001I'd like to call. I'd like to call to order the Board of Education meeting of August 27th 2024, 2024 at 6:30. Would you please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance led by Brad or Tim. Let's do it together. Ready 1, 2, 3. 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. Well done. I always call on the right people to start this apparently, before we start I'd like to welcome to their very first board meeting ever, Kate Sonnenday and Tommy Allmand our Student Representatives now they were introduced before but this is your first official meeting so welcome to the team folks, and I have a really cute picture of them holding their signs
002it's great, I at least I think it's pretty cute. Public comment Betty Jahnke do we have anything? Seeing as there's no public comment we will move on to my response to previous public comment. I have no response to previous public comment today. Moving on to the revisions or approval of the agenda items can be added or deleted from the meeting agenda and/or the order of items may be changed. Oh pardon me before we go on I do have one slight note, I just heard thunder in the back background and I wanted to say this following statement if the YouTube stream signal freezes it's likely that we have lost the internet, but Ben Goodman will record the meeting, if we lose power we will make a determination about continuing with the meeting. You got a quick
003question, oh and we also have one absence this evening Steve Laatsch will not be with us this evening, but the rest of the board is here and we can continue, we have a quorum. So back to the approval of the agenda, I really did want to get that out of the way before we lost power and you see I almost didn't make it. In fact I didn't make it. The agendas must be approved before proceeding further. I'd like to entertain a motion to approve the agenda as printed. Motion Gerbe. Gerbe. Support Steben. Go ahead Susan that's fine. Oh support Estep. Estep supports. All in favor please say I. I... Opposed. Great we have an agenda. Let me just write this down. We have one action item this evening I like to entertain a motion to
004approve the change order for additional funding as recommended by Clark Construction Company for additional work to the Trade Contractor, T&M Asphalt, in the amount of $218,911 as submitted by Rex Clary, Executive Director of Operations. The Board, please note, had originally approved the amount of $555,555 as part of Bid Package 1 on December 12, 2023. Do I have a motion? Motion Miller. Miller. Do we have support? Support Steben. Thank you. Rex or first of all there any questions just shimmered right to the front of the room. Did you have anything to add to this and why it's coming about? Yes, so this is twofold um the scope at Harvest grew, for one we added additional square footage and then after we milled it. They realized that they could not save the ashphalt the ashphalt we were
005going to put on top was going to last at most three to five years, which would have been a six figure waste of money, and so they went all the way down to the base, uh did some undercuts, filled back, filled it back in, and then they repaved on top of that another fu, what three inches on top of that. So this should last another probably 12 to 15 years is what the goal is with this, and two fold... You have a question? I did just to remind us all this is the parking lot for the buses at Harvest? This is. Oh Harvest, no I'm sorry, it's the the I was at I was at Heritage sorry, the other lot, which is the. It's the west lot, no this is the west lot. So we
006were just going to mill the west lot. Which is the parent park, staff park, walk in, and the buses come up we were going to do the heavy on the bus part which is very very small in nature I guess, in square footage. So when we took the mill on the parent parking side, which I did not feel was which was acceptable to me it just did not perform well, when they did the milling. It was falling apart, there was not it was just not going to be a long lasting repair, and it was still going to be well into six figure so we we we needed to do it right. The second part is the old the part the Harvest parking lot is separate from the playgrounds so we're using safe warm and dry
007by 2015 for this project and we're using uh the new bond for the playgrounds, and the new bond for the playgrounds had contingency in it we did not put any in the old bond. Okay so we need to move we roughly have $170,000 left in the contingency fund for the playgrounds, we're asking for 200 and I forget the number um 218,911 to come out of the Safe, Warm, and Dry to to stay with that project per Miranda's request is an accounting piece that she has to do. We just can't move that money over, that money will come back to the district, we're wrapping up this project now, we'll be doing close out majority of that money is going to come back to the district, so there is additional need at Harvest but the accounting piece
008is to come out from the Safe, Warm, and Dry. Did I explain that right? So does that wipe out our that contingency money is it been there's no more contingency money now. Correct. Correct as we wrap this up well. you're app approving this tonight and then we'll wrap that project up, but we're 95% almost done. I'd say almost close to 98% and this Friday will be a hard work day and Saturday will be a hard work day, and we hope to have be a 99% by Saturday no September 7th. We won't probably have grass in some of the playgrounds yet, but we're going to be pretty much done with construction. Thank you any questions from the board. Tim. Yeah. Tim and Brad. Yeah I just kind of want to mention, I know the answer but
009I mentioned you I'd bring it up so that the rest of the community can know too. When when you see uh a 218 $220,000 change order come through, you wonder how did that come about, but um you have unit pricing in there too so that protects the school from the contractor just bidding it whatever he wants to. Correct. A change. Yeah he had to carry the same what he bid on the milling of the bus pathway, he had to carry that same percentage as far as cost into that same parking lot, as we expanded our scope so. So so when so when you say contingency on this does that mean that this still fits within the budgeted parameters of this particular project? On, we bid both projects together so we could get um better pricing
010unit pricing on all the asphalt work not just the parking lot and the playgrounds. That's why we brought the playgrounds with this, so as we did all that so um we have $170,000 left in that contingency so it is an ad of roughly 50 $48,000. Correct correct correct. And how abnormal is this um abnormal we normally do not, but our scope grew so much, with some of the, with this project, um when they like I said when it failed, we had to pivot and do something um we couldn't just leave it the way it was and it was it didn't make sense just to cover it up, it would have been something we would have been gone back to probably in this bond if not the next bond. And I appreciate your diligence and your
011long-term thinking on it. I just wanted to know how we were buttoned up on those fronts so thank you. Jennifer Steben. Hey Rex, just quickly, can you talk about the the safety and and kind of the the user experience flow for the the kids and the parents, and if this is affecting anything or if we're doing good at Harvest as far as being back to school. So I was there on Monday um it was all positive from parents and students. We've added um real ballards to protect the students on the central pl plaza now. Those were just light poles in the past, aluminum light poles. So we've added those ballard to protect if anybody does come through there, um which we hope never will ever will happen. The flow looks good um we didn't have
012the backup we got more queuing now on campus, so we can stack more cars without backing onto the roundabout, on the parents side. The buses now are separate from the parents and so before we'd have parents students cutting between the buses which is very unsafe. We used to have that problem at Heritage we solved it there, Woodland the same. So now the buses come in the keyhole the front loop and they do the loop and the parents have their own curb they have two curbs now, two drop off areas. So I think it's going to be a win-win, it's just a change um but the kids are safer, the staff has more parking closer to the building, and then we've in crued improved the AdA accessibility from high school to Harvest now. Before you couldn't
013get down the ramp on the high school side you could always get up the hill on the Harvest side now we've included that and now you can get down the ramp from the High School parking lot to Harvest on those big event days um so it it should be a win all the way around. We've not heard anything from the staff. Emily's doing a great job. She'll she lets me know when we don't do well so. Great well sounds like we'll be ready and time for homecoming parade. Yeah. Which is where a lot of folks park. We got a big game on Thursday night, and then we're off we're on the road I think for four weeks straight. So we're going to clean everything up, make sure we get ready for for that Hall of
014Fame and I think homecoming the next weekend, something like that. Well thank you Rex. I appreciate that. So all in favor please say I. I... Opposed. hearing none. Thank you very much 7-0. Thank you. Thanks Rex. We have one scheduled report this evening from our very own Kara Davis, Executive Director of Teaching and Learning, thank you Kara. All right good evening board and community. I hope everybody had a and our new student reps, welcome. I hope everybody has had a wonderful start to the 2425 school year and um looking forward to sharing our summary of our annual District Quality Report with you this evening um as a reminder these are highlights. This report is over 200 pages, so we're I think we're at 203 this particular year. I think last year was 213 um so I've
015just popped out a couple of pieces of information for you as related to our district um strategic frames, and I'm going to go ahead and get started, because Michael has set quite the tempo this evening. So with that our Quality Survey is something that we have given um in the last three well we've given it for across a decade at this point in time but for the last three years, we've worked really hard to try to give approximately the same survey, so that we can really compare results year-over-year which has been incredibly helpful. We partner with a company called K12 Insight our representative is Dr Amy Boehl. She works very closely with us to design this survey to continue to cal calibrate it across time and then of course to share the results with us
016in a way that we can understand them. So she's actually walked through these results with us as a core administrative team and then I break down the results for our staff so that they have access to them first as our building administrators and directors, and then to our teacher leaders and to our staff at large. So I'm happy to be sharing these with you this evening. Something to note is that we uh one of our goals last year was to increase student participation, we certainly did that. You can see quite the increase there from 21-22 to 23-24 so um we had to recalibrate how we were giving this survey to ensure that all staff had or all students had access, that it was given at a consistent time, and that we were really intentional about
017the when, during the window of the survey that students would be taking it. So we had 1300 approximately 1300 secondary year students from grade 6 through 12 take it and 734 elementary students 3rd through 5th grade take it. Notably in the top right hand corner in terms of parents and guardians we had 598 total responses this year, which is technically down from 21-22, but there are some things going on there so I um included the percentages for you so you can see that we did not send out as many surveys this year, so if you're looking closely at that in terms of the number of invitations delivered, a couple of things have happened over the last couple of years. One of which was that the IT Team was cleaning up PowerSchool in terms of who
018was listed as a guardian, a parent or guardian in order, to not have um non-custodial or non-guardian parents listed as well so we had some grandparents on there some friends of families and things so that was a work in progress um well I haven't spoken to Jay directly about this that's one of my hunches there additionally. This past last year we also piloted a spot check survey through K12 Insight. We started giving that spot check to a random 200 people starting in December all the way through April, and I do recall in April I made Dr. Boehl turn it off. I said like they're not going to answer our regular annual survey, because we're using this pilot survey and sending that out, so you may have been a part of that, we had good results
019from that survey and it's interesting to compare the pilot survey results to the Quality Survey results, but that was happening up, right up until this, and uh frankly I don't know that we did a great job saying and this is our actual quality survey um for families to complete. So um those are some of my hunches around why that number 598 looks like that and is down from the previous years, it's actually consistent percentage wise with 23-2 or 22-23 um but down from 21-22. All right and just as a quick reminder, um something that's not overly apparent when I run through these results just for the sake of folks watching and if you do look at it the full report after the fact is the the degree of I don't knows do influence the results
