001right i know that says 5 55 but my clock says six o'clock okay okay okay um it's okay i just it's okay so i would like to call this meeting of the lansing school district board of education to order and i'm going to get out my agenda will everyone please join me for the pledge of allegiance [Music] yes thank you very much will the clerk please call the roll dr boddy dr cavanaugh present mrs lawrence present this is little g here mr lopez mrs moore president dr rodriguez mrs thank you very much any additions to the agenda this evening seeing none i do see that we have two people who are registered to make public comment those public comments are going to be on non-agenda items so they will be held until the end of
002the meeting and for anyone else who is interested in making public comment please fill out a blue card at the back of the room and you can hand it in to miss hester up here in the front of the room uh first up we'll start with presentations and we have miss jessica benavidez who's going to introduce us to some new principals and directors all right good evening everyone it is my privilege tonight to introduce you to some new staff members to the lansing school district some are new to us and some are new to us in different roles so as i call your name tonight if you'll please join me at the podium so everyone can see your face and match it with the name that i'm i'm going to share so without further ado
003i'd like to start with yvonne thomas our director of instruction we're thrilled heather guerra assistant director of instruction [Applause] nicole milsap director of cte [Applause] nicole namie director of special populations she could not be with us tonight but she's wonderful just saying [Music] mark manley director of human resources [Applause] jennifer lyco's special education supervisor [Applause] randy cusack also special education supervisor i think he was he was had a conflict but he wasn't sure if he was going to make it so i had to look in the audience we have our principals coming up next i have danielle bowden who is going to be the principal of mount hope she is also not here this evening and also terrific so please a round of applause for her um angie morris principal of riddle [Applause] with her
004proud secretary also who can be here this evening because she's closing at a house so way big congratulations to her julie ferguson who is the principal of averill elementary [Applause] joe colar principal of post oak and just hired today who is not here because it was very last minute um which is sharon hampton medyon who is the principal of atwood and we have four special individuals who are here with you this with us this evening which are urban fellows so these are external candidates that have come to our school district for a year-long fellowship and we have these individuals in the audience who i'd like to bring up and introduce to you we have tony greenberg [Applause] vincent price [Applause] nathan gatlin and alyssa stepter [Applause] we're really happy to have all of these individuals
005and we're really proud to present them to the board this evening thank you [Applause] [Music] thank you very much and welcome everyone we are so happy and excited to have you here with us in the lansing school district thanks jess moving on to our next presentation for this evening is from plant moran cressa i learned recently that word uh so let me give the the board a little um background as to what we're talking about tonight as everyone on the board knows we have had barry roney working with us as our owner's rep for bond projects since about 2017 with regard to the 2016 bomb projects barry has been trying to retire for quite a while um so we are moving on from berry and uh have selected to bring plant moran cressa to the
006board this evening to introduce them and to talk about entering into a similar arrangement with them all right thank you president lawrence uh superintendent board members and uh other administrators it's great to be here my name is paul wills i'm a partner with plant marine cressa and with me this evening is mark alexa our vice president of our group who uh both specializing in k-12 and again through the rp process we're very happy and fortunate to be selected to carry on with the great work that barry rooney has done for the district going forward um so what we know uh so again the district passed a 129.7 million dollar bond in may um right now the primary focus is in creating those new learning environments for the elementary schools renovating sexton high school which mark's
007going to talk a little bit about some of the opportunities and challenges of older aged facilities and our experience of helping districts do that across the state as well as installing air conditioning at classrooms there's others technologies furniture that are also part of the bond um going forward um at the end of the day again it's continuation of the owner's rep i'm not going to spend a lot of time on what the owner's rep is but our job is to really help you navigate both facilities and finance because we know your facilities and finance teams already have a 50 to 64 hour work week in addition to 130 million dollar bond issue going forward so who is plant marine cressa many of you might have heard of plant moran the accounting firm if you will
008next year we celebrate 100 anniversary as a firm crest was actually founded in 1994 uh 1995 really to become a facilities and finance group for hire when our capital projects are our clients are taking on large capital projects um if you're a delta dental if you're a little caesar's arena if your michigan dental association they'll do a project every five seven ten years so our group has really come to be known as that owner's rep piece if you will we have architects myself and others we have construction experts technology furniture removed management and we have as you imagine we have a few accountants i think crested really helped districts take on these large capital programs at the end of the day um we truly want you the board and administration to make informed decisions relative
009to capital programs that's probably the easiest way to tell where our job is i'm here going forward so with that um in terms of the facility piece again we're not going to spend a deep dive in each one of these we know you've already done the strategic planning piece which mark will highlight quickly but again from helping establish the program budget schedule scope again as the owner you really should drive these uh time frames going forward if you take a look at the bond itself probably 60 65 is construction related the other 30 to 35 percent is not construction so this would be your technologies your furniture your soft costs um going forward and again our job is to help you navigate that going forward i'm going to turn over to mark who's going to
010kind of walk you through just high level kind of our four remaining columns if you will so mark thank you so much for having us this evening uh as paul said we've you know gone through strategic planning for the most part this is kind of our five pillars um you know with our clients you can see where lansing public schools um clearly is right now we're in the process of assembling our team um you know as part of that what we want to do is help you guys identify the right architects the right engineers the right construction managers we want to go through the contracts make sure it's fair to the district there's you know quite a breadth and depth of knowledge we have on our team and with flight man you're hiring a full
011team it's not just paul and i there's a number of people behind us so um not only are we here to support your team but um we've got a number of team members that you may not see on a daily basis but know that we've got half a dozen or more folks that are always on your team so um once the team is assembled assembled excuse me obviously you want to execute contracts um we get into design we're going to help you go through that design we're going to figure out um what makes sense where we can value engineer things you know are we spending money in the right places um what are the owners needs and what are your ideas we want to make sure that the architects engineers are hearing you and not
012just telling you what you need for your district it's all about you we all work for you it's not about just the owner or the sorry the architects and engineers in the cm um once we get through that process we're going to have an oh you know ae on board we have cm on board maybe some consultants we're going to do some rfps maybe for commissioning we're going to do it for for technology some things of that nature so once that team is all assembled we get fired up right we get a shovel in the ground or we start a renovation or a new building and we're here to oversee construction so some of the things we can do um even ahead of that i should say is um we did paul mentioned i'm working
013on another district in grand rapids with 100 plus year old building we were able to go through the uh architect engineers design um their design was wonderful uh but it was over budget we were able to go to a different system mechanical system we saved a three million dollars on a you know roughly 30 million dollar project and um it was awesome so we got to do a lot more things than on what we had anticipated so that's what we're here for um like i say there's a lot of years of knowledge i was on the cm side for 20 plus years before i came in here actually had the good fortune to work with barry at granger construction um have also worked for chrisman who i know you folks are working with right now
014so again there's a lot of relationships that paul and i have um developed over the years and that's we're here to um you know take advantage of to share with you um before i jump into the end phase i kind of went through that kind of quick is there any questions or anything from you folks okay uh with that being said commissioning um management of the project oversight punch list completion lists warranties what do you folks want as far as is everything going to be digital do we want hard copies um one thing i've neglected to say is that we want to make sure that we bring your facilities team into that's critical because they're little things like maybe you want to put an additional valve in on one wing so that if you need
015to shut a bathroom down you can do that you don't have to shut the whole floor down or have to school them those are the kind of things that we want to make sure your team is involved with so that we're taking advantage of those things that make your day-to-day life easier and make your people more effective um again then we get to the point of where we get substantial completion doing punch lists maybe we're helping you guys with some furniture procurement or some move management and then obviously want to get folks into those schools and you know get parents in to see things get kids fired up teachers fired up see their new space and um you guys are able to occupy that building so one of the things you'll see across all those
