MAS Board of Education Live Stream

001it doesn't feel warm it just feels hello thank kirsten she said it was gonna feel different good evening i'd like to call to order the milan area school board of education regular meeting for wednesday july 20th for 2022 please rise for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right good evening everyone thank you for attending this evening here or online i just one reminder if you do want your attendance noted for the meeting please make sure to sign in on the sheet at the entrance so that your attendance can be noted in the minutes all board members are present except for miss rosen leitcher she is

002excused for this evening and other than that i don't have any other updates so in support of our strategic plan for communications to develop a comprehensive plan to foster student family staff and community engagement and partnerships this is the time that we have public comments a reminder this meeting is a meeting of the board of education and public for the purpose of conducting the school district's business it is not to be considered a public meeting there are two times for public participation during the meeting as indicated in the agenda when addressing the board you will be asked to state your name the board determines the amount of time granted to individuals or groups to speak each person shall be allowed to speak for up to three minutes board members may question speakers but are not

003obligated to answer questions or make statements or commitments in response to issues raised by the public in general such items will be referred to the superintendent for advisement investigation study and or recommendation or designated as future agenda items for board consideration i will give you a 30 second warning and then i ask you to finish your thought when the the timer goes off is there anyone that would like to address the board greatest of the board chair greatest of the board chair the superintendent and my fellow citizens who are here tonight my name is lafist gallimore and i'm here to share with you uh an innovative program at least i think it's an innovative program that we are trying to put together for our young people in washington county it's called the washington educational metrics

004institute and the uh the what it's designed to do is to help many of our kids who don't get their early preparation to prepare for post-secondary education uh for example uh we met with the ipsy school board last week and we prepared the presentation to them about some of the kids who probably will need this but they don't get that exposure early on to start preparing for post-secondary education so by detangling the 11th or 12th grade they're already behind scheduled in terms of many being competitive with some of their peers and so i would like to share with you that the program is divided into three components one is an online test taking practices and the way that's set up is that uh we will eventually have computers where we will have a demonstrated sat

005act test where the kids can actually come in and practice starting at a very low grade so by the time they get ready to take those tests uh in reality they are familiar with those tests they feel they may feel comfortable with those deaths they may feel confidence in taking those tests so they understand they understand the strategies that will at least improve their test scores beyond what they are now so that's one component the other component is called my college process these are a series of educational modules that we put together that are designed to help parents and the students understand how to navigate the post secondary education process and i'm sure most of you probably been through that and it's a very complex process if you don't have a support system to guide

006you through through it and to give you information and to help you understand how to fill out those fafsa forms you know how to research colleges how to look for scholarships and believe it or not last year in the year 2021 there was something like 3.7 billion dollars that was a pell grants that was returned to uh the government because they were not used because kids just i don't know whether it was because of covet and whether you know kids were preparing for a post-secondary education but that money was unspent so we have an opportunity to provide students with uh some prior preparation in terms of how to navigate that whole process the third part is uh um what was the third part bill yeah and you know and that's essentially what the program really

007is about is that we're just trying to help kids from what we call underserved communities and and the parents understand how to traverse that whole system the third component that i drew a blank on is what we call a community-based counseling program michigan ranks at the bottom of the barrel when it comes down to uh uh student-to-council ratio okay and that was exposed by the oxford incident that happened some months ago and what we're saying is that there are people probably in the community that can be trained to be community-based counselors they can be assigned to a student and that and a family and guide that family and their student through that process for a whole year and be there as a support system for those of those students and we have uh we plan

008to offer a training program for those community-based councils we plan to uh of course we have to do an eye-check background on every volunteer that comes into the program and we're also looking at trying to get we're working with u of m like uh edu community uh outreach education program and we have uh uh two uh uh churches in ypsilanti that have agreed to work with us as well on this second baptism agreed to host the computer section of the program brown chapa agreed to hold the educational modules that's where the students will meet on a regular basis so we do have some support plus we've been working with mishkan out of lansing we received the innovator grant from them to get started so we're making some progress and we're beginning to form a board

009of directors that will help guide this whole initiative over the years and we're not looking at this as being a short-term initiative you know from the very beginning bill and i and some of the others we talked about this being a sustainable program sustainable in the sense that hopefully within uh 30 years from now which i hope to be around by that time but you know making it a sustainable effort and that's the thing that we're doing now as we begin to build the foundation of this program is that we're looking at this as a long-term initiative not just a stop-gap gap initiative okay thank you great i have some documents here that i don't think i bought enough but uh if i don't know whether yeah that's exactly what i was hoping that you've

010had some some so you can hand to superintendent gearbox and then if you could uh email mr gearbot his web his uh email address is on our website okay just so that he's got your information unless it's on the what you have i well i had to print it down here so okay but anyway this is a a copy of the rollout that we do i'm sorry your time is expired okay so thank you yup i appreciate it thank you sounds like a program thank you are there others who would like to address the board good evening rachel hobbs thank you for allowing me to speak this evening so i was reviewing the board or the minute packet and or the meeting packet and i noticed that there's some some stuff going on with minutes

011again one of the issues i'm going to address is that the draft minutes for the last june meeting there have been discussions have there been discussions about inserting a link and of the superintendent's comments this is an official record these draft minutes if they're approved they become the official record of the meeting and so um i don't see those comments attached to the minutes i see the link but i don't see the comments attached and i have a concern with having the link in there is because what happens when the link or if the link becomes broken or something happens then people can't use that resource and these are no longer official minutes thing so i just want to know what the discussions are what the best practices are on this particular matter it's my

012understanding from the statute that these are official minutes and they need to be bound and maintained by the district [Music] i believe that the record needs to be the entire record and not just have an inclusion of the link and i'm going to request that you not approve these minutes until a complete draft of the official meeting record is available for the public to inspect and on file or for in one file one complete file and i also believe that this is in accordance with the oma so um a couple other things i've made several requests for the expenses and disbursements to be included in the meeting packet in the spirit of full transparency and trust within the community what is the mystery of why mr gerba will not include those expenses and disbursements you

013in the meeting packets i had several exchanges or a couple exchanges with mr girba about a concern that i had with items being dropped off during the school hours at the high school and and those items were placed in the hallway on a table and he told me that and i felt that that was a serious security concern and he told me that that would be addressed at the next admin meeting but in my discussions with him that got tabled until the summer admin meetings and i want to know what the status is what we've come up with you know what are we doing to make our schools safer what are we doing to make them a harder tar target you know are we talking about having one point of entry i know this is

014not the only issue that i've raised and i just want to see that something's being done we can't wait for lansing to do something we have to do something now as a community you know it's not relying on coordinating with our local authorities and in law enforcement what are we doing now i don't hear those discussions i don't see anything going on the trainings are not enough we need to do something to make our schools more secure please let me know thank you thank you ms hopps hello hi good evening my name is beth vandergrift i live in milan and i have two students that attend milan area schools i'm also the founder of patriot freedom book club a group formed to combat censorship in our local school libraries as i'm sure you're well aware

015there's a concerted effort by other groups across the u.s to label dozens of books often found in school libraries as obscene or pornographic in order to have them removed from circulation the books in question are often disproportionately about or authored by people of color or members of the lgbtq plus community i'm here to show my support for all of the library staff and teachers who are now under attack i trust the professionals who staff our school libraries to make age-appropriate choices regarding the books available to our children i appreciate that in recent years there has been an effort to acquire more books that explore and celebrate the diversity of cultures and personal experiences in our community and i'm not alone in my support a survey conducted in march of this year by two independent research

016institutes at the request of the american library association yielded the following results and i quote large majorities of voters 71 percent overall oppose efforts to have books removed from their local libraries including a majority of democrats at 75 percent independents at 58 percent and republicans at 70 percent most voters and parents hold librarians in high regard have confidence in their local libraries to make good decisions about what books to include in their collections and agree that libraries and their communities do a good job of offering books that represent a variety of viewpoints end quote also as i know the board is already aware as we have all seen on facebook videos yelling at school board members during a public meeting or complaining on facebook is not actually an effective way to ban books a u.s

017supreme court decision in 1982 prohibited school boards from removing books simply because they don't like the content accordingly myelin area schoolos has established has an established and eagle legally necessary policy available on their website that outlines the procedure one would follow in order to have a book removed from the library perhaps following the policy would produce more void more results than screaming into the void earlier today i started a gofundme to show our support of all the school library staff and to raise funds for them to use at their discretion so they can continue to promote literacy and maintain a diverse collection of words 30 seconds as of 6 pm after only 8 hours the fund was at over 400 and is still growing i hope that anyone who is watching who is associated with

018our schools and particularly our libraries will take this as a testament to how much the majority of the community supports and appreciates you if anyone would like more resources links to the stats and policies i mentioned today or to donate you can find more information on the patriot freedom book club facebook page thank you all and keep up the good work thank you hello um before my time starts i just want to let anyone who has kids know that they probably should leave the room that's just fair warning okay i'm just okay all right exactly all right so i had no intention of coming tonight to address this topic since i've already discussed it with mr gearback and mr sislow however i'm here because it was brought to my attention that people in the community

019have started to go fund me to fight the censoring of books in milan schools and a previous board member and possibly a current board member family member has a donated to it i want to read some of these books out loud i want the people fighting to keep these books to hear with their own ears what exactly they're fighting for we want inappropriate books to be removed from the school system however they would not be banned they would still be available at the local library for parents to sit down and read porn with their children if they choose to do so mylan public schools was one of the worst schools in the entire state when i searched for these books these books have been verified by mr gearbox to be in your school book number

020one push this story is about a seven-year-old little girl being raped continuously by her mother and father my daddy stinks the white drips off his dick lick it i hate that but then i feel the hot cha-cha feeling when he's inside me a girl having her father's dick in her mouth knows things that other girls don't know my hand is going through my hand is going through the smell of mama my hand is pushing daddy's dick out of my face mama pushes my head down in her i gag from the smell daddy pops my in and out and i come he bites me hard he slaps my thighs like cowboys do horses on tv i shiver he orgasms in me his body is shaking my is popping like grease in a frying pan his dick

021is soft he starts sucking my titties i hate it afterwards i go to the bathroom and i smear on my face book number two all boys aren't blue raping is about a young man raping his younger cousin you told me to take off my pants which i did you stood in front of me fully erect and said taste it at first i refused but then you said come on man taste it this is what boys like us do when we like each other i finally listened to you he reached down and pulled your dick out i quickly went to giving you head i sat back and enjoyed it as i could tell you were too we both got both got up and went into the bedroom and got completely naked the only thing i knew

022about anal sex previous to this was that it was painful nervous and drunk i listened and got on my stomach and you got on top and slowly inserted your dick into me book number three identical this one's about a daddy raping a seven-year-old little girl kaylee was secure in the aura of daddy's love she tried to sit up but daddy pushed her gently back down against the mattress stay like that for daddy i want to teach you something new he lifted her nightgown rolled it up over her belly coaxed her thorough bred legs apart she squirmed in protest don't move daddy said don't be afraid this won't hurt you you'll like it i promise he kissed the length of her torso down to the small naked v book number four and these are books that

023are four of numerous in mineland high school 30 seconds lucky after he did come at me he got up off the ground and started dressing me you're going to have a baby what you going to do about it he f'ed me he effed me hard when he came he came loudly and snorted he began to kneed his fist against the opening of my vagina inserting his fingers into it three or four at a time something tore and he got wet and excited he worked his whole fist up into my vagina and pumped it after reading these books out loud i would hope that this is one topic that the liberals and the conservatives can come together on if you think this is acceptable for this trash to be in your schools then there's no other

024way to put it you are a sick pervert hello my name is george elder and for the i'm sorry what's your name i didn't get your name at the beginning of your comments thank you hello my name is george elder and for the record i'm at a uniform so i'll be calling my employer and state and i'm making comment in uniform but anyway i'm kind of concerned about the books in the uh school this one's called monday's not coming by tiffany d johnson page 194 she did your homework and you ate her coochie page 194 because in that picture looked like monday was once licking your box page 248 you just here to get some dick that's in the modeling middle school another one that's served on page 246 you said i tiptoed toward a

