Saline Area Schools: Board of Education Meeting (09.30.2025)

001There is Excellent. I'd like to w Good evening, friends. I'd like to call to order the board of education meeting of September 30th, 2025. Uh standing as you are able. We'll begin with the pledge of allegiance led by none other than Emma Olyri student. Great job, Emmy. You can put that in your resume. Uh thank you. Uh public comment, there is no p there's nobody lined up to do public comment this evening. Uh I have no response to public comment. Look at that. We are charging along very quickly. Uh at this point uh I'd like to u uh recommend a mo I'd like to entertain a motion to approve the agenda as printed. >> Uh so move >> Second Tim Austin. Thank you. All in favor please say I. >> I. I. >> Opposed. Thank

002you. We have ourselves an agenda. 70. Uh Jillian, you you cut it so close, but we're so glad you're here. Yay. >> I couldn't find parking. >> I was like, "Oh, okay. Cool. >> Getting ready for college already." >> Well, when you Yeah. When you get to college, it's not a license to park. It's a license to hunt for a parking spot. That's >> Well, we're glad. We're very, very glad you're here. And guess what? We're up to you on the agenda. >> Are your uh middle school student council folks here? >> Not. any of them. >> Oh, no thanks. Sorry, I just got here. Apologies. >> Well, then I will let you introduce your group and then you can sort of settle yourself. >> Thank you. >> It's all right, Jillian. >> No, you're

003fine. Everything is fine. We don't want to add to any pressure to you. Thank you. Uh we are going to move over to our student showcase now as orchestrated by our student representative, Jillian Hayes. >> Yes. All right. Thank you. We have if you guys would like to come up that would be fantastic. Thank you. We have uh where if you want to introduce yourselves um you are more than welcome to >> with the mic. >> Pardon me. You'll have to speak into the microphone or the people uh in internet land will not be able to hear you at all. >> Um I'm Shotty Alib. >> I'm Kenzie Stannifer. I'm Emma Olri. I'm Lily Atinson. >> I'm Natalie Green. And I'm the student advisor for student council. >> Thank you so much. If you guys

004would like to present, that would be fantastic. I'm super excited. As I was on the student council in my sixth grade, I'm not quite sure how I won because I was brand new and nobody knew who I was. So, thank you for all your work that you're doing. So, we're the Selen Middle School Student Council and we're here to present what we do at our school. >> So, welcome to our presentation. At the SMS Student Council, our mission is to make the school experience better, even better for everyone, and help everyone's voice be heard. February is acts of kindness month, and every There's a new random act of kindness. One example is hold the door for someone or invite someone not to it at your lunch table. At the middle school, we sell candygrams. Candygrams

005are a note, a note that is attached to candy that your friend will write and it cost a dollar and we sell them in February and November and they're a school fundraiser. Student voice group is a group of students on student council who get to meet with staff members to let them know about any issues in the school and give them insight on what's happening. If you decide to be in this group, you get direct contact contact with the principal and assistant principal. This helps us to make our changes and improvements way faster. Every year we partner with PALS to promote inclusion and every year there's an inclusion SMS and one day and one example of a day is what rock your fun socks day student council is very involved in our UI snowball dance

006we help plan set up and make decorations one day after school we meet with the PTO to plan and a different day we all meet up to help make it decorations for example last year we made signs to put around the school and paper snowflakes to hang up on the walls The school store is a store where we sell things like shirts, hats, stickers, bracelets on Fridays at lunch. Uh, I attended the Dexter leadership conference last year and basically what we did is we met with different students from other districts who are also on student council and we learned about leadership and played games and one of them was the peanut butter and jelly sandwich uh game where one person would make a how-to on how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and

007the other person would try to make it based off of that. Uh some other activities that we do during the year are baskets for the spring craft show which are uh designed to uh help fund raise for charity. Uh there's the student sta student versus staff showdown uh which is to show appreciation for the eighth graders. And there's also student elections for 9th grade, morning announcements with hornbug drawings and letters to show staff appreciation. Uh we hope these activities leave a a lasting impact on SMS and the community. >> Thank you for listening to our presentation. >> Well, thank you for making your presentation. Now, I know our board of education are very curious about all sorts of things. I don't think, you know, the peanut butter sandwich is just one of the many things,

008but I will ask the board members if they have anything they'd like to ask or any encouraging words from them. Uh, we'll start with Jason and Jennifer and work our way down the table. >> What do you guys do with the proceeds from the fundraisers? >> Um, some of the things to our fundraisers go to things like the school or different clubs. I don't really know any of them off the top of my head, but I know one of the things that we also make do donations for is like toys for tots and um other things like that. I had uh a question about the student voice group. I really think that's a great idea. So, could you give us any examples of some of the topics that you've been discussing in in that uh

009committee? Um, well, we haven't started the committee yet and last year I wasn't on it. So, I don't know. When are you guys on it? Okay. Right. Well, I think like some of the things we could talk about is just like different issues like like one of the things that comes to my top of my head is like lunch. Like I know we made this thing where like you can't have your computers at lunch. I think maybe that came from the student voice group because like we wanted people to be like more inclusive to each other and like talk to each other and have a better community, but that's just one of the things that I can think of. Well, I would just like to say thank you on behalf of the board. We're very

010impressed with the work you've done so far. And for all of you, is this your first year on on city school council? You've been on before. You're all old hands at it. Okay. What do you do to bring in new members? Do you just uh Who does the recruiting? Is it your school principal or >> No. >> And I'm sure students just march right up and say, "I want to be >> a lot of this year." >> Well, I'm sure you'll find I'm sure they'll find other avenues for their their their public service heart. Well, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And um I wish we had some wonderful swag that we can give you for for being up here, but I don't have anything right now. I'm an orange peel

011is about all I have. Sorry. Well, thank you very much and have a lovely evening. You don't have to stay for the whole meeting unless your your principal is making you. >> Oh, we are with the board. Would you like us to take a photo? >> That's my job. way. >> Yeah. [Applause] Good. >> Thank you, Jillian Hayes. I appreciate that. Thank you. Good job. Um, we have one scheduled report and we are ready to rock and roll apparently. Thank you very much, Miss Cara Davis. >> Great. Thank you. So, thank you so much, uh, board. I'm so happy to be here this evening with you, uh, to give you our continuous, um, improvement update that we give annually every fall. I'm joined this evening to share our progress, our highlights, our growth, and our

012continued action steps with uh, members of our teaching and learning team. Presenting with me tonight is Jen Nelson, one of our literacy coaches and instructional designers. Caroline Stout, our district MTSS coordinator, Dr. Ryan Kerr, our DEI specialist, and then as well as some additional team members here to answer questions. Representing our EL team, our Katie O'Keefe, and Gabo May, as well as Beth Russo, our secondary MTSS coordinator. So, what I'd like to do this evening um is just walk you through some of the pieces that are important to us setting up for success for our continuous improvement update. Uh we'll be reviewing some of who we are as Seline, what the continuous improvement cycle contains, and then with each my KIPP goal, we'll also be highlighting some of our program staffing and professional development highlights,

013as well as some of our areas of growth and what we're monitoring. So, what I'd like to do is start by inviting Dr. Kurup to go through some of the who we are of Selen Area Schools. >> Thank you. Um this is demographic data that comes from my school data and from power school enrollment data uh that was presented to our teaching staff at the beginning of the school year just to orient them and situate them in terms of reminding ourselves who we're teaching uh who are we uh working for and with here in this district. Um and to acknowledge that this is a diversifying district that the um membership in these demographic groups is growing. uh and uh we don't need to read through all of them, but I do want to highlight the