016pillars is really the the budgeting as well so i know barry is primarily focused on construction um the one thing that was including our proposal as well as requested the rfp is financial support for john and his team so you'll see at the assembly of the team the design phases construction we are updating those budgets to actual costs i would do a monthly report to the administration team a quarterly report up to the board if necessary um just so you and the public know where you're at with your overall spend kind of going forward we do utilize a system called e-builder so i'll let mark kind of talk just briefly about that and there's some sample deliverables of dashboards so the nice thing about e-builder it's kind of an all-in you know project management software
017it but it also does not compete with maybe procore or something that your construction managers uh you know have online so what this is this allows us to house you know contracts uh plans all the documents you know uh monthly payouts insurance forms all those things that we need to make sure that um we're doing things safely effectively and then also like shannon who will be on our team um she's on the accounting side she's going to go through dot the i's across the t's before anything ever comes to me to look at monthly payouts and things of that nature we want to make sure again the right coverages are in there we make sure that we're not over billing we're going to make sure that we're on top of the construction manager so there's
018just a number of steps and you know i hate to say the word change order but i'm going to say because that happens in this world we'll keep those to a minimum but you can't even write a change order um in e-builder without having that being funded and approved so it's kind of i don't want to say idiot-proof but it's a very safe system that allows us to watch your dollars effectively and you know take you know we're looking after your best interest so it's just it's a it's a well-rounded program and like paul said they're just it's very user-friendly um we'll bring your um accounting and finance teams on board so that and we can basically customize reports that makes your life easier we'll do you know like possible quarterly um dashboards and whatnot
019to share with your team and we would go through that as do you need more photos do you need more information do you need more month to month what happened last month's this month's this coming month so just a great program and i say it's it's handled by a number of people and again it's just way more than me and paul it's a whole team approach and um again we'd love to work with you guys now the other thing that e-builder does help is also so you have a two-series bond so looking at your fiscal year ends what's overlapping between series one series two preparing for audits on a yearly basis so again just taking some of that burden off of the financial teams to really go forward um so one of the things that
020was requested in the rfp is what other work have you done that's similar to this um so here's a list of the top 50 districts the ones that are in blue are our current clients i'd say the ones are probably most familiar similar to lansing schools right now is portage schools it was in the process of their 175 million bonds replacing the elementary schools grand rapids is looking at some of those options as well as you can imagine detroit schools going forward again some just local clients um between northview um dewitt um done some work with st john's we've done obviously a lot of work with similar peer districts we're also familiarized with the lansing area so as we mentioned we work with delta dental we worked with michigan dental association uh as well as
021greenstone financials and and again mark's been in the business for 30 years i've been in it for 25 and again our our eyes and ears are for you um again so even though we have relationships they're professional but we still do that challenging piece going forward again not just mark myself chris benkowski um but at the end of the day you know we we know this is what it takes to get a 129.7 million bond done successfully and at the end of the day just really appreciate the consideration for this evening and we'll open up to any questions the board or administration team may have mrs willis thank you i actually don't have any questions for you guys presentation is great got it i understand what's happening the owners wrap appreciate the expertise you guys
022are bringing to the table wasn't aware of this armor plant ran that's wonderful question for administration two of them one is how much is this going to cost us is it more than what we were spending for our previous owner rep because we're getting a lot covered here which is wonderful um second thing did we bid this out thank you so much for those questions i'll certainly defer to our cfo but the answer is yes it is more expensive than barry i think the exact numbers is a little bit um malleable because of how they would come on early without full staff because but i think it's also uh it might be in the packet as well um but uh you know basically it'll be about 2x uh what barry was doing um but we
023feel certainly very confident uh in terms of what they can do uh the other thing is that it was it was bid there were i think five bids uh there were two individuals and three uh companies and it was done through uh a bidding process as well as the facilities committee uh et cetera so i mean john i don't know if you want to add to it but um you know it was a really good process where we talked to a lot of people thanks i have the memo about the process and my packet that i'm going to review before we vote on this thank you i also want the board members to know that there was a committee of district personnel who um really took a deep dive into all respondents to this rfp
024and that committee included christina tokar john lane katie white todd coe and barry rohney did and there were five respondents there were two individuals three um companies the facilities committee had a presentation about this on monday i also want to point out that that if you've been involved with facilities you know barry has been in the district full-time since mark will be fulfilling that role as well so it will not happen immediately because of course our our new bond projects are not starting immediately um but the plan please correct me if i'm wrong is that within the next six six ish months mark will be in the district full-time five days a week probably like seven days a week but five days ago plus you get to see shannon and of course unfortunately me too
025but uh and then chris so hey again that's uh there's a part of our piece and just to maybe highlight a little bit of the thinking from the district committee and not to speak for the finance uh sorry the facilities committee is that barry is wonderful and we wish he would stay forever but he is allowed to retire uh much to my chagrin and what we found that moving forward with such a big bond project 129.7 million for brand new schools was that with a company and there were three companies that bid there is so much more support that the district gets not only through financing but also and this is a really big key thing is they know what is happening in other school districts so when we bid things out and they say
026well here's the price they can say well it's interesting because in grand rapids it's actually this price or this is what other school districts are doing and so it gives us a much better and kind of fuller more robust understanding of the market and what we have talked about is it will be more expensive than a single actor i.e barry but we think the cost savings will make up for it uh kind of probably twofold but also just having the expertise of not just one person on site but an entire office of folks that can help and support us other questions from board members miss ultra not really a question i just want to highlight again that of the three firms that responded you all came in with the best deal so thank you appreciate
027that thank you okay thank you very much very much thanks guys we will move on to oh may i have a motion this lg i move that the board of education accept the recommendation as presented it's been moved by his legend supported by dr body any discussion okay good discussion uh any other discussion well all those in favor please signify by saying aye any opposed thank you very much did you see you tomorrow no you won't not me moving on to report from superintendent ben thank you so much uh good evening everyone um i will have some comments later but one of the important things of my report is uh we have tried really since the beginning of the covet epidemic to update not just the board but the community writ large on how we
028are dealing with kovid we have been incredibly lucky to have uh sue dr nurse sue wheeler be part of this conversation um we thought it was really important for us to give one more update before the beginning of school this is the last board meeting before school starts on the monday august 29th and so i'd like to turn it over to sue and then i'll have some comments on the covet presentation and then i'll have my regular uh updates to the board so take it away thank you i have a little powerpoint that i don't see yet but oh there we are and i'm here this evening to just give you a brief update on covet as we went through the summer session and as we move into fall during the summer we maintain the
029majority of our mitigation strategies that were so successful throughout the school year social distancing hand washing the environmental strategies and intentional case management throughout the summer we strongly encourage vaccination and we partnered with the ian county health department to offer vaccinations through our school-based health centers at both eastern and sexton and we also did stand-alone events such as the sorry such as the sports physical and health resource fair that we held at sexton on august 2nd we partnered with the becoming visible group of nursing students from michigan state and then drew in community partners from msu human medicine osteopathic medicine the college of nursing lcc sodexo cada joined in provided free transportation and we ended up with sports physicals for more than 90 of our students and a great distribution of health resource and vaccinations
030that evening as well our biggest change in the summer was the shift to making masks optional for students and staff in the summer and we did encourage and support people that chose masking whether they had underlying health conditions or maybe they have close contact with vulnerable people or they might have their own personal choice and reason that they would like to continue in a mask these policies were quite successful over the summer as expected we did continue to have covet cases within our school community although at pretty low rates we had only 13 positive students throughout the summer 45 positive staff members for a total you'll see there are 58 cases throughout the summer from june 15th until august 15th we had no clusters reported within the schools and no sports related covet clusters or