025door peeking through the window at a boy his pants around his ankles squeezed between april's straddle legs and she laid on top of the teacher's desk that's inappropriate and that's in the modern middle school it's crazy am i to say i'm out of uniform can you just turn around to see your shirt no no no okay i would just like to say a couple of things can i get your name first sure my name is gwen lacroix so first of all i'd like to say yes maybe in middle school those books are inappropriate those were from the high school library and unfortunately people go through situations like those situations i wish they didn't happen i wish that didn't happen but i have a third grader here yeah he left because he was uncomfortable with that

026because those books aren't in simon's library thank goodness but my child takes out books on grammar because he wants to read them on flowering plants because he wants to read them and i want him to be able to have access to any books that are age appropriate obviously the high school books are not age appropriate for him and i am also concerned about safety in the schools you know i'm much more concerned that my child is going to get shot in school that he's then that he's going to read an inappropriate book the other thing i would like to say is that i grew up in london england in the 70s and 80s in the shadow of world war ii i went to private schools in london because my parents taught at the american school

027in london and on jewish holidays i was one of five children in school so i am well aware of what burning books and banning books looks like and it's just simply un-american thank you thank you are there others hi i'm janet mcfaul so i guess i didn't plan on talking tonight but i used to work as a para in english classes and and i don't blame any teachers or for librarians for the choice but there's somebody that must be the bottom line but when i was in these classes i was in junior english classes and they were reading a lot of things but one that stood out was called kindred by octavia butler so many situations of rape going on i was in the halls with those kids after the times were reading that book

028there was way more sexual conversation than there ever was um when we were reading other books it was just promoting all of that that what are we doing we got to promote education but why do we have to use those type of books i don't get it thank you are there others we definitely hear your concern i just i do want to remind folks that there is a policy it's policy 9130 matters regarding instructional materials so if there's a request or suggestion or complaint or grievance that relates to instructional materials such as textbooks library books reference works and or other instructional aids used in the district the following procedure shall be followed the criticism is to be addressed to the principle in writing and shall include author title publisher the complainant's familiarity with the material

029objected to sections objected to by a page and item and the reasons for the objection and just a reminder as part of that policy no challenge material may be removed solely because it presents ideas that may be unpopular or offensive to some you can find this policy at mylonaryschools.org our district board of education then you click here for searchable neola policies then you can click the search button in the upper right hand corner and perform a search for 9130 and that's where you'll find that policy thank you mr caramel can i ask a question have we received any complaints about any of the books that were mentioned today have received two emails but we have not received any complaints through the board policy procedure thank you all right next up on the agenda is routine

030matters for approval i need a motion to approve the corrected minutes for the workshop meeting of may 24 2022 move by pharaoh support by tiger it's been moved and supported to approve the corrected minutes of the workshop meeting of may 24 2022 discussion mr freight that's correct no there's there's times to try to capture people that necessarily didn't sign in like um if there were people that were um that we knew had attended the meeting or were on stage for some some purpose that was tried to capture who was attending attending the meeting so without being able to capture that we've gone to if you've signed in that's that's going to be the official attendance record if you've signed in andrew can i also add that if you speak at the meeting as well so

031if you do not sign in but you speak at the meeting you will also be listed as attended but that's the only the only time or at any point during the meeting so i think in the current board the meetings not the corrected minutes but the other minutes that are on the agenda we listed the gentleman from who was here to honor connie cox while he did not sign in because he spoke and made a presentation he is included as attending okay or speaks or speaks good question so can i be very clear so if as we had with the tennis team if you are in attendance to be honored but you do not sign in or you don't speak you will not be listed as attending that meeting just want to make sure we're

032all clear any questions or concerns all right it's been moved and supported by to approve the corrected minutes of the workshop meeting of may 24th 2022 miss haika pharaoh yes freight yes haika yes kyger yes macchio yes cislow yes motion carry 6-0 next up is i need a motion to approve the minutes of the workshop meeting of june 2022 uh june 22nd of 2022 moved by pharaoh support by tiger discussion mister or mr cell yes um is there some concern that we should maybe look into having the link as mrs hobbs is appropriated i thought there was a summary of the comments i didn't know that i mean is the link just the exact verbatim i thought we were staying away from that i'm a little confused on i would propose maybe that we adjust

033the minutes to just say the superintendent um made comments for this meeting and then we can move forward um before future meetings in regards to this so that we can approve these minutes so my proposal would be to strike through the link and say that mr gearball superintendent made comments would be would be something that i would move to to append to this motion are there other thoughts is there a way to re revise the comments and like add a summary later like maybe table the minutes or there's that's a possibility too i mean there's many possibilities so i i think we have to check the policy i think there's a we should check the policy before we table it because i think there are timing issues in terms of yeah i mean the uh

034the policy is that they are approved at the next meeting so that's why i would propose that we just say the superintendent made comments and then we can we can have a discussion as far as how how that's summarized and move forward for future meetings are there other thoughts or do we we i mean we can put emotion and they have a motion to table it as well i would just add for information that comments made at board meetings are not required by law to be part of the minutes so approving them either as they are or as mr sislow suggested would not violate any state laws i i would add to that that the open meetings act does not require that any comments be included in a meeting minute um the meeting minutes as

035drafted today comply with open meetings act they also comply with masb guidelines and as we've discussed in the past maybe not the link but the rest of the minutes comply with you know best practices that are offered by the masb any other comments so we do have a motion uh and support to approve the minutes of the workshop meeting for june 22nd of 2022. miss haika freight no haika yes kyger yes macchio yes cislow yes pharaoh yes motion carries five to one next up i need a motion to approve the bills and reimbursement of inspect spec expenses move by pharaoh support it's been moved and supported to approve the bills and reimbursement of expenses any questions or concerns mr cislow mr pharaoh i had a few questions for krista they were readily responded to the

036district is still waiting on some state and federal funds one of those i received that should improve our bottom line we're waiting for a lot of grant funding for the month of june the scholarships that have been paid out many of them were through the foundation we also had the edna meade and the muriel gilbert scholarship that run through the district the district also received checks from a few local organizations for scholarships that we send on to college colleges and universities once the scholarships have been awarded no other questions on the check detail thank you mr pharaoh any others swimming supported to approve the bill's reimbursement of expenses miss heika uh haika yes kyger yes macchio yes cislow yes pharaoh yes freight yes motion carries 6-0 next up is a board organization i need a

037motion to adopt the following resolutions to name jpmorgan chase chase bank united bank and trust fifth third bank u.s bank michigan school district liquid asset fund bank of new york mellon first merchants bank and mbia michigan classes depositories for general fund payroll debt retirement trust and agency food service athletic and internal accounts for district monies for the 2022-2023 fiscal year and that the following staff members signatures be attached to the respective accounts as listed general fund payroll invoice debt retirement food service trust and agency athletics is the superintendent the super assistant superintendent and the finance director high school is the mylon high school principal the mylon high school assistant principal and superintendent the middle school is the milan middle school principal the milan middle school assistant principal and superintendent simons elementary is the simon's principal

038finance director and superintendent paddock elementary school is the paddock principal finance director and superintendent be it further moved that the superintendent or designee is authorized to transfer funds from savings to checking and checking to savings and is authorized to buy time-saving certificates and invest district monies in accordance with state and or federal law and board policy b is to designate the superintendent or designee to post notices of meetings see is the law firm of true law firm pc be retained as the district's legal counsel for the 2022-2023 fiscal year further move that the superintendent is authorized to extend the retainer relationship with troon law firm pc for one year upon its anniversary date further move the other legal council may be retained for specific purposes as needed indeed to approve the appointments that we will

039determine in regarding the voting delegates and the alternate voting delegates for masb do i have a motion move by tiger support by pharaoh it's been moved and supported um is there anybody who would like to be the voting delegate for emma for the conference for the masb conference i will be i'll go ahead and be the delegate is there anybody else you can put me on there too carrie do we have alternate voting delegates i can be an alternate andrew freight alternate i'm gonna be honest i don't know that i'll be able to attend the okay and hike up okay all right um discussion concerns regarding the this motion can you repeat who the delegates are yeah the delegates are sislo and macchio and the alternate voting delegates are freight and haika thank you yep

040mr sislow that's right um just in the interest of due diligence and i think mrs like i always ask this so um with through law retaining that do we ever bid that out or see if there's anything different to save the district any costs or we have not bid it out there about three law firms in the state that handle school law specifically i've talked with other superintendents and the majority of the districts in the state of michigan use troon they they know our policies they know our history they work with us on a lot of individual situations so a continued relationship with them is what i would recommend good question any other concerns i will say just since i've been on the board for 10 years now i one of the things that i've

041appreciated with troon is that mr diesel is almost always 99 of the time ben um the person that is our contact and and addresses things for us so not only you know are we using the same law firm and they know our background but having rob at um attending to a lot of matters i think has been great with consistency so and i think he's done a terrific job any other questions or concerns or comments right it's been moved and supported to adopt the resolution to name the banks and the staff member signatures and further removed that the superintendent or designee is authorized to transfer funds in accordance with state or federal law and board policy to designate the superintendent or does it need to post notices of meetings and that the law firm of

042troon will be retained as the district's legal counsel for 2020 2022-23 and the voting delegates to masb will be cislo and macchio and the alternate voting delegates will be freight and haika miss heiko tiger yes macchio yes cyslo yes pharaoh yes freight yes hika yes motion carries 6-0 it's part of the strategic plan initiative for business and operations to maintain improved facilities and equipment to support a safe and innovative programs i need a motion in regards to the school loan revolving fund to approve the annual loan activity application resolution for borrowing from the school loan revolving fund as presented in attachment a move by pharaoh support by tiger it's been moved and supported mr gerba just a brief explanation so this is borrowing that was approved by the voters when we voted on the different

043bond proposals on the last one being in 2009 because we want to keep our millage rate as low as possible for our community members we entered into an agreement with the state of michigan as do a lot of districts to borrow money from the school loan revolving fund the best way that i can explain this to to most people is it's like a second mortgage so during the early years of paying back the bonds our local tax collections did not provide enough funds to pay back all of the current bond holders so we are allowed to borrow from the state to make those payments at some point you then kind of click over to because you've paid off some of the bonds that your tax collections more than cover the cost of the bonds and

044that's when you start repaying the school bond loan fund we are once again this year borrowing but we are about a year year and a half from starting to pay back the school bond loan fund because we have some major final bond payments this year some bonds that mature and that will get us into the payoff mode with the school bond loan fund this really is a formality but we do need board approval we would have to come up with a lot of cash very quickly if we didn't approve borrowing from the school bond loan fund any questions or concerns oh i will have the school bond loan fund has a mandatory payoff timeline of 30 years and we are on track to meet that timeline any other questions mr sister yeah mr pharaoh i

045just want to add uh mr gearball summarize that uh quite well um the borrowing of the funds from the school loan fund has been a standard operating practice for a number of years so um i just wanted to comment that you summarized that quite well any others all right it's been moved and supported to approve the annual loan activity application resolution for borrow borrowing from the school loan revolving fund as presented in attachment a mishika machio yes cislo yes pharaoh yes freight yes haika yes kyger yes motion carries 6-0 next up in support of business and operations i also need a motion to approve the usac e-rate purchases as presented in attachment b approved by haika support by macchio it's been moved and supported to approve the usac e-rate purchases as presented in attachment b

046mr gearbaugh so these purchases include a replacement for our firewall for the district which is at the end of life it also includes the installation and maintenance agreement for that firewall it also includes updating our battery backup systems for all of our major network components including our phones and again the installation and maintenance of those and then it is also purchasing um racks so for those of you that don't know all of the servers and everything that we have are in racks and over the last few years they've changed the normal size of those racks and so new servers and things that we purchased can't be installed in the current racks that we have so we're needed to update those the nice piece of this purchase is that these are what are called e-rate eligible

