001more people show up like he still works like on average so You don't need me to gavel in you already uh looked at the clock and decided it was 6:30 I'll just do it anyway welcome to the uh I like to call to order the Board of Education meeting of Saline Area Schools on April 23rd uh 2024 at 6:30 standing as you're able please uh we're going to do the Pledge of Allegiance led by Brad Gerbe. 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 everyone let just get set up I was just a minute late myself uh we have uh a couple of very important people to recognize this evening
002and I'm going to pass the microphone over to uh Superintendent Laatch. Thank you very much President McVey. We're going to be starting with Tim Timoszyk and the Auto Tech Program and talking about 36 years of education and a wonderful career. So this is something compiled by Tim that I want to read that really showcases his importance in education and the school district and as he's um getting ready to retire we just want to uh thank him and the wonderful program that he has um instilled here in the Saline Area Schools. So we're going to start with first a little history I completed my student teaching at Saline High School in the fall of 1987, my cooperating teacher Greg Bearsy was very influential in my teaching techniques. After graduating from Eastern Michigan University I took a
003job at Lincoln Park High School after a semester at Lincoln Park I began to look for a new job as it turns out Greg Bearsy took a job as an administrator at the William D. Ford Vocational Tech Center. Greg called and informed me that this position was going to open up after a couple weeks I applied for the Automotive Technology teacher Position and interviewed with Saline High School Principal Paul Tebeo and David Maris the vocational director for the SWWC Consortium. At the same time I had j job offers from GM and L'Anse Creuse Public Schools. I called Mr Tebeo and let him know my situation but told him that my first choice was Saline. The issue was that the Superintendent Morrie Khan was on vacation Mr Tebeo called me back later that same evening and
004offered me the job. I'm probably the only teacher at Saline Area Schools that is never interviewed with the Superintendent or the Human Resources Director. I was I was asked to write about the successes in the Automotive Technology Program. I've been successful at Saline High School because I was surrounded by and still are outstanding people, Karl Roscoe was my assistant for 34 years. Karl and I had a working relationship that was second to none. In addition Mary Howley-Visel who has been the special populations coordinator for 17 years years. Mary has been instrumental in helping many of my students to the graduation finish line. I would be remiss if I didn't mention the six career technical directors that allowed me to operate my program the way that I believe best educated my students. The automotive technology competition
005highlights over the years have been numerous we've been very successful in the Skills USA competitions we've had over 41 State winners and eight National contestants, several of which have placed in the top 10 in the nation. My favorite competition was the Ford AAA Students Auto Skills Competition students in this competition must first pass a written exam to be eligible for the hands-on portion of the contest to prepare for the state finals we would borrow a brand new vehicle from Briarwood Ford in Saline former state finalists and advisory committee members would help me bug the car to prepare the students for the hands-on contest. Over the years SWWC won seven state titles, at the national level we placed top 10 of the nation five times and we play second of the nation twice. Two activities that
006I'm most proud of are Adopt a Family Program that we've participated in for the last 20 years. My students have raised enough money to adopt over 30 families since 2004. The activity has had the most influence on my students is the as AES Automotive Youth Education System Program this program allows automotive technology students to enter an internship program with a local dealership after they've completed the Automotive Technology I Program. Students work full-time with a master technician during the entire summer break. Upon return to the school in the fall students are required to enroll in the Automotive Technology II Program and co-op education the goal is to have students find a meaningful career and continue their education. I want to thank Saline Area Schools for the opportunity to influence students in a positive way for the last
00736 years. So with that said I'd like to bring Tim Timoszyk and any of his former students, current staff members up to the microphone to say a few words and then we want to get a picture with the Board of Education. [Applause] you you toggle it on I think it is on All right my name is Ryan Hastings I think I graduated in 2011. I'm actually supposed to be staying up here with my wife that I met in Auto Class. Auto tech love. Yeah I was part of the AYES program I worked at La Fontaine Saline there for three or four years. I participated in the Skills USA and Ford AAA I think I was first in the state in both um I don't remember what I I think it was like 10th in the
008nation for Ford AAA I don't remember what the Skills USA Timoszyk probably remembers. I forgot about that a long time ago. Timoszyk was a big influence in my life he helped me out a lot especially with all the automotive competitions um helped me get the job at Saline there more or less the automotive program itself was huge so I'm not trying if you guys ever want to try to get rid of that I'll come back and speak again because I think I gave him a lot of hell over the phone because he won't keep working for another 15 years so he can teach my daughter but um yeah it's I mean I have an associates degree through Washtenaw Community College it was free I won that through all those automotive competitions. I'm trying to think
009of what else I mean I won at least $20,000 worth tools, there's a bunch of stuff that I can trace trace back to that automotive program and I would like to not see it go away a lot of it goes to he is dedicated probably more dedicated than he should be, but and I think I got was pretty pretty good at getting underneath his skin that was like my uh little hobby but yeah um so after I left the dealership I went and worked for a family friend for a little while I went and worked at GM doing engine development for like five or six years. Now I own my own automotive shop in Manchester my wife and I run it together we've been doing that for a little over 5 years so pretty much
010everything as far as my career goes I can trace back to those classes um easily the if you picked one I had a lot of good teachers but if I could pick one teacher that influenced my life the most it would be that guy he did drive me nuts a lot but it was worth it so I think it the mut feelings mutual. Yeah. So I think that's it [Applause] Hello so my name is John Grademan I'm also a former student from Mr. Timoszyk class from a while back I don't know if I care to date myself and say how far back but it's been a while um so I graduated in I did graduate in 99. Being a former student uh competed in Skills USA uh Ford AAA, although we didn't go to states
011that year rather not talk about that either um it wasn't my fault I got I got the test score it wasn't me um so yeah so I graduated 99 went on to college went to Western Michigan University with a bachelor's degree uh continued well got a job straight out of there uh as an engineer so I got my Bachelor in Mechanical Engineering um worked in the auto industry for a while then also went back to University of Michigan and got my Master's Degree um professional engineering license as well been working now at Ford Motor Company for the last 11 years so 20 years in the industry automotive industry in various places um trying to think what else oh I actually still have surprisingly enough my ASE Certification so uh if things don't go well in
012the auto industry and engineering I can always go back to being a mechanic again and actually have done that um on several occasions all thanks to Mr Timoszyk and and the education that he provided um I can second Mr Hastings comments on his passion for the the industry is fuels a lot of us and I'm sure it it plays a huge role and and I've seen it shaping a number of the folks that have gone through the program I'm also a member of his advisory committee. I am one of the folks that has helped bug those cars for many years uh and I think many of us were very disappointed uh to see that program unfortunately dissolve a bit the Ford Ford AAA Skills Contest but we're hoping it makes it come back cuz we
013have a great time bugging those cars too but uh um yeah so seeing a lot of the young men that he's he's and women excuse me that he's brought up through the program he's he's done a tremendous job and uh he's been a huge asset so big shoes to fill for whoever may come their way but thank you oh and I have kids coming my way we're coming here starting in Saline Schools so keep up the good work. A round of applause for that. Three of them. Yeah Justin Sly 2013 graduate the program I was AYS intern uh through the program competed in Ford AAA made it to States uh we competed in Skills USA for two years had a great time uh went on to further education at Ferris State I think one of
014the really clear things you notice when you're sitting there that the impact that the to Mr. Timoszyk class had was how much further advanced you are than your peers. Not only that but uh in the real world working at the dealership had a 5-year career there and you realize when there's other folks your age that come in you know they're still kicking tires while you're pulling engines and transmissions and that really goes to show how if you if you take it seriously how much Mr Timoszyk enabled you to to really learn and go with it so and then had a great six-year career at General Motors ever since so thank you. [Applause] I'm Adyson Naebeck and I was supposed to be here with my dad today. I'm currently a student of Mr Timoszyk. My dad
015was also a student of Mr. Timoszyk and he now runs a successful diesel mechanic. He has his own company worked at Varsity Ford for oh I don't know 14 16 years and now he has his own shop in Clinton and runs his diesel shop. So I know he's got a lot of good things to say about Mr Timoszyk and I sure thank him for all of the times he's encouraged us to keep going in class and yeah. [Applause] I had to write down some notes because I'll forget everything so uh my name is Jeff Szpara I graduated from Saline in 2000 uh I was in Mr. Timoszyk's program for two years from uh 98 to 2000 I participated in uh Skills USA and uh made it to Nationals for Ford AAA. Mr Timoszyk's teaching prepared
016me for the next four years uh that I spent at Ferris State University where I got my bachelor in heavy equipment uh manufacturing and then I was hired directly from Ferris by Cummins Engine Company uh where I'm still employed 20 years later as a power generation technician uh here I am many years after graduation with my son Andrew who is now a junior at Chelsea High School and in his first year in the auto program with the same great guy. I'm sure Andrew and his classmates are a little bummed that they won't have Mr. Timoszyk next year, but no doubt they will use the skills that that he has given them for the rest of their lives uh there are many other stories like you've heard that are similar to mine that prove what a
017good can come out of this program and uh what Mr. Timoszyk has built it into uh just want to say say thank you and wish you all the best in the future. Thank you. I am Andrew Szpara his son um this is my first year in the Auto Program and I've always heard great things about Timoszyk even before I was in his program and I can say that those things are all true. He's a great guy he always pushes us to be the best that we can he never he gives us a hard time but he's never going to let us take the easy way out and I appreciate that cuz I think I don't know I went to States for Skills last weekend or the weekend before and um Timoszyk helped me all the
018way through there he helped me uh place third in regionals and there's some stuff that Timoszyk taught us on the first week that other people didn't know how to do and it really advances Us in the industry of so yeah I really appreciate what Timoszyk has done for the program even though I am one year student but we'll be sad to see him go. [Applause] So Andrew is interesting I did interview a lot of students last year and uh when I interview Andrew one of the questions I have is what makes you special why should I let you in my program what makes you better than anybody else. Andrew's the only one that answered the question this way and his answer was I'm not I'm not special I'm no better than anybody else and I'm
019like you're in, because you know and I had his dad so I mean he had kind of an inside track anyway um I was really hoping that uh Matt Naebeck could have been here because I was really trying to get the kind of the two generation thing going here um I've had I've been here so long that this has happened not once not twice but I can't even count on the number of fingers that this has happened now where I've got I've had their son or their daughter and now I have their kid you know and and I always get the same question so how am I how is my dad or how is my mom? Oh they were great when in fact I might be lying a little bit okay um I was telling
020Dr. Laatch um today that I'm doing some other work in other districts right now and uh you know you get kind of you get kind of spoiled working with the people that you work with day in and day out and uh I'm working in a particular District that they've got an enormous amount of teachers that are permitted teachers that haven't that can't pass their certification test you know your teaching group here is second to none truly is. We were negotiating here the other morning I've had spent a lot of quality time here in this building and um we were talking about attendance and I was defending teachers and somebody told called me a unicorn and my quick response back to them was I am not a unicorn you have very very educated staff here and
021very um staff that that wants to be here, that wants to do a good job, that wants to educate kids and that's my job. You know my job was always been I was taught very early on about work work ethic go to work you better be really sick not to go to work you know and some days like you know may I go to work and I kind of spread around a little bit makes my job easier you know I'm okay that you know so go to work do your job do the best job you can and ultimately you're always trying to remember is it's always you're doing the best job you can for those kids because they're the future I'm leaving you got to pass it on and I kept on telling my first
022year kids because I feel bad you know that I'm leaving you know I would love to go back to my second year class next year all the kids that are coming back to my second year class about 22 kids they're all great kids nice good kids and I'd love to come back just for that class because I know them all and uh and I did tell them kind of is the year was going on because I told them early on I was retiring I said I will not leave you if I can't find somebody good to replace me and hopefully tonight you will okay the person that has applied that our candidates and I had an advisory committee meeting the other night and I could not tell these people that we had hired somebody because
023we haven't because you have to approve them so there hopefully that happens tonight and um I think that the person the future is very, very bright for the program. I'm excited I've told this person that I will come back I just call me and like Kara Stemmer my new boss number six and I love Kara you know I didn't even try to count the number of principles I've had okay. I did the superintendence I did my vocational directors but my CTE directors but not the principles because that's a lot. I love Kara because she's um all about process and procedure she's about rules and that kind of stuff and we fit we work real well together then um and she's going to do a great job here um you know people like Mary Visel and
024my like my assistant Karl and those kind of people. They make me better I mean I'm a good decent teacher but those people around me make it much better you know um when I was Union President I had a great VP I had a great Treasurer I had all those people around me and it just made me better. So again I want to thank you the school board Dr. Laatsch and everybody in the school board and thank you again for the time that I got to spend here at s high school thank you very much. [Applause] Okay let's let's get everybody up for a picture They put tall people in the back Okay I'm just gonna head to the next one. And on to our next Legend Dave Mellor uh Dave is also also uh
025retiring this year and he's done just a tremendous job with our Agriculture Program. And so we're going to start with all these accolades, awards, accomplishments that um their program has achieved over just this year and a half and it's impressive so if we start at the national level in July of 2023 the Ag program at Saline High School is listed as the fifth best Ag program in the United States and first place in Michigan by the Ag experience tracker of Texas A&M University. Also received bronze in the National Food, Science, and Technology team and Isabella Emrick got an American FFA degree. At the state level at Summer State Skills Contest in 2023, we start with the State Tractor Driving Team Nathan Dubnicki was State winner in Garden Tractor Division. Jackson Schaible was State Runner Up
026in the Garden Tractor Division. William Rogers was State Runner Up in Zero Turn Mower Division and Henry Sch Schneider was State Runner Up in Utility Tractor and Trailer Division. Fast forward to the fall of 2023 at the Michigan Broiler Contest State Runner Up for 9th grade Ag Biology Class with six gold entries and three silver entries. Then in Spring of 2024 at Michigan FFA State Convention we talk about March um State FFA Degrees Adyson Naebeck which I had a chance to see at Michigan State was State Runner Up in the Star State farmer, Payton Klein 5th Place State Star and Ag Placement, and 12 State FFA Degrees, with six free college credits at MSU. The State Outstanding Junior Awards, William Rogers third place for State Outstanding Junior Award, 19 total State Outstanding Junior Awards. And
027for State Proficiency Awards at Work Based Experience the state winner was Adyson Naebeck, in Diversified Livestock Production Proficiency. The State Winner Abigail Road in Agroscience Research Proficiency, seven gold proficiency awards, 12 silver proficiency awards, and six bronze proficiency awards. At State Leadership Contest State Bronze with the Demonstration Team for Farm Safety, State Bronze Job Interview Contest Kendal Mickey, State Bronze Kendall Livingston FFA Creed Speaking Contest. At the Arthur Berkey State Agroscience Research Contest the State Winner for Plant Science Research Max Girbach and Ryan Feldkamp. State Second John Ronayne Plant Science Research. State Winner Lola Stacy and Lyla Naebec in Animal Science Research. State Second Audrey Wallen and Bell Schilz that was in Animal Science. State Winner of Logan Haley and Cole Yarger in Environmental Research. State Winner Abigail Rohde in Environmental Research. State Second Place Markie