031outbreaks either so what's next well our focus will be maintaining the health and safety as we adapt to covet in our community reasonable mitigation vaccination and careful oversight will be essential as we achieve that balance so adapting for fall what's new we will continue with masks optional as we return next week we have distributed the updated and revised policies to all the staff and students and we will continue with key mitigation strategies those we did all last year those that were so successful in the summer distancing environmental safeguards and others and we'll follow the science-based guidelines for those that are positive for covid which i know you see all over the news now it's staying home for five days if you are fever free for 24 hours your symptoms are greatly improved and you are
032able to mask for the remainder of the 10 day period you may return to work or school as the science and cdc and the mdhhs have also recommended we will eliminate quarantine for close contacts we will continue to provide on-site testing for people who have been close contacts as an extra layer of safety this is not required but it's a little something extra that the district will provide this will significantly reduce lost instruction days for both students and staff we can keep them safely in school also important is the kova team will continue to have the dedicated covet oversight we have immediate response to positive cases to contacts and we monitor daily and sometimes multiple times a day the changes in our school community or in the local community that will lead us to look
033at what our policy is what do we need to do and what might we need to implement quickly this is the updated exposure protocol this will be in the coming days available easily on the district website and will also be distributed in this form to students staff everyone throughout the district it's the same model we used last year that gives people a quick visual of what do i need to do depending on the the category i might find myself in so as we review and reflect uh we uh the superintendent and i have spoken many times about the impact of covid on everyone's lives this is an experience that none of us have had previously we have been changed as a school community as a greater community and really the world has been changed by
034this pandemic as people return next week we are very mindful that many have experienced physical suffering grief loss loss of family members and friends they've had social emotional economic hardship and we hold space for that we know people are coming back to us and really many people in a very battered state covet although we have we hope turn the corner and we will just learn to co-exist with covid it's caused great hardship for many people for more than two years so as a school community we we are just mindful of that and we ask that our staff and the school community in general support each other as we return with the healing that's ongoing and the healing that will continue throughout the year it's also been a time of awe it's been a time of
035amazing medical achievements and advancements it's been public health challenges that have been overcome you know who would have imagined in two years time we would have vaccines we would have treatment we still have covet out there but people are not becoming the numbers of people are not becoming as seriously ill and are dying from covet we have great treatment and we have treatment that is accessible to many many people treatment that even a year ago was not as accessible to people so we hold space for the suffering the grief the loss and we are in awe of what coming together as a community in the world was able to achieve so our future looks bright we're adapting to covet in the community we know that we'll continue to stress vaccination will provide opportunity for that
036we will continue to have a balance of mitigation and a greater return to academic best practice models so we can get kids in school stay in school and have the best practice models in place thank you so much sue um i am happy to turn it over uh my whatever my uh superintendent report time for questions comments anything that the board wants to ask uh sue dr buddy thank you sue could you be so kind as to go back to the um the slide that's going on the website that's the hardest question you could ask me i'm sorry this slide no the website slide the blue one with the small oh this yeah yeah yes so after a person has been sick and they return one there's after five days of being symptom-free for the
037subsequent five days they have to wear a mask because they can still be contagious my eyes are not that good i'm sorry does this say or specify the type the type of mask because a cloth mask for the new variants is basically to coin us phrase from our superintendent theater so um i think we should specify that it has to be like a surgical mask or a kn-95 and it has to be tight fitting because if people just want to wear like their favorite spartan mask it's not gonna it's it might as well not wear anything yes the only disclaimer we added was well fitting and i would be all for add medical grade or surgical grade or yes i'll be happy to amend that thank you can i just ask a follow-up to dr
038body um i i love that idea and i certainly agree um you and i have of course talked about this quite a lot um you would be okay with uh with saying surgical the even though we know okay thank you um yeah so we that's the ones that we have thousands of so we can amend that today so that's terrific thank you dr body questions from board members mrs willis i have a question not about covet i really appreciate all the updates and the protocol i'm curious if we're starting to see any guidance recommendations about monkey pox i know that we're starting to get um recommendations about how to treat and aggregate care settings i do whatever i'm not going to start speculating but it's weird because do you guys remember right before covet started
039and we had a meeting and we were like when should we start to worry about covet and dr body was like not right now then next week we needed to worry about covet so not to do that about monkey pox but i'm just curious if we have i mean i can answer from a kind of educational standpoint of what's going on kind of in schools across the country right now know the way that the disease state has been hasn't been necessarily school-based but i will defer to a medical doctor to speak on anything that that you would know but all the guidance across the country so far has been be aware be thoughtful but but nothing right now yeah sue could you could either of the doctors tell us what monkey pox is i always
040defer to dr body first so unlike covet which is spread through respiratory droplets somebody who's infected coughs sneezes breathes and then the people in their air orbit breathe it in monkey pox like other kinds of pox viruses is spread through direct bodily contact so you can't get it from breathing somebody's heir and so like every school district that already has policies in place for what to do if a child shows up with active lesions of any kind whether it's chickenpox or shingles or things of that nature i imagine that the same mitigation strategies would be used to limit the spread of monkey punks that would be my best answer a vaccine for monkey pox currently exists correct yeah yes yes but it's not widely distributed yet so okay great yeah mr lopez thank you as
041as we're talking about things that are impacting communities what about polio do we have any idea where we're at with that you know we have experienced in the last that's i'm sure where the question is coming from in the news there are new cases of polio a disease that had largely been considered eradicated in the united states there's a lot of theories out there about why that is if it's a change in vaccinations if it's you know where that where that's coming from it's not an issue in our community at this time but it is something that we watch closely and i know the am county health department monitors as well so so the the number of vaccinations or vaccines that a student needs to have to come to school includes polio and mom's rubella
042and all that stuff right yes polio is one of them yes right so and obviously parents can opt out of them right yes okay do we have many students that have opted out for vaccinations of the regular vaccinations that we've had forever we do have families that have opted out but it's a very small percentage yeah so we don't have i mean even though it's there uh we're kind of like not too worried about that at this point yeah i'm not too worried about it and i worry about everything so yeah that's a good sign no but we've got covered in monkey parks in there yeah but then there's no videos yeah but just keep an eye out i guess on that one yeah but it's good to have it in the radar because it
043you know it's here in the united states so thank you dr buddy would you share the uh it's low worry at this moment yeah in our in our area absolutely thankfully while the general trend in vaccinations among children especially in the last two years is way down because with resistance to the coping vaccine came resistance to every other pediatric vaccine so vaccination rates have gone down and we're worried about the potential of having pockets of outbreaks of things like measles like you've seen in minnesota and other places but right now grace of god we haven't had that but it is something that we worry about in clinical medicine to try to like encourage people on a daily basis to get to not skip their shots and really that's part of our push to continue getting
044kids to come in for vaccination we offer not just covet vaccines but all the childhood vaccines and we know partly i agree it was in response to people's fear about the covet vaccine and also people were just home you know their kids weren't out in public they weren't in school so they may have delayed vaccines which may also account for why the the numbers have dropped so significantly so we're going to try to get them all in for vaccines dr body how is polio spread uh polio is a neurodegenerative condition that i don't mean to put you you are putting that i think it's also uh direct contact but let me double check i can google it thank you sure you know all that i find on google is going to be totally totally accurate
045polio has been one of the diseases that we were allowed to let some of that go because it was not a big issue for us yeah any other questions from board members i don't want to share that information that's terrifying okay thank you so much sue thank you so much and i look forward to seeing you in the fall with still good news thank you sue so i'll get to my normal uh comments but i want to speak a little bit about covid uh first of all uh through the tremendous work that sue and her team has put on uh it's been oh you can go go go so it's fine you don't have to listen to me pontificate um you know one of the things that we of course witnessed last year was that