047a little explanation on e-rate e-rate comes from the universal service administrative company it's handled by the fcc universal service fund so a lot of us that pay phone bills pays a small fee on each phone bill to help with universal fcc items and through that they then provide support to governmental agencies based on several factors one being the level of free and reduced lunch in the district so we as a district qualify for 70 reimbursement so the total cost of these purchases is eighty thousand nine hundred and twenty seven dollars the e rate fund will be covering fifty six thousand six hundred and forty eight dollars and ninety cents of that and the district will be paying twenty four thousand two hundred seventy eight dollars and ten cents it's already been through the entire e-rate

048process they help us bid it out um they have to be approved by the e-rate agency so the good thing here is for twenty four thousand dollars we're getting eighty one thousand dollars worth of needed materials for the district thank you any other any questions comments concerns it's been moved and supported to approve the usac e-rate purchases as presented in attachment b miss psycho system yes pharaoh yes freight yes haika yes kiker yes macchio yes motion carries 6-0 [Applause] next up to help with our strategic goal of learning environment to improve and foster a safe learning environment that supports the academic social emotional physical creative cultural needs of the individual i need a motion to approve the student device purchases as presented in attachment c so moved support by tiger it's a move and supported

049to approve the student device purchases as presented in attachment c mr gearbonne so these are annual purchases of chromebooks for our students we normally replace at least two grade levels so that we're kind of on a five to six year cycle of replacing the devices as the chromebooks that's about their life expectancy this year we are adding a third grade level we we normally replace the devices at the sixth and ninth grade and then those students keep those devices through middle school and then they loop back around so we are replacing the devices at sixth and ninth grade this year we are also adding second grade as paddock has not had a refresh to their chromebooks and actually you'll notice that it's a little bit different device we're going to try and work with the

050second graders to help transition them from the ipads they have in kindergarten and first grade to the chromebooks that they will have in third grade and so actually for second grade only we are buying a chromebook touch so the screen is touch sensitive and you can still do a lot of the things similarly to the way that you do them on an ipad but they do have the keyboard and we can start to work on keyboarding skills at that point so it would be a nice transition device um as you can see they're really not that much more expensive um but we feel that that will be beneficial the second grade and then at the simon's elementary school we are putting in one lab of 35 chromebooks so that the students have those devices when

051they go to technology class and then of course we buy protective cases for all of those devices is there any thought to getting as we go through the refresh the similar devices in the other um grades i know in our household one of the major complaints about the chromebooks is it doesn't have the touch screen because everyone's so used to using it it's something we can investigate i think what we have to look at is while it's not a major cost um what are we looking at about 23 dollars per device times 1900 devices no i got you starts to get more expensive nope thank you any other questions all right it's been moved and supported to approve the student device purchases as presented in attachment c miss haika cislo yes pharaoh yes freight yes

052hiker yes kyger yes macchio yes motion carries 6-0 next up i need a motion to approve the social studies curriculum purchases as presented in attachment d moved by pharaoh support by haika okay before we have a discussion we will have a presentation by mr mcmahon um in regards to the social studies curriculum and i think we're going to go down to the front row to watch this presentation well so good evening you guys hear me okay all right thanks for giving me the time to present um it's kind of been a long time coming here with this work as i'll explain a little bit but it is good to be in front of you talking about finally our social studies purchase that we started a couple years back um i i forwarded you um a

053link to the presentation not much has changed since you received it um some of the links i have um you've already had access to but i will access some of them in the presentation um so the first thing i want to do is um i want to say i asked the teachers that were involved to not come tonight to not give us a night in july they gave plenty throughout the year and if we were able to do this during the year it might be different but i said please stay home or hopefully on vacation or somewhere not anywhere near you know your work because it's their time to take a break but these are the folks that helped me through the process so first i had a lead pilot committee they're the ones that

054really helped me address the first formal meetings that we had to get at this work and that's sarah farmer in fifth grade jake lacrosse in third grade eric romans who teaches at the middle school he's transitioning grades this year heard more like at the high school he's working with our seniors this year and probably next and then myself when it came time for the committee to forward on some recommendations for us to pilot some materials we added teachers to um to that piece so we can get a more comprehensive overview and that's mary jo monroe tracy klein lisa drawhiim terry bigham steven price von price and matt walling all those folks ran at least one unit for us in the second semester of the year to it's for us to get a better feel for

055the materials um going back to like the reasoning of why we're doing this um i noticed on you know on the table we've had these up here for a while but the the board priorities that we set a couple years back well one of those in fact the goals even before the board priorities was actually a goal was to get a new social studies curriculum but that transitioned to the priorities but there's three of the five priorities are lined up directly with what we're trying to do here the socialized curriculum and that's expanding relevant opportunities for our students in individualizing the the program fostering community engagement and partnerships and we pick two programs that can do that if we if we use them right which i hope we do and then supporting academic creative and

056cultural needs of individuals so that aligns directly to priorities we wanted to get a new curriculum we needed one a big reason for that is to create k-12 alignment we talked about that um this goes back to when we even did a science purchase back in 2018. um so i'll talk about alignment for a second there is a little bit of a misunderstanding that there was supposed to be new social studies standards coming out and that's not actually true the michigan k12 social studies standards have been around for a while they get updated but it's the same um set of standards that's been the base platform anyways what is new is something called the c3 framework it's been around for a couple years now it's not a new set of standards there was a movement

057years ago to create national standards for social studies and they were linked with common core and that created some controversy so the powers that be in the social studies worlds university and academia decided to create a framework by which you can apply your standards so we still use the michigan standards and there's this framework that we should be using to apply the framework c3 stands for career college and civic life it's got um five disciplinary areas and it's all designed for what they call the arc of inquiry and it's to get students to start inquiring a little more to think a little more and like a little differently and that's what the c3 framework does and so we're we're looking for materials that would align to not only give us a k12 structure but also

058to be tied to the c3 framework another piece of the programs we're looking for is to connect ourselves a little closer to the disciplinary literacy frameworks the essentials you might have heard about remember we talked about the elementary school the literacy essentials well they've created documents for k5 and 612 that are disciplinary literacy essentials so it's it's really trying to get students to read think and write a little bit more actively in their content areas it's across the content areas the core content and so we were looking for those three things within our programs and then the third kind of major bullet was to engage our students with the technology we have let's get programs that are a little bit more resource rich and get them using those tools to engage a little more deeply

059the instructional framework i've already mentioned it the arc of inquiry within the c3 framework and the disciplinary literacies is to transform the experience i mean really what it comes down to is kind of one of the foundational reasons for public schooling is to socialize folks to get people to be active participants in civilization in society which is really kind of the cool thing about social studies because that's the curriculum and the content that we can do that and so we're trying to promote this idea of inquiry-based get kids thinking a little bit more thinking a little bit differently it's not just about learning historical facts it's about trying to engage civically and so that was kind of the framework we're going by but i do want to express the fact that the process doesn't outweigh

060the content there's still a good valid reason to have historical content so it's our job to balance those things between knowing facts and knowing history and then being able to apply them to your life and to your situation as growing young adults um i i did want to share with you i don't know if you had a chance to look but this is on our website these are curriculum progressions i'll try to link in and see what it does to my slide here i'll just go to simon's so we have um what we call curriculum progressions in all of our core areas and they need to be updated routinely but this is what we based it on this is like our foundation of um what we have been teaching as a guide for social studies

061and so we were looking for programs that kind of lined up with this the ones that we find that i'm going to recommend tonight aren't perfectly aligned we have to adjust this but they're they match so that's kind of like a foundation upon which we were building like this is what we do where do we need to go but i want to share these with you because they'll change we got to do some work this year hopefully we get the programs approved and we start using them but we'll realign those documents as appropriate nothing radically would change maybe maybe a unit goes from one grade level to the next or the order we do them in the grade levels that's a real thing so to go through the selection process we actually started back in

0622019 with informal conversations and that is not only amongst our staff teaching staff and principals but also with other curriculum directors in the county i work with wayne county quite a bit for instructional resources so talking to folks over there and you start to just have a conversation hey what are you using for social studies what do you know what are you learning maybe go to professional development at the administrative level around the c3 framework just to get our kind of bearings around what we're trying to do obviously kovid the pandemic put a pause in that so we were able to kind of formalize our process last fall in 20 2021 and that was engaging that committee around some formal meetings we held six uh formal meetings multiple um informal conversations and in those beginning

063meetings um we went through and discussed the framework the arc of inquiry what we were looking for and we narrowed down to seven programs we wanted to kind of dig a little deeper in to see if they were worth investigating further i i will show you kind of a notes document that we used it was a guiding document for us to evaluate the curriculums and you can see across the bottom of the different tabs but this document was based upon five different domains so it's you can see domain one up here is you know agree based like how strong does it go towards inquiry we looked at supporting culturally relevant and responsive education as a second domain i'm trying to scroll and look a third domain was standards-based instruction assessment how closely is it aligned

064within the c3 frameworks and we can tie it to our michigan standards because they're not all michigan-based products the fourth is high quality diverse sources and that was going back to the technology we have a lot of technology at our hands we need to use that differently and better and then the fifth was the instructional supports and continuous pd that our teachers can access and so we went through yeah it's from a rubric that's based on inquiry-based social studies kind of curriculum evaluation framework we adapted a little bit to meet our needs but we just tabbed it out for the different products and kind of went through and this is these are the domains and the notes we took as we went through the resources to kind of that down to what we wanted to

065try to pilot so we much like science purchase years back we came up with a split decision we didn't find one program k12 that met all of our needs and so we are pushing forward on a pilot program we pushed forward on a program called inquiry journeys it's the company's called inquired with ed capitalized at the end inquire ed is how they say it and we piloted units in grades first through fifth looking for a k5 purchase there and we do recommend this program for purchase i'll explain a little more detail and in secondary we went with houghton mifflin harcourt hmh we call it we did pilot units in sixth grade through tenth grade but the purchase would be four six through twelfth um i will say plan b because in the past we we

066try to pilot two programs it's gonna evaluate two at one time plan b here was to not make a purchase it was just go back to our mesa units what we used and to renew a tci for one more time with secondary that's not cost prohibitive but that would have been our backup option because we didn't find two programs that we thought were worthy of um investigating so we took that risk we were going to look at one at each elementary and secondary and go from there and see what happens fortunately we found two programs that we liked so inquiry journeys will be our k-5 that's a recommendation i'm making to the board for your approval um i linked in the scope and sequence and i actually want to show you that a little bit

067because i'll talk about it here um one really great thing about well one thing i'll say um these programs they're capable of becoming so resource rich that they're overwhelming and because they can load them up with content and a lot of them have some sort of online platform whether they're fully online or a hybrid model they're just loaded and they get kind of overbearing so one thing we like about inquiry journeys is it's approachable it narrows down to three units with a lot of modules in each unit per grade level fifth grade actually has four modules or four units but that's like doable the time we can commit to social studies we thought this program just from the get-go was like okay this is achievable and when you look at the structure every unit starts

068with inquiry question um i can speak a little bit now it'll be about one and second grades i pay close attention to this um the middle one there how can we respond to our changing landscape that was the question that drives like the whole unit and the kids the students it's broken down is streamlined into modules and it's broken down to address that question in four different ways with the idea of that at the end of every unit they're creating some sort of project or they have the ability to whether we choose to do that or not because that's heavy work we want to do at least one project per grade level k5 but you can do that in any one of the units so it's actually producing something that's the idea that's kind of

069the arc of inquiry is identify a question evaluate your sources get talking about it and then produce something do something with that information so that's the whole design we really like to structure this program and then we put it to use in the in the pilot sessions and we got pretty terrific responses it was instant student engagement they were just glued to it right away because they have cool resources like that the one i told you about the changing landscape started with a really great video that we actually showed other adults because we got to see this video it's cool it starts with a view of the chicago shoreline and how it's a rapid movie how it changed from you know a marsh to the city it is and it talks about a timeline through