014statistic in the middle that one sixth of our students in this district are receiving special education services. And I point that out to acknowledge the great work that is being done by our special education staff and teachers within this district. Um I think that it's well known regionally that Seline is a uh place to come for these services and our teachers do um excellent work um in this domain. Uh I would also point out too the significant recent increases in our multilingual learner population as also evidenced by this graphic on the right uh showing the case loads from our also equally excellent uh EL team uh doing excellent work here within the district. So uh quick acknowledgement of the sort of wonderful opportunity that we get to do uh this work for here u in

015our district uh as a way to get ourselves started here this evening. So the continuous improvement cycle is set up in such a way to be responsive to diverse populations and be intentional throughout the year. So I'm going to walk through each of the stages just for some of our new board members and the audience watching to ensure that you know how this uh works. There's essentially broken up into four different sections. So setting up for success is where we are right now where we have designed a plan from this previous year, worked to refine it over the summer and are launching it with the um help of our teacher leaders, our building administrators um and the other teachers and staff across the district. We then move into a monitoring and adjusting stage where we're

016monitoring ongoing assessment both uh local and then what's available to us at the state level. uh for for example some of the state data that we've shared in the board packet has just really become available to us across the summer while teachers were on break. So we're now bringing that data into our data cycle with the teams here through our teacher leaders and then we also have a local local assessments that we study as well as we monitor and make adjustments. We're also looking at the impact of those assessments and making updates as needed in order to ensure that we are meeting those diverse needs. looking for places where we might need to make slight adjustments to the plans that we have made in order to be more responsive to student needs. Um, putting in

017interventions or re um redesigning some of our behavior plans are taking a closer look at our approach to ensure that it's having the impact. Doing that for both staff and students alike. And then of course towards the end of the year monitoring again to see how did we do so we've got a more full set of data and then looking ahead to the upcoming year summarizing our successes and then bringing those data results back to the different teams across the district and then determining how we might move forward for the upcoming year and making those plans accordingly. Our first goal uh this is our goal from uh really the beginning of our my launch back in 2020 2021. uh we have one that we we kind of assess as an academic goal and one as

018an SEO goal. There's not one that's better or worse than the other. They are the same and level in the playing field. Um and we we have this particular one focused on academics more so and we have a goal of course of ensuring students are progressing and mastering academic content across all subgroups. However, in closer look at this goal, we wanted to make some updates to it. So Ben, if you hit the forward button, they should see the new one. We revised the language slightly uh to to incorporate increased student mastery in all content areas for all students and subgroups by improving the quality and consistency of tier one instruction supported by aligned MTSS and PBIS practices. We moved in this direction because we felt like it was broader and more included our systemic uh

019work around MTSS and PBIS which wasn't mentioned in the previous iteration of the goal because it is our hope that we are ensuring equitable access to curriculum and of course equitable AC um outcomes while supporting the whole child. MTSS stands for multi-tered systems of support. That is the umbrella term for both academic and behavioral supports. And PBIS stands for positive behavioral intervention and support frame. And it's a framework inside of MTSS because we recognize that it's important for students and staff to feel both psychologically and physically safe in order to perform as well as they can in the classroom setting. With that, I'm going to turn it over to Jen to share some of the highlights related to this particular goal. Good evening everyone. So thinking about programming, some things that I want to highlight

020is when we're thinking about um this presentation, there's a lot of things happening behind the data and things that we want to pop out to see some of the things that the district is doing to support students and teachers in these practices. So thinking about some of the programming that's happening, we are always in a constant cycle of curriculum review. So we operate in two-year cycles of curriculum review. We're currently in the second year of curriculum review with social studies, secondary ELA, phonics, early childhood. So those are those are ongoing. We've completed curriculum review for math and science. And so those are kind of like in a check-in phase. Um but those are relative to programming. We currently have homework hive going for 6 through 12. A cohesive or um we've piloted high school math

021learning lab. We were able to increase service minutes for English language learners. We were able to purchase a new data program that is called school litics that is going to replace illuminate which is going to help us analyze data more easily is sort of the hope. We're still in the beginning stages of using that, but we have talked with the board about some of the challenges of looking at some of our data and some of the uh time consuming measures of of analyzing data in different ways and we're hopeful that schools is going to help us do that. We've added an additional day of advisory at the high school level. We've updated our uh ESL curriculum and added a high school grammar and comp class. You'll see that some of our some of these have

022an asterk next to them and that just notes that these were items that we explored last year but we're implementing this year. And moving into staffing, some exciting things happening related to staffing is that we were able to expand our early childhood specialist role. We added an ESL certified teacher which is what's resulting in the updated minutes for our English language learners. We have a dedicated heritage MTSS building coordinator which now allows for team time to happen also known as best fit in elementary buildings or win to every classroom at Heritage. And we've hired occupational therapists within the SEA contract in every building in the district. Always lots of professional development happening which Cara will outline at the end of this presentation. We've had a lot of K5 math literacy. We were able to pay

023teachers to do some various literacy training uh including letters and Orton Gillingham using our 35J grant which officially wrapped up today. Uh lots of learning walks. We had uh adopted UFly in our phonics curriculum review which teachers are implementing this year and we were able to train every teacher this summer by bringing you from the University of Florida to Seline to train teachers. We were able to pay teachers in the summer to come in during the summer to be trained and then pay for the training with our 35J grant. We uh offered NGSS science training to our teachers. This came from our curriculum review where our teacher leaders were able to say this is a real need. We need this training for all staff, not just the curriculum review leaders. And so after finishing curriculum

024review, we have been implementing cycles of this training for all 612 science teachers and then continuing work inside of secondary curriculum review for ELA and K12 social studies curriculum review. While you have the data to look at um in depth uh however you would like, we're just going to pop out some opportunities for growth and some some things we're monitoring and then celebrate some growth. So, some things that we are celebrating uh today. We met for the first time for our second year of curriculum review with our social studies teachers and we were able to show them how social studies scores improved significantly on the MSTEP in all three grade levels tested and it's pretty significant. So if you haven't looked at that I would definitely encourage you to look at that. We spent time

025today talking about why that might be and what are the things that we've been doing in the last year. um but definitely was something exciting and really I think um encouraged them in the work that we started last year. Science scores also continue to trend positively in the three grades that are tested. We have a positive trend line in EL students achieving WEDA scores needed to exit. Increased percent of AP participants scoring three or above. We're seeing um increases in certain grade levels of a cadence reading, some being higher, the highest level we've seen uh post pandemic. So, just some things to note there. And also some high um scores on evidence-based reading and writing on the MSTEP that are noted there. While we always want to celebrate growth because these efforts matter and what

026teachers are doing in the classroom that's working, we need to note so that teachers are continuing to do those. We also want to monitor. And so there's some things in the data that we're also monitoring. So, some of the bullets that are listed on the right include math outcomes and all grade levels, disproportionality in math around females and males with males scoring higher, acquisition of foundational math and literacy scores, and the number of AP participants and AP pathways. From there, I'm going to turn it back over to Cara. Can I have it? Thank you. I appreciate it. All right. Our our next goal is what I would say is centered around our social emotional support models. And this is a goal that we shifted more significantly in terms of the language this year because we

027were re reflecting on the feedback that we're receiving across the last um especially this last 18 months from our staff and our students alike as well as with our quality survey. Originally the goal read strengthen social emotional support models in order to positively impact staff and student self-reporting of SCS services as measured by the bianial perceptions of equity survey. And we thought that it was really important in being responsive to the feedback to ensure that we were approaching this in a more systemic way. So if you go to the next slide. Um so we shifted the language to be more um cohesive as well as to represent a stronger uh framework via comprehensive school safety and then picking up some of the pieces we were hearing from our teachers and knew that our students needed