020and so I made a move this year to indicate the if if it was a 15% higher I don't know um in terms of answering the uh question, then I added this gray triangle to the results. So when you see the graphs you'll know that there's a significant degree of I don't know um which is neither good nor bad necessarily from a positive influence/negative influence, I think it's informative in terms of us making sure that we're communicating the information and gathering the results, but there is that piece that um I wanted to make you aware of. All right so the last three years, the district has spent a number of hours working with staff to really think about databased decision-making this will not be the first time you hear me say this this year, because
021it'll come back in my report in September related to our state assessment results, but as always I encourage folks who are looking at large sets of data like this to consider norms um specifically from our bridge to civility. When we think about data it can get really you know when we think about emotions like looking for those areas to celebrate, and then of course there's areas for opportunity and growth too um the data that sets that we have represent our entire organization, not just one department, not just one person, not just one role. Assume good intentions everybody is working towards Improvement all the time, certainly there's continuing areas for us that we're striving to improve upon, um observing and reflect it's wonderful to think about as said like where are the areas of celebration, and
022then where are the areas of growth and then anticipating unfinished business. So I always look through um the lens of okay here's what we've accomplished and here's what our next steps are um so that we can honor the incredible work of our staff um and continue to have our eyes on the future as well. So in order to create a um just something that we can synthesize a little bit more quickly the data is organized around the four strategic goals for the district. So I'm going to break those down one by one as we go through the the first one being developing adaptive learners and order to cult cultivate academic professional and life skills for current and future success so when I think about our data as relates to that particular goal it's really positive
023um in terms of developing adaptive learners. You can see here the positive perception of the quality of Saline education, and this is certainly a tribute to the hard work of our educators and our system as a whole, if 80% or more respondents indicate the quality of Saline Area Schools education as excellent or good and our results outperform the national average. Similarly you can see in terms of rigorous curriculum there's high levels of marks for that and holds up our standards for what we hope our students are experienced curricularly in um the system. This is only reported by secondary students so it's great to see that our students, staff, and families all have similar general agreement about the quality of our classes and the courses offered. We also are looking at our Compass Skills in terms
024of our SAS graduate profiles so our hope is always to think about not just the academics, but also about the skills of the future that students might need and we capture those in our compass and through our student attributes so the survey has um delineated questions from our compass and asked about our students performance in this area. So generally speaking you can see that there's agreement that our students can demonstrate um some of the student attributes that are outlined in our compass and um that carries on through these uh next set of student attributes with the exception of financial literacy and this is something that's been trending for the last few years, and we have our eyes on that, that's um we've made some improvements in this area and some things that have been um
025added we added Financial Algebra last year we started really to we teased out the different curricular areas that would be covering financial literacy last year. I would say that's going to come into its full um version this coming year since we've worked through those curriculum maps with the teachers who are teaching that the high school. We're starting our social studies curriculum review this year in where we're going to be discussing how Junior Achievement fits in. That's been a really popular program that we aren't necessarily leveraging all the way across the grade levels, so that might be something we consider scaling in order for every student to have it, and there's also a high degree of I don't know from both the families and the students as to whether or not we're teaching that, but one
026of the things that you might see throughout here is that there's a what we call it a perception gap, between the staff and the students and the families. Obviously the staff have a much more intimate understanding of what's happening directly in the schools day-to-day um but even the staff and U this particular response uh don't necessarily feel like students demonstrate financial literacy. So that would be an area that we're going to continue to interrogate um and work on growing as a district so that our students have that skill, and then just anecdotally I was interested that the students felt, only 75% of the students felt, like they were digitally literate, so I thought okay look we're gonna keep working on that, because like how do we define that and make that be something that they
027understand uh because those other ones if it doesn't have that gray square uh weren't influenced by and I don't know for that. Strategic frame number 2 has to do with strong partnerships with both families and the community in order to have a a positive culture or environment for our students and increase uh enhance their extracurricular activities and their academics. You can see a lot of gray squares on this page and this has been true for the last couple of years now so we are well aware of the need to continue to work on our communication as relates to what's available um for our students in terms of partnerships with our families and our our community partnerships and um this is something that we have been paying attention to in terms of communication. The effectiveness of
028communication has been something that's on our minds this actually came up in the Wellness Committee. The Wellness Committee did and you heard from Musetta Deneen in I believe June might have been July, from the Wellness Committee Report, just talking about like how do families get information about the opportunities that are available for their students a specifically as related to SEL and in such a way that they can absorb it, and one of the things that we've had heard is that we over communicate. There is a lot of information out there um from Saline Area Schools and so how do we make it be in such a way that uh families can get their hands on it, in a way that's accessible for them, for the way they communicate, for the way they receive information well.
029So that's something that still on our minds and we'll continue to focus on. Additionally we're going to continue the District Family Partnership Series this year that was something we launched last year in an effort to improve uh this particular set of survey results um and to provide a better service to our family, so Jackie and I are working on um the month-by-month overview for that, our hope is that consistently offering something every year we'll start to increase our participation rate um and help families know that it is available and that they can rely upon it. You can see here this has to do with um more of a direct partnership with teachers to families themselves. I would add this as another area for growth while the numbers are high, and I don't want us to
030be like we get we tend to get pretty high numbers you know north is 70 - 75% and whatnot, but I did recognize the need for us to think about how we're communicating directly with families, regarding academic support, and materials that might help in the home front for families. So families respond or replying that they feel like they're not necessarily getting that direct communication from teachers, there seem to be a correlation to age of the student that that communication seems to decrease as the student gets older, and those are things that I think we need to talk more about as a district and how do we do that. So families feel like they have the information that they need to best support their student at the time that they need it. From a sense of
031being welcoming um and to our families and our volunteers there's a high degree of agreement that our schools are welcoming um from the families, students, and staff so the school is welcoming to all f families and staff members and families treat each other with respect um and that the school promotes opportunities for families to volunteer. And finally um this idea about families having opportunities to be involved, so you see similar results regarding the opportunities positive perception of opportunities for families to be involved whether it be um in extracurricular activities or as a part of um improving the schools or being part of advisory committees. Of note, we are going to relaunch the Strategic Council, this year um to revisit our strategic frames uh our Strategic Goals were set in 2000 they were affirmed in 2020-21
032and we are going to revisit them, because of um they were started in 2018-19 so as a part of our strategic planning this year, in October we're going to be revisiting that process again as a line to our Compass which is now essentially a decade old um and it's amazing how fast that happens so. Those are the kinds of opportunities where families really can have an opportunity to participate and weigh in, similar to our committees that are available. We have SEAB, SEAC, there's a lot of acronyms for our committees The Wellness Committee, DEIAC and the I'm missing one sorry. SexEd, yes Wellness DEiAC. Special education. Special Education yeah. So I'll get you all, but there is on our website, if you're watching and you are interested, there's a list under um committees and ways to
033get involved that you can find, and we'd be happy to give you that information. And then our Strategic Council we ran a small Strategic Council last year on a focus group around fiscal responsibility. We had quite a few participants. I want to say there was 25 that was really successful so we're looking forward to um digging back into that again this year. Strategic Frame number 3 has to do with um enhancing a positive school environment and um creating a sense of positive morale for staffs and students, and here you can see that the staff have a high degree of agreement in these particular areas in terms of students having staff members to go to uh for a school problem, so that seems to be an agreement across all of the three groups that responded, uh
034different when you get to personal problem and that is something that's that's been something that we've seen for the last few years um when I've pondered this obviously you can see there's what we would call a perception gap between staff and families and and students in that and then the question becomes like they can come with a school problem can they go with a personal problem I wonder how we define personal problem we do not define anything in the survey itself for the students um however just being aware that we want all students to have a trusted adult, we have added a question about trusted adults into the survey whether or not they have one, and we've we obviously know that trusted adults don't have to necessarily be within the educational environment, another layer that
035we've added is of course we have have an advisory opportunity um in every grade level whether that's in the form of a morning meeting or middle school advisory or Hornet time there's opportunities for students to connect with adults in positive ways that are above and beyond academics, and then these pieces you can see with a high degree of I don't know, it's very correlated to the other data that I put out related to the partnerships. It's this idea of whether or not um a respondents are aware that the school is doing so much around teaching into mental health, personal health, well-being, stress and anxiety management and all of that. So it's a high degree of agreement and there's a high degree of I don't know there. So something that I have seen shifting is us
036trying to be as clear and transparent as possible about the opportunities that are available during the school day. For example the high school administrative team is putting out the Hornet Time curriculum and their weekly news letter so parents are um able to see that. In addition um Dr. Laatch is including in his community newsletters some prompts question prompts for families to ask their students that might be helpful in getting that conversation going about what's happening in school and then of course we'll have that Family Partnership series again uh we'll be providing some supports and then better understanding of connections of what's happening in the schools related to these particular areas. All right and this in terms of the culture of the school there's much more perception gap in this in some areas of I don't
037know, so in terms of the schools being treated or the students being treated fairly regardless of their background so you can see that staff in the first three really feel like um they are they are treated with um fairness regardless of their background and lifestyle, that we don't tolerate bullying um and that staff members are responsive, it's interesting to see and it's not necessarily in those first to um an agreement, but there is a high the sorry the last two there's a high degree of I don't know but in those first two they're really isn't. So that perception gaff between the staff and then the families and the students is definitely worth us continuing to interrogate and these are things that we've been talking about for a couple of years and so, some of the
