001I'd like to welcome everybody and call to order tonight's Board of Education meeting February 27th 2024 standing as you are able could you uh recite the Pledge of Allegiance as led by Treasurer Gerbe okay I pledge allegiance to the flag the United States of America and to the republic for it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for Ma chère Mademoiselle it is with deepest pride and greatest pleasure that we welcome you tonight and now we invite you to relax let us pull up a chair as the dining room proudly presents your dinner be our guest be our guest put our service to the test tie a napkin around your neck chèrie and we'll provide the rest soup du jour Hot hors d'oeuvres why, we only live to serve try the grey
002stuff it's delicious don't believe me ask the dishes they can sing they can dance after all miss this is France and the dinner here is never second best go on unfold your menu take a glance and then you'll be our guest we our guest be our Guest beef ragout cheese soufflé pie and pudding, en flambé we'll prepare and serve with flare and culinary cabaret you're alone and your scared but the banquet's been prepared no one's gloomy or complaining well the flat wear's entertaining we tell jokes I do tricks with my fellow candlesticks and it's all in perfect taste that you can beat come on and lift your glass you've won your own free pass to be our guest we our guest be our guest [Music] I'm just going well and thank you thank you very
003much the SHS Drama Club under the direction of Miss Glatz we're really looking forward to the um three upcoming performances of Beauty and the Beast it'll take place on the weekend of March 15th through the 17th all taking place at the Ellen A. Ewing Performing Arts Center but it's a cashless event so ticket purchases will be online only and can be made in advance there's a link to purchase tickets coming out soon and they can also be purchased online at the door on the day of the performance I'm going Friday night so I'm really looking forward to it thanks for thanks for entertaining us tonight but I'm going Friday night too oh you're going Friday night too great thank thank you so much I've been hoping to be able to do something like this for
004the past year and a half thank you we have uh Superintendent has would like to recognize a few uh special people in this District okay so our first uh recognition tonight is the Saline Volleyball Program and many if not all are at uh club volleyball tonight so we went over earlier today and had a picture taken with myself um Athletic Director Mantha and uh many of the girls that make up the team and so I'd like to acknowledge the Saline Varsity Volleyball Teams from the past two seasons with backtrack to 2022 as it was the best season Saline Varsity Volleyball has had in 38 years the 2022 season was coached by Darien Bandel and Jamison Kruze and the season brought many championship and honors including first place in the SEC Red District Champions, Regional Champions,
005Elite 8 Champs and they made it all the way to the final four in Battle Creek one Senior Laney Burns continues to play volleyball in college at Edinburgh University now on to this past season the 2023 season was also coached by Darian and Jamison and the team was led by five seniors along with six juniors and five sophomores and they saw tremendous improvement throughout the season they took second place in the SEC Red they were District Champions and made it to the Sweet 16 in the regional finals six players earned All Conference Honors including first team Olivia Behen, Mallery Boh, Catherine Flaharty, Marie Laurio and honorable mention Kate Fredericks and Allie Smith two players earned All Region and All State honors Marie Laurio Second Team All State and Olivia Behen All State Honorable Mention three
006seniors have committed to play volleyball and further their education in college including Olivia Behen at Grand Valley Mallery Boh at Notre Dame, Catherine Flahary at Xavier and Junior Marie Laurio is going to Syracuse but she still has one more year to play as a Saline Hornet and the varsity team wants to also recognize the Freshman and JV Teams as their support and cheering were vital to their success thank you to all the younger players as well as Freshman Coach Stephanie DeVee and JV Coach Ellen Stolz the future of Saline volleyball is is bright, sting um. And now on to our next superintendent recognition and that includes the SHS Today and Hornet Nation um our our teachers involved in that program and the students wonderful program so we'll start with reading a little bit about their
007accomplishments the video news production program taught by Mr Nathan Bush creates weekly news shows SHS Today and Hornet Nation for Saline High School in the local community SHS Today a magazine style news show is in its 15th year and features stories about interesting happenings around Saline High School Hornet Nation is celebrating its 10th season as it showcases the best of hornets athletic programs this year the teams have produced a combined 18 shows for the season the year started with second year students helping to lead first year students towards being knowledgeable on the production process and technology required to pull off the various aspects of news production by mid November the first shows debuted during Wednesday's Hornet Time and have continued since in addition to the weekly show production schedule both teams have been producing the
008advertising videos for the 22 different SWWC Programs that will be showcased throughout Washtenaw County over the the course of the next year and a half these videos provide every student a real world opportunity to work with a client aka the program teacher to create a high quality promotional video that showcases each unique program offered through the SWWC but probably the most fun was had on two video news production field trips to Detroit this year in November students had a chance to go to Ford Field and experience the Michigan Association of broadcasting Great Lakes Broadcast and Sports Media Academy they met industry professionals in breakout sessions and learned from keynote speaker Detroit Tiger Broadcaster Craig Monroe and just earlier this month the team headed back to Detroit to visit the awesome media house at Rock Financial
009and had a behind the-scenes tour of WDIV Studios with News Anchor and Reporter Nick Monachelli they even made it on a live news broadcast at noon as you can tell it's been a great season so far so we'd like to have Hornet Nation and SHS Today everybody come up to the microphone we'll go one at a time and you state your role what year you are in school and then tell us what your um what yeah what you do um for either SHS Today or Hornet Nation let's start with uh our our our Mr Nathan Bush let's begin with that and then everybody come up and then we're going to take a picture over on the side and oh you have to toggle the microphone on by clicking the push button to make agree all
010right thank you very much and Ben I just sent you a text if you want to showcase that uh my name is Nathan Bush and thank you very much for the honor uh these are some of the Student Representatives come on up um that have are part of the video news production program here for us this year and I'm having like a full circle moment as my son is also Lumiere so I wanted to point that out which is fun for me so thank you for tying this all together this is great so anyway come on up so I'm Brady Nachtrieb I'm a senior uh producer for Hornet Nation this year uh this my second year doing the program and this year has been such a wonderful opportunity to get to really leave a legacy
011for these like first year students and people who are really interested in the industry the trips we've been on these experiences that we've actually got to be like hands-on in the industry have been really impactful and I'm really excited to go maybe do something with that in the future I'm going into like a graphic design kind of field but a lot of video does come from that and like is needed in the industry so there is always video needed everywhere so it's been just an honor my name is Nick Roman I'm a junior and a second year student in the program I uh I'm going to be a third year next year and so I'm just excited to continue the work that we do and and you know pursue a future in the field so
012yeah hi I'm Faith Pearson I'm a second year and I'm the producer I'm one of the producers of SHS Today along with what Brady said I've learned so much in this class from last year and this year this year being in a more leadership position so I get to teach people as I go and it truly is just a great class leaded by an incredible teacher and yeah it's I had so much fun and all the opportunities that I've been given and are amazing hello my name is Ev Belote I have been in SHS Today this is my first year I'm a junior and I can't wait to come back next year and have more fun [Applause] eventually Rhonda think a couple of them are ready to take our seats thanks for joining us we
013hope you learned a few things here and what an awesome group from Saline I love SHS Today when it uh every time it comes on I get the little email from Nate Bush I'm I I just drop everything and I say all right let's see what do they got going on this time and it's it's must watch tv must watch TV uh we are at the public comment section uh member of the public can address the public uh the board briefly for up to three minutes or request to be scheduled on 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 only a second public
014participation portion will be offered at the end to allow for any other comment individuals addressing the board to take into consideration the rules of common courtesy public participation portion of the meeting cannot be used to make personal attacks against a board member, district employee, or student we have one stakeholder wishes to speak this evening and we got a new person on the timer you know give him a few seconds to oh now it is I I am Corey Belote and I am speaking to you tonight on behalf of the Saline Lacrosse program I am the Board President of the High School Boys Lacrosse Club and wanted to let you know that sign up is open for 3rd through 8th grade through Community Ed the 3rd through 8th grade parent guardian meeting is March 13th at 5:30
015p.m. in the Liberty School cafeteria High School registration is open it's under Self-Funded Sports Lacrosse where you'll find both Boys and Girls Lacrosse Boys Lacrosse starts Tuesday March 12th from 6:00 to 8 at 6:00 to 8 at Hornet Stadium we'll be holding practice and tryouts same time uh the High School parent guardian meeting is Tuesday March 19th at 7:00 p.m. in the High School Commons we are a self-funded sport that means that we are fully funded by our player fees and fundraising and we do hope to become a school funded sport someday our player fee is $400 we offer financial need-based scholarships and it's a wonderful sport by far it's my favorite sport to watch my oldest started playing in fifth grade and he is in his second year at Hope College playing Lacrosse there
016my youngest started in third grade and he will be playing goalie as a junior so if you're looking to try out the game check us out again third through 8th grade register through Community Ed High School join us on March 12th at 6 pm. and if you've never played before come check us out we do have equipment for loan we're happy to teach you introduce you to the wonderful sport and lastly I do want to give a shout out to the Beauty and the Beast Cast I have a kid in the cast um as well as they were also in are also in Hornet Nation so thank you thank you so much um I have no response to a previous public comment at this point uh it's the revisions or approval of the agenda and
017I know that there are a couple of issues going up I'll I'll start with mine uh I'd like to remove item seven uh the student showcase is canceled this evening and um are there any other changes to the agenda that we need to take into account um maybe I mean it's not a big one but I I know that Jenny's not here and for the policy update oh uh she she left me a lot of notes I'm prepared to make a policy up okay yeah she it just had her name there so I just wanted to okay well if you if you think it would be better with my name there that's fine I'll be her designatee thank you yeah oh I thought you wanted to table that one item oh yeah that no we're
018we're tabling or changing we're adjusting the agenda at this point okay your mic needs to be on so I was hoping to um move the bench discussion to a later date and possibly form an ad hoc committee is that what we decided or take it to the Wellness Committee super thank you so we'll remove uh we'll table this recommended motion 8A regarding in the the benches and uh there was some discussion about whether it should go to Wellness Committee if they're meeting soon or set up an ad hoc committee and uh we've had a little discussion about that just between the two of us and we'll probably set up a quick committee it I'll have to move quickly because um this sort of a time sensitive issue so thank you all right so that won't
019be on the agenda this evening uh don't to vote on that pardon well we are about to uh I'd like to entertain a motion to approve the agenda as revised revised Gerbe second Austin do we don't think there's any other discussion if you're ready then all in favor please say I I I I opposed all right 6 0 thank you 6 zero sorry action oh action items so we're moving straight to item uh 8b you're on in a second Assistant Superintendent Owsley uh I I'd like to entertain a motion to adopt the proposed 2023 - 24 General Fund Budget Amendment as submitted by Assistant Superintendent Owsley Gerbe Gerbe second second Austin all right thank you so Miranda Owsley the floor is yours the podium is yours thank you um up on the slide was the