028with the trauma-informed practice restorative practices and those proactive behavior supports. So now the goal reads, establish a consistent district-wide system that fosters comprehensive school safety by integrating restorative practices, trauma-informed approaches, and proactive behavior sports that teach and reinforce positive expectations. So with this significant um appro or shift in approach, we really wanted to be explicit about what we wanted to see and we wanted to have a frame that our staff felt that they could lean into um and felt that we strongly had a strong stance on. Um and this has been a really helpful shift this year. We've already done quite a bit of work in this area and our hope is that by shifting our goal in this way that we will really increase our consistency and cohesion in building our practices that positively

029impact our students and our staff sense of psychological and physical safety. Both Caroline and Ryan are going to present the highlights um around this school. Uh before we close, we want to highlight a few of the programming, staffing and professional development uh components that we have done with relation to this second goal. Uh one, our coaches have moved under the umbrella of our teaching and learning team, which makes sense because they provide a lot of instruction at the tier one, tier two level um to support and prevent um behavioral and social emotional challenges. um we have more consistency with the way that we're teaching social emotional skills um through uh classroom obviously instruction but also community meetings at the uh elementary level and through advisory at the secondary level. Um the PBIS team at the

030middle school has really done a lot of work and some targeted teaching to support our middle schoolers in this work. Um we have had some nice staffing additions. Um Dan is district director of safety and security. Um we have uh some classroom assistants to support our youngest learners in Young Five who as you can imagine we could use a couple more hands to make sure that we're building that really strong foundation um and some of those skills with their youngest learners. Um, some of the staffing updates that Jen mentioned are also relevant here because we've added some more ESL staff and an MTSS coordinator heritage. Um, because we want to make sure that our students who are new to the country or multilingual learner, those who are striving readers also feel connected and valued and

031um, supported in their transition. Um and then we have a really nice um pathway for some of our ESP staff, some of our pair educators to become behavior uh registered behavior technicians or RBTs. Um we're excited about that one. In terms of professional development, we've continued work with diverse text training so that students can use literature both as windows to the broader global world and also as mirrors to really see themselves um and uh and in all of their identities in the books that are available to them and that are present in our curriculum. Um we've done quite a bit of training. Well, we I'm taking credit, but really the middle school has done a lot of it. And um we are also uh forming a district team to do this. We're going together next

032week to St. John's to focus specifically on integrating social emotional behavioral health supports with PBIS and are excited about that. Uh we spent a lot of the kickoff uh in August focusing on comprehensive um school safety training and we'll continue to do so throughout the year um including restorative practices training for all of our staff and uh comprehensive school threat assessment guide training for our team members. Um and now Ryan for some of the highlights. >> So some of the data points that we have chosen to highlight here this evening come from our annual quality survey. Um and to get back to something that Cara has mentioned a couple of times, something that Caroline just talked about our school goal of or district goal of comprehensive school safety. Um focusing on the component of that

033that has to do with student sense and staff sense of psychological safety. How we feel a a sense of community throughout this district. Um it is a sort of um philosophy that we have within this district that in order for our students to achieve their academic goals, they have to first feel a sense of safety and belonging within our school buildings and our learning spaces. So really trying to focus on those ideas here. So just to highlight a couple that we're proud of here that more than 70% of students and guardians feel that they have positive interactions with staff in our district. That nearly 80% of staff and students and guardians feel that our schools are safe. more than 70% of staff, students, and guardians uh feel that students demonstrate ethical and responsible citizen uh

034citizenship, seeing beyond themselves uh to the needs of others. That more than 70% of staff, students, and guardians feel the culture at school support a positive environment that promotes student well-being. So, the work that we are continuing to monitor, the programming that we are continuing to implement throughout the district is designed to increase those numbers. Uh so when we're talking about uh increasing student engagement uh in order to increase our attendance rates uh to monitor behavioral incidents uh across grade levels and types uh anything along those lines in that righth hand column is all sort of geared to that idea of community building community of creating a space for psychological safety and um and community among our students and our families here in the district. to close and to reiterate, you know, in taking our

035action steps to support success, it is really important to us that we're building systemic um consistencies because collective efficacy is so important um in terms of us having a positive impact on our outcomes uh whether it's for the adults in our system or for our students. It's important for us to have the ongoing communication and transparency as part of this process. So communicating to our staff, to you, to our community, the work that we're doing and the why, as well as the results that we're getting. Having a robust professional learning plan. I'm going to share some highlights from that from that in just a minute. The curriculum cycle that Jen was referencing that we're um systemically repeating that year-over-year in that cycle format so that our staff can lean in and depend on those opportunities

036to make those improvements where needed and to continue to do those quality checks um improve outcomes for our students. And then of course um thinking about our whole system uh both as a district level system and then our building level system down to our classroom level system. So macro to micro and continuously monitoring and analyzing. And you may wonder like when does all this happen? I wanted to share just how we systemize our time. So we have x number of hours throughout a school year. Uh there's about 30 hours that we provide and we actually provide more in Selen area schools. But in terms of our professional development and opportunities for professional collaboration where there's opportunity for staff to lean in and do this really deep good work um both within their own grade level

037and course and then across the district as well. We utilize our our meeting time to address each of the two goals. We break it up depending on the opportunity. Um so there you can see there's a a key in terms of our comprehensive school safety. We're thinking about prevention, response, and recovery. um and thinking about where are those pieces going to be lifted in the work that we're doing. So in our DPPD, which is uh short for uh district provided professional development, we focus predominantly on our academic RMI kip goals. Uh staff meetings, we're focusing more on our comprehensive school safety. We also have cross district meetings to build that horizontal or sorry vertical alignment. And then teacher leader meetings are an opportunity for our teacher leaders um to run the department meetings and um

038for them to learn from us so that they're bringing the work that we're talking about today back to the uh ground level where they're working with their teams. And then of course we'll be keeping the symposium this year which is always our our fun event in the uh middle of the year where our teachers and our staff um present to each other some of the great work that they're doing and we share that learning. So because as John Hadtie says, accomplishing the maximum impact on student learning depends on teams of teachers working together. And I won't read that entire quote to you because I think that captures it all. Really proud of the work we're doing here and appreciate our teachers, our staff, and our building leaders for all of their efforts and this charge.

039Thank you. >> Well, thank you very much. I'm sure there might be a question or two from the board. I appreciate that. So stick around. Oh, Jason, please. Uh so it actually appeared on a couple different slides. Uh so I'm not sure if uh you might have to have a team answer for this. Um but specifically uh around uh programming, I noticed that a lot of the a lot of the items that were listed on the programming slide and the uh organizational highlight slide had asterisks next to them with you know explored in last year implemented this year. Uh so there's actually three questions uh with this so it kind of all wraps together. One is how did you determine what will get implemented? Um were there items that you did explore that did not

040get implemented and were there any programs that we abandoned or deprecated to make room for the new programs? >> Yes, I think all those things. So yes, part of the monitoring because the continuous improvement cycle is much more fluid than previous school improvement cycles used to be. It's not a oneanddone report at the end of the school year. So throughout the year when you're in the monitoring, so if you were to go back uh to the uh the four boxes, the quarters when we're monitoring and we're thinking about okay, what are our next steps? What are those next best moves in order to be responsive to our student needs? uh when we collect data, we monitor progress and then we adjust. We are thinking about what are the programming adjustments that need to be made.

