2021-09-13 | Regular Board Meeting

001you as soon as you're ready okay uh it's seven o'clock i'd like to get this meeting started the first thing on our agenda tonight is approval of the agenda but i'd like to make us just make a little tweak to the agenda to do an introduction before public requests or comments but besides that can i get a motion to approve the agenda so moved moved second okay support by patrick any discussion all those in favor aye any opposed okay only five tonight so five yes uh so then next on the slightly amended agenda i'm going to turn it over to mr javitski or mr barry hill for an introduction tonight well i'm going to begin can you hear me barely like to introduce mr berryhill our middle school principal who has a special guest actually

002two special guests with him tonight so uh mr barry homer turn it over to you good evening everyone um as we started the school year miss maryvalker is our recommendation for the new middle school assistant principal and athletic director and she's here tonight with her mom karen hilker who some of you may know from her time with us here in mesa public schools and my wife baron is here to support mary uh so thank you very much and we're excited to bring mary on board um she's done an excellent job so far so we'll get to that item and the agenda here in a minute but welcome okay so thank you and that'll be part of the consent agenda in just a little bit um but moving on to number two is public requests or

003comments sorry if you can't hear this is challenging but public requests or comments i have a few sheets up here if you filled out a sheet back there i just haven't seen it yet but generally speaking you do not have to fill out a sheet you can choose to just state your name and address or you can fill out a sheet and just turn it in and we'll go in this order so first on this list is carmen okay here's my ground he's grounding me because i get nervous so he's right here okay hello everyone my name is carmen i'm pretty sure everybody knows me by now and the lady with the accent and when get excited go fast faster than speedy gonzales when i speak so bear with me okay um i'm here because

004uh i just want to share a little experience that happened this week in the bus stop on the at the bus with my children it was handled by mr trevor and i really appreciate what he did he took care of it right away and i appreciate that it was a hate speech against children that were straight and was toward my son they make comments the the two students are from the lgbt community say come flat straight people are nasty disgusting when my son confronted the children and said god created everyone create straight people he was told god told me to tell you go screw yourself my question is there is a safe haven for lgbt communities in our school which i think is fabulous is fantastic we need that what about the straight people if

005you really think about it straight is a sexual preference so either the like or not it fall under the umbrella so my son feel excluded because of that so are you guys planning to include the straight people just a fair question because they receive a hate speech it's not okay do we can tolerate his speech against the lgbt community at all we can tolerate straight uh hate speech against traits people instead of heterosexual people it's wrong it's morally wrong we are human beings so we need to respect that and i want mason to be a safe heaven for them too because they are the vast majority of people there is a terrorization in society but we need to focus only on the lgbt no what we don't focus on all and stop the hatred between

006them nobody needs to be attacked nobody needs to be looked down because of their sexual preference it's wrong like this week i went to the middle school i noticed i was allowed to go in i got mad imagine me never have a bad experience in the middle school like that i always feel welcome and always share kindness with them bring the donuts apple ciders and they know me for that you can ask the ladies in the in the meso middle school about my character about my kindness for me to lose my temper because my children was inside the school and not allow me to go inside the school imagine me i was like mama bear i threw my mask down and apologize to the new assistant principal sorry i did and i apologize to the

007ladies in the front office because when i make mistakes i own it but you have to understand where i was coming from what i have to talk business about something that happened in the classroom outside the school parents outside they can go in and they have an issue they talk to them in the door was because of the mass mandates hello i was wearing a mask and i was allowed to go inside the school when can i blink bling is that i say plenty because i can curse so i'm sorry i think you got the picture are we humans are we trying to unite the community what we are i'm wondering if the board members have to be unbiased when making decisions for our students so when you guys make the decision for our community

008for our students are you guys being biased unbiased which one it is i think the right decision for the students and when you make decisions not based on your political views not based on your religion or anything like that okay but you have to think of both of them that's your time thank you okay thank you next up is kevin mccullough if i said that right all right well thank you very much for the opportunity here to talk i just want to share just my experience so far with the new school year and a little background my oldest son is in first grade of steel and he was virtual all of last year so he's never actually gone physically to school for a full year so that obviously had some challenges as we went to

009the new year but i just wanted to stand up and really just give a shout out it has been a great experience for him with the exception of the first day the jitters he didn't really know what to do how long to eat lunch the communication has been great from the principal the staff at steele his teacher mrs ashley go over has been awesome her communication multiple times a week to us what they're doing how things are going what needs to be done what we need to send has really been going very well so i can i can just see a big difference from last year obviously things were moving extremely quickly austria not that they're not now but the communication so far has been so much better from this year from last year and

010you know it's just a much better experience for us and we're happy to have him there safely in school so thank you very much okay thank you next up is jennifer sokol thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight i understand you will be voting to fill the open school board seat my husband and i moved to mason seven years ago with the goal for our child to start preschool and graduate from mason public schools if you thought you would vote no on my application i want to give you a few reasons why you might want to vote yes all of the experiences i have gained in the various positions i have held have set a foundation for me within every area i could be tasked with as a board member i'll bring a new

011set of eyes and a new perspective to this board which i feel is what is needed most right now my strengths of consistency and discipline will help guide us to be more efficient my training and education will help guide us to utilize facts and science to make our decisions you have no reason to doubt that my vote on topics brought before this board will take into account the safety well-being and education of every child in this district without going into personal details the topic i have most recently been speaking on doesn't even affect my own child i have taken time off of work to be at meetings and i've raced to a meeting after returning from vacation to speak to you on behalf of all the children of this district not just my own even

012with the topic not affecting my child when i found out the air conditioner was broken in the classroom i made suggestions in an effort to decrease any further disruption to learning for all of the kids in her classroom you will recall i listed a couple of very specific situations on my resume with regards to my experience in my current leadership position one of the situations i highlighted was hiring an employee with a traumatic brain injury i have worked to find ways to meet the individual needs of several other employees for various reasons over the years i bring this up as an example that i would use when i am tasked with meeting the needs of each of our students i have an employer perspective which gives me a foundation to easily transition to a board

013perspective i applied for this position of my own free will and at the request of no one i know you probably think i'm doing it for the great pay right i'm a blank slate an open canvas and new blood i bring no agenda other than to look at things from a parent standpoint standpoint to ensure we are doing the best for all of the district's children i have already offered to ensure there are no conflicts of interest with this role i fear there may be applicants who are trying to push their personal agenda onto the board an applicant who brings their own agenda and is unwilling or unable to listen to all sides of a discussion will cause further divide with this board and the community i believe my experience and my strengths will help

014us find a way to bring this community together for example i have shown complete support as a director over the past 10 years and have a strong foundation and diversity i've had the pleasure of leading a very large and very diverse team having diversity in my team promotes new ideas and viewpoints to help us reach a common goal some employees call us our own united nations we celebrate the beginning of each new year with a culture festival where employees share their heritage with others they even talked me into hosting a table where i served my mom's kapoosta recipe my employees have all had different walks in life and thus all bring different perspectives to the table i was just extended an open invitation last week by one of my employees he has family in india

015he trusts and respects me enough that he is so honored to be able to offer an opportunity for me to spend time in india with his family and share his culture with me there is a lot of confusion in the community surrounding diversity equity and inclusion and how curriculum changes integrating critical race theory will affect our children the experience i have working with such a diverse group of people has set a foundation for me to navigate the board's role within these areas to ensure the needs of all students are met i trust your decision today will be based on the depth of my experiences and the passion i have shown for making the right decisions for our children thank you for this opportunity thank you next up is kelly hannon hi my name is kelly

