001I'd like to uh welcome everybody I'd like to call tonight's meeting of the Saline Area Schools Board of Education uh to order uh July 9th 2024 uh and we will start standing as you are able with the Pledge of Allegiance led by Brad Gerbe. Glad to do it. 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. Thank you Brad once again. We are at the public comment section a member of the public may address the board briefly for up to three minutes or request to be scheduled on the agenda of a future meeting. Please note that students will be given priority to speak on any topic. The first public participation portion will be limited
002to 1 half hour and normally limited to agenda items uh second public participation portion will be offered at the end for any other comments. Individuals addressing the board should consider the rules of common courtesy. Public participation portions can't be used to make personal attacks against the board member, district employee, or student. We have Melissa Ashby and on deck is Kimberly Secrist Ashby. Oh since you're somewhat new at this our our our Secretary Miller will will will start the timing when you start speaking you have 3 minutes. At about is it 30 seconds? 30 second mark you'll hold up the yellow card at which point you'll get really nervous and and and when when you're done she will hold up the red card when your time is up. Okay um so I'm a student and I
003have both witnessed and been a victim of bullying. So uh I have been bullied by um athletes in gym who you know uh will make um who will just be like very subtle about it, but you know will make fun of me because I not an athlete and I'm in no way athletic and like I hate gym and so they'll do that and there was also one time in gym um where we had a lot of special ed students and you know me and my friends made friends with them because they're really cool and but all these athletes would like come up to them and like bully them and be really mean and like make snide comments like there was this one time a kid brought an umbrella into school which I was like okay
004cool you know you do you, and they they kept like going under the umbrella and being like it's not raining and you know they just like snide comments but they did it in such a way so that if a student or if a teacher came up to them they could like brush it off, um which is how most bullying goes on this day uh I do really well in school which means that I have a lot of other students asking me uh to do their work for them or give them answers which I don't believe in, I you know will help but they uh would you know keep asking me and like you know every single day I'd walk in I'd be bothered about will you give me answers and you know all this other
005stuff and I have been um like texted about it like non-stop about been uh being given answers. There was one time where um I had a crush on somebody and I was told that this person liked me and so you know all this other stuff and uh I got constantly texted by them and their friends um asking me like details about it and um like why you know like like all these things like when did it start and like which friends don't you like of this person and just like a lot of stuff like I would be texted and I I had said many many times I was like I don't want to be texted anymore I'm done with the drama. I have been um also texted many times asked to buy people cookies um
006at the edge of the high school and I have also witnessed bullying so not only with the special ed thing but um a lot of my friends who also happen to be queer they get you know subtly bullied a lot and like told mean and snide things too and the thing is is that all of these um people that do it they do it very subtly, so that if a teacher comes up to them you know they can't get in trouble and so I think something that should be done is that like teachers, if a student comes up to you and says hey this is happening, to believe it do something about it you know listen, be active, and to just pay more attention to what's going on in your classrooms so. Look at that
007without notes too. I was going to say this also um Melissa that the board is not going to react but I did want I do want to tell you knowing this board we listened very very closely to what you had to say thank you. Next up is Pastor oh Kimberly Secrist Ashby. Thank you good evening everyone I am here yes I am Pastor First Presbyterian but I'm especially here tonight on behalf of the City of Saline's Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility Committee of which I am a member um with that I attended most of the Listening Sessions that our superintendent held with different groups within the school district. I want to publicly say thank you for those, those were exceptionally helpful uh they a lot of us from the city tried to attend as well so
008that we could hear some of the ongoing situations and be able to respond to those so I appreciate the effort that's going on. I also wanted to officially report back that there was one issue that's super that um came out in those Listening Sessions that really was more a city issue, and so to close that loop I'm reporting back to you that we did talk to the city about the Mill Pond Playground it's been referred to parks and rec committee and they are seeking grants to replace playground equipment at this point. So I just wanted to report back that we have indeed taken care of that issue which came up. Thank you all very much for all the good work you're doing. Thank you very much. Seeing no more public comment uh we're moving on
009to the response to the previous public comment and at this point I would like to say that I will decline to comment on previous public comment on the last meeting. At this point we are uh looking to revise or approve the agenda items can be added or approved from the agenda uh or the order can be changed at the request of an individual board member or the superintendent. Agendas must be approved before proceeding further. I'd like to entertain a motion to approve this agenda. Motion gerbe. Gerbe. Support Steben. Steben. No discussion, all favor please say I. I... Thank you very much. I just want to make sure I get this 6 yes. 6 Brad Gerbe JS 6-0. Thank you very much. We have an agenda. We have several action items. First I'd like to entertain
010a motion to name the following banks or depositories for the various funds of the Saline Area Schools in fiscal 24-25 year. Bank of an Arbor Michigan Liquid Asset Fund or and the Old National Bank. A motion Miller. Miller. Second. Tim Austin. Do we have a comment from... We'll take a peek at that when we get to it. Right so we have a motion on without any discussion, then let's uh put it to a vote please all in favor say I. I... And opposed. Great 6-0. So Michael just just there's no addition past Bank of Ann Arbor Michigan Liquid Asset Fund. There is no what? Old National Bank. Those are the three. There's no that one is. No the discussion is that there's a motion later that needs to be amended to in compliance with a new
011updated policy. Okay thanks Jenny. Thank you, like to entertain a motion to authorize Stephen Laatsch, Superintendent as the primary signer and all checks written by the district, with Miranda Owsley, Assistant Superintendent of Finance as alternate on all accounts listed and this is the very long list I must read. A Bank Of Ann Arbor 2021 Bond Checking Account, 2023 Bond Checking Account, Michigan Liquid Asset Fund or MILAF, 2021 Bond Investment Account, 2023 Bond Investment Account, Old National Bank the General Fund, General Fund Payroll, Community Education, Recreation/CARES, Food Service, Student Activity, Student Activity, The Edge, Flex Benefits - Maestro, 2016 B&S Debt Service, 2018 B&S 2 Debt Service, 2021 B&S 3 Debt Service, 2018 Refunding Debt Service, 2023 B&S 1 Debt Service, the Sinking Fund, Paul Handy Scholarship Fund, Tim Kirlaly Memorial Fund, Horticulture Award, Randy Hoffman
012Fund, Rachel Townson Fund, the Dora May Mayer Memorial Scholarship, and Kathryn Steiner Burr Scholarship. Do we have a motion? Moves. Tim Austin moves. Support Steben. Jennifer Steben supports. Any discussion? Any comments, questions, queries, quibbles? No, all in favor please say I. I... Opposed nay. For same sign right thank you. I'd also want to entertain a motion to authorize Stephen Laatsch, Superintendent and Miranda Owsley, Assistant Superintendent of Finances signatories or transfer on transfers of investment monies. Gerbe. Support oh go ahead Jenny. Support Miller. Okay uh hearing no discussion all in favor please say I. I... Opposed right 6-0 thank you. Recommended motion I'd like to entertain a motion to adopt the resolution for continued participation in the Michigan State State of Michigan Loan Revolving Fund as submitted by Assistant Superintendent Miranda Owsley. Motion. I'll get Jennifer
013Miller supported by Brad Gerbe. Comments? All in favor please say I. I... Opposed. Great 6-0. Was this one that? I'm I'm willing to since that was me, it was updated but this looks like the one prior to that um adding or board. I got it in this part. As we did last year. I'll read it then. Oh I see okay thank you. We it'll be clear, so people listening yeah I am people listening in then we'll know. I'd like to entertain a motion to approve to appoint the Thrun Law Firm, P.C. of Lansing, Michigan and Collins and Blaha, P.C. as legal counsel for the district for the 24-25 school year. Oh sorry for the district and school board or school board or board right so you understand them the change, in addition the district is
014authorized to utilize other law firms pending areas of expertise. Do we have a motion to do we have a motion? Motion. Estep thank you. Support Brad Gerbe thank you. Any other discussion or comment? Hearing none, all in favor please say I. I... Thank you. Opposed. 6-0 thank you very much. Yeah thanks for catching that, I remember that discussion we had last year about this and, I'd like to entertain a motion to accept the adoption and revisions to Policy 5511 Dressing and Grooming as submitted by the Policy Committee as just as submitted by the Policy Committee. So moved Steben. I didn't know Jenny was gonna do that one. For support Miller. Thank you very much. Any discussion, comment? Yes um I would us like to reiterate um that uh I don't think that uh we should
015remove or actually I feel that we should put in um that the principal should invite the participation of staff and students in preparing the dress code um you know that this this was initially on there. This was um something that was proposed um from the DEIAC as well, to add and the policy has been pushed back for a couple of I think at least a couple years now, and every time it came back to the policy committee um invite the participation of staff and students had been removed so that kept being removed and now it came back to the table um with those not checked so it will not be included so again I encourage the participation even if it isn't written here that that still um occur. I think that's important when we talk
016about student dress code um and the inequities that have um happened to um have those voices who are you know who who who are in the buildings um you know experiencing uh whatever so. Other comments I just wanted to note that it's in the packet but just um as a result of our last discussion letter E now reads uh for anyone listening that has been revised and so if you're not looking at the packet it now says direct staff to enforce the district's dress code in accordance with Saline Area Schools Non-Discrimination Policy which is Policy 1 0145 and the Transgender Non-Binary Student Policy, Policy 5517.02. Thank you are there other comments? Right well let's put this to a vote then uh all in favor please say I. I... Opposed. While hearing none thank you 6-0,
017and I a personal note thank you for getting this done. I also like to entertain a motion to accept the the adoption of Policy 1540 the Administrative Staff Reductions/Recalls as submitted by the Policy Committee. Motion Gerbe. Brad Gerbe moves. Support Miller. JM. All right do we have any comments from anyone regarding this? Hearing no comments and I'd like to put it to a vote please all in favor say I. I... Opposed. Great 6-0. Thank you that deals with our action items. We have three scheduled reports this evening and we're going to get to the the first and most exciting one first. I'd like to welcome to the I like to welcome to the podium Dr. Ryan Rowe who will provide a uh an overview of Washtenaw County's Career Technical Education. Did I just steal all
018your thunder? That was the presentation. Thank you very much. Thank you very thank you thank you so much give be short. Thank you you for allowing me just a few minutes to talk about an update to our countywide design process uh kind of talk about what we are doing currently, what we have done, what we are doing, and more more importantly probably why we are doing this. So again it is our overarching goal to have every student in Washtenaw County approach the graduation stage at their high school graduation, to confidently state their postsecondary plan, and hopefully throughout their PreK through 12th grade experience have had experiential and applied learning opportunities that affirmed that choice. That's it. I it's it's there's beautification and simplicity and that is it and um it's surprising to still state how
019many students approach high school graduation and say I I don't know and that to me after 13 years is is not the right answer so all of this work is going to that. It all started really with opportunities and access to our Career Technical Education Programs, but it's so much more than just our juniors and seniors in in CTE. It is about a I call Continuum of Care from prek to 12th grade. What experiences can every student have starting at prek through fifth grade that they understand themselves. That they like working outside, they like working with other people, they like working with computers, they like taking care of others. In middle school they start to dabble in what they enjoy and and apply why they like what they do to what they could do and
020then their freshman and sophomore years they explore a little bit in these introd introductory level classes Intro to Baking, Intro to Foods, Autotronics, Engine fundamentals, and then hopefully they have a Capstone experience in their junior and senior year, so their junior year they can enroll in a Career Technical Education Program or advanced placement or dual enrollment or co-op or a variety of other areas, and then their senior year apply that in some authentic real world experience hopefully with business industry. So that's where it all started and the U of M Youth Policy Lab that is right in our backyard had done a lot of studies in the State of Michigan about the lack of equity and access to Career Technical Education Programs in various areas in the state, from the upper peninsula to the west
021side of the state and because they're in our backyard we thought it was an opportune time for them to really take a deep dive in Washtenaw County. Why do we exist in the way that we exist with Career Technical Education? So they did a report for us that's available now the superintendent just received that, we'll be sharing it publicly on in the near future. Although I served as a CTE Administrator and CT Director here in Saline. There was a lot of things that we do in I'll call consortium. So Ann Arbor Public Schools does their own Career Technical Education and Ypsilanti Community Schools does their own and Whitmore Lake does their own and we're just fortunate in the Consortium that six districts came together to do as the vision states what not one District can
022do we can do together. So where's the catalyst with us working on a countywide scale? Which led us to me presenting this and really promoting this pathway to potentially a a decision day. Philosophically how we could develop a system of Career Technical Education and Experiential and Applied Learning and also hopefully have a funding model. So we'll talk about that in just a few minutes. So what we've done is uh well we've done a few things, we have applied for a CT Equipment Grant, which two years three years ago had $530,000, last year it had $580,000, and this year had $1.53 million. So over a million of that was within the Consortium itself, many within the labs at Saline. That not only the Consortium students get to appreciate, but so did the Saline students in their