038moves that we've made related to this is continuing to grow our clear and transparent expectations and making sure students are aware of those through grade level meetings, which are happening this week, through um organizing our handbooks in such a way that there's more consistency across the grade levels, looking at the language between grade levels and buildings to ensure that there's some consistencies there, because I know that we as a district believe that this is happening and we want our uh students and uh families to also feel that as well. Sense of safety is high degree in terms of I've just included that in there because this is pretty broad in terms terms of goal number 3 um so thinking about our schools being safe and school and community being aware of these procedures high degree
039there um and then staff members treating students with respect is high for all three groups and then you start to see somewhat of a decline with students treating staff members with respect and then students treating each other with respect, similar to having really clear transparent visible expectations for students and having community meetings and talking through our expectations and working on behavioral norms, this is something that we've continued to work on in the last few years and will continue to reinforce, and the work is in progress. Strategic 4 our Strategic Frame Number 4 is essentially about maintaining district fiscal responsibility and strong operations, some data points related to that you can see positive perceptions of the basic operational components related to a school district. So whether it's a school buildings, technology resources, transportation, um supporting students
040a high degree of agreement that it is strong. And then in terms of Dr Laatch's decisions you can see some representative um categories there with him making courageous decisions about district sustainability, and then implementing a plan. The staff have a high degree of belief that Dr. Laatch is doing these three things and then you can see a high degree plus I don't know and I will tell you in the I don't know here I want to say it was between I have wrote it there cuz I would knew I wouldn't remember 19 and 25% not of not knowing, so I'm thinking about our communication our communicating that plan out um knowing what the specific moves that we're making as a CORE team in order to um maintain fiscal responsibility and make decisions uh for the
041future of the district in a ways that our community can understand. As a part of this particular um goal area something that I know has been of interest in the past is whether or not we have our families returning to Saline Area School so one area um that the survey has been checking in on for the last few years is what's called a net promoter score. Net promoter score is essentially like would you uh tell your friends, relatives, neighbors to come to Saline Area Schools. So that is um abbreviated by NPS um and in general that 28 score is essentially it's the 50 minus it's the promoters versus our minus the detractors. So and this particular case parents and guardians net promoter score is a 28 that is on par with National Benchmark in terms
042of families promoting their schools, and then our you can see a much higher degree, kind of off the charts Dr Boehl would say, for our staff promoting our schools. Reasons for promoting our schools, are outlined here, so if you are promoting Saline Area Schools the question was why and you can see that there's a lot of consistency with the previous charts in terms of academic programming, opportunities for extracurriculars, customer service, the access, so and there is a higher degree of staff agreement us within these different categories, but still overall um I think this reflects some of the wonderful opportunities we have here in Saline Area Schools. Another question that we ask is whether or not your student would reenroll. We've been tracking that and so 89% of the respondents so there's 588 respondents at what
043the N equals and 89% of those said yes uh that they would be returning and then 4% said no and 8% were unsure. In the big scope of this I think that's about 55 people don't quote me on my math on that standing here after first two days of school, but I think that's approximately sort of where we're at with that um and then asking the question of why. Why would you be leaving? So these are the they were able to pick any one of these, more than one, or none and so respondents. I think there were 56 okay 56 folks decided to select why they would not come back to a school here and you can see on this graph that um the highest one was seeking improved academics and that's certainly something as
044the District Executive Director of Teaching and Learning I'm grappling with because the very first slide was our excellent academics, so there's some disconnect between some of the these data points that we have that I think are worth us um continuing to explore, ask questions about, talk to our stakeholders and better understand um and continue to work on. So as a part of our continuous Improvement plan just really is a a reminder to you as the board into the community Saline Area Schools is oriented around the Michigan Continuous Improvement Process and we are staying the course with our um desire to ensure that we are hearing our connecting our stakeholders so that we are creating independent and aligned processes and working toward a common goal to bring about the results that um that we've set out
045ahead of us and that we follow a very strategic plan in order to revisit our our goals, look at survey results, set a plan in motion, and then check in on that plan across the year as outlined here, and this is all supported by the State of Michigan. And our 2 goals we set these um in 2021-22 officially we are going to maintain these this year in our September report on the state assessments, we'll talk a little bit more about this but I do want you to know that we are moving forward with these two goals. Essentially the first one is academic about overall ma rates of mastery in the content areas and then the second one is about strengthening social emotional support models and the survey uh the quality survey results is one point
046of data that we use to monitor our efforts in these two goal areas so um you can see with that second one specifically, we have continued work to do and especially as it comes to um communicating at what we're doing to support students social emotional health and wellness. Let's skip that for today and then you can't see it because it's really light blue, but the full report is linked here for you at the end um I did link up the very, the new report that does not have the confidential watermark on it I asked Dr Boehl to send that to me, and that is the one that we will post online for you. So with that, thank you so much for letting me walk you through some of the highlights of the Quality Survey.
047Thank you very much um Kara Davis. So if the board has any immediate questions that can be answered uh fairly promptly that's great if not I'm sure you will respond by email. Absolutely. Anyone on the board table wants to speak up, starting with you Lauren Gold. On the the NPS score I wondered is there a way to break down and this isn't for right now, but just because I won't remember to email you tomorrow probably the score differential between elementary parents and secondary parents. I actually we'll have to investigate that. Yeah, I don't know I mean if it's if it's easily done where you see when do people, like I understand that we're meeting we're at nation norms and doing well, but it'd be interesting to know if there's any statistically significant difference between people's
048willingness to promote the district and does that meet norms like in general nationally are people less happy as their kids progress through school, because it's hard to have teenagers or or is everybody more you know I have I have a bias, but I don't know if that's like rooted in data. I I will tell you that Dr Boehl when she meets with us has shared some of her insights just having worked with so many hundreds of school districts and that the tendency of secondary students to be a little more negative and potentially that's related I don't she hasn't said that particularly but she has mentioned secondary students do seem to be harder across the board, um and so we see lower percentages typically across the nation. I did cross check this I will look up
049that for you to see because we do have these all these reports are all able to be delineated by school and they're provided to each principal by their individual school report. I did check the pilot number what was really interesting to me was in March right before we gave this survey the net promoter score was approximately 20 points higher, so there is a disconnect between the random sampling of people, and then the people who took this in April in or May and I just curious to know why like I will I didn't find that until today. so that's a question I'll also ask Dr. Boehl. Yeah there's some statistical term for that, when people who are seeking to take a survey are skewed it's either negative impression or a positive impression bias, but um I
050wondered if you uh collect data as to demographics of non- returners um in other words do we have demographic data regarding uh like race, grade of school, like any kind of demographic in that way as to people who are non-returning do you see do we see any demographic patterns and then specifically if there was any way for next time to dig into what people mean when they say they're leaving for academic, like improved academics do we know where they're leaving for. Like what are people's are they leaving for private school with smaller class sizes, in which case you can't compete as a public school or is at a different district? Do we have any way to collect that data. So this particular survey because it's anonymous does not collect that data um it I would
051have to go in because I can see some of the subgroups for some of the questions which is an interesting um you know more narrow look and helps me understand some of the things a little bit more. I know that Dr. Laatsch will be giving an enrollment report at some point in time, these the numbers that we have for example you know I did reach out to uh Mandy Rucky and ask like is this p is this is this panning out? Is this number? And it doesn't appear that it is. So the report of that many not returning isn't what I'm seeing in PowerSchool right now, but we also have two weeks and or Report of Records before we finalize PowerSchool so the numbers that I'm looking at that don't necessarily reflect today's um but
052in Steve's report I will mention that that might be a point of interest for us to examine. You're welcome. Brad. I have a couple of comments and then I do have a couple of of questions if you want to write them down this fine with me and get back to me. So the first thing is um I want to appreciate the the vast amount of of data that is here right, this is important data it's massive there's a lot to digest here and not even for me this is a lot here. I want to thank families and parents and participants who did this survey I myself took it and it's not short. So the reality is that if you took this survey you really did you know kind of get into it for 10 minutes
053or so with us about things and we appreciate you taking that time because it does drive our improvement. Which is going to be my last question to you, and then uh one of the things that really excites me about survey um as I look at the data is the idea that I really do think that the data in general affirms the strength and the quality of our staff right like it really affirms them it really makes me feel confident about that and about the the commitment they make. I know they're great. I know they're brilliant. I hear about it, but it's affirmed in the data by by the individuals who are actually living there every day. So that's that that's awesome to me. So current 9th graders, there was a question about financial literacy that
054you said had a um had either an unknown component or just didn't poll as as strongly as we would hope. Am I correct that the current 9th graders have a state requirement on their for graduation? Yes. That how are we going to meet that requirement how are we doing that. So we actually that's we actually jumped in a year ahead of course, Saline Schools did that, uh because we like to be ahead of the curve so we are math teachers alongside of some of our CTE teachers, so we've got a Senior Strategy Class, we have a business class, we have an accounting class, and now we have Financial Algebra which you approved two years ago, so that we could run it last year, so it ran for the first time last year and we,
055those folks who are teaching those classes, essentially there's four opportunities for students to receive the financial literacy credit, the ones that I just named those folks got together and looked at the curriculum in each of those classes determined those resources and really wrote that out more intentionally last year so that we were ready for this year's 9th graders who are required to have it on their transcript, and so far so good I mean the reports back are the students really like learning about financial literacy so. So it's a multi-tiered type it's multi-tiered there many pathways for them to get that credit. Okay, which is probably good when kids have to take into mind graduation requirements and how do we meet also all the other credits that we require and some of that kind of stuff.