046with the mitigation strategies that we used our rates of covid were low not only compared to other school districts in the area but certainly around school districts that had similar populations and rates of pre-existing conditions and things like that and you know i just want all the people certainly in the audience and listening at home to know how seriously we continue to take this but what we've also seen uh which is wonderful is the resiliency of children and how this disease affects them and how it affects also our adults um and that by allowing for masks to come off on a voluntarily basis we can start to get back to some of that normalcy that i think we all want to see as a educator you know we we always knew that that covering of
047the mouth and the face was problematic because of how young children pick up cues how they read lips even if they're not needing to how they look at facial expressions there's so many things that are lost when we do that but of course what's gained is the safety and so now feeling comfortable that we can do this i hope uh this allows us to really move forward and get back to that focus on pedagogy and instructions uh the other thing too of course is that we want everybody to know that we have uh health clinics in our schools if you want to get vaccinated we can support you on this we are big fans and supporters of this we have found that our vaccination rates have certainly helped tremendously and we've seen just a really
048a really great use of of modern technology of understanding of science to really get our district to be in a very very good place we continue to urge uh schools to use outdoor classrooms to spend time outdoors um all of those things are just great to begin with let alone that they help with with health and we're going to continue with having you know a push to washing your hands and to just general uh cleanliness and what's been interesting and for those of you who might have noticed this either personally or with your families or people that you uh spend time with because of these extra mitigation strategies many people aren't also getting the flu and they're also not getting sick in other ways because we're finally realizing that we need to take this stuff
049seriously so you know really thanks to the incredible work of sue the team uh the great guidance from dr body from this board and from everybody's hard work the teachers the parents the kids uh we're hopefully turning the corner and on the first day of school on the 29th we can uh we can actually go in uh you know with without masks unless unless you have to have one um but certainly again if you are sick if you do get a covid uh you will quarantine for the five days and then can come back with as amended surgical mass uh kn 95's uh or n95s and what we'll see of course is an incredible increase in days of attendance uh and for both staff and students so thank you all and certainly i'll always be
050happy to engage in in covid okay on to other things uh unless you have been living under a rock uh this district has made some pretty significant changes uh over the last couple of weeks and i want to address uh certainly those listening at home those in the audience and really just everybody about some of these decisions and to kind of walk us all through uh what's happened you know look we have press conferences and we release letters and you know what everything that sue shared was in emails to staff and to families and so we're trying to be as communicative as possible but we also know uh that you know not everybody's reading the paper and not everybody is is reading their emails so uh you know we'll start with the decision that we
051were very public about that seemed to um be very supported by the community and that is uh this move over the next two to three years to take the seventh and eighth grade out of our high schools um for many many reasons uh we feel that this is the the right thing to do we've talked to families we've talked to to staff we've talked to everybody um there was there were strong reasons why the district made this decision uh when it did but now looking at both its effect and impact as well as what we're able to do uh slowly but surely taking seventh and eighth grade out of the three high schools ever at eastern and sexton is going to allow us to focus those buildings on to 9 12. we feel that certainly
0527th and 8th graders don't necessarily need to be in high school but that they can be with with other children and have more of an academic feel of a place that that is more catered to them in addition the way that the district is doing this is slowly but surely we're doing this organically so uh if there was a school let's say pat and gill patent gill was a k-6 well in order for us to find more seventh grade seats what we're doing is saying okay pat and gill you're sixth graders well now there's gonna be seventh grade so some of those sixth graders can stay in seventh grade at wood north mount hope sheridan road those were all places that had six grades not seventh grades now they're going to have seventh grades so
053that those kids can stay and of course by process of elimination those kids are not going to ever eastern and saxton so by doing that organically there isn't a ripping asunder where the children are going but just letting them stay in their current schools now this of course as some families have probably seen has impacted the number of seats in seventh grade at let's say eastern so when a family is saying hey i want my kid to go to seventh grade in eastern well the number of those seats has gone down by about 50 percent so that over the next two years we can start to pull away all the seventh and eighth grade so we are taking about 50 of the seats at everett eastern and sexton away this year by again growing it
054organically within the the k-6s and this and the four sixes um with the idea that then that 50 would become a 50 an eighth grade and then a zero percent for the seventh grade the year after and then a zero percent for the eighth grade after that so it's going to take some time but we think that this is really a solid way of doing it uh so that the students in sixth grade can stay in a building that they feel comfortable with that they know their staff they know their families they know everything um and then by the time they get to ninth grade as these kind of full high school students they're ready to go to high school where there is a different kind of curriculum there's a different kind of schedule there's
055a different kind of a lot of things so that's the the important news when it comes to that um and we're certainly trying uh our darn just to make sure that families uh know this and and have access to understanding that uh the second decision that uh we certainly know the community hasn't been necessarily thrilled with uh is the decision to stop busing uh ninth through twelfth grade students using the dean bus but having them go and use cata so we certainly understand that this is a big change we understand that this is uh scary to a lot of people uh but i really want to assure the the community that this was not done uh lightly uh this was a conversation multiple conversations over the course of months and weeks and a lot of
056decisions with talking to families talking to teachers talking to kids talking to a lot of folks uh with with this decision but i appreciate that there are still many people that might question this decision and might want to have a better understanding as to why we did this so i want to take if it's okay a little bit of time to go over that because again uh not everybody's gonna watch the news uh nor nor do you need to um or necessarily read uh the emails that were sent so a couple of things one the way that our busing system has been working is we have something called a triple tier system which means that we bust the high schools in the first year in the early morning then the kind of middle schools and
057then the elementary schools because we have a district of choice where kids can travel really throughout this district we have over 8 000 of our 10 000 students that are eligible for transportation and use it and want it that gets to about 72 bus routes that are triple tiered now in order to do that tiering the high schools though high school started at 7 25 the buses actually dropped those students off at seven o'clock or even before seven o'clock by going to caddo we are now able to move that start time all the way up to eight o'clock all of the research shows very deeply that a later start time for high school is much better for kids or better for high school kids so this ability to now start high school eight o'clock is
058really a powerful tool that we will hopefully use a second piece that not everybody thinks about but those of you who experience it really do understand this is that many of our students live in multiple homes maybe they live with mom one day and dad another and grandma the third when you have a school bus you get basically one stop and so what we saw was that a lot of students that were spending one day with one family one day with another were really having hard times with transportation because they would have to go from one house to another to get to the bus stop that was assigned to them with caddo with a public bus system that of course ceases to be an issue you now have this about ability and capacity to get
059to school no matter where you are spending the night now hopefully you are spending the night in a good and safe and warm environment uh but the idea of course is that by going through a public bus system you'll be able to do that a third thing and this is something that has really struck me since i got here is the kind of paucity of number of students that spend time after school in our buildings not a lot of our kids play sports not a lot of our kids do after school programming now i appreciate that a lot of that had to do with covid but a lot of that was because of a lack of transportation home after practice lack of transportation home after drama or band or what have you and we don't
060want our you know our after-school programs to only be limited to students that have their own car or have other ways of transportation the idea that now you can just take the bus home at four o'clock five o'clock six o'clock after football practice or after drama is a really powerful reason why this is also going to be very very good for students the the fourth reason uh is that you know gas prices are super high and we understand that that is hard on families and so we also know that it's also hard on kids we have seen certainly as you've probably uh made pre pretty clear uh you know the salaries of places like working at mcdonald's or wendy's or whatever you know it's like 15 16 bucks now a lot of our high school
061kids want to work there a lot of our kids want to have you know summer jobs or after school jobs or weekend jobs to have a catapass now will allow them to be able to go there have those jobs because these passes are good at night and certainly on the weekends and the ability to now do jobs on weekends and after school and just being able to travel after school is really powerful um the the another reason that we feel really comfortable about this and why we think this is really good is we're also and this is something that is we felt really strongly about doing is offering uh each family a pass as well we know again gas prices are expensive but we also know that you might want to really experience the bus