020the Budget Summary that was in your packet uh this rolls all the way back if you see to the far left columns the 2017 - 18 to kind of give those historical balances as we roll forward the peach colored columns are the original budget that we passed if you remember back that is in June so it's largely there's a lot of unknown since the state budget does their budget from October to September so there's a lot of unknowns how those things we sometimes get them in legislative things but not necessarily how they're going to roll out line by line um for Saline this is a February Amendment and then I continue to have the February 2024 estimates but if you see in green that's for the 24-25 year and then from the 25-26 year in
021yellow and those are basically those roll forward kind of budgets if everything remains the same um we've been to you you know Steve has talked about many different things that he is um intending to do with the District but at this point in time those are still projections that we're looking at working towards so these are what we have in reality so the estimates in the green and yellow column do not represent any attrition yet of any teachers or things that aren't going to be returning back from um the replacements and retirements until I have a schedule to where I can sustain that kind of thing I use I'm still using roll forward kind of numbers in that staffing model so so in general a lot of the things um that change throughout these budgets
022is on realities we know a lot more about staffing we know retirement rates we know um we're getting in that state aid um so you'll see a lot of reductions one of the greatest things I really want to point out though is part of our ORS our retirement system we get money through the District and it comes in as a revenue and then it leaves right as an expenditure so it's a net zero to our bottom line however we have to spread it across all of our salaries last year the State Legislative put an extra pot of money it was about $3.6 million that they handed to school handed to Saline we turned around and paid it back um that is a big reduction so it looks like it's significantly dropped but it would be
023in the you would see that drop in the state sources and then also in the basic programs in general at the time in June I didn't know if that would continue so I just rolled over what we had last year and then at this this point in time unless the legislative makes action in the middle of the year is not likely that that payment will be there so I took it out of the budget so it's a pretty big swing in that $3 million range for um those line items as well as you'll see local sources um increase you'll see an offset in the state um sources in general the pat and how were funded in the local taxes and the state chips and the rest and that whole as we do the bar um
024in the original budget timeline as our taxes go up it doesn't mean we actually get more revenue it means that state sources will come down because they don't have to chip in as much because they still dictate how much we get um some other things to note that was one of the very big changes there's lots of little changes I mean we have 1500 different lines that I update along the way and then the biggest change was to that benefits category with the ORS um pieces along there so in general as we those become reality for if we talk about different staffing models for fall and when we come back to the the board in um June for for the original budget for 24-25 those would be at that time when we have those more
025reality of where those attrition could happen and then that model um as we make it our goal always to make sure that our revenues and our expenditures are matching and they this off balance um we obviously swung in the if you look down to the bottom we originally said our our revenues were going to be less than our expenditures at that 1.6 number and now we project that we are about 700,000 off from balance there still is a lot of one time um revenue kind of things that are coming in that we still want to make sure that as those fall off that we are continually looking to right size the District to make sure that we are not going we land softly are there any questions for Miranda Owsley we have one from Jennifer
026Steben yeah Miranda can you just talk a little bit about and it's possible you just talked about this at the Finance Committee meeting but the the change in fund balance from um the 2024-25 estimate to 25-26 that so going 20.2 to 7.4 which one say it again sorry uh the Fund Balance the projection on fund fun balance in which two columns the last two the green and the yellow yeah yeah okay so I should have led with the colors it's okay um in general the what do you mean on what that change was um no kind of just a little bit more storytelling about the reduction and fund balance down to 7.4 just how how that got there because that that kind of stands out as if if I was a community member reading that
027like what does that mean if you could in general so the the years and there was a lot of um one time funding that came through if you look through the 2020 through 2023 there's a lot of one time funding things that came through and there's a lot lot of things we put into place and also reduce back down but fund balance itself is is a is a one time you know it's revenues over expenditures in that year and then in general you know you carry that forward you basically have your fund balance you add revenue to it and then you subtract what you spend out and that's what's left um in general you know you might say that that's a you know a lot of money that's sitting there but when you equate it
028out to the number of weeks that the District could survive on that that number it ends up being a little bit more realistic of of where you need to operate and just then the every day going back and forth but in general we got to this historically when we were at 5% Fund Balance if we roll all the way back to 17 - 18 - 19 that was about two weeks of expenditures that the district had on hand as we moved forward and so those kinds of um conversations and how we do our job in the Finance Office become very difficult um for cash flow purposes when you only have two weeks of cash on hand to to meet your needs so those kinds of things are really dire situations where you don't have a
029lot of timing as things change and from the state does not give us a lot of timing to make adjustments and move forward or unexpected things that we see if if I could add too just the um it demonstrates the importance of sticking with that goal of reducing a million dollars from the General Fund each year for the next three years because the quicker you get at that it slows that down so that that 25-26 isn't going to drop to 7.4% so that that's it's demonstrating the importance of doing the um reductions that we're proposing and have been discussing with our staff for the last several months so anyway yeah I'll piggy back on that and say that like that's the reason like if you look at our um February amended versus the prediction for
03024-25 green the thing that there's a couple things obviously Miranda and I have exchanged emails about the ORS thing because that definitely jumped out at me about the 3 and half million dollar swing between um a basic program original versus but then the ORS thing and that that's an all kind of an interesting thing but when I look at our um budget I see almost a million dollars in one time funds if you add together State versus Federal and so um I do think because of our right sizing of the District and what have you like our goal to do that in our goal through Finance Committee and through are still from my perspective as the Finance Chair you know the right way to go um and I guess that's even makes me feel more
031confidently about that when I look at our numbers and look at then you know we end up being you know net you know like I I agree with you I don't want to drop from 26% to 7.4 that's a drastic change and I I I really don't think we'll realize that I think that's I think that's conservative budgeting which is what we've always done and some of those kinds of things so anyway it's just important that we yeah we're budgeting conservatively but if we were to not make any moves that could be reality so we we're just going to demonstrate confidence in the plan moving forward of that three year plan to just reduce down so that more or less the fund balance stabilizes and and won't see that kind of a dramatic drop I
032want to be clear I have confidence in that plan so and that kind of rolls back to enrollment and how enrollment does fund a lot of our general funds so in general I already estimated approximately 87 kids dropping for this so the regional budget already had those State sources kind of reduce we did see a reduction of you know more like 100 students um but there's also some one time is things that came to we got some extra little money for transportation for this that and the other so it wasn't a huge difference and there was an enrollment stabilization little pot of money and those things are come into state aid and then also drop back off in years so I continueing the other years forward do not include very one- timey sort of things
033that the state does in um our ongoing grants that are repetitive I keep those in and so it's more of a the a bonus when we have them but we're not planning on having them in case that it doesn't keep going and that's that's what the estimates in February um they're the 24-25 and the 25-26 also estimates I've kept in there I think one is 110 um student loss and then another one because it's a concept of a straight rollup if our continuing our low kindergarten class continues in the next kindergarten class is ex exactly the same so it's those kinds of rollup projections used in these numbers can I also ask a clarification I I know Steve you talked about the um recommendations coming to the board table in May is that still the
034plan and if so do you know which meeting you're referring to the Strategic Council recommendations yeah we we're still going to work towards a May um one of the May meetings yet those conversations are not really addressing the budget per se they're more about programming changes they potentially have impacts on the budget but they would be down the road so I think more of the specifics as it relates to the budget those conversations are happening now we're addressing that now um strategic council is geared more on you know uh different programs at the high school level or we've talked about early childhood and Early Childhood Center even if we were to move towards something like that that wouldn't see we wouldn't see dividends till down the road of revenue enhancement if that's what you're kind
035of wondering about okay thank you I just want to kind of comment what Miranda said and just reiterate you know the all the little nuances of the financing and I appreciate everything you do Miranda because it's it's a lot it's a thick book of all your little things but the idea of the the ORS and some years they're giving the extra 147c all the different 147's really kind of gives a misconception of what the bottom line of this District really is and because it does come in and go right out so when somebody says oh it's a 68 one year and then at 78 the next year well we did get a lot of onetime funds but they were they were pumping money into ORS too so yep thank you I'd like to put this
036to a vote then now if no one has anything else to say all in favor please say I I opposed hearing none can I just ask a um point of order clarification who who was who recommended the motion and who seconded Brad Gerbe made the motion supported by Tim um I I thought that that was revisions of the agenda no they they you did the second you did them both okay okay thanks thank you uh I'd like to entertain a motion please uh to accept the bargaining teams for the SEA 2024 Collective Bargaining Negotiations as recommended and submitted by Carol Diglio Interim Assistant Superintendent of Human Resources and that team I'll just say their names consists of Carol Diglio, Miranda Owsley, Kara Davis, Rex Clary, Emily Sickler and Principal Theresa Stager so moves Steben thank
037you support Gold support Gold I just have one quick thing to say this is new to us we haven't usually uh listed the members of the team before from my experience and uh it may be a best practice going forward apparently other districts do this regularly so is there any uh discussion or any questions and uh Carol Diglio is right over there ready to answer all of our questions yeah I have a question um like you said we typically don't have I guess that specific information um with the team um I know we've worked kind of with individual um people um so I guess this number of people um I guess I if okay is the question that is this a usual number of people for yes because there there's many um we have six
038people here and so I was um kind of surprised by that and just wanted more information thank you how's that it it is um pretty pretty typical one thing that I want to be mindful is I don't have institutional knowledge so while I have practice and experience and doing the negotiations on many levels um I wanted to make sure that there was members on um the S SAS District team that can help in discussions that um require some institutional knowledge when you're doing negotiations I also look at it as a great team building um for both the SEA or whatever team we're negotiating with with the District so there is collaboration and there's a lot of opportunity for people to get to know each other on a deeper level and have discussions that are around
039the practices that we're all living into um and it also helps to extend learning into um the building levels to have principles a secondary and elementary principle on board that can help with bringing information back to their teams at the elementary and secondary level and again to provide some of that institutional knowledge great I think um I think that's great um to have multiple people out there um getting that feedback um and I like process and uh completely this is transparency and I love it so thank oh great thank you appreciate it I appreciate you mentioning transparency that's exactly what I'd like to note that this uh practice going forward will do will afford us added level of transparency is there anything from the other side of the table I'll just add that this is