056And just and just so that you are aware predominantly it's in 11th and 12th grade. 11th 12th grade. Okay. So it's not going to be in the 9th and 10th grade. So some of those students have not gotten to those courses yet, but will. Correct. It's possible that that data will if we track it we could see if there's some improvement see if if that requirement has had the teeth that that we would hope it would. Yes. So okay um so the other thing that I would want you to to think about is is the leader of the Teaching and Learning Team is that I know that we're now going to digest this in professional development and teaching and learning conversations and all of that, have you identified like a top three areas of focus
057or like a top areas where you're like I think we should put our energy and our because we can only do so right put our energies into so much. Where would you say is like the 1, 2, 3 areas that are of greatest need to you? Yeah so we actually call those our shifts and so I pull those notes up often, we built those two years ago we see this data in front of us alongside of our academic data and our MiCIP goals and knowing that our hope is really that staff will feel confident and competent in the area of their curriculum and assessment and so we've rolled out a number of pieces related to studying data, because a part of that is building the muscle with data and then having the opportunities to revisit
058their curriculum maps, so that's one bucket and then the other one is safety and security, that our staff feel really comfortable, confident, and competent in handling high stress situations, whether behavioral or emergency um and the Safety and Security Team has been working really hard on that and you can see you know a high degree of agreement in the Safety and Security of our buildings and I can only imagine what that's going to look like this coming year, because of some of the shifts that we've made whole District this year, with the safety response protocols under Jackie, Rex, Jay's, and many many more other building administrators and staff representatives leadership. Thank you. You're welcome. Great thank you um these these reports are incredibly informative I appreciate you Kara. It's a lot of information. Like Lauren I
059jump to NPS um and so while 50% is the national average, we always strive for excellence, pursuit of excellence right so I I would like to and you don't have to do this now, but collaboratively amongst your team and of course with Steve it would be great to know like uh what are the top 10 things you can do to affect that number more positively, because I would love for everyone to be recommending the school district of course. I also hit on the financial literacy part that really popped out at me as well. I think one of the reasons at least for the CTE why it's a little bit later is because I think intro to business is a requirement so they you have to take that in if you don't get into it in
060freshman year then it delays it. So I think I think we have a nice path for financial literacy at the high school. I would also like to see it at the lower grades. I love your idea with JA. I think it should be um and I know that's also due to people that can't find the time to volunteer so um cultivating a slightly larger audience to go into the schools and provide um their excellent curriculum I think is a really nice idea, because the kids love it um they love it like the paper money and and understanding how um money can move throughout a community, it's really cute to see so a very good idea. The other statistic that I really liked was um safety involvement welcoming a safe school a coming environment and 97%
061that's a really really good number, and the involvement numbers were really high both from families and from staff and students and I think one thing that we can um continue to drill on is that partnership with the families, because the more that we do and this is actually part of policy that we partner with the families in a particular way, it can improve academics, it can inc um lower behavioral issues, it can promote safety um and well-being, and so I think we're on a right path and doing those Family Series are a really, really good idea so those were really good numbers and I I know a lot of times we drill into the and I started with the NPS how can we improve this like and I don't mean to sandwich the compliment, but
062but I think it's really important that so many of those numbers were really positive and sometimes it's important to drill down on your opportunities for improvement, but it's also really nice to to double up on our opportunities that we have strength in. Absolutely. So not not just teaching to deficit but teaching to excellence as well and reinforcing that so thank you very much, but yeah top 10 ideas for a net promotor score would be great thank you. Thank you VP Steben. Secretary Miller. Just a couple of things the first thing in looking at the non-promoter score and the students returning that's of course one of the areas that we're looking at but I do think that it's interesting you mentioned that um Mandy Rucky who's in charge of enrollment and looking at the number of
063respondents to the survey, and how it seemed like you were saying it was inflated compared to the actual number of non-returners so that is interesting to me, and so I wonder if there's another way to acquire data and I I don't remember the answer to this question but is there an exit survey for for families who are not returning? So we did. I didn't want to speak to that because I'm not I haven't asked Mandy if she's still asking that question, because we're incorporating some of that here so I will I will get that answer for you. I just wondered if there was since the data doesn't seem to align with the current picture of reality I wondered if there was um another way of finding you know digging deeper into that so that's just
064a question. And then I think too um for me what I'm thinking about potentially reasons why people might not be returning, I want to acknowledge that while we strive to offer the best in terms of public education, that there are um you know legitimate reasons for people to seek other opportunities. I know I have um family friends this year for a variety of reasons that um um online high school was the best fit for one of their students, or I know some of our students are attending um programs like WIHI high that just offer different, it's a different model than than what we have to offer. I think also you know people who are seeking religious education, I think it's a great that they have that opportunity and and that's different than what we offer
065here so I think sometimes reasons that people might not be returning might not necessarily be negative, it's just it's different than the model we offer and that's okay. It's great that people have choices and can choose um what best fits the needs of their individual students, although we'd like you, know for for um this to be a good fit for everyone the reality is that it's a public school, so there are something things we can't do. So not always negative I guess is what I wanted to land on there um the other thing that I was just going to mention in terms of um financial literacy and that endorsement just as I guess a little plug for that my two recent graduates did take financial literacy courses. One of them took the course called financial
066literacy for life and I just wanted to say what an impact that has had on them, one of my children in the midst of that of course was making a decision on whether to attend an in state or out of state private school and it had been something that we had been we had been discussing, and I felt like we were talking about Monopoly dollars in that student's head, and the reality of the end result and and the amount of the difference in debt that could could potentially be there um just wasn't resonating, and in that class it resonated, a decision was made very quickly and happily and it wasn't one that we had to force, but it was one that made so much sense to them, and so it was like for me that
067light bulb moment where the two of them really saw um not just what's happening right now and not just their wants, but also long-term financial stability. So my husband and I were both extremely thankful for that class and the thinking that helped them to make that big decision, amongst others they they also they met before they went to school with a financial adviser for investing and they the questions that they were asking the financial uh person that we met with was astounded they knew the different kinds of investments and um how they mature and how soon they could use them and all of those things so just really really impressed with the level of knowledge that they gained from that class, and I'm I am um excited to see how that impacts um our students
068as they move forward in high school, as that becomes a um state requirement. Yeah where every student has an opportunity to access. I'll be sure to pass it along to the teachers we'll be very happy to hear that feedback. Yeah I mean we could go on it was it was amazing. And then lastly I just wonder um because we do have our student representatives and it is their first meeting so I don't want to put them on the spot, but there is a number yeah there's a number our sorry there is a number of data here that definitely reflect um you know differences in parent perspective or caregiver perspective parent guardian perspective and staff perspective it is to me just as like a general observation I think that it is um I don't know I
069think that it I'm I'm extremely happy to see the high numbers coming from our staff who are intimately involved in in the day today, and I think that's also um reflected in the number of um staff who choose to bring their their kids to school too so and some don't again for a variety of reasons that are also legitimate, but I I think that that is a really positive thing, but just seeing the differences there um but overall there is a distinct difference between how parents the grown-ups, I guess are answering and students so I wondered if there was any insight. Call them the adults. Yes yes um if our students had any response and again don't mean to put you on the spot but I'd love to hear from you. I was going to
070in I was going to interrupt Susan for a moment and no and and just to before you go. Sorry. You said Susan. Sorry that's. I meant that's because I meant Susan. I was going to interrupt you before you spoke to put our student reps on.. Let me finish. ...and just to prepare you in advance so if you have something to say by the time we get you, ordinarily we would we would ask you either at the beginning or the end don't but if you have any comments or thoughts on this, deep thoughts. I want their thoughts at any time. Yeah at any times of course so now we'll get back to the regular flow here. It's a soft entry point I very friendly. The reason we're doing it this way is also to accommodate Ben
071Goodman who who swings the camera slowly across the room it's easier for him. So we'll go to Trustee Estep now. You have something to say or a question. Yeah what you interrupted me before I even spoke. Pre pre-interrupted. Okay so. Thank you for um this information I like how you um you attached it with the the Strategic Plan and um pu pulled from that I know there's so much data that's kind of like the perception an equity survey we only got like one maybe two slides and so there's there's so much in there. I wa was able to look through um what was it 200 300 pages um I didn't look through that much but I kind of focused on you know some areas um but you know on on the financial literacy um that