070it builds that was the whole premise of that inquiry unit it was really just really engaging the kids loved it and that just hooks them it's a lot like mystery science that we bought at the elementary levels where you hook them early with something cool and then they go investigate we found a lot of diverse other resources in terms of audio one of the big things about this program is the protocols that you use to teach the inquiry-based teaching that's going to take some work our pd is going to be focused on inquiry-based teaching more than knowing the content teachers know the content and it's going to take some work and so it's it's not as resource-heavy it's not it is tied to the standards but it's really heavy into teacher protocols so we have

071to do our job of whittling through what's usable and what is going to be user friendly um for our students and getting to that end goal of of driving from inquiry to something we can use in lieu of having our teachers up here this is something i added i don't think you saw this yet from the weekend i asked them to share some quotes about their experiences the first one the first quote there at the top it's really that resources are designed for differentiated learning that there's a lot of options to engage kids in different ways and that's a good thing for us the second quote is really around the students were actively engaged like throughout the unit they were excited to do the unit which is terrific that's what you want then the third

072quote gets around the fact that it spurred discussion students were talking not only to the teacher about the content to each other and that was a terrific experience i will say i observed the lessons um throughout these units and it was really great there was a lot of cross-curricular connections in second grade um mary jo monroe she was doing the changing landscapes and she was also doing the science doing um a weather unit and she was able to tie those together and actually do some cross unit or content projects or conversations which was really cool and then in first grade it was um tracy klein and she was doing i think hers was around weather actually that unit um for social studies a climate um unit but the kids were so engaged that she changed

073her vocab she's a protocol for how she does vocabulary lessons that she actually used the vocabulary from that unit and swapped out her vocabulary lesson and used those and the kids actually designed it a powerpoint around that it was just really great you just see the kids were just buzzing about it and she did that because they wouldn't stop talking about it they're like can we use this for vocabulary she's like that's a great idea let's do that and so they did and so you can see right away that there's there's options for cross-curricular movement which is what we would really like to do that's not going to be easy but it's at least it's there at the secondary level so 612 we moved on with a little bit more formalized curriculum which i would

074expect at a 612 level it's certainly aligned to the c3 framework and the michigan standards tie into it it's this one is really resource rich much more than the the k6 program as we would expect and so the teacher's job here is less on the protocol piece but navigating the content we've got to make the content palatable and able to be navigated by the students it's similar in structure to the tci program we had where the plan would be to have a classroom set of texts but then an online program the kids can access in class and then at home as well they wouldn't be taking text home with them because they're as you expect the big thick history books that we don't need to be looking around it's the ed platform hmh that we

075use for other programs our science program at um three grades three eight and every day math is tied in to the ed platform that's not right hm mcgraw-hill is everyday math um connect ed works with some intervention programs at the elementary level but we're familiar with the program that's what i'm saying the platform of connect ed they call it ed and it integrates well with google classroom and schoology which we use extensively at the middle school in high school and then some words from the teachers that were able to pilot this was all three grades at the high school and three grades at the or all three years of middle school and three grades of the high school that it's research rich and engages for inquiry which is what we want so it kind of

076lines you up to do that it makes that a little bit easier for the teacher it's a very usable structure that there's plenty of differentiation for the teachers to use to engage kids differently and also for the students and their learning it is adaptable the reading levels are interchangeable you can upgrade them and change them for the level of the student that you need and one quote that i heard in two classes at the high school and one at the middle school was that it was really tied to reading apprenticeship which is a practice that we implemented back when i was the principal of high school years ago and we try to hold on to because it's really good literacy practices and discipline in the core disciplines um and a lot of three of the

077teachers that i talked to specifically about this they're like it reminds me a lot of reading and apprenticeship which is like hey that's great the four domains of reading friendship we can tie that to social studies that's what we've been trying to do since i was here as principal so we're really happy the way that program works it's going to take some work it's it's heavy for the teachers but we're confident that they're going to be able to to get through and then the last piece i want to share with you oh i will also add um the research around the programs because i know you probably ask is more about inquiry than about the success of the programs because there's not a lot of great um standardized assessments for social studies programs so they

078focus more on the instructional piece of it i did link in a white paper the inquiry ed summary of it it's in the inquiry ed journeys piece about the power of using inquiry for teaching and that's where the research follows and both of these programs and so i don't have anything linked in there from hmh i can get that for you i can get the link to work but um that's the fcc the program's around the instructional piece of it so one thing another thing you need to know is about the professional development because that's a big piece of a purchase as we buy the materials we got to be able to use them effectively and there's two different approaches here because they're two different vendors and so inquiry journeys they utilize what they call

079inquiry advocates which is essentially a train the trainer model and their recommendation is one per building because we're a smaller school and they said nope that will work just fine give us an inquiry advocate from paddock and one from simon's and then they'll get some specialized training and then they will bring that back to the staff we'll have our principals and myself tied into that training as well but that's how that's they intend for that to work and they have a really great pd program we they invited us to attend a lot of the sessions and some were applicable to us some are not i mean you they have like so many you can just choose from that are free for teachers to go to and we jumped in a bunch of them and they

080were great and they're all uh teacher-led so it could be teachers from across the country leading a session on a different inquiry in a specific unit a project they used and if you want to dial into that you could and you could interact with them a little bit because it was live but it's online hmh for the secondary option what we did is we purchased hours of pd from them we can purchase more if we need but we started with eight hours and the idea there is it's online but live it's not recorded so we have to schedule it and they'll be with a person one-on-one the plan there and i have to work with the principals is we're going to schedule a one or two hour kickoff uh before the beginning of the year

081and part of that they've already done in the pilot because because of our size like in the middle school with three pilot teachers we have three socialist teachers so there's a new one in the mix now um hopefully soon so they've already seen some of that they know how to use the platform but we'll take that a step further and then we'll get into the content and then we have individualized pd that we can access per the course content so each grade level can have their own and so we're just going to schedule as we need we'll do the kickoff training in the beginning and then we'll probably meet you know somewhere end of october maybe around that pd day that's usually around the 30th um and we'll see how it fits into our schedule

082if i want to pull social teachers and the principals will let me during a pd session we'll do that if it's after school maybe we'll pay them an hour or they stipe in to do some extra training but that's how that's gonna work so with that's kind of um you have to schedule it with them but it's sort of when you need it and when you want it so that is the plan for professional development and both companies are great the vendors are really supportive we can there's a live customer support from for both of them i wouldn't say around the clock but i can access them most time i need to so that is my summary okay [Music] can you expound upon the the pilot just a little bit more like how how many

083teachers how many i think how is it just a lesson or what what's the problem no essentially um so we're two different pilots so there was elementary and then there was um secondary so elementary we piloted in uh first second third fourth and fifth and they got access to a unit they actually just they can cater the access you get so they only gave us access to one unit per grade level another piece i didn't mention is the units also tie in novels for the students i had to buy those separate it's just one classroom book that's a read aloud but that was kind of cool to see because they can connect that to their literacy units so we got access to a unit for those teachers and then i bought the text or the

084novels they needed one grade needed to others needed one and then they just ran with the unit and we attended trainings throughout you may have a chance to ask questions about how this works and they just ran with it it's what they do they just play with it really essentially um and at the high school level um it's different they give you access to the full course basically and they sent uh classroom sets of texts so if we order it we already have them um in some of the grade levels and so they just have to kind of pick a unit that fits in with you you don't want to shake up your plan for the year and with i mean like for example there's a world history unit and terry bingham does world history

085he's able to find a unit that fits in with what he was going to do naturally next so it's not like he they gave us one we just picked one and then you just really go through a new pilot you try things you you know you explore the high school and middle school have what's called guided work workbooks for the kids that would be consumables they would get those every year it's a paperback collection of it's a reading guide with um graphic organizers in there to help you process the content and so we got those we played with those a little bit then we played with the assessments there's multiple choice or short answer because some of the questions teacher have about is it easy to grade how how do i grade how does it

086integrate with google classroom and schoology and so we just kind of tinker a little bit and get the kids engaged and then we get feedback from the company with you know we had questions we're able to make this work and this works really well so how is uh is student engagement measured at all as part of the process like i mean can like like do they see a difference between the old curriculum nothing formal just anecdotally i mean i could see it tangibly when i walked in the rooms and the teachers all reported out because i was one of my questions how were the students responding that was a big thing if the students aren't engaged or aren't seeming to enjoy the product then we have an issue and it was i mean high school

087at the end of the year they're engaged as much as they're going to be in any program they seem to respond pretty positively to it i actually went into classrooms and we paused it and said hey tell me a little bit about this what do you think and the kids are able to give some honest feedback like it's really clunky we can't log in here and that was feedback i gave to our tech department they were able to fix a they whitelist a certain site so it gets a little more free access um so yeah the response was really positive the younger students it was like extremely positive they loved it the upper grades was just yeah it's more like a practical feedback of like it's usable we like it you know are there any

088concerns um for the flow from fifth grade to sixth grade and will the fifth grade and sixth grade teachers have a an opportunity to work together to to make it seamless no more concerns about flow from fifth to sixth than i would have about any of our content areas and we do need to do more i think with that concept in general not just in social studies but this is a more formalized approach to social studies and they're connected i mean they're all they're tied to the inquiry framework um and the standards and so no it's gonna be more than what we had in the past so i'm i'm good with that piece in terms of socialized content i think we need to do more transition work but um of the purchases that you're recommending

089tonight how did they score um as against the other products as it related to the cultural learning and the diversity goals yeah i mean that was one of the one of the domains we looked at and they were higher in that area we didn't quantify scores i don't have a number i can report to you but they certainly scored high in that area it was interesting i was sharing with brian a little bit just as i was processing this experience and putting together this presentation that back when we did science companies were really forthright about their approaches there and now it's just ingrained it's just a piece of what they do and it's like they don't necessarily jump out and say we're doing this to prove that they're doing it it's just in their work

090and it's what they talk about i mean there's on their website you have links to the website um it's just ingrained they know that especially when it comes to social studies right we're talking about cultures and historical perspectives and how we can relate that to our lives to make future decisions so that has to be representative of other cultures and um has to be diverse and inclusive and so it is ryan um the novels then she mentioned would those be included with this or that would that be at a cost yeah no you make separate purchases on those because they don't they're different publishers and they don't they're not vendors of other companies so yeah but it's it'd be six books in third grade or maybe 12. but yeah um and then is there an

091opportunity i don't know if we know what the costs would be um to get more than one trainer for the elementary schools i just want to make sure that you know we're still i think slipping into what our new normal is and everyone i think is still adjusting to in person school and i'm a little leery of overwhelming one teacher to be responsible to roll this out to the entire because it is different than the middle school in the high school where that's the only subject i don't say the only but that's my main subject i teach whereas for our elementary teachers they're responsible for all of the subjects and then to i want to roll out new curriculum but i want to make sure that we're cognizant of the the strain that that puts

092on our teachers yep so i'm not that you haven't been i don't want to get totally open to that idea okay in fact i said i was careful my wording they recommended one per building because i actually recommended one per grade level and they said that's a lot we can go one for bill so i can go either way there's no change in the cost of the program if we pay a stipend for teachers to do some extra work with me in the evenings or something that might be a minimal cost but that wouldn't that's not a factor necessarily um a few more hours of stipend is not a real big deal so i'll explore that further principles if we think that's a better model they're open to it they just said that might be

093too much with you know having the number teachers you have we just recommend one but they said we could so other questions or concerns thank you mr mcmahon yep i just want to make one last point i just want to thank the teachers that i i presented they did a ton of work and it was a real busy year and we were flexible we did some hybrid meetings some online meetings we got vendors to work with us but they put in a lot of time and i'm really grateful for their work i'd love to have them here because they show the passion for it but they need some break so thank you to the teachers for all the work absolutely i also want to thank mr rick mann for all of his work um with