016hannon i use she her pronouns i know that you are discussing the edit to boardpolicy2240 tonight and first of all i would like to say thank you for reviewing the policy and taking a look at the language it contained i think it's important that we all work together and listen to each other when it comes to the different voices of families in mason schools and mason community as a whole i am assuming that the policy as edited will be used in the school district going forward my hope is that there can be reporting on the back end by school administrators to the school board or the policy and curriculum committee detailing when they use policy 2240 both formally and informally so that the board can see whether its usage falls in line with their expectations

017of how the language and the policy sets the goals of the policy i believe if the board sees it in action they will better understand our concerns again i very much appreciate that it was investigated in the first place and time was taken to ensure that diversity equity and inclusion are goals we strive for constantly in our school system and not just boxes to be checked and then left ignored thank you okay thank you next is mac uh hi my name's mac um i use they them pronouns i came here to say that mason experiences the things you guys say never seen happen i came here in third grade from an extremely diverse school where i had friends and supportive teachers and i didn't necessarily have to ask questions about diversity because it was already

018taught to us when i moved here and i came here i instantly was met with bullies i was bullied from third grade up to my sophomore year of high school i was called every name in the book especially after i came out i was purposely misgendered by students and even a couple teachers because i feel like no one was educated on the topics of race gender and sexuality young mason doesn't have our backs when it comes to racism and homophobia it honestly kind of hurts me that i have to be here to talk about that right now my aunt is married to a black man and they have two beautiful mixed girls that go to mason and i'm scared for their futures here they aren't represented in books just like i wasn't the default for

019books and story problems and posters is cis straight in white when that's not all that there is in mason it instantly alienates students and staff that are part of these diverse families i can see how it wouldn't be a priority to some of you because you don't walk in those shoes and you've never had to take a walk in my shoes for a day constantly having to fear someone will judge you based on your gender your sexuality not having a safe place to express those things because even your school isn't accepting i've had to work twice as hard to accept myself for who i am because you guys won't and that's honestly just sad mason is full of so much more than just straight and white people but you'd never know it because some people

020are ashamed to be associated with mason because of the message being pushed through generations raised here when i mention mason public schools to other people they instantly assume i'm racist and homophobic because that's what mason is known for most of the teachers at least at the high school are so accepting of everyone who walks through their doors yet you wouldn't know it because they're being silenced mason is instilling hate in the minds of young students because they aren't willing to share their experiences even in the smallest ways it's important to get representation in books and in math problems and in posters discussion topics all that stuff so these kids don't grow up and get culture shocked by the real world you may have you may say that there has to be an appropriate age to

021teach children these things these certain topics yet you're failing to realize that they're going to find out about it without your help the internet is easily accessible to most people of all ages what really matters that you teach them the good in these examples before they find the hate to teach them about families with two moms or two dads or only one parent to teach them about mixed-race families or families with disabilities or children raised by just their grandparents because they're going to see these things without your help yet you're not doing anything but lead these kids instantly towards the hateful side of the story than the inclusive one after i graduated this past year the first thing i said to anyone that was listening that would listen is i can't wait to get out

022of mason and i feel like that should be talked about for a while i'm ashamed to tell anyone that i'm from this school and then this is where i graduated from i don't want to wear my mason attire i don't want to live here and have my name associated with these public schools and i don't want to raise a family here because of the things i've seen and heard or haven't seen and heard come out of these schools sadly i'm scared for the students coming after me what they will learn and seek and the changes with the changes that are being made how they will grow and what mindset they will develop from the lack of diversity and lack of inclusion that mason teaches them i thought that when i moved here that mason would

023be a fresh start when really was just a fresh set of problems that i have to work through in my adult life these schools are driving people out more than they're inviting people in mason needs to change before the hate gets worse because at that point there is no turning back thank you okay thank you the last one i have up here is from amy lark a little tall so my name is amy lark i have also applied for a position on the board and i came here today basically to have an opportunity for you guys to see what i look like at least from the mascot um i've lived in mason since 2019 my family and i moved up to the upper peninsula straight out of grad school for me as i was a

024professor in education and science education specifically i spent those five years and the years before in grad school preparing people who are going into teaching so i have a lot of teacher prep and teacher education knowledge under my belt i also spent a lot of time doing professional development activities with in-service teachers and i taught master's classes for in-service teachers the reason why i got into education in the first place because that is not where i started was because i always felt really passionately about students and what they're learning but also about the teachers and my background has allowed me to really both understand the different things that struggles that teachers have and what resources they need and how to help them get those resources so the to the board i bring to you the

025whole toolkit that allowed me to get through grad school and to be a professor including knowing how to write a grant proposal and i know that's important because money is very important in terms of getting those resources for teachers and students but also what drives me is empathy more than anything and wanting to be able to serve my community by bringing to bear the experiences and the expertise that i have the knowledge that i bring from not only my years of education but working with lots and lots of different people i've had students from all over the world um from all walks of life and i loved all of them very dearly and um when we moved here um so we moved here in 2019 and then covet happened and so i um i left

026academia to be a sheep farmer which may sound strange but it's not really not that much but a main goal of my farm right now is very education oriented so once things get up and running i really hope to be able to bring the community into that space to help teach people about sustainable farming practices as well as helping them to understand where things like textiles come from and just have the opportunity to give people hands-on experience with something like how farming practices work in general if i am not chosen to be on the board that's okay i'm still here i'm still up there on hagerdorn road and i would invite everybody to to come on by um uh to have a cup of coffee and say hi peta sheep i don't know they're hypoallergenic

027i think um and just have conversations because i'm also looking to build a community and now that we're we're not out of the pandemic but i think people are a little bit more mobile i think that that is a lot more possible so the last thing i wanted to say was it doesn't matter how it goes tonight um i'm still offering in any way that i'm capable to share my expertise my experiences my knowledge my life experiences with the board with mason as a larger community with the school and i hope that i can get a lot more involved so thanks okay thank you and yep you can either just say name okay that's fine okay so um my name is rachel brander i live here in town um i just wanted to say that

028i wanted to thank you for your service it is a service that you're doing and we really appreciate it because except for a few people here i think most of us would prefer to sit here instead of there also i did want to come and share something positive with you because i know usually i come here and tell you how concerned i am but the beginning of the school year has been handled really really lovely i can't say enough for the administration at steele elementary school and ironically there's another class parent we aren't allowed in the building because that's what's safe for our children right now so we haven't had a chance to commune and have these you know big gatherings like we used to open house was very hurried and i just want to

029thank you for adopting policy that made sense for our school district so that means that our kids are wearing masks my kids are getting used to that the teachers are being very safe giving the kids plenty of time to take breaks outside being very lenient and you know easing everybody back into the learning um and the communication has been great we've been seeing receiving updates from both um i actually have a child in the misc lovers class also but miss dorambush's class also weekly updates daily updates letting us know how things are going mr dufresne has been wonderful the secretary's really i just can't say enough so i do appreciate the hard work that goes in here i know it really shows on the small end and the classroom and all the way up here

030so thank you for your hard work and your hard decisions that have been made and keeping our kids in school okay thank you very much do we have anyone else that would like to make public comment tonight just ask that you state your full name and address or fill out the form either one would be fine okay uh my name is john hutto i've been a resident of mason since 2016. my wife and i moved here from connecticut and started our family here our daughter is a kindergartner at harvey i just want to quickly say the school year is off to a great start and our daughter is very excited and very happy uh to go to school when she gets home every day so thank you um i also wanted to let you know