0239th and 10th grade elective classes. So that will continue and that's being facilitated at the countywide level um with support from Emily Koch and Miranda and others. We've also developed a countywide networks, so a Society of Manufacturing Education SME Prime you've probably heard this from Kara Stemmer, but engineering programs that have been developed and we'll show an expansion of the programs here in a couple minutes um in working with Lincoln Schools that is really working on Electronics, Digital Electronics, EV and working with Ypsilanti Schools more on the machining side. Manchester has some engineering programs. Robotics in Chelsea. We have this Engineering Manufacturing Education Network. I talked with a gentleman from SME Prime, Vice President of the Foundation, and I said it's interesting that we have our FAME Chapter, Federation of Advanced Manufacturing Education at
024Washtenaw Community College, students can graduate from high school, go to work for companies like Toyota Research and Development, two days a week making $20 an hour, while attending Washtenaw Community College three days days a week in a cohort setting, graduate after two years with an Advanced Manufacturing Technology Associates Degree and start with those businesses around $60,000, and I said it's interesting that we have the FAME Mitten Chapter at Washtenaw Community College, SME Prime Schools, Engineering Manufacturing Programs, feed the FAME Chapter, and yet we don't have one SME Prime School District in Washtenaw County. So I'm talking to him via zoom and he gave me a look, which I knew later when I looked in the mirror, said well then do something about it and so I started to work with Lincoln and Ypsi specifically. Kara
025was working with Saline with Trent Trout and three of the 16 programs that are launching this fall are in Washtenaw County. Saline, Ypsi, and Lincoln and all of these engineering manufacturing programs are working together, they complement, they don't compete. So if you want robotics, FANUC robot you go to Chelsea, if you want digital electronics and electric vehicles you go to Lincoln, if you want uh computer integrated manufacturing you go to Saline with Trent Trout. The problem is that if you are residing in Ypsilanti you can't access these other programs. If you reside in Saline you can't access a collision repair program in Ypsilanti, because we have these Consortium. We we have these silos. So that's what we're working towards to break those down. Part of that CTE equipment grant that that money that I just
026said towards that equipment is intended for non-millaged funded counties. So we're one of those and the legislators are saying invest this money, in part to convince your taxpayers, look at what we can do with a half million dollars, what could you do with five million. So we're working towards that end. So we're developed uh countywide networks, SME Prime, the FAME Chapter, we are also consolidating efforts with our CTE New Teacher Boot Camp. So a majority of the people that Kara is hiring as new CTE Teachers are coming out of business industry, they're not coming from traditional educational routes. So they know the technical aspects of machining and nursing, but they don't have the pedagogy they haven't gone through that so we offer Kara and myself and Tom Pachera from Ann Arbor offer a boot camp
027for new CTE teachers. So they don't have to be brand new they could be one to three years and we we walk through all aspects of education from planning and preparation, pacing guides, uh how to work with diverse populations, um and so we're going to offer that again in July and there's 26 teachers in Washtenaw County that will be joining together for that process. So we're excited about that. We applied for a quarter million dollar consolidated studies grant so what could we do to develop a countywide system so that any student residing in any county could access any CTE Program. It was a quarter million dollars, we received that so that helped pay for the U of M Youth Policy Lab Report, in part helped pay for my position, and then paid for in part
028another position of a CT Data and Entry Specialist at the ISD. So um in part that study came out it showed that we have some areas for improvement in this County and how we can expand access including transportation, expanding program such as aviation, that we don't have currently, uh that we hospitality, tourism management that we could open countywide or engineering manufacturing, our health science pathway, and so out of those results of the U of M Youth Policy Lab, we can now implement, apply for another grant, to implement a structure that would support all of those efforts and we will be applying for $5 million to help uh support that. So what would that look like? It would look like business, it would look like enrollment, and PowerSchool and software and transportation and administration of these
029programs and studying what programs could we expand so that all students could access programs in Washtenaw County. This is all leading to our date in August on August 12th, our Business Industry Roundtable in folks that we've been working with will join the Washtenaw Superintendent Association, the superintendents we're coming together to talk about the study, where we're headed with this effort, where we can expand, where our opportunities lie, and um I'm really excited about that because I think if we all come together then these opportunities could be available to all students. Hopefully um then August when we meet some recommendations come out of that, philosophically how we can structure CTE in Washtenaw County for all students, and then in November 2025 if that's in partnership with Washtenaw Community College potentially a vocational millage uh that would
030be our decision day in November 2025. If we pass to millage what would that help support? It would help support your vo vocationally certified teachers salary and benefits, it would help to pay for transportation to the locations that our students attend, equipment, programming, curriculum and development. So what have be we've been working on? If you look at the map we had 50 state approved CTE programs um the year prior all of the areas that are in circle that are proposed, so there are 10 new state approved CTE programs that are launching this fall, so we're going from 50 state approved CT programs to 60. You'll see those are mainly launching in areas that have limited CTE opportunities currently with Ypsilanti, Lincoln the only District that didn't host is at least one state approved CTE Program,
031and you can see they're pretty diverse there's Engineering Manufacturing, there's Theater Management up at Whitmore Lake, Careers in Education at Whitmore Lake, but pretty proud that we worked uh pretty rapidly to expand from 60 from 50 to 60 CTE Programs. I will note not one of those 60 CTE Programs is open to students from all nine districts. Those are dependent on where you reside, so I'm still searching what is that that unicorn program and potentially aviation that we could launch in this upcoming year that would be open to students from all nine districts in partnership with business industry. Last slide is really the millages map so um this needs to be updated because there's a couple of these counties that are um working towards millages at this point in time and we go out for a
032vote, but currently if you look at this map, those that are above 1 Mill so if you see those like in Lenawee County that have 2 point something those were passed back in the 70s. Those were passed in the old vocational days before Prop A before 1994. After that, so they could pass those for as much as they wanted and for as long as they wanted, after 94 you could go out for up to 1 mill and it was time limited, so you had to go out for to reup. So there's just a few of us left without a vocational millage Washtenaw County is one of those, but certainly moving forward, we are researching we're analyzing, how we could best support and maybe that's a millage and maybe it isn't CTE programming at the high
033school level, but more importantly that career exploration from PreK through 12th grade, and so that work in August at August 12th at the retreat will take place with the superintendent and business industry partners. I'm sure Steve or myself can report back to you on the results of that, and then we'll be working diligently between that August date and potential decision date of November 2025 to recommend uh what direction we head. That's all I have for you. Are there any comments or questions? I know I have at least one. Susan. Thank you for the great presentation and I always love hearing about um CTE Programs here and um across um the district in Washtenaw County. I'm glad that you're heading that up, so just a really quick uh question on um the training program for sorry
034um for the CTE teachers um you you know you say that um like I I think that's great that you're going to help them with like the pedagogy and um how how to you know teach the classes and stuff, a lot of professors who get their PHD in I'll tell you um my wife in civil and environmental engineering, there were actually education engineering education classes that she could take, but um a lot of times they don't teach like they go straight into teaching university classes without having no um information about how to teach, right um how to uh so I think that's um exciting that you've already thought about that, and um you're going to help them be the best teachers that they can be. Thank you very much. Yeah was fine if you're covered.
035All right um I would like to follow up on that and say okay I I have two questions so the first one kind of piggybacks off that idea and it's about how can we offer though more continuous professional development and mentorship for these individuals who could be maybe partnered I I I'm just spitballing here like partnership between a teach you know the pedagogy expert if you will teacher and then the CTE expert and bring them together? So I guess I'd want to continue or hear about like if there's any interest in continuing those conversation it doesn't just become a one-size fits-all July go be a teacher you know. Yeah so to answer that one you know when I was the executive director and I had a a 22-year-old new teacher uh that had a certification
036was coming in to teach I would pair that individual with a mentor often a veteran but a master teacher, I'll take Nate Bush for instance Nate Bush there's not one day you walk into Nate Bush's classroom or lab and there's downtime. He knows what he's doing every day every minute it's all intentional. So to par to pair Nate bush with a brand new CTE teacher he understands technical education, but he also gets the pedagogy as well so I think we're very deliberate in that approach Brad where I can talk about the pacing guides and such, where then Nate can take that to the next level on an ongoing basis. Okay I wouldn't mind just it would be nice to to to see that support and how it's all it's delivered so um and then the
037other thing is um my antenna goes up just slightly about I I think it's great I think it's important to hire from industry because those are the experts and those of the people doing it, but then how does and this is more for the community too to hear about highly qualified status and how that all kind of functions together with it. Yep so very complex with Career Technical Education Vocational Certification if you um are starting from scratch you would go through a traditional route let's just take Western Michigan University, they would take an individual teacher and they have 10 years to earn their bachelor's degree, in teacher education, and a vocational certification on top of that if a teacher already has a bachelor's degree let's just say they have a culinary arts bachelor's degree then
038they can take three classes towards their vocational certification. So it's it's scaffold based on their education and experience at that point in time and so and there's universities Easterns one of those and several others that offer occupational certification and cater to that approach knowing where they're coming from. Yep. First of all welcome back to Saline Area Schools it's great to see you. I wanted to learn a little bit more about the August 12th business industry round table and if the public was invited to that, if we were invited to that, and what could we do to bring because yeah several of us work in industry where we know businesses in these in these fields and what could we do to support bringing more industry. You mentioned Toyota Tech I mean Hyundai here and Superior Township
039I think it is like what else could we do to bring in more um to support these. Thank you, that's a great question. So we had two um we had Wholemindesign, located in Ann Arbor, facilitate two think tank sessions, and what we did was we brought individuals together from United Way, South Central Michigan Works, Southeastern Michigan Works, um U of M Health, we brought folks together from community organizations like the Kiwanis Clubs, um together just 12 individuals to kind of frame what experiential and applied learning looks like and that kind of when you do research and you know this, you reach a saturation point so we kind of know what we we would like to see from business industry community in the educational realm but now at this August 12th meeting it's bringing our superintendant
040were not part of that think tank pretty strategically we didn't want the educators to lead the education we want business industry to have a a voice in that so the business industry folks that were at that think tank will be working in educating the superintendent the morning of August 12th, and out of that meeting we will ask for who should be at the table on an ongoing basis working towards that November date. So I'll share information with Steve regarding the August 12th date and if you have individuals that you think should be at the table for August 12th fantastic from business industry or the community and then if they can't do the August 12th they could be participating on an ongoing basis a couple times a month leading to that decision day. So I'll share
041all that with Steve to share with you in great detail. That's awesome and if you could just just a follow-up question um if you could define the persona of like not only the industry or the organization like this would be a wonderful company but like the persona within that organization like a VP of Operation, CHRO, like. You got it. Okay. We'll do. Thank you. So a couple of things I was just going to piggy back off of what you said my daughter is in a relatively new nursing program in her college she, the college used to collaborate with all other universities to have a shared nursing program and now they've they're they're on their own, so they're facing the same thing and I keep saying to my daughter uh they can be a really good
042nurse and not know how to teach nursing so so give them a little grace while they're learning and support them in their learning too but that can be a little bit of a learning curve for some of our students too who are you used to highly functioning teachers so uh so yeah I think that's an industry situation when we're getting into specific content areas, I also uh liked the idea um especially when we're talking about um continuous Improvement the idea of the boot camp is fabulous and then just thinking and I know you know like the mentorship program um and I think even for our veteran teachers there's always new things to learn so that ongoing continuous improvement I know that's a part of your plan and has been um for for the duration of
043the time that I've known you so um I trust that that's embedded and and I know with all of the uh new like um here we have the Instructional Designers, I'm sure there are people at the ISD that can support some of that um overarching pedagogy too uh through individual sessions or coaching things like that. I wanted to just uh throw out um if you would like to get in touch with someone who has um some insight on the aviation industry um my husband is a pilot so he has worked both in the corporate and commercial um aspects of that and also has worked closely with e well not as closely with Eastern but has been a visitor at the Eastern program and it's graduated from Western and remains in contact with their education people.
