001i know uh good evening everyone it is six o'clock on the dot and i would like to call this regular meeting of the lansing school district board of education to order will everyone please join me for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you very much will the clerk please call the rule dr body dr burrows mrs hodgin mrs lawrence mrs lilgie here mr lopez mrs moore here dr rodriguez this is willis forum as president thank you very much and mr lopez did notify us of his absence this evening any additions to the agenda this evening okay seeing none i don't see any public comment on agenda items
002this evening so we will move on to report from superintendent [Music] good evening everyone uh it's lovely to see you all um you know i am now 36 days into the job which is uh fantastic uh and again like last time i just really want to thank the board uh for not only their belief in me but already in the in this last uh kind of month being just so supportive meeting with me talking about their kind of hopes and dreams for this district uh and i think the the people of lansing should be really really proud of this board it's really been a pleasure to serve them and and the people of lansing i want to thank the staff you see over here if you're watching at home uh that we have our executive
003team who are all fantastic and they'll be sharing some insights and ideas um and then i really want to thank the community we had all sorts of really great events but i've been spending a lot of my time just going out and meeting folks and just how warm and and open and friendly and desiring of uh you know success for their students uh that really means a lot to me um today there's going to be a conversation about the organization chart um is something that we've been talking about a lot and i just want to really thank this board for allowing me to work with the staff so that we can have this district fit the needs of the community and that's really what this is about and you know through that and i sort
004of alluded to it uh last time uh because i i think we're going to be moving forward with this uh i really want to say that at least for the org chart um we're promoting one uh really important person uh that i want to highlight today and that's jessica benavidez she will be named the assistant superintendent of schools and that's really wonderful so yeah please please clap um you know she has served this district for uh well over two decades uh she cares deeply about the folks here and it's my honor to uh promote her to an assistant superintendent role where she can really help lead uh the charge so thank you jessica um the other thing that i want to just talk about is that over the last couple of weeks i've met with
005every one of the principals uh in the district and you know it really gave me a tremendous amount of faith that we're going to be able to move forward uh with a lot of things one of which is some district-wide goals um you know it's it's always tough for a superintendent to go on the spot and say here are some numbers that i want you to hold me accountable for but that's what you deserve uh that's what the the great people of lansing deserve and so um you know we've talked about this a lot uh shared it with the board so i feel very comfortable stating this that you know it is my hope uh that we as a district are gonna have uh an 85 graduation rate uh in by 2025 a 11 500
006enrollment by 2025 and a 90 uh high sc 90 attendance rate by 2025. those are the numbers that you should hold me accountable to those are the numbers that we should hold ourselves accountable to and i'm really really thrilled that we created those together that it wasn't my idea it was a group of educators through this district that said this is what the the folks deserve and this is what we're going to do so i really want to state that publicly and thank everybody for for being supportive of that the last thing i want to talk about is all the stuff that we're doing because we haven't had a board meeting in a while it's kind of amazing how much we've done that we haven't said publicly the first one is we had a lovely
007enrollment fair at the eastern football field we had well over a hundred folks either come to enroll new or or move schools it was incredible the line was literally down the court uh you know to enroll families and it just shows you that the leadership of this board and the district that people really want to come back into our schools and be a part of it we also as many of you know have started an online school a fully virtual k-12 school that the state approved as an actual school this isn't just a program this is a place that can give a diploma this is a place that can educate our children and we're already seeing uh many many families sign up for that and and i think i said this last time you know
008we believe in face-to-face education we believe in you know students interacting with each other but we also believe in student choice and family choice and if families feel that an online education is something that they want we want to provide it at a really high quality and so we're doing that and i'm very proud of that um and then last but certainly not least between last board meeting in this board meeting as many of you know we announced universal pre-k uh that's a powerful powerful thing that the board believes in that the school district believes in and then certainly i believe in that any child who's four years old at the dates that we've set uh i think it's december 1st um is is is eligible uh for a free uh pre-kindergarten this is not