031that i am i've submitted my candidacy for the open board seat unlike the other folks that i've spoken today i don't have a background in education i'm actually a chemical engineer at dart container i hope that i can bring a slightly different perspective to the board at chosen with a background from the professional world and also an interest in the stem education services at the at the mesa public schools so uh i don't admit your decision it's a hard decision to make under these circumstances it's very difficult to make a decision without being able to sit down with the candidates directly i wish you the best i know you're going to make a great decision and thank you for your time okay thank you is there anyone else that would like to make public comment

032tonight um hi my name is katie can you move them can you move the microphone so we can yeah there you go my name is katie and i'm a senior this year and i go to high school amazing high school i want to tell you my experience as a student when i'm coming when i wear max i have a speech problem and it's very hard for me to speak a lot to the teacher because the teacher can't hear me because i'm wearing a max and i the max is very hard for me to breathe and i have a lot a lot of students complain about the max i have friends and even my boyfriends complain when i'm back that they can't believe it's too hot and it's very hard for me to focus on the

033max because it's so hot in the max and it kind of makes me sleepy and i can't focus in class so it makes it hard for me to listen to what the teacher needs to say and it's very hard and stuff and stuff like that and i've been struggling with max and and i never get enough um breaks to breathe the only time i get breaks to get delicious fresh air is only uh after school and lunch that's all okay thank you can you make sure we fell out thank you is there anyone else that wanted to speak tonight thanks john okay we can move on to number three on the agenda special reports recognition is there someone else coming up to speak okay come on up we're back to number two public requests or

034comments um hello i apologize for being late my name is cassandra burns and i just wanted to introduce myself to each of you i did cassandra your address please my address is 3526 west kip road mason michigan i just wanted to thank each of you for the opportunity to possibly serve alongside you on the open board seat i did apply i just wanted you to put a face to the piece of paper that you did review this last week my hope is to be a part of the positive change in the community that i think we all want to be i am passionate about the students in this community and i do wish to serve in some fashion whatever that looks like forgive me i'm a little nervous however i do hope that you would

035um whoever you select as your next board seat member i do hope that it is the best candidate that you see fit if it's not me that's totally okay and understandable i do hope to be more involved in this community as time goes forward so you will see my face again if it's not alongside each of you serving this community so thank you for the opportunity that's all i have okay thank you is there any more public comment today i don't want to rush anyone sorry does anyone see anyone else okay we're going to move on to number three there is another public comment at the end if you change your mind after we've finished nearly finished the agenda so number three on the agenda special reports of recognition no report okay number four's curriculum

036and instruction nothing tonight number five is communications other than a collection of emails that we receive from community members i know the board is very diligent on reading all the communications and certainly uh taking all the thoughts and input from our community into decision making each and every every meeting so thank you for all your communications via email okay thank you moving on to number six or business no old business okay and now we're to number seven which is approval of the consent agenda i'd like to make a motion to approve the consent agenda including approval of the minutes of the august 9th 21 2021 regular meeting august 23rd 2021 special meeting personnel report number seven financial report number eight including payment of general fund bills in the amount of one million eight hundred twenty

037eight thousand two hundred sixty six dollars and seventy two cents food service fund bills in the amount of twenty thousand nine hundred sixty eight dollars and ninety nine cents sinking fund bills in the amount of two thousand three hundred dollars student activity fund bills in the amount of fifteen thousand one hundred thirty nine dollars and eighty two cents and capital project fund bills in the amount of eight hundred fifty five thousand nine hundred eighty five dollars and ninety five cents support it's been moved and supported is there a discussion all those in favor aye aye aye opposed that means we've approved new principal hilker and the rest of the consent agenda so congratulations and welcome thank you [Applause] and we're going to keep moving next is number eight on the agenda committee and superintendent reports

038first item is finance and property there was no meeting in september okay we're moving right along bye mrs helker and family mr barry hell mrs barry hill community and staff relations that would be me hopefully you can hear me i'll lean into the microphone we met on august 16th we had public comment we went through a staffing update we talked about the eppling safe school report presented by our superintendent we talked about nice job notes which is a monthly thing which we'll talk about in a minute here but we'll move on ingham isd public relations communications service agreement we talked about that and i believe we gave the superintendent a green light on that and i don't know if you want to make comment ron well we reviewed reviewed that agreement with the ingham isd

039communications team for those that weren't at the meeting very pleased and with their support their expertise their involvement and all of our communication needs they've certainly been very responsive and so we're excited to continue that relationship with them for the 21-22 school year very good thank you communications was talked about uh and which is also included in our board packet you can see the extensive communications efforts by the district and by our superintendent we talked about the district website it's prompted uh by steve dwayne thank you steve for uh calling us out and again i don't know if the superintendent wants to make comment on that but the approach that we heard was perhaps a a team to look at that website so thoughts you've got that work in progress another meeting is it bi-weekly

040um starting at the end of the month so we hope to have some more information back to that committee if not november december and um you know we're looking at all the all the bits and pieces of it i mean there's obviously a lot to it but certainly you know the website management as well it's not just important to have a great tool and all the buttons where you need them but certainly the backbone to make sure we've got uh you know timely posting and materials and those kinds of things and that's what our communications team as well helps out and assist with so stay tuned on that more to come on the district website thank you uh we also talked about the superintendent evaluation tools you'll see information in the board packet about that

041i don't believe and correct me if i'm wrong that we are doing anything about that tonight as much as an fyi and uh share uh share our our thoughts as we get into the future on that one um but uh it was something that we've i think we've all talked about as board members what what that tool might look like and whether or not we need to go to a different tool masb has now been added into michigan association of school boards their tool has been added into the discussion here board presentations this comes from mr o'connor being excited that's me mr o'connor being excited about level up and seeing teachers and students for the first time in many many months so i tasked our superintendent to consider some kind of a showcase perhaps at

042each school board meeting to not just to refresh us as school board members to see some of the wonderful things we do in the district but also we we we have a sold out crowd here in a worldwide audience um i think it would be really super swell to have teachers come in and or and or students or whatever whatever the district feels would be nice to for us to see presented school board meetings knowing that that we have a lot of challenges right now so no one's put a timeline on that but um i appreciate the superintendent actually uh giving feedback on that idea and and entertaining that thought we'll see where that goes uh we did have an update from the superintendent on the diversity committee work um we talked again from our

043superintendent talked about the update on a capital improvement project things happening at steel street we adjourned at 7 15. we're scheduled to meet next week i want to say thank you to mr mumbi for quasi-chairing i was out of town but phoned in my my thoughts and was a part of that so mr mumbi stepped up in a wonderful way and as always uh michael kelly for his uh incredibly nice notes that's my report thank you oh no i'm not done am i sorry about that nice job notes i previewed that this uh nice job notes or something we do internally here in the district teacher to teacher staff member to staff member it's an opportunity to recognize those little things that all add up to make a wonderful day for our students and for

044our staff so we have nice job notes that are put forth uh to us in our board packets and we it's a nice idea to actually share those again with our sold out crowd and our worldwide audience so i'm going to go ahead and if i can pull these up talk about the nice job notes that i was assigned to talk about from the summer we have mr laddig who led the uh directed and and kind of kept things going on the antigen testing to allow our kids uh to keep keep keeping sports um addie hamilton uh peggy wassner and mr page and miss bearcall were all involved in that and i'm going to try and move to the next group that i was assigned so hats off to those folks we have becky hinman