072I just wanted to mention I don't know if you mentioned, but um that there was a law passed in um June 2022 um and House Bill 5190 and they so um it requires that there be a financial literacy course and so you know the Merit um curriculum like their their um um put putting that in as requirements and so I'm interest interested to see how those numbers will improve as you know that that's being implemented. I agree uh Junior Achievement um you know I I was able to um teach that this year, and I was thinking you know I hope this continues with all of the available grades, because it it is totally valuable and applicable so uh yeah let me see so I have a couple things. So um when I was looking at
073I I picked a specific thing because not only was it you know comparison it was like each section of you know um how the parents responded and then a section of how the students responded, but in addition to breaking it out in the three categories um it was broken out by um the past three years and so you can kind of see um that improvement or even you know um the percentage staying like the same right which which is interesting because you're getting different numbers of um you know people doing it. Absolutely that's the trend data year-over-year in the... Yeah. It's about page 170. Yeah but so I did pull um the data specifically um that uh so students, staff, and parents with the school does not tolerate bullying and or bullying like behavior,
074and so I'll just give a an example um in the past the students had had agreed 62% and now it's 67 the staff um it was 83 in the past now it's 87% that they um say that the school doesn't tolerate it, and then uh parents as well um in the past it was 59% and that's went up 69%. The fact that we've started doing the the bullying um report right the past two years um I don't know if it came up there yeah there was one slide there, um you know I think that shows improvement as in when we're looking at tracking data and um and reporting that, that that's I don't know I feel like you know it was similar in the two years and then has had a little increase and I
075think that's um you know related possibly, but um you know I think uh like with the financial literacy exciting to kind of see those um connections and improvements um so yeah I just wanted to to mention that. Can I interrupt just because it seems to be theme, the I just appreciate you amplifying that because I look at trend year over year data and it gets really weedy really fast and to see those incremental changes um are representative Dr. Boehl says when it's plus or minus 3% it's considered significant and so the fact that you did your you know deeper digging on that to present that here tonight I really appreciate it and does show that growth. So thanks. Yeah that's good so it is significant that makes me even happy that you shared that, and so
076um I I had a question about the it was the reasons why people were leaving there was two different sections there was primary I think and then there's all reasons and then there is an area for other reasons. So I was curious because on this there's like I guess maybe it's a question that um and I didn't look at the specific questions but um that you can choose multiple ones right and then is there a separate question that says primary. Yes this is it which is your primary reason sorry so I misrepresented that when I was speaking cause there is one you can select all and then the the graph that I chose to put up here is your primary reason. Okay. Of the 55 people, so they had the opportunity if they had selected
077they were unsure or were not returning to answer why and then they could select all and then they could pick their primary. Okay um and then the other reasons do they is there like do they write that down or? They do. Is that um is that possible to get those um the data on those so those are the narrative responses and... I would have to work with Jackie to see about what that form might look like um and how we might approach that sensitively, because there's some personal information inside of some of those responses. Yeah, because yeah that would be you know interesting as well um and then there was mentioned a couple of times up here about this getting more data from this I believe in the past we've done exit surveys um I
078know that something that you'll go back and ask about, but I know regularly the board and the community um has asked for exit surveys on when students um families are leaving and also with staff um so uh you know maybe um uh Superintendent Laatch can um you know address that more specifically but I think um it's something that the board um cares about very much and you know hopefully something if we're not doing it now that we will continue to amp that up. I had talked to someone who um a superintendent I don't know if it was at a professional development where a superintendent had um actually called and reached out to the families, and I thought you know whenever I thought exit survey I thought you know just a written survey or um you
079know typing it up, but um you know to went that extra mile to just reach out to the family and say hey like what can you know what was it? What can I do better? Or you know just to to make that connection um I thought that was an interesting approach, and then I think I had. No I don't have anything else so um thank you this is great I hope um you know we can break down that data somehow and you know that be helpful for like at the building level and how we especially set like Strategic Goals you know when that that starts back up. Yeah and I do anticipate bringing this data in a more digestible fashion to the Strategic Planning Group that's going to start in the fall. Awesome Yeah. All
080right thank you. Thank you Trustee Estep and Trustee Austin. Yeah, so I'll try to do this quick, because a lot of things were already talked about, but um so I'm glad you explained the uh number of deliveries in those students because you know with our some students leaving and you know this has all come up many times, but um that was alarming to me at first and I was like oh man this is not good because in the NPS we're capturing only those that are still here not that are leaving and so you know from a district standpoint what does the NPS look like versus just the people coming to Saline look like that might be different so in those exit surveys that would be you know that would be helpful. Couple other things real
081quick uh financial literacy talking about that you know Senior Strategies is an awesome course, and it I mean if there's any way to to move that down so other students can take take that earlier as an elective. I think that would be a a good idea. Just it goes over more than just economics. It goes over life skills. So we have been um sorry to interrupt we have been exploring alongside of the High School Administrative Team and Kara Stemmer, Director of SWWC, what this a senior experience might look like in terms of a job, a work based or work site based experience for students, that might include some of those pieces related to resume building, developing a portfolio, learning communication skills, writing professional emails. I don't want to alarm anybody, because it's really a pilot
082like a pilot idea out there, and it's a bit nebulous right now, but it is something we're really interested in potentially implementing in the next couple of years. So that all of our students who exit Saline High School have had the opportunity that many students have through SWWC, because it's required and or if they take some of the classes that dial into that like a Senior Strategies class. Yeah, no that's a great class and I think all seniors should be taking that, and then uh so the uh perception gap like you'd mentioned I think on uh slide 20 you we've heard we hear that kind of in the community as well, and so I think that's something that we you know can need to continue to work on I did see on page 167 of
083the entire report um when I just kind of gloss through it real quick, there's page 167 talks about unfair treatment and different uh segments of that and for the most part that stayed pretty, pretty steady or you know some decline the one socioeconomics was the one that seemed to really kind of you know feel like there's more of an unfair treatment and so I'm just hoping that we can kind of look into that and kind of see what we can do differently for that to kind of bring that number back in line where where it was in the past. Yeah and that is a very interesting graph if you're interested in diving deeper into that is like when what categories do students, staff, and parents and guardians feel like students are being bullied and are
084harassed um it's and it we happen to also have the opportunity to look at it by subgroup reporting, um so self-reporting, within those subgroups is also really interesting I'd be happy to put something together for you too related to that. Yeah that' be that'd be great if you could, so you know overall appreciate a lot of information, and uh wow you you pulled out a lot of stuff, but there's still so much more it's crazy thank you. Thank you Trustee, indeed so students, I'll let you decide who wants to go first if you have anything to say any response to this onslaught of data and no pressure. I would just say I agree most of the statistics let. Gotta pull it towards you, there you go. Yeah I would say I agree with most of
085the statistics, with most of them, and also we mentioned financial literacy a lot and like Senior Strategies and I know people like two days in the class already that have learned a lot and enjoy it and I'm taking it later in the year and think it will help a lot for the future. Great thanks Kate. I just have a couple questions about the financial literacy requirement, so that is a state requirement for classes right? Is there going to be an opportunity, because that's going to be implemented into the student schedule and something that like for me I had was preparing my high school schedule like 7th and 8th grade, and I had a lot that I wanted to take like I've been I'm in two APS this year, I was in two APS last year
086and another three trimester class and it was hard for me to fit all that in and all like the language credits, gym credits health and stuff like that and I had to cut a lot from my schedule that I want to fit in, like exploratory uh SWWC classes. Just want to like what if kids who have a more rigorous schedule, but don't aren't really sure like where they want to go and are using this time in high school kind of try out some of the opportunities Saline presents. Is there a way that we can accommodate that? I think that one of the reasons why the counselors, the high school administrators, and then the teachers who were teaching these courses got together and collaborated on it to create these multiple pathways was just to speak to
087that particular uh pinch point for some students, and we started well ahead of the game. So it's the current 9th graders who are required to have this by the time they graduate. So we've got some room for growth there but you can count some some of these classes as either Financial liter literacy or another um you know course component that's required in graduation, and if you're taking some of those courses um that incorporate some of the the math and or the financial literacy you might be able to capture your financial literacy credit in that manner and that's a approved by the state so I think they were looking at all the different ways for students that could get it and still be in compliance with the law and have opportunities to have the exploratory classes.