041Some we might be able to do on the spot. For example, homework hive has been a longstanding um opportunity for our students to get onetoone or small group help after outside of school hours. Um if we see for example an attendance dip in homework hive uh we might then specifically uh bring in a math teacher who's inviting students to come in who might need that specified help and make an adjustment in that way. Uh we are actually making an adjustment to homework hive this year from the end of the year. So not abandoning but revisioning. So Beth Russo, our secondary coordinator who really coordinates Homework Hive in order to get those individualized student supports in place um is working with the secondary teachers to talk about what is the next best step with this model.

042Uh because we're not seeing as many students as we would like to be based upon the needs that we have identified and who we know needs those supports. Um so I the ideas come from the generative conversations for from our student success teams uh myself the building principles the teaching and learning team um and then of course alongside of our capacity what we're able to do and able to afford based upon the opportunities. So one example was uh we last year we instituted the math lab uh as an opportunity we had a math teacher take an overage at the high school to teach a small group of students who were not thriving mathematicians at the time and we were hoping that uh that small group instruction would create an environment for those students to really

043uh lift up their math skills in that moment. It wasn't as successful as we hoped. So we've got some analysis on that. We're holding for try one because it wasn't over. It was an additional cost. Uh that money that we were using from a grant is no longer available. So we have to be constantly flexible with our thinking, looking at the data and thinking about what's the most important next steps. Um, would you add anything back or >> Sure. >> I think the question of what did we abandon or move away from is excellent >> or remove I don't want to say that we purposely abandoned just what we moved away from deprecated because these were better options is what I mean >> and I don't think we do that enough as humans right like

044get rid of things when we bring in new things. So um there's a number there. So the phonics uh curriculum that we're implementing, UFly foundations, replaces a number of different options that our teachers used to use. So we used to have three or four different ones that were used across the district. Now we have one, which is really nice. Um the Heritage MTSS coordinator, that role used to be split between me and uh Erin Grudis, who's the Woodlands MTSS coordinator with an overage, and that is now one role, which is really nice. our um ESL or coaches used to be under the purview of the special education administrators. Now they're under um teaching and learning team so freeing up some of their work there. And then school litics replaces illuminate um which we're very excited

045about but still under construction. >> If you were coming to my office you'd see a timeline through 2028 with ideas that are laid out with the possibilities for how we might bring those to fruition. Did you get your three questions in? Thank you. Um I thank you for the schoolics uh point. Um I had a quick question about letters. It uh you noted that it takes place the training takes place over the summer or it finished over the summer. It >> So you fly is the phonics curriculum that we adopted and there was training that we built in using the actual UFly trainers from Florida this year. Jen organized that with 35J funds to bring those um facilitators up and we uh had training for all of our teachers. If they weren't able to make

046the summer day, uh we pro have provided them opportunities either through Wayne Resa um or Jen's direct facilitation of training in order for them to get that onboarding. The letters training was optional and uh because it's essentially 140 168 hours worth of time. It takes about two years to complete and so teachers opted into that if they wanted a deeper dive into that particular content area and it complements our uh early literacy. >> Perfect. That's that that was a piece that didn't fit for me. I appreciate that. And I saw the boxes for your 35J uh end of the end of the grant and well done. Congratulations. You spent every last penny. That was wonderful. Um, and I don't think I have any other questions right now, but Jennifer does. >> So, first, thank you

047for the consistency and the accountability. I It's incredibly important, and I just want to make sure you know it was recognized. >> Um, I did have a question question about the gender-based math outcomes. >> Um, can you talk to us about what grades those are in and kind of data behind that, next steps? >> Uh, yes. And you'll be hearing this a little bit more. So if any math teachers are watching know I'll be getting to you soon. Um you know when we were looking at our data we've been monitoring our subgroup performances. So we do see those consistencies in disproportionality with students who are in EL have IEPs or may be economically disadvantaged. Something that surprised me and I think it's because now when we when we do have a consistent cycle of continuous

048improvement and we're studying data year-over-year was the it's sometimes it's a 10 Caroline and I actually looked at this more closely together 15 20% gap between our females and males. It starts in our early well we start this is an MSTEP only. We actually haven't we were just talking today about the fact that we haven't looked to see if this is replicated in Aadian um or NWA. So that'll be a checkpoint because MTEP is one assessment point. Um but when we see it there, we'll definitely check in those other two places to triangulate it. Um and it does s seem to travel all the way up through the secondary. And we were talking about math identity. We were talking about perceptions of math and its value in the world. I invite you all uh the

049WISD is um showing Counted Out, which is a math documentary this Thursday from 6:00 to 8:00 PM. It's free to the community. Um I've already seen it once. going again because I found it so compelling and how important it is for us to ensure that our mathematicians um see themselves and the the joy of math and how it fits into our worlds and how important that is. And so we've got some exploring to do in this particular area. Um and this will be a conversation I'm really looking forward to having with our math teacher leaders and then ultimately the different grade levels and and departments. So >> thank you. If you can keep us updated on that be really good. >> I do appreciate the attention to it as well. national issue for sure. Anyone

050else at the table? Tim, >> I I just want to make more of a comment. I had a quite a few questions and uh Cara actually was teaching me how to email this to her because I couldn't figure out how to get it off my iPad. So, just right before the meeting, I got them to her and she's already responded, but I have not read them yet. So, I appreciate that work. Thanks. >> Dr. Gold. Um, so I think the focus on safety um, with SEAL leaves me with just like a couple questions of how SEAL looks for the average student say let's just say like at the middle school high school level I just like what are the offerings right now? I know things have it seems like it's in flux. So, I'm really

051glad we have more coaches, but what does SEAL curriculum sort of can you give us some examples of what it looks like for students? >> I would put this in the um this isn't the right slide, but if you were to go to the one after the second goal, then >> so when we look at increasing consistency, so for example, um Principal Stagger and her team, you know, thinking about what the high school needed, they added that second advisory time. So now instead of just t just Wednesdays, now it's Tuesdays and Thursdays. There's a scope and sequence of lessons um that might be coping, might be managing stress, might be um how do you study some things that are relevant to high school students that are pre-planned uh predominantly uh those particular lessons are utilizing

052the be good people curriculum which is we had a speaker here a few years ago virtually uh that was uh the organizer of the developer of all those lessons. So they've integrated that. Dr. Kerr has been um collaborating with that team to ensure that there's a scope and sequence there and it's been consistent. So freshman, sophomores, juniors, seniors, it builds upon itself across the year. Similarly, principal Jasper at the middle school and her team have been working to develop lessons and integrate those in a meaningful way to be authentic and responsive to the what they're seeing. Uh and we look at the scope and sequence K through 12. Um I actually just put this in our our mic platform today. We look at um essentially building you know helping to foster humans are civily minded

053empathetic um and what are we doing at each of those levels. Whole group meetings are called community meetings. They often come to the the auditorium or to the gymnasium depending on the grade level where there might be a speaker um or a presentation. It might be culture building or some fun just for them to feel a part of it. So like right now for example, Heritage is launching their houses which is really fun. Um where they can sort of shrink the building a little bit and then the advisory or morning meetings at K5 where they do more of the lesson direct targeted lessons around different skills students might need. Um and then of course in the tier two and tier three specified lessons based upon the students the coaches where they're placed K8 will push

054in and do a lesson a month. Um and then we will be exploring something that Jason uh sorry trusty Tisidus was asking was that um you know how do we know one of the things that's on our radar is having a unified curriculum and a a structured PBS support that is aligned K12 that's next on our list. So that's where we'll start getting the training to scale that out and then working with the teams at each of the buildings to ensure that we have um collective efficacy consistency and cohesion districtwide. Thank you for that. I knew there was lots going on and I just wanted to sort of hear the summary and really just focus on some of that work and say how much I appreciate it. And um you know more and more it