045called out becky is somewhere in the room over there called out for her energy and work uh putting together a retreat for staff and it said she was organized and neat and that's no surprise because that's the becky we know we got a couple shout outs actually believe it or not facebook social media prompted these uh thank you or nice job notes uh peggy kaiser and give me a second i gotta go back to the next one and uh cecilia bouchard for just being wonderful uh bus bus drivers in fact they were both called the best bus driver so i'm not sure how we manage that tension but i'll say they're both the best any other board members wanting to read nice job notes yeah i'll go next um i had a selection from june

046so these are coming in at the end of the year and there's a whole flu in here talking about staff thanking each other for for a wonderful end of the year but there was one in here caught my eye from our facilities director kevin doty thanking roger brock for his help um coordinating the district dynamic air filter installation so that's kind of one of the behind the scenes things that happened last year that's been very important and one of the main reasons we're able to be safely back in the classroom this year so i definitely wanted to call attention to that because it's a little bit invisible but super important so thanks to roger for that i actually read the wrong ones this week but um the overlapped the summer ones but i i did

047catch the what struck me too was the amount of work that goes into the commencement preparation and there were a lot of uh positive comments um for the team that put that all together that was extra special last year considering we had missed oh it was a it was a year break there so thank you for all of all of that it does take a lot of work to pull that off i'll go next because i beat him to the microphone switch a couple that i saw that that i would like to call out kind of extreme ends of the district age-wise here last year we had approved the 3d printing course at the high school and mr shoemaker used the 3d printing to print the numbers that are on the tennis courts so i

048just think it's a really cool internal way to teach the kids how to use those things and then be able to use it on the new tennis courts that are out there and absolutely beautiful and then we have the other end of the spectrum with our littlest folks um crystal hodge and crystal earl that are in a classroom together at harvey center and they worked with one of our littlest bulldogs to help potty train them so i personally know crystal because she used to work at our family daycare before coming to the district and so what a what a big difference there but just wonderful the input and the impact that they have on the students okay i have just a couple here uh one is pretty much the entire counseling staff of the high

049school for their wellness week preparation that that they put together um and i don't know if that's uh if that was what they did in the spring or if the high school teachers get to look forward to that for the fall conferences as well but it says it includes a massage and all kinds of other stuff is that open to board members and other faculty or just i'll have to check on that one okay all right well that sounds really great so there's danny grieve and kathleen oakes and sarah i think maybe sarah's the third that was one and then i had another one it was nick tujo for um he's retired from this position now but for all his work he put in uh balance the covid responsibilities as our mason public schools kovitzar

050i think that's what he wanted to be called um his preferred title yes his preferred title so now i believe that's mr brooks handling those responsibilities uh or others but uh congratulations to the new person but uh good job mr two joe for all the work as harzar we're actually expanding that role in the district matter of fact aaron barry hill is going to be assuming some of that uh work as well her background is registered nurse so um we've got more details coming on that's a little little early yet but we'll uh be commuting communicating that to the board in the near future okay thank you all set then i think that would that would conclude the community staff relationships just before you move on on the topic of the superintendent evaluation i said

051we're going to decide tonight but we're almost a quarter of the way through the evaluation period right when are we going to decide because we don't have we don't have goals you know set yet we don't have targets we don't have a lot of things decided good question and i don't have an answer i don't know if any other committee members would like to do i do plan to bring goals to the next community and staff relations committee once we get that all kind of tied up um we are obviously you know absent one board member that needs to be appointed yet so certainly we want to make sure it's a group decision we do have training if we do switch tools would have some training to go along with that switch um also to

052any new board member that would come on board would have to be trained um but it's it has been a little slow but that doesn't necessarily mean we have to switch for 21-22 it can be something that we look at 22-23 if that's something that's um you know problematic but i would there are some similarities there's certainly some differences with the tool purpose is to let you get your your eyeballs on them take a look at two of them um and we can have further discussions uh in the near future if the the board decides to or desires to make a change in the tool go ahead i'd just like to point out that we discussed a little bit at executive committee as well our not total satisfaction with the tool we've been using previously

053in my two cents that that i'm interested in and looking at the new tools so we wanted to make sure they were in the packet hope every board member has had an opportunity to to review them and um we do need to make a decision soon but we did want to wait until we filled the vacant position and got kurt back for a meeting so if you haven't looked at them yet please look at both of them and kind of form your opinion on whether you'd like to stay the course this year or look at the new one as ron said we'll have to train at least one person anyway so there will be a training offered on either the new tool or the current tool so make sure that you look at it and

054if you have comments i guess get you can get them back to curt so is there any more for the community well just i would like to again reiterate the nice job notes are just really a slice a little piece of what we get there's an awful lot of wonderful things happening we maybe forget that as school board members under the pressure or maybe we forget that as parents or maybe we forget that as a community but we've got some superheroes here in mason and um it's nice to see that through the nice job note so you all didn't hear what i got to read i got a i got a lot so thank you okay next on the agenda is policy and curriculum all right we met on august 23rd um there was no

055public comment uh first up was the discussion of mystic lake so just a little history typically mystic lake is seventh grade camp however due to uh virtual learning and covid 19 last year the current eighth graders did not get the opportunity to go to mystic lake um so tiffany henfling the one of the seventh grade science teachers and beth bailey who are the two that organized that have formulated the opportunity to be able to expand seventh grade camp to this year be seventh and eighth grade camp to be able to give the current eighth graders that opportunity to go that are able to um i'm very biased on this one as a parent of an eighth grader my son and all of his peers are beyond excited to be able to have this opportunity so

056there was a discussion with regards to covid protocols and things of that nature and that will all be followed based off of mystic lake and what their protocols are with regards to the testing three days prior um it's approximately a hundred dollars i believe or maybe an even hundred dollars per student um and there is a current fundraiser that the students are able to participate in and there is assistance for those that need it so we were excited as a committee to be able to bring that to the board this evening we have two policies that are before the board this evening the first one is policy 2240 which we have been talking about several times it did go back to committee if for those that remember it did go back to committee to be

057further discussed and vetted within committee and even from there we asked during our conversation for it to go back to the district committee that was made up of administrators and teachers and those that represented the unions as well to be able to be a part of that conversation to sit at the table so mr duvitsky took back some of the conversations that we had here as well as at the committee level and they vetted it and felt that the way that the language is written today in that update is what they felt would be the supported language that they would like brought back to the board again there was some further discussion about it however it was um it was forwarded to the board for first reading at this time the second piece of policy

058is 0167.3 which is public participation in board meetings we've just had more public participation which is great which just means that we doing our job as the board should take a look at what that policy looks like to make sure that we're covering the needs of the community as well as the board so there you'll see some language that we that's being recommended to to be stated in that piece of policy and then the other thing that we talked about is to make sure that at all for the first couple committee meetings and board meetings to make sure that we discussed these changes so that the community that participates in those meetings understand the new piece of policy once it may be voted on obviously it would be after next month's second reading if it

059passes so there is that piece of policy as well then we had a discussion about the professional development for the start of the school year and i know a couple of us were at the um welcome piece at the beginning which was i just love being able to be a part of that and um our dei consultant was there to speak and i've worked with him as a part of the dei committee and now it was super cool to see him in person and to be able to to have a face-to-face interaction with him so that was very nice and so there were lots of topics and the teachers had a lot of work to do those first couple days but they had a lot of interesting topics for them to discuss diversity committee was