040typical with the number of people that are on the SEA negotiating team too that they don't just have a couple people they have they'll have at least four a team like this hi Tim might be for you or Steve so what's your role Steve then gonna be are you typically superintendent generally plays more of the moderator as you're getting closer to negotiating a deal okay and usually is not part of this initial part now I'll still be consulting but in terms of the actual negotiations it's generally not done with the superintendent okay that's and to anticipate a question MASB recently I was listening to Brad Banasik talking about this very thing and one the podcast from MASB and they said it's extraordinarily rare that any board members are on the team although it does happen
041it's extremely rare and probably a best practice not to be on the negotiating team so Carol thank you so much you're welcome thank you to a vote please oh thank you is there anything else you want to add thank you all in favor please say I I I opposed thank you thank you very we have one schedule sched report they're in the hot seat now soon they're going to be at the hot podium I'd like to introduce uh our presenters Ashley Mantha and Jeff Pike Jeff has the clicker so now we're official I think we're live now a hot spot as you just said there we go well I appreciate us uh being here with you all again um seems like every February so it's good to see all the faces um like I said
042is a report that we were scheduled for so we're kind of doing an athletic update um behind the scene so to speak of Athletics uh our main focus is the 2022- 23 school year last school year because it's in finale it is completed so we can report all the numbers accurately versus where we are right now which is still finishing up this school year and winter season and spring hasn't even started yet so um with our department right now thank you for doing the clicker appreciate it um this is our department we return this is we have finished year two as of January so it's been two complete full years um if January not school years um and we're excited to go into our third year together as a group of three so um by
043the numbers I'm going to move this for a second here we go sorry um this is a slide that we showed last year but just to kind of reiterate um our sports that are under our purview in the Athletic Department there are 35 High School Sports Programs boys and girls um as well as nine Middle School Programs learn in the Athletic Department um there's a little bit of color coordination there for yourself just to see um as Corey before for Boys Lacrosse came and did the public comment mentioned that um Boys Lacrosse and Girls Lacrosse is a self-funded varsity sport so they're all varsity sports under our purview but there's where it becomes whether it's District subsidized or self-funded is where the that difference is so you can kind of see the yellow versus the
044gray um but there are in the big picture there are plenty of opportunities for our student students um in the fall, winter, and spring um and as you can kind of see I know there's a lot to kind of take in there but we kind of break down you know JV junior varsity varsity FR is freshman um and then obviously Middle School sixth seventh or eighth we're mostly focus on seventh and eighth because that's MHSA grade level um we do provide opportunities for some of our sixth graders and some of our bigger sports as well um but that is just kind of like a nice little look of what is under the Athletic Department Umbrella um for the High School and the Middle School basically um this is a new slide just because we've had
045some questions um this past year of just kind of understanding classification of where is Saline and is that changing um and sometimes you hear every state kind of classifies their schools differently sometimes you use the word division sometimes as class um you hear these different letters like BCDE or you know Division 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 kind of thing so to kind of um give more clarification to that um Saline is MHSAA sanctioned school and so we are a Class A school and should be for the foreseeable future um because as you can kind of see by that yellow diagram um anything over enrollment of 807 for the high school will be a Class A school so for the foreseeable future we Class A where it gets more fun is by sport
046so MHSAA has multiple Sports and uh basically whether a school can sponsor a sport puts in those numbers so for instance um there are 756 high schools in Michigan so in theory you could have 756 soccer teams you could have 100 swim teams you could have 200 hockey teams and I'm just using general numbers right now but every sport is different and that's why sometimes you see um as my example is showing on the slideshow um there sometimes is um golf has four divisions uh football has eight divisions swim and dive has three divisions and so it's not just because of some random arbitrary numbering it's does does a school actually sponsor those sports to equal um that equal divide of Divisions um for right now we are division one across the board for MHSAA
047sports um but if you look at that third bullet point I know I got a hockey player here too kind of seeing um in my gymnastics we got you but as far as different divisions um hockey right now we're about you know very close to um our number next year is going to be 1643 we're 20 students away from being Division 2 hockey when you talk about little things like that of Division 2 state championship versus Division 1 state championship who are your opponents um obviously we're seeing enrollment down in Saline but also throughout our SEC as well so we we don't know in that bar it might be set the same or do are we all going down together basically um the enrollments that happened at Count Day in February around Valentine's Day that's
048the number we use for next school year um and we count our Alternative High School ECA WIHI in that number so if you go in PowerSchool it's not just straight up what's in our physical high school but also Alternative High School um who can play sports for us basically um and so that number for us next year is going to be 1643 um and that we'll find out in March maybe April of where we'll be for next year and we project Division 1 for most of our sports but in case something happens we could be Division 2 Swim we could be Division 2 Hockey Division 1 Soccer Division 1 Tennis it could be different based on the sport and so if you start to hear things like that we're seeing a lot of those numbers
049change too so just wanted to give a little bit of heads up on that and just kind of understanding when someone it's Class A or Division 1 that's what that's really talking about so uh these numbers pretty much speak for themselves um the idea that we have a lot of students who are participating in both High School Level Sports and our Middle School sports um again these are roster spots so this is not 1184 of the high school students participating it's 1184 roster spots um and same thing for the Middle School so we have a lot of student athletes who are participating so Caroline good example of multi uh sport athletes um that's increasingly rare but uh that's included in in all of these numbers uh as far as the coaches uh 156 different adults
050fill in the 185 coaching positions and that includes volunteer coaching positions uh and then something that's not on there that uh we were looking at earlier today uh there are 40 different uh staff members SAS Staff Members who are coaches and some of them multiple season coaches uh and that's something that's remarkable because we obviously would love to have our staff connecting with our students in different ways so uh definitely applaud those staff members for for putting in that extra time so uh this has a lot more information uh some of the different things that we do so first and foremost um my most fun job is eligibility checks uh so at the end of each trimester uh I make sure that our student athletes have passed the necessary requirements according to MHSAA having said
051that we have higher standards uh than MHSAA requires so every two weeks I will go through for both our high school students and our middle school students and make sure that they do not have uh one E or more than one D and if they were to fall into the uh bad grade situation of either of those things they do not participate they do have a five day leeway period to get their grades up if there's missing work to be turned in etc uh and parents and coaches and students are all consulted in that um and so that's something that is something we take pride in and it will come back on the other side and the next slide as far as grades and and how well our students do uh you might remember last
052year when we came uh we talked about Big Teams Big Teams is our registration system uh some of you will agree the first time you log in your your child and Big Teams you think that you've like you you've suddenly gotten really old and don't know how to do uh any electronic work at all um and then the good news is once you're in you're in so uh that's helpful um but it it is thorough it collects a lot of information it allows our coaches and our office to see everything and to keep track we no longer have papers that we have to worry about finding someone's Athletic Physical God forbid there's an emergency everything is electronic the coaches and trainers have that on hand so uh that's a big thing uh something we did
053last year uh working with Community Ed uh and with Laurie Dawson and Clubs an Extracurricular Advisor uh we all have our handbook uh together now uh so our policies are the same across the board and the goal in that is to make it consistent for students and for family members uh and so the uh link on there is our most recent update from 2023 in which we did that uh other things that we've done we try to offer uh a lot of leadership opportunities for our students and so some of our athletes joined us uh a couple of different SEC Conferences that we have each of the 14 SEC schools will bring 10 students to uh different things so a leadership conference we do in the fall uh and then Ashley and uh the AD
054Pioneer and a couple of our teachers and administrators from uh Dexter were leaders in creating a women's uh leadership conference to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Title IX last year and so that was something that our conference had never done we then invited uh 10 female student athletes from each of the 14 Schools as well to offer leadership training and guest speakers uh and that's something that they continued with this past year so we'll talk about that next year uh as far as DEI we are both committed to continuing that work and uh last school year we had Dr Washington uh going team by team to have a session on being a good Ally uh and that's something we wholeheartedly believe in and look forward to continuing now uh even though Dr. Washington has moved
055on we are looking to continue that with our our teams uh for each season uh going forward uh and then the last thing is somewhat delicate is our uh student section expectations and uh what we are trying to do is to have the students have fun and also not cross the line and so as educators we are trying to teach them gestures uh that would not be appropriate but others that would be or sayings that would perhaps not be appropriate or um and we want the kids to have fun we don't want to have a reputation among our opponents or officials uh of being obnoxious we want to be loud and we want to have everyone enjoy themselves uh and that's really a conference wide thing uh the conference tries to get us to avoid
056saying names and numbers and cheering for your team not against the other team uh this is more of a societal thing this is obviously not just Saline or the SEC but um big goals that that we have to say the least uh I mentioned the academics and uh grade checks uh this is why we do the grade checks and the reflection here is kind of amazing uh that we have student athletes who are taking additional hours of their weeks uh consistently and in each of the three trimesters you can see for the high school students this is uh from Varsity Athletes uh their GPAs are higher than the average student and perhaps this isn't a surprise that you know if a student athlete is involved in something they are committed so you're committed to your
057team and you're also committed to your studies uh but this is to commend all of the student athletes this for these high achievements that's kind of amazing to uh to look at what they've been able to do in the classroom because really that's what we're about we're about educational athletics uh when Ashley and I were hired we talked about student athlete the student coming first and and this is really what the emphasis uh should be placed on so congrats to the students for that to follow up the academic excellence there's we have we just want to make note of the athletic achievements as well from 2022-2023 um and this is I know it's a lot of color coming at you right now um but it I know if you want to zone in on the
058yellow or the gold you can kind of you find Saline really easy right everything else you're just like it's other schools but um what basically what you're looking at is there's 14 schools in the SEC there's eight schools in the Red Division which Saline is in and there are six schools in the White Division and makes up our nice conference um each season we kind of keep track um historically of which school takes what sport title so to speak um and so on that left column you see Fall Sports in the middle you see Winter Sports and Spring Sports on the far right um and we were very blessed to have nine of the possible 26 SEC Championships last year um quick math that's one and three basically that a Saline team won for the
