001[Music] oh hey um uh good evening i'd like to call this regular meeting of the lancing school district board of education to order it is 6 p.m and ask that we all please rise for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice thank you and will the clerk please call the role dr body dr burrows here miss hodgins is absent tonight mrs lawrence it's absent mrs lil g president mrs mr lopez mr for the record mr lopez's present okay mrs moore present dr rodriguez mrs willis i'm president i was just giving the feedback a second to settle down quorum is present thank you uh any additions to the agenda before
002we get started [Music] okay thank you i can have that updated for the record any other updates all quit seeing none we will move on to our next uh business item which is public comment for which i do not believe we have any registered public comment this evening so we're on to our presentation which this evening i will turn it over to our superintendent well thank you so much um i will be giving my report after so it gives me really great uh honor and privilege to do what is tradition here which is so wonderful which is an introduction of new principles and director level staff you know large districts the size of of lansing you always have new faces coming in and out and i think it's just so important to give the kind
003of pride and privilege that we have in our new staff to allow them to be presented to the board uh for you know for the board to know who our leaders of the district are and it really just i'm super happy about this um as you also know i try to really have the entire executive team be part of these kinds of decisions and these kinds of um events so i am not going to actually introduce folks but i'm going to have et members and foo and introduce the folks that work within their departments so uh first i would uh turn it over to uh mr sergio cac who is the deputy superintendent whatever you'd like good evening um we're going to start the day with um the first person which is angela berry so
004you please stand up we are going to be the guinea pigs and see how we do this right okay angela berry is the new uh preschool supervisor for the lansing school district angie has been in the district for over a decade she has been a preschool teacher she has been an early childhood specialist and now she's a supervisor of a large program and we have a lot of faith and hope that you will continue to carry this program to new horizons so welcome [Applause] the other person uh is not here uh dude it's not feeling well uh her name is terry bernaro and her new uh assignment as a director is she is the director of cte uh miss vernero is well known also in the community in the school district she's been around for
005over 30 years uh teacher principal and director of different areas so she also has new duties that we wish her the best and these are the two people that are under my supervision thank you [Applause] it's now my honor to introduce cordelia black who is the executive director of a school the office of culture and climate good evening and thank you i am very pleased to introduce to you ms jennifer west who is the new director for the office of school culture she's been with the district for 22 years and worked in several capacities but the last 20 years she served as a school counselor at everett high school ms west will oversee our student support specialist program our homeless division mental health crisis response and we'll assist with community outreach parent council advisory board
006uh sc and both the sel and initi and excuse me attendance initiatives we're excited to have you on board and look forward to further growth thank you [Applause] now bring up dr camilo diaz who is the associate superintendent of curriculum and interruption [Music] good evening everyone thank you for the opportunity to share a little something about the staff that we have in our shops and the work that they do to support the district students and staff across the board i'd like to start with leanne weber she is our new director of curriculum leanne has been with the district a number of years in different capacities working primarily at the high school level as a teacher as well as a school level improvement coordinator she has been the assistant director and director most recently of our
007reap grant over the last four years which as you all well know has been a very heavy lift and she's now transitioning um as of september 30 she'll be fully and only director of curriculum at least for a minute until we find some other things for her to do so she doesn't get bored right but we're very pleased to have leanne on board and a part of the oci team so thank you leanne [Applause] i would also like to do to introduce two other individuals who weren't able to be with us tonight um sarah o'neil who is our director of diversity equity and inclusion she joined us in march of 2020 and if march of 2020 doesn't ring a bell for everyone let me remind you just about a week after she moved into that
008position we all went home and so this is really the first opportunity that we've had to uh formally introduce her welcome her and um and that we've all been together to work uh collaboratively as a team so we're glad to have her on board with us and then finally glenn stevens who is our director of assessments and he's been with us here working on assessments um for the past year but the uh director position is a a new title for him and uh he coordinates all of our nwea and aims and p-s-a-t s-a-t m-step all of that kind of falls under her his purview so he's sometimes not the most well-liked because he has lots of messaging around timelines and assessments but we're glad to have him as a part of our team as well
009thank you [Applause] and i'd like to now bring up jessica benavidez the assistant superintendent of schools i was hoping to not have to follow camelot because then it's obvious i have to adjust my microphone but it's quite all right it's an honor and pleasure to be here this evening i would like to introduce to you kurt barnum this is kurt's 23rd school year kurt has eight and a half years in the lansing school district and he has extensive knowledge with data systems technology finance etc we are so proud that he is our new director of state and federal grants he supervises our three wonderful compliance officers and all of our state and federal grants such as title 1 31a esser i'm sure you've heard that word a few times in the last year magnet and
010reap to name just a few so please welcome kurt burnham [Applause] next i'd like to introduce to you anthony foster he is our new principal at atwood new tech serving fourth through sixth grade students anthony has served as a vice principal assistant principal and athletic director he has been with the lansing school district for four wonderful years and he has also completed the reap aspiring leader program mr foster you can't see it now but his smile energy and passion for student success is absolutely contagious we are thrilled to have him lead our atwood team [Applause] next i'd like to introduce to you kyron harvell he has been with the lansing school district the last 16 years and he has served also as an athletic director guidance counselor assistant principal principal i could keep going star
011grant director kyran has also participated in the reap aspiring leader program he is very well versed in social emotional learning and building long lasting relationships with families and students alike we are so lucky to have him lead the riddle elementary school team this year [Applause] next i'd like to introduce our new principal of our capital area k-12 online school carla laws it's kind of fitting she's not able to be here tonight so she'll be joining us probably virtually carla has served as a principal here in lansing and also as a reap aspiring leader advisor she brings a wealth of technology and instructional leadership to this position and we thank carla for taking the lead on our brand new online school and helping to make it a wonderful success so front row applause for partner [Applause]