028Girard-Wootan in Food Science Research and a State State Second Place Kendall Livingston and Savannah Iverson in Food Science Research and then we had the State FFA Band Carmen Cunningham on flute and the State FFA Choir Carmella Gatto, Olivia Hafner, and Markie Girard-Wootan. And the Spring State Skills Career Development Events for MSU on Friday April 19th were awaiting the results for 14 teams. That was just this year and a half and you can imagine over Dave's career there were many many many awards. So with that said we want to invite up uh Dave Mellor and his students and they're going to say a few words and then we're going to take another picture because we're excited for um hearing more about your experience. So you can just start with. um I'm Gavin Male uh senior at
029Saline High School and I thought I'd talk about how Mr. Mellor has affected my life so uh FFA has made my high school career the most enjoyable it can be from state and national conventions to chapter events and meetings there's always been something going on that has brought memories I will cherish for the rest of my life. Mr. Mellor has made this all happen, he has always pushed everyone to do their best from making sure we turning our award applications and updating our AET Records to telling us to fill out a chapter officer application. Even though we don't think we're the best fit Mr. Mellor always saw something in us that he knew would be great for the chapter. Saline FFA has brought me so many opportunities for the past three years I have been
030able to achieve two Silver and one Gold Proficiency Awards in Turf Grass and Landscape Management. My Outstanding Junior Degree, my Region Two Star Award in Agricultural Placement, and my State FFA degree, I've been on the officer team for the past three years as sentinel, vice president, and now student adviser. I have participated in job interview contests and meats judging contest for the past three years as well. I will truly miss the time I've spent in FFA and but I will always remember the time I've spent in this organization and keep those memories with me for the rest of my life. [Applause] Hello my name is Allison Finkbeiner. I am a senior at Saline High School and I have been in the Ag classes for all four years of that. Mr Mellor has pushed us to take
031do things that we usually wouldn't be comfortable with um especially when it comes to public speaking I was in the Creed Contest where I went to state level um and just being in this class you think it would only teach you about agriculture but not only has it taught me about agriculture it's taught me about lifelong skills, like how to talk to people and um how to be professional, and how to speak to a group of people such as yourselves. I also got second nationally with the Science Fair and I wouldn't have done that if it weren't for Mellor pushing me so I'm glad that we have such a great teacher here to push us to do things and grow academically and just as people ourselves. Thank you. [Applause] I'm Adyson Naebeck I'm currently the
032Saline FFA Chapter President and I would just like to thank Mr. Mellor for a wonderful last four years he as Allie and Gavin both said has pushed us to do things that we normally probably wouldn't have done, he saw something in us that we didn't even see in ourselves, and he made sure that we got our AET records done as much as we didn't want to do them, and they paid off in the end because I got a Star Finalist in Star Farmer this year and a Gold State Degree and a State Winner Degree, so thank you to Mr. Mellor for the last four years the people and the memories I've made and the lessons I've learned I will cherish for the rest of my life [Applause] I'm William Rogers from the Saline FFA chapter
033um and I've been the former reporter and vice president of our chapter and next year I'm going to be the president. FFA has really impacted me more than any other subject in school has overall uh I remember my first year I started when I was a freshman I was just kind of messing around and having fun in the class then he got me to do public speaking which I didn't really want to do but I got 4th in the state and then I realized I actually have to start trying now, so then I kept going at that and I've got a lot of awards throughout the years and uh he's pushed me to become a regional officer this year for Region 2 in Michigan so I was the sentinel and this year coming back we're
034finding out this weekend but I'm most likely president or vice president of our region and then this year I'm also running as a state officer so Mr. Mellors really impacted that a lot. I also got to be on the Food Science Team this year at Nationals which was really interesting and cool, and uh Mr. Mellor wanted me to show off some of the awards just from this year so that everyone can kind of understand what each student gets to do. Um so this year I got uh Gold and Raising Broilers and I got 3rd in the state out of all the juniors for our Records um we also uh like many of our students received I received uh Gold and Silver Proficiency Degrees in Diversified Livestock and Crop Production and uh also received um the
035uh Silver Academic Excellence and that's for our grades in GPA overall and a lot of our students participated in that and they all received a lot of awards and one thing about Mr. Mellor that's different than a lot of teachers is I feel like he's like part of your family even outside of school he's like an extra Grandpa if you need one and uh he's there for the good times and the bad times whether you're we're walking across stage at the State Convention winning awards or like this year we sadly had a former member pass away and we had to attend a funeral but that's what makes the FFA specials because we're more of a family than a class. Ao I think Mr. Mellor is a great teacher and the next teacher better be a
036quarter of as good as he is so [Applause] Hello um my name is Carmen Cunningham and I'm a current student of Mr. Mellors so in the 8th grade I loved riding horses that's my passion I've been doing it for over six years and when I joined this class it kind of changed everything for me so whenever whenever I ride horses it was I was very dedicated and I didn't have a lot of time to reach out to friends and so I was very limited in the people that I talked to I probably only had four friends um and then I joined this class and I kind of found a family that I wasn't expecting to find it was really special to me cuz I felt like I had a place that I belong now and
037I was really excited and I didn't want to let that go that go um I also really enjoyed Mellor's class just because he's he's very silly he's fun he's engag enged in everyone and is very dedicated to everyone and wants everyone to do well um I've also had the unique opportunity to participate many different competitions that I would not have otherwise done um I got before I was not really excited about public speaking and then I did the public or I did the Prepared Public Speaking this year and then Creed last year, and I made it all the way to States last year with Creed which was something that I never thought would have happened because public speaking scared me very much that was like one of my biggest fears and Mr. Mellor helped me
038look past that and realize that I I could do it, and then I also was able to get second in the state for my Skills Contest in Milk Judging last year which was also something that I was not expecting. I was very unsure because it was my first year and I didn't know what to expect but it was very reassuring to see that if I put in the work that I could do well and it's and it's all because of Mr. Mellor I'mma miss you a lot. [Applause] Wow all those accolades anyway um to finish up the list there we did get some results for the state contest just before this started and um Tim will be very happy that we get we're second in the State for Nursery Landscape so some pret and um
039Carmen picked up 5th in the state in uh uh Dairy Quality Judging and the team did too. We're waiting for several contests but those are the first two we've got results on so that's how we we probably will have some more to report to you but I I just like to say that uh it's been privilege, pleasure, thank you. [Applause] come up [Applause] We'll just wipe our own tears just a wee bit. After judging the uh several FFA competitions and going to all their uh banquets it's those kids are great I love every one of them that I've had a chance to know. I'd like to invite all school members to our next banquet which will be Monday May 13 at 6:30. All right we'll be there. Public comment section a member of of the public
040may address the board briefly for up to 3 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 of the meeting will be limited to 1 half hour 30 minutes normally and limited to agenda items a second public participation portion will be offered at the end of the agenda to allow for any other comment individuals addressing the board should take into consideration of the rules of common courtesy, public participation of the meeting cannot be used to make personal attacks against a board member, district employee, or student thank you and we have uh three so far I think that's just three. David Hayward followed by Tiffany Alexander and I'll just read the whole list Amy
041Teslon that's your one, two, three. And you are ready to uh Secretary Miller has got her time cards I know you've done this before so we won't review those rules. I think I know the rules. This comment concerns the agenda item uh because the policy uh committee uh is is on the agenda um at the March 12th meeting or six weeks ago uh there was a discussion which I know everyone on the board is um aware of concerning um the role that Neola plays or uh may play in the writing of policy guidelines um I've been as as the board is well aware I've been trying to get um some answers regarding what uh role Neola does or does not uh play in this this uh procedure for the last six weeks um part of
042my comment is just to get this read into the the public uh domain um and this is I want to make it clear this is not my interest in this is not some piece of trivia or some kind of gotcha question um but this this concerns the fact that it's been nearly two years now since the Transgender and Non-binary Student policy was passed by this board and it has gone unimplemented for almost three years um and this this uh issue about Neola being involved in writing the guidelines is uh appears to be um one more in a long line of reasons for delaying this implementation. At the recommendation of this board the trans parent group uh in the last 6 weeks has sought out consultation with uh numerous stakeholders including a number of students who
043did inform us of many uh significant problems which have have made the the urgency of of adopting these guidelines all the more obvious uh significant problems including shortcomings in record keeping that are leading to persistent dead naming of students, students who have been forced to use accommodations contrary to their gender identity during field trips, and students who feel that they have to hide their identity in certain classes because they fear that there are specific teachers who will engage in harassment against them. These are all things that should these are the reasons that this board adopted this policy almost three years ago and because of the lack of guidelines these things have still not been dealt with. Thank you. Thank you Dr Hayward. [Applause] Almost tripped over my purse that would have been funny for everybody
044um except me so I'm here and I guess actually it does fall under policy but I was actually thinking of it as under the threat assessment um my lay person's understanding of threat assessment means danger to others or danger to yourself um I already know this board is well aware that the trans community has one of if not the highest suicide rates in the entire country um and that is doubly so for students. So what's the better way to ensure that trans students do not harm themselves as a school district than to to pass a policy supporting trans students. Well that was a long fought policy you guys did pass it you passed it unanimously not everybody in this district including not every single admin wanted that pass it was hard fought people fought really
045hard to get that done but the board did, the board unanimously embraced it now we are almost three years in and we have things going on in the classroom such as was previously mentioned students who are dead named and students who dead name themselves, because they know that that teacher will out them. These are not my words these are words of students of which some of you have heard and yet here we are no guidelines. So I understand this work takes time, I understand very well because I've done the work so a bunch of people came together and they used the exact same um content that the policy was made from to create guidelines, along with peer-reviewed articles, information from parents, teachers, admin, students, to create a very respectable body of work that there are
046now four different ways to access, two slideshows one specifically for teachers uh one very big long document that apparently the fact that it's long is is somewhat problematic so that's fine there is now one that will be much shorter and and yet we have no guidelines, and despite the fact that these are now being presented we still have no idea when we're going to be able to relay this information to you or to concerned parties or stakeholders. So at this point as a parent of a non-binary student I'm led to actually question how many of you up there actually want this passed? I I I I have no other choice but to ask ask are you really dedicated to getting these guidelines passed and this policy implemented? Because a after three years it hasn't been
047done and the excuse of that well we have this other company that's doing them um and we can't get a response after six weeks on if this com is something that this company does which the company is apparently under the idea that they don't. It seems to me that. Thank you. So it seems to me that my my concern is now with, is the board willing to implement its own policy? [Applause] Thank you. resident McVey and the Saline Area School Board Trustees. Today I am speaking as a concerned parent on the topic of Threat Assessment we all know the stakes the high stakes involved I hate that our schools have to deal with this my daughter has nightmares about it every after every drill um when I worked at Pleasant Ridge as a dishwasher I was
048able to participate in two trainings with respect to school shootings. The first was in my orientation which involved role playing, and the second a few years later was focused on prevention. The expert trainer explained that once there is an active uh school shooter it's almost too late the most well researched preventative measures involved creating a school climate where students felt they were supported and that they belonged. I have looked over many research papers since and these conclusions are similar. I recommend that Saline Area Schools takes guidance and training from experts on this various serious topic as they have in the past. Saline Area Schools has many amazing teachers, staff, and administrators they are devoted and care deeply about the students as we heard tonight uh and many many more. But they aren't experts at everything
049how could they be? There are so many things that they don't have the resources to handle. I worry about the pressure on our teachers and our administrators to be perfect or have perfect schools or perfect classrooms. This can lead to a culture where things are hidden and fester and become a breeding ground for future violence and harm, sadly and not unique to Saline Area Schools my heart my heart breaks knowing that many Saline Area School students do not feel like they belong. Often based on incidents of bullying and suspensions I implore the board and the district to objectively assess where Saline Area Schools is succeeding and where Saline Area School needs help expertise and resources. Our students lives depend on it. [Applause] Thank you very much um there is no response to previous public comment
050from last week's meeting but since there are three comments this week I really suspect that I'll have something to say in two weeks time, thank you. We are now at the Revisions Approval of the Agenda Items can be added or deleted from the agenda and the order can be changed uh at the request of an individual board member or the superintendent the agendas must be approved before proceeding further. I'd like to entertain a motion to approve the agenda as printed. I would like to make a revision. All righty. I am requesting that we add um a discussion item so that would be um nine discussion Item B um regarding board seeking legal services and the process with that. Just writing it down. Sorry board seeking legal services? Is that what you said? Yes. And there
051was another part but I think got it all right process all right process or process all right thank you so I'd like to entertain a motion then to a approve the agenda as revised. Need a second. I need a motion first. I'd like to entertain a motion to approve the agenda as revised. It doesn't sound like anyone is willing to entertain that addition. So perhaps there might be another, unless I should just wait a bit longer? So so you're suggesting nobody's I'm sorry so you're asking whether anybody wants to put that add to the the agenda? It sounds like there's no motion to approve the agenda as. I will motion. Revised. Okay, do we have a support? Okay well that being the case then uh Trustee Estep well I'm going to recommend then is uh
052you and I communicate with each other and we. Oh I'll communicate during my board updates. Okay let's do it the right way then uh if you could communicate with me regarding what it is you want to discuss and maybe we can find. I have Michael. Excuse me I'm I'm going to just finish and then we can well no I've got a sentence I'd like to get to the end of then we can figure out a next step to make sure that your concern is addressed uh formally by the board. Okay? So we go back then I I like to entertain a motion to approve the agenda as printed. So moves Steben. Support Gerbe. Gerbe. All right thank you very much all in favor please say I. I. Opposed. Me. All right uh well 6-1 then
053thank you. Tonight we have a oh as as as per tradition now I'm going to ask our student representatives to in uh introduce the student showcase. Tonight's student showcase is about the Saline High School's World Language Conference um the presenters are Julianna Marini and Ethan Hornberger and their advisors Beth Gregones. Hi. I'm Beth Gregones. I teach Spanish at the high school and I'm the World Language Department Chair and also the advisor for Spanish Club. we hosted a conference for World Language teachers at the High School this weekend and we had teachers from across the the country come. We are assisted by Spanish Club and our student um leaders Ethan and Juliana and they are going to tell you a little bit about the conference and then share a portion of the presentation they presented during