059Conference which is an amazing feat in itself um like I said you'll see some schools in there that have maybe one championship and we were fortunate to have um nine last year so um if you can kind of see the yellow you see Boys Cross Country, Boys Soccer, Girls Volleyball, Girls Basketball, Boys Ice Hockey, uh Baseball, Girls Soccer, Softball, and Boys Track and Field um so it's very something very proud to be for the like I said the conference that we part of and besides the uh Conference Championships uh the next three slides we'll just do a brief breakdown from each of the three seasons of not just SEC Championships but District and Regional Championships uh so as you can see for Boys Cross Country finishing 7th in the State uh fall of 2022 Girls
060Cross Country 4th in the State Girls Field Hockey in the semifinals and I look forward to when they beat Pioneer uh Boys Soccer uh going to the Regional Finals Girls Swim and Dive 3rd in the State including a State Champion Diver uh Girls Volleyball as uh Dr Laatsch presented earlier uh making it to the State Semifinals uh and then Boys Water Polo in the Quarterfinals of the Regionals uh from Winter uh you have uh Girls Basketball uh also won Districts besides winning the conference uh Gymnastics last year qualified three for the States uh Boys Hockey pictured there the SEC Champions uh that was their back to back year uh Boy Swim and Dive finished 6th in state in 2023 and wrestling won the District Championship as well as qualifying three wrestlers for the State Finals
061and then lastly from Spring of 2023 uh Baseball League and District Champions Golf 16th in States Rowing two students qualifying for Nationals Girls Soccer making a two State Semifinals Softball also uh District Champions as well as Conference champions boys track and field 10th in the State Girls Track and Field 30th in the State and Water Polo finishing sixth in the State and uh one picture to highlight on that screen there the Boys and Girls Softball teams we hosted the Districts for both of those uh teams and they both won Championships within half an hour of one another so they were able to come together for a truly Championship uh picture so that was pretty cool uh overall we also have three different uh signing days that you sometimes uh hear about or maybe see on
062our social media that we have students who are playing at the next level and so we celebrate that three times a year as they officially commit to their uh next level of education and athletic uh achievement all right so into our coach training requirements I get a lot of questions of I you know we we just talked about 185 coaching positions right it's that's the community to run all of our programs um and we do want to make sure we're going to talk about safety and just the training that goes into it just just to know behind the scenes um we all talk about just oh coaches just show up and just do it but um it is a part-time job on paper we all know it's full-time responsibility and full-time care right that we
063all appreciate our coaches doing um they are the first responder a lot of times they are uh mandatory reporters they mentors they're the first line for mental health sometimes it's all these things that we you know we put on a part-time job so to speak um and we want to give them credit for that and their excellence in that um and just kind of an understanding of where they're coming from what's required to be a coach at Saline Area schools um every single coach is fingerprinted they're not allowed to be around our students paid or not volunteer um before they are fingerprinted and cleared um they do every single head coach Varsity, JV, Freshman, Middle School has to be CPR trained and that um we work with Nurse Karan um and's collaboration we do three
064times a year so there's opportunities always to be recertified um for those what if situations unfortunately should they arise um to go along with that our team emergency action plans uh Mickey Tulett and Natalie are athletic trainers which I'll talk about more in a second um they go around with our teams and actually show where's your nearest nearest AED, what happens if coach goes down, what happens if student goes down, all these kind of situations where's how do you do 911 who does all those kind of risk assessments kind of so our athletic trainers are very awesome for that and they go around with our teams um our coaches are also um each I should say each high school has to go through uh a rules test which is nice for their sport specific but
065within that there's a mental health aspect as well as concussion, heat index, all those other safety things very similar to what teachers do for GNC training and all those um bloodborn pathogens all those kind of other safety issues video is watching um then to add on to that we have our coach meeting we had a retreat this past August 1 where all of our coaches were invited high school and middle school we did an onboarding we did safety um Rex actually came and talked about the bond a little bit uh we had some socializing but a lot of that was um basically on board there's a slideshow there which I know you all can click on but others our coaches have access to that as well um we do have some parent and student surveys
066we started last year so we can kind of get an inside of what's going on dayto day with our teams cuz Mr Pike and I are unfortunately not there 24/7 with every single team um as we do have I know it's crazy right we can't be everywhere put 35 teams I know so the inside uh scoop so to speak we can kind of hear back from students and families um varsity coaches are required to have CAP 1 or 2 which is MHSAA's um Coach Advancement Program basically it's training coaches to be coaches um there's different there's eight different levels and they each are six hours and you can get professional development hours for going to those as well um but it's just nice of you know someone might know their sports but maybe they don't
067know how to coach per se so it's that person coming out um to learn how to coach and that's the simplified version of it um every time I hire a new coach I do have mentoring with them I on board them for a few hours I there's a document there of a recent hire um but we do go through to make sure that they not only know Saline's institutional knowledge but they get them ready and things I wish I had known when I was a new varsity coach per se kind of thing so it's kind of one of those you've been in the trenches let me try to help you with what I wish I had known or do know so to speak um we provide them with a mentor coach as well that might
068be more experienced for something I may not be able to answer for them per se um and the be nice mental health program is available for all of our teams that has run through MHSAA it's part of their coach meeting as well um and then we're also in the process of um we worked on our student handbook this past summer so another fun project for us this summer will be working on our coach's handbook which will be in complimentary of our um our summer retreat and our um meetings already I'm making a handbook so to speak of that so um yeah thank you I kind of mentioned some of these already but um you know when you have certain situations like Bronny James um basketball player and Damar Hamlin last year all these situations you
069might see on TV or in the news where athletes go down unfortunately those bizarre situations even though you're planned you have everything situated but those what if situations and we try to do our best to prepare our coaches our students our athletic trainers um just for those you know unfortunate situations um like I mentioned before our coach training every coach uh goes through concussion videos, CPR training, um EAPs is Emergency Action Plans with our athletic trainers um we have AEDs all around our athletic facilities I believe we're at 10 right now just with easy access our athletic trainers also always have a portable AED on them so whether they're outside in the pool the gym um they always have one near them so we're very fortunate that we have usable ones um we start I
070have a group message with with all my head coaches for those quick instances where email just doesn't do it right there's no informacast outside which I love that system but it's one of those things where I've got rowing on the water, golf course, bowling alley, hockey rink we're everywhere right that kind of thing so I do have a group message going with our coaches um for those snow day cancellations heat index when the web globe thermometer says hey 105 we're done with all activities right um if there's a lockdown fortunately we had the Walmart situation a year ago that that kind of thing where it's like hey if you're outside time to come on in kind of thing our own version of our athletic um safety protocols um and as I mentioned we we are
071very fortunate to have two full time athletic trainers um so we always have someone whether it be inside outside especially when we start having uh let's say volleyballs inside soccer outside water polos in the pool right multiple locations everyone has their contact information and they're easily accessible and of course 911 for those emergency ones but um we are very fortunate to have two students usually from Adrian College work with our athletic trainers extra hands to help with those I want to say mundane tasks but taping, Band-Aids, you know those they're not fully trained yet but they're they able to assit so our trainers can look after the more serious things as needed um uh security we do hire out Pittsville Township Police and Security for those bigger events whether it be football, basketball, soccer, hosting
072Districts, Regionals, where there's just the presence alone deescalate a lot of those situations in case there's fighting in case there's rivalry um it's just those what if situations someone's already on site and can call it backup if needed um and so we do hire out for those bigger games we also provide game workers for more that spectator those low escalations if hopefully they never need to but for that and of course our official safety it's uh they like to go after our official sometimes those the spectators right go figure I know we got to protect them too we want them to come back we want to have games go on right um and then obviously we are our administrative support whether it be central office, our principals, our deans, um when they're there too the
073students are our our parents everything is just it just runs together as one big it works so nice together yes it's very nice um of course all this cost money right um we kind of showed this last year and numbers have changed just slightly but you know not too much the same categories um are very much saying the same big categories um it's always interesting when I talk to people outside of here are just you know small talk they're like oh why don't you pay for this what's going on where does the money go um Saline has everything your facilities are beautiful you must have millions and unlimited wallet um as you all know we are a public school right there is a finite amount um we are very fortunate to have what we have
074um but just for those people to kind of like I said pull the curtains back of knowing where our money goes um Miranda was so kind to give me a nice little easy version of looking at these numbers so um though we almost have a $1.5 million that sounds amazing when you really break it down into as we talked about 1100 roster spots 35 um sports at the High School nine at the Middle School 185 coaches that you have to pay certain things the money just evaporates real quick um and that one big category the biggest one is our salaries and benefits which is $1.1 million out of that 1.46 so with that we basically have about $350,000 left to take care of the other necessities to make sure games go on and this money
075is for our district subsidized um no team is fully 100% there's everyone has these you know myths of like oh they this team gets this this team gets this in full transparency there is no team that gets everything from from taxpayer dollars and that's where Student Activity Account and fundraisers and additional donations and so forth comes into play to cover those other items that teams will need so a couple things on there that of note um as I mentioned $1.1 million for salaries and benefits our athletic trainers that we so appreciate and for our safety um we have two of them so we're paying their salaries through Trinity Elite uh 100,000 our officials to make sure the games go gone and the game workers so scoreboard operators um book all those kind of things just
076to make sure the game goes on uh we spend about 80,000 Transportation when available we appreciate when we do have bus drivers and by the way we need more bus drivers in case you're hearing this um so um when we do are able to we're spending about $65,000 on that um security and police as I mentioned about 15,000 uh to enter tournaments invites about 30,000 and then we left with about 70,000 each each school year to spend on miscellaneous things that come up last year we had a couple scoreboards go down right we rent uh we have to rent port johns for those big events like track and baseball and softball so all these little things that start to add up that are ancillary but still very much necessary is where that extra miscellaneous kind
077of comes into and then all of a sudden we're just we're tapped out kind of thing goes really quickly as I mentioned um but it is yes I was going to say you got nice perfect I'm going to let oh it's still me never mind carry on more budget stuff um a lot of those common budget questions too we just mentioned about 1.5 million but a lot of people say well you just had $180 million you know bond why don't you just use money for that um and as I know you all know this but that money yep that money is set for what you voted on right and so we cannot pull money so if I need a new bench for a current weight room nope that money is going to the new weight
078room right and so a lot of people are like oh you have all the money but no that is set aside for what is um determined for so um pay to play participation fees um we do collect these uh High School is $325 Middle School is $275 and that is for the entire school year so whether you play one sport two sport three sport it is a one time per school year um we do have waivers, we do have scholarships available need based um and that's something you come talk to our Athletic Office about we can take care of that as well um but that brings in about $270,000 so a lot of people say oh it should cover cover everything and as I just mentioned we spend about 1.5 million so 270,000 is is