062yourself you might want to be able to go to the meridian mall or msu or things like that we know that there's a lot of families out there that are struggling and we want to support them uh with this extra way of of getting to and from work being with their families uh you know certainly if you uh want to take your high school kid to a grocery store and make that child carry your groceries you can go with them uh that would be really you know there's a lot of reasons why having families get this pass is important and then the last one and this is something that really really um drives this home is that when you miss the school bus that's it you miss the school bus that means you're not coming
063to school or somebody's got to drive you or something's going to have to happen and we have looked at our attendance rates dramatically this year that there was a real sense of well if i'm not getting up at six in the morning to get on the dean bus to get me to high school at seven to get to high school at 7 25 that child really wasn't coming to school and so what we of course know with public transportation in general is if you miss that bus well there's another one coming and that's really important because if our children don't get to school if they are not in class that is a real problem uh you know study after study shows that even even five days of absences and certainly 10 and 15 and 20
064can dramatically impact the way that they learn so those are some of the major reasons another thing that i'd like to point out of course is please don't think don't anybody think that this is some sort of like lansing specific thing in fact in some respects lansing is very late to this conversation um grand rapids has been doing this for more than two decades and what's interesting to note is they've been doing it exactly like this with dean where dean provides the k-8 bussing and then the 9 12 is through grand rapids but it's not just a michigan-based thing wichita toledo and certainly and i'll speak from experience you know growing up in new york city in the 80s which i will tell you wasn't necessarily the safest thing in the universe even that i
065was taking the school the the public bus the m19 uh across town across the 96th street uh i was taking the bus by eight nine ten ten years old um and i appreciate that new york is different than than lansing but i also know actually that lansing is a smaller community and we know more folks and we actually can really keep a handle on this and again this is a this is something that many many and i would say a super majority of cities that have public bus systems do this you know you've got boss in chicago but like again other cities that are more like us grand rapids the size of a witch or toledo this is something that is really common and in fact i was somewhat surprised when i got here uh
066that that this wasn't something that we were doing now i also understand that there is a sense of but what about safety what about security i i hear that and you know i will tell you personally and certainly my staff who's gone with me a couple of times to do this and i've gone a lot more i've spent a lot of time at the cata hub i go there probably every other day now just to kind of check it out walk it talk to people i appreciate that that the community might think that that place might not be you know the safest place in the universe but i will tell you that it is a place that i feel comfortable in it is super open in terms of glass in terms of access but more
067importantly we as a school district are going to have people there not only are we going to have our own officers there but we're going to have an office there that cata is giving us we're going to have people there all of the time during that morning rush as well as the afternoon rush we're going to have uh people we're going to have volunteers cata is going to have volunteers and what they're calling ambusheders which i think is very cute so ambassadors that are going to be riding the bus with folks um we do take safety and security incredibly seriously here but we also know to be honest if i was hanging out in the school in the in the cata bus station and i saw 500 high school students i don't think i want
068to be there um you know the the high school students that are going to be there they're going to have you know their own their own way they're going to know each other they're going to be kids that are that are in the same class that really understand each other and they're going to be supportive and again not everybody knows this but last year we actually had about 200 students that were taking the cata with this as a pilot program and those students were really really supportive of each other they would wait with each other they would take the bus with each other there was all sorts of really positive things that came out of that and so you know we feel very confident that this is not only the right thing to do for
069the students but is really the right thing to do for the system at large for the school district so that we can now have kids stay after school be part of sports do all these things start later have their families involved uh being able to have extra transportation options there's really a lot of incredibly incredibly positive things that are coming out of this now i will say that some people have said oh you're only doing this to save money well nothing could be further from the truth this is not going to save money because the 41 routes that we ran with dean last year is exactly the same number of routes we're going to run this year so this is not about money at all we are not trying to get one over on the
070community we're not trying to save a buck what we're trying to do is be incredibly thoughtful about the hand that we're dealt and trying to do the best we can so that we can put always students at the center for this and you know one other thing i would say of course is that if we were to um actually have uh the buses the way that they are now and um uh you know and have the triple tier system that i was talking about the only way we could do we could even come close was to have our elementary schools end at 4 30. now that means a elementary school kid would be getting home in the dark throughout the winter at five o'clock in the cold if maybe even 5 30 depending on where
071they live that's just something that we're not we don't want to do because again we're going to try to make our decisions with with kids at the center um and just so that everybody knows and those of you watching at home i'm sure if you had kids in our schools last year you would recognize that the busing was also late often it was late quite often and that reason was because of the triple tier system where we have so many buses that have to do one route and then another and then another and what we ended up seeing actually was buses and certainly my staff can tell you because they were there and any principal and any teacher and any parent could tell you just you're talking about consistent 30 minutes 40 minutes 50 minutes
072even an hour and you know that's just not acceptable uh there's no way that i want to go into a school year knowing that you're going to have buses that are going to be 30 minutes late 50 minutes late an hour late and if you were gonna then mortgage that and say okay you don't want late buses then you need to have triple tiers so that a longer space between the triple tiers where you're going to have elementary schools basically uh you know ending at 4 30 4 45 with kids not getting home until 5 30 6 o'clock you know in the winter and in the dark so look i don't think there's anything i can say that's going to convince uh everybody or even most people that this is going to be the right
073thing but what we ask is that you you understand that at least we did this with the best intentions for children the best intentions for this their learning and that you know i would say let's just see um i am going to be the first one that will admit that if there are serious concerns and serious issues we will handle them we're i'm going to be first day of school probably that entire first week i'll be riding the bus i'll be at cada i'll be there um and you know we're going to make sure that that the staff is there that our officers are there that our supports are there that other uh community members are there that cata is there um and you know we'll we'll see right and but i don't want anybody
074to think that this was a decision that was made uh callously or arbitrarily uh or without putting students needs uh center and again these are high school kids this is ninth grade 10th grade 11th and grade 12th grade only this is not including seventh and eighth grade and it is not including the special ed kids that already have the special ed bussing and things like that so it only is impacting the 9 through 12 students um at the high school so again i appreciate that this is a big deal i appreciate that uh not everybody's thrilled with this but i don't want anybody to think that this had anything to do with money this had to do with trying to find the exact the best answer we can uh with we had there so long-winded
075for me uh i want to turn it back over to the the president uh but just to say we appreciate that this is difficult we thank you for your understanding and certainly you know we want to hear uh your thoughts on this which i'm sure there are people in the audience that will say so thank you ben for the update that was really comprehensive and i think um you addressed like 99 of the um concerns that i've seen that people have i have a couple of questions that i want to ask are there stops at each of the three high schools oh thank you for that question so uh if you know sexton which you do uh there is there is a stop directly in front of the school in fact the principal's office can
076see it directly there is a stop in front of eastern and this week we are building a stop in front of everett so there is going to be a brand new bus stop specifically built right next to everett for our students my other question is are students limited in using their bus pass uh for transportation only to and from school no so this is a bus pass that basically gives them free rein and so we're really happy that this will allow them to go to msu the meridian mall et cetera work to work to practice home from practice you name it thank you any other question mrs mrs robin yeah mrs rabbit okay um yes i have a question about training now we're going to be offering any type of training for our parents and
077our students and also i am a parent as well and my daughter has to walk aways to the bus stop will the routes be changed to accommodate the students sure so great questions uh let me try to answer uh the second one first which is you know when we run the dean bus routes the the truth about those is that those are not always in front of the homes either and so um you know sometimes students with the dean have to walk half a mile a mile as well um the the routes the way that they are for cata right now we can't adjust the way that they go or create extra stops but what we can do is uh what are called crate tripper buses so for instance um you might say hey how