055seems like there's studies about the importance of play and fun and play with students at different ages. So older kids interacting with younger kids. So whenever I see those opportunities come up um in the district I'm really happy to see it. So um I just want to thank the people who are are doing that sort of uh sometimes not as easy to notice work. So I wanted to highlight it. Um I also had a quick question about literacy at the post like at the secondary level and review of um like the reading and fiction and English curriculums and whether that's like where we are in the cycle with that because I just am curious. >> So 612 we're in our second year. Uh we'll be meeting with them in two weeks for the first time

056of their second year in the cycle. Uh we contracted with a professional from um it was teachers college and now they're independent. Um and all I can think is Maggie Roberts. Am I right? Yes. I'm there's Maggie and there's Kate. They're both authors and so we contract with Maggie Roberts to come in and work with our English language arts teachers to talk about current best practices in secondary reading and writing. Um, and we've talked about like what that might look like this year to ensure that we're lifting those practices. And then of course utilizing uh there's disciplinary uh literacy standards for the state of Michigan that we utilize as well. Um that helps us calibrate our own best practices and of course keeping our eye on the research and what's needed. Um so we're looking

057forward to working with those teams again this year. >> Thank you for the to the team. I always really look forward to this presentation and like learning about all the smart things that we're doing. >> Thanks. >> Yes. Thank you very much. I don't think there's anything else from the rest of the team. So, no. Uh I what the public may not know is that the package that you sent to us is many many many more slides beyond this. And I appreciate you not going through each and every one of them. >> You are very very welcome. But as I was able to go through there, I thank you for color coding as well. It was it was really quite fascinating and I'm so impressed by the time and the energy and the detail uh

058that you put into this. So, thank you so much on behalf of the students and staff and the board. >> Thank you. And thank you to student staff, the board, and the team. Of course, >> and the team. >> Thank you. >> Well, they are shuffling out. We have one action item this evening. I'd like to entertain a motion to approve the meal price adjustment effective October 1st, 2025 as proposed and submitted by Larry Dandria of director of food service who may or may not be here. He's not here. >> So move. >> Who was that? Oh, Tim. Thank you. >> Support >> and Lauren Gold. Thank you very much. Uh is there any discussion or any question or is there anyone here who can speak to this? I'm going to have Miranda come speak

059to this briefly. Although by the cadence of the incoming emails on the state budget um which is related to this. This is a required um motion that we're asking for tonight to be passed to get these on the record. Um but she may want to weigh in as I continue in my update about the information we're getting as we're up here. So, as um Superintendent Kowalsski kind of said, we are looking at the possibility of charging since the state budget is still in flux. Um this may ne never go into to use because the free meals may continue but in efforts to just re take our prices and pull them up to today's things. Um, as she said, there's a lot of requirements and standards because throughout even though that we talk a lot about

060right now the state um um contribution for the free meals, we also have a federal part of the requirements for free and reduced lunch is. And so there's a whole calculator piece and you have to make sure that you're following those guidance and things like that. And so we thought it wise to update those prices to some of the current um data that we have and so that we're prepared in case of that we need to go this direction. But it does not um does not influence if we continue the state continues to fund meals as well. Any other questions? >> Um I had a comment. It's not directed toward you, Miranda. Um I I have a lot to say about food in schools and what's going on right now. I'm going to pause and

061not say everything I would like to say, but I think it is so upsetting that we're talking about food in schools and we're in the budget situation that we are right now. Um, I would like to thank Selenary Schools for the memo on September 19th. If you haven't read it, it says important food service updates. Um, I'd like to pay attention, have us pay attention to Selen Area Schools is committed to student well-being and will continue to ensure that all students, no matter their situation, have access to meals during the school day. Our food service staff will ensure that every student has access to email meal regardless of funding. Um, so thank you for that and I implore you to however that operationalizes, be respectful of student situations and food insecurity. Um, I'm sad that

062we have to talk about this. Obviously not directed at you, Miranda. >> Um Dr. Kowalsski, did you have any recent updates regarding the budget like or is it still we're waiting till midnight plus one minute tonight? >> I have an update I'll share during administrative updates about um guidance we received from MDE that is potentially still um correct and um that would be the update I'll share in a bit. Thank you. If there's no more Oh, Jason, >> I I can't remember if we specifically brought this up in in finance committee when u when we were talking about whether a budget was going to be passed. Uh is it at all possible? Because I I I agree with I agree with Jen wholeheartedly. I don't I don't understand uh why this particular thing is even

063in in jeopardy. Is there any any way that we can use any other funding sources and pay ourselves back retroactively once a budget is passed. Can we take money from any fund in order to cover these costs? >> There's a lot of different things that schools have to do in case of what percentage of free and reduced lunch that they are. So there's a thing called C for certain schools and so their position and how they're able to fund those things but legally yes if the our food service fund is not does not um it cannot go legally go negative. So in general back in COVID um timing we actually our food service fund did go negative and we hunt to support it from our general fund dollars. And so there there is some means

064but it's also kind of how how the how it's all structured. Food service is very regulated in some of those structures. And so we're kind of in a little bit of uncharted territory on what to do because we're also um how our software works and things like that. And so we're kind of waiting on guidance from the state. Um we did get word that they have committed to saying that it will be retroactive to October 1st. So that's kind of um a little bit promising that they've committed to that that will be the date of this um transition. So that's kind of a little bit where we're at right now. Well, hearing no more discussion, let's put this to a vote now. Um, all in favor, please say I. >> I. Opposed. >> Hearing none.

065Thank you very much. We have one discussion item, board policy committee update from the chairperson, Lauren Gold. >> So, uh, the policy committee met, uh, this evening. We talked about policy um um which you'll see on a future agenda um regarding uh student privacy and student records. Um we discussed policy uh 7440.01 1 uh which will also come up at our next meeting I believe um which is um an update regarding uh video it says taping but videography yes recording um it had been we had discussed this previously it had been updated by Neiola and so we looked at that policy um we uh discussed with our uh new superintendent and uh board president. Uh the possibility of uh enlisting Trune policy services um as a change um for our policies and that will be

066discussed with the full board, but uh seems like it may really help with student welfare and really streamlining our uh policy responsibilities. So stay tuned. Um, in light of that, our discussion of board operating procedures was relatively brief because um, those would be sort of included in a a trun packet potentially. So, we didn't want to waste time making a whole lot of discussions, but I will uh say that we uh looked at some possible revisions that Dr. McVey had looked at and we talked specifically about looking carefully at policy around appointing a new board member uh policy around board member ethics and policy about board member public communication and we are going to look into um MASB guidance on some of those things and best practices. Um and then we finished up with a

067discussion of concussion policy um versus administrative guidelines and uh state concussion laws. Um, and again, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense for us to start writing and working on new policy if we're going to make a policy service change. So, we had productive discussions, but um, we're not planning on bringing anything to the board just yet on that. >> Thank you. Appreciate that. Um, yeah, it's going to be going to have an interesting few months coming up, I'm sure. Uh, let me just think administration board updates. We'll begin with administration and then start after Dr. Kowalsski with Jillian Hayes and then work our way down the table. >> Good evening, uh, President McVey, members of the board and community. So, three weeks ago, we were together and we were just in the beginning

068of the school year and now we're down to the hustle and bustle and um, things are happening uh, extracurricular activities happening everywhere, of course, our athletics and then of course the classrooms and buildings. So everything is well underway in teaching and learning as you saw um by the amazing presentation but also the work behind it in our teaching and learning department tonight. And so I want to give you some updates on some work happening. Uh count day is tomorrow uh in the state of Michigan to mark the close of attendance awareness month this week. We had three spirit days. Um and I saw I was at four buildings yesterday but Pleasant Ridge I think was the most uh comfy and cozy that I saw. Uh, Tuesday today was silly socks day. It was a board