009daycare this is not babysitting this is true education with what four years four-year-olds need with qualified certified wonderful educators and so i just want to say um how proud i am that we were able to do that so quickly so with that i just want to thank everybody for their incredible hard work and it's again an honor to be here as a superintendent thank you i guess i will turn it over for the fantastic for the did you knows good evening everyone did you know that on monday june 14th we began bringing students back face-to-face instruction through our summer soar programming during the first four weeks 159 students in grades k through eight participated in structured face-to-face programming four days each week four hours a day during summer soar our k-8 students have had the
010opportunity to learn face-to-face again with our amazing teachers as well as work with several of our community partners some of these partners include reach art studio happen dance woldemar impression 5 ymca potter park zoo msu broad drm and haptics in addition students have experienced incredible learning opportunities through three of our very own district programs that we are very proud of the equine center for learning culinary camp with sodexo's chef patrick and a physical education program led by one of our rock star teachers mr marley thank you did you know during the first four weeks of summer programming our 9th through 12th grade students programming for our 9th through 12th grade students more than 500 high school students participated in credit recovery opportunities both screen to screen and face to face at the end of our
011first four weeks students had successfully recovered 294 credits with three students satisfying the graduation requirements we can't wait to see what our success outcomes are at the end of the next four weeks good evening did you know during the first four weeks of summer program we have had over 450 participants in 14 different eversaw based summer camps students at eversaw bay summer camps have been able to engage in several exciting learning opportunities this summer including canoeing kayaking wilderness survival skills tree identification various natural arts and crafts projects fishing animal tracking macro invertebrate identifications and many many more aside from the summer soar-based camps for k-6 students eversaw has also hosted summer camps for the star grant the bilingual department and our am high program thank you good evening did you know that this summer the
012ebersol center has also served as a host site for several professional development opportunities including an end-of-year reflection for our aspiring leaders on-site training for collaboration between the national science foundation msu and the lansing school district to train teachers to teach outdoors and serve as a learning site for michigan state university's michigan mass master naturalist course they have even been able to squeeze in two day camps for the wayland union school district to generate a bit of extra revenue and continue to build relationships with local west michigan school districts thank you very much executive team i turn it back over to board chair board president thank you uh superintendent schuldener i just want to thank you for carrying on the tradition of um keeping the did you knows it's very helpful and i just want to
013thank mr lang for doctoring up the exercise of dissecting owl pellets as micro vertebrae exercise i'm i'm here for i'm gonna start calling it that but you guys they're dissecting all palettes it's cool though i did it all right thank you i did that in fourth grade as well and remain traumatized 25 years later that is disgusting i love you ben bowinski but that is disgusting that's why i went to law school on to routine matters in old business we will come first to our committee reports facilities committee mr lopez is not with us this evening uh we had a facilities meeting last week and discussed the ongoing negotiations with the sale of the auto building and the auto land and the ed center behind us we anticipate having purchase agreements ready to sign soon
014negotiations are moving smoothly anything else i think that was all we discussed you have in your packet this evening a bid recommendation um to address the yep um the turf practice field and the stormwater detention basin of the athletic complex um when we get to that if anyone has any questions on that i'm sure that nathan would be happy to answer your questions personal committee business oh any questions for this person who knows just a tich about the facilities committee yes just the question madam president have we had an update from um are anyone regarding a potential um replacement of our patent bill debt was that disgusting facilities um that was not discussed at facilities that was discussed at a separate meeting that we had last week and we do not yet have an update
015except for there are a lot of ideas and as those ideas become more concrete nathan will be happy to give you an update not kidding you're not kidding any other questions about facilities okay personal committee mrs willis it's fine if i had any questions i'd ask nathan anyway i'm just kidding personnel committee [Laughter] um for the board this evening there are lift to staff personnel changes for your information and there are three new staff positions that are for board approval this evening that will be on the consent agenda any questions cnn madam president may i roll into my equity committee update just an update on the equity committee dr sarah dr diaz i may ask ad admin oh neil the d is just there for no okay dr cyr o'neal who is our new diversity
016equity and inclusion director um is helping lead the charge along with dr diaz um with our partners um to work with equity audit so we are looking at a projected start date of our equity committee of august 17th for our series of um committee meetings that will um continue to lay out the project and move this forward so i just wanted to give you guys a brief update on on that um uh dr o'neil may not be happy if i say this but if you do have any members that you would like to nominate for the committee i know that the the invitations are going out soon if they have not already um please let me know i'd be happy to um pass that along to dr o'neill thank you thank you policy committee dr