012and last but certainly not least i would like to introduce to you arielle rodriguez pena arielle is our newly appointed middle years and academies director he will be serving as the support and supervisor to 11 of our schools he has been with the lansing school district excuse me the lansing school district for 12 years where he has served as principal esl director district-wide esl teacher consultant and a lot of other things in in between prior to that he was a professor and a vice dean he is a strong passionate leader who i'm very excited to have on my team thank you very much all right thank you very much it's really an honor to be able to welcome all of you in your new roles i know many of you have been with the district
013for for many years but we really look forward to you uh doing incredible work continue to do the incredible work and thank you all for for being here so that we can introduce you to the board great uh so we're going to go to part seven um the superintendent's report i've had the honor and privilege of doing this a couple of times now i'd like to start off by saying that it is hispanic heritage month and how wonderful that is the district of course cares very very deeply in not only diversity on on a kind of the level of that it's important but more importantly that we really want to show our love and our care and our understanding of all the different communities that we serve and so by celebrating hispanic heritage month i
014think it it helps to show uh what the purpose of a school district is which is to be all-inclusive to welcome people and to make sure that all people no matter where they're from uh no matter where they're going are are shown and cherished in this community um there's a lot of things that are going on because of hispanic heritage month um there's a whole list i can go through some of them uh create a list of resources that can be sent by staff so that we can have readings and and books and articles librarians are displaying authors the college is uh there's workshops hosted by msu and other organizations we're coordinating videos in fact many of our school board members will be interviewed in these videos uh they're really just doing a lot of
015things to celebrate uh you know for hispanic heritage month and so i just wanted to point that out and and to celebrate it here and i know that the district's going to do a great job over the next month that being said i try to spend this time really giving a state of how the district is is doing and i would be remiss to say that you know kovid has really taken a toll on us uh i think we've all felt it we've all seen it uh we're you know going back into buildings for after 17 months it's it's hard and it is a struggle and i hear that and i understand that and i want to to name it to say that it has been very hard we've had kids positive we've had teachers
016positive we've had to quarantine folks uh you know the logistics of making sure that we get cleaning and air filters and all the things into the buildings that haven't even been used in 17 months is it's been hard and i want to acknowledge that and i understand if there are folks that are really stressed because it is a stressful time uh we're finding that kids are coming to school and sometimes just breaking down and crying because it's been so hard uh and the stress level and so it's important to acknowledge that i think um and because of that you know i want to thank the board and the staff and the community even more than i normally do because we now see it and we now feel it and you know when it was in
017july and you know the beginning of august it was ephemeral in some ways and now that it's surrounding us uh we really need to to understand it um as you know we're um we still have our bus in crisis uh there's no there's no beating around that and it's getting a little bit better but it's not great we're working really really diligently on trying to not only find ways for our partners and dean transportation to get more buses and to get more roots but we're again very thrilled that the gas cards and the catapasses have been used by over over a thousand people especially the gas cards and so um you know the buses are a struggle but there's silver linings um just yesterday one of the buses had to just didn't show up it
018just wasn't there um you know we were told two hours that the driver just wasn't there so you know it's terrible it's horrible but you know then the community rallies around we get on the phone to public safety and they brought three vans to make sure that if any kid was stranded at any of the schools they would be taken home and so yes it's bad but this community is powerful and this community is wonderful and i think that the more that we understand that the better covett has been terrible but the covid response team has been great we've been able to mitigate so many of the issues when you look at the numbers of actual uh covet positive folks we're seeing that that it's not actually be given being spread in schools that's incredible
019that means the mitigation strategies are actually working that you know as far as we can tell we we we have very few if any uh cases where it's been in the school it's been families and all things like that um so yeah kobet's terrible but the coveted response team and the teachers and the faculty and everybody they've come through and and that's the silver lining staffing staffing's been a hard thing as you know there's a labor shortage um we've been trying to hire more people anybody looking at home if you want a job we'd love to talk to you um you know we really we really care about you we really want you to be part of this um and and so the silver lining is that some people have worked just over and above
020what the expectations are so our sss who are being pulled in thousand different directions you know i go into schools every day and i see principals you know washing down tables from the lunch i see teachers doing incredible things i mean with the bus saying the buses are two hours late they're still teachers there every day holding those kids hands making sure that the kids are okay until the buses come so yeah it's rough and i acknowledge that but what i've seen is the resiliency of this city this resiliency of the staff uh because we know that we're gonna get through this and then it's also gives me great pride when i do spend my days in the school and i see the kids smiling and i see the kids learning and i know that
021we're going to get out of this and i know we'll be better for it just today i was at the welcome center and i saw five new students being enrolled from the democratic republic of congo and just seeing that they are here and that we're going to serve them is very powerful um it's going to be bad but we're going to get out of it uh i would be remissed uh and i'll take the i apologize for taking a little bit of personal privilege here but i would be remiss to not mention that today is yom kippur uh today is the most holy day in my tradition my my culture my religion um and it's a day of atonement it's a day where you don't eat for 24 25 hours it's a day where you
022wear white uh it's a weird day where you don't wear leather that's why i'm in sneakers i swear it's not uh i don't try to wear dress shoes and and be um you know be professional um but it's a day where you reflect and it's a day where you think and i think if there's ever a holiday for what we've been dealing with it would be one where we atone for our sins but that we reflect on our year and how we can do better and so you're supposed to ask god for forgiveness you're also supposed to ask people for forgiveness and so i certainly say to all of you today that like we are going to get through this we are going to work together i apologize for any sins that i have made
023but that we will we will make this happen and uh we will all do better i promise that i will do better um and it is kind of fitting i think to have a board meeting on yom kippur and if i do go in and out of consciousness over the next three hours it's because i haven't eaten in right now 24 hours 23 hours but i promise i will get some nourishment when this meeting is done so with that i want to thank everybody who is here and uh we'll turn it back over to uh the vice president acting as president today thank you and thank you for that update and just for the uh staff that are joining us in the audience today please do not feel obligated to stay we will not write