044He has um contacts with Minorities in Aviation and Women in Aviation both organizations who have lots of funding dollars who would love to support historically marginalized um students in building aviation careers. So uh if that's someone that you I could help connect you with so they can so he can connect you with others get in touch with me and I'll make that connection. Yep, I will send that information to Steve and then I'll have you just filter it through because that's exactly who we're looking for I think. He's off on the 12th so I'll plant the seed. Perfect thank you you know what we what we need folks to understand and I know that you do is that every student can benefit from experiential and applied learning and when we think about CTE specifically and
045we're focused on Career Tech we think 11th and 12th graders with Career Technical Education we're talking much beyond that we're talking a PreK through 12th grade continuum and so when we think about that and we think about how could drones and aviation be infused in third grade classrooms leading to a career in in aviation we could use a lot of other examples that's really what we're looking at. I know this board of education understands it, but we need every citizen of Washtenaw County to understand that. Part of it is the identity like identifying yourself as someone who could be in that field too um last week my kids participated in a dance uh they they are they have been under contract with some dancers in LA and so my son was finishing his contract, he's
046no longer going to be a dancer like he has been, he's going to focus his efforts in dive, but one of the things that the owner of that organization said to him is the work ethic and the learning is the work ethic and the learning, so take this work ethic and learning and apply it to what you're going to do next and I think that's what the beauty is of CTE we're giving these kids experiences and should they decide to pursue engineering they've got a great foundation should they decide to take the work that they've done in in engineering and pursue culinary arts, they know how to learn and be learners so I think you know it's a great foundation and um it's a great way for for students to visualize a path toward their
047future so thank you for the work you're doing. Thank you. Thank you secretary Miller. Did you want something Tim?Just um not much but the um boot camp I really like that idea and then also I just want to thank you for your vision in all this because I think Saline we take the with the Consortium we take it for granted that other people people in other districts have very limited resources to CTE so I know you're passionate for CTE and um I think it's awesome that you're trying to somehow bring that all under not maybe one envelope but so that every student can have that opportunity and um I mean it there's great earning potential for every student in this and uh a lot of lot of um potential I guess so thanks. Yeah our
048youth today can do whatever they' like there's a variety of ways to get there and so we want them to consider when they approach that high school graduation stage what's the most value added approach to college and career and uh hopefully they have options that they're choosing they're empowered to choose that path that they they want to take. Excellent thank you Tim. Thank you everyone for your comments. I do have a quick uh if you could just elaborate a little on where aviation fits with the CTE kids. So we got like pil aviation that leads to pilot certification to drone certification to drones as surveying tools and then uh avionics versus aircraft maintenance. So what is it that we hope to, all of it? So I I think right now Mike we're at the very
049we're we're at the very beginning of all of that we're exploring you know FAA is involved and Willow Run is involved and I think to a to a various degree we could have all of that taking place within Washtenaw County. I think aviation mechanic is certainly in the realm, I think Pilots are certainly in the realm and I think that drone technology from photography to building maintenance to agroscience is applicable. So again I I think those transferable skills can be to a variety of different career clusters but everything that you just mentioned I think is going to be explored in the next few months regarding aviation. I appreciate that and the other question is because the aviation program and you touched on EMU's Eastern Michigan University's program which I know fairly well they have a
050great deal of equipment already and trainers and and that sort of thing I'm wondering because they're not part of the Consortium directly, are they people you can still reach out to? Yeah we are. And you are, thank you that's great thanks. Superintendent Laatsch. I just wanted to say that this is one of the few um well since I've been Superintendent which hasn't been that long but we've been working as county superintendents to sort of come up with that one focus that truly would help all our students in Washtenaw County this has been it and you know to Ryan's credit he's demonstrated so much value as the SWWC Director that the superintendents could then project out what would happen if we created this new position to expand these offerings, to what Tim just said or Trustee
051Austin just said, to students that don't have these opportunities because there's there have been so many studies including the U of M study that shows that really kids are participating you know in large scale if they have the programs locally. So if you do you know Lincoln and Ypsi specifically where they they really do need more opportunities for their students. So we've really come together as a county as saying these are Washtenaw County students, they're not Saline students they're not Chelsea students, Washtenaw County students and so Ryan's position really has been focused on that and and we feel it's just a great direction we're really proud of the direction which also speaks to the need for a countywide millage, because to expand programs anytime you want to run a new course like drones for example
052that's like $200,000 and cost to get those off the ground. So if we want to expand it is going to cost money to do that in the future, so. Well said. We have some follow-up questions This just got me thinking um and not that we have to answer this but after spending five years on the finance committee I guess I think about revenue generation and I think about um our budget overall understanding that we want to make as much impact as we can to serve our students and have a really comprehensive course catalog um for our high school learners but as we drill down and cascade within um middle school and down but has it been considered to offer some of the programming additionally for charge like through a Community Ed or something like that
053that would help um supplement school districts and um budget challenges that they might be having. Like as a revenue generation model, like this and, like thinking about a for-profit piece of it not taking away at all from the students or districts that we are serving, but another layer so like morphing into a like a bit of a for-profit. Yeah I think we're we're getting to you know we've expanded and expanded and I think we're getting to a tipping point overall where there's a reason why this map exists and why the the red areas are getting limited and limited because they understand that we're getting to a tipping point where we can't we have a student go through a cyber security program and through High School become certified for cyber security and say I want to
054go over for Saline Area Schools and I can make really good money doing it your desperate need of a technician and the certification cost $500 in high school. We're supporting that financially now and so I think the vocational millage would would offset some of those costs and then I think we need to look at other areas you know potentially including what you're mentioning our partnership with Washtenaw Community College, our partner with post-secondary institutions, our partners with business industry. I think we need to consider everything at this point in time because we we are really meeting that that tipping point. Well I'd like to thank you very much oops for coming tonight and you filled our heads with visions of sugar plums and great CTE Program and appreciate it. Thank you so much. A greatly appreciate
055it. we have two more rep I think a little tape just went off in my head as I was saying visions anyway uh I we have two more reports and Dr. Laatsch is going to lead us through both of them. To uh start with a Bullying Report I did want to point out that um for our Core Team I did want to welcome uh Julie Voelker who's here tonight we had we had stated that when we formed the new Executive Director of Special Education we felt that that position was very important to be part of the Core Team, and so she's representing um the Special Education Department here tonight and then uh just of note Carol and Betty and Rex are on vacation, so anyway, welcome Julie uh so this first report uh the Bullying
056Report is an annual report that we are presenting and it's associated with MCL section 380.1310b and that is specifically a procedure for each public school to document any prohibited incident that's reported and a procedure to report all verified incidents of bullying and the resulting consequences including discipline and referrals to the board of the school district or intermediate school district or board of directors of the public school academy on an annual basis. So this is the annual report that we and we we started that last year um and then as a result of reporting it last year, we've had to make some modifications so that we are more accurate with reporting and and what not and so one of those changes we made if you can recall last year I spoke about how PowerSchool where we
057put discipline, only allows you to like choose one incident to report. Do a scenario where uh let's just say two students would be get in a fight for example and then we want to report that um you know that fighting was the reason that they had a referral and they were disciplined for this, however we felt that one of the students was being bullied and that's the result of the fight so now we've change the reporting mechanism so all our principles and assistant principles have been directed to describe the scenario in a note section in PowerSchool and use the term bullying if they feel that there is an association with it and so as a result of that when Betty Jahnke goes to run the SID Report which is where we report that type of
058data, at the end of the year, it will now gather that so it's it's it's more comprehensive in the way we're pulling that information out and so that will be reflected in this report for this year. Okay so with that said we will take a look um the other thing that I thought it was important to do was to categorize the different ways that students or or people are bullied and um recognize that there are different ways and different shapes that that shows up in the district so um although this isn't part of the requirements I did go through and categorize the incidents that I read about in PowerSchool because in order for me I'm I'm making some generalizations with the data to say this one is associated with this type of bullying anyway so
059there are these um five categories, verbal bullying uh includes name calling derogatory language and offensive comments, social bullying which includes um excluding someone from a group or activity or public humiliation, physical bullying which include what we would know hitting kicking tripping or other physical violence, cyber bullying social media whatnot um include sending electronic messages that threaten or harass someone, and then we also have a category hate speech or discrimination which would include using language that attacks a person or group on the basis of attributes such as race, religion, ethnic origin, national origin, sex, disability, sexual orientation, or gender identity. So as you see the report coming next which will show each school, how the data was reported and then there's a category assigned to that and I will say I assigned the category so it's
060not a perfect science, but um that's how that's how I approached it this year. Okay so we start with Harvest and there was one incident uh it was a physical bullying situation and the disciplinary consequence was a safety plan created in collaboration with administration to address bullying behaviors. Move on to Pleasant Ridge they also had a physical bullying situation and that phone call home to address the situation and you might say well why is that one different than the other one, because there's different degrees of bullying as determined by the building principal after they investigated it. Woodland Meadows with 3, physical bullying all 3 of them disciplinary consequences there were phone calls home, restorative practices, out of school suspension, and then two in school suspensions in this uh situation. With Heritage 12 incidents reported 5
061were verbal bullying, 4 social bullying, 1 physical bullying and 2 cyber bullying and sometimes they would cross over, but I did my best to categorize the type of bullying based on the comments in PowerSchool and then the disciplinary consequences here were phone calls and emails home, a number of lunch detentions, in one case it was a bus situation where a seat was assigned, and then there were also apology letters involved and a number of in school suspensions. Middle School 22 reported incidents in PowerSchool associated with bullying again what what I do want to point out here is there were other there may have been another coded consequence as the primary reason in PowerSchool, but this captured all the PowerSchool comments so I didn't I didn't differentiate whether it was in the comments of PowerSchool within
062that or it was the actual reason um as as the reason for the disciplinary consequence and this included a number of verbal bullying situations, social bullying one time, physical bullying 5, cyber bullying 3, and in this case an incident of hate hate speech and then a variety of disciplinary consequences from warnings, to lunch detentions, in school and out of school suspension, number of restorative sessions, apologies, and a couple times conferences with parents specifically. At the high school 20 incidences 12 verbal, social bullying 1 time, physical bullying 3, cyber bullying 2, hate speech discrimination reported twice and then you'll see the consequences there, a lot of detentions, some in and out of school suspension, not as much as the middle school for example. A couple things that happened on the bus here resulted in bus suspension
063and uh movement of a seat on the bus. Alternative High School reported 2, one verbal one cyber bullying, and um out of school suspensions in this case it was the same situation with a couple of students so kind of blended together. Okay so as a result an important part is what are we we trying to do about the uh bullying that goes on in the district. We definitely are taking action and I do think something though that was important that Melissa right Melissa you pointed out which I think is very astute and we need to address this and that is the sort of sly or um different um under the radar ways in which kids are being mean, are doing bullying and as a result we really need to look at well what are the
064proactive measures that we're doing to make sure that all our students know that they're doing this and that we are educating in ways that were more proactive especially earlier on in the process and you'll see here that the Middle School is being my last slide of the night is Middle School related and specifically how they're trying to adjust their approach to to helping with a anti-bullying program. Anyway so there's a number of here that are listed here including our Culturally Responsive Instructional Model, that were seeking trusted adults, we had and this is something that um Musetta Deneen had reported about. How you know back uh a number of years ago we had a very low percentage of students reported that they had trusted adults that has now risen quite significantly, so we feel like that's
065very important again um social working, counseling support, SEL lessons through coaches. We have currently 3 SEL coaches in the district um funded with SEL money, which is a concern because that has gotten eliminated from this upcoming state budget but more about that to come later, social thinking curriculum at the elementary schools and that the SEL supports coming at advisory time at the Middle School and Hornet Time uh at the High School, we also have WEB and LINK Crew which are transitional programs that are helping kids uh assimilate into the uh Middle School and High School and then um Saline Middle School specific this Be Good People curriculum. At the High School did Rachel's Challenge this year um which was an effort to better support uh an anti-bullying campaign and then a number of other things on
066the right side here uh speakup protocol, community meetings around PBIS, restorative practices, the conflict resolution series that we've been running, U of M peer-to-peer depression awareness program and of course the Bridge Civility that we continue to work on. Specifically to the Middle School and I know this is is somewhat difficult to read but they have an approach that they are working on next year with the realization the Middle School is a real key area where students are I would say very focused on the need to fit in friendships and there is quite a bit of insecurity at this level therefore really have to focus on this at the Middle School because by the time kids are at the High School I'm not saying it's too late but they've already established some of these patterns of
067behavior and and making decisions on their own and and and we feel that the Middle School is a real key area to really get after this work and so you can see that that they're taking an approach next year to put greater emphasis on on the plan to combat bullying. So with that said that what we have about that and I can go ahead and take questions and then we're going to move into the uh Listening Session Report and the Perceptions of Equity Survey which will also coincide with with some of this work you'll see a a pattern of things that we we need to work on. Great so um well we'll open up the table questions. So so Steve you kind of answered some of it because I was kind of looking looking back
068and looking at the history of the report, the reported numbers and 5, 24, 61, but it sounds like you've done made more of an emphasis on how how they're coding things so you can it's not like it jump almost three times from one year to the other most likely is that what you're thinking. Well I mean with out a jump you could say well we're making better gain around it, because potentially before we were missing areas that were being reported as bullying because we were coding them as fighting or assault or kind I gathered I don't I don't know how to how to for sure quantify that, but you're right it didn't go from 60 incidents to 300 this year, but with that said I think it does go back to are are there a
069lot of places where we're missing it and and we we do need to work on that if we're hearing students say that these kinds of things are happening and it's very hard for the teachers to identify it because the kids are um sometimes being uh like covert on how on how they're doing it, we do have to be listening and and and and really um looking at that and doing everything we can to help help address that. Yeah because to some extent it's pretty subjective to who's involved, the staff that's around and and how they're coding it. So that was my biggest concern is looking back at the numbers and 5, 24, 61. I was like wow this is a big jump but kind you've kind of explained that you've started coding things a little
070bit different so it's easier to see in PowerSchool when you're pulling them up, which is good to know because we've been throwing a lot of money at Social Emotional Learning Coaches and all these other things and so if if it continues to go up then we gotta maybe question. Yeah we want we want some data to demonstrate that we're having an impacts yes I would support that. Just really just really quick um I wanna to you know state that I appreciate our districts um you know efforts and I appreciate your efforts to break it down so that we can see patterns and we can see different types of behaviors and we can maybe focus our efforts more and that's what I like about the idea of breaking it down into if we want to call
071it categories or or whatever, but um I appreciate that um but this is ongoing work right like I mean this is day in day out, ongoing work for teachers, for staff, for students, for administrators, for everybody, so um I appreciate the people that are in the trenches and doing that work and I also want to note that it takes tremendous courage for those people those individuals to come forth and to speak about what what what's happening and what's real to and what have you and that's is that's an important piece of this I want to make sure that I say not just because we had an individual is courageous enough to come and talk to us tonight, but just in general the more that we know, the more we're able to then say we don't
072want that behavior to continue. So anyway so I appreciate that and you know we want to be partners with families and with students and and all that so thank you. Jenny Miller I think. Yeah I I um wanted to acknowledge that I I feel like the report this year um was responsive to some of the concerns around the the nature of reporting and the numbers last year, so I feel like we're getting to a more realistic view of what is actually happening, so I appreciate the modifications and and the way that um things have been adjusted to have this more comprehensive report. It's also interesting as as Brad was saying the um just that the the work is ongoing and it's never done and I was thinking specifically around like cyber bullying which wasn't a