017rodriguez thank you let me just start by congratulating the equity committee i think that is so important for our district and is a hope that we are going to have a good system that we will have the students and the community the congratulations and we will be waiting for more and more coming in that direction they come the um policy committee that we met three times and the first one was july 8th at this meeting we started finding the responsibilities on eola and responsibilities of the committee and also where we were at that time with the policies some of the policies where the we how many policies we have to update and you will receive soon i have here 16 of them then there we got a lot of work and the lord reading but
018it was a good meeting the superintendent was there and thanks for that and also gives us some ideas on how to use the right terminology because sometimes the terminology of these working days business day and all that is confusing then that's what we did that day now the other two board members of the committee miss legion and mrs liege and mrs moore will report the other two meetings thanks doc so after we had our introductory meeting where we really were resetting our procedures and kind of um i learned a lot about what kind of leeway we actually do have and um superintendent children are really kind of helped me understand that we actually can have permission to do things better than what federal regulations and state regulations dictate and um that i think the three
019of us decided at that moment that we were going to get more involved with with it and because we do we hire a consultant from the neola organization and we could just go with what they say check this box you don't have to read this you don't have to do that and the we all decided that we were going to reject that and read everything and question things and really make decisions um so i really thank you for helping us understand that we can do that um and yeah and then you know really digging into what is the process getting that into writing making sure everybody understands that and then we could get in the second meeting we could really get into digging into the policies the second meeting we talked a lot about anti-discrimination
020anti-harassment um ada 504s equal employment opportunities all of those and then i'll let ms moore tell you about the third meeting hello hello all right so um i'll report on our third meeting um so we were able to really get into the readings of our policies and we had um several revisions and we will be presenting to the board um in the future i would say the next couple of our next couple of meetings will report but i do want to point out that um there were highlights for all the harassment policies the compliance officers were named and they are michael jones our title ix coordinator is i hope i'm pronouncing her name correctly if you're listening please forgive me honor holiness thank you holiness she is um our title nine coordinator hr manager she's
021the hr manager um let's see i think that's basically it we did change some language thanks to our wonderful superintendent for for calling us out for pointing this out we revised um in the sexual um harassment policy there was wording that says for the purpose of sexual gratification but that was a little too vague and we wanted to be more broad or more broad term to cut to cover um all motivations does that make sense so highly creepy so we have to make sure that everybody's covered that we're safe so thanks ben for that um we have further what did did you i'm missing it did i did you did it okay okay look cue me in let me know um but um yeah so that's where we're at right now and we have a
022couple more meetings to go and we should be presenting um let me tell the board members and the superintendent and the public they're having two board members in this committee they are so active so i absolu so conserves and made me feel be careful and i am so glad that we are working together and that and this awareness meeting will be august 17. thank you so much go are you yeah go ahead tell me how to close okay that's it madam president yeah that's it thank you does anybody have any questions for the policy committee thank you so much for all three of you for this is awesome and i'm so exci really i'm so excited to hear people that are excited about policy because god love you couldn't run i couldn't run they weren't
023persistent they were persistent i couldn't run and my age and my i'd say edge you are in target man that is great to have people they can do a job better than me is benediction and welcome thank you very much of course well you know policy is important right that sets the framework for the for our district so yeah we want to ask questions and we want our parents and our our students and our and our community members you got i'm an advocate for that to be in this space so they can hear about our policies because that's what makes the district so yes it's extremely important and when we get that big thick packet that um doc just showed we're gonna have to go through it it's tiring but we gotta do it i