094this committee and with these teachers and helping them and guiding them through the process this is one of those areas where we do truly implement shared leadership this is not a top-down selected curriculum it was selected by our experts in the field the one thing that ryan does take on and he does a tremendous job at this is once a product is selected it's amazing at how much negotiations there are with the companies that we purchase the products from and he does a great job of trying to get the price down and then you'll see also splitting that over a two-year time frame that is not their normal mode of operation it's normally one payment up front but in order to assist the budget and spread that out a little bit he was able to

095negotiate two equal payments in the first two years of the six-year purchase excellent thank you ryan and teachers for sure i will add that my main negotiation strategy is talking about how conservative my boss is when it comes to financials i just start with i'm never going to get that approved that's my bargaining chip uh so as mr mcmahon stated this does touch a lot of areas of the strategic goal um primarily academic programs to expand relevant and individualized learning opportunities for all students um we do have a motion and the second to approve the social studies curriculum purchases as presented in attachment d miss haika pharaoh yes freight yes haika yes kyger yes macchio yes cislow yes motion carries 6-0 next up in support of our strategic goal around personnel and leadership in order

096to recruit and retain skilled passionate and effective staff who are committed to the success of milan area schools and its place in the community we are going to consider teacher appointments i need a motion to appoint the following people to the teaching positions listed the base salaries listed effective for the 2022 school year rachel staley a paddock social worker catherine west paddock speech pathologist craig mcmahon paddock first grade brianna wisniewski for assignments teacher consultant emma packard assigned simon's teacher consultant sierra moran milan middle school steam teacher christina rankin milan middle school science teacher and krista lerman of and middle school teacher consultant moved by macchio support by tiger it's been moved and supported discussion uh mr gearball how did we advertise these positions these were advertised through our website also through all of the michigan

097associations and they go out to k12jobs.com which is a national posting site that we now are implementing whenever we post a position in the district obviously we also do a lot of in this day and age we do a lot of calling of universities and recruiting i have attended a couple of job fairs that brought in a few candidates in the more difficult to fill we spend a lot of time calling universities and and nudging folks to to get people to apply and to get their their students to apply and then are all these positions budgeted for yes mr gearbell or mr cisco yeah that's free um mr grieber are all of these replacement um they are either replacement let me go to my notes i don't want to miss me or retirement for the

098first grade replacements of retirements um resignations there's also one that we had been contracting with for a speech path for a while and we decided to make it a district position it's getting more and more difficult to contract and actually contracting can be more expensive at times um so i'm trying to find hold on one second yes i know i got it in the nose that suffices brian that's i appreciate that i have a question or actually more of a concern if you will um within the budget we it's my understanding that we're using the sr3 monies to cover the salaries and the um benefits for these positions am i correct on that not for these positions to cover the to cover the salaries of of staff is the major use that we are using

099for sr3 um that came out of our community surveys that came out of our staff surveys that they felt that the number one way we could use esser dollars to help our teachers overcome some of the delayed learning was to keep class sizes lower in in all of the grade levels and so that's one of the things that we are working to do next year and the union is very understanding that those class counts will change following next year when esser dollars no longer exist so there is a risk that we will have a potential of having to lay off some of these teachers due to lack of funding i would say that's a minimal risk with the turnover that we have and the the normal retirements and folks taking jobs closer to home i

100i'm not going to say it's not going to happen but i i would assume that's a pretty low risk possibility even given the drastic drop in our numbers our student numbers with our foundation allowance yep that's been considered and this is based on the number of pupils that we had at the end of last year which is the 1900 brian yes and are we using the extra money that we are using towards this is that just for this year yes so even though it can go through until the thought is to use it now in this 22 to 23 year correct correct from our community input and our staff input this is how they wanted and felt was the most effective way to use our esser dollars to support our students mr gerbal as i

101recall from your presentation on the s or three dollars we were significantly limited in how those dollars could be spent right they weren't like the original cova dollars where it was fairly easy to justify the the expenditures but with the sr3 there were significant more limits is that right correct in just regards to the uh the paddock social worker is an additional social worker at the district level uh simon's teacher consultant was a resignation like mr gearbot said the pathologist is a position that was contracted the paddock first grade is a retirement and then the rest are resignations any other questions or concerns all right it's been removed by macchio and support by kaiger to appoint the following people to the teaching positions listed at the base salaries listed effective for the 2022-23 school year

102rachel staley catherine west craig mcmahon brianna wisniewski emma packard sierra moran christina rankin and krista lerman misaiko freight no haika yes kyger yes macchio yes cyslo yes pharaoh yes motion carry is five to one all right next up are board issues uh in regards to our strategic goal around communication community engagement to develop and implement a comprehensive plan to foster student family staff and community engagement and partnerships we do have a pre a an update from our co-chair of the communications committee ms karen hunt is here to provide that update oh we'll make sure the mic the we need the speaker mic on oh it's on good because i don't have a loud voice uh so my name is karen lambert and first we'd like to thank the i'm sorry i apologize karen i was

103looking at your email karen lambert i apologize my maiden name so uh first we'd like to thank the board of education for forming the communication committee with the goal to improve transparency and to create a culture of two-way communication in the district second we appreciate the board's answers to our questions about what is going well and what areas they would be interested in improving communication in the district we learned communication has been a major concern of board members for about a decade possibly more and was something that came up often when developing the district's strategic plan as we have discussed the committees and boards expectations for communication i was surprised to find most of the concerns and solutions raised were similar though there were also differences one unique concern that the committee raised in many

104is that many committee members were unhappy that questions are repeatedly brought up during board members and left unanswered leaving others who were listening wondering we brainstormed a list of possible solutions to give the community answers even if not immediately during the meeting communication committee concerns also aligned with board member concerns in many ways there were committee members and board members who expressed a need for regular opportunities for the public to ask the board questions outside of public meetings a need for more proactive communication of what the board is doing and better ways to handle controversial topics in addition there was the perception that not everyone understands the open meetings act or the different roles of the superintendent and the board one concern of board members that we will take into consideration is they sometimes plan

105meetings or events designed to provide information to the public and have poor attendance one recommendation we recently made was to reinstate your quarterly big red board chats we hoped that this would allow people to learn about board issues raise concerns and receive immediate feedback the committee also felt like the format of people meeting one-on-one builds trust and unity these should be well advertised and consistent even if attendance is poor to keep communication channels open we are working to toward writing our recommendations for the board if there are community members who have additional concerns or solutions they can contact us at our committee email listed on the board website again thank you very much thank you karen next up is the district scorecard update in regards to the strategic plan the last we've reviewed this back

106in um let me make sure i think it was february and then again in april so we have committed to um formally um reviewing this quarterly along with uh mr yearboz performance um and we're going to walk through mr gabriel is going to walk through the the scorecard that we went through for the last update in regards to any changes um with it and other data that's been added so mr gearbest um so you have a scorecard in front of you this was made available in the board packet and i will be posting it on the district website after this evening's presentation so the first change that the community will notice and you will notice is as we did my quarterly evaluation review you actually did determine a category of objective met objective on track

107or objective not met and for each of those objectives listed in the five goals we have color coded those as to where they are and we will do that quarterly as i do my updates to you for my evaluation process i can tell you that our our last discussion about this during my evaluation was over a month ago and there are some of these things that are read that are already being addressed some of it was kova delay and and availability of staff the second changes that you will see i'm going to talk through each of them page by page and the updates that we made so the first is under academic programs and we list the test scores and you will see that under nwea for math and ela for the paddock simon's and

108middle school buildings we do now have that end-of-year data in we report this and this is how my evaluation is conducted we report those on the conditional growth that students demonstrate just a reminder that basically takes every student and compares them to students that were in the same starting place as them across the country and ranks our students growth against the growth of students across the country so i i want to keep at least three years of data available to you because again my evaluation is based on a three-year weighted average 50 percent on the current year 30 percent on the first prior year and 20 on the second prior year so i also kept an extra year of data on here for the time being because i think it was important to kind of

109see the pre-covered numbers and then see the dip that occurred and i'm glad to report as we look through these that we are seeing a lot of rebound this year and that our data is getting if not fully back on track very close to back on track to where we were pre-covered in some instances well ahead of where we were pre-covered and we're very excited about that so you can look at the 2022 nwea math and ela growth components for each of those tests and then the new three-year average frank can i ask so when i see the nwea math at simon's when it's a 2021 and i don't want to call it a score because i'm not sure that's the correct word but i have a 40. and then in 2022 i have a

11064.2 what is that 24.2 increase mean so what that means is basically if you took every student it signs and you compared them to their peers and their peers are everyone that had the same starting writ score when they took the fall test and then you compare where they stand in that line up against those same peers on the spring test it's what percentile on average our students fall so that 64.2 represents our students on average are performing better than 64.2 percent of their peers across the country and again every every student is held well not every student but every student that has the same starting rit score is compared to their peer group so it's it's a very complex process that nwea does for us and provides that nationwide comparison does that help so

111some of the reason obviously that maybe we saw a dip during covid that maybe didn't happen nationwide was not every state handled covid the same in their public school systems and so we are glad to see the rebound and see that our students and our staff through a lot of hard work have gotten us back on track in our conditional growth um on those tests right yes if i may um on 2020 it says we have no data do we not have any fall data that's the 29th um this is all based on growth and so we weren't able to do the growth factor and so almost every district is is not using that year so they actually nwea is actually using the growth and part of what we do is we we do this

112data is based on a fall to spring growth so it measures truly a school year um do we not test fall winter spring yes we test three but you want to look at the growth that was accomplished through the entire year so that and that's how we're then compared against all of the other schools across the country a lot of schools didn't have data in 2020 so we we aren't we chose not to use that data in my last evaluation and so we're carrying that forward so the three years of data that we're using um or will use in in my next final evaluation are 2022 2021 and 2019. okay and then as far as the high school goes do we have any data on the ap scores and classes and testing as far as

113that goes or is that in a different area well so right now um you'll notice under m step those scores are not yet available we don't have them readily accessible and they're not public yet and therefore we don't have the state averages and and they are the ones that give us the the sgp which is really the exact same as the cgp the state just decided to call it something different than nwea does and at the high school level we do not have the final sat scores and and those other scores so those will be filling in as we do our next update on these and in the high school we do look at sat and we compare to the state and that group of masb peers that you folks selected back a year or

114two ago will we have ap scores though i can look into adding ap scores if that that's not something that was requested on the scorecard but i can look into adding those if that's something that the board would like to see i thought it was something that we were looking at my apologies i i because the sat scores go follow along with college board and the ap scores and our programs that we offer currently it would be nice to know how those are going so i think just to echo ms hika's comments it's all the areas are higher than they were in 2021 and then even for for simon for paddock through middle school um four or the six are higher than we were pre-coped in 2019 and the other two are within points so

115it's uh it's pretty remarkable yes our teachers did a tremendous amount of hard work this year to get our students back on track on the next page i did not alter at this point because all of those sports were completed and those were the numbers provided for this year so we will look at changing that as we start to get into the new seasons next year the promotion rate ending june 2022 i did update that from june 2021 so you can see the promotion rates at each of the grade levels the graduation rate for 2022 is not yet available it takes the state of michigan quite a while to get those out and then schools have a time to review it and look at each individual student that is marked as not graduate and we

116have the ability under very specific guidelines to address those students um ryan yes do we typically always have the hundred percent it like everyone carries over from first to eighth grade and is that going to be impacted by the read by three is that going to change read by grade three we had a few students that qualified under read by grade three and all of the parents of those students follow the appropriate procedures to not have their child retained is that something that we're going to continue to do or that's ultimately the read by grade 3 is not our decision necessarily the parents have a right to appeal and address that using the appropriate documentation it's fairly common in a lot of districts to not retain in those middle grades there's a lot of research

117that says it's very detrimental to the student and actually causes more long-term harm than good if we're going to retain we really try to do that early and diagnose that in kindergarten and that's also the purpose for the young fives programs is for students who just truly maybe aren't ready for kindergarten so young fives actually the way the state handles it young fives are actually considered kindergartners who are then all retained that's the way the young fives program is defined by the state of michigan so while this is just june of 22 this is fairly typical yes thank you on under the next section learning environment and culture you will see that um with the help of the administrators we included the monthly attendance percentage for the remaining months of the year and we included