024down your names and remember that you left early uh unfortunately for the staff here it's in their job description to sit through our meetings but you guys don't have to so if you if you need to leave please thank you um for your and congratulations on your new positions oh we need to do did you knows that's right yes let's please see that all right cool great i know there's so many so many things going on um so with that we have this wonderful other tradition uh on uh did you knows and uh today we're actually doing some presentations and so the did you knows are gonna be about those uh so with that i will turn it over i guess the surgery i don't know we're going down the line like always all right
025great did you know that the 2021 annual report included much information about services related to special populations some items include that we offer high school diplomas and geds to the adult learners we piloted virtual english learner extended day programs we launched the fire science academy in partnership with the lansing fire department we strengthen our partnership with boys and girls club caterpillar corners impression 5 lancing parks and recreations voldemort nature center and the one ymca through the learning labs we hosted the first virtual latino recogni recognition ceremony we provided over 2500 translations to support parent-teacher conferences and ieps we establish the spanish bilingual student family advocates and we delete deliver preschool services online thank you whoo all right we also um did some amazing things uh with our curriculum and instruction uh during the course of
026the last year so at eversol center which of course as all of you are aware is our outdoor nature center transition from face-to-face learning to virtual learning by providing 178 virtual learning sessions with over 3 000 student and staff participants they built a unique user-friendly resource-filled google site that logged over 1700 visitors during the pandemic and is still available and created two complete self-contained week-long learning experience called camp in a bag for over 500 students in addition our equine center for learning transitioned from a strictly writing center to an actual center for learning by expanding programming options to include equine assisted learning equine care and leadership we also continue with writing lessons and therapeutic writing thank you good evening did you know the lansing school district was awarded three future proud american excuse me proud
027michigan educator grants through the michigan department of education in the amount of three thousand dollars to create and implement a grow your own teacher education program because really what would a school district be without wonderful teachers thank you and we also in 2020 uh piloted an artificial in an intelligence chat bot mini to communicate with via text with our families approximately 2500 families weekly regarding attendance positive attendance messaging good evening did you know we are nearing the end of our 2016 bond projects the finishing touches will be completing the major renovations and additions at everett with completion expected in january of 2022 as of june 30th we have now spent over 100 million excuse me 109 million of the 120 million dollar bond proceeds all schools received new classroom furniture and instructional technology along with
028upgrades to the district-wide phone network and wireless systems and security cameras we are now also in the third year of our 10-year sinking fund which expects to generate over 7 million annually to help support the continued maintenance and upgrades of our district facilities and need to order pro excuse me and need to order to provide a warm safe and dry environment for our students and staff please see pages 20 to 26 of the annual report to view pictures and highlights of some of these projects good evening did you know that human resources department has updated platforms used that will help support our efficiencies unit by talent serves as a professional learning portal applicant tracking will streamline our new hire process by speaking directly to our current hr system redrover is our new absence management system
029that our teachers work with for absences and substitute coverage good evening did you know working with the executive team this annual report was put together by the communications team our graphic designer ashley did the design work with contributions from our photographer tc a former employee kata myself and then it was printed at our print shop with our employees jenna melanie kathy and courtney the communications department is able to take all documents from conception all the way through delivering uh the final product all in-house all right thank you so much for those wonderful did you knows that go directly to the document that's in front of the board thank you so much for that turn it back over to uh acting president wallace thank you thank you for not letting us skip those i always appreciate
030this and it helps summarize our um annual report for us next we are moving on to our routine matters old business we have our committee reports so i will start with mr lopez to provide an update on from our facilities committee mr lopez thank you madam president uh but i think that john gave my report already but i'll let a little more okay uh so saxon cafeterias was completed except for punchlist items that were they may be done with it already uh but they were gonna be doing them uh pretty quick as uh school started i'll just give you the highlights everett editions i think we talked about a little bit uh and renovations were substantially completed on and this on august 27th prior to school beginning so the areas that needed to be worked
031on was the auditorium the stage the scene shop and the dressing rooms under the stage other punch list items were also to take place nor north renovations are where i'm going in the phase three classrooms and other parts of the school are ready for occupancy we're ready for occupancy phase three is scheduled for completion in late october wexford is complete and the punchless corrections are near completion okay at kavanaugh the roofing was done and the new water heater was installed and boilers uh which we need maybe more than one or uh not as readily available so they were waiting for the boilers to come to be installed uh patent guild the roof was done except for the edge metal the secure entry guyer is was in use and obviously it's in use now and the
032work on the 27th of august was 95 complete the secure entry at sheridan road is complete was complete and used except for removal of a mullion on one set of doors uh condensing units of big one were are done and the officers are served by the units are receiving cooling again classroom furniture was brought into most of our buildings and uh we discussed also the uh the issue with with mung hope uh we got a discussion on on the particular needs of that school and further on in the agenda we have an item to to vote on a business item relevant to mount hope school and the repairs urgently needed at that school that's my report madam chair president thank you whatever i am today madam chair president sure uh are there any questions from
033a solo past before i turn the floor back over to him to give us our promise committee update okay see none i uh yield the floor back to you for our promise committee update yep okay uh we met today and um i'll ask dr rodriguez to chime in as he's also on the committee on the foundation and i'm on the promise board so today one of the important items was the selection of officers for the next year the the group elected kelly dean as chair linda lee taylor dr linda lee taylor as vice chair guillermo lopez myself as treasurer and mike jankowski is secretary so we're good for one more year it was reported that the gulf outing uh for promise was a success and we're expecting about 40 000 in in net profits for
034the for the promise the the board also uh this was a combined board meeting so it's the foundation and the promise boards meeting together uh approved policies uh six policies one policy was bank and investment account reconciliation policy the second was a budget policy the third one was business expense policy fourth conflict of interest policy the fifth policy was um gift accountability policy and the six was a male processing policy and procedure among the items reported and converged on was that lensing promise through through its years that speed in operation has received or will receive by by fall of 2021 uh a total of one million dollars in tax capture so it's looking better for the promise and and the tax capture that we so one million dollars is it's not bad you know in