069meeting day, so I kind of got out of that one. Um, and then tomorrow because it is count day, we want all healthy students to be in attendance and so they're accounted for, but also we're in their um, as I'm told, not ma and blue. It's it's blue and gold. I have to make sure I say that correctly. Uh, county is important for all districts, but uh, definitely ours. It determines funding when the budget is passed from the state of Michigan and that turn uh supports many of the things that are possible for all of our students from transportation, technology to student services. So we all benefit when everyone is here and healthy and in attendance. Uh this was also a chance to spotlight uh the power of good attendance and the role that we

070all play. When students come to school regularly, they stay more connected. Families play a critical role by setting routines at home, encouraging positive habit habits like going to bed on time. Uh daily choices that families make are incredibly important to the partnership that we have with them to be sure that children are present, engaged, and ready to thrive during all school days. The update I have on school meals, uh I do not believe has changed since we've received word um on a deal pending, but possibly not tonight. This is the guidance we received from MDE in the preparation for the possibility of um the ending of the school meals program. You may remember as um Vice President Seban pointed out that we ask all families to make sure they could log into their um meal

071accounts and make sure that they are turning in their free and reduced uh meal paperwork and we still would ask them to prepare continue to prepare for those things. We did receive on September 25th a formal guidance from MDE in a memo form. The message from them was clear that schools should continue serving breakfast and lunch to students exactly as they have since the start of the year. That is the guidance from MDE. Districts were asked not to change their practices or to stop meal services at this time. And the department shared they remain optimistic, but that was not saying that it would happen um that this the state budget would include this and we were told it would be retroactive again to today. Selenary school students should plan tomorrow to be served meals without

072breaking lunch money. There are some other things this this could mean um that again they will tomorrow and as I've told our team Friday and you know something were to happen um that would cause us to have to not do that in in other days and weeks. We would ensure families have that information ahead of time and those changes occurs would be communicated clearly with next steps outlined. We had a busy weekend in Seline the Selen community senior area schools. We had the privilege of celebrating the opening of our new steam center wait room and all the great things that were part of that. um the ma the team, the students, the teachers, the parents, so many people came together to plan this space um and it can be used from the broader community and

073all the wonderful groups, science Olympiad, robotics, steam, all of the things. Also connected, of course, was the um to our current auxiliary gym is the brand new weight room. Had a lot of fun um watching some students test out that equipment, younger students. Uh and so this was also designated as a meeting and collaborative space um as well. It was just a great moment to see. I was not part of the planning process. So take a lot of pride in that I'm in a community that put so much forward for their students and um and the community at large and symbolizing the commitment. It was also run tough fun family fun day on Sunday. Uh another I know a very special event to the community. Uh it was our 12th annual. I was a participant

074for the first time and it was nice to see the community come together to support research for childhood brain cancer and um as we saw from the other t tables and um tents that were set up um we also h they also had the opportunity to showcase some other fundraising efforts um as well. I want to share that I received some wonderful news word of mouth last week but finally in writing from Dr. Dr. Spickard at the Michigan Elementary in Michigan Middle School Principles Association, MEMSPA, Principal Megan Degran from Heritage and Pleasant Ridge Principal Kinyatta Hughes have been nominated nominated two nominations from Seleneria schools for region two principal of the year award. Very exciting. This recognition is no small thing. She shared in her letter to me about um the candid the honores. She

075said this honor is a testament to their outstanding service to students, staff and the broader community. She said this nomination also recognizes the individual achievements but the collaborative culture in which support systems and these leaders um to have such excellence and to flourish. Congratulations to their leadership. I am so proud to and humbled to serve alongside them. So please join me in congratulating Mrs. Degrant and Mrs. Hughes on this well-deserved recognition. They will be honored at the annual Memphis conference and the many of their colleagues will be there to celebrate them. And I mean just so so neat and exciting that we have two of our elementary principles. I believe they're from what I understand the only two nominees from region two. So it's really exciting. I would be remiss to miss this. I'd also

076like to pause to recognize that Thursday, October 2nd is National Custodian Appreciation Day. Uh it's a day set aside to honor the hard work and dedication of all of the custodians who keep our office spaces, our schools, our facilities, everyone around us, all of the facilities around us clean and they also love kids and like to engage with kids and oftentimes are um the individuals whose students see every day that they look forward to. Don't forget that we have a very important millillage on the ballot on November 4th. The last opportunity to see anformational session in person is October 9th at 5:30 at the Washington ISD. We also have I don't want to steal thunder, but so I'll say it quickly. Um the foundation for Selener Schools Hall of Fame inductees, which I am confident

077vice president 7 will and others will likely talk about a bit more. And in closing, I would love to see a great attendance just like our first listening lab um at the pizza and priorities event next Monday 6 pm in this room. And I believe Betty Yankee has has gotten some great pizza. Um so like we're not just talking like you know pizza like we've got great really good pizza that's going to be here for pizza and priorities. I look forward to seeing even more of our community members from the hundreds and that I've met so far. Um, thank you for allowing me to be such a part of a such kind and caring community for children. >> Thank you, Dr. Kowalsski. >> Yes, thank you. Um, apologies for coming in late. Couldn't find parking.

078That was fun experience. Um, good luck to the middle school football team. Um, I was at Chad TU actually. I was there for Miss Selene handing out beads. um right behind marching band. I was kind of hidden. I was down by the stoplight. It was extremely fantastic to see so many people come out and support. It was wonderful to see everyone just having a good time despite the heat. I I loved it. It was that was also my first year attending due to being kind of absent due to camping. It was fantastic to be there for the first year and I do plan on coming back because I couldn't run it due to cross country MHSA regulations. Um I will be coming back and I will be running it next year. So I'm excited about

079that. Um I'm a little bit late to this one, but Senior Capstone s um tied the teal ribbons all around downtown Seline. That was one of our first uh volunteering hours that we were allowed to get. Um, we've recently just took those down. So, happy end of ovarian cancer awareness month. Thank you to all of our seniors that went out and did that. Um, I have seen a ton of sports and clubs be active like every day. I just see more and more clubs in the media center, in classrooms, in the um, Hornet Hive, and just everything. I'm incredibly excited to see everything that will be coming my way about all the fantastic stuff clubs will be and have been doing. And happy midway through the first trimester to everybody. Good luck. Fail your way

080to success is a really good example for student athletes whether you're in high school or college. And I want to share this kind of impactful story for me that happened a few weeks ago. There's a young student athlete at the University of Notre Dame and his name is Tyler Buckner and he's the backup quarterback and they were playing a national televised prime time game on national TV with 80,000 people in that stadium. It came down to the very end 34 to 34. Notre Dame scores a touchdown. So, when you score a touchdown, it's six points. When you kick the extra point, it's seven points. Nothing. Anyway, Tyler Buckner is the placeholder for the extra point. So, he comes out, nice snap, bobbles the snap, doesn't get the kickoff, rolls around, see if he can get

081a the ball in the end zone. They can't. So, they're only up by six. He has to go to the sideline and stand there in front of a national audience. And not only that, he has to put on this yellow neon vest because his responsibility is to signal plays into the players that are on the field. So for the next two and a half minutes, he has to be on national TV and he's on the spotlight and it's makes for a good storyline that he's the going to be the reason that they possibly lose this game. Texas A&M goes down, scores with almost no time on the clock, kicks the extra point, and they win. So, it doesn't sound like a really good Hollywood ending story, but for me, I wanted to share that opportunity