024am i am going to um say with a little bit of trepidation that i am looking forward to seeing that because i'm looking forward to the three of you being able to walk us through it and tell us why we're doing what we're doing because i feel like we've been lacking that in the past and and i really do appreciate your updates this evening thank you i will do my best thank you very much uh moving on to um to update to update people a little bit we had a board retreat a few weeks ago and created two ad hoc committees one on gun violence and one on updating our strategic plan so we have up we have added those ad hoc committee updates to our agendas for the time being and we will now
025hear from our chair of our ad hoc committee on gun violence robin moore back to you thank you madam president yes i i want to first of all say thank you for allowing us this opportunity and i want to also thank you for starting the conversation because if you initiated this so thank you for that so now it's time to follow up um trustee little g and i we met and we talked about the vision what we want to see um it's important that the community has um a space to um for us to listen to them and for them to exercise their voice so we're in the process of collaborating hopefully with help me peace yes and utilizing those dates why because there's food and child care and no seriously real talk and our
026pa and our parents need that they need that support so um what i'm am i missing so i don't know should i be quiet that would work for me oh okay i didn't know i'm like okay okay i'm learning you have the mic okay don't tell me that oh no okay let me reel it in let me reel it in so yes so we are in the process of um reaching out to pcag to find out if we can collaborate with them if not we have another plan in place and we will report at our next board meeting but we want community there we want parents we want to we want our students right because there's some things that we didn't talk about um at the gun violence um and we want everybody that was
027present at the event that um you that you hosted or we hosted as a board also um i guess i won't talk about this on the mic i'll talk about this with you okay that's it madam president thank you so much questions for mrs moore rachel i would just add and and thank you so much um to mrs moore and miss logee for miss lil g for um taking the the time to to lead this charge i think it's an incredibly important topic for this district to to undertake and take seriously and come up with actionable um solutions to i just wanted to plug that technically uh this past tuesday was the national night out um for community policing and getting to know um getting people connected in the community but city of lansing will
028be celebrating it this coming tuesday so august 10th so just a plug for folks to get involved in the community and certainly that may be a way for us as board members to look to see what's going on in our neighborhoods um to see what other community resources are out there that we can continue to collaborate with with the school district perfect thank you vice president thank you and moving on to our second ad hoc committee that is our ad hoc committee on our strategic plan dr burroughs hi um so we had a meeting last night uh it was um doc was dr rodriguez and dr body and i um we it's partly an organizational session partly a vision session so we're planning on moving with a fairly aggressive timeline our ambition if we can
029possibly achieve it is to have an instruction plan finished by the end of the calendar year we recognize that's extraordinarily ambitious and i can see the president looking at me with horror at the moment we think it's very important with a new superintendent coming out of the pandemic that we not let too much time pass before we let everyone know what our priorities and goals are um for the next five years um so we're going to have a a fairly aggressive um outreach and community engagement policy um we're i'm going to be discussing with the president in a very few short days um i'm gonna schedule a meeting with you to talk about uh getting an external facilitator to help manage this process because we think it's important that it not just be a board
030or superintendent-led activity that it needs to be one that is that its own entity and the community needs to know that yes we have priorities and we have goals and commitments um but the community has a really important stake um that whether it's the staff whether it's the parents um and other stakeholders so that's broad strokes but if you have any specific questions i'd be happy to answer them any questions from board members thank you again so much for getting started on this i knew nathan that you'll be the right person to do this and i have a suggestion for an outside facilitator who used to be a member of this board whoever could you be thinking about it's not peter he's a doctor so he'll put right in um thank you so much again
031for for taking on this this important update for us uh okay moving on to our consent agenda for this evening our consent agenda includes the approval of the july 8th regular meeting minutes and july 24th retreat meeting minutes the receipt and approval of the personnel report and the receipt and approval of the bid recommendation found in your packet for the eastern high school athletic practice field may i have a motion dr rodriguez it's been moved by dr rodriguez supported by ms hodgin any questions on the consent agenda will the clerk please call the roll dr boddy dr burrows yes miss hodgin mrs lawrence yes miss lil g yes mr lopez is absent mrs moore yes dr rodriguez yes mrs willis yes motion passes thank you very much moving on to new business and discussion items