035all these years uh also uh scholars promise scholars that have been served by promise is a promise scholars um of those over 300 scholars have graduated um they've gone on to jobs here on elsewhere and um a total accumulation of credits of the scholars from lcc msu olivet was over 45 000 credits one of the great things is that um consistently our freshman retention both i also see at msu is that uh is higher than the national average by by pretty up to 20 uh so that those are that's good news and um the promise is looking to um considering or there was a discussion of consideration of uh paying for books and fees in the future um to also include in some which i perform skilled and professional trades options for for the promised
036scholars you know that funding for example apprenticeship options funding models for equipment and supplies future post-secondary partners and again you know this was in discussion items future post-secondary expansion options uh maybe other universities or other colleges in the area um so those were the highlights of today's meeting that i captured dr rodriguez do you have any that you'd like to mention as well well you did very very well to remember too i was meeting that way thank you mr lopez the only thing at the end they also project in the future and they are planning to have a job description for a new person to work with with the students and how we can help them before they go to apply for this for the promised scholarship of hope and also how we connect with
037them other higher institutions and how we can have a better communication around ourselves and i think that i am planning to be part of this committee to select the job description for that person mr lopez also is invited concerning the new job description oh that you offer whenever it's it's uh uh put together um it'll have a i believe a couple of steps you know come to the finance committee for review and then on to the board for approval but uh that's in the works yeah like the the good thing i think overall is that the promise as through the years has once we got a director a full-time director it has grown not only in terms of our students you know participation in in the promise but also services offered to our students through
038interns that they have and one staff member and then some sort of contracts for other services so it's it's a growing uh organization and um obviously that the board once we i don't want to use the word vigilant but you know aware of what's going on so that we can uh um uh do our job in in using those uh tax capture dollars for their intended use and also uh in terms of the foundation the monies that they raise that they go for the purpose that they were you know requested and given to the promise that's my report madam president chair president um any questions for mrs lopez hey thank you and i really appreciate the update especially on the enrollment um our scholar recipients well just a note uh about 50 of students at
039lansing school district do apply the other 50 may not apply anywhere and we don't know what's happening with them so but i do know that many of them go to other to other schools that are not affiliated with a promise and and certainly they get uh many scholarships that allow them to do that but but i think that with that 50 there's students that that we need to work with yeah it's great that that number is identified in this logic that just made me um wish for a reminder of what it takes to qualify for the promise [Music] well you need to be um have been in school in in a high school within the lansing school district uh could it would be obviously lansing school district not less scenario it's within the the bounds
040of lansing school district um so you could be graduate of a charter school of a online uh high school um or rather you know private not not private but another high school but you have to private as well right yeah so as long as it's it's within the confines of the lansing school district that is what the zone authority is within the boundaries of the lansing school district um then you're eligible to apply and i think you have to go from 9th to 12th grade and you have to live here yeah i yes yes you have to you have to live within the district and going to school within the district i think there was a issue sometimes when students that were not in the district did not live in the district but when came
041to a district school there was a question some time ago but i think it was clarified you're welcome beside the promise scholarships we also have hope scholarships the i think that now any sixth grader all sixth graders can apply for hobby scholarship yeah more on that point at another meeting another update okay it'd be great and i think it's about we're probably about due for our justin sheehan um for an update so we can certainly arrange one of those but one of the things that he did say and i'm sorry to prolong this is that um he works very well with lcc i mean lccc has the bulk of our students and there are a lot of services that that lcc provides once they're there and uh justin works very well with the with the
042staff as well as with michigan state you know the two schools within our you know within our area so uh but again you know more needs to be done but at every time you know yes ma'am miss moore yes thank you madam vice i have president question do we have to get the data of the students that um apply for the promise for each high school can we ever i would like to see like the breakdown yes school i can i can ask for that sure i know that they gave us that information you know routinely okay but i don't have i haven't seen the the latest we have received it in the past but i don't believe we've seen the class of 2021 numbers i think that's a great update for us to request
043absolutely nice being into the board absolutely and for what it's worth if i had been provided a scholarship opportunity to have the first half of my credits covered at community college and then proceed to a four-year university i 100 would have taken up advantage of that even though i went on to um finish my degree at a four-year university i could have not paid for those first 36 credits yes or still pay for those 36 credits well i think that's one of the goals of the promises to is to is to get our uh students that go to lcc to then transfer to a four-year university and and michigan state is here but that's not the only ones that they can work with yeah all right any additional questions from syllabus scene nine i will
044take um over these next one i'll take over these next two topics up to update from the personnel committee included in your packet this evening is the update from our personnel committee report um you have for board information a list of resignations um and then there is also for board approval this evening a list of new hires so those list of new hires will be put on uh are on our consent agenda um for approval this evening mr or sorry dr rodriguez thank you um and i think then we have the name of elisa whatever the name is a teacher from sexton the resignation was in august 12 but also we had her for him and the tenure and the tenure is 9 6 20 2021 then maybe we had to eliminate that name for
045the tenure i don't know it's already resigned and later it is a detention oh we have not looked all the way didn't even realize we had 10 years down here yep um so which is it um miss corbin i am going to um unless you're are you able to provide us an update on how that's possible someone's resignation they can proceed their 10-year date so i'm saying that person has terminated um but we pulled the ten year status when they were still active in the city in the system and so that's how they ended up on that other report so should we amend the report to omit them from 10 year approval yes please okay okay so when we um when we approve the consent agenda this evening i will say it will include the
046um personnel report as amended is there any objection from the board thank you for that catch dr rodriguez i will also note um that the superintendent um has been working very uh closely with miss corbin um to make sure that we are filling our vacancies as best as we can but as everybody knows um it's difficult to hire teachers right now um and we are also doing yeoman's work in um trying to make sure that we have subs and long-term subs placed in buildings where we can so any questions okay see none i'm gonna move on to our equity committee update just an update for the board on tuesday of this week so on 9 14 the equity equity committee met for our second review and work session um it was a very long and