073thing when we were in school and how we have to constantly be um you know have to constantly be flexible in our thinking around what is included in this realm and one of the ways that we can do that is with feedback from students and families and so we appreciate when students and families come forward and and let us know that that things are happening so that um so that you know those things can be thought about in in different ways. I do want to put out um a challenge and I know it's a challenge for everyone involved, but um more and more I hear hear reports from students and families and so I'm I'm I'm going to go out on a limb here and just say I'm hearing reports more and more from students
074at the High School that the advisory time is not not being used the way that we would like for it to be used or the way that it's being leveraged for example in in this scenario and I don't want to put fault or put blame on anyone. I just wonder if it might be something that we could think about, because as I have been wondering about it as people have been talking to me I know it's a burden on our teaching staff because it's another prep that they have to and it and it might be um an area that's not an content area expertise area for them and so I am thinking and wondering if um there might be an opportunity for some of our we have a an abundance of clubs and organizations that
075have come to talk to us um like for example you mentioned one of the partnerships with U of M that one of our I believe it's the same um the U of M peer-to-peer program. I think it's one of one of the clubs brought that uh to us earlier this year in one of their um uh presentations, so I just wonder if we might be able to leverage some of the organizations that are already in place, so that there isn't an increased burden on our staff, but there's an opportunity for students to um have uh some learning around some of these areas. I know Connecting Club did did a presentation this year so is there a way for us to follow that model um to to again create an opportunity for learning to create an
076example or to create an opportunity for ongoing continuous Improvement in this area without overburdening a staff that already gives 110% every day. So just something to think about. Okay yeah and I can write that down and and talk to him. I do think it's important that I address the cyber bullying part because I think you bring up that good point that, that is another challenge for our administration especially when some of that cyber is ha well most of it is happening outside of school hours and then we we have to try to determine is this coming into the school at a level that we would discipline at at it or does it need to involve the police. We've had a lot a number of situations like that where our um building principles and assistant principles
077are doing the best they can to manage that but that is very challenging, because the vast majority it's not happening during the school day. Well and I would I think like in addition to cyber bullying being not contained in the school day it does appear just as our student shared with us tonight that while it may originate in one area say PE, it's continuing in in texting or purchasing cookies or you know so it's it's not contained in one area, so how do we impact the social dynamics in our school and community at large. So it's a it's great to have a partnership with the DEI at the city, and I appreciate that they're um that they're continuing to have an impact on our community at large, um while we can co coordinate efforts here,
078and I do think that in large part looking at the way things are coded that there is an element of um you know diversity, equity, inclusion that could be addressed with some of these so thanks. Okay. Did you have anything to add? So I have I mean a lot but um just try to I have some questions that I'll touch on um so regarding um the ha well okay so I guess to to begin, so all so the person who is responsible for the bu like taking the reports and investigations in the building which is the principal or another admin, so they must report to the superintendent all reported bullying, all verified bullying, and then remedial action which you've added here this year which is great. Which is which would include disciplinary and referral, um
079referral maybe leads into my my next question um so um which regards like the hate speech um I was shocked to see only two incidents in the Middle School and one, wait two in the High School and one in the Middle School um when when we've had students come here over the past year um with BSU and uh with hopefully response to that, I don't know where where we're on that with the um handbook, go ahead. Well yeah why don't I respond to that first because okay this starts with the keyword of bullying and then it then it was sorted out just by me to say did that fall into hate speech or not there there probably are other documented things in PowerSchool that potentially say hate speech, but they don't use the term bullying
080so they don't they don't show up in the bullying report so it's nuanced in that I I I created what I thought that was that bullying was associated with. There there could be just thr this number out there there could be 20 incidents of hate speech or discrimination that the building principles put somewhere in PowerSchool but if the term bullying isn't used it wasn't getting associated in this report. So then this really isn't accurate at all if that's I get so I guess the building person supposed to report it to you, but you are just pulling from the overall broad District PowerSchool. Yeah yeah okay but the interpretation of that is that, the superintendent or building administration would use the PowerSchool record to gather that data, in other words uh yes I could have talked
081to each individual principal, about each incident, but I I felt that I could get that information from PowerSchool and assemble it that same way um I wouldn't say that this information isn't relevant I I'm just trying to state that there could be other incidents of hate speech being used that weren't coded with bullying and so. So I reported what was listed as bullying okay so so the so then the building like the principles or whoever aren't reporting it to you like do they know that there's an I assume an expectation that they tag bullying for these incidents or. Yes because I said I directed him this year to say I would like bullying listed as a phrase in the uh description if they felt that it was somehow the event was associated with bullying, and
082so I I am putting some trust in in the principles and as when I was putting this report together, I did share it out with them and ask them to provide any other feedback that they wanted to provide, and then I'm presenting it to you tonight. So they did they did look at the report as well. Okay great I mean that's what it it says that they they report it to you so um so this does this data include then um har well I guess if they don't put bullying on it um harassment that uh goes on uh based on protected classes does that capture any of this data here or? Well it's it's based on if the I I I can't I can't answer that specifically other than to say the way we put
083the report together was I took any incident in PowerSchool that said the term bullying in it compiled the report and compared it back and and shared it back with our building administration to provide provide feedback. I I don't know the answer to that on whether all of it was captured or not if it didn't wasn't associated with the term bullying then it then it wasn't in this report. Okay so you're not communicating with I guess Title IX type things and um all of that with this so it's like separate just building based not like from the office or? I'm I I I complied with uh the procedure for each public public school to verify incidents of buling and the resulting consequence including discipline and referral so that's what I did. All right well I I
084encourage you to to look at how we can capture um that data on the harassment with hate speech and acts um so because I know that's something that um with the three-year plan and um the uh DEIAC, you know how how do we capture that data so we can decrease, what is happening in the schools to um you know children who um have disabilities, who are being harassed um uh LGBTQ students, race, ethnicity, you know I think that's definitely data we need to pull and figure out how to do that. I I could I mean and another way I could do is just get rid of that categorizing all data and just call it bullying, if people would like that as a better way to report it. I added that element this year to the
085report to try to provide more detail. Yeah and I. People feel like it's too confusing. Some schools use multiple at least I know in the Middle School the last year it was they do like a Google Doc or something. So I mean I'm glad that there's not glad that there's more data on bullying but there's actually more data um so I mean. But I can encourage us to share I think what you're asking is me to go back to the building principles and say they need to do a better job of including any harassment data associated with bullying. Is that what you're asking? I'm asking for us to capture data more data like specific da if they're not putting bullying for or um hate speech and acts or sexual harassment um what have you, how
086are we capturing that data? Okay I can ask them. I'm not telling you to tell them to do anything. I'm just want the data um I think it's important um and then I had where did they go yeah because I know from this from last year to this year um like you said it increased like over 200% um and I know there has been data um that were captured in the past and and so I'm not sure how that that was recorded I know last year was the first time that we actually received a report from you and I don't recall having one from uh Superintendent Graden, but that information was reported, but still from 2019 it appears that you know taking out that kind of COVID period um that it still has increased um
08727%, but yeah thanks for get getting that data. The so when like Rachel's Challenge um like that was put on there um for my understanding that's like a one-time event. I don't know if anything was done beyond that in the classes um I've received feedback um from the advisory I've heard it from students mouths that the Advisory and Hornet Time is not, they're not talking about anti-bullying um a lot of times the students tell you like I I don't know what we did or you know it's a short short period of time and everything and I've heard um also teachers express you know um I guess concerns with whether everybody's implementing it the same and and so um so yeah I guess when I do see some of these things I don't necessarily, I see
088that it's trying to be proactive in like I guess social development, um but social emotional development, but I don't see like the actual anti-bullying prevention programs, and so you know are we educating our professional staff members on how to intervene. I think since we don't have the number here of everything like all the bullying that has been reported. We're missing a good chunk of um maybe some of those things have that have been reported from students about um you know this group of kids, doing you know something to another group of kids, or individual but they're like well we have no proof well we don't even hear that there's like reports about it right so, you know I think that's hard to capture in the data but I think that goes on where um you
089know maybe something maybe a teacher reports something to the principal and there's just not enough information or um you know how how are we handling those um the culture the entire culture and how are we responding to um you know the bullying and harassment so. Thank you um Jennifer Mil oh. I just wanted to to ask you if you um could just speak for a minute, maybe anecdotally even, because you you stated that the report was more comprehensive this time that you were able to pull different kinds of coding because before it was only coded one way now you were able to pull things that were coded multiple ways so it would increase the data because we're we able to find more things so increased of 27%, so I know and trust that you are
090in constant communication with the building principles and dean of students and and the people who are most often, guidance counselors, who are most often um in position to support students with um potential bullying so anecdotally just seeing that increase in numbers could be alarming to people, but from your perspective as the leader of the district has there been a a quarter of a percentage increase in bullying or has there been, oh okay thank you, I okay I misunderstood what you said, ah gotcha okay, so sorry anyway so there's been a significant increase in the numbers however that is due to this more comprehensive report. So can you speak to how the programming with the SEL coaches and um um with, uh you know people who are in positions to support students, how that is having
091an impact um on the day today occurrences, and not that the work is ever done as you said it's continuous improvement, but um I just would like for you to maybe have an opportunity to speak to that since the numbers by themselves tell a story. Yeah I I think um that I I guess I would argue that if we were reporting it the same way the previous year, it probably would have looked about the same, because again with PowerSchool only allowing you to select one primary issue you know it's it's subjective to some degree on what's the most important or what's the most significant issue that you enter there, and so this year we were trying to be more comprehensive with reporting, it likely would have looked like that the previous year too, had we
092made that change earlier. With that said what are we trying to do about it? Yes um the SEL Coach's primary focus is to be proactive in nature about providing lessons to students, sometimes classroom lessons sometimes, individual about a lot of it is how to be nice to people, respect, empathy, appreciating each other's differences, and I think when you look at what the Middle School is trying to do next year they're trying to be more comprehensive with that, because the more proactive we are with education, the more likely we will have an impact on bullying and um and those types of things with our students as they go on. I just I believe strongly now that I've seen data and and have talked to our building principles for years, that this Middle School state especially when
093kids are coming in sixth grade is a real critical time, not to say that it's not you know super important at Heritage level or High School but I'm going to equate it back to why we spend so much money and put so much support into early literacy because there's a lot of data that supports that we need to get at it early enough before third grade for kids to be you know as proficient as possible. Same things applying here too when students are most vulnerable as relates to you know insecurities of developing friendships and transition to the Middle School level. I just strongly believe like we need to put a lot of resource and effort forth there and I believe strongly that Kim and Lindsay and the social workers and counselors and SEL coaches are
094doing that moving forward. And then lastly um because uh it was brought up and I again I I hope that you're not um that you're okay with us referring back to your comment, because we were really listening but I want to make sure that first and foremost our students feel heard and valued and so could you just for um for Melissa and for the Melissa, is that yeah Melissa, and and her peers um I know we have the Okay to Say app and way of reporting, but what are some other um ways that they can report, when they feel um bullied or who are the safe people that they can, if they have not already identified someone, who are the safe people that they can reach out to that are in positions to support. Yeah
095I mean what we like to say they go find that trusted adult and and report that, but we we also would like our students to believe that any building administrator, counselor, social worker is available to talk to them about any uh specific issue that's going on uh related to that. Now some other areas are are some of those groups you spoke about, whether they're involved in a club like uh Bridget Sparks, Students Against Racism, you know find a club that you go uh we've been talking to our students at both Uproar and the GSA at the Middle School we've been to multiple meetings to hear from those students um and our our BSU for example is another area that we would want a safe space for people to report to. So we do feel like
096there are a number of avenues that that students can take, but you always have to be working on it because I mean the goal is to have 100% of our students feel that there's somebody out there that they can report this to and that and that they will take action, because we don't want students to feel that, hey there's a lot of this going on and people aren't listening to us. Go ahead Brad. Can I just say one thing? So thank you for saying that I just wanted to say also on the slide ongoing strategies, the speakup protocol I have heard students at the high school um exhibit and illustrate how to do that, and I am so proud when they do that. The more students that stand up and interrupt microaggressions bull examples of
097bullying and harassment, etc. The better off we are, so thank you to those students who um personify that strategy. Treasurer Gerbe had a comment. Well I just want to make sure that we I it just kind of piggybacks right on that idea about speak up protocols, and I also don't want to sell short, the efforts of our WEB, our Link Crew, our students who are out there, our staff who are who are trying to have you know perspective and listen and we can always do better like I I I I've said you know we can always look to improve we can always be but at the same time like you know I I really really want to make sure we don't sell short the fact that we are doing a a lot of things with
098professional development sessions and around restorative practices, speak up protocols, and I really do appreciate like I I think our WEB and our Link Crew are really good like the whole idea, I I I run a Link Crew like the the whole idea of Link Crew is about wanting to develop connections and when you develop connections and foster good connections, then you have pride for your school, you have pride for each other, you build each other up and you and so like my hope is also that like through our WEB and our Link Crews and through these speakup protocols, we're developing a whole army if you will of students who are out there for each other, right yeah, and I I just don't want to sell that short I just want to make sure I say
099that all loud as part of my comment. Thank you want to add something? Go ahead. Yeah I I forgot to add um that Heritage had also sent something out about um to parents about hate speech increasing at Heritage and the principals sent out some amazing resources about you know how to address that with their children. I thought that was wonderful, I do remember there was kind of criticism about um at the High School some stuff had went out um over incidents and um things going out to the parents but not the same information going out to the students to address it um I don't remember if that was this year or last year but that that had come up um as well, but I think it's important actually communicating um you know these things I
100think the speakup is used at Heritage and used to be for like I don't know, I don't know how long it was but at the Middle School um but it's I don't think it's something that happens now it's good if it's being implemented at the High School that's awesome um so you have your upstanders um and uh so yeah I just think you know I think it's we need to talk about it, right um I think I do hear students who um about students who won't report at all, because um they don't want to get uh retaliated against. They don't um you know want to be like "tattle tell" um they don't want to get harmed by the person that they tell on um so you know it's really um I think those those um
101upstanders, bystanders, um and taking action is uh super important and getting that information out there so um yeah just something I wanted to add. To Susan's point then just to to wrap up then I absolutely agree you can't report in a report like this unless it's reported up the chain so to speak. I wanted to also say after doing, first of all thank you so much this is very proactive and I heard the word proactive a couple times and I absolutely appreciate that. I want to ask you later about restorative practices and how effective they are, but not not now um but having done a lot of qualitative analyses before of of data like these it's tricky, absolutely tricky, and I appreciate I applaud you for taking a stab at it as well like for
102example so many of these things can be unpacked so when you talk about cyber bullying or social bullying it it says there's one instant incident but we know that because it's dealing with groups or activities or public humiliation that more are involved, far more are involved, than just one person so how do we count that do we count as by incident do we count it by individuals the same with cyber uh sorry cyber bullying if a message goes out to from somebody that's one instance but it's going to many people, and they're all then suddenly involved do we count them as, do how do they get counted, so I absolutely recognize and and and appreciate that it's curious about one thing I noticed that the phone calls to parents kind of dropped off after Heritage.
