times for Elementary and high school being sort of switched around I think it can do

167a little bit better but it's a good step in the right direction and I would certainly work on ways to improve that and that's all I will say and I'll show yield the rest of my time thank you Mr Dan devite Dustin Howard good evening everyone my name is Dustin Howard I am a new business agent with local 333 bloomers and pipefitters just want to take a moment to introduce myself to you guys so it's really about it thank you and you stayed the whole meeting thank you I appreciate it nice to meet you I appreciate it and our final speaker this evening will be Sharde Burton good evening board my name is chardey Burton I am a lifelong Lansing Community member resident and Mentor volunteer in the Lansing school district I'll keep this short

168and sweet I know we're over tonight and long night but um excuse me superintendent during your address this evening you mentioned about the merging of the two schools and how it was necessary for two principals to turn into one question regarding North Elementary or North School excuse me in particular in the video we saw principal Mass mentioned but earlier this evening there was a principal who introduced herself as the principal of North who mentioned her long-term history of high test scores in her previous School District so my question that I would like to pose for the community members parents and myself and the community is can you clarify who is the principal and assistant principal at North as well as the other schools that have been merged and I will yield the rest of my

169time thank you thank you um next on the MS Burton if you don't mind staying around I'll have the superintendent connects with you um or one of his Destinies next on the agenda this evening are comments from board members Madam president if I'm Miss Williams so most of you see a Texas Row House cup and peanuts and big bees uh Teachers Appreciation those were given to me this week to pass out to you all but with the Texas Roadhouse thing there is and it's already the challenge has already been made by one of the teachers in the district where we can actually have dinner and a proceeds of the schools that we're choosing can make money for that and so I was told it should be the battle of the high schools this is one

170of those ones so I'm posing this to the board giving it to you to expect to see it happening real soon Eastern ain't going out like that from what I was told but Tia Bell kind of threw me under the bus and said she taking this down so I'm just saying every everybody but I think it would benefit the district as a whole you know extra money coming in where the schools it goes to the schools that do the event and everything and it's just things for the school to use the incentives to the kids and stuff like that so I think just something to look forward to going on and then Happy Teachers Appreciation Week from for all of you um welcome back second week of school I am so glad to see you

171all your smiling faces eating everybody so let's make this a great year thank you any other comments and board members all right may I have a motion to adjourn Dr Rodriguez I moved to German it's been moved by Dr Rodriguez supported by Mr Lopez that the Board of Education adjourned all those apparently signify by saying aye aye opposed same sign wonderful it is 8 54 and we are adjourned thank you