118the disciplinary actions for the remainder of the year and then we have the list of ongoing learning environment and culture initiatives we will probably be adding some to that list next year can i ask brian how is this attendance rate calculated because i recall um during i hate to keep saying darren colbert like it's over but when we were in remote learning and hybrid learning the state had a very specific way that we were supposed to count contact with students and i assume we're not doing that anymore no this is back to true okay um students sitting in desks in the classroom this data is all all based on that and our our power school software is actually where i get these numbers i pull them right from powerschool and that's the state required so

119we have to at the end of each school year we have to turn into the state of michigan what's called a 75 percent calendar we have to demonstrate that we had at least 75 percent attendance on every school day or you're not allowed to count it as a school day so the software actually has a state-approved built-in report that pulls these numbers and that's where i'm getting them from is from that that system so it's pulled right out of powerschool based on teacher attendance entered and then when i'm looking at the disciplinary actions is this typical for a school year have we compared it to other school years to see how the last school year stacked up other than the middle school they're all typical the middle school i i've said this to a lot

120of people kovit had a pretty drastic academic effect on our youngest students our k12s that were kind of in the middle of just starting to learn reading and just starting to learn math and so the major academic kind of hit was more so focused there behavior incidents really gets more to maturity and self-control and respect of others and that's something that middle schoolers are working on developing and not being around other middle schoolers consistently during the covid situation caused a great deal more discipline at the middle school i will tell you the majority of those are truly linked to disrespect of each other or disrespect of staff i've talked with other superintendents across the county and across the state and all of their middle schools experienced pretty significant increases in discipline this school year so

121we have some things that we are putting in place and some some different conversations that we are having to work our best to decrease those middle school suspensions next year can i make one request that when we do this um in the next quarter where this data is available so we're july so that'll be october right we'll be the next quarter we'll okay can we let me get to my real question now since i'm thinking out loud um can we have in the attendance and the discipline can we see the 20 21 22 number and compare that to the 2022-23 number okay for one year keep at least two years data in those sections yeah so you can kind of build this out each quarter as we as we progress through the next school year

122so then we can see how attendance is stacking up how discipline is stacking up and then as we at least in my head as we watch these things we can see if there are patterns or trends that we need to address um and then maybe can yes you can address them yep so as i start adding attendance and discipline with the assistance of our administrators we'll keep last year's data there as well thank you so that we have it to reference moving on to communications and committee engagement that's some work that we need to do and and some of that will be helped by the the survey that we more recently conducted and and some committee work that we need to do but i did um insert into this update the current communication methods that

123are used by each of the buildings and i received that information from the building administrators so at least we have a starting point and a baseline set of systems that we're using and that will help us then as we work through making every effort to improve that just what is the status for sharing the k-12 survey data just um i actually have that in my superintendent's comments so i will i will give an update on that during my comments the next is personnel in leadership and so i did click this over from last year to the new school year and you can see the resignations and retirements and the new hires so those are as up to date as they could be at the development of this report and then in the operations i did

124make a few minor changes to some of the things that we are accomplishing um at each of in each of those areas and then i changed the district fund balance and the fund balance above 10 percent to reflect that that is in the june amendment instead of the april amendment and then obviously we will update that in accordance to the audit once we receive that final audit of those numbers and then when's that expected um we receive the audit i'm trying to remember it's conducted in august i believe the auditor comes and reports it to you in october okay any other questions on the updated scorecard no i i just i'm really impressed with the uh the growth in the india in nwea for those areas the fact that we're above where we were in

1252019 um and significantly above where we were last year is that's definitely a testament to all the work that's been done so i i would say the same thing although we haven't seen the 2022 sat scores but even when you compare the 2021 s.a.t score to the 2019 s.a.t score which is pre-covet i see that we are even before kovud we were addressing um these score issues and so i'm happy to see that this work continues the one thing that i will add is that we hope that our trend continues that our m-step scores do while they're calculated differently they do tend to at least kind of follow our nwa scores because nwa is very tied to our state standards and things just like the m-step is so as soon as that data is available

126and published we will get it included in this document any other questions or comments thank you for presenting that this evening next up is live streaming comments during public meetings i need a motion to allow or not allow we need to figure out live streaming comments during the public public meetings mr cislow i move to not allow live streaming comments during public meetings support by pharaoh right have emotion and second to not allow live streaming comments during public meetings discussion this was brought up back in february for us to discuss we decided to get a legal opinion in regards to it we have received that legal opinion and i've shared that with the board so if there's other discussion or comments regarding that we can have that now i i am i support not allowing

127the comments um in accordance with the legal opinion that we received um allowing the live comments [Music] puts us in a position much like we were concerned about that if there are dangerous or hurtful or misinformation comments that are made and quite frankly if they're just blatantly racist or homophobic or transphobic comments that are made there's nothing we can do about it we have to leave it there for all the world to continue to read in perpetuity and i have a problem with having to allow individuals who may not even live in our community or have any contact with our community at all to be able to post things like that and us have to leave it there i also have concerns about questions that may be posed and what our obligations are related to

128that and a host of things that have been addressed by the legal opinion so so based on the legal opinion i'm i support not allowing the live comments which i understand is in line with how other at least some other districts are also handling this situation so we will not be an outlier and we are not an outlier at this moment by not allowing the comments other thoughts this is though yeah that's right well i can sincerely abide by and appreciate the the legal opinion i'm i'm a little concerned as to what our concerns were when we had them on for facebook you know and that we'd had them on before and now we are due diligently concerned about where they could go i just look at our history and to my knowledge i could

129be very wrong i'm open to to understanding that it didn't seem like it went down that path so it i'm just voicing a concern that it we didn't do this before and now we find a need that we have to why it took turning them off for us to look through that avenue mr cislow yeah mr pharaoh i just i just would like to add that um when we were using facebook we didn't uh have a legal opinion now that we have a legal opinion i think it's important for the district to follow that legal opinion just a point of information facebook also does not allow you to turn off the comment feature that's not an option so we had no choice when we were using facebook when it was streaming that was yeah i

130mean the legal opinion does mention it in some way it says even though the board previously permitted real-time comments during the live stream meetings it's of no consequence a form once created need not remain open perpetually a government entity including a school may always close a form i think the one thing that i took from the uh from the opinion was that a board meeting is not a public debate it is time for the board to conduct the district's business the comment feature which creates a forum for real-time debate and commentary is therefore inconsistent with the board's meeting purpose i think that pretty much summed it up and i'll i'll add that if we say this a lot at the at our meetings that if if someone wants to reach out to us or someone

131has a question or if someone would like to comment even on something that has happened or is on the agenda on a board meeting for the board meeting they don't even have to physically come to the meeting although that's an option um they can email us which many people do many many times um and that email correspondents can even go back and forth which it does and quite frankly they could call a board member if they had a very specific question and wanted to have a conversation um i've been stopped at kroger and at wilson park there are there are many ways that that we can communicate with each other or that questions or concerns can be addressed and it doesn't have to be through the youtube comments which then opens open us up to

132some liability any other thoughts or comments it's been moved and supported to not allow live streaming comments during public meetings miss haika haika yes kyger yes macchio yes is it slow yes pharaoh yes freight no motion carries five to one next up on the agenda is the big red boar chats which does present an opportunity for some more two-way communication with the board as karen uh talked about with the communications update the committee did make a recommendation regarding big red board chats to having them at least quarterly i did email out a potential schedule to the board so this is this is a draft but hopefully we can get it formalized i guess i would consider this a first reading the thoughts were to have a quarterly big red board chat um i was thinking

133some of the suggestions at the the communications meeting was to have one before the board meeting so like from 5 30 to 6 45 so that's one of the times and then also i propose to have them on a tuesday so that we're not always having things on wednesday so i have a tentatively i have one i put one out there for september 14th which would be wednesday before the board meeting kind of like back to school the next one would be january 17th which is a tuesday which would be after winter break the third one would be march 22nd which would be a wednesday before a board meeting where that would be before spring break and then one on june 20th and a tuesday that would kind of be a end of the year

134so but that was my thought behind this the schedule it's definitely open up for conversation comments if we want to make any changes we can finalize it and then we can start to um to fill this in with attendees and at least get it published so that people are aware when these when these big red board chats are going to be and just a reminder in regards to the big red board chats and the open meetings act um anytime there's more anytime there's a quorum for the board which is four or more of us um that meet together that is potentially considered an open meeting where it would have to be publicized we'd have to allow public comment it would have to be posted and we would have to follow all the the regulations of

135the open meetings act if four or more of the board members participated as there's a chance that there could be work towards a decision in regards to public policy so that's the reason that we're looking at these big red board chats would be um an opportunity for three board members to sit down and have a two-way conversation with those in the uh that desire to attend this is what we use previous prior to kovid again we we did these at local establishments they weren't well attended um and that's why um with with renewed interest we think um our last one that we did we had one in may um it was relatively well attended we had it at the at simon's we did have some pretty decent attendance mr pharaoh myself and jan we had

136a big red board chat where we did have some um i i felt was a decent two-way conversation with those that attended we were able to answer questions directly um and and and have that conversation um so just the thoughts um in regards to the structure of these meetings and it is one of the things that the communications committee is looking at um formalizing it how best we communicate this and get it out for for the public so um questions or concerns regarding the schedule what do you what do you folks think andrew i had i had one suggestion um since all of these are in the evening and a lot of times that might be a child care issue for single parents or some of our families who have a spouse who works in

137the evening then maybe you know just to be more accommodating to people who are available during the day to maybe change the times on one of them that makes sense but i i hate to say that because i'm normally not available during the day but but you know it just kind of stood out to me that these are all evenings and um you know just to be accommodating different work schedules and and we know that child care is should be an issue for people yeah we could definitely i guess we would have to figure out which board members were available during the day or you know if they they could take time off of work themselves to do that that makes sense to me does that and in the past we have done that so

138it makes sense to continue that yeah so maybe one of these um that we're at the um yeah i guess it doesn't really matter i mean we can is it possible mr cislow to consider a saturday it's definitely possible i mean just to throw it out there and or you know one of our student committees can or i mean student organizations at the school i work at the nhs kids offer to do free day care or child care to you know children air from it's necessary yeah i mean i guess it's really the availability of of us to be able to do it which yeah i mean well i mean i i think it's important too i didn't really think of it until kirsten said that but to also make it available for our students

139to attend right because we want them to be you know open and willing to to come to any of the big red board chats so maybe you know a lot of our kids are on tight schedules they're they're very busy so maybe every day a weekend day would be helpful as well make make one during the day and make one during the weekend then we've got four different opportunities any preference on where that those might land maybe the first one we go ahead and stick to the uh to the schedule and then the the last three we figure out where we can land those we can talk to the communications committee and and work from there so does that make sense yep and thank you for putting this together mr zuslow i think this really

140helps get on the ball with the communications committee and and give it out there to the community thank you to you as well you're on the communications committee we try all right so that's big red board chats we'll uh we'll adjust that schedule take a look at it we'll have we'll bring something back to the next meeting again in regards to our strategic plan around maintaining improving facilities and equipment to support safe and innovative programs i do need a motion to approve a land easement agreement as presented in detachment f move by pharaoh support by macchio it's been moved and supported to approve a land easement agreement has presented an attachment f mr gerba so conversation started back when a developer purchased the property just north of simon's elementary school and we really started looking

141at how can we support development in the community because as many of you who have been here for a long time know big developers are not coming to milan right now to build large subdivisions because it's more profitable to do so in other communities not because they can't make money in milan and developing large pieces of property but they can make more money in other communities where housing prices are higher so we do have a local land developer that purchased that property just north of simon's elementary school and is interested in putting in a subdivision he's been in front of the city and the planning commissions and has all of those approvals he and i started talking about that development because obviously it's got the bus garage as their backyard neighbor and simons as their