078in the world can one bus fit an entire school good question so what kata is going to be able to do is have a bus right behind that bus that's going to run at the same time that will fit the extra students and so we're gonna actually depending on how many students will ride they can have a second bus a third bus even a fourth bus so that they can do it and then we're also at the end of school gonna have buses that will start at the school empty that way it's not coming through they can actually come empty pick up the kids but they do have to follow the route in which that they're published and this i've learned more about federal transportation law this year than i ever thought possible um the
079federal law is basically say a bus a trans a transit company like cata if they have a published route that's the route but we do know that there are some communities that might not necessarily be on the route and we're actually working with cada to create relationships with other transportation organizations in the area so that we can get there but if there is a bus stop that is far for your family i do apologize i don't think that we'll be able to change the route there but we do know at least that the bus stop at the school will be at on the property yeah and then the first question yeah and i told my daughter i said okay you've got to learn public transportation yeah no i i appreciate that absolutely and and i
080i appreciate that and in some respects what i'm i'm gonna really love about the students riding the bus is i think they're gonna be exposed to that grandmother and hopefully will have that experience of helping them with their bags or giving them the seat but in terms of training there's going to be a lot of training and it's going to be in a multiple ways so the first thing this year again when we did the pilot with the 200 students is kata actually came to the schools and uh did trainings there they had maps we actually have a special map that's a lansing school district had a map that we'll be giving out to families we're doing training on how to how to use the bus pass how to get on the bus uh the
081families uh will certainly be able to um have that cata has had um their own uh phone number for for the families they actually have been in the first year they actually called the family specifically and said here's how we would route you this is where you should go so we're trying very hard to make this as palatable as possible i understand that not everybody's going to like this but really we're going to be doing the training for the families and it's not really training it's information about how to do it now in terms of how to ride the bus yeah i mean each of these different high schools will hopefully be well they will be working with their kids about you know here's the stop and here's how you get on and here's how
082you do that which honestly is something that we would be doing with with dean anyway um for for me what's interesting is that you know when you ride the public bus you can listen to your your music you can play on your phone you can do those kinds of things with dean sometimes those rules are not like that i actually think it's going to be more it's going to be a better experience for our kids doing that um but look will there be some uncomfortable times sure but i think that we'll get through it and so anybody anybody listening to this and certainly any family if you have any concerns about where the bus stop is or how to get on it or where you're going to get the the cards that's probably one thing
083i should say each of the high schools will have a person at the high schools that we'll be distributing these cards um we'll be doing it before school even starts um certainly cata knows that we're doing this so on that first day if a kid is trying to get on the bus they're going to let them on it's not like they're going to say where's your pass it's the first day they know this in fact they're gonna be people on the bus to help support them um but we are doing our best that even before school starts there'll be people at each of the high schools that'll distribute it and the kids they'll just have a number that that's the the bus card number their name they'll sign for it and that way they'll do
084it and i don't know christina if there's anything specific you want to talk about in terms of how it's going to function sure um just want to make sure it was turned on so we'll definitely be at the um welcome back events at all three of the high schools which is on august 25th so for anybody listening if you want to check out those events we'll make sure we have staff there available to help with gas cards and also with the catacarts of course um and then staff like like ben said we'll be there all week to help sign out the cards sorry um to everybody um i would just say that we'll have lots of staff there from cada from the district to help support students in every way possible to help them on
085route them we'll also have public safety available to help students if they feel like they've maybe got off at the wrong stop that sort of things we'll have them available at the hub so that we can radio back and forth and make sure we get students where they need to be yeah and one of the things that has been brought up a parent reached out to me a couple of days ago you know and they were worried what if what if their child got lost what if their child took the wrong bus uh two things i can say one is kata is very good about knowing that talking to the students um in fact we've witnessed this multiple times where somebody tries to get canada to kind of stop and cata will actually stop and
086let them on i will say that not that doesn't always happen with our yellow buses which i mean i understand why um but there are ways of allowing folks to contact cada and then they contact us cata is going to have our numbers on speed dial we then actually have through our public safety office we have our own vans and we have our own cars and if anybody actually witnessed this last year we did this a lot when the school bus didn't show up sometimes families couldn't actually pick up their kids and we would take the kids home so if there's ever a time where a kid really is lost now i will tell you having spent a lot of time with high school kids they might have been lost on purpose uh i can't
087help that uh but you know if a kid really is lost uh we're always there to to help support them we have public safety that can ride them and then cata if you've ever seen canada has their own vans as well and so there are ways that if there really is somebody that's lost or in trouble uh we can get to them super quickly and you know we also have a police department that can always be supportive that it's not in a punitive way but in a way to find a kid and to bring them back safely miss kavanaugh um ben in terms of any parent-facing resources uh so you're talking about hotlines and um informational sessions will those be translated into multiple languages yeah no thank you for that i'll certainly always turn over
088to uh sergio um you know we're working with uh kata to translate them we have about seven to eight of our major languages we also have a a company that does on-the-fly translations as well and so that's always going to be uh available but i don't know sergio if there's anything you want to say i mean you've been working with cata and actually we had a really wonderful uh at the beginning the end of last year we worked with a lot of the afghani refugee families and and actually had translators for them and with them on the bus so absolutely i mean for this to work we want everybody to feel comfortable if even if english is your eighth language you know but sergio i don't know can you can you hear me yeah you
089said it very well mr superintendent uh we also to all the community partners in the area to make sure that everybody knows so every first responder yeah i mean one thing i'll point out that sergio jogged my memory what's been really wonderful about this and again i appreciate that not everybody likes this is that a lot of community partners reached out to us almost immediately and said how can we help and you know we've been spending a lot of time with our community partners asking them for help for all things and and you know sergio could could you know was speaking to this is these community partners who work with a lot of our students especially those where english is not their first language are really helping us not just with translation but just getting
090this to be part of the community in which they serve and it's it's been pretty good uh the families seem pretty thrilled about having the pass for them and and certainly the later start time but again i know not everybody's thrilled with this do we know if cata has an app um i will yeah so they so we do know because what's actually one of the cool things that cata has is they have an app but then they also have a texting thing where you know where the but the next bus is but john i know you know the technology a little bit better than i do you can probably speak to that one there we go all right we'll try this one so yes there's an app it's a my ride cata that they
091have that tells the routes and the time i believe in that even the times that the buses are going to be estimated to come and then we have information on the website as well um as sergio mentioned some of it's being translated but we also embed it on the website um where any family member or anybody can go up in the top right of the website and uh pick your language um so we embed it actually on there and not just a link so that it actually translates on the website as well great thank you and and thank you and one thing i also want to say is we are still you know very proud and very thankful of our partners with dean because by doing this we're now able to you know transport the
092k-8s and what we think is a much better way as well as special ed and one thing that we are bringing to the dean buses which we hope to be bringing to cada in a little bit is that the id system the new id system that we have kids are going to be able to actually tap on and tap off the dean ride which is going to be super helpful we know especially with the younger kids second grade third grade a lot of times we say oh my god where's the kid you you actually can know when they get picked up and when they not and so you as a family member will be able to know that so those new ideas that all the kids are getting uh one of their many many things
093that they can do is they'll be allowed to tap on and off of the dean buses thank you i have a question mr lopez yes um and i guess uh just for the information public they know that dean and cat are still hiring bus drivers so that's the other issue that that's happening with the transportation systems uh they're constantly looking for uh for for staff for drivers so there's an opportunity for those who might be able to get their uh what is it the operation yeah yeah license that wasn't a question okay okay okay all right we're going to move on to routine matters in old business on our committee reports board members will notice that this section looks a little bit different uh the board officers decided to make a change and if your