103Is that because they just don't work at the Middle School or because a phone call to parents is just understood that it's going to happen? And some of it's that it's not reported that way in PowerSchool it it that level it probably still occurred, but they're primarily documenting for example if student gets an in school suspension their parent knows about it. Of course. But anyway again, that's something we could clean up next year to sort of verify hey do all these get a phone call it's likely they do, but again I was pulling specific data from the PowerSchool report and then confirming it back with the principles. I've been with my students many times in the vice principal's office or the principal's office and the most terrifying thing he can do is just take the
104phone and turn it around and then the kid has to phone home you know it's it's a terrifying thing, and you you you hope that your parents never find out, but it they do. Michael per per policy it is um for the p each parent um to be contacted, um that's a requirement not, not as far as. If what, when? Bullying. Okay. Which doesn't, I can confirm that doesn't happen always, but that that's a requirement. Understood um but anyway I just want to say thank you for being proactive, thank you for tackling this and I know this is just this is a work in progress, and as we move along uh the reporting will improve, and I appreciate that greatly thank you. Okay thanks okay so we're going to move on to the next presentation.
105Let me back it up here. Okay this is this is a long report, so I will do my best to summarize overview, but I'll start with saying that um Ryan Kerr helped put all this data together, um he can't be here tonight he's on a family vacation out west so hopefully he's having fun with that, but one of the things that uh I'll talk about throughout the report is many of the goals that Ryan will have this year are going to be based on data that's coming out of the Listening Sessions, three areas, the Listening Sessions, the Perception of Equity Survey, and another that I didn't mention in this title, but but you'll see in the report and that Black Student Union and also GSA and Uproar at the High School level or Middle School and
106High School level. So we'll go ahead and get started. Okay so we had five listening sessions where, myself and Ryan Kerr were there and then we had representatives from the City of Saline, Kimberly and and a Dei committee and then also some representatives from Pittsfield Township which was nice too, because the idea was to hear from all these different perspectives on not only what is going well or needs improvement in the schools but what also is going well or needs improvement within the community. I will say in complete transparency the vast majority of the focus was on the schools, in other words that's just what parents wanted to talk about so um but with that said um community members can learn a fair amount from that as well. And so here's the list of um
107sessions we had. I will point out that I would not say they were um well 32 unique participants in in the five sessions and what that means is some people came multiple times to different groups, which was perfectly fine but I always like to consider that the feedback we're getting is from a a fairly small smaller group whereas the perception of equity survey, that feedback is coming from a larger uh body a population, so I just wanted to point out like how many attended each session and then how many unique participants we had in total. The overall general themes and Ryan did a good job of categorizing like here's what we overall deemed were positives and what were sort of some key areas that we need to focus in more general themes that need improvement.
108So for the positives the existence of affinity and support groups. We did hear from especially our students in GSA, Uproar, and BSU at the High School that those support groups are really important for them, and so we need to make sure for example at the Middle School, we had a BSU our advisor dropped out and now we need to make sure that we you know get that back going again because the you know our students say these are very important. Positive teacher experiences uh since a community demonstrated a positive School environment from a lot of the people, recognition of the importance of diversity even though there was a lot of recognition that were not the most diverse community, and the existing resources in place are a positive. Areas for growth representation within faculty we've talked
109about that, diversifying our faculty, um curriculum inclusivity microaggressions. You could argue that some of the things we were hearing tonight from Melissa some of these microaggressions some of the you know it it's hard to pick out that that's what's happening but there's either bullying or acts of racism occurring and we need to be very aware of how that's playing out. Administrative response can sometimes be improved. This was one that I thought was important that we need to address and that's support for families new to the district, there were a couple of parents who came to the sessions who said I just wish I had more resources on how to navigate starting in the school district. So that was something we need to be paying attention to. Bullying was brought up and um there was this
110balancing religious beliefs component that was brought up as well, so those are kind of the the general themes and areas that uh were doing uh better in and areas that need uh growth or Improvement. Okay so specifically for the listening sessions on Black African American children here the areas of concern on the left side racism, lack of black representation, curriculum non inclusive, microaggressions, and racism not always addressed, there was some exhaustion uh discussed, meaning um students don't want to report it because they would hear and I'll just say some of the things that that um for example if the n word was being used at the High School in the hallways that that students don't want to report it um potentially hear it too often or it's just part of the culture, which isn't acceptable
111and we need to recognize that that those are the types of things we need to be very aware of, a desire for change. But positives we had a a number of people talk about how important the BSU is for kids at our High School and then positive experiences with specific teachers which they in the session were um naming or alluding to um I don't want to I don't want to say that here but that are a number of teachers are really working hard to support our kids, all our kids. Okay so then uh we had another racially diverse group that included more um Indian Native American, we Asian we we sort of had some um group in together because in the previous listening sessions we just didn't have enough attendance when we did them all
112individually, at any rate um this is where we heard about the lack of support for newcomer families, which we need to address, some experiences with discrimination, a feeling of isolation sometimes, a lack of awareness of District resources. Some good experiences, sense community, supportive teachers, and a positive school environment. And then we continue on with some suggestions for improvement a newcomer support group. We used to have that in Saline, especially at our elementary school level. How do we come back and and identify specific newcomer groups especially those in marginalized groups in our community and provide better support when they enter the school district. International nights yes we do one of those for our EL department, but how do we make that more um comprehensive across all our buildings and and not just for our El Learners.
113DEL education was brought up and there was a discussion about conversation starters, people felt that for example they brought up that when Jackie and I published the every other week Community Newsletter some parents use as a catalyst the things that we report out that we see in classrooms, and they said well what if you would put in there conversation starters to get your kids talking about various things in the school district, whether it's racism or or any any of the topics that that we're talking about relating to SEL how do you get parents talking to their kids about those often they the parents themselves need some help to get the conversation started. This was the special education group and and again you'll see a theme of of some bullying occurring um the need for
114more staff training which we've been making some adjustments on for example we've had some training this past year to make sure that all our teachers are doing better with IEP, writing IEPs and implementation uh communication and collaboration transition planning that's brought up honestly in every group, but especially our special education students when they're transitioning from one building to another that's very difficult. The opportunities limited for postsecondary students and again I just brought up that compliance with uh five for an IEP um we're we're dialed into that next year in terms of getting a lot of focus on who's supporting the direction and lead of our 504s to make sure that they're being consistently implemented across the district. Positive experience I was brought up over and over again that many families are still moving to Saline
115for its reputation and serving students with disabilities and that continues to be the case, specific teachers named as very supportive. And then we looked at some resources, these were resources provided to us by a number of parents who were attending, that were very knowledgeable in in in this uh area, and so um I'm not going to read through all of them, but these were some good resources and some suggestions that we can be working on. For our LGBTQIA+ session uh again you'll see the bullying harassment concern, uh lack of support, feeling unsafe we do need to work on the whole safe safety component that's key that our kids do feel safe in the school district. Some talk about limited visibility and representation and that uh some difficulties with clubs and activities not so much attending
116GSA or Uproar but other uh groups and clubs um feeling more welcome to do that and then positive experiences the Diversity Hub at the High School, the GSA, and Pride Month activities were things that were brought up. And then suggestions clear and more consistent policies, more staff training, greater resources, better communication, increased visibility, and safe spaces so that all students know they have safe spaces in our schools. This was the group uh that spoke about following religious traditions and that the importance of respecting religious beliefs of all students was mentioned, there was a call for celebrating a wider range of religious holidays throughout the school year. I do think we've been making efforts to do that, and I know there's debate about how many and how often and but but we have been working to
117address that and that some parents felt the curriculum should be more inclusive of diverse religious figures, and then there was discussion about balancing religious beliefs uh and at this session there was some tension around how to navigate religious belief that differ on issues like LGBTQ+ identities and there was some conversation and debate amongst those who were attending, but I felt like it was civil discourse, it wasn't you know people yelling back and forth it was a conversation. Some parents felt that uh celebrating LGBTQ+ identities conflicted with their religious beliefs and then others argued that religious beliefs should not be used to justify discrimination against LGBTQ+ students. And then continued with this discussion of finding common ground desire to find common ground was talked about, one suggestion was made to hold a conversation about how flags
118like the pride flag are perceived by different groups, there was a focus on core subjects. One parent expressed a preference for a curriculum focused on core subjects like math, science, and less emphasis on SEL and then some insurgencies how to integrate religious holidays and celebrations into the school curriculum in a way that is respective inclusive all all students, we definitely have had some discussions this year about making sure we're not in sort of a cancel culture that's been discussed this idea like oh we can't talk about celebrating Christmas for example, no we want to talk about celebrating Christmas and a lot of the other religious um holidays and traditions that a lot of our other students are supporting. And then how to navigate situations where religious beliefs conflict with LGBTQ+ rights. Again there was some
119what I would say is civil discourse back and forth with discussions here on this topic. Okay so those were the listening sessions, the five listening sessions. Now we move into the per Perceptions of Equity Data this is a survey that's organized every other year and Kara Davis has done a good job of putting this together with Amy, Dr Amy Bowl through K12 insight, and we continue to try to modify this survey, if we feel that there are questions that are confusing and and there there are some issues with the survey, in that you're going to see that what happens is, you have um patterns developed, but there still is a pattern that a lot of times people don't know how to answer the question and then therefore they answer it, I don't know and that
120that does create some you know we wonder is that because the way we're asking the question or is it because we're not communicating it out well enough, those are all things we wonder as we go through this data. So if you look at it it's this survey given to students in grades 4 through 12, it's given every other year, and so we're looking at the one that was given this past year. And it's important to note that the data is used to inform the DEIAC and the school board and then we talk about patterns that develop in the survey, specifically the areas we need to focus on and um we embed those into like Kara's talked about the MICIP plan, which is our continuous improvement process, and then again Ryan's going to be really dialed
121into this too to help focus on, well where are the areas we need the vast majority of focus on and um center his goals around those. Okay so we do have although we had a lot of people take the survey, it's less from previous years and we wonder is that survey fatigue is it timing is it communication um with that said we still feel that you know it's a significant uh it's significantly significant even though it's less uh participants than in previous years. I just highlighted the blue to show you, that's how many people took the survey in those areas 643 parents and guardians, 162 staff members, 719 secondary students and 416 Heritage students. So here are some trends, Saline Area Schools treat students of all backgrounds with equity, secondary students supported and oh um
122these are agree or strongly agree responses, so 75%, 74%, staff said 83% those are increases from the previous survey but the next question, there's some decreases in these numbers, feeling comfortable and welcome in Saline Area Schools 76 secondary students said agree strongly agree, which is still a strong number, but it is it is down from the previous survey parents and guardians at 85% and staff said 90%. Treated fairly at school and if there's not something to compare then um Ryan was saying it didn't happen in the previous survey or it was worded differently so I'm treated fairly at school elementary students uh 91% by teachers, 86% by staff, secondary students 81%, by teachers and 83% by staff. Okay um here's more about bullying, because we've talked about it a fair amount tonight 38% of parents
123and guardians said their student has felt bullying harassed or excluded by other students in their school and 37% of participating secondary students said the same thing, but this next, this next bullet gets interesting in terms of whether people are perceiving that's happening to a different group or they're experiencing themselves. so that that ne the next bullet point is very interesting more participants said harassment or ability has happened to others than experienced it personally and so here's for example it says 32% of parents and guardians said harassment bullying based on race or ethnicity is happened to other students, but only 7% of those students in um you know reported it happening to themselves and so that is in conflict with um you know, they're reporting about others versus reporting about themselves, but regardless I think it's
124clear, we do need to work on harassment and bullying. I mean we're we're getting enough data that shows that this is an issue not only for the Saline Area Schools but but in all all schools, my conversations with superintendent are that uh you know behaviors have increased over the years and so has um some behaviors as it relates to bullying and harassment and we need to continue to be you know really putting extra emphasis on it, which I I strongly believe we are. Okay I don't think we need to go through all of these because I feel like it's just going to get long long winded and I know that you all have this report. I've sent it to you, but basically we were looking at trend patterns, what are the, so this slide, when
125you look at it over um this is parents and guardians these are the highest reported areas and the lowest reported areas. So with the lowest reporting areas this is where Kara and our team will say okay even though you might say well that's not that low, yeah but there's a trend pattern that that's the the lowest of all our questions reported, so how are we going to address that and that we would take that same approach with how staff members are reporting, how secondary students are reporting, and how elementary students are reporting, and be discussing that with our administrative team and Ryan to help develop more focus on on our goals for this upcoming school year. I did want to touch on our Middle School and High School GSA meetings we met multiple times and
126we had really good conversations with the students, which I think is important a lot of times we're hearing from parents, but it's really important to hear from students like we did tonight, and we had a good opportunity to meet multiple times with our a GSA um GSA at the Middle School and Uproar at the High School and there were lots of areas that they supported positive experiences that they're seeing, and some areas of growth and we feel strongly that we are taking action with those areas of growth. One area is PowerSchool and how we're identifying students and Kara and team are actively working to make those adjustments within PowerSchool. Another suggestion was when they're substitute teachers how do we help them know, how students want to be called, because sometimes when they just pull it