054one of the sessions of the conference. Okay, hi, wait how do you? Okay so my name is Juliana and I am a junior at Saline High School um I play Varsity Lacrosse and Ice Hockey and I am a member of the Spanish Club and Student Council. So I have been a part of the Spanish program since my freshman year and have been a leader of this club since about the end of my freshman year as well. My name is Ethan Hornberger I'm a junior at Saline High School as well. I'm on the Cross Country and Lacrosse Team as well as Student Council and I've been in the Spanish program um all throughout high school and even since first grade um we are both in AP Spanish currently and had Ms. Gregones for Spanish 4. So now
055we're going to tell you a little bit about the conference we presented at which is CI in the Mitten so this conference had 225 teacher participants from 12 states and eight languages were represented. Our Spanish Club helped help facilitate and organize this and I helped facilitate and organize last year as well um but this year Spanish Club really stepped up um and this was our first year with student presenters which was Ethan and I um and the conference helps fund our program um and yeah. We also would like to mention that Chef Danielle and the SWWC Culinary Program provided snacks and meals um and then and then uh this is the largest portion of the fund that we get through Spanish Club so it was really important to us to present this year um it
056helps all of the activities that we do. Here are a few pictures from uh set up and the conference. So now we'll talk a little bit about our Spanish Club specifically and what we have done to grow it. First we wanted to talk about the Spanish Club itself and how um last year we had around 10 to 15 members uh throughout a lot of through a lot of student outreach that Juliana and I created as presidents um we started off Spanish Club this year with around 50 members uh about 30 of those are active but it's still a very large club compared to some of the others. We also would like to talk about how um in the previous years around our freshman year year was the final year of the Spanish Club or the French Club and
057program so without the French Club it only left Spanish and German Club and Spanish Club started doing a lot of activities on its own so Juliana and I stepped up to help to make sure that the Spanish club didn't go away. So we do a lot of this outreach through social media um we have an Instagram page which we follow just a bunch of people from Saline High School and all of our class student council pages so we were able to um use that to get more traffic to our page and we posted some flyers that we had created which included uh code to our Google Classroom which is one of our means of communication, alongside our GroupMe, um which really helps get the message out there and helps us uh communicate with our advisor
058uh Señora Gregones. We also posted that teal poster right there all around the school so that's one of the ways that a lot of people find out about Spanish Club. To talk about a little bit about the club events so as we said we've set we've helped um set up the World Language Conference for a while now but this was our first year presenting, we also have um the Club Fair in the fall and spring which Spanish club makes sure to set up our trifold and that picture there um we also have meetings every Thursday and then every so often we have parties um or fiestas and we have catering and piñatas to make sure that um people enjoy going to Spanish Club and stay active. Here are just some photos from like typical club
059events and parties um like we said we love getting catering and doing food and we have like a gingerbread making contest every year so it really helps bring the students in our club together and gives common activities for everyone to do. An a lot of the food here was um we paid for and as well as the gingerbread houses we paid for through our funds from this conference uh Spanish Club is one of the only clubs that doesn't have um a fee to be a part of it so this conference really helps us um get our funds and then we also have some more pictures just from meeting activities uh starting off for Hispanic Heritage Month we made the collage in the middle it had a lot of um Hispanic figures and then we also
060made um paper flowers just to put around it and it was in the middle of the Spanish hallway so as people are walking by they'll see it um we also created a poster uh for um of Afro Latinos and each person like colored a different portion of the page so we were able to put it all together and also hang that in the Spanish hallway so um as Juliana said the one poster on the right was for Black History Month just a few months ago and we tried to coincide a lot of our activities through Spanish Club with stuff that's going on uh currently and by showcasing art that we make in Spanish Club it sort of helps us draw in new members as well. So this is an excerpt from our presentation that we
061gave at the conference but uh this is going to talk about the impact of this club and why it's so important to us and to people at Saline High School. First we want to talk about community so throughout um our years in Spanish Club there were as I said there were just about 10 people a few years ago and now there are a lot more so it's a similar group to people who keep coming back and um it provides a nice break at the end of the day um people can look forward to it they know it's every single Thursday and we yeah we like to have fun and we like to go back to that same group yeah we've grown a great Community within the club um and although there can be little small
062groups within that club we do so many events where everyone can come together and have like a common like activity a common theme that we all share and something everyone can Bond over. This club also provides people with quality education so some of our members are not currently in a Spanish class or may not just have it this trimester um so through Spanish Club we're able to give them like immersement into the language and we do that through like our fun activities and our favorite choreographer Mundo Guyi. So it's just a easy and great way to put that into um the minds of our peers. It's also a great way to connect different levels of Spanish um I know AP Spanish has had uh increasingly more people in it each year we have people in
063Spanish Club and from Spanish 1, 2, 3, 4, and AP like ourselves so by having um Spanish Club include everybody it is a great um it's a great pipeline to keep the Spanish program going thank you guys [Applause] So before you sit down muchas gracias um maybe somebody at the table might have a quick question for you. A question? Thank you. Preguntas? Does it have to be in Spanish? Si, si. No it can be in English correct yeah okay Michael and I do French so this is this is hard um so first of all thank you for coming I appreciate it. I think that cultural intelligence and respect for other um languages is so important so the the sentence that really stuck with me that you said is you didn't want to see it go
064away so you stepped in and I appreciate that that's so important. Foreign language is important here it's probably going to be important in the future and I know that Saline students travel quite a bit so it's always um nice and respectful of other cultures when you can at least say say some of the greetings and and things so I appreciate that. I had two questions and I'll just say them both and then you can answer how you'd like um I was able to meet and and um get to know several exchange students this past fall when they came um and are still here and was just curious if you try to involve exchange students in your uh in your program um the conference or or Spanish club or German club or or what have you?
065And then also um what are you doing to get the younger grades involved um particularly like you said when they don't have um Spanish that tri? This year we don't currently have any exchange students in Spanish Club but last year we had two exchange students from Spain who are a very active part um they really enjoyed uh listening to a lot of their music we created a playlist and they incorporated a lot of music from Spain um and yeah as I said this year we don't have any exchange students but it was lots of fun having them last year. Recruitment, Maybe particularly with with freshmen just coming into the um the high school yeah so last year we went to the club fair and we super annoying and like we're like flagging down students um like the
066incoming freshman so we were able to get a lot of them in the club like I think almost half of our members are probably freshman at at the moment so being their first year of high school they're looking for clubs to join and we made like our trifold poster like super flashy like we had candy and everything and we just keep them engaged and with those fun activities um this is it's also growing a little bit harder each year as um a lot of the younger grades don't have Spanish at school um I know we've grown up with Spanish in school so it's sort of a a struggle to get people to join it right in high school um so we hope that Spanish club can be a way to do that in the future.
067All right I'm kind of notorious for asking this question but I'm gonna do it in Spanish. Ready? Como podemos ayudarte? How can we help you? What can we do like what can the board do to support you? You can correct them too. And you could oh correct me please because I think it's would it be. Como podamos ayudarte. Right? Yeah how can we yeah all right. Anyway there you go I think I got it right. Actually just, honestly just bringing... Shout out to my Spanish teacher. Just bringing more attention to the program itself um it is a very big program at Saline High School we have that's the most teachers, the most students involved um but just keeping that attention on it and like making sure students know it's a great community it's we have great teachers,
068Spanish Club itself is and just keeping those Club Fairs going it's so helpful for students to see the opportunities that they have. Okay, I um I just was uh impressed with the shared experiences that you're offering the club and students and I think those shared experiences are um really helpful to the culture of the school overall so when you have something that ties you to together and some experiences that tie you together it can be just really positive for the culture of the whole school um I'm really impressed with your presentation of the conference and that you help facilitate that conference and um I have I have a daughter who's in college right now and being published or giving presentations is something that future employers are looking for and so the fact that you're doing
069that now when you're juniors I think are you juniors yeah juniors in high school is is really impressive and something that um will you for a long time. I also noticed um as you mentioned the uh food and catering that you um are able to provide through those funds and so I'm wondering with that with that I'm curious about um the connections that you're making to the Hispanic community at large. I'm I'm thinking the catering is probably from per perhaps some um authentic uh cooks and chefs in our community and if there are any other um connections that you're making. Okay um so we the first time we got catering was in our conversational Spanish class last year um we went we asked around to a lot of the uh local restaurants and a lot
070of them weren't willing to uh give us a huge spread of food at 8 a.m. um the first one that did say yes was Paradise right down the street um and we have since um kept an open text thread with them um we've had Spanish catering at um a Spanish Club meeting and an AP Spanish class as well so um it's been good to connect with them because we keep going back to them and they're always really appreciative and helpful um and um yeah. I think those connections are really important for our school for our community I think it's important for us to know too um you know we always like to support local establishments so it's really um nice and uh great way to um connect thank you. Well thank you. um I've appreciated
071the Spanish food and AP Spanish and conversations um I wanted to ask what your goals are for the club for next year um as you guys are going to continue being leaders and how you're going to leave it better than you found it. We would love to get as many people involved as possible um like we said we have 30 like active members at the moment but I mean it'd be really cool to make that number more and we're currently trying to find like two sophomores um to train to like take our spots when we graduate in two years um so that and also like we've cre created the Instagram account and like made it a lot more more like p publ I don't really know what to call that but making sure like that
072gets passed down to each um leader and training those leaders to take over like we did. We also in previous years we've done the mural for Hispanic Heritage Month but this was the first year we did something for Black History Month so I think um creating a lot of uh art made by the students in Spanish class or Spanish Club um and posting it around the school helps to um let people know that we're there but also helps to highlight uh the intersectionality of a lot of people um who speak Spanish and we'd like to um keep expanding that part of Spanish Club as well. So thank I I just want to say thank you to uh your teacher so [in Spanish] it's going very slowly uh but thank you you've done a wonderful
073job with with the with the team and the the club and thank you and thank you for your leadership in it. Thank you guys so much. Thank you. [Applause] We have gracias. We have two scheduled reports and we rolled the dice beforehand and to determine who would go first and Carol and Lindsay you won. Good evening. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you this evening I'm Carol Melcher currently Principal of the Saline Alternative High School and longtime member of the District School Safety Team. Hi, I'm Lindsay Guenther I'm the Assistant Principal at Saline Middle School and I am honored to be here this evening so thanks for having us. Difficult topic but I hope uh we will alleviate some of your concerns this evening with our presentation. I had the honor and the privilege
074of attending a training presented by Dr. Dewey Cornell about three years ago and I going to give you a brief bio on Dr. Cornell so you can understand the reason why this training was so important he's currently a Forensic Clinical Psychologist, Director of the Virginia Youth Violence Project, and Faculty Associate of the Indiana I'm sorry The Institute of Law Psychiatry and Public Policy. During his clinical and academic career Cornell has worked with juvenile and an adult violent offenders, he's testified in criminal proceedings, and legislative hearings and consulted on violence and prevention efforts he's authored more than 300 Publications in Psychology and Education including studies of juvenile homicide, school safety, bullying and threat assessment. He is the principal author of the Comprehensive School Threat Assessment Guidelines. He's currently directing a national study of school threat assessment
075with funding from the US Department of Justice. A major emphasis in his work is the achievement of equity and fairness in school discipline and educational outcomes. He holds a PhD from the University of Michigan. In addition to this training uh Lindsay and I were also um able to attend a training at uh Washtenaw Community College that was put on by the Michigan State Police and that was in Threat Assessment as well uh we were thrilled when we entered the building and saw that Officer Gasaway was there. He's the school res resource officer at Saline High School. So the acronym CSTAG is that that is what we'll be referencing this evening so it is an evidence-based program um since 2013 by the US Department of Health and Human Services and is considered the gold standard so
076we may need to move on to the next slide if we haven't done so already I'm doing it all right oh they gave me that power okay um they do partner with um the Sandy Hook Foundation as well and the belief truly is to elaborate to not go through a cumbersome elaborate process for threat assessments but to have questions and key observations and processes that allow us to be objective when we're you know trying to address um a potential threat. So the system that we've adopted is more efficient um and we have places is for less serious and more serious and we want to make sure that we are um you know collaborating with our colleagues to do this work in addition to making sure that all buildings have teams that can address this so
077as Carol mentioned she went to the train the trainer um directly from CSTAG. I went to the CSTAG training as well. Our goal has been to train our administrative teams and our mental health professionals in every building um as you'll hear later on in the presentation it's really looking at the root cause of some of the behavior that we're seeing and that takes a well-rounded team to give that well-rounded response to anybody that's involved and so we'll go through a lot more details but our priority was to ensure that our administrators and mental health professionals were trained first and we'll be expanding our training um after this date. I did push buttons. Okay so what is threat assessment um lots of folks have different ideas but truly what it is is to assess behaviors. We
078look at a behavioral threat assessment as a problem-solving approach to violence pre prevention that involves assessment and intervention with students who have threatened violence in some way. Sometimes we learn from conducting a threat assessment that discipline is not necessary at all, but that mental health supports are indicated so we want to make sure that we look at a comprehensive threat assessment to include not only just what happened or what the student may or may not have said but also to look at um whether or not we need to put additional supports in place to make sure that that student is supported. We currently have conducted 34 threat assessments at the secondary level and 15 at the elementary level since February of 2022 when we first began our trainings. We really want to take the opportunity
079as we're conducting threat assessments to figure out what can we prevent so how we do this is identifying what what needs to be identified what was said, what was done, um and are we seeking help from other professionals to help um this person in distress um we want to evaluate so while we're evaluating we do that from a team approach um we need to first and foremost figure out where are we at, is there a serious threat, and or is this something that needs to be addressed right now in this moment we have a lot of technology that supports us in this that flags information for us um I know those have already been presented to you but we're getting information from all sorts of different places, and we want to make sure that people