094committee has met you will have a report if your committee has not met you will not appear on the agenda just for the sake of streamlining things a little bit so facilities committee mr lopez thank you mr president at the meeting of uh august 15th uh last monday we met and we uh discussed the two items that are in the um um consent agenda or note that we have two uh that we're recommending for approval is the oversold center new cabin construction dormitory remodeling and the 2022 bond program owner's wrap i know we discussed the the the construction management contract already had a lot of conversation on that so we did those uh head information on those items and and like i said we have a couple of recommendations for approval i i'm gonna have
095to ask my committee members i know we also touched on other items uh if you feel that you want to bring them up go ahead please okay all right that that was kind of conversation that will come to the board at a later date uh that's my uh report on the uh committee report questions from mr lopez okay equity committee mrs willis thank you in your package this evening you will find um the recommended language for the district equity advisory committee that i'm hoping that the board will adopt today i do have one small change in the first paragraph um the second sentence reads the this the resolution was passed following ingham county board of commissioners to clearing racism a public health emergency um thank you very much to commissioner crenshaw who is not only
096one of the four people that watch our meetings but he's one of the three people that that i made download a sexting grant uh he uh but technically the county board of commissioners declared racism a public health crisis and not an emergency and that does matter um as far as their statute like if it's an actual emergency or crisis so i just want to correct for the record that um this is in response to them passing a declaration that racism was a public health crisis but as such we have finally moved on to this action step as a result of receiving the um as a result of seeing the equity audit and so i made some tweaks to this is recommended at our retreat to include and the purpose of welcoming culture and climate as
097suggested by dr rodriguez um and finalizing sections in a bit so that is all that i have once the board adopts this then um i will be working with dr o'neal and john mcgraw to get an application on the website for folks join this committee and solicit folks who meet our representative bucket um to make sure that we represent us from our different labor um units and staff and and community members um so that we can move forward with this committee any questions all right so you're not i'll have us added as um an action item if it's okay madam president absolutely thank you treasurer's report mrs moore yes this treasure report is for periods of july 1st through july 31st the beginning cash and investment balance was 42 million 267 receipts totaled eighteen million
098seven hundred and eight thousand five hundred and thirty four four while disbursements equaled thirteen million two hundred nine thousand eight hundred and fifty one the net inter fund transfer totaled five uh 527 906. in investments from fun and interest excuse me from fund investments to the student and bond funds as well as journal entries the monthly transfer to the general fund for 2022-2019 bond expenses were zero the ending general cash excuse me the ending general fund cash and investment balance on july 31st 2022 was 48 million 290 the general funds cash and investment balance is 33 million greater as compared to the same time last year the donations received the month of july 2022 totaled twenty five thousand twelve dollars and fifty two cents donations were given from the black bud giving fund for the
099eco eco lab donation of ten dollars carl mclean memorial fund two dollars and fifty two cents and the lansing promise for the purpose of the high school graduation twenty five thousand dollars um mr president that concludes the july 2022 treasurer's report thank you very much any questions for mrs moore okay may i have a motion sorry i'm moving on the consent agenda my page was already flipped moving on to the consent agenda for this evening which includes the receipt and approval of the august 4th regular board meeting minutes the receipt and approval of the july 2022 treasurer's report bid recommendations that you can find in your packet which include ebersole new cabin construction and dormitory remodeling and the 2022 bond prague program owner's rep now may i have a motion please it's been moved by
100mrs willis supported by mrs lil g any discussion mrs willis sorry i wasn't moving fast enough during mr lopez's presentation we're building a new cabin a new like dormitory cabin or a new tiny home so we're doing two things okay um yeah so in order for us to even attempt to have this boarding school uh at eversole we're building staff housing so we're going to be building a cabin for the two one two cabins one for each of the full-time teachers that will be there and then we are redoing the dormitory so that the students can have kind of their own private room it's not a full room but it's you know it's a nice thing so it's uh that's what we're doing okay so i'm tracking the remodeling of the dorms that's great right
101and then we're also constructing and one new cabin two new cabins are they where are we putting them are they like the tiny homes that are on the front yeah in fact what's nice is uh when they built that first tiny home they did um the plumbing and the electrical that will have space for two others and that's where they're going the only extra thing we had to do was create um some more fire suppressions we have to build a basically a water tank that we're doing as well other questions on the consent agenda or discussion will all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye any opposed consent agenda is adopted moving on to action items we have an addition of the equity committee madam president mrs willis i move that the board
102of education established a board equity advisory committee as presented it's been moved by mrs willis supported by mrs moore any discussion we're very excited well all the mr lopez yes um so um the the equity audit was certainly an eye-opener i think i can say that for all of us right so i certainly um support the four items that are listed but i would hope that that we could also look at a multicultural history or program that would bring some of that needed historical background to our students so i'm not looking to you know i i support it but i ask that if we could do that that would be more inclusive this is a equity you know charter so we need to have equity across the board to some extent any other discussion anything
103no well i mean no i mean what i was going to say is that i i totally agree however because the resolution was passed by the ingoma county board of commissioners declaring racism a public health crisis and our equity audit data showed that our students um our black students are impacted um i think this says a lot i think that we as a district i think we are mindful and we are intentional to be very inclusive but i think that this issue has to be addressed however we should continue to make sure that we are um and we will continue to make sure that we're inclusive with all of our students and our staff and and everybody right that serves um the lsd community right and i understand that um all that i'm bringing forth
104is the fact that that equity audit certainly surfaced um things that that affect you know this is a racism issue and it affects impacts not only black students obviously you know community but also the latino community and other minorities that that do make up our student population and i just want wanted to be with all that that we have here that's great i have no problem with it but i think that when a student reads this who happens not to be black student african-american student they will say well where are we that's my point i hear you thank you so i i i i would um hopefully uh well or when discussion can we make an um a motion to amend you want to amend the most command or include to include a another point
105a bullet point that speaks to multicultural study or not study but curriculum as we have as we're doing for the um let's see the black history curriculum that's great but we have a multicultural community in in our schools can i say something i totally understand what you're saying i do um however i think this speaks to the to the equity audit right what's that was specifically pointed out are our uh black students so that's what this supports if i'm not this is supporting our black students um so i don't know how adding another people no i mean i get it i get it i get it i hear you because think about it there's been times when i get it i'll just say that i'll just say that um so yeah and this speaks to
106the equity audit if i'm um vice president willis if you could chime in because i was i wasn't on the board when the resolution came forth so two things the language about having a black history curriculum was from the resolution and so the language to adopt the next steps for that need to match the resolution i think if we're going to have an an effort to address equity across the board this is an effort to address equity across the board but what mrs moore is saying is very specifically the equity audit pointed out a target population and so there's a target population that needs the most and this is we've talked about this by definition equity means that it's not the same as equality we want an equal learning environment that is equitable equity means
107that sometimes you you do have to do things with a very with variability and it's different and so our audit specifically told us that there was a student population black male student population that needs special attention and so i'm not disagreeing that we also need to address all minority and i don't want to use minority i'll usually all bypass populations absolutely but that's not the purpose of this action i will just say this the audit you're right it brought all this up but it also brought the other things that are affecting students in the lansing school district and and latinos are not that far far off in terms of equity okay so since we did this equity audit should we not you know take a look at that and says okay there's there's room to
108be inclusive of all our students in this audit because if you look at the at the report that was presented to us many of our students black brown white even you know have needs so goal goal one says create action steps to operationalize the recommendations for the equity audit i'm sorry goal one says create action steps to operationalize the recommendations from the equity audit so that would address the issues that you're bringing up the reason why number two exists how it says is because our resolution that the board passed two years ago explicitly said that we would develop a black history curriculum that's what it said so we need to explicitly operationalize that as a goal so that is why that is an explicit goal as opposed to being rolled into what it says to