060updated subcommittees are rolling and i know that mr kiefner has gotten in touch with those that are on the committee which is nice so that's going to be up and rolling i know that there was already a change which i think is super great to to address there was a change to be able to respect those that were celebrating rosh hashanah to be able to change the diversity meeting so that it met the needs so that those families could be able to celebrate those moments together without having to be stuck in a committee meeting so i think it's great that we were able to to see that and acknowledge that we did have a couple of public comments at the end and then we adjourned at 7 52 our next meeting is september 27th any

061questions i'd like that just a quick comment on the 2240 part of the the conversation on that it didn't come back with substantive changes to it but but one of the things did come back was a commitment that we would monitor its application in the future to gather data and information and experience on how it was being applied and use that to help further our our discussion on that as as time goes on in case it remains a problem or becomes a different problem again can i follow up with the question was there any timeline on the monitoring for instance a year two years six months anything like that what was the question patrick i'm sorry it was he had mentioned the sort of monitoring how it would work how it's working how the policy

062would work and my question was was there any kind of timeline set like well let's try this for a year let's try this for six months anything like that i think it was just more of a fluidity fluidity to it that it wasn't necessarily like this is in place it's not going to change like it just is we will it's going to be put like the recommendation is to be put in place but that if it's not meeting the needs if it is meeting the needs that we'll address it and we'll we'll we'll we'll be flexible to see what we need to change in the future if need be if not maintained yeah essentially the the policy is applied in a vanishingly rare amount of circumstances so it's more as it comes up bring it

063to the next board or the committee and you know we'll raise it if it if we feel it needs further discussion just to make sure we understand how it's actually being used in practice okay i appreciate those comments thank you any other questions all right i'd like to make a motion to approve the mystic lake camp trip as presented support it's moved and supported any discussion um i did uh i appreciate i had some questions regarding the the coveted protocols some concerns were raised in other conversations i was having it's all it's all good i the administration has responded to that and and i think that um we should consider maybe providing a follow-up that maybe clarifies that a little bit more and i and just to to avoid any confusion also i think i

064was told that the the pre-trip protocols would be will include day before and day of negative tests which is not what we had heard in our meeting that it was one to three days prior is that actually correct that was changed well i know mr brooks is working on mystic lake it's one of the items that's on his list right now we're putting together our test to stay program which we are hopefully going to have kicked off on monday a week from today so we'll have the resources the location all that details worked out i think we've got some supplies on hand now um so we're looking forward to getting that ramped up to obviously keep more kids in school and that would just dovetail into mystic lake but if you've got i'm not sure

065on frequency i don't know what if you got a a little bit more details at this point to the trip yeah yeah just for the trip yeah it's my understanding that mystic lake has their own criteria um so long as they're accepting of the test type that was made available to us by the state will be able to administer that okay i just wanted to make sure there was no miscommunication regarding the the pre-trip protocol so i guess that's still being worked out but as soon as we know exactly how we're going to go about you know testing the kids and if the test meets the mystic lake uh check box then we'll let our kids know how that's going to happen what dates and then of course any follow-up um if need be um

066but it'll kind of happen right when because that's it's uh exactly what week is the the week before halloween exactly so it'll be halloween probably the week before depending upon what day they go because we've got four or five different groups some are going to go i think even the sunday night um and then so it's tuesday and could be a thursday and then yeah so it's we'll have a little bit of a of a uh i shouldn't say juggling act but certainly a little bit of a coordination to do as far as getting kids tested at the right time in the right location based on what days that they're going so more to come on that okay we've got a couple weeks yep well just jump in quickly mystic lake by the way would

067be a wonderful thing to showcase with some nice slides by these you know i'm just just dropping a hint i think that's a very good idea yeah um like the family trip that you're you know from your uncle and you're kind of getting bored but i think it'd be cool to see what they're doing it's i'm excited for the kids and the staff and the parents that are part of this so thanks to those folks yours i agree and um certainly uh good news we want to hear every now and then right i mean we're tired of all the other stuff not that that's not part of the job that we do but boy you can't get enough good news and that's great that you're you know highlighting the nice job notes that's that's um

068also super cool we got a new uh um huge nice job note idea coming up that we'll share with you next month so stay tuned on our uh huge nice job note idea is there any more discussion on the motion on the floor i'm sorry i'm kind of off track but i just got me all excited about uh thank you mr o'connor you're starting to sound like me hearing none all those in favor hi hi opposed 5-0 thank you that's your only motion to correct is that the end of your report okay sorry mr chavitsky i would love to hear about the exciting thing i just wanted to not lose my place because the guy that normally does this is way better than i am okay let's move to 8d which is capital improvement committee

069and that is a committee i'm a member of and i will give the report tonight we met on thursday august 26 not long ago and we had kind of a pre-meeting where we got to tour steel street school under construction with the proper protective equipment including closed toe shoes and everything that was fantastic they are making good progress and they are starting to make headway uh kind of eating into their um their delays that they experienced earlier in the construction season so still several weeks behind but making some progress and catching up a lot of work turned off my microphone sorry a lot of work going on there very exciting um and i was able to walk through again and see some folks even there working on a saturday morning so i know they're using

070all the time that they have available to try to catch up after our tour we got back into the office and discussed mostly that project because that's the big one we have going on right now made a selection on bleacher curtains very exciting it was choice number two in case those of you in the audience are curious it's the best looking bulldog we talked about the budget for series 2 and we're on track on and on budget so far we reviewed a few change orders our superintendent gave us a communications update and the actual capital improvement committee meeting was only 27 minutes long and we adjourned at 6 27. next meeting is coming up in a couple weeks the 23rd of september is that correct that's the schedule correct uh questions for capital improvement committee

071folks okay then we're going to keep moving on 8e is executive committee seldom used committee but it consists of the president vice president and treasurer this time the executive committee was just two members so we met on september 8th and we had no public comment that morning and the extent of the meeting was reviewing the um large list of very qualified applicants for the open board position some years you have a hard time convincing anyone to run for these positions in some cases this time we had three or four doctors a nasa scientist i mean the litany of of folks applying for the position there was no no shortage of applicants and that was the bulk of the meeting was a discussion on okay we know that the way to fill this vacancy is the

072board votes on somebody that's the part that's set in stone how you get to that part is not set in stone so we discussed a litany of ways to figure out who to vote for rather than voting for one of 13 or 14 names which is the number of people that applied we did not whittle down the list of candidates besides excluding one that was ineligible but we did agree to send out some additional questions to uh candidates then we had a brief discussion on merit pay for superintendent executive director curriculum and director of student support and did i bring that tonight is that in the packet it is not i didn't think so no it's not okay and then we adjourned at uh 9 47 in the morning and are there questions about the

073executive committee before we move on to to kind of the next step okay so now we get into that that gray area that uncharted territory that we've we've done a few times in mason but we have a long list of candidates and um and kind of an open process for how to whittle them down first of all we do not have to select we do not have to vote on somebody tonight but we may if we don't do it within 30 days of the vacancy being officially vacated isd will try to do it for us so we would like to do it before we reach that date and we have a little bit of time if we don't get through it tonight but a suggestion on how we might do it is for us to