080continue to feel comfortable to report um but we also evaluate from all of the information provided to us most importantly that was the intervention so not only are we assessing the threat and responding to it but the the way we close out a threat assessment is to make sure that we're putting in intervention because we don't want to have to respond to a crisis. We want to be preventative. We want to make sure that prevention is occurring and that we're getting information and respond appropriately to make sure that that student and that family and/or anyone else involved in what we have found is supported and we have a clear path forward and making sure that everyone is able to come to school in a positive way. Prevention doesn't always require prediction we don't have crystal
081balls we'll talk about that later in our uh presentation we cannot predict what happens but we can make sure that people are supported um and we want to make sure that we have safety regulations that make roads safer and we have all different platforms in which that we gather information we are looking at evaluating that information and providing interventions as needed. We don't want to always think crisis, we're trying to be preventative. When I'm going to click so that was the slide we just went through sorry I should not be trusted with the clicker um and then when should a threat assessment be conducted so we're going to go over a couple of pieces of information in regard to that so stay statements are behaviors that express intent to harm others um these can be
082direct or indirect statements. We also are making sure that we're looking at plans, means, and intent so sometimes we have fleeting comments that are made um especially at where I work the Middle School um sometimes we don't think before we post, speak, or act and so we want to make sure that we're truly looking at do you have a plan, do you have means, and do you have intent. Looking at that planning and preparation of causing harm to someone how is it just a comment or is their plan, means, and intents behind it. So transient transient threats um think those fleeting comments of you know in the moment heat of the ,oment I'm responding quickly not thinking before I speak or post a lot of things happen on social media um or substantive now it's
083not how it's spelled we had to practice this when we were doing our trainings substantive threats and that truly is looking at plans, means, and intent and/or actions that have already occurred that go into that plan, means, an intent um we're going to talk a little bit more later in the presentation about the differences between transient and substantive um threats um but that's really what we're looking at as those three domains. So what we want to do is not operate out of a position of fear um zero tolerance has been Institute in our state for quite some time and truly what threat assessment can do is eliminate the need for zero tolerance it gives us an idea to look at different ways to discipline, different ways to hold students accountable, and different ways to get
084students the help that they need. Suspensions as you know um lead to falling behind, dropout rates are increased, school to prison pipeline is increased, so we do everything that we can to prevent suspensions and keep students in school if it is safe to do so. There is no profile of a school shooter it just does not exist, but we can avert school shootings by looking very very carefully at some problem solving techniques, intervention when students report threats so we have to look at the difference between snitching and informing and we have to educate students on what the difference is between tattling and telling and those are two very very important things that we want to start teaching students at the prek level. So additional principles that we look at in regard to the threat assessment
085process and this comes both from CSTAG but also the Secret Service and DOE so targeted violence is the result of an understandable process it's not just a random or spontaneous act. We truly need to consider the person, the situation, the setting, and the target in addition we added students individual educucational needs keep in mind the person who makes the threat and the person who is the target both are important in providing support and making sure that we are communicating with both. We need to make sure that we're maintaining an investigative sk uh skeptical mindset keep in mind that we want to believe all students that are you know we want to believe everybody that they're telling us the truth but also keeping that skeptical mindset that it prompts us to ask additional questions, to dig
086deeper, tell us what that looks like tell us what that sounded like who was involved and not just stopping at one person's word but getting as many statements as we can as possible. Focus on the facts and behaviors not traits we all present differently as humans um developmentally we present very different from elementary all the way up to high school and everything in the middle um so we want to make sure that we are looking at the facts and behaviors and what's being reported in addition to getting lots of different statements um using the information again from all possible sources um sometimes we get inundated with information if it's widespread sometimes we don't we have to go looking for it so we say where were you where was this located we ask the who what
087where why how questions often and frequent uh to ensure that we're getting as much information as possible. It's really important to keep in mind and this one's really hard especially when we don't think before we speak, act, or post um but making a threat is not the same as posing a threat we have to ask ourselves is the student on a path towards an attack or did they make that fleeting, transient threat, or is this more substantive because there is plan means and intent so really looking at those principles. In addition um threat assessment is not designed to determine whether the person has made a threat but whether they pose a threat do we want to get to the truth if they actually made the threat absolutely, but we are truly trying to hone in
088on those substanstive of threats of do they pose a threat to cause harm or violence in the future and or have they already. You want to avoid overreaction and underreaction there are some students who really want to share everything and our witnesses and our families and or we find things sometimes it's hard not to overreact but we have to maintain composure and make sure that we are responding to each and every comment that is made and or action, um but we also don't want to underreact either we want to make sure that if something was said or done that we are reacting. We are always doing this from a team approach It's always important when you're going through something that can be harmful that we have supportive measures in place from the get. So if
089we know that we're going into a full-blown threat assessment we are ensuring that we have mental health professionals in the room and or a designated safe person for the student involved. We want to make sure that if we need to we're notifying our district team we're working and we'll talk about roles and responsibilities in a future slide but if we have to work with outside agencies such as law enforcement we are doing so um but we want to make sure this is never an individual decision so if we get information from a staff member or whoever we're not just deeming one way or another if something happened and a threat was made and or a threat is going to occur we want to make sure that we are doing it from a team approach. We're
090trying to figure out the why why would you say that why would you do that why would you think about that so we can prevent that from happening the next time. Again that thinking before we speak, act, and post that pause that's what we really want to work on so then during that pause we can get people what they need to feel like they don't have to make a threat um and then again threat assessment is not a disciplinary process it can inform the disciplinary process but um it's the very last page of the threat assessment for a reason of how we respond and there are numerous boxes and it's not just disciplinary. Discipline is at the bottom we want to make sure are the parents informed, you you know do we have counseling, are
091there any outside agencies that we can connect our students with. There's all sorts of different responses that we could go through and disciplinary action is just one of them. Okay so who's involved in a threat assessment and who's involved depends on what type of threat was made um and what that looks like in each building so always there is an administrator involved on the threat assessment team and usually that's a principal or assistant principal in one of the buildings that responsibility is for the principal or assistant principal to lead the team. We will sometimes involve a school resource officer if that's indicated by the nature of the threat that was made. So if a crime has been committed or that we are very certain that a crime may have been committed we will ask the
092school resource officer to sit in to help us go through the threat assessment process. Mental health staff as Lindsay mentioned our important especially for many of our students who are in crisis and many of our students who might be on case load they might have a case manager who might want to sit in not necessarily a mental health professional but somebody that they know is a trusted professional in the building and we'll have that person sit in because they know the student well and they know what behaviors to look for and what behaviors we might say okay that was a little bit off for that student today and that really doesn't fit any pattern of what we've seen in the past. Optional team members might include a a bus driver, a teacher, an aid, other
093staff, pretty much anyone in the building who knows the student well and can inform us um about the threat assessment process. We may not need every single team member in every single threat assessment case these threat assessments take a long time, they're very time consuming, they're very laborious, but that's very intentional that's what our work is to make sure that we get to um the right determination of what happened and why um and we were like I said We are continuing um to train additional staff members I think next up will be our special education staff to make sure that they understand uh the threat assessment processes as well. Oh now I have to do both. It's tricky. Lindsay mentioned Continuum of Threats and when we start at the bottom there figures of speech or
094jokes things are are really transcent and those things happen often in school settings um they often happen in the adult world figures of speech are just sometimes taken literally and then we don't really know what that means. Jokes um fleeting expressions of anger could happen if something happens in a school setting and somebody just kind of um drops an F bomb here and there, does that mean that we need to conduct a threat assessment maybe maybe not. Attention seeking boasting all of our students um seek our attention for various reasons and we want to make sure that that's a legitimate need. We want to make sure that those needs are met, but as we go up the Continuum of Threats we're looking at attempts to intimidate intimidate or frighten and then finally a warning of
095impending violence and that would indicate a substantive threat. Substantive. Sorry, golly why do they have to name it that because nobody can say it. Serious. Serious. Very serious threat to Dr Dewey he didn't listen. He didn't listen um so anyway there we go with our Continuum of Threats and why we would do a threat assessment uh for various reasons. Just screaming or having a tantrum is not a threat, however we do often see depending on the developmental age and or cognitive ability that sometimes that tantrum can be paired with I'm going to kill you or I'm going to kill so and so. At times we still need to conduct a threat assessment depending if that is the baseline behavior of that student other times we understand that that is their baseline and we will do
096a threat assessment screener to determine that their needs could be met with more individualized and or specialized instruction so it's not the question of whether the student expressed intent to cause cause harm to someone that also needs to be addressed as well because it is a behavior, however it is are they going to carry out that threat as well there is no magic formula or crystal ball we have started numerous threat assessments that we think okay this is going to be easy close shut we're going to get our witness statements and move on and address it as such and then you get more information and then you get more information and you're like okay now we're going to include our school resource officer because now we're going to need to do other things outside of
097school. We're not trying to predict the future we're trying to be preventative and make sure that we're problem solving um and providing interventions and those vary depending on the needs um so there's no crystal ball unfortunately. Factors that we do consider um I know we've mentioned a few of these but the age of the student the capability of the student to carry out the threat um every single threat that involves a weapon we do have to ask, do you have access? Does any other home that you go to often have the ability for you to carry out something with a weapon? We don't just stop at are there guns in your home? We have to dig a little bit deeper and ask more follow-up questions because we know that students share spaces with all sorts
098of different people and we need to make sure those spaces are safe as well. We do look at the students disciplinary history, the credibility of the student, and the willingness to acknowledge their behavior. A lot of times our hope is that they come in and they say yep I did it, I shouldn't have, I regret it, and so that's part of our key observations when we're doing a threat assessment and if we don't see those key observations we're digging more giving them additional opportunities because sometimes talking to a team of people and starting that threat assessment process can be overwhelming and so sometimes we got to pause, we got to go back to it sometimes students come back the next day and we're still in that you know portion of the threat assessment and we
099have with us that have also talked to their students and said okay we've got to open up, we've got to tell them everything, and so it it goes on and on but we also want to make sure that we are getting all the information. The credibility of the witness accounts, so it's not just the person who made the threat it's all the witnesses involved and then having access again to weapons and or possessing a weapon, but when in doubt treat all threats is substantive and go from there, so you may start thinking that it's very serious and then you realize okay, okay, all right we're going to keep going, um but we treat all of them seriously and we look into everything that is provided to us. You want me keep going? Okay just gonna
100keep rolling. So research Dr. Dewey very well-renowned uh rooted in research and evidence-based. This is an evidence-based tool. We use the same tool across buildings, we ask the same questions, we ask different follow-up questions depending on what information is provided to us, we're looking at the same key observations, we're looking at the same list of responses to a threat, but keeping in mind that all of this is based in the fact that 99% of threats are not carried out. 1% of students are expelled. 1% are arrested. They have seen a decrease in suspension rates um when using this tool. Racial disparities have been reduced and are absent. Counseling is used more often. There's a plug if we can ever get any more counselors, there's your plug um and then a more positive school climate. So
101once students have been a part of this process and know that it's lengthy and it's a team and oh my gosh now I'm sitting at a table and I'm having to talk to all these people, they start getting word out okay you can't say stupid stuff anymore or you can't do stupid stuff as we say, we're not stupid but dumb. Right? And so that it gets out there that you know this is a process we are taking these things serious we do have a list of questions, we partner with families I have conducted numerous threat assess assments that the family was with us the entire time, we have paused on our questioning and they say okay we want to be there, okay we're not going to shy away from that. Here's what we have,
102come in, and join us, and the parents are a part of that process and they are actually pretty helpful when they do come in and help us, it's not always the case but we do and you know we don't shy away from that. All right so what are our next steps? We want to increase the amount of staff trained. We have gone through we've shown our staff what the document looks like. We show that there is quite a process for this. We've also shown them what we use as a threat assessment screener again looking at that student's individual needs to see if we do need to do a full-blown threat assessment or address um the needs in another way, so those are our goals and I'm sure you have questions. We might. Thank you for
103your great report on substance substantive threats. We had to look up the Google pronunciation and actually add it to our slide deck for our training. Awesome. So if there are any board members with questions. If you if you can provide uh you know succinct answers that's great and if you know it'll take longer to get the answer please just record the question and I know you'll get back to us all thanks. I I don't have much but um couple things I'm better put my glass on um I like the idea of the prevention. I think prevention not crisis I think I like that um and then also and you can think about this and even email back but are there any state laws that are hindering your work in this or that need to be
104adjusted or changed because there there's a lot of the uh Why Meadow Died book and stuff there's a lot of things about state laws that were hindering the schools on what to do and so forth. So I'm just kind of curious if there's state laws out there that we might have to look at? Thank you. I'm I'm sorry I so you're going to respond to that perhaps later okay? Yes. We have either of the oh Brad? Okay. Could just go down that's fine um so I guess a couple of things kind of like are light bulb things for me if you want to write them down it's perfectly fine with me um so you know one of the things I think about this and I see this through the lens of a teacher because that's
105what I do on a day and day basis is that like how equipped do you think our staff is with regards to reporting and then follow through on the reporting and so that's the first thing and then the second thing is I would want your expert opinion at some point about our policies and our procedures and even our consistency between buildings about how we do a threat assessment and how we carry out and the language we use and the information we disseminate and then the last thing I could tell you that as an educator could be really a challenge is like and I'm going to speak freely for a moment FERPA law almost makes us like afraid, to like, that we can't talk about what's happening but at the same time we have to find