109do for the equity audit everything in the equity audit there was eight recommendations in our equity audit that include addressing disproportionality and that's across all all boards all by black populations exactly so if we followed the logic of this was specific to that then we would then have to come back and say well let's do a resolution that for for latinos then we'll pass another resolution that's something that we're responding to a resolution that this board passed two years ago so that we will have to do this kind of program than for others in order to come to this to this end if that's what the board wants to do is establish another committee and all that i'm suggesting is that this is a really good audit it brought obviously you know we we knew
110this was going to happen right because we knew that that are african-american students you know unfortunately this is happening but it also brought many more issues with with other students that's what i'm saying that this dei or this equity charter maybe it's not legs it's not inclusive i will call the question which means we're voting do i need a second to call the question okay dr body is my second and we vote on that like normal correct first question roll caller does it not matter well all those in favor of calling the question please signify by saying aye which just means to vote any opposed okay will all those in favor of rachel's initial motion please signify by saying aye any opposed as i said i do not oppose it but i'm hoping that this
111board this is not the time for well comments this is the time to vote yes or no well i'm qualifying my vote and i think that's appropriate so as i do not oppose this the question was called you cannot qualify your vote you can vote yes or no well you see then you're making it mr lopez you can vote yes or no okay then the motion passes seven zero one thank you moving on the next thing we have on our agenda is a closed session may i have a motion madam president mrs willis can i um recommend that our public comment speakers well before in a closed session yes you can there's three of them i would like to that's a great motion mrs willis thank you uh we're going to invite our public our
112registrants for public comment to make their public comment before our closed session because we don't know how long that will take so i'm going to take these in alphabetical order i'll start with anesia dillard alecia anisia my apologies my next public comp just so you know my next public comment will be jocelyn joslin lamb thank you and and then albert roper uh you have three minutes within which to make your public comment the board typically does not respond to public comment go ahead whenever you're ready thank you thank you uh anisia dillard i am an avid public transit user i want to say thank you to the superintendent for providing the rationale as to why the 9 through 12 grade students are going to be using catapult transit um i look forward to serving as
113an ambassador and um having with cat in this effort to getting the students to school safely also if there's anyone who is interested kata does have a website with the information you can go to cata.org lansing school district if you're interested in applying to be an ambassador you can go to uh i have here cata.org slash ambassador and that's a-m-b-u-s-s-a-d-o-r also i want to encourage the board of education as well as cata to partner and and get feedback from the students on their experience as this is the larger group of students compared to the pilot and i look forward to seeing what's going to happen i think it's great for the students to learn how to be independent use public transit as i said i'm an avid user also when we think about impact on
114the environment this is something that we can do to reduce our footprint as well thank you good evening i'm here as a parent and i have a lot of concerns about what's going on with the business um i've also worked in valencia public um schools as a lunch aide and i got to know a lot of the kids so i'm very concerned about the kids in this community we got a last year we had i know three families that lost children to gun violence in this district i've worked in the homeless shelters so i know what's going on down at that bus hug that's it's a lot of heroin it's a lot of meth and i'm concerned about my ninth grade son i live on the south side of lansing my son will have to
115leave the house about six in the morning to get on that bus to transfer downtown and get another bus to go to saxton last year i woke up friday morning my son told me he was so happy about starting high school i went on a job interview that day and my life was lining up at the covet because we all went through something through covet um so i'm getting my life back in order so i took a job that i could work around my son's school schedule so i can be more involved in what's going on in his life in school where i can attend some board meetings because last year when i worked at the shelter i couldn't attend board meetings so this year it was like okay well i can do this now
116i can get more involved and be in places that i need to be to help out my community i abuse my voice to to not necessarily address but tell people that look like me we need to get some bonds passed and i'm sitting here and i'm listening to all these great things that we're doing for lansing public schools but then when it comes to my household it's not going to be that easy so working within the district i got to see students and i got to also see how stretched parents are to just even continue to be a part of this district if i wanted those issues that new york has detroit has i would live in those communities but i live in small town lansing and now this now we got big city problems
117in small town lansing and i just really don't understand i'm not a fan of school of choice i've seen what school of choice has done to our community and i'm just and i'm so disappointed in what's going on here right in small town lansing other districts don't have that problem dean we were one of the first customers of dean i've been in business for 25 years and when you don't do your customers like that and i feel like as a customer i've been forced to accept something that i didn't buy thank you hello i've got some uh some concerns about this cattle station here about the kata buses i've heard a lot from ben that said all the benefits that we're gonna get and um seems like we're just pushing a narrative to cata itself
118and i like to know what is cata getting from this nothing comes from free um our gas prices go up everything's going up and now cat is giving free rides and free passes seems like there's a uh alternative narrative to that um i hear a lot of bashing about dean that dean's not um able to accommodate multi-parent households or different households they they do accommodate that i'm a parent and uh they will take that into consideration and get that taken care of if you need that done you say that dean transportation won't pick up the students if they're late or if they miss the bus our 9th and 12th graders the only ones who are later missed the bus so uh it doesn't seem like it's fair all throughout for our kids if our kids
119are able to um be known where they're at on dean transportation i can call dean transportation anytime and say is my child on that bus and they can let me know none of that is provided from cata none of those things you you say about the other places that are doing that did those places implement this within a few weeks of school starting or did they transition to that you say a lot about statistics we just were talking about uh getting seventh and eighth graders out of the high school well why were they there in the first place based off statistics if there's an issue on the bus you say you'll be at the cattle station who's going to be on the buses with the children if there's an incident incident are you going to
120call for public safety are you going to call the police is that a judgment call that the bus driver is going to have to make it's not their responsibility to police our children um you're saying that cat is hiring well we just were talking about dean hiring a few weeks ago like whose agenda if we're for the kids why are we pushing these big companies why isn't dean and cata coming together to keep our routes children have been doing school they have after school activities that's never been an issue my child has not told me i cannot do after school activities because the buses picked up the other kids everything was still able to happen um yeah uh uh you say about the emails and about the parents who have been notified i'm a parent
121i check my emails i've not got one notification about changing the times or about the cata i registered my child for dean transportation well at the beginning of summer and as far as i knew she had a bus so when you say who made these decisions no parents made the decisions because i'm a parent and i was not notified so i like to know i know i won't get a comment or anything taken care of now but i like to know if after this how long it would take to get a response thank you very much madam president mrs willis i move that the board of education recess into closed session pursuant to open section 8d of the open meetings act to consider purchase or recent property it's been moved by mrs willis supported by
122dr body will all those in favor please signify by saying aye any opposed we're in closed session thank you i just started yeah okay on thursday august 25th there are open houses being held at cumberland luton riddle sheridan road and post oak maybe more you can consult the lansing school district website for more information on saturday august 27th the eastern class of 1977 is holding their 45th year reunion there is more information on the website monday august 29th is the first day of school [Music] get your lunch boxes and your book bags and we'll see you bright and early on thursday september 1st all grades have a half day also on thursday september 1st we will not have a board meeting our next board meeting will be september 8th on friday september 2nd and monday
123september 5th there is no school due to the labor day holiday and i will add one thing to this on wednesday september 14th gsrp starts mr lopez yes just to remind public and us that on the 25th august 25th is the renaming of the eastern stadium to gilberto gill saucer stadium get eastern high school it's all are invited 25th and the program starts at four o'clock with a welcome tent for folks to go and mingle and learn more about uh mr saucer and then at five o'clock they're about we'll go to the to the stadium but i'm sure you will receive an invitation yet so this is for the public that uh this is happening on august 25th 4 p.m festivities start [Music] thank you any other comments from board members okay at 805 we
124are adjourned you