082to fail to success. We got to see this kid that was 23 years old stand there on the sidelines for a good five minutes on national TV and just bear the weight of the entire football team losing that game even though he had such a minor impact. When you give up 41 points to a football game, it's definitely not one player's point. But the fact that he was had that maturity and that courage to stand there and just take it. He didn't go hide behind his teammates. He didn't have the opportunity to kind of blend in with everybody. He stood there and took it. And he just took this punch over and over with the national TV calling him out about it. And I was so impressed. And I see that week after week when

083I go by the stadiums here at Seline, these kids, I don't think we recognize the pressure they're under to step up to these huge moments. And I want to remind all the student athletes, don't forget, we get so caught up in making mistakes or failing. And what you're doing is you're failing your way to success. So don't ever think about a missed field goal or a dropped pass or a missed kick. You're just setting yourself up for success. And just to tell you a really fun story about this Tyler Buckner, he's graduating. I did a little research on him. Really smart kid, well respected on the football team. And he's got a job already lined up at Goldman Sachs in New York. and the football season is not over. So, this story may have a

084really good end come playoff time. >> Okay, I wrote a few things down today. I normally don't say much, but uh got a few things to say today. Uh was going to mention the count day, but that's already been mentioned. And then um the state budget also did they did have an agreement and I did get a um email late today about a press release from the governor mentioning the uh record per pupil funding and free breakfast and lunches. So we don't have specifics on that yet but hopefully that's going to come down the pike here. Um third uh county has a CTE millillage um just as uh superintendent Kowalsski mentioned and uh that will be on the ballot November 4th. Um, this will be a one mil increase, so roughly $100 for every,000 $100,000

085SUV of your house. I am not a tax guy and all at all and I seldom vote yes on taxes, but the CTE millage I strongly support. Not all county schools have a southwest Washington consortium. Selene is lucky to have such a program. Um, this millillage will also expand opportunities for our Selen students. It will give opportunities to students and districts that are lacking them. Uh we have seen an increased demand in CTE programs. Businesses need skilled employees from these fields and not all students are collegebound but these are good paying jobs. So I think everybody needs to get behind this whether you are for taxes or again um against taxes. I think this is a good one. So then lastly, this is more of a public service announcement. Um, since our last meeting, which

086was say like 3 weeks ago, our country has seen some pretty terrible violence towards one another over the past few weeks, we've had a young lady stabbed and left for dead on a bus. A young man uh shot and killed for having dialogue with those he disagrees with him. A high school shooting that will forever change the lives of those students. Three police officers killed in Pennsylvania. And then close to home Sunday, we had a church shooting and burnt down uh to the ground. This is just the news stories that I've heard and it I know it's not all inclusive. I'm sure what is wrong with our society that we quickly resort to violence. I don't know. We are easily it's e we can easily point fingers, but we really need to start changing um

087changes by looking at ourselves. Can we tone down our own words? Can we have conversations with those that we may disagree with peacefully? Let's be honest, I don't agree with everybody on this board on all things, but I've had some really meaningful conversations with fellow board members. We might not change minds or ideals, but we can walk away learning from one another. You know who you are on this board, and I thank you for having those meaningful engagements and conver tough conversations. It starts with us. It starts with you to do the tough work and communicate. That's it. >> Thank you, Sam. Thank you for those words, Tim. Um, I'm going to echo maybe build off that a little bit and that we have some great community building opportunities. Uh, one of them is through

088the Washington ISD. They do provide services countywide and partnerships. Uh, and Cara Davis mentioned counted out the screening on Thursday which is at uh, Washna Community College. That's one opportunity that's coming up. Um they and this district did just um put this out on social media. There is a special ed inclusion coffee and conversations that's starting up in November and goes for I think there's about four sessions of that and all of this is on uhd.org. They have so many um learning opportunities and um community building events uh and of course more about the programs that they offer and also a really uh deep uh dive into the CTE message so that if you can't make any of the sessions they have so much information online uh the services that will uh be uh brought

089to the district to the county to all of our districts and uh financial information and voting information. So again, that'sd.org. >> Thank you. Um I'll pass it along and do the anchor leg. >> All right, I'll keep rolling on that. CTE um this way. Absentee ballots went out today. Please vote whether you do ballot or whether you are at the polls and able to do so on November 4th. Um, please consider looking at the resources my colleagues have mentioned and consider voting yes on that important um, ballot initiative. Um, with regards to the foundation for Saint Lean Area Schools uh, in October we have a few interesting and fun things coming up. So uh, for our Hall of Fame weekend, the Hall of Fame game will be on the 10th. So one week from this

090Friday, the day before on the 9th, um, consider getting involved with the Seline uh, alumni committee. You do not need to be um a graduate of Selen Area Schools to support our alumni committee. They're having a social hour, social two hours at Dan's Downtown Tavern from 4 to 6. So, uh consider swinging by if you are able. Um and then my other comment was around the open house that we had on Saturday. um seeing that come to fruition and was amazing and I loved I loved so many of the assets that were in there and months and months and months of Rex talking about them and what we were ordering and what we were doing. But I think for me the most important thing that I saw there whether we were in the um the

091weight center or the steam area was students were coming in, students were hanging out and I think that um they like the new home. Um so I appreciated seeing that. It was wonderful to see. Thanks. >> Um thank you for the comments uh Tim especially. I've also been thinking a lot um since Minnesota and then it just goes on about um violence in our society. Um and I'm holding uh our fellow um Michigan worshippers close to my heart. Um I want to um on a more cheerful note uh send a happy new year to fellow Jewish hornets and their families who are celebrating and wishes for an easy past this week and thank uh the teachers and administrators who hold uh those students and families like mine in uh their hearts when uh understanding about

092things like scheduling and missed class days. This really is a little bit like our December. Um and so it's a busy and a joyful time of year uh for families like mine. So, thank you for being understanding to the teachers and administrators. Um uh September is um childhood cancer month awareness month and um I always am grateful to this community's efforts with Chad TU. Uh beyond that um I wanted to talk a little bit about childhood cancer survivors because I'm certain that we have uh some in our uh schools. Uh because when we talk about our special ed populations, what a lot of people don't realize and isn't aren't aware of is that um more than 80% of kids diagnosed with childhood cancers will survive, but they will survive with oftentimes uh pretty significant complications

093and late effects. And so, um it's just important for us to remember that not every uh difference in ability or disability or chronic disease is always obvious. And um sometimes uh these kids have often uh these kids have lifelong late effects that can impact their health and learning. Um so just um when we are talking about attendance and special ed uh there's a myriad of ways uh that these can become complex issues for kids and families. And um while I encourage attendance, I um want kids to come when they're healthy and feeling up to it. And um I just thought September Childhood Cancer Awareness Month was a good time to also recognize that. And uh thanks for this community and the CAR family for all they do for pediatric brain cancer and for others in

094the community raising money for pediatric cancer in general. And um yeah, so that month is coming to a close and um I hope we all have a healthy year. >> Thank you, Jason. >> Uh just want to echo uh what a lot of my colleagues said, but the CTE millillage is extremely important. Uh we have a huge skills gap in this country. Hundreds of thousands of extraordinarily well-paying jobs are unfilled right now. Uh, and the best way I can kind of uh, illustrate that to people that don't understand what that gap is is think about your mother or your grandmother that needs a plumber, needs the plumber now, and needs to do it on a budget. the more skilled tradesmen and women that we have in the future, the easier it will be for everybody.