106a balance also with being able to disseminate information so that we can alleviate concerned individuals in our building, concerned teachers, staff, students, etc. So I guess I would want you to you know speak to like that balance that happens and how how really that is a difficult thing to navigate. Absolutely. So if you want to talk about any of that now or you can talk about it later but thank you. To answer later? No. As the leaders in this work um we often have other administrators call us and say okay I just want to make sure I'm finding the correct document, I'm using the right tool, all right now what am I doing, all right, these are the questions I asked and I have I have some follow-up questions great ask those follow-up questions. So
107they're contacting Carol or I if we have questions we are going to our Core team and making sure that we're all on the same page and that we're addressing the needs the same way depending on what actually occurs during this. That's when we disseminated a team of figuring out that communication piece. You know, in the past we've had sixth grade classrooms that were entirely impacted by the word choices of others and we needed to communicate out with all of those families for those two classrooms, other times we've found the need to communicate with the entire building. It depends on the situation, so that's that grey lan like we wish we had like a phone tree that we could follow each and every time and we have that tool here but figuring out those after pieces
108of communications is up to the discretion, but also with the the premise of we need to foster relationships with our staff and our students and our families we have trusting relationships with our staff. They know in both of our buildings that if you have questions open door policy we're going to communicate with you as quickly as we can but we need to be factual. We cannot provide misinformation we need to make sure that we have all the facts before we communicate out, but with that prevention piece we want to ensure that if there is a student in need that our teaching team and anyone else that shares space with that student knows, hey handle with care, in addition here's what we're dealing with if you have follow-up questions please communicate that with us so we
109can address them. I will add too Mr. Gerbe that um if you are concerned about FERPA there is an anonymous tool that is really powerful and that's called, Okay to Say, and you can report any threat or any uh anything that you feel concerned about where you like to do that anonymously um you can identify the student or not just say this happened in this building um and then we will get that information and we will know how to handle it. And we're communicating that with our students just in the last couple weeks I've been responding to Okay to Says and they'll name somebody involved. So I start with that person, because it's where I can start, and I pull the kids in. They're like oh oh yeah that was me, I submitted that Okay
110to Say. I said I truly don't know, I truly don't know, when you submit it the State of Michigan doesn't know when it goes through their call system, and/or their answering system. We don't know because it truly is anonymous however this is the information provided and this is where we could start. So the kids are starting to hear too like really no you can you can see my screen I don't know who submitted it. Yeah I I just I want to make sure I reiterate that idea of that just it is a delicate and I understand understand what you're saying and it is a delicate balance afterwards about being able to to share out, right? We want to be able to tell as much as we can but we want to respect the privacy of
111individuals and that is a difficult thing to walk and I appreciate you guys like going through the training I appreciate you going out to the police training. I thought that that was going to be very worthwhile, I'm glad to hear that it was, um and but uh boy like this is never like you said crystal ball is never easy and I appreciate your efforts. When in doubt we tell our staff come to us, don't hesitate, text, call, come to our offices if you have that weird feeling and you think something is awry. That's where we enact a team even if a threatening statement wasn't made or a threatening act wasn't made. If you've got this feeling of hey I saw them search something but I don't know if I actually saw it get another team
112member involved so we can follow up with it and make sure the kid is being supported. No I was just going to say I know that you mentioned that you know sometimes it's a good lesson to be learned that our words have power and that we need to um be mindful of that and and recognize that and sometimes that's um you know comes with maturity and so I appreciate um the education that's also going along with this and sometimes the firm but but but loving education that's happening with that. I will say that the other piece of this is that um it's also providing tools and resources to families that might be in crisis and um I know that in my own experience in a public school setting that the connection to community mental health
113and the mental health providers in the community is sometimes um I I won't say like out of reach for families, but in crisis it's not it's not the first thing they're thinking of. So having somebody who has um who has that calm and um I want to say procedural knowledge of how to make those connections is saving lives. So I appreciate the work that you're doing, and I appreciate the way that it's being uh disseminated um I I do wonder about um and maybe you can speak to this, but um I worry a little bit like as I want more people to be trained but I don't want it to be diluted um and so how I think maybe the documentation or the tools that you're using but how can we ensure that you know
114the two of you had the training from the source and now you're training others. So how can we make sure that the integrity of the tools and the and the systems um remain. Before I forget I'm just want to offer the students a chance if you have anything you want to add if not that's fine. Just before that I have a question for um like the social media as aspect for the substant substantive um threats for the social media how do you um like pick up on that as a substantive threat? Cause like if they're posting it once it could be seemed as uh the just the first word threat and then the how yeah and then how do you pick up that's like a line and how do you know that it's not just
115the one threat it's the substantive? It's a really good question Mateo and we don't know. We do hear um honestly you folks are are first informance you see social media a lot more frequently than we do. I don't spend hours and hours on X or Instagram or wherever just looking at your accounts. That's just not my that's kind of creepy, but you guys tell us what you hear, what you see, what you feel. You can post that up on Okay to Say, you can do whatever you want to do, and then let us determine whether or not it's a credible threat. Serious one. Yes keep in mind that typically social media stuff happens in the middle of the night and so we trust that our students and families are going to work with us. So
116example being there was a threat made on social media it was Snap so it only lives for 24 hours, it it lives much longer than that get that word out too. Once it's out there it's out there and so 11 o'clock at night, I'm getting a phone call from a family, um well they emailed, I called, and I said we have to contact the police. Police made sure it wasn't a substantive threat right away, because the principals were not going out at 11 o'clock at night. And then we went right into a threat assessment with the family involved the very next morning, because we needed to ensure that yes, you caused harm with your actions. Did it end up being a substantive threat? No, however we we took it as such because we didn't know.
117So going back to that objective you think worst case scenario, but then you make make sure you get the information to see is this going to be worst case scenario. I just simply wanted to say thank you for the care and attention you take to this very very sobering topic. I value you both in this um and thank you and Carol and I know how many years you've been involved with this thank you very much um and fully and and fully support um you know the training um to keep both our staff and our students um safe you know you mentioned Sandy Hook Promise earlier in the um in the the slide deck uh and less we forget that it was staff and students that were affected so it's important thank you. Yes um so
118you mentioned helping a person in distress, responding to crisis, and providing support um Lindsay um under what situation would a staff member use physical means to manipulate a child, you know whether it's physical restraint, physical prompting, or dumping an unresponsive child out of their chair? I'll get back to you with my response thank you. How um how are students followed over time? So you know if you have someone who like how how do you ensure institutional um memory? So the kids move from school to school within the district outside of the district. How do you make sure that you know without invading someone's privacy or sort of tagging them as being dangerous, on the other hand like the uh there's a balance there of trying to know if something is a repeated threat as kids
119move through the system. So uh are there procedures? Is that sort of case by case? How do we how do we follow the kids as they develop and how do you move past the in the moment you know there's crisis in the moment and then something happens but finding that long-term mental health care and continuing to follow those kids over time as they develop seems like it would be quite a challenge but also really important. Sure you have posed lots of questions there, I will try to answer as many as I can. So first and foremost um there is a paper trail that follows every student it's an electronic paper trail, housed in our um log entries within PowerSchool so it just is a simple pull down menu that says a threat assessment has been
120conducted that's all it says so that flags a teacher or an administrator to go look further on what it was that was done and what the determination was on that threat assessment what the outcome was. So that is usually then the paper part of that is usually housed in the students cumulative educational record which is in the uh usually in the office, in each building, uh it's different, so it's in the students personal personal file. Getting them help and following up on help and those kinds of things um actually I will say um we have a new program in the county called Care Solace. Where're going to be able to refer students out and have them get some help, quicker than we have been able to do in the past. Mental Health Resources as you
121know are just stretched so thin Washtenaw County, pretty pretty much everywhere so getting kids help and getting kids help immediately is not necessarily something that we've been able to do in the past, I'm hopeful that our new program through Care Solace will allow us that flexibility able to get kids some some help like right now. We also have help available in each building so not as many counselors as we would like obviously but social workers are available, behavior threat assessment people are available, and um obviously administrators are available to help students um with their challenges with their crises. So yes following a student consistently is going to be a challenge for lots of years but I think if we use our new systems, I think we're in in a much better spot than we have
122been in the past. I would add to that that we don't want to get in the um habit of branding students and so having just a a notation to look further and then looking at the documentation that's in the file will give that well-rounded approach in all of the details because it is hard to capture that in just a paragraph right it could sound really bad when something was actually just a kid in crisis that needed help. So going to that file and having okay all the things that actually occurred through that process to support the kid is important as well. Well I would like to thank both of you for your presentation I really I appreciated that um and release you from the grip of the board. Miss Stemmer. Mmhmm. You have a 30
123minute presentation coming up or so? No, 45. Because what I'd like to. No, 10 minutes. Okay because I was going to recommend that we perhaps take a brief recess since we've been at this for two hours and we're we're unaccustomed to to to that. All right then that's fine if so without objection I'd like to have a five or so minute break, thank you so much. Thank you. Now, we're back on thank you very much. Thank you for uh thank you for accommodating our need for a brief break I appreciate it greatly. Let me introduce please um Kara Stemmer who is int I don't know what to call you. Let let how about you introduce yourself to us? What hat should I wear tonight? No so I'm Kara Stemmer I'm the Director of the South and
124West Washtenaw Consortium um some people refer to the position as a principal um but at the end of the day I just help oversee I say help because it takes a village um I help oversee all 23 of our Career and Tech Ed Programs. As you can see on the screen we're from fall or early winter and kind of gave you just a little you know a few touch points about the Consortium, but I'll be here I'm here to share a few more in-depth um highlights of our program. So thank you for the invite um it's kind of feels like a CTE night as we honored some of our staff and you know I I tend to be emotional when I talk about student success or program success so I apologize in advance if I
125get emotional behind it because I I you know I got to embrace it, because I can't fight it, so that's just how how it works. Anyway and I just I'd be remiss not to introduce Emily Koch um she is the Business Coordinator from our office and she we don't survive without Emily you can ask any one of our teachers, anyone of anyone in the high school, um she helps run the Consortium, so I'm going to lean on her for some historical knowledge in case there's something that is asked and I can't because obviously I'm just finishing my first year in this role. So okay, oh what happened, there we go I was talking too long and it already stalled. On the screen we have pictures and and we yeah um passionate Drew Miller in the
126marketing class yeah so we put this on the on in the um PowerPoint because this really captures the narrative of CTE um and it's two fold so Adam Rodriguez's class his Advanced Photography Class was charged with going out and capturing some photos that share what CTE is and super proud of these so proud that we were given we asked if can we give you a new challenge um him and his kids. So we have they have printed these photos on canvases and um stretched them, built the frame and they have provided us about 23, 24 by 36 canvases, that are going to line our hallway in the um CTE the SWWC hallway. So I certainly invite you to do a gallery walk um next time you're at the high school because it's certainly a point
127of pride um for many reasons. We did invite Drew in and I said Drew you're going to be forever marked on our um hanging on our wall, but uh yeah so good stuff. This is a little bit of a repeat um we had our Open House in November and it really really was a start of our recruitment campaign. We had about a thousand people attend we had 30 about 34 businesses that signed up to join us. The intent of the night was to take or was to invite new students, potential new students or current students, and come and just really see our program, talk with industry professionals, you know if my student enrolls in one of these classes what does that look like for their future, um extremely proud of of what that night
128looked like and um more or less just because so many people were involved. So it really showcased the talent of all of our programs um starting from Danielle Phelps who's obviously we all know her culinary talent um she they her team put on the dinner, and Mr Rodriguez's class made the brochures, um Mateo can speak to um working with Mr Brehmer in the Entrepreneurship Business and Accounting class and being like the project managers for the night um and let's see even down to our Welding and our Building Trades programs made products to be sold or auctioned off in the silent auction. So it really encompassed the entire um CTE family and what we can do and provide for for our um community. And then I guess I I also need to mention because I know
129in class with Mateo the Saline Chamber of Commerce we had them help mentor some of our students uh which I think is a skill set in itself working with adults and communicating and teaching them those real world communication skills and so some some of the members would come in and just kind of have a touch point with the students, what's going on, what you know, provides suggestions. So I thought that was super special too and so I just want to thank them as well for their help in the event. Let's see so the next we just kind of move on, oh there's a picture of it, um fun night I think overall. Feels like forever ago uh but and then we're moving on to enrollment and it has been I'm living I I was told
130CTE from you know the office standpoint is cyclical and it certainly is, because like here we are. I full we're coming full circle to I feel like we just started the school year, and now we're talking about next year, so here we are with our enrollment um and this is specific to Saline only and all of our classes are on the left side and then our current enrollment trend um is on the right, and so this is very fluid. I want to just be transparent with that uh right now we have students still building or they haven't even started building their actual schedule yet for next year. So this you know sometimes a student will have an epiphany oh I didn't know Marketing was a CTE class and I had to apply for it. So
131there's just a lot of that conversation going on, so again these numbers um well it's still kind of live right now if you will Emily just said this morning she you know added three kids, so this I expect to change in the still in the next couple months so but we're excited the trend um we had about a thousand applications this year very similar to last year, so it obviously we all know that CTE is a voice right now and a movement and excited to be a part of that and continue to um work in the in that field and pushing kids. And then let's see so exciting news I mean free money is always exciting to talk about uh so it's our third time for um receiving the Grant the 61(c)1 Grant. This year
132uh we are awarded $263,000, significant um one just example, so Adam Rodriguez's class had an 80 maybe even $88,000 printer um copier, piece of equipment that I don't know how we would have replaced that other than this grant. So very intentional with what we tried to um ask teachers for big ticket items so that we could replace things that you know maybe we couldn't do without this grant, so but I all of this stuff is coming in as we speak um um it's super exciting to train the teachers on it and then obviously pass that scale over to the students. A staffing update because I've seen that posted places, um and obviously we've heard of the retirements tonight. We in the spring when I met with the six superintendants we approved um a new Culinary