074assuming everyone has had the opportunity to review the candidate applications and the responses to questions and any other supporting documentation that was submitted again my my two cents is that we have a lot of qualified and interested folks for this position this is a roughly 15 month appointment the position is vacant next year regardless and it's one of three that are up for election um my suggestion and we can um we can discuss it a little bit but i'm trying i'm kind of um trying to set the stage for a potential way for us to to whittle the candidates down to a reasonable number and possibly vote tonight would be for us to list in priority order or rank order our top three candidates see if see which candidates might appear on everyone's list and

075then further discussions or possibly entertain a motion on one of those candidates going from about 13 of them is going to be challenging to to review so i don't have a motion but i'm opening some kind of discussion on does that sound like obviously if you're raking like if if i say here are my three and they're in this order everyone would have to publicly state that because it has to be a public meeting where everyone knows where we stand but we could do that and you know three points for your first one two points for your second and one point for your first see who was on that list who figure out who the top two are and then see if someone has a motion on a candidate that is a way to do

076it i'm open to other ideas yeah i'm in favor of doing that i think it's least good as a first pass if it we don't come to consensus on that well then we can we can cross that bridge when we come to it but we might be able to make this easier so i'm in favor all right yeah i mean i think substantially um i think that might be the best process but i i do believe um you know after reviewing some of the masb recommendations um the i would i would think maybe we should consider not necessarily putting in in rank order at this point um just because we i don't think that our process is perhaps as accommodating in terms of gathering information and i understand that that's a you know we have

077so many candidates that that's not a practical um not as practical when there's so many okay how about how about this can we can we either two or three write two or three names down and we're going to have to read them aloud and um obviously we're not necessarily going to name everyone's names so we're going to heard some feelings already tonight but that's that's how we have to do it then we can read them we'll see which names appear the most frequently and then we can have further discussion on two or three of those and see if any of those appeared on everyone's list and if somebody feels comfortable making a motion again this is a temporary appointment through next year and the only thing that is official is we must vote on it

078or someone else will pick them for us and we're in a very fortunate position and that the 13 eligible folks all gave us very good reasons why they could serve on the board i'm not sure why 13 people necessarily want to but um we're glad that there is that interest very glad and we should be in good hands no matter what we decide so let me give folks just a moment to try to write down are we going to pick three two well my concern is first off you're right 13 people is an amazing thing and sort of re-energized me particularly when i saw the caliber every one of them could do it to do the job not to sound like you know bob barker on the the the final candidate of the miss america

079thing but the point is everybody's wonderful everybody's passionate they wouldn't be in this pool where they're not but my concern is i i struggle with what the criteria is and what the criteria is supposed to be um are we looking at i mean how do i weight some of this and that's where i think masb sort of helped us a little bit one of the challenges i have a big challenge i have is i don't know some of these folks and i you know we are talking about a position that granted it's a person filling in the slot but it's not a small thing it would be it would it would uh equate to a third of my overall four-year term meaning you know about a year and a half a year or whatever so

080it's a big chunk of information not information a big chunk of responsibility and time the other thing is we've got some pretty weighty things coming down the pike including a couple we talked about here tonight earlier uh things that that are going to take a lot of energy and attention and and all of that so that said if we were a private company trying to hire people the process would have been some sort of calling or not calling that's not maybe a friendly word some sort of finding the right people those people that sort of rise to the top for whatever reason and then some sort of face to face and i'm concerned about the lack of face to face one of the candidates i actually met just in front of the building here tonight

081one of the candidates i've known and had conversations with and a lot of them i don't know and i'm just worried about the fairness to me as a school board member trying to make a sound decision with again not just a slot being filled but a real a real position and i'm also concerned about the fairness to the community and to those candidates so what i do with that i don't know i'm not about to make a motion i just wanted to sort of put that out in case i do make a motion in a few minutes thank you for entertaining my thoughts two or three and i don't mean to disrupt i'm sorry you're not disrupting you're always welcome before we get to the number i guess i um an alternative endpoint for this

082evening um you know perhaps where we end up tonight if we can't get the four votes necessary um that that could be a an opportunity to maybe invite those remaining candidates back um maybe for the face-to-face um we do have the time if it's my understanding we'd have um you know more than a week um remaining to fulfill this responsibility well let me clarify i'm not proposing face-to-face for 13. so i guess i am leaning in the direction you're leaning mr mumbi with regard to sort of sort of getting a shorter list right i'm trying to do one step at a time and see how far how many steps we make today also i'll be cautious not to jump ahead coca-cola okay so how about um write down two or three names and then we'll

083see which names appear the most common and we'll see how many to proceed with and then we can either move to have further discussions and special meetings and any other kind of discernment or we can make a motion to appoint someone i agree half of these more than half of the folks that applied for this position i have never seen or met before tonight but there are a number of names that i'm familiar with enough folks that are they have the eligibility and qualifications experience and i've met that i can name some names so let's start with that and i'll give folks a minute to write down two or three names does everyone have their part done okay i don't know you got to handle this in the minutes so and and it'll need to

084be in the minutes like who everyone nominated so i'm going to type it up i have it handwritten i've got everybody down and so i will transpose once we get through all of this so that it is in and it's reflected okay uh mr dwayne uh my order in no particular order is uh matt hall michael cote and dr lark mr o'connor well i actually wrote it on my secrets it can't be a secret republican just have to eat that i suppose uh in this order michael code again in this order my choices would be michael cote amy lark matt hall mr kelly brian day jennifer sokol and david aldridge i don't have a brian day applicant um brian ball brian ball my mistake mrs evans i have matt bennett matt hall michael coote and

085i have matt hall and michael coat oh i said it wrong i apologize i struggled to find the the third name that i was familiar with and so um i only put two so can you tell us maybe in frequency order this is the hokey part where there are no instructions okay so in frequency order matt hall has four michael cote has four dr lark has two misoko one mr ball one mr bennett one and oop mr aldrich one okay so it seems like at least we've potentially eliminated or not eliminated that's a poor choice of words we've reduced the pool to two or four i think logically there are two names that appeared four times of the five people voting so um i'd be comfortable saying that the majority of the folks here tonight

086have those two folks on their list now how we proceed from here we could entertain a motion to nominate one of them we could entertain a motion to have a special meeting to interview them and grill them in public although we've sent them a list of questions which they have responded to and i'm not sure what other questions we might ask um them know both of these individuals have met them in person and they have been visible in the community and contributed at board member meetings and other functions so i don't know that i think we need to further draw this out but i'll listen to other people's views or emotion so i'd like to make a motion to nominate matt hall as trustee to the board of education there's been a motion is there

087support support it's been moved and supported is there discussion as matt sits right in front of me it's a little but i i know he's a good guy and he can appreciate what we're going through here i i would like to see us sit down with the top three that you mentioned uh limit it to 15 minutes or what have you um can you hear me i'm sorry i can hear you but there's there are two with four and then there are two more with two there's not a top three strike that strike that i miscounted so the top four individuals i would like to sit down with and have time to uh 15 minute limit whatever whatever you know ground rules sudden death overtime is but i do think it's uh an opportunity to

088better know some people one of the challenges we have is there are people who have applied who have had family in this community i think one of the people said not one of these perhaps not one of these people you know they've been in this community for 200 years and we've had somebody who's been here for two years but there's nothing in the criteria that says nothing in the eligibility that would say you're too new you're you've got 30 days so that those are my thoughts um there's a motion on the floor if if you count the votes at the end of the motion it would not be against a very good person it would be against perhaps the process so i just want to make sure in case that person ends up being our