088I also think in the next few years um as students who are juniors and seniors are taking these classes we'll find opportunities to tweak um and improve upon it before the current 9th graders get to their 11th grade year, so we're also always striving to make improvements on it. So thank you for that feedback. Okay and I I have one more question about you mentioned about the counselors and advising people through those courses is that also something that's happening in the middle school too. Is there like word getting out that incoming freshman need to take a financial course, because I I I was scheduling my schedule and I forgot about language so I got to my senior year and I was like oh shoot I gotta take the languages I had to cut a
089bunch of my schedule to fit in my requirements, so I just is that being like um made sure that's addressed to like the middle schoolers, so they can plan that in. Yeah so as a senior you know that the counselors meet with each of you you know do a course or credit count and the they do that in small groups throughout from 9th grade on up and then of course in 8th grade the counselors actually go to the middle school and do presentations um about what's required at high school, so they have the opportunity to plan and then meet with them across the four years to do the credit counts and ensure that they're on the pathway to graduation with the least amount with the most amount of experience and explor plus AP is what
090their hopes are for their postgraduate journey, while also hitting the mark for actually earning their diploma, so thank you. And then I just want to say thank you. I'm in AP stats right now so I appreciate a lot of the work that was shown here. Yay I will look forward to your feedback on my use of statistics. I could have used your help this afternoon on an interrater reliability question I had so um I just want to say first of all to the whole board and our student reps thank you great questions. I think uh they went a deep diligent dig into the data that's a lot of d's thanks and I I wanted to say and there are several instances where there seem to be disconnects a as I was looking for them and
091you addressed everyone indicating that these are areas for future consideration, and I'm I'm I have a theory or two about the digital literacy, disconnect but I'll save that for a quiet meeting with you, it involves Chat GPT, so but thank you so much Kara Davis. I like that, thanks for illuminating that too, all right thank you everybody so much and safe travels home tonight. Thank you. We have one brief discussion a brief I assume discussion item the Board Policy Committee update which met this afternoon. Jenny Miller is the Chair. Yes, so uh we did meet tonight and um just I'll just start by saying we did move a couple of items um due to time, but also because um we were uh going to give more time uh for for some of um the collection
092of ideas so for example, sorry hold on one second, so for example we moved the discussion on Policy 8800 forward to a later agenda um for a couple of reasons. One uh we we acknowledged in our last meeting that Rex was busily getting the entire school district ready and um that we did not want to put pressure on him to gather the information that we were seeking, while that was a priority and then the other thing is that um we were going to touch base with Neola and we are in transition right now with our Neola rep and so we are just going to move this forward. It will come back on a later agenda, sorry it was the um Religious uh and Patriotic Ceremonies and Observances. Okay so I'm going to go back up
093to the top of our agenda from earlier tonight so we had um three different items that we were talking about um regarding Title IX. So the first is, Steve sent it to us back in July you might remember there was um an a letterhead from Thrun there was um a document about some a court case actually that happened in Kansas related to the Title IX um changes. So there were Title IX changes that were offered to be uh implemented in August of 2024, but there was a court case in Kansas basically disagreeing with portions of the the Title IX language and the court um the court sided with the complaintants and said that that um the use of um or including sexual orientation and gender identity that was added to the 2024 update um
094they sided with them that it shouldn't that that there was not going to be enforcement under Title IX, and so what happened basically this happened in Kansas, but the US Department of Ed those who I guess it's kind of confusing, I'm just going to say so basically what happened was it happened in Kansas, but there were states that came along and said that they wanted to be a part of this so Alaska, Utah, and Wyoming were also included, and then there were some groups which I've never heard of this happening before, but there were some specific groups, Young Americas Foundation or Female Athletics United or any school in which a child of Moms for Liberty attends. So basically these organizations had to file um with the court that that they wanted an exemption for their school.
095So in Michigan there were 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. schools that um someone in their community who had a child who attended that school filed for that exemption and Saline Middle School was one of those schools. So that just complicates things a little bit, because the 2024 updates to Title IX are legal updates so in order to be compliant with the law we need to follow the 2024 updates, yet the court deemed that those States and those particular groups who filed for exemption would have that exemption, now the US Department of of Ed has filed an appeal, but that has not been has not been um decided yet or has not been brought back to the court yet so um it puts us in just basically what you need to know
096is that we need to be compliant with the 2024 laws, so we're moving forward with presenting you with the updates for 2024 with kind of almost an asterisk that the 2020 laws would be followed for any complaint that happened at Saline Middle School. Does that, did you follow that? So Steve sent that Thrun it was on Thrun letterhead if you don't have that anymore I can send that to you, but he had sent that to us back in July when the court case was decided, and to our to my knowledge as of today it has not been that the appeal from the US Department of Ed has not been reviewed yet by the court. So for this update we have um the the committee tonight decided to move forward with the update from um Neola,
097except where Neola says only. So let me just read to you Neola wanted us to include at the top of this update sorry this is Policy 2266 effective August 1st, 2024 this policy shall pertain to reports or formal complaints of sexual harassment that are based on conduct alleged to have occurred on or before July 31st, 2024. So the policy, so basically if something happened before July 31st, 2024 we would follow um Policy 2266 except at the Middle School so the caveat now is that that there's an asterisk that said um that the Middle School has a different following. Does that make sense? So you'll see that language coming through, so we've added an asterisk, because the language from Neola just said to move forward and because we're on that list. We felt it important
098to note that the Middle School will follow a different code. Oh okay, so we'll come back we we'll come back to that in just a second, I'm going to just go through all the Title IX and then come back in just a second. So the other piece that we discussed tonight and Carol is actually our Title IX Coordinator now, because um of of Mrs. Melcher's retirement. So Carol our h Carol Diglo our HR super Assistant Superintendent um is now our Title IX Coordinator and has been working on training the staff um many of our administrators and staff who implement Title IX UM have already begun to attend training based on the updates that came into law August 1st, 2024. So many are attending and um the training that they're attending which has been um thorough
099and is clear and easily accessible has been through Thrun um who is our legal um that's who we have as one of our legal uh um who we've hired as legal representation for the district so um Thrun has developed a policy, they have also developed accompanying um training that is again like I said easily accessible, and finally they have also created in compliance with the new um changes in the law and with Title IX forms that can be used um by our school district to um implement Title IX in the event that it's needed. So tonight Carol explained all of that to us, and we decided sorry I should say Assistant Superintendent Diglio explained all of that to us and so we made the determination to bring the Thrun policy to a discussion um in
100the upcoming months or weeks, and then lastly in terms of Title IX um it was also shared with us that over the last several years there have been some changes to the language that we use um mostly non-discrimination language in, but also kind of anti-harassment kind of falls they kind of blend together often, but specifically non-discrimination language um we as we have updated policies over the last several years and the website and some of our contracts, as we've as as we've come across them we've updated them, but then um Carol and Betty have gone through and found that there are a number that have not been updated and it's important to us and to the district that um those be updated so they're doing a thorough search um of policy, of websites, of contracts anything
101that we use that is that is governing our district to make sure that it is in alignment with our non-discrimination and equal opportunity language. So coming soon to a um consent agenda near you, you will see that the old language has been taken out and the new language has been inserted into many of those policies or documents, it's not going to be I guess I said coming soon, it might not be soon um it's going to be ongoing so it might take um a few months for that to happen but that is something that they're actively working on and shared with us the let me see, right now 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 items that they found so far, that need to be documented and updated. Okay so that's
102the Title IX piece so I'm going to ask Susan for her question or comment to the committee, and then uh I'll proceed with the rest of the report. So now I have even I have comments but I have really have questions about that, um about the actual language I don't know if you can do that real quick while it's in my head, but like the actual language and are we talking about changing the language so all say I've been talking about this for what over six years, before I even got on the the the board knowing that there was language for example on the main website, the HR are that that there wasn't consistent language, and I have brought that up many times and it was like we needed to discuss it at the table,
103but yeah it doesn't need need to be right. So, well what we what we determined at our meeting tonight is that we would like for them to to continue the work that they've started to find those areas where it doesn't match the most current policies which include language like Elliott L. from Elliott-Larsen. So um here's just one example it says the board of education does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, including sexual orientation, gender ident and gender identity, disability, age, religion, height, weight, marital or family status, military status, ancestry, genetic information, and or other legally protected um an any other legally protected category collectively protective classes in its own programs and um activities including employment opportunities and that's from Policy 3122. So some of them have been updated as we've