133Arts teacher an additional let me go back an additional culinary I want to preface that Danielle Phelps is going nowhere um she is staying put, but we just there has been a surplus of applicants and um which is an awesome thing, we always have way too many applications for culinary which um we are now going to hire an additional culinary arts so Danielle will focus more on the baking and the culinary arts teacher will focus more on the cooking and we added additional seats to the Consortium so now we can run the two programs simultaneously or concurrently. The David Mellor's job um yeah it's going to be hard to fill I'm going to lean on him to um you know help so we have interviews scheduled for this Friday, um we have the the panel
134ready to go and we're just going to um you know hope and and find somebody that can carry on the legacy that David has established with the program. Automotive teacher uh you will probably hear on the agenda we have a candidate that we have endorsed, um excited and I hope that um I hope to see him um soon, because he he's going to be a great, um you know Tim Timoszyk fully supports the hire so that means I think more we got to lean on him too to kind of give us guidance on what he's looking for to take over the huge program, and then Cosmetology Technician so we have our HVBA um the Huron Valley Beauty Academy we have a a techn a technician leaving next week or May 3rd and he's return he's
135going into nursing so we hope maybe he comes back one day and like helps with our nursing program, but anyway um we have recommended a candidate to HR and we're hopeful to get that position filled. Lots going on kind of feels like a full-time job but um we're going to get through and I'm my my goal is to like leave um you know come June we're done and I can start helping and training and mentoring our new staff. And then this this to me like I love information I love data and it kind of speaks to um just just how powerful and impactful Career and Technical Education is and hence the Consortium so this I just pulled this off the Michigan State website this is our follow-up service so one task that teachers are given
136is within a year, listen up Mateo within a year of graduating you're going to they're going to hear from us and we're going to ask them to complete a survey um if they don't fill it out we hit the parents, we hit siblings, like we want as many people to validate um what we're looking for so um this these are the results of our follow-up survey um 32,000 uh students took it responded which is about 87% 86% % which is good the key here that I want to highlight and which I think is awesome sometimes you're sitting in class and a student says when am I ever going to use what I'm learning and 72% of our students say write out 6 months after graduating they're using the skills they learned in our in our
137classes, whether they're in college whether they're on the job, whatever they're doing they're utilizing those skills. So you heard some of the students talk about it's more than the curriculum life skills job, interview skills, even down to like getting a professional outfit for the first time um this is where I get emotional because it's I'm just I'm so proud to like play that role in students lives because if it's not coming from home and you know someone's got to step up and and these programs are super impactful for our kids. And then speaking of that so on the left-and side 32,000 students are enrolled in some CTSO so some Career Technical Student Organization so hence FFA um skills USA 32,000 and you know I I can just attest I had a student that competed at
138the national level and wrote her college essay about it and um you know so it gives them a purpose and it creates this narrative that you know it's more than just going to a meeting, I mean this changes lives, and as you heard from many people obviously tonight that's all I have to say it's the why. So this extracurricular opportunity gives students a purpose to you know compete and just build relationships outside of the classroom, and then on the right hand side um I'll just speak quickly about credentialing so the state is really highlighting, like what can we do to set our kids up for success and set them, like what's their competitive advantage and so the state says credentialing so every one of our um Career and Technical Education, our state certified programs, has
139to uh offer some type of credential which means it has to just be offered not every student has to take it um but in other words when they leave our classes what is one like stamp of approval, so for example and it has to be industry industry recognized and state approved so like Culinary for their Serve Safe like that is an industry standard credential so if a student was to leave the program and go apply at a restaurant, you know they that gives them that competitive advantage and I think that in itself is powerful um and so in a few in a year maybe two years all of our programs, but right now they're weaning as as classes of programs are transitioning from Perkins 4 to Perkins 5 that's a requirement now, so I'd say
140almost half of our programs are under Perkins 5, hence the requirement. And then I'm going to stop here, and this is where I'm going to say this is where you can help. So work based learning, I I know right so I'm it's going to be my narrative for like ever because I'm on this huge push I say before I retire I want to create this opportunity for students to get out in industry and like experience what that job looks like, and so whatever they're you know let's help them have a plan so when they walk over the st stage at graduation, they have an idea of what they want to do, obviously those that are going on college, it's expensive, um even getting a job like where do we want to put forth our efforts
141and that's what CTE does. So work-based learning is another push by the state and you see four quadrants the bottom left one is like the highest level, so this is where I want all of our students at um all of our being a State Certified program we have like we have to meet certain rules if you will and provide proof at the end of every year. So um you know teachers have to have guest speakers they have to go on field trips they have to somehow bridge the gap from industry to you know classrooms, but that bottom left quadrant highlights um the highest level of like student engagement and so apprenticeships, internships, like getting students out there, so it's not just a one-h hour experience it's a maybe they're going out for two week and
142following this person on their job and I don't know what that looks like but that's like I feel like there's value, it's powerful. I've talked to people that have experience this and it's determined what they want it to do. So if you own a job, if you own a company or if you are in any type of corporation where you say yeah you know what I want to help mentor a student, I want to help guide them, I want to be a partner with the school. I would highly encourage you to get in contact with me, because we need you. I would love to offer every student and help guide them to to find that partnership, so that they can um get out into um the community and you know they've learned the skill. Now
143let's have them implement that skill. Let's see so I can kind of just end this you know obviously I could speak hours about the value of CTE um and how it just aligns with so many things, I think we've heard a lot about the why. I mean just from the the people at the podium tonight I just want to thank you for the opportunity. Again I it it's leaving the classroom where I taught it for 12 years, now I'm helping teachers and and it's inspiring and it's and I'm you know I'm hoping the students feel it that we're passionate and I I was going to end with one quote because I think it's so magical. It's by a, her name's Gabrielle Bernstein and she's a New York Times bestseller but her quote was, "allow your
144passion to become your purpose and it will one day become your profession." So again "allow your passion to become your purpose and it will one day become your profession" and I think that's what we're taking the kids they we're finding we're finding what their passion is, giving them purpose, and then taking them out and saying you can make a life doing this, and that's what we're here to help guide you that's what I have for you and I didn't cry thank you very much. Okay, questions? Anything? Well if I can just say first thank you Kara and Emily I appreciate that. So Emily you're going to be speaking for the next five minutes? No, that's okay I don't I didn't know if I I I could legally have her stand up here cuz she wasn't
145on the agenda, so I was like just be here if I if anybody has questions. So um oh. Yes please do. Trustee Austin would like to lead off with a question I just I just have to say I love the South West Washtenaw Consortium and all it does for all our kids and and we do see like well they spoke about it today how it helps them they they go to these events and they're they're so much further advanced than the other students I see it with my son and his college stuff and um yeah is it is great and so many kids too that don't maybe want to go off to college, I mean there's good paying jobs in this and and that's really exciting so I think this is a jewel of Saline.
146Yeah thank you. I I don't have a question but I just want to say thank you to Mrs. Stemmer for everything she's done for the SWC because I've been in Accounting and Entrepreneurship and then Marketing with Miss Stemmer and last year was a lot a blast and with the and I like how sorry all the clubs that are with all the um Consortium classes I find that really cool because it gives the people a group and find a common interest among individuals that want to pursue something and with that quote at the end, I really like that because ultimately the SWWC classes have follow my passion for business and then is something I want to pursue in the future so that quote was super cool and thank you. Well said sir. Thank you Mateo. Mr.
147Gerbe. Okay um first of all I want to say to you Miss Stemmer that I have heard incredible things about this transition and how incredible you are and so thank you for your diligence and work. I am an incredibly supportive individual also of of these students and you know I I I hear you talk about credentialing and I think about like that's the AP exam right like these students 72% of them right are credentialed or they're ready to go right they are ready to work in our businesses, in our places like these are good prospects for jobs, so I'm going to give my own little plug to the work based program because I am all behind you on that um all the way. So I have two questions and are this so you talked about
148$263,000 that was allocated being a a grant so my first thing is can you give me a quick like synopsis of how that grant process goes and then like you said we've had multiple years in a row. Is that a normal amounts? That's my first question unless you or do you want to do them one at a time? No that's I can. Yep go for it. And then we are moving our Cosmetology program over to SMS. I'm just wondering how like that planning process is going and and all of that because I'm really excited for those students and those families, so. Absolutely um and I might lean on um Emily a little bit but the grant so we're on our third year of it is it not I mean I wouldn't say it's normal, and
149it might be coming again this year. So we don't know for sure and Ryan Rowe is the one that applied for it, you know through last year and at the ISD so now that he's at the WISD he's now allocating and disseminating you know the funds to the appropriate districts um so it's for you know nonmileage based counties and so as long as we're you know not on a vocational millage we can apply for that grant. So and when that changes then the money stops you know but it's there's obviously other ways of being funded do you want to speak to anything. Do you think I I think covered it okay? Okay um so anyway that's and is it a normal amount? I mean I think it was a little less this year than it
150was last year, is that true. It varies year to year um it depends on how many um applicants there are, how much the total money available is. Right, yeah. It's they do um require that we place we spend 50% of the funds in the top five um state programs um so that's that's how that was chosen this year. So which I was yeah so um you know oh yep so cosmetology it's ironic us because we sat on part I sat in our meeting on the design of that, um I think that's obviously super exciting um it's going well. I just spoke to Elaine Sines the instructor tonight, and I just said like well done with doing the homework, um I know the architect the the team I the architects and you know the engineers and
151so forth just said it's one of the easier transitions of you know planning things out and I just say that's because of Steve Lucas and Elaine Sines for doing the the the back you know the background on it and saying this is what we would love and then I think it's just I I can't say it enough like we need to be mimicking what's going out in industry what's going on in industry to our classroom so that we're setting these kids up for success. So like they are creating that environment to you know duplicate what they would find in a salon and just making that transition smooth for when those kids so they f feel fully prepared when they go out to their jobs yeah, super exciting thank you. Okay I was fine until you
152said cross the stage so I'm [Laughter] gonna uh as you all know Drew is in the SWWC and I will say that, I'm sorry, it's been the most influential um class that he's taken um and that's saying a lot, because he's had a lot of really great classes and great teachers. Prior to your class last year I don't think Drew knew what he wanted to do or who he really was um I think initially he thought he wanted to be president and I'm glad he's not still pursuing that path um um we kind of joke about that but I do think that when he joined marketing he found his passion, as you mentioned, and um the experiences that you um started and that have continued this year through the marketing class but also through DECA
153have just set his course. He's going to Internationals on Saturday I'm driving him to the airport I did say I think Mrs. stemmer should be getting up at 5:00 in the morning to drive you to the airport, but I'm going to do it. Many years I have many years I've been on that trip. I know you have. I know you have um, but I I think that um you know many of the things that that have impacted him have been the day-to-day experience experiences in the classroom, his DECA experiences, the field trips, and I will say that the connections you've made through through your alumni even have um really allowed him to see where his passion is um that field trip he is not a Lions fan. Much to my husband's um dismay, he is
154a Packer fan and uh that is always exciting on Thanksgiving um but uh that field trip really um really impressed him and really started having him think about the possibilities for his future so he is um in the business college next to year at Youngstown State and he's pursuing a degree in marketing with a minor in um social media and campaigns and so um that started that started with you. Drew was recently asked who the most influential people in his life are and he did not say his mom and dad, although maybe he said that went without saying but. That's obvious just for the record, they never give us any credit. He said Mrs. Stemmer, Mrs. Mailloux, and Mrs Warren. So I just thank you for the way that you poured into him the way
155that the program has grown. He could have graduated this semester uh trimester early, he could have left um and he did not because of marketing, so um because of you he's also enjoying Mrs. Timoskyz one more semester and trimester in Pottery also and apparently she said excelling there too. So um it's just been a great experience I I know I heard from the students tonight um in every single um classroom um we heard from those tonight too but it really the SWWC um I don't even know that we know the full impact and I just think that we see alumni coming back, we see um we just see like the tentacles of of what started here so thank you for continuing to pour into our students and especially for Drew. Thank you. It's very very
156meaningful. Yeah I my own daughter's in three of the classes. I mean that's how much I believe in it, like you know talk about hands-on and just getting that again when you're sitting in an interview with somebody sitting next to you what's going to differentiate you and you have a story to tell like you I I led something, I did something, I you know it's just it's impactful and we like you're we just don't know but glad he enjoyed the Ford Field trip and like I you know, I have students working out in in you know for the Lions and so that's that connection and we talked about doing a DECA like you know reunion and then networking what an awesome networking opportunity for the last 12 years to bring all these people together so
157good luck to Drew. Oh I'll just say to Youngstown does not have a DECA um program. Drew is planning on starting it the business college is does not have classes on Friday so he is taking that up as his Friday project. So he might be coming back to get in touch with you one last thing that I did not want to forget I'm glad I wrote it down can you tell us about um because you know I love school-based enterprise after I read the 23 page paper and edited it. So can you tell us about the upcoming sale and how the community can have access to um that sale to support these projects yeah thanks so um the SBE also known School Based Enterprises also known as The Edge so um we're on our like
158it's a cycle so it's a five-year cycle. So the first year this is a DECA event a national event so a lot of students get excited because they can write this paper and really like um talk about the operations of running a small business um and so yeah like every aspect of it and so the first year is you have to talk about like maybe eight different segments all the way down to like selling and promotion and operations and hiring and all of that but then every year after that they choose three standards that you have to write and then it starts over so like the first group that gets year the first year like they're charged with writing like an 80 page paper and so they're like oh man you know they got gypped
159because the next person only has to write like a 20 page or 25 but nevertheless um yep so that that's The Edge and May 6 I believe is the event, and it's going to be held out at the stadium. Again I that's another one going to be one of my passion projects is maybe looking at trying to get an off-site location for The Edge. I think that's another opportunity um to have a store front in our community since there really is not a lot of competition um so that's kind of like I saw this role as, hey this is where I see I saw the need in the classroom and now I can execute and make that happen um and then just build community around that I think the community would support that and so