032for this evening we have the sphero athletic trainers contract this you chris i'd be happy to turn the mic over to our wonderful district athletic director chris greetings thanks for having me again are there any questions regarding the contract um it is a yearly contract all cac schools which are the 19 schools were involved with um use uh most of them sparrow athletic trainers these are our athletic trainers that are each of the high schools the rates and the contracts are the same at all schools yeah athletic trainers responsible to the athletic directors and then their prime supervisor at sparrow they work with staff members of the athletic department they're responsible for care and prevention athletic injuries as well as the maintenance program for training room supplies and equipment they maintain current nata certification their
033general responsibilities and duties are supervised operation of the training room requests for purchases of all athletic equipment pertaining to athletic training they collaborate with physicians to manage treatment and implement rehabilitation programs for injured athletes they file injury reports including participation status of athletes the mhsaa concussion protocol as well as all data required and they also consult with physicians and coordinate off-campus medical treatment as well attend all practices events and contests to perform the duties of the athletic trainer and then last but not least and of course there's much more that they do they adhere and assist in implementing all coveted related protocols and procedures which our athletic trainers did that fantastic job during this past year with their data and their testing that was required by mdhhs and our own district thank you thank you
034very much i had the first question is um are these people from sparrow do some presentation about her also about showing themselves to the players on some time but before the uh the in the training or whatever the student know who these people are do the students in particular know the the if if any of these people from the sparrow has done any presentations about injuries or how to do it in front of the students yes great question uh each of our athletic trainers again they're fantastic most of them have been at their school everett eastern and sexton for i know sexton mike little is our trainer he's been there for close to 10 years and as well as the other athletic trainers have been housed at everett and eastern for a very long time
035um eight years i think is is where the other two are at um they have great relationship with the students the parents and the staff and they do do several presentations at the beginning of each year usually at the coaches athletic meetings with parents pertaining to injuries rehabilitation and other presentations as well mrs willis and then i'll come to you thank you i have i have a question um not implying that i have a problem with it but is this a a bit that needs to not not i'm planning to have a problem with the vendor i'm very happy with sparrow i think they provided us with good services um but is this a contract that needs to be bent for any reason okay i'm just for the record i'm seeing head shake no and
036i only reason why i asked this because looking at exhibit b i mean they're getting a pretty sweet marketing recognition deal and so i didn't know if there was any um need to to bid that but i don't have any other questions thank you dr burroughs yeah i had a question about the concussion protocol um i know with the mhsa they've got their level but schools districts can have a higher standard about return do we have a higher standard or are we just following the basic protocol that's another great question and as a matter of fact i'm i'm happy to to say that we do have a higher standard than just the michigan high school athletic association protocol again it's through sparrow and their their protocols are a little bit higher mhsa has a specific
037date and steps before athlete can come back with a concussion sparrow and our athletic trainers go a little bit farther to be specific and they go through their own testing even after the protocol for mhsaa has been met all right thank you um thank you very much i have one quick question do these athletics don't look at me like that chris do these athletic trainers undergo background checks yes they do okay um and again they're certified as well okay any other questions from board members would anyone like to make a motion dr rodriguez i made an emotion then we formed the contract we contracted the trainers with the sparrow support it's been moved by dr rodriguez supported by mrs willis any further questions or discussions on the contract okay will the clerk please call the
038role after body yes after burroughs yes ms hodgin this is lawrence yes miss little g yes mrs moore yes miss dr rodriguez yes mrs willis yes motion passes thank you very much chris see you next week time same place just just kidding next up on action items are is our organizational chart uh if you look in your spot you will see this beautiful org chart that our new superintendent has provided to us i know that at our board retreat there was quite a bit of discussion about this org chart but ben i don't know if you have other stuff you want to say about this uh well first of all i just want to thank the deep conversation that we had at the previous board meeting uh the only changes are uh spelling and some
039grammar uh and you know we we we do our best here at a school district to make sure that all things go out uh well uh as you can see some of the typeface is quite small so i think we missed some things uh but really the most important thing about this organization chart from my standpoint is that it is the beginning of a real uh structural change so that everybody who works in the lansing school district knows who they're working with what department they're in who's responsible for what it really allows for the district to move forward at a quicker pace i have to thank the executive team that's here their incredible diligence in making this happen uh there were times where we would just sit down and say okay what department makes the