079helping but it is not covering all of our costs we're not a cost neutral department um some other revenues we take in is our gate revenue about 75,000 to 110 and that does range because based on how many home games we have versus away games each year could be different each season's a little bit different but it is a nice little range of understanding of what we expect to take in as far as revenue um it does offset some of our department costs but once again um it's kind of a drop in the bucket of our 1.5 it doesn't fully cover that um so with that being said all that 1.46 as mentioned um with approximately 350,000 in revenue our actual cost of the uh General Budget is around $1.1 million so just kind of
080having those numbers out there as well Mr Pike so as far as communication obviously very important to get the word out and to help our student athletes and our parents uh and guardians uh the website is something I'm very proud of um that was part of Big Teams not only is there the registration side of things but there's the schedule and everything is updated immediately on that uh it gives directions to events uh and then when the events are over I try to get every single score from every single sport uh 7th grade all the way up um regardless so uh that's something that's uh an an important thing and along with that as far as spreading information uh social media uh last year that I uh we were here I joked about uh not
081knowing about social media and yet I'm in charge of it um and thanks to my 17 year olds at home I now can do uh Instagram a little bit better than last year so uh there's that but um truthfully this is something that it helps spread the word from our successes it helps add to information and so that's incredibly important uh something else that Ashley does every week is uh send out a Districtwide uh schedule for what's going on and then highlights of different things uh especially such as right now we're in playoff season and so each week giving an idea of what is upcoming for teams or how teams uh performed uh we also include that type of information in our school newsletter so that works for the middle school and high school students
082as well uh sometimes we'll have information that we need to send out through Student Central which is is the Big Teams and so therefore if we hire a new coach everyone who participated in that sport previously uh get a message to know what's going on for for that uh and then hopefully for February and perpetuity we will be here to uh to update for the board so uh the goal overall with communication obviously um is to always improve and to always give access to information and so if members of the public ever have any question uh obviously we can uh try to help them in any way possible uh so lastly just uh thank you um we uh the three of us in our office could not not do this without the support of countless
083people uh the student athletes like the two that are represented here today um we wouldn't be here to watch them and to praise them uh so that would that would be uh huge and then as I said earlier the coaches the amount of time that the coaches put into it the pride and it's not just about winning it's about teaching and so that's something we uh are very very proud of uh parents and volunteers whether it's a funded sport or a partially funded sport uh that it takes a lot of people involved and uh we're very very thankful for that uh for Buildings and Grounds and then also skip down to Transportation to thank uh Rex and everyone in his department um the fields are always in pristine shape the number of times we get
084compliments from other schools about that is is countless uh and as far as Transportation while we do need more bus drivers this year we have had a lot more of our teams able to use our transportation so we're very very very thankful for uh Buildings and Grounds and Transportation for that uh and the custodial staff uh who are always there to set up and always there to clean up uh we obviously uh depend on them greatly uh Ashley's talked about the trainers and security uh our administrators and teachers uh the number of times that we'll have other coaches say wait a minute your principal your superintendent is coming to your sporting events and we say yes and we're we we know we're lucky in that regard but perhaps also that should be a a something
085that we uh thank everyone for so thanks Dr Laatsch appreciate all of that um and then the community, Board of Ed all of your support for all of these things that we do it's not just about the dollars uh it's about the kids and so thank you very much for for what you do to support us in our endeavors thank you for a great presentation now I know you um you brought hydration this evening with any I'm recovering from a little sickness last week so it's not you know prep for this but that's well I we may have a few questions for you but I I if there are any extended disco questions uh that need to be taken offline I know you'll be able to respond very quickly thank you so anyone around the
086table have any urgent pressing questions start with Mr Austin mine's not really a question but been attending probably more of the sporting events this year and uh see you two at a lot of them and so you're you're your day doesn't just go from 8 or 7 to 5 it's long nights on many nights so thanks thank you thank you all right I have a few things um first of all um before I get too far into this um I was talking to to Jenny Miller and she wanted to reiterate to you because she couldn't be here tonight how fortunate and how lucky she feels to have been able to have her three children go through high level programs um you've mentioned like having Senior Signing Events those are really special things for families and
087I thank you for doing those things I know it doesn't just happen so anyway um I also want to reiterate my incredibly strong support and thankfulness for and gratefulness for the for the amount of programs we run and the quality of the programs we run when it's you guys it's coaches it's like you mentioned that whole list of of individuals with Buildings and Grounds and I even think about people like helping with concessions and making sure we have pizza and like just simple things but we do things at such a high level um one thing I would say is that and every time I pay my kids soccer I always think about this what incredible value we get for $325 I mean our coaches are not just good they're great right they could get jobs
088in other places and they could do high level coaching things and we get them for $325 a season or even a year and you get multiple so anyway I want to make sure that I I say like thank you for all the opportunities that our kids have and all of it I appreciate the emails that you send us with events and keeping us updated I appreciate the focus you know a year ago when you came to us we were having some culture challenges and I want you to know how much I appreciate as a board member and I almost am like nervous to say this out loud but like it appears some of that has calmed down um and so I know that doesn't just happen that's training that's individualization with athletes and teams and
089so I want you to hear from me how much I appreciate the two of you in your leadership and that I'm sure that goes in a top down way so thank you for that um I one of I loved the idea of athletic trainers going over safety with their teams right I'm a I'm a Manchester you know teacher and I've been a former coach and I've never done it like as a that what a smart thing to do with your individual you know we we we do fire drills we do all these things to practice for that and you're right with like LeBron James's son and Hamlin and like those things happen and so anyway I I just want you to know that that I I really um thought about that um I really love
090our prioritization about academics and success and you know and one of the things I guess I'm not surprised to see that um our student athletes do such a good job because they have to have such strong team time management skills right and so that's one thing that if I was like pushing I'd say this is a reason why to join a team and to try a sport earlier talking about lacrosse you know try it because I think one your kid is going to be surrounded by positive energy and positive things to do every day after school but also have to learn those basic time management skills you learn how to do that and do it well so anyway so that's that all right so here are my questions um and you don't have to answer
091them now um um base public comment got me thinking about this how often do we revisit um self-funded versus district programs how often do we look at that I feel like I do it daily but yeah to be fair no I it's we've talked about this with u Finance with um there's a lot of things that go into the why and I would love to support honestly and honestly becomes hey board I need more money kind of thing um as you kind of saw within our 35 teams or it's hey we need to remove some teams which I don't want to do I'm not trying to scare anyone listening right now kind of thing but it's one of those things when there's a diminishing interest and teams start to shrink you're like well is it
092worthwhile to continue paying for this sport versus maybe something that's growing um and so it is a yearly thing for sure that we actually talk about um but I I made a joke but honestly there's teams weekly that hit me up and were like hey what about us what about us and they're like it's growing your sport is growing but we need this we need this or we need this right um do we have systems though in place where like we do a review every three years or we do a review that's what I'm wondering it's very funny we had an extracurricular meeting today and I actually brought that subject up I he's laughing because it's one of those it's it's such on a there is no policy per se um there's nice little there's
093direction there's guidance there's what do you think is best um but that's what I was meeting with Laurie Dawson um Ashlee Howes of Community Education it's like why is a sport under you why is it sport under club why is it me how do we get it from you know a community sport to a varsity sport versus a self-funded sport versus a district subsidize but it's like what are those levels um and we do have a very rough draft of what that looks like but um we actually I'm in charge of that committee now to make sure we have a better process in place for I mean I'll use Boys Volleyball as an example it's it's in Community Ed right now MHSAA might be voting on it soon to make it an MHSAA sanction sport
094and that's exciting it's growing right it went from like 10 teams to now 58 teams in the state it's exciting but what but then it becomes okay where's the facility it's going to use it's a boy sport Title IX complications I got to bring in a girls sport now all these things it's not just like ooh I like your sport kind of thing so it is definitely a daily conversation in our athletic office of um sports that we we would love everyone to be part of athletic yeah great question and and I and I appreciate you doing that and I want to make sure that I also state um at in my public comment I had stated my strong preference for us revisiting things like letter processes and recognizing more students in those conversations I've
095been told are happening and so I want you to hear from me thank you all right I I'm I am thankful for you continuing to look for ways that we can recognize as many students as possible um I was I've been hearing a little scuttlebutt about more divisions in sports so like for example not having four state champions in basketball having six like we or eight like we do in in basketball is that actually a potentially a real thing or is just like what to be determined that to be determined the Rep Council of MHSAA votes on certain things and they usually announce things in May um that is based on each sport it wouldn't be just across the board for sports it'd be individualized um and that's based on what is their bracket look
096like for districts regionals and States um football has 64 in each of them because they like to do a you're doing a one on one competition it goes from 32 to 16 to 8 to four to two you can't just have a 100 random teams in one division right uh versus basketball has about 250 schools in each division So when you say you're a Division 1 Champion of one sport you might have sorry there's a little reverb back there um so every sport does have different um nuances and that'd be voted on by sport at MHSAA to say and then it comes down to us and we accommodate to that yeah I will tell you that I would be a strong proponent of more divisions and letting more kids feel what it's like to be
097a champion right and feel good about those things um anyway so I I have a couple other things that I think I'm going to send you via email thank you very much though like I appreciate it you're here late thank you than you thank you it's lunch time soon looks like we're sliding the table but I do want to give the Students Representatives a chance to pipe up if they have something um I just want to say thank you because this year the gymnastics team did go through the process of hiring a new coach Miss Mantha was great about that so thank you we love our coach super excited to look for an assistant coach and continue to grow the program so thank you for that yeah same with hockey we appreciate everything you do
098for all the students with the student section and teams and stuff like that and hopefully soon every single sport could be a school funded sport we'd love to take you on hockey I love I know if we could pay for hockey yeah you're ice time alone we got to talk yeah does the athletic department cover the cost of hair bleach I hear they cover that themselves but you're styling you're styling working down the table we have Jennifer and go Hornets thank you for the great presentation and Michael thank you for specifically calling out Mateo and Caroline since they are excellent representatives of um academics and uh athleticism at at the high school um I had one question and a couple of comments so at the last board meeting and in my my personal comments I