160it is a little cumbersome to check in at the school and you know come in and people don't know, I don't want to see my kid, I don't want them to see me, blah blah blah, but if we had some type of um store front in the um community I think that would be successful but May 6. I I should know the time yeah. 1:00 to 7:00, we have the flyer yeah on our desk, 1 to 7 but come out and support um we're looking, yep, get some great Saline swag, and yeah support an awesome program. I might be biased but. Little bit. I we keep running into each other out out and about and your your folks have come to EMU recently Vasilof was joining them and uh I and there there are other
161grants that are out there and we've been you and I talked about the Bessie Hoffman uh Facility as well so we'll we'll keep that conversation going and if I have questions I know where to find her. Yes thank you. Love the storefront and the community idea as you know we have some storefronts that could use right use some occupants um I know nothing about rent or anything like that but I think that that's a fabulous idea because um it is under served in our community and I always see people posting where do you get the Hornets gear and and I think it would be wonderful and and what better type of project than a school in a city to partner in support of students and it is hard for for people to get into the
162the school and we want to be safe and things. So love that idea um I love the work-based learning idea. This is incredibly important um it happens in college too of course um so support it there I think it dove tales nicely with um a point that Steve was making last night at the Superintendent uh Circle Dinner about uh internships or maybe Jackie, Jackie maybe you made that, one of you made it, okay. Whoever said it it was a great idea um and I think it reminds me of the conversation um because I was at your meeting last week and in my breakout we were really talking about how um they wanted more speakers in the classrooms. People who were actually doing the work um of the courses and coming to share those experience and
163storytell with the students and that's the perfect compliment to then open the door into the businesses for the speaker, so when they come and you have someone from XYZ company and it's in CAD or you know whatever and then that's perhaps the entree into that partnership for work-based learning. So I would just encourage you to think about how do you um how do you publicize the need for speakers and and what um what talents and um disciplines you're looking for and then begin to build that really um strong funnel uh for your network. Yeah thank you. Hi um I'm sorry I couldn't be fully present tonight um this is one of uh the presentations that I really look forward to and have a passion about so um I would like to follow up later with
164you okay thank you, thank you. Thanks. Thank you for all your work I really enjoyed seeing the your presentation and the teachers retiring it sort of was an advertisement for like you you could play it in your um careers and educ, you could play it in uh your careers and education um because I mean what an impact that's the kind of thing you can't testimonials. Yeah, that's the kind of you can't there's, there's no price you can pay on that kind of life changing um education and those educators so anyways thank you. Bravo. Well thanks for honoring them tonight. It fit in perfectly for um for our little discussion here so I appreciate that and I just want to go on record for saying thank you to everyone um the transition from the classroom to
165administration. So thank you. Lots of people that have had my back um countless reasons and I feel very comfortable going to anyone in asking any question, so I just want to say thank you. Good. Thank you very much again appreciate it. [Applause] Most presenters rarely get applause but well done. I'm going to hand, I'm going to hand the uh the gavel so to speak over to uh Secretary Miller who is also the Chair of the Policy Committee and and we're working on the second readings of these policies. So um we do need to um probably as a Policy Committee start there and then move forward but um there is some um question about first reading, second reading, action item, discussion item, etc., so uh the way that it fell for this meeting is that it
166is the second reading um uh of these four policies that are up for consideration a and um should someone feel moved to motion for them to be considered, that can happen tonight under action um but they are discussion items for now, if not they will be uh action items if approved tonight for uh or if there's no um motion tonight, um they will be action items on the next agenda. So first uh any questions about the four policies that were on um discussion for the last meeting and our um second readings tonight? I I can do it too as part of I mean whatever Brad you want to do it doesn't matter or Lauren? I'd like to please make a a motion to approve the following policies um as an Action Item for this evening
167Policy 5113, Policy 8300, Policy 0141.1 and policy 6152. I support that. Thank you Susan. And I would just add now that it's been approved to discuss that um it I think it it to Jenny's point it is a good thing to kind of discuss but um these seem clean, no comments so I think there's no reason to move forward with the business of the district if we can, thanks. Thank you all right so I guess you're President so you call for the vote on the motion. Well I I hearing no further discussion um all in favor please say I. I.. Opposed? Great thank you very much. Policy Committee and Board. Just for my own records who moved and who seconded? All right, thank you. Great. Administration Board updates. Yes thank you I'll start with um Trustee
168Steben mentioned this earlier there was a foundation event last night a Superintendent Circle which was great supporters of the foundation we're at Mac's, with myself, Jackie, um Jennifer was there, and I also just want to thank Wally and Cindy MacNeil they're the owners of Mac's. They've been doing this for years and be and they're very supportive of the school district and the foundation and it's nice when you have your you know premier restaurant in town um you know uh helping and supporting in so many ways and so I just want to publicly thank them. Also we got some results in from First Robotics in Houston Texas this past weekend in um the World Championships that didn't win at all, but they did have a really strong showing I heard that back from Chris Myers today
169and um the kids did really well and learned to ton as as usual. Also some of you heard that our Esports teams made the playoffs this year and I got a result that I I I wanted to read that I thought was great and this is from Coach Vasiloff said he's happy to announce that two of our Valorant teams made the semi-finals of the playoffs and had to play each other yesterday for a spot in the finals so now we have um uh Saline High School students Caleb Summers, Dominic Matthews, Jack Reedville, Lucas Bay and Jackson Stall of the Saline ValorRunts on top they're playing in the championship game tomorrow at 4 and he sent a link out to us and I'm gonna I'm gonna be tuning in to watch that uh playoff so that's great,
170and then also Steve Vasiloff was up for Coach of the Year in his first year. And then Griffin Berwick, Marco Matthews, and Michael Dooley made the All State Team. And I think that's pretty spectacular for the Esports program that just started so so that was great. And then my final um comment tonight is a great accolade for a couple of our high school students and I'm just going to read this brief letter that um Ashley Mantha got. So it says Dear Mrs. Ashley Mantha, the Athletic Director of Saline High School. The Michigan High School Coaches Association Professional Organization of High School Middle School Coaches and Athletic Directors has recognized the senior athlete in your school as one of the MHSCA Rich Tompkins Multi-Sport Athlete Award State winners. Thank you for nominating your athletes then it
171goes on to say the Rich Tompkins Multi-Sport Athletic Award recognizes the accomplishment of student athletes who have excelled in a variety of athletic, academic, school, and community endeavors these many student athletes were nominated by school administration based on their three seasons of interscholastic athletic participation in four years of high school and their accomplishments as a scholar and as an active participant in school and community activities. So not only did we get one, this is the first time we've ever gotten two of the in Class A both girls and boys so Jordan Wickham from Saline High School Class A girls and pton Payton Widen at Saline High School Class A boys have won this award and that's unprecedented and it sort of follows up with again Saline High School being named uh the 2024 number one
172ranked school for athletics. Which means you offer a lot of athletic programs and your kids excel in the classroom too, so I just think that pairs nicely and and we're really proud of them. I just have one quick update tomorrow is voters registration for all the seniors who are 18, we'll be doing it during lunches um it's been really great to work with Mr. Gumenick to set this up with um the volunteers so yes I'll get Drew and Laney on that. And I only have one update as well keeping with the SWWC theme. The manufacturing students and some CAD students had Skills USA like this past coming weekend or past weekend and some of them place the one States and they're going to go to Nationals in June so that's pretty cool and it's cool
173to see all the cool club awards and athletic awards that been keep coming up and are non-stop throughout the year so that's cool. So I just want to kind of give a shout back out to the automotive tech um Tim Timoszyk and David Mellor and the impact they've had in so many people's lives but in just the whole agenda today, the superintendent recognitions were really impressive, the scheduled reports, the threat assessment is really important, and um I appreciate what they did for us and uh giving us that information and then the South West Washtenaw Consortium and even the student showcase was all really impressive today. Heads up to Ben at a request from a school board member we're gonna sort of start at the other side so this is also a heads up to you
174Dr Gold. Yeah I wasn't entirely ready but um I am looking forward to going to the College and Career Night tomorrow night and uh that's pretty much what I have tonight. I'm gonna go later. l'll go next um as Steve mentioned we enjoyed the Superintendent Circle Dinner thank you to the Foundation for Saline Area Schools um and thank you to um Wally and family and Chef um because it was a wonderful meal that that uh annual event is uh take a moment to thank um a group of donors and kind of talk about what's going on in the District and the table conversation was very lively around all of the um building that's going on at the high school with regards to our our STEAM um Center and also the Strength and Conditioning um so
175that was very exciting. I mentioned when Kara was up here that last week I had the opportunity to attend um uh one of the meetings, one of the um meetings that's twice a year with the SWWC um I was asked to participate because I was a guest speaker, um last week also for all four sections of Intro to Business so it was a wonderful opportunity to bring um my life at Michigan Ross into the classroom. They ask that I talk a little bit about the school, um a little bit about what we have to offer students, and then um I did some interactive um science-based activities where you talk about um self leadership and then tie that to um high performing team leadership. So students could do one individual exercise and then we did a
176team exercise. I was super tired at the end of that day. I'm tired when I go to work but I was really tired at the end of that day at the high school so thank you to the teachers who are teaching at Saline High School appreciate you. I wanted to say a very happy birthday to Tim, and I wanted to say a very happy birthday to Jenny. It's essentially tomorrow or next week um so I just wanted to wish you guys a happy birthday and I also um really enjoyed the beginning of our our session tonight with our retirees I really liked hearing from the their former students and we all talk about our why and it was on full full display so um yeah Kara should bottle that and get those video testimonials so
177thank you. I was just going to note that I'll be in Lansing tomorrow at the Behind the Scenes Tour of a capital and uh reminder that next Tuesday evening I'll be doing a talk again about if for anyone interested in running for school board at the library. I just wanted to um wish uh good luck or best wishes to the DECA team that is traveling to Internationals. International competition uh next week or sorry Saturday it's in uh Anaheim California so they are headed there um we can all uh send our best wishes to to Mrs. Warren who is the chaperone for the group this year. She's um I think she I think her title is technician for the Marketing Class um and uh we have a several kids participating in competition Drew is just one
178of them but Sarah Yousef who we've met before uh Grace Warren um Erin Huetteman who we've met before and I um there are two kids who are attending um who are attending uh the conference and I am lost on one of them Noah Musson is one of them and there is another young lady going, I can't think of think of her name if I think of it again I'll I'll um mention it but um wishing them the best of luck and safe travels as they represent um the compass and all that it in it um includes uh this weekend. I also had the opportunity to attend um via Zoom, which was very nice and very convenient, um the WISD Budget Presentation um and uh that was very informative and um there are a number of
179things um that they'll be reaching out to districts on this year there's a millage renewal and some other things that are um supporting um especially Special Education in the county and shared services so so that was something that they discussed. Also it was nice to see because of my life it's not happening everywhere but there was a healthy Fund Equity Balance at the ISD which was nice to see, um and gave a little uh peace of mind, um and then I also uh last Wednesday attended our DEIAC meeting most of the meeting was spent on an update from Ryan Kerr and Jackie Martin on our um on the work that is currently happening in the district and there are um are some things that uh that some things that are in progress and some things
180that are happening one um bit of information that perhaps will be shared at a later date too is that they've been working with the folks at PowerSchool to update the um Information Systems to be more um inclusive and uh more representative of um students and their families and their identities so thank you for that work. All right so first of all um you know I recall my own opportunity to go to Anaheim for DECA as a kid and I have to admit it's like it's one of my like the best memories I had of being a high schooler and all that so um so thanks and I'm gonna give a shout out thanks to my dad who was also my DECA Advisor so there we go. I want to give a shout out to our
181Robotics Team for for Nationals I know that's a big deal in Houston and I want to thank the Autotech and FFA programs. I also agree that it was fantastic to see it in action and to see you know our whys right like these are individuals who have acquired skills and have then given back and that's that as a teacher like what that's that's what we dream about right is having students who do that so really cool. I'm excited for Mr. Mellor and Mr. Timosyzk. Mr. Timosyzk you know being a Manchester resident your family means a lot to me um but I'm excited for you too you've earned your retirement and all that but um it's a it's a big loss for the district. I want to give a special shout out real quick to to
182Payton Klein was mentioned she's representing Manchester. So yay Payton Klein. All right so a couple of other things Heather Dew continues to amaze me with her talents. I was reading today um she'll always kind of have a special place in my heart because I was fortunate enough to be like invited when we recognized her as Support Personnel Person of the Year um and then she took advantage of like the para pro to teacher transition program and now she is the Michigan Department of Education's Nominee for RISE. Recognizing Inspirational School Employees Award so like wow continues to amaze me but what more can I say. Thursday night I told you guys that there's a a Trun Prohibited Language item or Prohibited Language uh Seminar I will be there. So I have prioritized that and been able
183to and luckily my kid had a bus to Bedford so that helps for Track so anyway long story short like I will be able to be there I welcome anybody to to join me but I do plan to attend on behalf of our team. Climate Survey right I got a about three emails in the last week reminding me to do it right and and I'm going to remind everybody I finally did my Climate Survey um I would recommend and and ask everybody to do it as you heard at our last meeting it really does inform the things that we do, and then uh I guess the last thing I say is on April 16th um they had an open forum for presented by the MASB and uh I attended it it was it was via
184Zoom and I had two kind of takeaways from the from the meeting number one they spent a lot of time discussing cyber security and ransomware attacks and so I feel pretty confident like our our staff's readiness and I feel very comfort in our tech department and what have you but I just I'm mentioning it and I'm um I guess I do have a a small wonderment it's this do we have a specific plan in place for if a cyber attack was to occur? I know we've implemented things like 2FA we change passwords frequently but uh they shared some pretty sobering stories about school districts that have encountered ransomware attacks and it was a significant pain in the neck to say the least. All right and then the last thing they also um I received
185some some professional de development uh regarding just hiring practices and things of that nature and I I'll plan to share out some of those things with with my board colleagues because it's professional development that I would love to share. And yeah I've said enough so thank you to everybody out there. The student that I that I um left out is Nya do you know Nya last name in the Marketing Program? Stetson. Okay, so she's okay so she's also participating with Noah in Thrive Academy so didn't want to leave her out. I'll see you there Thursday Brad. Comments or from the board or updates this is your chance to share. Yes um um so um what I wanted to add to the agenda and I have to speak here now um so this is now my
186focus um about um what the process is for the board um to contact legal um you know if there is a legal concern or complaint of a superintendent or a board member um you know when a serious concern is brought to the attention of the board um if there's potential liability issues for the board um as it impacts uh the district, the community. And if one or more board members ask for uh legal input how does that happen? And so this has been a discussion uh before about I mean even last year um about board members do have that autonomy um the board has autonomy to um consult legal counsel um but you know for example telling a board member that if they're bringing up a concern that's been brought by a community member but