127out of PowerSchool it's it's not necessarily reflecting what students want to be identified as. And then there were some pro uh proposed uh ways in which we could address student concerns, including an important one, gender support plans for our students that are identifying as LGBTQ+ and how we better support students and make sure that our our teachers and our administrators have a strong path forward with that. Our Black Student Union reported a number of positive experiences and areas of concern and some specific things we need to work on as as a staff. So that's a lot, but I do want to entertain questions if people have any, and you're also welcome obviously you have the report or the report that's presented tonight you could always look it over further and ask me questions at another
128time too if you if you wanted to. I appreciate that, I appreciate that offer. Are there any pressing questions, to the table no no. One from Susan, one from Jenny. I was just going to say one of the um tricky things sometimes about the um about the reporting like the highest and lowest ranking items is that there are always going to be highest and low ranking items I think we mentioned this before, but so some things that are identified as the highest or lowest ranking I just want to reiterate for everyone that even if it's identified as a highest or lowest ranking item it might still have a high percentage of um achievement, because there will always be they'll always they'll always categorize those items for us which is great, for making our continuous improvement
129plans but it doesn't necessarily indicate um a huge deficit if it's ranked as a lowest ranking item. I think a key area though is the really important ones to look at are is when they, they all align in the different groups like if you see elementary students, say this secondary students, say this parents say this and the teachers say this or the staff say this, you can say oh okay we need to address some things and then sometimes you find that they're really far apart that's an issue too. I have a good one to bring up and that is that we always have um lessons that teachers well it's it's actually worded a little differently it basically says do the lessons that teachers teach you, reflect real life experiences. Well the students always rank that
130much lower than the than the teachers. So what does that say to us, we've kind of like Ryan Rowe was reporting tonight we've got to demonstrate, how our instruction is really supporting the real life experiences so that that's an example of how we could really dial in on some some data there. Well agree looking for trends and also looking for shifts and trends from from one survey to the next too. So yeah. Oh okay, so I have kind of stuff um these are like multiple presentations with kind of related um items um or topics, so just um one thing um when the Listening Sessions were advertised it was um I think you mentioned but um families of students who are Asian, Hispanic, Latino, Native American, or Pacific Islander, I think you had it identified as other
131racially diverse students, that that wouldn't be a good uh I would say, I mean there's ethnicity um and race uh represented there but I wouldn't title that as a whole, just giving feedback. Yeah that's good feedback I believe we did go back and try to change that but I that was confusing. yeah I mean Yeah it's hard right with um numbers of attendees and like getting that that feedback so like listing or having you know multiple identities coming to one session and that that brings up intersectionality um you know I think uh hopefully that's a word that everybody is aware of, but you know there's multiple identi people who have multiple um identities that are marginalized so um you know someone who's um queer with a disability, so sometimes you have multiple um you know
132m multi like one person experiencing um multiple layers of uh discrimination and their experiences, so I think, so as far as like the trends on the the dat like the data, um like I was looking at I think it's hard with the the comparison with that for example 32% of parents said that harass harassment and bullying based on race, ethnicity has happened to other students, but only 7% said that it happened to their student, or to them which is 1%, and so we're talking about race and ethnicity, so you know giving our percentage of students who are um you know um a race and ethnicity um other than you know white and um uh so um I I think that's hard to to gauge like to say I mean how many parents are we are
133filling this out if it's saying 7% of parents said it happened to their child, um you know we're talking about parents with children of um you know um a certain race of in ethnicity and then only 1% so um yeah that that's I don't think that's a good um comparison, because we don't have a lot of um you know um students who are you know students of color here in the district so um we're not going to be able to have all of them fill it out either right um so I think yeah that's kind of tricky there um and also the other one based on gender identity as well. I wanted to say like not all students um who are with GSA, BSU, and Uproar um who have those identities are going to
134those groups um and so uh I think you know I'm glad that that there has been admin uh be able to attend um whenever the groups ask and to be able to to get that that feedback and taking action on things that you know haven't um happened but also um being able to not only talk to those students and tell them what's going on but to make sure other students outside of um you know that group um know as well. So for example I think somebody told me the Upward there was like four students who regularly attended right um so if they know that there's an update on something other students who don't attend there which may benefit by that information may not have that information, um so I guess more communication in in
135general um and then I think let me see oh and as far as I think the the data um I had said this maybe a couple couple months ago um when there was a session of um the um special education and I en had encouraged that we you know give data to the the staff um about uh you know questions about or answers about the experiences of students with disabilities or even perceived students who were perceiving um uh you know who who um is being harassed more or um I think I talked about inclusive curriculum that that wasn't something that was seen in that population, and and so being able to share this data not only with the DEIAC um or the board um that it is shared with um uh groups as well who
136would benefit from from this data across the district, so not just special education, but you know talking about like maybe the counselors or um the building admin that kind of thing um to make sure we share and um so so my I guess one I guess a question um the like Listening Sessions um so when like if I go back a couple of years when these sessions have been um like have happened and have been reported on um there's things that continue to be reported on um that still need to be um addressed right, so you know two years ago talking about um you know racism um that's existing um and needing admin response um kind of the same things trickle over and over again, so with that listening uh portion what are you doing
137I guess beyond that um connecting with those people that that gave you feedback, you you know to say this is what we're doing or um I don't know how how are you moving forward from this specifically like when you're doing your listening sessions or. Yeah I mean I I I'll sort of go back to what uh Trustee Gerbe was saying about bullying you, we're always working on it and and even though, we're likely to continue to get you know responses that we need to work on on racism or microaggressions it is about what we try to do next um for example the previous year we didn't have such a strong uh Black Student Union at the High School and I think we've tried to put some greater emphasis in creating that uh space and I
138do think the the reporter is that that's paying off as a a really good space for um the students uh our Black students and so you know we we continue to try to respond that that was some feedback we had received previously, but yeah we are going to continue to need to work on you know our um anti-discrimination policy, our our um harassment, all those things try to strengthen our hate speech policy we've been talking about all those things to continue uh consistency. I think handbooks is a big thing that we've been working on to try to develop um more consistent approaches on dealing with handbooks. I know that we're doing that right now now our administrative team is working on revisions and talking about consistency, because you know there has been some discussion on
139how we're um disciplining and that we need to develop more consistent practices there. So I do think there are those things that we keep continuing to work on, but um it's likely that you know if I'm giving the same report next year a lot of those same things are still going to continue to need to be worked on, an area that I know that we're making some progress at least with resources is um hiring practices Carol Diglio has been working with a subset of the DEIAC to uh identify better ways to communicate out our postings to HBCU Historically Black Colleges and Universities and also um Hispanic Institutions so that's an area that we're actively working on based on feedback about uh trying to diversify our staff. I have I have one more thing, thank you
140um so I got feedback and I I got to make sure I say it because it just came back to me um as far as the the surveys um you know I'm sad that there was less people filling them out, but I think that that's part of um you know what action is being taken from from that feedback right um so I was told that there was a concern from students um filling out the information I think kind of they're filling out the survey, you know I think part of that they fill that they're not being listened to um anyways right when they report I think there's also a fear if they fill out the survey that they it's as if they're reporting the the bullying and there's concerns that um they will be you
141know approached when they don't necessarily want to report it, so um from coming from another parent there are students who um whose child said mom we don't we don't fill that out, like we have to enter our student information in so um I think communication on that possibly um making sure that it's um like we don't want students to to take multiple like take it multiple times right and we do do it through K12. I think communicating to the students and the parents that this is completely anonymous and um just stressing that hopefully we can get more um feedback and and survey response. So that's just feedback that came to me and I thought it was um a good thing to to point out with the students hesitations to fill it out. Okay I can
142mention that. That that sounds helpful, Brad or Jenny fer? Well thank you so much that was a long presentation but pack full of items. I'd like to hand it over to Secretary Miller also Chair of the Policy Committee, and if you don't mind um gonna excuse myself for just a couple minutes. BRB. Okay the Policy Committee has been busy again feels like it's been a busy year busy year uh so we have a few items that we are bringing to you as a first reading. So they're in the packet um and I do want to just mention that there was one memo that was linked wrong in the email that I sent you ahead of time um but it was correct in the packet, so hopefully um it was just a one sentence thing, but
143um but just in case it is correct in the packet. I accidentally linked the policy twice instead of the memo. Okay so the first one that we're going to begin with tonight is Policy 6350 titled Prevailing Wage Coordinator um so this is a first reading and this is a new policy that the Policy Committee is bringing to you from Neola. This policy has been added because Michigan's Prevailing Wage Act has been restored and will take effect or has taken effect in March of 2024. So we need to have um this position and I believe um Steve correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe we already have someone in position to take this role. Rex will be taking this role because it primarily impacts um contracts, yeah. So um I'll I'll introduce them one at
144a time and have discussion if that's okay, if there's any discussion on that on that one. Any comments or discussion on um Policy 6350 so that one had the red and green and the memo, or no it didn't have red and green it just had the the the recommended sorry um recommended policy because we didn't have it before. A little bit of, they changed it but we didn't have it so ours is all it's all new for us, yeah. All right if anything comes up we can come back to that. Moving to Policy 8800 Religious/ Patriotic Ceremonies and Observances this is a first reading for this policy also and I'll read for anyone listening the memo, this policy is revised to reflect the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in Kennedy versus Bremerton School District in
145which the Court clarified the equal importance of an interaction between the Constitution's two First Amendment classes pertaining to religious rights. The Bremerton decision reinforced employees rights uh to free exercise of religion such as such that a First Amendment analysis regarding District action (i.e.discipline or censorship) must consider whether the employee is exercising the staff members' free um exercise rights uh as a practical matter the analysis remains unchanged however the court clarified that the school district officials were not entitled to error on the side of avoiding a violation of the Establishment Clause. Revisions are recommended and if there not adopted to articulate current law, the District can be exposed to a Constitutional challenge to the policy as um f uh facially factually should that say factually facially invalid. Likewise application of new concepts does require officials to
146apply the law as described in the policy revision. So this is a revision to a current policy, however because of the extend extensiveness of the revision we felt the Policy Committee felt like rather than putting it through on consent agenda um it would be best um best brought to the table for discussion. One note that I will make um is that uh Steve did have a conversation and I also had reached out to Rex or actually Steve reached out to Rex on behalf of our committee and one of the questions that we had is that the the policy in its revision is pretty specific in the size of the flag and so we wanted to know um you know, first of all we wanted to know from Melody is there a reason why there is
147specifics or specificity on the size of the flag, and she was not aware of um of any reason that we would be legally out of compliance if we didn't have that certain size of flag., in her research of the policy. Secondly um Rex stated that that the the schools and classrooms have flags and the um secretaries and building principles are kind of order those as needed, when a new flag is needed, and so he did not feel like it was a benefit to us to have to have included the specific size, because um because the the buildings kind of take that on by themselves. So if you look it says um it's down in the second page sorry, I'll get to that it says under patriot patriotic activities and observances, the flag of the United
148States shall be raised above each public school building operated by the district at all times during school hours, weather permitting. That is happening. The flag shall measure at least 4 feet 2 inches by 8 feet. The United States flag shall also be displayed in every classroom or instructional site in which students recite the Pledge of Allegiance. So Rex did confirm that the flags are flying over School uh over the schools during school hours um or school events, weather permitting. He also confirmed that there are flags in learning spaces or instructional sites where students recite the Pledge of Allegiance, but he did mention that the flag measurements are not that exact at every building, so that would um be something that he would recommend that we not include in the policy, just because, because you know
149one flag in one school might differ from another, for example the flag that flies over Hornet Stadium might be a different size than the one that flies over Pleasant Ridge, and so so we didn't we didn't have based on the interpretation from Neola and based on checking with our buildings and ground crew they did not feel that it was necessary to include that sentence in measurements. That came to us after the last policy meeting so that is up for discussion here at our table tonight. So I want to mention that um the current policy has the 4 feet in wait 4 feet 2 inches by 8 feet, I think this policy spells out. Yes it does. Yep so the change is there yeah but it came I'm sorry I should have clarified yeah so the
150change this time would be to change it from to it right now it it is just listed in numbers and so changing it to words, however in our discussion at the policy table we discussed whether or not we are um in support of continuing to leave that sentence or if we would um be in support of striking that and we wanted to collect information from the two and got that information so we can decide that here at the table it doesn't need to go back to policy if we decide to revise that. So so I couple things so Neola wrote these changes then. Neola wrote the red and green changes the only change that we are proposing is, well that we're not proposing, the only change that we are are were inquiring about was that
151one sentence. The rest of the changes were changes from Neola in compliance with the case that was mentioned in the memo, which is the Bremerton case. Yeah okay so that was Neola that wrote these changes. Yes. I guess I'm not sure on 4 foot 2 inches and feet you know, but this says every classroom so we have we have flags in every classroom then? That was confirmed by Rex and not just every classroom, but every learning space so there are spaces that aren't necessarily like a classroom, but like a media center or so every classroom. Cuz I I've heard that there aren't in every classroom, but I've not gone to every classroom to confirm so. So Rex said that they they are um made available in every classroom so if you have observed one that