142southern neighbor and so i wanted to work with that individual and have conversations and some of the conversations that came up was the plan as approved actually doesn't include sidewalks along platte road it has the students actually coming out of the subdivision crossing over platte road then coming down to simons and crossing back over platt road which does not make sense to me because we already have a crossing guard at one location at platte road and those positions are not easy to fill so we started looking at what are the opportunities of putting a sidewalk on our side of the street the developer was open to that and is even open to um at first at cost to the district also continuing that sidewalk um from our property line to the current sidewalk at simon's

143elementary school so just kind of as these conversations happened and we talked about how many you know pine trees need to be along the back property line to make sure that we have a good divide between the bus garage because our buses do start up at 5 30 in the morning and just some other things we started talking about and he approached me with the option of putting a well one enhancing the drainage ditch that goes all along the bus drive route and then also looking at putting in a retention pond um that would partly be on the if you and if you go to the easement sketch plan you can see that piece of property it's kind of where the bus garage loop takes that turn and and i do want to reiterate we

144have a drainage ditch all along the bus garage drive and there actually is a very small dry retention pond already in that location i have requested that if this easement goes through and the developer has agreed that this would be a dry retention pond so it will not be like the two repent retention ponds in front of the high school it will actually be at a low enough level that it will stay dry and if you go back to the retention pond at the other end of that ditch by the bus garage sometime that's a dry retention pond and you can see that 90 percent of the year we can mow it and and keep it clean and so we began those discussions and and i got our legal firm involved because i didn't know

145exactly what it took for a school district to create an easement or if it was even legal and part of that is there has to be some fair trade involved and that we're not just giving something to a person and that then looped in those discussions of sidewalk and some additional trees and some improvements um this easement also includes that um in order to main in order to gain this easement um the llc will have to maintain that retention pond keep it mowed if it needs to be dredged dredge it if it needs repairs repair it and so i feel that this is a a very safe agreement for the district to enter into it's working with a local developer and we would love to have more rooftops in milan area schools and really that

146piece of property already has a smaller dry retention pond on it and and really ultimately we have no use for that property and allowing an easement there doesn't is not detrimental to the district in any way and i can answer questions if anybody has any all right just to clarify brian because i have easements on multiple parcels of my property and and then in the process of negotiating um another one this easement would when or if the company were to be sold this easement would go with that yes the easement um is transferred to the air successors um and the signs of both the district and madison estates so if madison estates decided to sell their their property um that easement would be transferred so let's say they get the development built and they're maintaining

147it and it will be an association type situation so madison heights is the association so basically there there's other lawn in that area that the association would be covering the mowing of so this would not be like they have to come out and just mow that piece um that does transfer and then the other piece that's important is looking at the termination this easement agreement will terminate upon agreement of the parties that's one option upon madison's estate abandonment of the easement area so if they say they don't want it or they don't need to use it anymore or upon madison estates failure to perform the obligations set forth in this agreement so if they don't keep it mode or they don't keep it up or they don't do those things they're required to do then

148we can end this agreement and require them to develop the required retention space on their own property brian is there a start date as to when all this is gonna the start date for the building of the homes and things well and then the requirement of the you know the easement um i think there's a desire to by the developer to start working on this um hopefully this summer obviously the roads and things would be the first i mean we all know how subdivisions develop out i have not seen the exact plans for the whole subdivision i just haven't looked at them but i've talked with a developer it sounds like it's going to be somewhat similar to o'brien street in that it'll kind of for those that know o'brien it'll kind of have an

149entrance and then some type of oval i think i believe it includes single-family dwellings and possibly some condos on on one side kind of very similar again to o'brien street i just didn't know if it would interfere with like the bus and everything especially no the work that they would be doing will not they have to stay a certain distance away from our bus drive and they they really can't interfere with us that's part of this agreement is they don't they don't have the ability to interfere with us i appreciate it i just wanted further clarification very valid questions it wasn't going to be an issue okay thank you the other piece is the agreement also allows us we currently use that drainage ditch and the retention ponds at either end and so the improvements

150will also help us in that if we ever had drainage issues we have the right to drain to that as well thank you good questions any other questions or comments it's been really supported to approve the land easement agreement as presented an attachment f miss heika kyger yes macchio yes cislow yes pharaoh yes freight yes hika yes motion carries 6-0 all right back to uh communications reminder this meeting is a meeting of the board of education in public for the purpose of conducting the school district's business is not to be considered a public meeting there are two times for public participation during the meeting as indicated in the agenda when addressing the board you will be asked to state your name the board determines the amount of time granted to individuals or groups to speak

151each person shall be allowed to speak for up to three minutes i will give you a 30-second warning and i ask you to finish your thought when the alarm goes off board members may question speakers but are not obligated to answer questions or make statements or commitments in response to issues raised by the public in general such items will be referred to the superintendent for advisement investigation study and or recommendation or designated as future agenda items for board consideration is there anyone that would like to address the board janet mcfaulin i want to thank jamie for reading earlier and revealing you know some texts that are in the high school library and i just wanted to make parents and grandparents and any concerned people that truly care about what their kids are exposed to and

152what um it made me would not want them to be exposed to materials that would be promoting sexual activity so i went to the website and here's what it says you need to go to the website go dot board docs dot com and then go to the right uh topics you click on the right top is policies in the top right corner a menu comes up and then you click on nine thousand relations then go to nine one three zero public complaints and then scroll down till you get to matters regarding instructional materials so here is a list of the books that jamie just read so you can so they can no one title is push by sapphire another title is identical by ellen hopkins another title all boys aren't blue by george johnson and

153lucky by alice sabold and i just want to say i'm not speaking here as a republican or democrat but just a concerned a concerned parent 100 of the people i know will be concerned and they will be happy to know that they can go to make a complaint and like i said there is just when i was in that class when they were having that um that book read there was just more crude sexuality language happening from the students like i'd never heard before um it focused on women being treated like objects come on kids and teens are impressionable so let's expose them to learning math and science and english and all of that and not sexual exploration thank you for your time thank you hello um alicia powell i was not going to speak

154tonight uh but i have to say that i'm shocked as i think many of you were um just watching your faces as um some of this content was read um i'm a parent of a high school student i have younger children i have lots of family members extended family in the district and um sorry i just just ran back here real quick but each year we get this you know the list of all the books that they'll be reading in english class just to approve because some of them can be a little controversial of mice and men things like that you know school is where i send my kid to get you know to have to have their education and to productively learn about things and so we re you know i sign those sheets

155knowing that they're having a conversation so when there's tough parts in those books they're having conversations with a professional who is there to teach them that it exists that this happened but that it's not okay i support education in a wide variety i don't want my kid to leave out of high school ignorant to things that do happen in the world that being said i am in no way okay with any of the stuff that she was reading and i have a high school student and um it's not i'm 40 years old and i was appalled and embarrassed and felt like just disgusted i cannot imagine what a 14 year old freshman would be thinking i don't want to imagine actually um and there was a parent that mentioned that unfortunately it is a reality

156for some students and and i agree it is and it's disturbing and it's terrible but i can't imagine they want to relive it either in school which is a safe place for them that's you know they absolutely should be able to go get some help with that but they don't need to relive that that in that spot that's not appropriate let alone through the whispers in the hallway that are happening from kids who maybe are not sensitive that maybe that actually happened to somebody and i think it's um reckless to even be allowing something so off the charts even to have for them to have access to just unlimited access to that and i think it's making it okay which i think all of us can agree that that and the um the topics that

157they were that she was mentioning really right from the book are not okay and i can't imagine democrat republican independent i don't care what you are as a parent as a grandparent as a community member it's not okay and so where do we get a list because i now feel like i would like to know what does what's available to my kid and so that i can follow this policy and i can go and say you know what i really i'm not okay with this and i don't agree with just taking everything off of the shelf i do think there's going to be some hard topics and but there has to be a limit and this is just way beyond the limit thanks thank you ms phil hello my name is amy landingham in case

158you forgot me already um so i have just a couple of things on the books um i haven't read any of those books but i did write them all down so that i can read them because i think judging a book by one excerpt is probably premature i can't say that i think that we should have the book on the shelf because i haven't read it but my one thought that hasn't been brought up yet is incest and rape are horrible and they're egregious and if you handle them with gentle language and clean them up and sanitize them you are no longer representing what really happens there so i think it's important to acknowledge that yes the language kind of makes me want to vomit but when we're talking about rape and incest we should

159want to vomit so i think we need to make sure that our kids are getting authentic literature to the topic at hand in addition to considering the fact that the language is vulgar and and disturbing um different topic i think that we you you the board have spent an inordinate amount of time in the last year discussing the minutes and i would suggest that you consider make the minutes what you want them to be keep them there and stop continuing to have these discussions because it is getting to the point that it is just a waste of time and i think that there are many many more things that you should be focused on besides continuously having debates about minutes and my last suggestion is that you consider bringing back the recommendation or the requirement

160that when someone does has public comments that they give their address i think it's really important for the board to understand who your stakeholders are so for example i'm a good example right i live in the district i don't have a child in the book in the buildings and i think that my opinions maybe should be weighted just a little bit less than people who do have children in the buildings and do it does your decisions are affecting them directly every day so i'd like you to consider re-implementing the requirement that people give their address so that you can get some read on if they're one of your stakeholders if they're not one of your stakeholders and what their standing is in the district thank you thank you [Applause] okay first i want to say

161it was kind of ironic while i was sitting here i just got banned from facebook from my group for posting graphics from the books that i'm discussing tonight i was banned for adult nudity and sexual activity literally as i was sitting there oral sex pictures of a man on a woman oral sex pictures of a woman on a woman with a strap-on dildo those are graphics of the books that i'm asking you guys to pay attention to these books i read tonight were the ones i could stomach reading there are worse in milan schools one ones that i couldn't even bring myself to read out loud if you can imagine after hearing what i read so some of the things parents that are fighting to keep these books in the schools say to me most

162is it's not porn but then they hear me read it and they go oh well they can get worse on their phones well unfortunately that is true but they can also go get drugs or alcohol and anywhere anytime they wanted does that mean that in a school we should sit up a table and serve it to them on a silver platter no then they turn to well we can't ban books nobody is asking books to be banned there are legit restrictions on movies dvds music why would there not be restrictions on books more important there's more important things to worry about people say well i want to know who brings these books in in the first place i don't expect any of you any of these parents i didn't know this until recently i don't

163expect anybody to know what's in every one of those books but there needs to be a better process of finding out who got them in in the first place and an easier way to deal with getting them out if they are inappropriate so different type then people say well there's different types of kids that need to see themselves in these books i agree 100 percent but the problem with that statement is the majority of the books are heterosexual sex it's not remove all the homosexual books or or remove different cultures than ours that's not it at all the majority of the books that i couldn't stomach reading tonight are heterosexual sex most and then people say well some of these things happen in real life we can't we can't exclude those people from society are

164feeling like they're in a book 100 percent understand where she was coming from but i talked to many people who've been abused and they said the last thing they would want to do would read these books as abused teen and know that their fellow students are sitting there reading them along with them so i think this comes down to the left knows that this is wrong even based off of their standards but they refuse to side with or agree with those on the other side we need to come together and protect the innocence of these children's minds why does it have to be a fight why can't we agree that this is not okay and this is not book banning there doesn't need to be a fight and the law actually states that you are

165not allowed to disseminate exhibit or deploy display sexually explicit matter to minors there is an exception to the law allowing teachers and schools to do this if it is to a student as part of a school program permitted by law so i will be looking into how these books in your library are part of a school program permitted by law thank you thank you hello again rachel hobbs um thank you for putting the big red chats on the board um i think they're way overdue but i appreciate the effort um i also want to make comment that the board has a concern with comments online [Music] but yet they're not concerned about the comments that are coming here publicly in fact there was a speaker earlier that publicly humidi humiliated one of our community members