047draining meeting and i will say this what i experienced in that meeting on tuesday we have a wonderful group of very um uh very dedicated enthusiastic staff and community members and stakeholders that are participating in this work what what i think we experienced was a microcosm of what it will be like to expand this work to the entire district um and so definitely i think that it's helpful that we have this process of doing these work sessions to work these kinks out of what it's going to be like to roll it out especially because um we are going to meet people on a whole spectrum of the journey of um doing anti-racism and race equity work um so i'm really thankful that we have this um that we have this uh this this process going
048so that's the update for me from equity committee any questions um cnn we will move on to um dr rodriguez for a policy community thank you mr president um our first meeting i'm going to go through there we arrived what we are today but the first meeting was on july 12th at that time we planned was developed on how to catch up on all policy dear revision in that meeting the second meeting was july 21st we began the discussion of first reading and these policies started revision on not discrimination anti-harassment policies and the meeting on august 3rd 26 policies were reviewed very long meeting for meeting august 31st wellness policy and criminal justice information security policies were revised days were indica and identified to send first reading and second reading to the board once policies
049are reviewed and approved neola will receive notice from the deputy superintendent office to update the policies they will be available for view on the lansing school district website that is very important because one thing is to approve and then we don't put that in in our records the mean won't appear in any place that we did the work the committee will arrange to meet for the next steps and possible new reviews revision revised policy that you have you don't have the hard copy but we had in the web for you for for the first reading is the first group is the edgar group because federal regulation for grants and four policies for revision the second group no discrimination and anti-harassment revision you have 11 policies and i can go one by one here this 11
050no discrimination and equal employment and so on but for you and everyone here we had to read it the part isn't green is because it may change the part is red it's think that we don't need it but they are really the policies um [Music] volume number one there are four policies were for the they were for you for division and volume 35 number two are 11 policies they're these 11 policies disability discrimination no discrimination of sex emergency medical uh do not resociate order to minor students all kinds of new things there then then it's going to take some time to read and i want to thank the two board members that they were so dedicated so much in in involved and and what these policies also the superintendent attend the first meeting and gives
051us some directions the deputy superintendent and his secretary and also uh board secretary um lanette was also participating in that any place where neola say recommendation will be changed on the end when you approve it and lands in school dc policy the first reading is today we present that for the first reading in this meeting right now and 6 48 and will be for the approval here october the first meeting in october i hope that you can because i don't say we'll be here but you can approve some pass and we can keep going going because we were very much behind and these policies is no reason to be designing that thank you mr president any board member want to ask anything the committee okay thank you thank you um next is an update from
052our ad hoc committee on gun uh anti-gun violence miss moore yes good evening again um i would like to report that um we have three tentative dates to hold a conversation with a follow-up conversation about um anti-gun violence excuse me with our students staff in the community um thank you trustee littlejee for the dates um at our next report hopefully we will have a location where we will be holding these conversations and then the times we want to make sure that we're able to accommodate our students and our staff and our community so they can be a part of this conversation to come up with solutions and we could report back to the board trustee little g do you want to chime in and say anything um is it premature to kind of save the
053dates um i don't know i'm new at this i'm trying to figure it out it was going to be my question for you okay share the dates so the the oh i'm sorry yeah yeah the dates that we came up with october 19th november 16th december 14th thank you i don't know i got lost there in the shuffle so okay all righty october 19th november 16th december 14th and they are tuesdays those are all tuesdays we don't have a time yet so at our next board meeting hopefully we'll have a time and the location and if there's any suggestions on what this space should look like feel free to chime in it's not a a trusty little g or or a trusty moore event this is a board event or not even an event excuse
054me a conversation so i would love to um have everyone engaged in this thank you um any other questions or comments great seeing none we're going to move on to our ad hoc committee on strategic plan dr burroughs hi thank you um so uh we had a brief meeting on uh tuesday or wednesday anyway we had a briefing this week um we are drafting the uh request for proposal to hire an external facilitator um we'll be sending a copy of that um for circulation uh through the district staff and we're hoping to have the board have a chance to look at it um so we can have a vote on the rfp um so we can start hiring someone at our next board meeting any questions you hope that we will have the rfp the
055rfp ready for review by the board not to not to hear yeah who's applied to them no okay all right that would that would take a miracle okay all right any questions um i do have a question thank you madam vice president um could you share with me the process um pass process of how you would um organize your strategic plan uh i wasn't here for the last strategic plan all right um my understanding is that they brought in an external facilitator and they had a public forum um and got some stakeholder and community engagement and talked with members of the staff as well we'd like to have a process somewhere along those lines but we'd also like to have facilitators who are interested in doing this work pitch us their best ideas in case
056they have a better way of doing it than what we've come up with and that was my next question is how do you select your your facilitator right so we we have a set of very general criteria um and what our objective is as a group um the ad hoc committee is reviewing that rfp to make sure all the key components are are in that then we're going to be looking for feedback from the district leadership team as well um and then circulate through other members of the board we want to give you a somewhat more fun finished product than what we've come up with so far thank you are there any other questions for dr burrows and a big thank you to dr burroughs uh dr rodriguez miss moore and miss logie who have
057been taking on these extra ad hoc committees um assignments to uh further operationalize our outcome of our strategic planning session this summer to make sure that we didn't drop the ball and don't look up in july of next year and say what happened so i really appreciate your work on that um next on the agenda is our consent agenda items for approval tonight include the approval of our august 19th regular meeting and our september 9th iss meeting minutes the receipts and approval of the personnel report as amended and do we have an august oh in our august treasures report we also will approve our bid recommendation for the welcome center sewer separation may i have a motion dr rodriguez thank you it's been moved by dr rodriguez supported by by ms logee i will ask