089schoolwork member and sitting next to me he knows that that it's the process of questioning can i clarify first i i counted two people with four one person with two and everyone else has singles yeah that's again where i'm confused so there's only one person who received two correct so we only have three people who got more than one right thank you for that because that's what i thought yeah i guess to to that point considering at least the two the two individuals who who appeared on on four lists uh mr hall mr co both of them are to me i consider to be pretty well known commodities at this point i'm not sure what else i would learn from further discussion with them i've i've known them for years that that's one of the

090reasons that they're both high on my list they've been involved for many many years in the district from you know appearing at meetings and making comment to participating on committees going back to the bond campaign both the study committee that you know generated the bond and then the campaign that got it passed these are two highly involved individuals and at this point with a partial term left i think it's best to focus on people who've got some heavy steady involvement they're known you know like i said known commodities basically we understand that they're committed and they know what's involved in this process uh and i think we let the voters then decide in a year and a half between the other slate of very well qualified candidates to decide on you know who's maybe the

091best well if i could just address that i appreciate your comments steve and i do agree you've got in the group two people that have been very visible but i worry about the fairness of somebody who hasn't had that opportunity to be visible who wants to step up who also has some incredible you know accreditations um a female with a phd in education to stop and say well we can't include her in a 15-minute conversation because we've known some good guys have done some good things i think those good guys who've done some good things would actually say yeah that seems like a fair approach so that's all i'm coming to you have a motion on the floor again if i don't vote in support of the motion you'll know why thank you further discussion

092yeah i guess i struggle a little bit with not having the opportunity to interact with some of the uh excellent candidates um you know i look at some of these and i you know i may have been the first one off the list um when i look at some of the qualifications and of all of these candidates um so i i would feel um you know that we're not really doing all we can and then being fair to as many candidates as we can um also you would say top four and and i mean i i don't see such a wide range um you know if we did take the opportunity to get to know the candidates better for those of us that are familiar with some of the candidates you know we don't have

093to interact with them as much i mean if you don't have questions that you need to ask them but i would feel better if we provided more opportunity to interact with with all of the potential candidates here that have been noted i don't think it's an overwhelming number at this point i didn't hear a majority of folks interested in personally interviewing 13 although i know you've personally spoken to some of the candidates so i assume that you've had any of those discussions that you might have needed to have before tonight um yeah i mean to some extent but not you know but i i also know that that not the board or the candidates haven't had that opportunity to interact with the people that are voting and that that's really more my um concern um

094you know on their terms so that we can you know it's different you know when you hear somebody standing and talking i mean for me it it it has a much more meaning and impact on me than than looking at a piece of paper or even a phone conversation frankly and and and the process would not eliminate the person who's been nominated already so in fact it would be an opportunity to have reinforcement for me because again he's on my list the person who's in the motion right now so that's where i'm coming from but again you have a motion on the floor those are my thoughts thank you is there further discussion now i do i do want to add that the vote does require a majority of the board so that's four board

095members would need to approve the motion not the majority present the majority of active board members yep i just clarified that with our school attorney okay i don't hear any more discussion so now uh let's go roll call please right mr kelly no mr dwayne yes mr mumbi yes mr o'connor no mrs evans yes okay the motion fails three to two two there's no action correct so no action and does anyone have any other discussion for tonight um or would you like to propose a special meeting next week before the isd selects someone for us i'd like to make the motion to set up a special meeting for the purpose of face to face discussion slash interview with the top three listed here our top three candidates as determined by our highly scientific poll maybe

096you don't want highly scientific poll in that motion but can i please have your verbage slowed down so i can get it written it's a really good idea it's a really good idea i'd like to make the motion to have a special meeting for the purpose of face-to-face interviews with the top three candidates that we've special meeting for the purpose of face-to-face for the purpose of a face to face yep uh interviews with the top three candidates as determined by tonight's discussion we might just want to list the names in the motion candidates and i can list the names michael coat amy lark matt hall thank you do you have the motion i'm gonna read it back in a second quote okay um so mr o'connor just make sure i have the verbiage correctly mr

097o'connor made a motion to have a special meeting for a purpose of a face-to-face interview with the top three candidates from this evening's list mr coat dr lark and mr hall that is correct thank you thank you there's more than one doctor on that list i don't know if you want to use doctor or not but okay i mean i'll i will say doctor too who i did not know that there was another i apologize i said there might be more than one doc or one more than one phd anywhere on that list so i don't he doesn't self-identify as doctor typically though all right surprisingly nor do i not surprising for any more discussion was that was that supported i don't know i think steve just supported it so now is there a discussion

098i guess i don't i don't see the point of limiting to three um i mean everything that we just said you know would suggest that we should open it up to to everyone that we felt that all of us felt were viable candidates i mean they're all viable candidates but the ones that were were put on the list um i mean we're picking two of these people that i think we're all very very well acquainted with and so i'm not really sure why we would limit it to the top three it seems rather arbitrary to me how much time are you imagining we would spend in a face-to-face discussion with each candidate as much as as long as necessary i would you know so we've got seven candidates on here if we could spend a

099half hour to an hour with them i don't know how we possibly manage that well i don't know i i wouldn't necessarily put a time limit on it i think if i think that most of us are going to have a reasonable it'll be a public public meeting broadcast on youtube um that has to happen in the next 10 ish days 10 days i think that think the 22nd or 23rd was our drop dead date so i would think uh early next week i know president creamer's um out of town until next week so superintendent's out of town next week but he's not needed for the special meeting i don't actually vote on this so um well with the with the the question on timeline i i did not include in my motion format so

100i i would hope that that could be something the board president slash vice president could come up with a format my earlier comment was 15 minutes so i i don't know if i need to amend my motion to get very specific on the process i'd like to not do that i'd rather defer to our school board president so that's just discussion again the top three is what i was talking about michael's talked about more okay is there other any other discussion on the current motion could i could i clarify um um there was was mr bennett mentioned as one of the yes yes yeah okay do any school board members feel i need to amend my motion to talk about format at all or should i just amend it by saying uh format at the

101discretion or school board president if it's left open i think that's that's fine if it's not specified that's how i think it will work all right thank you any other discussion i guess i would like to make a motion to amend the uh the motion on the floor to include the four hold on hold on to include the four additional uh candidates selected so say it again i'd like to make a motion to amend the motion on the floor to include the additional four candidates that were selected by tonight's board members and i think we'll want to put those names in that emitted motion either now those candidates are brian ball jennifer sokol david aldrich and matt bennett okay so we're a motion and emotion and the motion inside the motion is to amend the

102original motion is there a second for that amendment i'm getting dizzy all the motion it does not appear it appears to die as an amendment without a second so we're back to the original motion and discussion is there any other discussion on the original motion could you please read the original motion again please mr o'connor mate and mr duane supported a motion to have a special meeting for a purpose of face-to-face interviews with the top three candidates from this evening's list of coat lark and hall can we have a roll call vote please mr kelly no mr o'connor yes uh mr mummy yes myself miss evans yes okay so we are not selecting a new board member tonight but we're going to talk to three potential board members should they still be interested after tonight

103um at a time within the next 10-ish days just to pull the board is um mondays are typically meet our typical meeting date does the 20th work for the five of you we do have a committee meeting that the agenda is by no means stock full of items matter of fact it's rather light we could cancel that meeting and have a uh six o'clock or seven o'clock meeting on the 20th which is monday i would have to obviously double check with our board president um kurt kramer to make sure he's available would that uh that work well as chair of the committee that that would be canceled i would again i i would be okay with us not meeting for the for this purpose for to have a good solid meeting a special meeting in