099said something about how I have had the opportunity to visit a lot of high schools in winter sport season this year and um I am just very impressed by the ambassadors that our student athletes really are for both academics and for how they carry themselves as representatives of our District when they're out of the building um then conversely when we're hosting things and um the comments that that I get when I'm wearing my Hornet gear and they don't know I'm on the Board of Education and and other family members saying saying wow like our grandkids get to have this or or people from other districts saying what beautiful facilities you have and how excellent they're they're maintained and how um staff are present to to support those those students um it really matters and it
100shines through and so I hope that you do hear that we also hear that all of the time so thank you um also thank you for all of the the facets with regards to I don't want to steal Lauren's thunder since she's the physician and not me but but there's a a lot of diligence whether it's in the Big Teams with the um the forms uh or it's it's the trainers it's Dr. Dean and thank you I'm so glad they were all there in Belleville with us during the last football season they were like another coach on the field um it's so important and emergencies do happen and we read about those all the time so it's really nice when we talk about safety and security we we focus on our buildings and our grounds
101quite a bit but we have a lot of um both staff and students who are out at you know um you know whether it's rowing or whether it's swimming or whether they're at a golf course somewhere else like you said so it's it's really important um I wanted to ask about data from the surveys that you mentioned and first of all thank you for asking parents and guardians and for asking students I thought think that's very important but my question was um can you tell us a little bit about what happened with that and and kind of um if you think you'll repeat that process for winter and spring Sports and moving forward in the future yes so I usually wait till the season ends before I send them out um I know as a
102cheer mom you'll be getting your shortly kind of thing and Jenny as a swim parent we'll be getting dive we'll be getting hers as well um we did that last year and it was a very I think some this was the first year a lot of parents and kids were apprehensive they're like who's going to see this where is it going and I try to put that proactive message of it comes to me and only me um and so that's it's doing this the second time around we started in the fall again um I've seen a lot more come through this year than I did last fall because I don't tell names kind of thing not that's because it's supposed to be you know a little sneaky or anything it's just more sometimes like hey
103coach this is something you're doing great I want to highlight this and they're like oh I didn't know they like that like oh your overnight camp trip that's great team bonding they love that they love the t-shirt they love the team dinners you know all those kind of things that coaches need to hear positive affirmation as well so i' would say 95% it's been positive kind of thing and every now and then that I say that 5% I'm just making up percentages by the way but it's very small um where it's something like room for improvement hey did you know when you do your cut process you're actually making a kid feel bad when you do it this way what if you changed it to this kind of thing so we kind of have those
104conversations at the end of the season where I talk with themes with my coach I don't say hey Jeff Pike said this of you I say you know a parent recommended that they didn't really like your cut process like walk me through what you do kind of thing so we talk about themes and patterns and um and just kind of highlight the things like I mentioned that needs to be giving kudos and some things that maybe for improvement but I've definitely seen more come in for students and um parents and I need to find a way to get more even more kind of thing because um like a team of 20 I might get seven or eight back kind of thing so it's not a full encompassing view but it's enough where I can get
105an idea of someone that's really happy or someone that has some concerns so to speak so I filled out three of them for fall um so I got to experience this firsthand I was like oh I was I was very impressed and and I think being on the board now in my sixth year and seeing the emails that we've received over the years sometimes we hear a lot about certain topics but we always wonder about what's the other 90% thinking or what's the other 80 again I don't know the exact percentages and I think that those evaluations and especially asking for student voice give every single participant and family the opportunity to speak up and feel um like it's it's safe and that they can they can report that in so thank you thank you
106hi um a couple questions were answered well asked and then answered um because I was curious about uh the self funded versus uh District subsidized um is is anything covered with the self funded or like the coaches or I feel I've been talking uh the short answer is no um so for ice hockey for example like um they pay for everything everything and so you're talking um ice time and uniforms and travel and things like that um for the uh district funded sports there are still going to be sometimes team fees that are additional or expectations of working concession stands or things like that so uh trying to find a balance between those things um but again the the money is is limited unfortunately and whether we'd love to take on boy lacrosse as uh
107as Corey talked about in the um public time um we'd love to do that for multiple sports but unfortunately not not able to do that all the time um have you considered or I guess something to to consider um maybe well sometimes if you don't use the 70,000 um or like having sort of a grant fund or some funding that you could give some like each of the teams or that they can apply for for specific things um just just putting an idea out there that's um Miranda not to put you on like we've talked a lot about different possibilities um because in my head I was love to give even the sell funded something hey maybe I'll pay your coaches or maybe I'll pay your buses so at least you get to the event
108safe kind of things we've kind of worked those ways um but that 70k as you just mentioned it's it's kind of like the the oh crap kind of money where like something broke something needs to be maintained yeah um you know with baseball and softball scoreboards go down those are about four or 5,000 each kind of thing so those things of maintaining it's the the rainy day fund is a better word for it I guess so to speak of um but that's we're trying to find creative ways to help all of our teams so we're Miranda and I brainstorming and we're look for if you guys have ideas we'll take it all right awesome I have an idea actually I was going to say something about the Foundation for Saline Area Schools in a little
109while I I know they do a lot of grants and I know our our friend Joe Welton um has received a lot of grants over the years whether you know in the beginning at Pleasant Ridge all the way to the High School I I wonder if there's some kind of partnership there with the funding because sometimes they allocate X number of dollars like I think it's 90 90,000 something this year and not all of those go used um and not I I know that they're not looking to subsidize something on an ongoing basis they they you know think about experimentation and new philosophies and teaching and things like that but I don't know so I would talk with them we definitely forward that on to our coaches as well as the Crab Tree one that
110just came out this past week as well so um as you said for those once in a while new equipment uniform something doesn't happen every year but those big things that are hard to purchase for sure sure um I have multiple questions did you have something related I'm gonna spend an hour and a half on on this um so uh you mentioned the CPR I think this came up last time that it's only like head coaches are required um and you mentioned athletic trainers um which is great like a support um so I'm wondering um our athletic trainers at all sports um and if uh a head coach isn't there um what I guess resources are there to use in case an emergency great question so there is no athletic event unless a coach is
111there kids can't just show show up in like in the gym we actually sho them out because there's no adult there for those what if moments so uh someone that's been ichatted, background check, CPR has to be there to open up the gym, open up the field, open up the pool, open up whatever may be um and so um as you mentioned not every coach but every head coach and that honestly is the majority of our coaches because we don't have um I mean I'll use uh let's say baseball you've got your Head Varsity Coach certified your Head JV Coach is certified your Head Freshman Coach so your three teams everyone is certified and most of the assistant coaches on baseball are CPRs they're either PE Teachers or someone else too so um we do
112offer it to all of our coaches but we I actually keep track of every single head coach when they're expiring when they're due and I email them saying hey you're expiring in two months another class is coming up so we do keep track of our head coaches um that does majority of our coaches are head coaches is what I'm trying to say so there's always someone there and to your athletic um trainer question we always have someone on campus um so whether you might be on the far grass field but someone's at Hornet Stadium so they're 100 yards away or something but they are present we have a Gator for outside so they can get around quickly so they're not just running for an emergency um and inside it's right by the main gym um
113for the high school of where they're located inside too so when you talk about away events that's on the sometimes our trainer does travel for those collision sports that we know are going to provide a lot more more likely contact um or if there's nothing else going on they just happen to be like oh I'm going to go watch swim today we don't expect swim to collide um but you know versus football soccer gymnastics cheer you know when you're doing all the stunting um those bigger ones more likely for injury but other schools also have athletic trainers on site as well even though they're not ours they're there to serve student athletes cool thank you um and then let me see I guess this is one big question um so I know that you all
114track um which is great um the grades um and where students can't participate um and I went through the um handbook the Athletic Athletic Handbook um and was pleased to see that there was um a component of discipline um and when discipline comes from the school that that will carry over to um the sport and um I guess I'm curious as well um if there's athletic um component and things going on does that get communicated to the school so I guess my big question is um is there that great communication going on um as it is with the you know the grades and checking that and you know making sure um those behaviors and everything um are you know yeah being consistent and then uh in in addition um if there is hate speech um
115or um you know comments going on um specifically I guess w with among the sports and um if that's you know not just that one student but harm caused to possibly you know um more athletes um I know you all haven't did the DEI um a uh training um recently but I'm wondering how that's kind of handled as well so to your question um yes I don't want to say I've them on speed dial but I do have the principles in my phone for when we have issues off campus or with our own so to your point where if a student gets suspended during the day that does affect their after school activities as soon as we get notified as well um and we are notified by the high school and middle school they have
116their own documents that they send us um so once they put it in the system we get notified so we can tell our coaches hey they're not playing today they're not practicing today whatever it may be and vice versa um if we have a situation at the middle school or the high school where they're misbehaving that does we notify the principal cuz there might be school consequences on top of um team consequences it might be you're missing your next event it might be suspension from the team it might be expulsion from the team it kind of escalates versus how many just very similar to um the student handbook for the Middle School and the High School where it can escalate based on you mentioned hate speech or bullying or fighting all these different levels of
117did we catch you with the vape did we you know all these um so there's no set specific but we work with Kim Jasper, Lindsay, Musetta, James, Teresa very easily and very well um for those situations where it's a combo so to speak where it's not just school or not just athletics especially when they're in season versus maybe out of season where we don't have if I expell from the team you're not even in season it's not really a consequence but there's still school consequences that can be upheld great um thank you so much I appreciate it um I I want to more highlight one thing and make sure that I think we're going to be in agreement on this I talked about the tremendous value that I think our student athletes get for for