104come across them for a variety of reasons whether someone from the board has brought them forward or Neola has brought them forward but then there are some like you mentioned um the website has recently been updated but like for example our contracts have not been finally so um so yeah so there is a need for that and I'm super um thankful that um Su Assistant Superintendent Diglio and and our um are lovely and wonderful and always working hard Secretary Betty Jahnke has agreed to take that on and um look for those areas for us and what we determine tonight at our meeting is that we feel like um that can be handled in a consent agenda, because that's language that we've already agreed on, but it needs to come through consent so that it's noted
105that it changed on that date. Okay um I I want to um so for example this was this was a policy we approved, but it it had reference to a policy as our non-discrimination policy and when I went and I haven't brought it to the committee that actually wasn't the non-discrimination policy it was specifically based on sexual harassment. I it was in the 1000s I know um Steben brought that up, but it's so I mean I guess being careful in what's specifically like the Title IX language versus like you know um for employment overall State language right so I um yeah and I know you all will be careful with that, but um. They already noted that like the anti-harassment language is different than the anti-discrimination language they're being careful about distinguishing between the two
106although sometimes the non-discrimination language needs to be included in the the anti-harassment language, so there is there is like for example in the anti-harassment um policy there is more language than just the anti-discrimination language if that makes sense. And um the the Community Ed is way off and I cringe every time I see it um but it adds like um political uh viewpoint or something in it so um and that comes out like mailed to everybody um so that's one just to um throw that on your radar um but it's it's I don't know where it came from, but I'm glad that's being done. So I had a question about um so the the Moms for Liberty um Title IX there's a parent who has a child or multiple parents um in the Middle School
107therefore you know consistent with that law we Implement 2020, I do want to say the 2020 rules um that and so let's just I mean be explicit that this is about um being inclusive and and addressing harassment issues and discrimination based on transgender status, gender identity, and expression, but fortunately our current policy does um define uh sex as sexual orientation and gender identity so that's so in a way like that nothing is going to change in the sense of focusing on those identities, because that's really a piece when you're talking about the Moms for Liberty and the cases that are out there, in in the courts um is specifically about that unfortunately it's gonna, it's impacting um where there's expansion on it's it's really more descriptive I think um with the 2024 and you know
108it's now going to not allow the language with um students who are pregnant and you know that's just kind of a wider um component, but... We we did ask um and Carol graciously agreed um to uh to take the documentation from Thrun specifically because it is kind of difficult to find um Lauren, Lauren, Dr. Gold um Trustee sorry Gold uh did a deep dive to try to find a non-discriminant um like an anti- like a a resource that didn't have any kind of affiliation that could potentially create um bias in determining the differences between the 2020 and 2024 um uh laws Title IX laws and so Carol Assistant Superintendent Diglio sorry I'm being very very um informal but um did agree graciously to take the the training from Thrun and create a document so that
109all of us here at the table prior to uh deciding on that um on those laws can see or on those policies sorry can see the distinction between the two. Because it is like you were saying there's there's now language around um pregnancy so so there is some distinction the the other interesting thing about this, well first of all it's interesting it happened in July 2024, so we were trying to um we were also trying to think about how long it typically takes the courts to respond to um a request an opposition from the US Department of Ed um and so we don't know it could be anytime um it could be another court takes it up, and so we grappled with um we grappled with this because um currently it's it's it's a legal
110it's a law. So we had so we wanted to create a distinction that um that allowed us to not be in a legal bind one way or another so that's kind of where we were right now, that because someone who has a child attended the Middle School at the time of the filing and has an affiliation with one of the groups, it could be um Moms for Liberty there were three I think different young. It was specifically Moms for Liberty. Moms for Liberty. For for our school. For our school yeah so um so anyways but it also doesn't mean that they still attend it could be somebody who attended, who was um had an 8th grader who now goes to the High School, but it's specifically named um Saline Middle School and you can look
111at the list um there's there's um... Do you know there's a second list that doesn't include Saline Middle School? We were waiting for an updated list from Thrun and I checked for a week and never came about so I haven't seen the list yet. Yeah I just I just um I love Title IX. Yeah well if if Thrun if Thrun does come back with to us with um further information we could um you know reconvene and and make a different recommendation, because bottom line as a board it's our obligation to be in compliance with current law. So that's kind of where we felt like this sticking point that and and Lauren even asked she said well if it's le if it's legally binding if there's a law, then why do we have to have a
112policy about it, and the the reason why we need to have a policy about Title IX is because Title IX is something that schools um encounter and deal with every day almost and so we need to have administrative guidelines and training around that, so that we know how to um be proactive, but also then how to respond when there is um you know an issue around Title IX. Yeah so I just um you know the the that the tw our current policy and federally they do, and under our trans students policy, a non-binary students policy, it is they are protected they are covered regardless of the changes, so I think that's important, because there is you know what it is about right so and then Elliott-Larsen also protects not in a Title IX way, but
113because we do have that language um Elliott-Larsen still protects our um trans and non-binary students against um harassment so um I just think that's important while we're going through this. No I'm glad you I'm glad you raised that yeah I think it's important I'm I'm thankful that you raised that, because I think it's important for students and families um to hear that yeah that um and that's I think one of the reasons why we grappled with with it we don't want we don't we want to be compliant with the law so that we don't get into a situation, but we also want our students and families to recognize that um this doesn't diminish the the um the work that we've done and and their value so. Thank you. Yeah so that is the Title IX
114kind of update so you'll be seeing um a couple of things coming forward um soon, we also recognize that that the September um September agenda is already very full the first September agenda, so it might not be um coming through until later in September. So that's the Title IX update, we talked about um the Religious and Patriotic Ceremonies and Observances being moved, and then lastly we just briefly, because of time got into a discussion around some proposed modifications to the DEIAC Policy language um that's Policy 9141 and President McVey had submitted prior he had submitted some recommendations and he rescinded those and um made these new recommendations. So the only um piece that we were able to really um discuss um tonight uh was the idea around, there's a couple of um things that just
115are raising some concern around OMA and um how um how we operate as how the de DEIAC operates we know that this policy was fashioned after some of our other policies or some of our other sorry advisory committees such as um the SEAB and um so we know that there is like historic like precedent around how um how the language was written, however we wondered if um there might need to be um just some clarification and so when we were having this brief discussion we only had about 10 minutes, the conclusion of that discussion was that we are not making any recommendations at this point, but we are going to um contact Brad Banasik who is from the Michigan Association of School Boards and often often conveys um his understanding of Open Meetings Act as
116it pertains to um school boards and since we already pay for MASB and there wouldn't be an extra legal retainer fee, we thought we'd start there first. So we're going to seek some clarification from Brad and this will be on the agenda for the September 24th um Policy Committee Meeting um and so no decision yet to come to the table but um it is something that we're working on. There is a bit of um I will just acknowledge that there is a bit of um a time crunch in um in regards to to at least the OMA response or um interpretation from Brad, because we do have a on a committee of 20, we currently have um vacancies of eight on the DEIAC because of the way membership rolls over and um those members uh
117returning for fall and because the work that is done on the de DEIAC is often done in committee that leaves some committees either um um you know with few or none, and so we don't want to hold up the work that that they do in um in terms of our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion and so um there is a bit of a sense of urgency so even if the policy doesn't change just having that insight um ahead of the selection of the committee members of the new committee members, will be helpful in just um upholding our current policy even aside from these changes if that makes sense. So just having clarification there can help us to make sure that we are um following that law. Well thank you for that report, but I
118I do want to say that uh as the person who made those many slight adjustments to the policy. I'm fine it to expedite things to pull that out. I you don't need you to ask me or anything you could plow ahead and do it. Of course yeah you're going to do it anyway that's great. Okay. You know what I mean you, y'all, y'all. So, we I think I mentioned we um when developing the policy, and Michael I believe was on um President McVey was on the committee at that time um we had gotten a couple of legal written opinions about one of it one of them was having 3 board members versus 2 and making sure that that was okay and keeping it um that it was still compliant with OMA, that we didn't have to
119have an open meeting, if we had three board members there, um and then um and that's why we didn't number how many uh we had at that time, and then there was it yeah I don't it'll be helpful I I'll I don't know if you pulled it yet but um that legal opinion I don't know if it got sent to the full board that year and then also um Brad Banasik uh with MASB um any any board member has access um to Brad with um with uh our membership just to let you all know that if you ever have any questions um from him, um but he had sent me an article at the time um that he had drafted because this qu this question had come up and so maybe that will um it
120was probably I could either find a print um one or um just send the draft to you all, but um it's kind of the same thing like his interpretation of um advisory committees not having to be public, um because of the decision making so and especially with the DEIAC there's actually less um recommendations and action that we actually take with that versus the other um advisory committees but yeah I don't want want us to hold that up um because of policy, but yeah I mean um I'll send that but does it address specifically you know the choosing of going through applications and stuff. Yeah that's definitely a question um and I would say that with SEAB and um Wellness which we've never ever had to to do, have like an open you know looking at