187they were just thanked for their email if a board member um you know bring brings it up as we are we have a duty and um um you know ethics um to ask questions um not just here at the board table or before um a board meeting um you know violating OMA um so why would a s a board member have to go through a public complaint process um to um for that to to be addressed uh when it's not necessarily their complaint um or a board operating procedure um on board superintendent relations um so I don't think there's issue with a board member asking questions um and you know asking that legal have input um so they can determine uh next steps um but somehow um not even necessarily my complaint just bringing up
188a process issue um but somehow now I'm the one who um and being trying to be ethical um I'm being um not even having the opportunity to to have that discussion so yet again we don't know how that occurs um and so you know investigating a board member. Like who makes that decision? I would think the board would but oh if we don't have process I guess we don't you know do anything about it so um you know I wasn't going to speak to the issue I had no plan um it sounds like multiple board members were talking about my email and simply in the email I um I said if we could have, since there is confusion about accountability here, um that you know we can publicly discuss and decide this as a board
189whether you want to talk about the specific issues um that you know come up or if you know um we want to talk about who does that right um I think shutting down conversation of a board member who's trying um to do the right thing and requesting that we do do the right thing um you don't shut them down I mean this is ridiculous. So um there you go. Is that it? Thank you I am happy to address uh Policy 0172. I I don't. Are you? What oh. I thought you were done. You're not done? Is this your? Did you not do? No this is me as the as the president of the board saying what happy to address this. Oh I'm happy to talk more about it too. No no uh first of all well
190just since since you brought up and you want to talk about it um you I'm if if you uh would like to set a discussion topic about how we go through policy 0172 which is uh that the Board of Education, and you were very specific and I appreciate that, uh get employees an attorney. We're happy to discuss the process uh and the same with Policy 8325 in which uh uh an individual board member can also get legal counsel. We can talk about those processes as well at a at a future board meeting. That's not the process for a board member. Let's put it on the agenda. I know you attempted to this evening, but we weren't sure what the topic was I don't think, I don't know why you didn't get support then, so I
191will happily make sure that gets on the agenda. If you send me the the topic we'll discuss it and. Go ahead and put it on the agenda because you've seen it. No I was not allowed to you would ask me not to go back and forth with you to ask questions via the email. Because of OMA yes. So I chose not to. And we're talking about it now I'm asking for you to put it on the agenda. That's it. If you could clearly write to me and let me know what the it is that we want on the agenda, let me see if I understand it, and I'm happy to put it on and Betty can even make comments for the next next agenda uh what is the procedure for the Board of Education to employ
192an attorney to represent the school district if I understood that correctly what you're asking. We have like what do you mean employ like we have? To employ an attorney or law firm to represent the school district or board in actions brought for or against. Yes that's a policy, yes. That's the policy and you like to know the procedure? Yeah I would think I would hope all the board members would like to know that but. All right we won't discuss it right now but I'm happy to make sure that that gets on the agenda and I'm sure we'll all be ready to discuss it in two weeks or whatever three weeks time thank you. We are at the I think we're at the public comment section, oh consent agenda. Oh the consent agenda uh the consent
193agenda is listed in this agenda and will not be read aloud the motion noted will allow for the authorization of all listed items without discussion unless a member of the board requests that any one or all be considered individually. Can I I'd like to entertain a motion to uh authorize the consent agenda as printed. So move Steben. Steben moves. Support Miller. Miller moves. All in favor please say I. I... Opposed. Thank you so 7-0. Just let me scroll down to items on the next agenda Dr Laatsch. Yeah we uh for our superintendent recognition next time will be uh honoring the Washtenaw United Girls Hockey State Championship and Boys Swim and Dive and then for reports a Special Education update and then following that theme of Special Education Millage like um Trustee Miller said we're going
194to be talking about the Special Education Millage and the WISD Budget Resolution. That you buried the lead that would be the best presentation of the evening. That's because you're doing it. That's because I'm doing it. No I'm looking forward to it I was I I couldn't make it that evening and I asked uh for the presentation they gave it to me with volumes of notes and I I thank you very much Jenny for for being there it's very rare that people go, but Trustees and superintendents go. Right um a member of the public. Michael I'm sorry I just had one thing, I just wanted to um remind you and let the board know that I will be absent from the next meeting um so I can go back on policy but you'd have to I
195think it would be Jenny who would be Vice President if you were ill or had to step in so I just wanted to kind of kind of raise that I don't think he plans on not being here and I don't think he plans on being ill, but I did want to raise it I have a mandatory work trip out of state so I will be there and I since it's going to be on everyone's calendar October 22nd I can't make it that night so I'll be. I gave you 6 months and 2 days. And I can make it that night we're good.Thank you very much we uh so public comment sorry for the lively banter uh members of the public can uh speak to us for up to three minutes or request to be scheduled
196on the agenda of a future meeting. I have in my hands Lindsay Anderson is first followed by Tiffany Alexander on deck. One minute warning with the yellows. Hello, okay hi my name is Lindsay Anderson and I have two children who go to Saline Middle School one of whom is transgender um I used to be a member of the Saline Transgender Task Force uh when we were working with the district uh we had a hand in helping to put together the policy um this the Transgender and Non-Binary Student Policy um and we have been working with the DEIAC since then to um help craft guidelines that are going to uh make that policy more operationalized within the district both for teachers administrators um and students um our parent group uh met with the DEIAC we got
197a lot of great feedback from teachers, students, and other community members one of the things that came out of that meeting was the um uh the updates to PowerSchool thank you I couldn't remember the word power schroll um about making PowerSchool more inclusive it was a really great um example of community organizing where many stakeholders were meeting at the same time to decide what was important and what was needed um so that this policy can do what it supposed to do which is protect students and make school um safer for them. The thing that I heard come up multiple times tonight was prevention um this is what those guidelines are really there for is to prevent instances of transgender and non-binary kids being bullied uh and being in environments where they don't feel safe. When
198we talk about threat um examining threats just to bring it back to what you were talking about tonight sometimes when you are doing threat assessments for something that seems like an off hand comment when those off hand comments are happening throughout the day they accumulate to become a something that can feel like a pretty big threat to that student and so if the environment of they go class to class and maybe it's different students saying similar things that student is dealing with a threat load that can maybe equal something that's more serious. I realized my time is almost out I also wanted to just talk about that we often feel like we are adversaries of um the school board sometimes when really we strive and want to be an asset to you um we know
199what our kids are going through. We deeply deeply care about creating environments where they can be safe and I think we are on the same page as that um when we come up here and we have to bring problems before you I know it's not fun for any of us um and so sometimes the reaction can be that we are a threat to the status quo and I just want a better working relationship between us thank you. [Applause] Thank you Lindsay I I appreciate that um Tiffany Alexander is next followed by David Hayward parent. I wanted to talk about the same thing I want to talk about how we have it anybody in this District who attempts to bring a legitimate problem is put in a situation where it feels hostile and adversarial. Even people
200who come here who are supporting the policies that you have enacted and are asking only that you see these policies through. Are still treated with hostility. We fear for retaliation on our families and our children and the reason we have that fear is we see retaliation on families, on children, in this District all the time. There are people who will never come up here and talk to you because of that and I think you know that. I have been disrespected. I have been defamed I have seen people accused of being lying when it's in black and white. We get promised the same thing over and over and over again. We get pleasant smiles and we're doing this and we're doing that and then it doesn't happen and then when we say hey you said this
201but you're not doing it. Then suddenly we're bad and in my case I'm the angry Black woman. Well I am a very very angry Black woman, because I'm really tired of these disingenuous conversations that is supposed to be part of civility but there's nothing ci civil about a dishonest conversation. Ego a does not belong here. Fragility does not belong here. This is not about us and it's not about you. This is about the kids and it's not just about the kids who are flourishing. It's also about the kids who are struggling the problems we bring you are real we're not making them up and I think each and every one of you knows that these are real problems with real kids with real families, and we can't safely come to you, because we don't know
202how we're going to be treated, dismissed, humiliated, made to sound like a bunch of radicals for simply bringing you what you know to be facts, then the facts get manipulated and twisted and if you attempt to do a FOIA God help you because they will pad it for thousands and thousands of dollars, because that way they can make sure that they can keep things quiet if you want to help your students you have to hear the voices of the marginalized telling you that you have these students who are are doing great and these are amazing kids, with amazing families, and amazing teachers but the kids who are struggling they're amazing too and they need your help, and you're not giving it because you're not elevating the voices of those who are marginalized and struggling. You're
203pretending we're crazy. [Applause] Thank you. David Hayward. On Deck is David Rosenfeld resident. I'd like to talk about the social media policy uh about two years ago the district adopted its current social media policy in order to allow it to moderate offensive content on its social media feeds um recently there's been a certain reticence to exercise this policy. I think that uh incorrect uh and I made that point um to to to the board and to the superintendent but that's somewhat neither here nor there the rationale that was given was uh fear of uh First Amendment lawsuits. Ironically my own uh post urging the district to follow its its own policy um was moderated I've been told uh today that that happened because uh the District was using an AI auto moderation tool um my my
204comment at right now is um to to point out that I think that if the District is indeed worried about the Free Speech implications of its of of what it does on social media it needs to strongly consider whether those tools themselves are appropriate and and uh and legal for for its purposes um because uh on the other hand if the District can algorithmically moderate my posts, why is it not also able to moderate a genuinely offensive post? And again uh following on my theme from before, I'm not trying to make some kind of abstract theoretical uh debate or or nitpick a point allowing hate speech against students, staff, and community members which is what is is going on on the District's social media posts is is actively harmful to those students and staff and
205community members and when the District allows those things to stay up especially when it's moderating other things but just allowing those things to stay up in general that can come across even as tacit support for those ideas. This is just something that that we need to do better. [Applause] Okay my name is uh Dave Rosenfeld my pronouns are he him his. I'm a Saline resident and I'm the proud parent of three former Hornets including an amazing 16-year-old transgender son. The main reason I'm here today is I'm hoping to get some clarification on what's happening with the Transgender Student Policy Guidelines which I know your DEIAC has been working on so hard and so diligently for the past several months at least until just a couple days ago I was actually planning on attending today's meeting
206in support of those guidelines being presented to you and possibly even answering some questions in my capacity as one of several parents, several parents of trans students, who has provided feedback for the guidelines but then I discovered that even though the committee has an excellent draft ready for your review they did not make it onto tonight's agenda for reasons that are not entirely clear, but whatever the reasons are for the de delay I sincerely hope that it is just that a slight delay and that you do fully intend to review the guidelines which your own advisory committee has has prepared and to provide feedback, allow them to make any necessary changes, and then ultimately support the guidelines adoption by the superintendent and the rest of the ad administrative team here in Saline. The reason these
207guidelines are so important is because not only have trans students and parents of trans students at SAS expressed concerns over the implementation of the Trans Student Policy in the two and a half years since it was unanimously adopted by this board, but teachers, administrators, and even Dr. Laatsch himself have all admitted that the policy has not been uniformly consist consistently and/or adequately implemented in all buildings and all classrooms in the District in that time, and to my knowledge in those two and a half years the District has not yet developed any other guidelines for the proper implementation of the policy. Now I know Dr Laatsch made mention at a recent board meeting that he is hoping a Neola representative will help develop some guidelines for this non-Neola policy that would be consistent with other Neola
208guidelines and also perhaps that the DEIAC has employed different processes in developing these guidelines than the district has used in the past. But whether or not those things are true it should not be a reason for the District to decline to seriously consider adopting the guidelines developed and recommended by its own DEIAC and I say that in part because I know for a fact that the committee members who were responsible for creating the guidelines did absolutely everything right. Not only is everything in the draft guidelines evidence-based and supportive of best practices in education as well as Michigan state and federal law but the drafters sought the feedback and incorporated the input of all appropriate stakeholders, from transgender students and their families to teachers to administrators to transgender community members to student and community organizations that
209support both educators and transgender students as well as others. If you fail to seriously review and then ultimately adopt and/or recommend adoption of some form of these guidelines, you will be doing a grave disservice to your constituents and more importantly to our kids. Thanks for your time and for your continuing commitment to equity for all students at SAS. [Applause] I feel very uh sad about coming back up here um I just have one question I'd like the board to follow up on what Trustee Estep asked Assistant uh Guenther at the uh question about the threat assessment thank you. Viva Rosenfeld thank you. I wasn't going to get up and speak but it is really hard coming to these meetings and and seeing how um minority groups are maligned by this board. The transgender policy seems
210like it was just a flag to hang up in the district, like hey we're doing it, we have it, but we're actually not going to do anything, you created the opt-out policy, apparently you already have guidelines for that, that was just created this year. Where the policy the guidelines for the trans policy? DEIAC don't seem to have any teeth in what actually you all do as a board. Again another flag, we're doing it, but actually not really doing it. I'm curious like why one of the presenters can't ask answer a board member a board member's question, is that how children are handled in this District? My question to you all is what do you do when staff are the threat to children and how are they actually handled? For a moment I need you to
211put yourself in a parent mode and think about how you would feel if you and your child are going through what your board peer is going through. If you can't understand and and see what's actually going on you're heartless you talk about threat assessment and um how threat assessment is lowering school to prison pipeline which is systemic racism. My question to you how many white children have been suspended for running in the school building and then my next question question is to you how many black children? I loved what the presenter quoted about what you're passionate about is what you should do. Clearly you all are not actually passionate about supporting de DEI which is what most of you ran on because you're actually not supporting those kids and protecting them. You're only uplifting kids
212that are already being supported through the groups and the clubs and the sports that you all want to show off. Let's support the kids that can't be seen and don't have voices [Applause] The next meeting of the Board of Education will be held on May 14th at 6:30 p.m. right here I'd like to entertain a motion to adjourn the regular Board of Education meeting of today at 9:24 9:42 motion. Oh vey. Jenny. Jenny. Motion Miller Support Steben. Jenny squared. All in favor please say I. I... Opposed. Great thank you and [gavel tap] Jennifer squared.