166by drawing spotlight to him rather than addressing the board and that's not acceptable how are you going to address that i would like to see that a newsletter come out of the high school i see that all the other schools have newsletters but there's no newsletter that's coming out of high school as far as the minutes go we just need to make sure that they are an accurate recording that encompasses everything my issue with the minutes had to do with a link in the c in the superintendent comments which gives no information but in order for you to get that information you have to go to another source so i was perfectly fine with you attaching those suit the scoop with the soup to the minutes that would have sufficed but you know i do

167believe that you made the wrong vote today and i do believe that you violated the oma because it's not a complete record that is available to everybody once you place it in that book um i had some exchanges with the board and brian about diversity goals and where they could be found nobody could seem to point me to those diversity goals however i was told that there is a dei team as well as many other teams i think that in complete transparency to the community as well as gaining trust within the community those committees subcommittees teams whatever you want to call them should be made available to the public so that parents know what's going on in the schools and so that if they have questions concerns or even want to participate they know how

168to reach out to those specific teens i've asked this for a long time i don't think it's too much to ask i think it would benefit all of you thank you mrs ashley saint-claire um i don't think i realized that the meeting was going to go this late i should have probably done this thing in the first comments um i'm here for milan parks and rec we're doing our summer concert and movie in the park series um so tomorrow night is third thursday in downtown if anybody's interested there's not a concert at wilson park but we are hosting a touch the truck from five to seven where kids will be able to come and get inside of fire trucks and the police cars and ambulances and there's like a lot of really cool vehicles for

169the kids to be able to climb all over and see all the lights and then there is the movie in the park so you can bring your chairs we have a concession stand available for everybody and so the movie tomorrow night is the the mitchells versus the machines next thursday july 28th the concert is the jackson french quarter dixieland band and then after the concert is the movie luca august 4th we have the concert is the ones and twos band which is like a motown dance band and then the movie is clifford the big red dog august 11th we have the celine fiddler's philharmonic and then the movie will be sing two and then for the last movie in the park it's august 18th there's not going to be a concert and it's going to

170be a kids drive-in movie so we've actually had like really big boxes that are being donated so that the kids can come early decorate their their boxes how they want to have their car so that they can actually sit inside of their cars to watch the movie cars so every single one of those nights we do have the parks and rec concession stand down at the park and we have popcorn and hot dogs and pretzels and it's super fun it's a big blow-up tv screen you can bring blankets you can bring chairs bring bug spray but other than that uh i hope to see you guys all there thank you thank you sinclair are there others all right next up is uh superintendent comments mr gearbot thank you a few things to share this evening

171again the district wants to remind our students and families that the program providing free breakfasts and lunches to all students ended on june 10th later this summer the district will be reminding families to apply for free and reduced meals for the 22-23 school year we don't want to see any of our families that qualify miss out on this important support and part of what will be included in that communication is the annual and monthly income allowances to qualify for either free or reduced meals and i will just give one line out of the chart that will be included for a household of four people in order to qualify for free milk and free lunch the household income is thirty six thousand seventy five dollars for a total household income for four people for reduced price

172it's fifty one thousand three hundred and thirty eight dollars so again the reason i would put this chart into that communication is so that families don't think well i don't qualify and they don't dig into the application far enough to see what those qualifications are so on the complete chart will be in my scoop from the soup and it will also be in the communication that goes home to parents regarding applying for free and reduced lunch the district also wants to remind all community members that we offer a free preschool program to eligible families eligibility for the great start readiness program or gsrp requires that families incomes be below 250 percent of the federal poverty guideline these are not our requirements these are the state of michigan requirements as gsrp is funded through the state

173of michigan if you have any specific questions about this program or our early childhood education or you are interested in registering your child for either our tuition-based preschool or our free preschool please contact miss lisa mellinger and her email address is the same as everyone else is in the district mellinger l milineryschools.org or you can call her at four three nine five one five nine again my linear schools offers both the state funded free preschool and a tuition-based preschool program the milan high school program in the federal corrections institute or fci held their graduation ceremony on tuesday eight inmates received their high school diplomas it was a great honor to be able to hand those gentlemen their diplomas as they've worked hard to earn them it's important to note that the myelin fci is the

174only federal corrections institute in the united states that offers a high school diploma and not just a ged opportunity the federal bureau of prisons as was stated by the warden at graduation is has visited the milan fci and is currently investigating how to replicate our program across the country and other federal corrections institutes the fci myelin program is fully funded by grants and does not in any way affect the general operating budget of milan area schools under some some community news i'm sad to share that gerald cook a mile and area schools graduate and lifelong milan resident passed away on july 8th i don't normally announce when our graduates pass away but i think jerry held a special place in the hearts of a lot of people in the district he supported milan athletics and

175was inducted into the milan high school athletic hall of fame in 2002 more recently the girls volleyball team actually created an award called the jerry cook award that is issued each year to a player for their outstanding performance i've known jerry for almost my entire career here in milan and i truly would venture to say that jerry is in the top five if not the number one slot on the list of milan area school athletic events attended during a lifetime by a community member for those of you that know jerry he attended just an inordinate amount of milan athletic events the teams respected him the teams appreciated him being there to the point where they would invite him to their banquets at the end of their season because he was such a dedicated fan so

176um and he was a lifelong myelin resident so we ask that you keep his family and your thoughts i'm bored just want to remind everyone that the state filing deadline to run for the military schools board of education is 4 p.m on july 26th candidates must file the required paperwork at the washnut county clerk's office that paperwork is not turned in here to the district so i don't want anybody to be running tight on that deadline and come here thinking that they can turn the paperwork in in the district it has to go to the washington county clerk's office i also want to announce even though mrs rosenlicher is not here tonight in accordance with the timelines provided in michigan state law mrs rosenlicher did sign the acceptance of office and officially took the oath

177of office those were notarized and those have been shared with the county clerk's office the responses to the k-12 insight school quality survey for parents campus-based staff and students are being finalized by k-12 insights once the district receives the final report we will share that information with our administrative team we will then share it with the board of education and then share it with the community at large by placing it on the district website we expect this to happen sometime in mid august and most definitely it will occur before the beginning of the 22-23 school year thank you mr gerba mr mcmahon yeah i have a few updates um just wanna let you know that we completed the section 31a program report in the section 41 program report which are due typically by july 1

178but they extended to july 15th this year krista hendricks is a big piece of that because it's a budget and a program report that i take care of so those are done that's nice we are currently working on the title one selection schools report the consolidated application and the title iii consortium application those are usually due july 1 um but during the pandemic things got pushed back we didn't actually get approved on our con app until like february last year so the new due dates are now like september 15th but we'll get them done ahead of time but that's one of our focuses right now is getting those reports moving and then i just want to share lastly that tomorrow the administrative team is gathering for a day-long pd on the instructional framework called making

179thinking visible and we're looking forward to a day of learning in the summer with with our administrative team so that's it thank you mr mcmahon uh board member comments mr cislow yeah mr farrell so just a few things i i also want to welcome betty rosen leitcher to our board um i think she's going to be a very good addition i know she couldn't be here tonight but i think she's going to be a real good addition to our our board and bring perspectives to our board that we may not have had previously um the district will be undergoing the financial audit sometime in august uh september so krista hendricks and the team in the district office will be busy preparing for the audit i did want to mention that the state of michigan did

180increase the foundation allowance per pupil uh by 450 dollars you may recall that we had budgeted 400 per pupil so i anticipate that there will be a budget amendment um coming to you to the to the board in november december uh we'll have a better idea as to what our student count is right now at 1900 students uh times fifty dollars per pupil additional revenue the revenue adjustment would be 95 000. uh the only the only other item that i had was i know there's a masb conference in october and unfortunately because of some work commitments i'm not going to be able to attend um also i just wanted to thank karen hunt from the communications committee lambert lambert i'm sorry that's my fault karen lambert oh yeah karen lambert thank you for coming and

181giving your report and uh the survey that you had provided the board was was i thought was very good and it allowed us to provide input to the committee so thank you thank you mr pharaoh others um i just have a couple of items um as we approve the new social security social security my mind is at the wrong job right now approve the social studies curriculum i would like us to set a schedule so we can get regular updates on the rollout i know that that takes time to really see how it works but i i'd like to keep that on in our mind so that we have a schedule on that rollout and with that i know i've asked for this in the past so i'm going to keep asking i'd like a

182roll out of the ela curriculum that we implemented pre-covet um because i recall during that conversation we discussed timelines and how we would be how long it would take for us to know that it has one been fully rolled out into the impact it may be having on our students and so i'd like an update on that i'd also like to thank our communications committee and karen lambert for coming and giving us an update i think i hope that everyone saw from the at least the board survey at least from my own perspective how long we've been grappling with this situation and communications and how to improve them and so i am happy that the committee is there to assist us because it is it's a difficult decision it's a difficult task to try and

183figure out how as a board we increase our communications i also want to send my sympathies to the cook family i um interacted with mr cook a lot at swim meets i don't think he missed the local girls swim meet he was always at the pool um as i'm always at the pool so i saw him a lot and i would send my condolences to his family i'd also like to just kind of level set a little bit on the number of times that the issue of school safety has been discussed at a board member at a board meeting so these are just um kind of a gathering of times that i think mostly mr gearball has updated the board on school safety issues and things that he and his administration are doing to address

184school safety during the february 23rd 22 meeting he announced that there had been a biennial review of our emergency operations plan and we had conducted that review in conjunction with our milan police department so we had reviewed our policies and our plan on how we would react to school safety issues during the march 9 22 meeting mr girabah announced that on february 24th mrs freight mrs landingham mr cislow and mr gerba had attended a washington association of school boards professional development on student thrust assessments and this development provided an approach to violence prevention that emphasize early attention to problems such as bullying teasing and other forms of student conflict before they escalate into violent behaviors basically a way of how to address issues before they become even more serious and result in a school safety

185issue on may 11th of uh i believe mr garbow announces but if not the district's professional development was held on friday may 6th sorry mr gearbot did announce during that meeting that on may 6 the district's professional development was held and it went well and it included alice training for everyone in the district again a way that we train our staff and our administration on how to handle a threat during the may 24 22 meeting mr gerabaugh announced that on may 13th the washington county superintendents and police chiefs held a joint meeting throughout the county to discuss community violence intervention student threat assessments and school safety and atlas training on june 22 at 22 mr gearbot announced that on thursday june 16th all mas administrators social workers and counselors attended an all-day comprehensive school threat

186assessment guideline training and the training was offered by the wisd using a trainer from school threat assessment the training puts a formal process in place for evaluating threats from various sources and it closely matches the informal work that had already been done at mas so this is just a smathering in the last few months of the number of times that we have been updated as a board as to how we are addressing school safety in in the district that's all thank you thank you mr psycho it was my pleasure to attend the fci graduation uh yesterday i was able to get there early enough to spend some expensive extensive time with one of the families um with young children that had traveled from alex out of state to come see their dad graduate and they

187were so excited and it just makes you understand how important this program is i'm very very happy to see that once again the federal prison system is looking at replicating this program i know they had talked about that pre-covered so it's pretty exciting um i believe they were having a college graduation ceremony today yesterday afternoon so it's just wonderful things that um are having ripple effects so i was very fortunate that it was my pleasure to attend there so thank you um just regard to in regards to the bills and reimbursement folks are welcome to email mr gearbaugh to request that and he will provide that as appropriate i appreciate jan and brian attending the graduation at fci and ra was not able to attend i did there today masb put a presentation on out

188on the state budget so as tom said i attended that and it was a very good information and obviously we'll get a lot of information back from that in regards to the budget amendment that we'll see in winter so um other than that i don't have anything else anybody else have any other comments miss freight thank you mr cislow yeah um i too wanted to thank karen and alicia for being here tonight representing the communications committee i know with andrew and i have been and amy as well um in many of those meetings that have now we're getting better at timelines but um i appreciate all the time in the effort that um you two ladies as well as the rest of the community or the committee have put in um i would also like

189to thank the community and the board um for their thoughts concerning the passing of my mother-in-law uh it was kind of you all to extend that i appreciate it that's all thank you any others alright meetings adjourned at 9 42.