040most sense to be under here who about what about this specific person where should they go and so for the first time in a long time there's a very very thoughtful understanding of why this uh needed to happen and how it happened and how it came kind of organically through the you know through the district so i'm certainly happy to answer any questions about it but again the only difference between what was presented uh last time and this time is it's nicer the colors are better and the spelling is correct questions from board members is this available yet on our website uh when it is approved if it is approved we will put it on the web dr burroughs that was my question okay okay dr rodriguez you don't need to but i think that
041is it's a big one and um and i hope that and it's going to help you and the objective for our students and our community and and i will support your vision but also i hope that this board come back to study that and see how we are doing other questions from board members would anyone like to make a motion mr president dr rodriguez thank you for calling me i am pleased to recommend to the board of education of lansing school district to approve the organizational chart presented by the new superintendent for the year 2022 support it's been moved by dr rodriguez supported by dr burroughs any further questions or conversations on the org chart mrs willis i'm sorry i didn't think to ask this question when uh mr schultener mentioned the new title for
042miss benavidez but i just want to clarify are we going to be receiving any contract updates for any of the uh executive team members and then just to clarify does this um this uh approval of the org chart just to try to solidify the official start date of must be in this new official position i will defer to the executive director of human resources jessica's title change and promotion it was august 1st other questions from board members i know we've had we've had a lot of time to absorb this org chart this is hajj i think it's an excellent idea and also for us because whenever when our people parents follow this incredible drug all this lucky you all over there um thanks everybody for your hard work on this if there are no further
043questions will the clerk please call the role dr body yes dr burroughs yes this is hodgin mrs lawrence yes mrs lil g yes mrs moore yes dr rodriguez mrs willis promotion passes thank you very much moving on to report from secretary and announcements dr rodriguez thank you let me just start by congratulating the board for the last approval of the char because that means we are all together with the future and that is that is very important for all of us to work in that but then thank you for for presenting that good plan i am happy to announce then the information study session will be next thursday in georgia brown board room at 6 pm um august 19 thursday august 19 2021 regular board meeting at 6 p.m again in georgia brown ballroom friday
044and saturday august 20 and 21st 2021 60 reunion of the 1960 class or jw sexton plus one beginning with a gathering and friday evening reno's east on 1310 about rod in his lansing from five to eight and ending to ending with a saturday banquet program at the lansing country club at 6 30 p.m for more information see the luncheon school district website for for getting more more information about this really reunion that represent too much for the luncheon school district and particular for the school that they are having the celebration monday august 30th am sure that students are very exciting at the paris 21st august 30th first day of the school welcome back thank you so much dr rodriguez i see no public comment right nothing jenna no dave dr rodriguez oh i i think
045the two things i want to talk tonight this one of the olympiakim in tokyo and how well united states is doing and how many characters are showing what they are and i think we have to celebrate that we can have this kind of behavior in our country and the second elections last tuesday i'm so happy then one of our members is there again and and we want for her good luck and few weeks thank you dr rodriguez mrs willis i just wanted to uh for the board's information the eversoft foundation will be foregoing their annual golf outing this year because of all the covert restrictions um and so this year they have also to know one of the things they mentioned which i really appreciated they rely on a lot of donations from small businesses
046help support their their golf outing and they wanted to be mindful of the um the rough go that the small business community has had but they still want to be able to this past year but they still want to be able to support the eversol center so this year they are doing a raffle and the grand prize of this raffle is three thousand dollars cash also they're doing the drawing at arts pub so i mean like everybody wants and you need to be present to it so if you're interested in um purchasing a raffle ticket please let me know how much are they oh and they are fifty dollars fifty dollars for a chance to win through three grand and pizza at arts second place is two thousand three places a thousand so i mean
047three people are walking away with some okay thank you so get get with mrs willis if you would like a raffle ticket speaking of arts and the cinecrope family yesterday was the lansing premise golf outing i stopped by to say hello and saw former superintendent sam playing with john lang i saw mark lawrence i saw a lot of our community partners who were there enjoying the beautiful hot day and helping support our students so that's always a really fun day and i really appreciated seeing everybody out and about yesterday any other comments from board members okay um with no further business before the board at 6 44 we are adjourned