121applications and stuff so all right I just thank you. Thank you Trustee Estep if you would send that to us that'd be great just for background reading. Thank you we are now at the part thank you very much uh that was that was a... It was lengthy, but it's also like it's thick stuff I think so. Well it is and it's timely and it has to be absolutely had to be addressed this earlier than now, but we couldn't uh thank you so we now the administration board updates Dr. Laatsch isn't here. I have no update, so we can start from one end or the other and students you're welcome to pitch in as well. What we usually do at this point is give a little talk about what we're what we've been up to uh what
122kind of board business we've been working on, things we've been doing in the community, and things we want to highlight to anyone who happens to be watching the stream. So we you can hold off and wait till the end. I'll start at the other end with Trustee Gold. I'm going to be brief and just welcome everyone back to school and thank the teachers who I know have been putting in um a lot of time getting classrooms ready, and thank the teachers who've been flexible about um moving and taking on new duties as we try to match things up as well as we can, and uh thank all the staff and faculty and and faculty all the staff and administrators, everybody's working really hard this week I know so so I'm just going to leave it
123at that. Well I will echo those comments and thank people again yeah for for their patience as we're working through things with construction updates and all of those kinds of things, but I do think those uh those opportunities are are exciting for our students and our staff so and welcome back. I I I am excited to be back with students and to it it somewhat I probably feel like the students do like you know setting your alarm is tough right having to do all those kinds of things, but at the same time it's it's what we do for a living and it's it's good to be back in the classroom and back in the swing of things, and then the the second thing I will say I'm going to embarrass him a little bit is
124um I want to give a shout out to to Michael McVey our our President um on the 14th he was awarded the MASB's President Award and I just happen to have the ability to to be there to support him, and um I thought it was incredible to see um how he was recognized for the commitment he made thanks to to being the best he can at this job. So thank you for or I'm glad that you received that recognition and I was happy to be there. Well that's what you get when you take 29 classes over 8 years or so thank you you got time maybe no let's see all right thank you thank you Brad I appreciate that. Just to jump ahead I just want to thank you for coming to that I appreciate
125it. Welcome back Hornets of course um I was able to join Steven, Michael, and the rest of the faculty, now I'm saying faculty too, I'm used to it uh staff uh at the opening of school last Wednesday. It was an incredibly energizing experience, it was just great catching up with everyone and having a cup of coffee, and then seeing some really wonderful presentations. I I believe that the staff felt very valued in what they were hearing I had I had some good comments so I appreciate all of the presentations. Steve also I wanted to thank him he did specifically address those um staff members that moved buildings as we look at at our finances and acknowledge that that is not always the easiest thing and and thank them for that. So I I appreciated
126that, and Carol I really loved your video on being Mr. Jensen. I don't know if you know this, but we used to have a Jensen School, it's where Pleasant Ridge is there's a plaque still in the media center. Google it it has like over three million views. I went back and watched it again I really liked it um and it was I don't want to spoiler alert but it's about a little boy who um had some behaviors in the classroom and those behaviors were looked at from a negative perspective from some classmates and from some other staff, but there was a teacher and his name was Mr. Jensen and he saw that young boy in a different way and he ended up going on to some pretty great things, and I think that our staff
127always looks at students as individuals and always looks for their best traits and and their um passions and talents so I thought that that was really great. All of our games and activities are back in motion, so please support our actors and our musicians and our athletes and our artists and um things like that there's some really great stuff coming up and it's already going on um so welcome back. Even on the first day of school I was watching the track uh the cross country run working their way around town and uh being very jealous of their abilities anyway. I it was we'll just work our way along it really on the opening day I got a chance to welcome the staff again and I heard some really good things last year about my my
128brief talk and I I tried to to top it I couldn't quite top it, but it really was and if anyone cares it was an in incredible honor to welcome back staff uh at all levels, at all areas and where function in the school district and um it was wonderful to see the faces, so um they're going to have a great year. We're going to have a great year and we're moving on. I'll pass this over to Secretary Miller. So this was um a different fall for us at the Miller household um this is the first fall in um 23 years that we haven't had somebody in a building in Saline Area School so um so to uh for for families like us who have kids who are now navigating college and career and all
129of those things um you know it feels a little different to be on this side. So I feel a little disconnected although um still trying to stay connected in in through the community the work that is connected to the community so that's been really interesting um and exciting um I was sad to miss the opening day, because I was at um I normally I'm at opening day for my own school, but this year moving a child into college so so busy busy times. Other than that uh looking forward to um just some of our committee work kicking off again this fall and um attending a supera Superintendent Evaluation Tool Training with Brad on October 1st. Bet he just registered us so we'll be in compliance with that so that's all welcome back to all of
130our Hornets. Trusty Estep yes um so I have uh just a couple of updates. So the Sex Ed Advisory Board SEAB or SEAB is holding um their second hearing um here uh Tuesday, September 10th at our next um board meeting. So that will be the second public hearing um there was one um done earlier this year and um there will be an opportunity um I hope this information goes out to the public um to view uh the curriculum. I believe that is I don't know if it's going to be here at the main office or with the um it looks like um our community um uh our Director of Communications um has that information and we'll um be getting that out soon so. Just seeing the head shaking so um so yeah September 10th um
131uh you'll find out more information about um how to view that if, if you wish to view um the curriculum that they uh will um hopefully be recommending to us in the future, and then also um this yeah happy first day of classes um it's been I have a kindergartener so it's super exciting well it was first day of class was 40 minutes, so I got to you know take her home it wasn't really an extra break or anything, but um she really enjoyed it and um it was nice to see all the the little kids and the nervous parents and um so you know it's been um really good. So welcome back everyone um and then we have um the Saline Community Fair this week and um that's going to be August 28th which
132starts tomorrow um through September 1st, September so August 28th um tomorrow is the um Saline Schools Day um and also part of that there will be um an Inclusion Day um with uh like 10 AM to to 2 PM um so it'll it will be um free admission until 2 um admission help um includes one like an helper, uh so this is um uh free rides that reduce speed for our special needs friends, and so um I think that's a really a great opportunity for our families who have children um you know and special education have special needs and and need um need those uh accommodations, so that's pretty exciting um and I think there's a oh um oh my goodness Olympics, Ag Olympics where you will see um some of our staff um there
133and so that should be fun and entertaining, but yeah I think that's all I have and hope to see you all out there. I'll be there Trustee Austin okay just a few things some already been touched on um the back to school welcome all the students and staff back to school, the with the construction going on new bus routes or bus routes and new drivers in I just want to make sure that parents and uh stuff are sending or given a little bit of grace I I guess maybe at first here um getting into school, and um we're we're doing we're they've been working on it and um so there might be a few hiccups, but uh we'll get through it. The other thing is the HR Report once again I saw uh staff member
134Carol Melcher retiring. I wish her well she has done just a tremendous job for the district over the years, and has made a huge impact on many students, and I just want to give her a shout out last part is maybe more of a Public Service Announcement and uh I guess um we are in in a election cycle in a divisive world so I think it is just important that our district maintains neutrality in the classrooms and as far as the adults in the community, I mean it's tough running for even as small of a seat as a school board and uh I think it's just important that our adults in the community be the example on social media that we want um to see in our schools, less bullying, be inclusive of differ thoughts
135and ideas, just be a good good an example, so that's all. Thank you. Say hey students. Do you got anything to add to our opening comments? I don't think either of us do but I just want to say thank you to all the teachers uh for being prepared. I had a friend who went in on the first day to get schedule changed and he was in the right class second day, and it's just really impressive so thank you. That's awesome it doesn't always happen that's for sure. Kate anything? No. Yes That's fine, that's it's okay not to speak too. Which is great. uh I'd like to uh the consent agenda listed in this agenda will not be read aloud uh the motion noted will allow for the authorization of all listed items without discussion unless
136a member of the board requests that anyone or all be considered individually. Do I have a motion to authorize a consent agenda as printed? Motion Miller. Miller. Second. Austin second. Any all in favor please say I. I... Great 7-0. Opposed. Great 7-0 thank you very much. Items scheduled on the next agenda as as Trusty Estep noted the S E A B not SEAB hearing second hearing will be held and we would like to try for a photo op with Steve next time. Just somewhere and uh we'll we'll I play with it digitally, and we do things with it it's it's in in a polite way uh anyway I'm looking forward to that. Public comment. Is there any public comment? Thank you very much. The next meeting will be held on September 10th 6:30. I'd like
137to entertain a motion to adjourn the August 27th meeting at 8:21. So move. Second. So moved Steben. Second Estep. Steben and Estep.All in favor say I. I... Opposed? I'm still waiting for that one person to be opposed to adjourning the meeting. It could happen someday. Thank you. Thank you very much. Oh good for you right, thank you good night. [knock, knock] I already took the perfect picture Jackie, sorry they're holding their name tags and