058that dr burrell's provide our brief treasures very brief uh the ending general cash fund balance uh in august was 23 million dollars and the general fund's cash investment balance was 2.8 million dollars higher as compared to the same time last year i would like to acknowledge and thank capital air united way and magna exteriors for their donations to the district thank you very much any questions all right miss logee i'm sorry who who were the donors again capital air united way he made a riff donation and magna exteriors donated for the fort donation thank you all right i'm going to ask the clerk mr lopez i think united way is probably those donations that have been directed to the london school district within the united way so i remember that i would donate uh my
059donation to united way but uh indicated that so much for lancing school so whenever just just as a matter of information whenever we hear united way well it's really the donations from the community wherever they want that they then forward to to the lansing school district uh collected by united way yeah and and there are rift donations through the capital area united way virtually every uh treasurer's report it's it's a very regular um stream of donations thank you miss moore yes thank you i was just thinking do we solicit um donations i'm thinking about like some of the non-profits that we want to donate how do we do we solicit for them i mean talk to me somebody [Laughter] i mean certainly from the district's point of view we have multiple relationships with many non-profits
060and so everything from donations in kind to things like that but i would be a big fan of kind of having a concerted effort of really you know thinking about how do we use our foundation as a way to really uh focus on certain projects and bring the community in so i'm glad you bring that up and i think it's something we should absolutely talk about thank you yeah that's something unique about our district we don't have an independent nancy school district foundation so some school districts do we don't um okay uh no questions on consent agenda so i'll ask the clerk to please call the world dr body yeah dr burrows yes miss lil g yes mr lopez yes miss moore yes dr rodriguez yes mrs willis yes motion passes thank you um next
061on the agenda today we're going to move into our action items so our action items to action item for today is the approval of the 2021-2022 student handbook which we had a thorough um presentation on this item during iss last week um may have a motion madam president dr burroughs i'd like to move the board of education approved the 20 2000 2021 2022 student handbook as presented it's been moved by dr burrell supported by i support miss moore any questions or discussion miss moore i do have a question did we um are we gonna uh can i get it out today's a long day did we decide how we were going to engage our students with this handbook i know at our last meeting i had mentioned um what our students have access to the
062handbook i thought it would be a great idea at least our seniors these are high schoolers um did we talk about that you mean beyond just the distribution of the handbook or yeah distribution or giving physical copies you know if they want it i know that we do in-house printing i heard that today in-house printing and i was i know that some students i believe some students would be interested in the handbook maybe not all but some and them given an opportunity to have a handbook and to know and to learn about their school i think would be great and it's also a great way to advertise hey i went to the lansing school district i graduated from the lansing school district and this is what i received so i just was i was wondering
063if we developed a plan to engage our students in having them um receive a handbook yeah and i just wanted to clarify because there was two questions at our last meeting about student engagement from dr rodriguez about specifically making sure students understood and comprehended what was in the handbook and the process for discussing that and then there was the physical distribution so i just wanted to make sure we answered your question correctly miss moore um and i see mr ling has um nope it went down to cordelia to answer the answer your question yes thank you oops sorry about that yes thank you um we did speak about that last week and the decision was made to make sure that our support staff were uh in classrooms um going over the handbook and and especially
064um certain sections at least certain sections of the handbook so that they can become aware and knowledgeable of the content of within uh the handbook and then secondly uh the handbook is definitely available to students and families upon request at this particular moment and i think that i am definitely not opposed to having a conversation with mr mcgraw i see he's nodding his head so i'm going to pass this mic down to him about how we can go about distributing the handbook to um to the student better body good evening again uh there'll be several ways that the students will be able to receive it uh we will email a link to every every email address that we have for students and parents we will also text that link out but schools will get physical
065copies as well so we asked each school how many copies they would need uh so they responded and then uh if they need additional after that of course we can print those as needed and then also in parent view when the parent has logs in usually during the summer it'll pop up and ask have you read the latest handbook so multiple ways and then it's on the website of course as well so there's multiple ways i can get it digitally or physically okay thank you sometimes i feel like i'm getting in the weeds so tell me if i'm getting in the weeds nope that was great follow up this morning you're fine any other questions all right seeing none all those in favor signify by saying aye opposing sign great motion passes seven zero next
066this evening we have new business for consideration um we have our 2021 2022 microsoft annual renewal for our license microsoft license um mr this time they were microphones stopped at mr lane um so yes this is the annual renewal for our microsoft licenses for the district um uh we've had to bring this the last several years to the district so can be either um brief with us or to have our director of technology jeff vanderlaan to talk about more of the details but again it's the annual renewal for our district are there any questions specific to this my only question is i don't see last year's um pricing on the invoice to compare what we paid for last year i went exact dollars and cents on the spot i i literally looked at that yesterday
067i believe it was around four hundred fifty five dollars maybe a couple pennies here there but that's just a little bit less okay so it's very close uh do you happen to have the number with you okay great fabulous thank you he saved you it's okay i wronged it any other questions dr body i was just going to make a motion that we approve the license it's been moved by dr body supported by i know i know we're doing it out of order they did make their programs a little worse it's been moved by dr body supported by dr burles are there any other questions comments discussion see none all those in favor signify by saying aye aye same sign great motion passes 7-0 next we have our first reading of our 2021 lansing school
068district updated policies um we had our presentation from dr rodriguez and we know that this is first reading um and so the um why am i having a brain part do we make a motion to the adapt first reading and then the second one we do second reading and adoption right okay yes that's how it works sorry i had to talk myself through that um so we do have a motion um available for us this evening if we would like to accept tonight's presentation as the first reading um just a reminder there is a wonderful cover sheet to the policies that list all the policies and that's helped me kind of check off and make my notes accordingly if you have any recommendations because we would like to take second reading and adopt these policies