095So, uh I support uh like my other colleagues here, the CTE millillage. So, uh please remember to vote uh and please strongly consider that millillage uh when you do vote. Uh Nate had a great story that was uh that was a fantastic story. Um I did not watch the Notre Dame game this weekend. Uh but uh I always tell people that if I screw up only twice before 10:00 a.m. on any given work day that it's going to be a successful day. So uh failing to succeed is good. As long as we learn something when we fail, we're not actually failing. So that that was a great story. I really like that. Nate, um like some of my other colleagues uh up here, I had uh had some thoughts about a lot of things that

096have gone on. And uh though I don't usually do it, I did write most of this down so that I didn't forget certain uh certain points. Uh so uh over the last several weeks and months, our country has endured a great number of tragedies. Though there is likely no one thing that connects them all uh from an ideological perspective, one thing is abundantly clear, and that is that our public discourse has devolved over the last couple of decades. What bonds us all is the power to communicate. God made us with two ears and one mouth so we can listen twice as diligently as we talk. Sometimes my larger than average mouth makes that difficult for me. Uh which is why uh while publicly uh deliberating regarding the candidates for school board and made comments that

097I felt were uncalled for and mean-spirited, that is also why I sincerely apologized to the person to whom they were directed. Uh, and I did so using the same public forum from which I made the statement. And I do truly hope that Ms. Vanstein has accepted my apology. I knew when I decided to run for school board that the position, though truly seldom warranted, does come with a degree of public scrutiny. I made sacrifices to the campaign uh for this role and have repercussions from that experience that I will forever hold over myself. What I did not expect was to have people I did not even know or ever talk to previously call me things like a bigot. I have acquaintances, friends, and colleagues from all walks of life. I am not a bigot. I've

098been called a racist. I have acquaintances, friends, and colleagues of all ethnicities, all races. I'm not a racist. I've been called a homophobe. I have acquaintances, friends, and colleagues, and family members that are gay. I'm not a homophobe. I've been called a transphobe. I have acquaintances, though admittedly not any close friends or colleagues that identify as trans. Though, I do feel that I openly communicate with members of the trans community. I'm not a trans folk. What does concern me the most is when people publicly berate me and my colleagues regarding things that could be best described as misrepresentations or mischaracterizations and at worst flatout lies. When my colleagues and I are accused of making statements regarding a topic, it would behoove those making those claims to remember that our meetings are recorded. When someone wants

099to carefully not name a board member but glares directly at me when accusing the board of harboring an idea, they may want to know about my actual opinions on a particular topic. They can do so by talking to me at any time. For instance, they probably do not know that I adamantly defended programs during my campaign and I educated a number of community members about what those services actually do for our students. They may not know that I had ferocious advocacy for my kids to have them put onto special plans. After being rebuffed, we brought to the table our expert consultant, our medical team, and if needed, our attorney was at the ready. I am certain that they do not know that when my child did not have the promised interactions with a trusted adult

100daily mom and I had to often pick up the pieces, especially when a male administrator singled out my daughter, treating my child with the presumption that anything that was a concern was my child's fault. They may not know that I myself am diagnosed with a common common mental health disorder and I struggle every day to work through that after being diagnosed in adulthood instead of when I was in school when I could have got the assistance that I needed. We need to remember that open dialogue and a sincere desire to learn from and about each other is what we all need to strive for. I am willing to discuss any topics with anyone at any time. We need to relearn how we can disagree without making it a line of demarcation. We need to not

101presume we know someone without speaking to them. We need to not call names if for no other reason than to teach our kids that the expectation is to treat all people with respect. And most importantly, we need to put all things in context. listen to an entire message and not form opinions on conjecture and complete information. >> Jason, thank you. I really appreciate your message, but just as you were wrapping up, my dis my computer decided it was about to die and I have my own message as well. >> I can keep going if you'd like. >> No, it's okay. I'll I'll see if I can squeeze it in. Thank you. Um, yeah, I hope everyone feels on this board that they're they're respected and listened to and um, at the very least the very

102that's the lowest bar, the lowest standard that we will try and listen to each other. Thank you everyone for your comments tonight. Few uh, reports. Uh, I attended the Citizens for Equality Community CQC on Thursday the 18th. Uh, we met Dan Swallow, the new city manager. We met the new fire marshal. Jackie Martin was there handing out all sorts of CTE Mill goodies and I'm sure there's more. You have more in your office there, Jackie. I'm sure. Yes, there's a thumbs up. I have a sign in my front lawn which I'm quite excited about. U and so are the neighbors from what I've heard. Um also one of the interesting things that came from the Seline Chamber President Liz, what's her name? Bosny. Lisa, thank you. Thank you. Well done, newbie. Uh she said when

103there are ribbon cutings and I've had at least 15 the the last last year. Please everyone go. It's not just you know people are affiliated with the business. I went to the clay and code. I went to the drink mate which is in the new flatout building and u it shows the the rest of the community and the businesses that we support them and we're here for them and it's warm and it's fuzzy. It's great news. Often there are cupcakes involved as well. Um again on the open house, thank you so much to uh to Rex and everyone who was there. It was fantastic. Uh 49 new student recruits for the Seline Olympia, sorry, Science Olympiad, which is fantastic. Uh it's it's going to be absolutely wonderful. Uh the DEIAC uh the other night selected

10411 new members from the community out of 30 applicants. Uh they are being contacted now. Uh I had the opportunity to introduce Dr. Kowalsski to the Seline Seniors Conference a few weeks back and to thank them for their support of the bond. I'm always thanking thanking thanking the community. Thank you so much. And I hope we get a chance, you all get a chance to see that space. Thank you, Jillian, for the beads. I was one of the the the exhausted runners. That heat was was worse than I was expecting. Yeah, it was pretty bad. And but I made it to the end and it was a lot of fun. They didn't just have us run the mile. Uh but I didn't know any of us could do that. They also said, "Run, carry this

10520 pound ball around a circle, do some push-ups, do this, do that." and uh you know they told us what to do and we told them where to go. Uh so and also finally and this is for Zach. >> I am so looking forward to the October 10th induction of the Hall of Fame awardees because of one person in particular. Who do you think I'm thinking of? Zach. >> Exactly. We're so looking forward to having you inducted on the Hall of Fame. Bravo. Bravo. Yeah. >> Thank you. I'm looking forward Are you looking forward to it? >> I'm looking forward to it. It is indeed. And I hope you have your speech ready. >> I will. >> Thank you. I'd like to uh I'd like to entertain a Thank you, Zach. I appreciate that for

106letting me put you on the spot like that. I'd like to entertain a motion to authorize the consent agenda as printed. Please. >> So move to >> JT support gold >> LG. All in favor, please say I. >> I. Right. opposed. Oh, thank goodness. 70. Um, items on the next agenda, Dr. Kowalsski. >> Oh, that's right. >> Well, I know some of the items is the third quarter review in close session of the superintendent who's going to give us an update. >> Yeah. halfway point. Goodness, I committed the cardinal. Thank you again for asking me about our next meeting. We are going to be doing a mid um year evaluation or midcycle evaluation in close session. And before that, uh, Cara Sim Stemer will be presenting on the CTE millillage. We did save that for

107any of like the folks out there who want to come and attend and hear from her right before the election with maybe absentee ballot in hand. Um, because we know there's a lot of different decisions that voters are making right now. So, um, wanted to hold that until later in October. And I, as um, as talked about yesterday morning, we have no other items at this time. Thank you. Does that mean it's going to be a fast meeting? A short meeting? All right. Thank you. Um, the next board of education meeting will Oh, is there any public comment, Miss Yankee? Uh, the next board of education meeting will be held on October 14th at 6:30 p.m. I'd like to entertain a motion to adjourn this regular meeting at what time is it? Almost 8 o'clock.

1087:58. >> So, move tides >> JT followed by Berwick. Thank you very much. All in favor, please say I. >> I. >> Thank you very much. Nice seeing everyone again. Yeah.