152is not um currently visible in the classroom then you could inquire. I think so the policy um also like just to that says that has displayed in a classroom or other instructional site in which the students recite the Pledge of Allegiance. So I I guess an example would be I don't know art class maybe there's that first period there's never students there reciting the Pledge of Allegiance it's not required by policy. Yes so if somebody so if somebody inquired of the art teacher I don't see a uh a flag here in your classroom, the art teacher might say we don't have students during the Pledge of Allegiance and that would be in compliance with the policy, but typically, typically they are provided to be displayed in each classroom. Yes Jennifer. Thanks for the followup, because
153I know we we discuss this um I'd be fine with leaving it I I think the essence of it is it's raised above each public school building and so a building is a significant size so the flag conversely should be a significant size as well so it's displayed largely, I hear what you're saying about Hornet Stadium because it's a little bit different it's ceremonial um during the athletic event, I think that one's bigger but it's also not a public building and it would be in compliance because it's even bigger than than that. So I'm fine I'm fine with leaving it I think the essence of it is that it should be of a substantial a more substantial size than something you'd have in a classroom. I think and Steve could maybe speak more to this
154because Rex isn't here tonight, but um I think the concern is is um and and it may seem small but the concern is the um maintenance and the constant um need to check for compliance to make sure that the flags that are ordered and currently displayed meet that specific criteria, and if they are larger or smaller then what. So I think that was that was the concern from Rex is that having the specificity included um may not be necessary. Yeah she did she said it could be removed. Yeah. Treasure Gerbe. Yeah I would say that like the words at least would cover a lot of the like piece where you're talking about we could have discrepancies between Hornet Stadium versus a building versus a so I mean I I I I think it's semantics if
155we leave the the language there. I do think that the flag should be large in enough to like you as you intended just to yeah to be able to say like with pride that and patriotism that this building is you know in the a public school in the United States of America right, so uh now you said that we might not we we could have maintenance making this be an issue for them and having to measure them. Isn't this language already there, so any flag we've already bought should already be this big right. It is so let me just let me just backtrack to say it has been a part of the policy, the Policy Committee specifically asked about the specificity and whether it needed to be included so I'm just reporting back to say
156Melody said it does not need to be reported or does not need to be included if we choose to omit it, it's not legally required. Second, that Rex said that because individual school buildings are in charge of the ordering and um procuring of those items, he couldn't say with certainty that they all meet this specific measurement requirement, and that if if we're asking him to then check for compliance regularly that could be an an additional thing on his plate I think. And I and I could totally appreciate that I would imagine if we had a flag that was not of these also that our community would you know have questions about that and would bring that to our attention, so I... We also asked we also asked Melody like if there was significance she didn't
157know of any, but Lauren did find um that there is some proportionality recommendations that are you know just on a quick Google search you know if the building or space is x size then the flag should be y size. You know so it it was um there are some proportionality recommendations I mean I have I've personally worked in most of the schools or had children who attended most of the schools and I find the flags to be proportionate to the size of the building, so it wasn't something that I'm I'm concerned about, but if um you know because it is stated in policy it should be something that is complied with and so um you know we I wouldn't want to you know leave it there and then say as long as it's close you
158know I don't know so yeah. I also wonder if there's kind of confusion about because the next sentence kind of just comes in saying about the classrooms, if there's confusion about the size of that. I think I think so too because it doesn't specify the size of the flag in the classroom um it only is specifying the size of the flag outside of the school building and so um I think you're right that that could be some confusion there too. Is it isn't an American flag supposed to be the largest flag displayed? I think when Lauren um when Lauren was looking for that she found the proportionality um uh the proportionality requirements but I don't remember if she found specifically um whether or not, I mean that makes sense to me, but I also seem
159to I'm just off the top of my head thinking about like government buildings that fly like the Michigan flag also and it seems to be smaller. Yeah and I'm just wondering because when you talk about doesn't specify classroom size, but if we got other flags flying in classrooms the American flag should be larger than the other flags. It's not in policy though is it? Yeah it's not in current policy. But if that is I guess we I guess we I I will look to see if that is what is supposed to be. Yeah for sure if you if you find something about that and would like to bring it into the second reading that would be. Yeah. That would be great yeah, we didn't that wasn't something that came up so. Jenny the other thing
160that we talked a little bit about, because we were Googling it while we were there because we were trying to like is this a federal law, um was the the size of the flag is proportionate to the flag pole size that there has to be a correlation that x size flag like I just Googled it and it said basically on a 4x6 you need to have a 20 to 25 foot flag pole so it it depends on the size of the flag pole as well. Who knew. So the size, the size was one piece that the committee had asked um for for us to consider, but as you can see there were a number of changes like whole paragraphs were um changed and this is a part of the packet for anyone who who um
161is wondering what specifically has been changed but I didn't know if there was anything else that stood out to anything else that stood out to anyone on our um team. Okay, all right um and Tim if you if you do find that information you want to share it um you know not for um not for dialogue but if you do have that information ahead of the next meeting that could help facilitate the conversation at that meeting, we won't obviously discuss it um other than uh here at the table, but it would be helpful to have it to consider. Okay so then the last policy um for first reading tonight is not a Neola policy so you did not have um have red and green for this, because this is a policy change um that was
162brought to us uh from um from Steve and from members of the Policy Committee so um this is a change uh that changes sorry to um ad the Development of Administrative Guidelines and um we are discussing it tonight, but I also uh wanted to note that Steve sent to everyone that if you do go to board docs there's a drop down menu now that does have the um Drafted Administrative Guidelines visible for um for all to see. So let me just say okay, the following policy so this is from our um uh board operating procedure. So the following Policy additions or revisions are being recommended for discussion items at an upcoming board meeting which is in compliance with um 0131.1 which states, all policy changes first appear on the Agenda as discussion item. If the
163full board is um sorry if the full board discussion is complete then uh and these sorry I'm still a little jet lagged I'm gonna to make this a little bigger, okay sorry, if the full board discussion is complete and there is a sense of consensus then the policy appears on a future agenda as an action item for adopting the next at the next board meeting. Okay so with that said that's why this is being brought to you not as what you've seen in the past as a Neola recommendation. Okay so administrative guidelines Saline revision. Superintendent Laatch has requested that a change be made to the paragraph that currently reads, a copy of the District's administrative guidelines manual and a copy of each handbook shall be made a part of the Board's reference materials maintained in
164the District Office. That's what it currently says his recommendation is that it now will read, Administrative Guidelines will be posted online alongside the Board of Ed Policy Manual. A copy of each handbook is available on each of the school's websites. Secretary Miller also has suggested that a change be made to the paragraph that currently reads, as long as the provision of these administrative guidelines and handbooks are not inconsistent with Board policies or with Federal/State law they will be considered to be an extension of the policy manual and binding upon all employees and students. So the change would now read, provisions of these administrative guidelines and student handbooks will be revised annually to be consistent with policies and with state federal/ state and state laws. Students are bound by the handbooks that are updated and signed
165each year. So those were the changes that are recommended to Policy 1230.01. I have two clarifying questions. So on again I I brought it up I think I don't know my emails um I got removed from the list somehow, and I think I emailed um separately you and Betty about um I didn't see a draft version yet, I know like with the strikes out and then um added in so we can kind of see. So the platform no longer provides that service for our policies Neola sends those to us but Betty doesn't have she would have to create that separately and so that's why we created the memo um to show where those changes would be. Because she used to have the ability to go in and create that and create the red and green
166and that has changed. Yeah and I I well when I was doing it we were working from um I was able to bring a draft, so um visually we'll have to do that ourselves then because Neola is not? Neola doesn't the last time we checked with with Betty that was not uh something that they provided on their platform for her to go in and make those revision and changes with red and green, so that's why we created the memo instead. Well I mean we always have a memo or supposed to right, so we're just not doing a draft of it. That's how we're moving forward with? We didn't we didn't do that, we didn't create a draft we created this memo that has the paragraph as it was and as it will read now. Can
167we ask for a draft or, I mean I don't I I would like to visually see the what the policy just just as we've always done with the marking out and stuff. So for so your proposal is for current for a change to the procedure to be that when things are presented um to the full board that there be a full draft not just a memo. Why is that a procedural change? Well it's not listed, so I went by what was listed and created the memo and thought that it was sufficient. I don't I can I can work on that it just creates more work on my end, but I can definitely work on that. I could throw it together honestly, but I just um when I when we have a draft come that's just
168what I I would expect um to see. Okay I can I can definitely make a note of that. I mean others can talk. No I can definitely make a note of that that's one of the reasons that I sent this in um at June 26 so that we could get feedback and I know you sent feedback just uh recently, but we can definitely create a draft but I went by I went back and looked at um the board operating procedure and created the memo and went from there, so if the board if the full board would like to have a draft every time with a red and green, then we can work on creating a platform that provides that, but we will need to do that in conjunction with Betty so that we don't have
169the problem that we've had in the past with multiple copies of things floating. Yeah and I brought this up after I didn't see it in the packet, so that was that's why I emailed the other day versus two weeks ago um just to have that in the packet. I had another question for you. I think it's it's gone, no I did oh so so the clarifying in I guess in the um and maybe this is why I thought like a draft was coming because it um in the agenda um the first policy you just talk you talked about says first reading, the second one says first reading, and the third one says discussion which I guess both they... I'm not sure they're all discussion. Yeah. I'm not sure why it was differently labeled that way,
170um but yeah I mean I know in the past when we've had policy changes Betty has had the ability to work in the system to create those changes, and I'm not sure why Neola isn't allowing that anymore, my my hunch is that if people are allowed to go in and make those changes that it could create um confusion. I'm not sure, but that is something that she checked into know within the last year or so and that is not a service they provide any longer, but I can talk to her about how we can do that if that's something that the board would like instead of just a memo, when there's a change to, a Saline change, not a Neola change. A proposed change from us. Thank you. I apprec I just want to say
171I appreciate the uh the rationale statement thank you and coming up I had a prop proposed set of changes and it's going to be red and green every it'll look like a seasonal celebration that great. Yeah I mean the the other piece too is this memo isn't automatically generated like the other memos are generated so when you get a memo that's like this, it's one that that I've generated from our discussion so it's just a just when we create policy or revisions to policy that's not done through Neola it just is another, an added layer. So if I can ask that I'm not hearing any changes to the language that, I didn't doubt that I'm just saying I didn't hear any changes to the language are you offering changes to the language. Okay I'm just
172saying I'm not hearing any changes to the language is that mean we're getting close to this. There's more from you then Susan? Okay. Yeah I was just asking clarifying on the draft um I I was wondering why and and it it's actually not consistent with um another policy on develop um sorry on administrative guidelines um which is 0132.2 um the language where you've taken out employees, I believe that's your suggested language that students are bound by handbooks that are updated and signed each year. So at our last discussion it was mentioned that there is no current employee handbook, so we didn't want to include employee handbook. I guess because it says administrative guidelines and handbooks. In the original? No in the current one too but sorry so um yeah I know that we yeah that
173was a question for sure. Okay I'm sorry can you restate I don't know I can I'm confused can you go back and tell me which which piece you're referencing and which qu what the question is? Yeah I think it's um what like what you've um suggest requested a change um so at the beginning um as long as these provisions of the Administrative Guidelines and Handbooks are not inconsistent with board policies federal state law they'll be considered an extension of the policy manual and binding upon all employees and students. So that would include handbooks administrative guidelines and handbooks and so I guess that's confusing with the employee piece, but the employees are still bound by the administrative guidelines which is actually in the current or sorry the the policy um that I mentioned, so if that
174was going to come out. We'd need the other one to be consistent so that's something for us to consider here at the table I will say that the language that is suggested is language that was drafted in a meeting with Melody um and that's where we landed with that if that makes any difference to anyone but I'm happy to entertain a motion to make a change to that to be in compliance with the other policy or a request for us to review the other policy if that's what. So I I'm I'm looking at both policies side by side right now. What changes, so the other policy isn't on the agenda, so I think that should be referred back to the committee, but just a clarify Susan what are you asking? That there's a sentence in
175this policy that you want replicated in the other policy? No, the other policy says that employees and students are bound by the administrative guidelines which that's the truth, and that's in both policies. If we're taking out under the the current policy we're looking at, that's inconsistent with our current policy, so that is relevant to um um this policy and conversation. So that's specifically the piece um that we're taking out, employees, that's that's the change. Okay so the request is to put on on an agenda of a policy meeting Policy 0132.2? No, I'm suggesting that we keep the employees in there, as being bound by the administrative guidelines. Okay so change language to the 1230.01? Or can I can I go back to say or uh a revision of that um let me, sorry I had
176another tab open okay. So where it says provisions of these guidelines and student handbooks will be revised annually to be consistent with policies and with um federal and state law should it some somewhere in there it should say that employees are bound by the administative guidelines that's what you're requesting? But it also um yeah but then the second sentence says um so I can see okay let me just say provisions of these administrative guidelines and student handbooks will be revised annually to be consistent with policies um and with federal and state law period. So the the the sentence that is up for question is that it then says students are bound by the handbooks that are updated and signed each year. So there is no employee handbook as was discussed when Carol was here at
177our last meeting. So there is no employee current currently there are no employee handbooks for employees to be bound by, but there are student handbooks so that sentence was revised to have students are bound by handbooks um that are updated and signed each year. The staff does this um staff does not sign those um those handbooks so that's why there was the omission there um and so perhaps an additional sentence should state that staff are bound by the administrative guidelines? Is that? Is that? Yeah I see what you're trying to do. I see what you're trying to do. I would say you could probably say something like uh staff and students are bound by administrative guidelines, students are also bound by the handbooks and updated and sign each year or something like that. So it'd