069at the next meeting please make sure that the policy committee get those updates for considerations if we need to amend any policies before next reading any questions or comments um would anyone like to make a motion can a member of the committee make those you sure can okay um so i moved that the board of education considered the attached policies for first reading it's been moved by ms logee and supported by support miss moore thank you any other questions or comments cnn i am going to ask the clerk for roll call vote dr body yes dr burroughs yes mrs lil g yes mr lopez moore yes dr rodriguez yes mrs willis yes motion passes thank you next on our agenda this evening we have public comment on non-agenda items for which we have no registered
070public comment um next i will open the floor for any board members who would like to make any comments this evening thank you very much and i want to congratulate the superintendent for emphasizing the hispanic heritage month and not only just their core hispanic but all the cultures they are coming from north and south america and how they influence all of us during the last from the beginning from centuries then celebration of that is not the only thing we had to do we had to learn we had to appreciate and we had to know how to live with them together for the prosperous our our society that was established the first week by lyndon johnson one week iron riggan changed from one week to one month then i think should be 365 days per day
071is going to enjoy all the great things that we have together and we enjoy this life here in the united states thank you mr lopez thank you um yes uh america [Music] i'd like to not not today but to kind of review our meeting time if it's time to go back to our general 7 p.m meeting slot um we're no longer meeting on virtual so we're here i'd like for us to reconsider that or consider going back to the the seven o'clock time 7 pm 6 30 i'm sorry it was 6 30 is that okay uh 6 30 was seven o'clock meeting yeah it was 6 30. we used to have iss at 5 30 and then regularly well no but when the pandemic hit we started to move it to 6 30 and then
072six o'clock and then uh i know uh at times uh dr body had difficulty getting here at six o'clock whatever but i'm just going back to the original what was original back then the center clock meeting of the board we can review the the minutes and all did we really meet at seven o'clock yeah it was six days 6 30. okay it was 6 30. it's 7 08 and i'm yawning now for the record um it was seven o'clock and i don't know we ever uh re-um what does it amend that our or our time even though it can be done by a vote of the board but uh i believe that it for a long time it was seven o'clock seven p.m you don't want the water to build photos coming in the class
073well it just and just and our meetings have become significantly more efficient and we we do um move through our business pretty quickly and then we're pretty intentional about what we put on our information study sessions um i do know one thing in addition to consideration of board members personal lives and schedules we also want to remember that our staff are typically working 6 30 in the morning um and then through these meetings so we just want to be mindful of that as well um which is why i let some of the staff go home but the ones i can't leave they had to stay so um i do know that folks are pulling very long days on our board meeting well you know obviously i like to have all the staff here that's fine
074but you know sometimes they need to go home early you know we don't always have to have them here you know it would give i'm talking and maybe i don't know it would change the attendance of the public to a meeting or not but i just say let's let's let's talk about it and see what we end up with absolutely miss moore i don't i don't think changing the time would well it may um affect the attendance of the public i think us just um creating a safe space space which i think we have in inviting people into the space i think i shared this before with the board um when our community comes into this space we don't always have to complain you can always speak about the good or just you know so
075i think that just um inviting people i've been doing it and i and i'm going to continue to do it because uh the community is invested in at the you know in the lansing school district especially if they have kids or grandkids so just let us invite and share of the good and i think people will come in and have an inviting space nobody wants to come into a space where they're not they don't feel invited they don't feel or welcome so we want to think about that as well sure absolutely dr burrows than dr rodriguez yeah i i think we've mentioned this briefly in the past uh we had a lot more public comment when we were virtual uh and there was some discussion about creating an opportunity for people to to make a
076public comment virtually um i know we should have the technology to make that happen and i think that would be helpful particularly with people's schedules and they've got kids and they've got responsibilities it's very sometimes very difficult to come here in person for a long time whereas if they know okay i've got a 15-minute window and that's my commitment but i still really want to speak to the board on something that's important to me that makes it much more accessible for them so i think we should at least take a look at that as a possibility that's great i think we should talk about it and see how we deal with that and all the other things that we have mentioned today yep and see what policy updates we'd have to do and i and
077i also think that um board meetings have a negative stigma you know and i think we really should we have to change that we have to and um i can speak for um the community that i'm associated with and i'm encouraging um my my community to come into this space regardless of um if you don't have anything to say just be in the space because we're accountable to them and i think that that's extremely important that they're that people are here and that they really know what's going on in the community with the school district if they can so just just to pick back on that i was at a uh citizen contact meeting with the commissioner um and hussein and i had a chance to speak briefly and invited the community to come or
078just contact us for anything they may they can have you know any questions or concerns i heard a lot of concerns which never come here and i said you know you're invited to the school board come and talk to us send us the information you know you don't have to wait until you have a problem to come and talk to us you know you can say how great the district is too so um so invitation is out there in many different ways but i think we we need to continue this conversation and then we can use one of our sss meetings for that or some other form but it looks like ben is getting weak over there being i'm not going to be long this is wonderful i love this conversation he's like hurry up
079no no no a good note i was in a community space today i went or this week i went to the city council meeting and i never go to the city council meeting but i decided to go because you know you can watch the city council and guess who was there ben our superintendent and he represented very well so i want to thank you for being in that space and promoting um the lansing school district representing sharing all the good that we're doing and even the ugly he was very transparent and that's what we needed because people want to hear that people don't want to always hear what's good and everything is fine when really it's not so i mean that's real talk so um thank you ben that's good i appreciate this conversation as
080well and that's what i wanted to say i'm another president maybe maybe we establish a develop new system or communication with the community from the border we can have the web we can communicate so we can have a newsletter we can do many other things to communicate all the people and i think we have to explore now in the new century what other ways we can communicate with them that we know what they want and we serve them the best we can absolutely miss logee in terms of community engagement there have been times when we've invited different programs to come and you know and present or students to come and speak and if if a student's going to come and speak they're going to bring about you know a bunch of people are going to