118their money I believe we've done some benchmarking as well to see where we are with regards to our peers around us is that correct I mean so what kind of numbers do we benchmark I mean like on our pay to participate fees yes yes right so I guess I wanted to give you a chance to like highlight that because if I recall we're pretty on average if not a little below some other places this one yeah I don't remember specifics but we have talked to other SEC schools um and a couple in the SEC um charge per sport so Dexter for example $250 per sport I do know that there is a family upper limit that they would set for that because if you have multiple kids in multiple sports you're talking a lot a
119lot of money um some of the others Northville and Novi we often compare to Northville does it annually $385 Novi is $175 per sport per sport um Ann Arbor Public Schools is $265 per year so we're a little more expensive than that although we have learned as far as some of the things we're able to provide that some of the Ann Arbor schools are not such as game workers and things like that uh we're we're lucky in that regard um the flip side Chelsea does not have a pay to participate fee um but in talking to their sports uh administrators uh they struggle in terms of ticket takers, game workers, security, and things like that they rely on volunteers and so you can imagine as parents how many times you asked to do something in
120our situation now extrapolate that with a no fee like Chelsea does thank you for highlighting that I just wanted to give a chance I knew we had done that so thank you there we go thank you so much for those who didn't hear Dr. Gold is showing her appreciation by not asking any questions I'd like to thank you all very very much for your presentation this evening I fired off one question via email and uh see you next February all right if not at a sporting event of some sort there we go thank you thank you so much thank you everyone thank you Dr Laatsch is up next discussion on under discussion we want to talk about Schools of Choice okay yes we do it from the table here or okay uh from it's fine versus
121go up there um okay I'll go up there like I don't usually do that but okay uh okay so I put a new uh handout for anybody who was we we talked a little bit about this policy uh some other matter but uh there's a new handout that discusses um the openings available or the proposed openings in 24-25 and so I just wanted to to talk about philosophy with this and and that is that um that we would focus more on the earliest grade levels in terms of most of the students that we would take would come in at young fives and kindergarten with a few um a first, second, and third grade openings and then not take students in School of Choice in fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth grade and then open it
122back up again in High School primarily for um you know schools like Emerson that there's you know not necessarily another option for students and they may be looking for a High School option so in other words the focus would be more the early grade levels um and then also open it up again for some students to come in at the High School level so that's the general philosophy for next year um and when you see it saying minimum openings th this is a little bit confusing in that it basically means that young fives it says 10 so if there were 14 students that applied you would need to be take the minimum of 10 that's more or less what that means and anytime you see it say one minimum opening it means that if you
123had 14 students apply for that grade level you would have to take one um that that's what that generally means and so when you get to fourth, fifth, sixth seventh and eighth we would have to um specify that minimum openings of zero means that we would not be taking students in grades four, five, six, seven, and eight for the next school year so that's just of that questions I mean well that's what that's what we're proposing Tim yeah so um short four months ago we kind of had this conversation when we talked about 51 policy 5113 and the strive for 10% from my understanding what I see is um we have 35 or 36 did you clarify that Steve that were're dropping off that are seniors right now that are going to be falling out
124yeah there's I I believe uh because Miranda provided some good documentation 36 that will be graduating that'll be graduating and so then we'll have a minimum of 50 with this policy so so our strive is going from like a 5 point or 10.5 over 10.6 to closer to 11% seems like that's going in the wrong direction um well that would that would be based on that a percentage yeah again we're trying to state that we feel like we should be in that 10% range but I want to try to focus on the youngest grade levels if this Board felt like we needed to move all all these minimum openings and change those numbers we could do that but I'm recommending this to be the range that we take sure so um I want to I
125want to reiterate my support for that okay so we looked at this also as a as a finance team first of all I want to you I want you to know that I 100% support Dr Laatsch's philosophy about prioritizing our youngest Learners and the biggest reason why for me that's a priority and reason why I find that to be wise is because I believe in the quality of our staff and so if we are obtaining students at four and five years old those are individuals who are going through our programs with our staff members and our program you know like and and our targeted interventions and our MTSS Model and those kinds of things and I believe in that and so so I actually believe that there is um tremendous value in that uh the you
126know the I asked Dr Laatsch to to tell us when I thought about like this 10% thing and I like the idea of strive for 10% but I also want us to if there's only two ways that I can think of that we can really really generate revenue and they are per pupil allowance which we have no saying whatsoever right and student count and so if we want to run high high level programs and we want to not have to make decisions about things like for example we had mentioned it I think it's not so please public but like things like we would have had to consider you know semesters instead of trimesters or you know maybe sometimes you have to like cut this program or that program and I guess for me when I
127look at our surroundings I asked Dr Laatsch about who had has um you know this cap idea the caps were things like Ann Arbor like near 20% um you know Lincoln am I like please like if you want to speak to it like you you wrote to me and I'm telling you that like if we are at 11% but it preserves our programs it preserves the quality of what we're doing then I support taking this many students yeah I did I did ask other superintendant about caps Ann Arbor said that they don't have an official cap cap that they try they try to stay below 20% Chelsea does have a 10% cap uh Dexter's unlimited Milan's unlimited Lincoln's unlimited um those are the ones I looked at like they don't have a cap in those
128other districts so so I guess what I would say is to back that up is I said would say that I trust our superintendent and our plan our plan to reduce by attrition a million dollars from our budget which will will help to to to take our budget and and and level it out and but I I think we need to take students too in order to be able to support 115 member marching band and some of those kinds of things and and we want to have those robust quality huge big programs then I think this is then I guess I'd rather see our superintendent take 10.7 than 10.2 anyway that that's my one Trustee thoughts Susan um so the policy uh 5113 um that the Board made a decision as a whole um to
129support um you know it it's superintendent striving to enroll out of district students at approximately 10% um I think if we do get 11% um that's approximate to me um so yeah I think you know you're still looking at that number and talking to different districts and um keeping that in mind um so yeah I I think this looks good to me from another Trustee thank you well we're not voting on this this evening by any means but I appreciate the information is there any other any other questions you want to raise at this point no okay uh in the we're moving on then in the absence of uh Policy Committee Chair Jennifer Miller being ill this evening I have a she's left me with some notes to share so I'm going to provide a
130very brief update of the last two meetings mike feels a little hot tonight sir oh good all right it's just me it's my ears are ringing um on February 21st we had a policy meeting to review the suggested Neola updates and you'll see these in the consent agenda uh these are related to laws that were changed regarding the Public Employment Relations Act what we call PERA uh Carol Diglio joined the committee meeting because these changes are connected to her role as the Director of uh Human Resources uh we discussed changes to the five policies that would be in alignment to the changes to the law and these are all strongly recommended by Neola uh the first is Board Powers and you'll see that uh basically this relates to a number of topics that are no
131longer prohibited subjects they've been deleted from the bylaw uh and these changes took place on February 13th uh the next one is Policy that was Policy 0122 Policy 1420 School Administrator Evaluation the major change there is is that the statute which goes into effect July 1 basically changes the evaluation scales for educators and will move from four columns to three so now spe effectively will we will have effective, developing, and needs improvement Policy 31 and again this is all by the law um so anyway uh Policy 3131 Staff Reductions and Recalls uh this policy relates to staff redu reductions and recalls which are no longer a prohibited subject of bargaining the legislature amended Section 1248 relating to what can be used as a decision making factor in staffing situations additionally perspective changes to the rating
132system are going into affect July 1st so the same rating for superintendents is this rating for uh staff for teachers probationary teachers also Policy 3142 uh there's a rating change for those people as well and this policy basically reflects reflects that and finally in the Consent Sgenda Policy 3220 Professional Staff Evaluations Senate Bills 395 and 396 were signed into law by Governor Whitmer these bills change the valuations system effective July 1st 2024 and uh you'll see that in the red marks and the green marks most of the red marks are basically the slash outs of the uh prior to July 1st and the rest are either reiterated in green or noted so I'll leave that at that and I would like to also talk about t this evening's Policy Committee we looked at four policies
133in particular I'm going to run through them really quickly because they are going to show up again uh Policy 5113 will be up for discussion in um March 12th our next Board Meeting uh this regards a slight change of language to our the very policy we were talking about this evening 5113 Schools of Choice Program um basically we're just becoming more aligned with the law as it exists and it's remarkable how a single word can make a difference and we'll have a great discussion about that next week uh March 12th also we will put two policies on the consent agenda the Policy 8400 uh which is a School Safety Information which is clarifies and tightens a number of pieces of language and uh designates the Director of Operations as a liaison to work with the
134School Safety Commission um try to see if there's anything else there no not major uh in addition to something that's going on the consent agenda and I would urge you all to read this is the use of five Policy 5512 Use of Tobacco by Students this policy great it's not just po tobacco but also nicotine related products and there are so many of them it just with changes in technology the language now is far more precise in this uh policy and uh basically covers all all manner of things that you can imagine ways students get nicotine into their bodies these days um and there are also uh policies that were reiterated on advertisement and promotion of uh tobacco nicotine signage again clarification of language is all the way through this as well as enforcement and
135finally we will have for discussion next week uh the next board meeting uh a Policy 8300 if you want to take a peek at that at some point it's the uh continu Continuity of Organizational Operations Plans in case of a disaster what happens who takes over what organizations uh and what staff members and administrators are are run the show in effect and um that in a nutshell is our was our Policy Committee Meeting which thank you very much Jennifer Steben for her first Policy Committee and five years nice to have you on board and uh we got out at 5:35 which um which was startling to me we so made me double check my watch to see uh so we um we have Administrative Board updates at this point I'm going to start with Dr Laatsch
136then go to the students oh oh oh oh I'm sorry we have questions it's a discussion item right this is a discussion about the Policy Committee yes yes um so you mentioned a word change um in the Policy 5113 yes which is related to School of Choice correct it it is the Schools of Choice Policy okay well we'll would you like me to go into detail about I guess in when we because this will come up on the next agenda so will that have any sort of impact probably not but I'm happy to just speak for a minute about that word change if that's okay um the in the our policy has said that the superintendent is not or sorry that schools that Saline is not available to any non-resident student who has been suspended
137Within the preceding two years uh practice has been that in some cases the superintendent has with in great consultation with the parents and the students and seeing the situation has allowed that student to come in um we noticed that that was a difference in our policy when we actually looked at the law it turns out that the superintendent our superintendent has been doing it exactly correctly according to the law it is so the word is changed from is to may enrollment may not be available to any non-resident who has been suspended within the last two years so that's basically the policy change and it it just keeps us in line with what we've been doing anyway turns out we were doing it according to the law our policy was a little out of whack awesome