104other words cancel community staff relations to allow time for the special meeting in fact that would be my recommendation unless staff comes back and says there's urgent you know things that we have to deal with but otherwise i would make make that recommendation yeah there's nothing urgent that needs to be talked about at that meeting i was actually going to follow up with you this week so i can double check with president creamer it looks like monday is a tentative thumbs up um we'll certainly um kind of confirm that in the next few days and obviously call the meeting as we normally would now just know that we'll have six members we'll require four for a full four board member vote or that's how it gets back to the isd if we can't decide just

105like to point out that this is a great problem to have that we have so many qualified folks interested in this and i've spent four five six hours myself trying to figure out how to whittle this list down because they're all ads are more qualified than i am just to sit up here for sure so um and i i just want to add to and encourage uh all the interested parties and and if there are others you know the next elections november and 2022 and that's really when the board members are elected okay just happen so that we're in a predicament we have to appoint we don't actually have an election where we you know poll our community but in november of 2022 we will and so you know i do want to encourage um

106if there are people interested in running for school board that would be a perfect time to to put your name in the hat and let the electric decide you know who is best to represent our community on the school board and there are lots of opportunities to to get more involved between now and then as well whether a board meetings or um in individual schools and and thank you for taking the time i know you're probably you know the six question questionnaire was not an easy task it took i'm sure a few hours to complete that and obviously put all the paperwork together to apply for the position um i i thank you for taking the time and the interest and willingness to to put yourself on on youtube and and kind of you know

107debate these important issues with us so it's appreciated okay moving on to 8f superintendent you have any report tonight i have no other matters mr mumbi number nine introduction of other matters by members of the board if if if i could just quickly um recognize uh mr latig our athletic director who will be leaving sadly because he's one of the best in the state according to his peers and certainly in my book he's done an awful lot and in fact one of the reasons mason athletics is strong and we have so many kids participating is because we have a person like greg laddick at the helm he's helped my family he's helped my kids he's helped me i got to coach a little baseball thanks to mr laddig and i got to be on the

108athletic boosters board i got to sell popcorn at the concession stand he didn't throw me out so thank you mr laddig and i think that goes for the whole community i just want to make sure it was mentioned well again we have a worldwide audience watching i'll just add to that tiny bit that i i discussed it with him last wednesday and chastised him for leaving but he pointed out that he has a student still in mason schools he intends to remain a resident of the school district and he's not going far lansing community college is just down the road so he may see some of our student athletes at the next level after they leave mason so it's uh it's really great news that he's not going to be too far away we'll get

109to keep interacting with him and it'll be interesting to hear about the candidates to fill that position i guess the the other other does anyone else have other matters i have at least one thing that i think we should at least bring up tonight but does anyone else go ahead yeah um i had a just a quick comment about the um the success of the this year's pd um the three days of in-service training before school started i think went very well and the other matter it was culmination i think of of a lot of dei work was was imbued into our training this year and as such it i i am hoping that we can find a way to make that those resources and those that training material available to the public as a

110demonstration of of the work that we've been doing um so that that has come up on a few occasions i think that um that and the the um other matters that have been brought forth by the dei committee including the controversial issues policy those are all things that that i think we can um that's the best way for us to demonstrate the work and the investments that we put into our dei efforts is to to make that information available mr dwayne yeah so on september 1st i attended the first board meeting of the mason public schools foundation for this school year under new leadership as i shared last time a new board president there is barb byrum she introduced several candidates to fill out some additional director seats on the board there and uh happy

111to confirm that all three of them were unanimously voted on and those three individuals are jose janes alec findlay and shantanna simmons so we have outstandingly uh fulfilled board at the moment with a lot of different backgrounds perspectives and skills and i am feeling very excited for the things that they're planning to do this year i'm going a little different direction maybe a downer i don't know but um president executive order requiring all employers with a hundred employees or more to vaccinate their staff i i assume that we're digesting what that means for mason public schools and there'll be some report in the future that is correct we're still waiting for uh miosha to come out with some guidance on that um we do know that we obviously have more than 100 employees so that's

112either require vaccinations or tests i think it's every five days i believe mr brooks um we're still sorting that out and obviously once we get more direction from our miosha group we'll be sitting tight waiting for hot off the press news breaking news and then the other thing i just wanted to um point out is um at least anecdotally um while it was a difficult decision at the last board meeting on on masks that was rendered kind of moot two weeks later or a week later it sounds like we made the correct decision and and we would have had we would have impacted many more students and been forced to quarantine a lot more students had we not made that decision so while it was extremely difficult for me i feel i feel better about

113the decision now knowing that we've had a very successful start to the year at all buildings and the vast majority of our kids have been able to be in school every day so just wanted to say thank you for that and to point out that would have been in the hundreds so we kept a lot of kids in school a lot longer and you know under the current rules now when we get the test to stay that's going to help as well significantly um and we'll see kind of how those numbers you know fall out when we get results of the tests but that's going to be another vehicle for us to keep kids in school and so you know we're excited about doing that and we've got a good plan to get that kicked

114off soon and and we appreciate the community's support i mean i um since day one i know not all people agreed with masks i mean we certainly could have that debate for hours upon hours we could have 10 special meetings but when push came to shelves when it came time for kids to go to school and line up for that bus everybody was supportive parents students and students a phenomenal job and parents were certainly right behind them supporting them and so we appreciate everyone kind of putting you know the politics of it aside and doing what's best for not only their child but all the kids in mason public schools it certainly has gone a long way our staff's very appreciative of that you know we got a lot of people that boots on the

115ground you got bus drivers you've got food service we've got people that are integral parts of our school district that really appreciate the support and the cooperation and not having to you know debate and argue every step of the way it's been unanimous and so i just wanted to share that and share my gratitude to to our community for for stepping up while we're on on the subject real quick that reminded me of a question that i had the other days looking at the the copen19 dashboard and i noticed you know mentions on there you know new cases and then cumulative how long does a new case stay on there before it drops off it wasn't clear to me the dates didn't make a whole lot of sense for what was considered new for some

116of them yeah a person that's positive and isolated for 10 days is complete after the 10 days um however we have done some back and forth communication to affirm that somebody is returning so there are some older ones that are due to come off especially after the weekend um so that'll be cleaned up okay thank you yeah i guess i want to say to thank you to the health department for mandating the masks which is actually the reason why we didn't have to quarantine um not because we i mean we could have chosen to have the mass as well we didn't um the mass mandates that is but we did we did choose the mask mandate um we did choose the mat but correct but what uh my point being that that um the six

117foot three foot difference that that makes up the hundreds differences was an arbitrary decision by the county health department and the application of i mean it's a demonstration of how you know ridiculous that was so i do thank them for actually mandating that make making instead of putting that you know keeping that on our shoulders so and and consolidating the rules any other matters by members of the board moving on other matters by superintendent again no other matters okay we're back to um the second round of public comment if you spoke uh earlier you do not have the same opportunity now but if you have not and would like to feel free to step up to the podium and either fill out a form or state your name and address would anyone like to speak

118at the end of the meeting okay then um can i get a motion to adjourn so moved support moved and supported in discussion all those in favor aye aye opposed adjourned to 8 42 thank you everybody you