081want to come support them often and so there might be a time um maybe not in all of our meetings but some of the meetings that have a lighter agenda where we could create space for um staff or parents or um students to like to actually come and present on something specific that they want to talk about or that we want to hear more about and we could put that into a system and that would probably create a lot more regular engagement yeah that's fine and it's it's it's been a while i mean we used to have a performance or presentation or recognition um and i mean we right before covid we were so focused on um hiring a superintendent that's where all of our meetings went so we probably haven't had a board um
082presentation from a student since december of 2019 um so that is something we can definitely look at be engaging i think that would be great to have a calendar and i don't know if like what board member could work on that but just have a calendar a consistent calendar of different groups different um there's tons of student groups at everett i don't know what's going on at eastern in sex and i can only speak forever but there's tons of student leader groups there and i think that uh that's another way to get our students engaged and our parents are great like trustee littles you just said but getting a calendar um hispanic history month okay can we invite the group here you know by that population here to share about their history so i think
083that we should really be intentional about providing a calendar some type of schedule and um pilot it and see how it goes i think that would be a great idea so is that something the board would do is that something your crew is gonna do ben or what's going on well i mean well first of all i think that um bringing in the student voice is a really powerful thing and it's something that we should absolutely do i think as we're finding with opening up schools of course is the 17 months of rust and you know cobwebs shaking it out and then of course as uh vice president willis said um you know there was also other things going on in the district before that and so i think that there can certainly be from
084the board a real decision to say look let's bring that up but i'm happy certainly from the superintendent's standpoint and from the executive team we can work hand in hand and we can think about you know what kind of topics not only students but from family members and the community and then also very specifically you know what you know groups that students want to come here and how we can have that open dialogue and i was at my phone only because our wonderful head of communications was texting me to make sure to say something and if you don't mind can i just turn over the mic to john mcgraw great no no so we did add uh just about a month ago we are broadcasting these live on youtube as well on the district channel
085and we share that on facebook uh the live link um that's outgoing only so we're not seeing their input here but uh it is being viewed by more people uh now that we have added that uh it was mentioned in board meetings uh several months ago that we'd like to get it out to more people so we did add that live and we're gonna do a lot more live productions going forward but but this is is one of the first starts and i think also just this conversation i hope is emblematic of how we can see the relationship between a superintendent the executive team and the board we're in this together i think sadly historically and you know my background having spent a lot of time in all sorts of different they don't have that
086kind of relationship and that's why sometimes it's antagonistic or sometimes it's just you know you sit there and you're quiet that's i don't think what any of us want to do and so i love that we're talking about this we can talk both online and offline but let's think about what a calendar of events for the board could look like so that we represent our community um one thing i was thinking you were asking last time about information study sessions and how we should structure those i think that's a wonderful opportunity to have some purposeful community dialogue whether it's particular group of parents particularly community organization so it's an information study session not just the executive team presenting something to us that we're do that you're doing but we're all trying to learn something so
087so i'm sort of thinking out loud but it's something to think about and that reminds me remember when we said we were going to think about taking iss meetings on the road because then we wouldn't have the camera i have to worry about the camera crew just thought about that right because we don't typically televise them so we don't worry about bulking moving the the equipment um if we if we decided to take iss on the road we could probably do a one million a quarter you know outside of this board room in one of the high schools or the middle schools in one of our buildings obviously yeah songs were doing it by choice and not because the roof literally caved in i'm sorry i'm scoring this morning i just don't want to lose
088this so how can this is what i don't want to happen we have this oh excuse me we have this conversation and then we get so busy and we don't do anything we don't there's no action behind it so our next steps can we talk about like what i mean we're talking about it but what are some next steps we're going to form a committee what's happening here we have a board officers meeting on the 22nd of this month and so i can commit to you that these will be items that we'll discuss okay um at our officers meeting um and come up with a recommendation for both the calendar of events and um community engagement opportunities and doctor um okay i'll say and i've stepped over i've been the superintendent a couple times so
089doctor body and then um superintendent i didn't mean to interrupt if you were going no nope i'm good my idea to piggyback off what dr burroughs was saying is in addition to allowing folks to make public comment online it i would suggest that it doesn't even have to be live they could record their public comment so so like submit your public comment on the website by such and such date or by sudden such time weekly and then we can watch it during our meeting and then that way they don't even have to log on to zoom during the time of the meeting they could just record a selfie video with their public comment at a time that's convenient for them technology's there uh mr schilder oh no all i was gonna actually say was to
090support uh what vice president willis said is that you know these are all really great ideas and you know go through the kind of the the idea of having the executive committee we can talk about it and then we'll make sure that we continue these conversations because i appreciate what you're saying tristan moore is like we say good things here and then does it happen and so we've got to keep that going and so there are some really good processes that we can put in place to make sure that happens so you know we'll we'll talk about it on the 22nd and then we'll move forward does that work miss moore it does vice president okay i just want to double check i'm happy to put you in another committee if you so choose i
091mean you know i get passionate about certain things so you know you got to watch out are there any other questions or comments from the board this evening the only thing i have is that thank you for these beautiful schedules for the sports i am so glad to see all this sport here i would like someday to have a presentation about how much participation builded by building and how we are doing and how we can promote sports in the buildings in the lansing school district then but i am pleased to see that we have it in front of us and i know this is going on in every building thank you that's fantastic and it's actually still the floor is yours i'm dr rodriguez to provide our report from secretary and announcements please thank you
092very much um wednesday september 29th 2021 professional professional development day you know school thursday october 7th regular board meeting 6 p.m don't change so far 6 p.m george brown ballroom friday october 8th um friday october 8th is new school thursday october 14 information study session i hope that we will have the the topic to send to every every board as soon as possible 6 pm and your brown boar on that and my report no the secretary reform of the president thank you with no further business before the board at 7 24 we are adjourned we are in business