138thanks that's it great and can I ask if the other Policy uh Committee Members have anything to add I don't but um I appreciate Michael stepping in and being a good teammate when um Jenny was out ill tonight so thank you super thank you so administrative uh or board updates please we start with Steve then the students and then work away from Austin Gerbe Steben Estep Gold okay yeah so excited about Inclusion Week we've had some great activities already it was crazy sock day today and then tomorrow Polar Plunge 10:15 Michael's getting ready to be freezing for a reason and that is not fun I've done it before this this should be good yeah but I don't care how warm it is out it'll be great okay we we shall see but we're looking forward
139to it um the other thing coming up this Thursday night I'm excited about I'm going to Wharton center with uh Dave Mellor because one of our students Addy Naebeck won the state FFA for Beef Production and Diversified Livestock so I'll be on the stage at Wharton to see her and her family accept that award so that's exciting and then also a few events coming up I'm encouraging people to um join me and and my wife Laura at the Foundation for Saline Area Schools Blue Jeans and Bling on March 9th and then of course get your tickets for Beauty and the Beast for March 15 to 17th that's going to be great show thank you um based off what we talked about today and having um the AD talk about Athletics I also wanted to talk
140about the student showcase That was supposed to happen tonight so it was supposed to be the Washtenaw United Team uh the Girls Hockey Team reached out and was super excited to talk about their successes unfortunately the coach was not happy with the progress on getting them letters and receiving recognition for that so they're looking forward to coming back um when they get more recognition in like the varsity letter process um comes back up to discussion so I'm excited to talk and advocate about that so thank you thank you and um along with sports hockey unfortunately came to an end but we did win back to back to back SEC titles which is one of the first time in a long time I think maybe one of the first and along with Inclusion Week yesterday we
141had a unified student verses staff basketball game and Dr Laatsch was a ref and it was a lot of fun seemed like the entire school was into it and the students beat the staff as always so was perfect of course it was just by a very slim margin right that's true but we won so that's all that matters and with the Polar Plunge coming up I'm excited to see everybody jump along with President McVey and after I have shirts for everyone on the board the wear tomorrow for the Polar Plunge um Thursday I uh went to an event uh Thursday night at the um High School the uh Fellowship of Christian Athletes had an event uh there um the leadership team put a lot of work together and uh brought in Donovan Edwards the running
142back from the University of Michigan and he kind of gave his um story of life and then his faith and how that has helped him through adversity and there's a lot of parents and a lot of kids there um and so I thought that was just a great event for um to to hear Donovan's story I mean it was a really good story and um it was good for all the other kids to hear that too and how how how his faith has helped him through adversities I just have one quick item I've talked a lot tonight but um there is something came across my radar that I wanted to highlight and um February 28th tomorrow in addition to to to Polar Plunge I I saw a potty training workshop that is being offered here
143um for those with and without special needs of all ages it's going to be in this Liberty boardroom it's done by our SEAC team so there's a number of people who are experts in that area and so I would want to just promote and highlight that again tomorrow that's happening here at 9:30 in this board room thank you um let's see uh Steve mentioned Blue Jeans and Bling so I'll just mention that as well there's still time to buy tickets if you'd like uh as Jenny mentioned last time you can also participate in the auction if you are so able and interested and I look forward to seeing Lauren's bling and Steve's bling and Laura Laatsch's bling um on the 9th so we'll see you there um at the High School I know our students
144are ending Tri 2 and getting ready for final so best of luck to the two of you and to all of our high school students and also um we are going through scheduling right now at the high school and um seeing our Hornet Nation folks our video production team it it just really reminded me about the breath of choices that we have at the High School and how you really can't um you know help but be grateful for those um excellent choices that our high school students are given um a lot of opportunity to find a lot of passions that they might pursue in life so love that um Friday starts March's reading month um so uh you know this is a wonderful opportunity depending on the age of your children to read to your
145children or to involve them in in a lifelong love of reading I know there's a couple teachers on here that probably would mention that as well um and then personally um the HR Report was part of our packet and I just wanted to personally um thank and um wish Joe Welton the very best of luck in any endeavor he he may have in his life once a Hornet al always a Hornet Joe but um he was one of the very first staff members that my family met when we started in Saline Area Schools and um provided a excellent foundation um and and to this day um remembers the kids that he started with when he was a gym teacher at Pleasant Ridge and is just very very involved in student life so I wanted to
146thank him from the bottom of my heart okay um so tonight was The Sex Ed Advisory Board um meeting um at 5:30 unfortunately um I wasn't able to make it and um the other co-chair wasn't um I know that it's a Board Committee so hopefully um we'll communicate about different uh time frames um but um hopefully we can provide an update um soon uh when talking to uh the chair um the DEI Advisory Committee Meeting is this Thursday um let me think I had something else huh Wednesday tomorrow okay thank you um so yes that is tomorrow um thanks Kara for um mentioning that um and then oh what was I gonna say oh I was happy I reached out to each of my my um younger uh teachers uh sorry my younger children's teachers
147and um asked the question about um what they were doing for Black History Month and uh which I knew some of the answers because my um uh multi-racial daughter um came home and was you know she was like oh that's all we talk about so I was like okay great um so she's like oh we've talked talked about so many and there's posters and you know um uh uh all of these you know black people in in history and um and so that was pretty exciting and then even my my um youngest in young fives had said um and she's black um she had said uh they they were talking about um like uh postal worker and um you know just within uh what they were already within that lesson and you know she was
148like oh yeah Phillip so you know like so so that was really great um to hear back from them that they are um you know incorporating lessons now um celebrating and recognizing and also um you know incorporating it throughout the year so um I was very pleased um with that that response and you know I know sometimes when I volunteer in the classrooms I do um see you know um people who children who look like them in pictures and um you know Woodland Meadows uh does a wonderful job of putting up displays and things like that um for particular um months uh for celebrating and so I appreciate that um one last thing um I did want to um I guess uh mention um bring awareness to um the student from Oklahoma uh Nex Benedict
149um who was a transgender student um who was bullied and harmed um well was attacked in a restroom um and uh passed away the next day um and I know there's some unknown uh you know things related to that death but um you know one thing was that bullying had occurred um consistently um and wasn't handled um for them being uh transgender non-binary um and so uh the school um didn't handle it in uh even the incident in it in a good way at all um so I just wanted to to um remind our students that um we do have policies um and so one of those is 5517.02 which is Transgender and Non-binary Students um and then there's the anti-harassment uh 5517 um Discrimination Based on Sex um includes gender identity as well um
150so so you know um make sure that you know that you have protections under that um and then also uh 5517.01 which is Bullying and Other Aggressive Behavior Towards Students um and so I just want to um know that that that there are those resources um I know um you know there's um the Trevor Hotline um for you know talking about these issues um somebody to talk to um and you know I know it's a really difficult time um for those in the LGBTQ Community and um I just wanted to to recognize that and um say that I I support our students um and hopefully things are addressed um and do not continue um through to to make sure that there's a safe and supportive environment for all of our students thank you um when
151we were listening to uh Assistant Superintendent Owsley's budget I just wanted to take a minute to thank um the taxpayers government Governor Whitmer the state legislators for increasing the per pupil allowance um on a day of an election um I think it's just important to uh note that elections matter and um you know that was a really great investment in our students throughout the state and I'm looking forward to some of the investments in prek that are coming and I'm grateful that we have lunches for our kids and so uh that's excellent and I'd like to thank our civics and government uh teachers who are out there teaching our students to be good citizens and hopefully we maybe had some 18 year olds eligible this year who went and uh exercise their right to vote
152today um and then I have not been to as many events as I would like to go to but I'm hoping for more this spring but I did want to highlight that almost every week uh I get some sort of message uh both as a parent and as a board member about um our Emergency Response Team's uh handling student events and I would just like to thank those people um I know some of them I don't know all of them but I um I know that some of those incidences turn out to be not a big deal and others have turned out to be a very big deal and being the person who gets that call is not easy and uh I know that they're handling it with professionalism and grace and compassion and I'm
153just every time I get one of those I realize that behind that sort of boilerplate message there was a terrified parent and a scared student in a health emergency and so I just like to publicly thank uh those teams and uh our school nursing staff for doing those trainings and keeping us up to date um so I want to mention that awesome thank you I'll just do the anchor leg here I appreciate that Lauren um I'm furthering my explorations in artificial intelligence by taking a course this week uh which is with run through a General Motors I'm going to be a SEMAL Quiz Bowl reader on March 9th and you all are welcome to your kids are in that one no all right uh and regarding two separate tanks uh one that doesn't have sharks
154uh the Polar Plunge is tomorrow I'm really looking forward to that it's going to be brisk but you know more like a spa Brad I appreciate the uh the funding he did say in his note may I share that he really hoped it would be extra polary tomorrow but I'm not sure it's going to be that way finally I'm I'm very pleased and delighted to be a part of the Shark Tank for Mrs Stuckey's class uh her biological Stooky I'm sorry what did I say Stuckey Stooky it's Stukey thank you well uh Biomedical Advancements or ideas and I'm looking forward to being being able to venture fund millions of dollars for some upand cominging brilliant idea actually last year's were pretty amazing so if you get a chance to drop in at some point please
155uh volunteer when it comes around again you'll be doing it with me and my kiddo is in the class oh you going to be there I'm on there's March 4th and March 5th what's your date um I told her I do oh okay I have to do only March 5th March 5th as well all right good well good we see some of you there then thank you um we're at the uh consent agenda part of the u a agenda the consent agenda 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 anyone or all be considered individually do I have a a motion to to authorize the consent agenda as printed so
156move Steben Steben any support support Estep thank you Susan Estep all in favor please say I I I oppose great thank you very much um items on the next agenda Mr Laatsch Superintendent Laatsch uh yes we'll have a DEIAC Report and a Community Education Report and then we're also going to do the uh First Quarterly Super Superintendent Evaluation Review in Closed Session fantastic thank you very much um the next Board Meeting will be held on um Tuesday March 12th at 6:30 uh we are I'd like to entertain a motion to enter into Close Session of the Board of Education meeting at 8:36 well actually we'll be there probably about 8 8:40 uh with the intent of reopening at how long will we take uh Carol half hour half an hour 20 minutes okay we'll see
157you in uh 9ish 9ish we'll see for the purpose of Collective Bargaining 8c of the open meetings act under 8c a simple majority vote is sufficient to enter into Closed Session do we have a motion please so move Steben Steben is it Tim thank you Tim is seconding all in favor please say I I hi thank you um opposed no opposed so we will see you in Closed Session we'll move out the people in the audience who shouldn't be here any longer and thank you very much for staying Zach students thank you very much we uh without objection I would like to adjourn the regular Board of Education meeting of February 27th 2024 at 9:32 thank you oh now it's official than thank you everyone see you in a