178be like two parts to it. So I just to clarify, so the the first sentence is not binding anyone to anything it's just stating that the handbooks and administrative guidelines are revised annually, so it's the second piece um that is the compelling piece in terms of like how staff and students are bound. Could it could it be um so employees and students are bound by these administrative guidelines and then students? So the administrative guidelines are not for students though those are for the implementation of policy and so I can see where the staff would be bound by those, but then those guide the handbooks and those are what the students are bound by. So the students aren't necessarily bound by the implementation or oper oper oper sorry operationalizing yeah operationalizing of the policy, um per
179se but they are bound by the handbooks that are created or generated from those um pieces. So I think there's two different things and I think saying that students are bound by the administrative guidelines would could be a little bit, um you know what I mean, so I I almost feel like there should be a second sentence there that if if we feel like we need to state specifically that staff are bound by the opera um by the administration sorry by the administrative guidelines, and that then secondly students are bound by the handbooks. Jenny just just to point out in the other policy it it reads such administrative guidelines should be binding on the employees and the students of this District when issued that, they are bound by the administrative guidelines. Yeah that's that's from
180would be consistent with um the one I referenced 0132.2. Yeah I have it up to. The only and and I'm just going to go back to our previous discussion the reason why employee was removed is because there was a question asked to Carol about employee handbooks and there is no employee handbook so it was removed. So okay or just I'm not sure it's like I like the idea of such administr right should be such administrative guidelines shall be binding on the employees and the students of the district when issued. Instead I I feel like that sentence could just be swapped in that so take out that last sentence and put that's what I think and then also to be honest with you like um I know that we probably have a I know we have
181a process in place for students to like sign for you know books every year, but I mean that could end up becoming an arduous task if you think about like now do I have to find every student who hasn't signed, you know this handbook and now like are we having principles and assistant principal spending good portions of their their time instead of enforcing them just taking this language and having to check box. Definitely that's and and that's a question Steve can answer I know in the past at least from my own experience in the District and with my own students that um one piece at least of the handbook was the tech usage and there was no tech usage allowed until that was signed. So yeah yeah the AUP. And handbooks are it's it there's,
182so I I'll give an example when trying to register my my children, um the handbook was that I was looking at and I'm supposed to sign as a parent or acknowledge that I read it um actually was from like last year because it was kind of you know pending and being updated so I think that's a question of I don't know when students are supposed to sign it, but... Um okay I don't want to open up that can of worms necessarily, I just like the idea of swapping the two sentences, but I also just gave a caveat as to why I also like it, right but I I just think it's more clear right the you know if we just make it say Administrative Guidelines shall be binding on the employees and the students of
183this District when issued period. That would be like what I would change the last sentence to, but we can talk through. Okay is there a is there consensus around that change, I just opened up the original document so that I could make that change the memo document. So that would um what what Jennifer um read initially uh would become the second sentence of where it says students are bound by we take that out and then put Administrative Guidelines shall be binding on. Yeah so so let me just um read what it says, so provisions provisions of th of these Administrative Guidelines and Student Handbooks will be revised annually to be consistent with Policies and with state with federal and state law such Administrative Guidelines will be binding on the employee and the students of this
184District when issued. Do we have consensus around that? Okay I will make that change on the memo for Betty. Any other discussion to the change in language? And then also um if you haven't had the opportunity I know Steve alerted everyone that um the Administrative Guidelines had been added but if you haven't had a chance to look at those. Yeah, so if you go to Board Docs, I'll just explain how to how to find it um for anyone else who might be listening to. So when you go to Board Docs um hold on I got to get to it okay so when you go to Saline Area Schools Board Docs in the right hand corner it says Policies um and when you click on Policies if you go over to the left there's now a
185drop-down manual that says Policy or drop- down Menu that says Policy Manual and then um if you click on that it says Administrative Guidelines Manual and you can find and these are in draft um these are the ones that Steve's been working on that um he said would be ready for fall. They're ready, yeah okay a few more. Okay. Okay. If I could also note that if you do a search on any particular topic you'll see all sorts of policies you'll they'll start with POS and AGs for for Administrative Guidelines I think some districts even have FOs don't they? Forms. Yeah that's. Coming up. A question if I don't know if there's policy on that or if that's something that needs to be in as far as the forms. Okay. So I I before we
186land this and I think we're getting there I I just want to make sure that I state one more time and I'm probably going to say it again the next time that we meet. About the idea of these published um Administrative Guidelines for me um do not infer any type of distrust or any kind of right like our administrative team is outstanding, I believe they do everything with the best of intentions and I love the clarity of this okay and I love the transparency and I applaud Steve and the administrative team for for doing so, but at the same time I also want to make sure that we maintain a collaborative environment and that we say that that you know what like yes like our administrators and our leaders and our staff and our students
187aspire to this level of guidelines this level of, but at the times we may also have to have discussions about things and we will learn and we will continue to improve and all of those kinds of things, and so I just wanted to make sure that I stayed out loud that like I really do believe in the best intentions of our administrators and of our leadership and these Administrative Guidelines are there for for our public, so that they can be be you know informed of what our administrative teams aspire to to do. So I just want make sure I say that out loud. I think they're informed of what policies they have to enact too so I think that's good explanation of how to interpret the policy as well because they still have to follow
188it. Okay so I um just made a note of that change for Betty and then I'll talk to her before our next meeting to see if there's a platform or way for us to create um to create proposed policy changes from our end that wouldn't create the Google Drive mess that we had um a couple of months ago, with multiple copies of multi of the same policy floating around. And I appreciate that thank you. Thank you for your service in this particular endeavor. Well to the whole committee. And I'm I'm trying to generalize that to the whole committee thank you so much to the whole committee. Give me a moment just to return to my own agenda I'm going with the electronic version tonight. Administrative Board Updates as usual we start with Dr. Laatsch and
189open it up to the table for brief comments. I've got two important ones so you know I've been talking at meetings about how we're ranked the number one athletic School District in Michigan, and I've talked about how a lot of that has to do with opportunity and balance with academics and I just got this from Coach Al Zeiher that their team, baseball team, for the second year in a row had a top five GPA for all teams in the State of Michigan in Division 1, there's a lot of teams, so this is baseball and I just want to point out that we could take a lot of our teams and find that same thing, so I just want to point out that importance of balance with Athletics and Academics. A couple other things we're staring
190at the you know we're getting ready to report our annual report that Jackie is working on and one of the bar graphs will show that you know we're looking at our largest fund balance in 10 years and I think that's a tribute to excellent financial leadership from Miranda, our Finance Committee, and um that it's just an impressive statistic in. In addition we just got our AP scores for the high school and we have a over a 93% pass rate that's the highest in five years and will likely be the highest uh in Michigan. Do you have a breakdown somewhere that we can look at later, but the calculus scores for example AP Calculus and AP it's on the website. We will, but it's not yet. Excellent thank you. Work our way down the table Tim
191Austin. I'm passing too. Susan, Jenny, and Brad. Yep we're just making we're making. I'm gonna try to be really quick because so I I I want to make it um known to our to more to the public and I've sent out some information to um the board team just information, regarding budget stuff so the the budget was passed for the 24-25 school year and uh I guess what I would tell the public and what I would tell everyone here is that this budget is very different in the regard of how they decided to do the the increases if you will. So there is no per pupil increase baked into this year's budget, however, well that may sound like doom and gloom there is a UAAL reduction from uh 20.96% to 15.21% and so what I
192would say like I guess, because we're going to be dig I mean this is 10 days old. So what I will tell you that as as a Finance Committee and mostly let's be honest Miranda and her team um is now it's going to be able to to look at okay how does that impact the budget we passed, right, um for this upcoming year and how now do we adjust from you know we kind of baked in a per pupil um change and how does that impact now this percentage change. What I will tell you from just my like 10,000 foot above Finance Chair perspective I think the budget still ends up being okay for us as a school district for this year, and I'm looking in Miranda's direction to kind of get her to like
193give me at least some level of like thumbs up or like but like what I'm saying is, we will have to watch a little bit with our budget, because will this change from you know 20.96 to 15.21% be a continuous thing, because they just wrote it and baked it in for one year. So that's the kind of like to be determined and the stay tuned part that we just have to keep an eye on for 24-25 as a finance team as a committee and as a school district so that's my report and thank you. Hope everybody's enjoying their summer. Thank you. Oh okay um so um July uh as far as the awareness months um is Disability Pride Month so I wanted to to mention that um and oh gosh let me see lost my
194notes the Saline Varsity Blues is holding their Back to The 80s Show which seems super excited. I know the flyer has um uh the vehicle from oh my gosh I'm forgetting the name Back to the Future, so um I I'm I'm excited to to check that out um that's July um Thursday the 18th through July 20th um on a Saturday, so um you know even though school has ended and we're in the summer um go ahead and and check that out so I think that's it right now. I want to uh wish the Saline Trap Team um for uh I want to wish them good luck this week they are headed to Nationals which will take place on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday I think, and in Mason, Michigan and they had an outstanding showing
195at State and had several qualifiers and I just want to wish them all the best of luck this week at Nationals, so can't wait to hear how they do and about their success I do believe they are defending a national title right, so or State State title they have the State title. I don't know anyways, okay State back to back okay for sure. So anyway I just uh wanted to note that that is happening this week and we have a number of kids who are participating in that and wish them well. Super thank you to everybody in the board for concise reports this evening. I would like to thank all of the board members who attended the training up at the WISD. I know those who sadly couldn't make it are going to scurry to
196try and make up a few other places. I know Malin is going to host one and the WISD Board is also going to host one, and um Saline was in the the group I don't know if you knew this Jenny Miller, Saline was in the group that went right to 9 o'clock whereas the other group left at 7:22. Which is so I'm still a I'm still holding on tightly to that I'm a little bitter. No it was... Well hopefully, hopefully my makeup session I was at Laney's uh college orientation so hopefully my makeup session will follow the sure protocol that the others follow. Tim talk the whole time. I'd like to move on to the consent agenda, that the agenda listed the consent agenda listed in this agenda won't be read aloud by me, the
197motion noted will allow for the authorization of all items listed without discussion unless a member of the board requested anything be handled individually. Do I like to entertain a motion to authorize the consent agenda pardon me as printed. So moves Steben. JS. Oh so I I did I was interested in polling um two things just for questions. Okay we we don't do this very often uh we have to sort of train ourselves to do this in advance, but go right ahead. Go right ahead which two did you want to pull up for quick questions. It would be a question to Miranda, so we're approving tonight like um almost well four M four million uh dollar item and um almost a four another four million um item in F and H and so I just really
198just um I guess an explanation of that, so if somebody you know looks looks at the agenda and is like holy moly we're doing this on consent, I just that's um yeah yeah so hang on Miranda just as a part of procedure. A an individual member of the board may ask that an item be withdrawn and this was for clarifying questions uh so we're not making any substantive changes to any of this so I'm I'm I am in concurrence with this slight modification so Miranda if you'd like to share with us. Thank you. So in letter F this is the general fund and it's everything that we've done between every board meeting from one of the next so it includes everything payroll, when we pay ORS when we pay all our payroll taxes the IRS
199includes just everything that we do in business so that number really isn't all that big in comparison to most of the months. Bond payments are collectively a lot higher at this point in the year we do a lot of our bond work is happening in the summer as you can see visually throughout our school so we're getting the active work kind of done all of the things pretty much in bond have already been brought to you guys as we do approval for um proposals there's a lot of POs that were happening throughout the whole year and this is where we're seeing them all come a lot to fruition um sometimes a PO will for Bond specifically will even um capture two summers worth of things so in general it's it's a collection of multiple payments
200to multiple people that kind of are in our check right registers. All right thank you great I think that definitely helps. Yes. For for the public and the board to to understand so I appreciate. If you think about $180 million being spent over eight years it's not actually that large in the concept of all the things we've been approving and kind of working towards so this is actually smaller and will continue to grow a lot more. Okay cool. Thank there's a lot of pre-work in our bond happening and now you'll see it flow for a lot of time. Awesome. Thank you I appreciate that your responses were clarifying. All in favor please say I. I... Opposed. We need a second on the. Oh we did I thought I thought it was Brad, did you do
201it? Griswald over there. Okay so all in favor please say I. I... Opposed. Right there we go 6-0. Items schedule on the next agenda. What are the big ones Dr. Laatsch? We're actually going to be developing them, we're we're still getting them ready for August. All right. We'll have them. Excellent. Public comment this is your chance Darcy Berwick. All right the next meeting of the Board of Education will be held on August 13, 2024 at 6:30. I'd like to entertain a motion to enter Closed Session. I'm gonna need my glasses for this at 9:20, 9:30 uh with the intent to reopen at approximately I think I said 10 minutes, 15, depends on how many questions. Can we take a break first? Well it tell you what. Put a five minute break. We're going, there's no note
202here as when we're actually entering or enter Close Session at 9:40. How's that? At 9:40 and uh with the intent to reopen at around 10 p.m ish. Thank you. I'll uh do I have a motion please? Motion Miller. Thank you. Support Estep. Thank you so much all in favor please say I. I... thank you so much and we'll see you everybody back here in 10 minutes there will be no action taken upon our return, so if you're hanging by your computer screens please don't worry, thank you. Telling that tell me that we're not live, I would like to it's not up for anyone I'd like to uh with that well I'd like to entertain a motion to adjourn the regular Board of Education meeting of July 9th, 2024 at 10:08. So moved Steben. JS. Did
203Tim did you. Let's let's do a voice call vote. No, all in favor say I. I... right Opposed. Nay. Right. Okay thank you very much, and we'll see you guys on August, somewhere in August August. No August, August 13th, just a heads up I'm going to be sending you an invite on August 14th.