001foreign right now yep thank you okay oh she hasn't started officially yeah well they never tried yet in English this is I'm getting used yeah I was at the middle school and I'm like walking around with my map and the schedule on my phone I know I know somebody's like you know where you're going and I'm like no I don't T minus 20 seconds good evening I'd like to welcome everybody to the Board of Education meeting of September 12 2023 I know we can all smell the fall weather in the air conditioning so uh standing as you are able we're going to do the Pledge of Allegiance and it'll be led by Mr Brad Gerbe thank you everybody this is our public comment section a member of the public may address the board briefly for
002up to three minutes or request to be scheduled on the agenda of a future meeting please note that students will be given priority to speak on any topic the first public participation section of the of the meeting will be limited to one half hour 30 minutes normally and limited to agenda items the second public participation portion will be offered at the end of the agenda to allow for any other comment individuals addressing the board should take in to consideration the rules of common courtesy public participation portion cannot be used to make personal attacks against a board member district employee or student we have six okay okay we have Mr we have six comments this evening and I'll let you know who's on deck so we're starting with Ann Jeffers followed by on deck is Cory
003Belote because this is you know baseball season say on deck thank you okay so I'm here expressing my disappointment in you the board the majority of you ran on campaigns that were Pro DEI and pro LGBTQ inclusion but your feedback on the opt-out policy is either for parents rights we're focused on non-issues like frog dissections and calorie counting I have yet to hear a parent speak at the podium on these non-issues instead what I've heard is a loud cry against the policy by parents of LGBTQ kids who fear erasure from the curriculum what I have also heard is anti-LGBTQ bigotry being spouted off at the podium so vile that my child and I had to walk out of a policy committee meeting geared toward gathering community feedback ironically using the Bridges of Civility you are
004not allies and this is clear in how you choose to treat the very few black and LGBTQ people who have served on your board a word of advice when people representing a marginalized community tell you that a policy has potential heart it is good practice to listen to them the opt-out policy in Saline is not being considered in a vacuum there is a nationwide effort to use opt-out policies to erase black and LGBTQ content from the curriculum but you choose to ignore it Trustee Estep very eloquently stated this at the last meeting and you were quick to change the subject back to eating disorders a non-issue that could easily and discreetly be worked out with the school social worker the DEIAC advised you that the language that you advise you to have language prohibiting opt
005out based on identity and you chose to ignore it the public has raised similar concerns and yet you pat yourself on the back for creating this masterful opt-out policy based on some of the things said at the last meeting I want to make you aware that you the board are overwhelmingly out of touch with what is actually going on in the district parents are already opting their kids out of SEL and Hornet time parents are already having their kids removed from teachers who are too woke parents are already pushing to have flags removed from classrooms if you don't know what's going on in your District frankly you have no business being on this board lastly I keep hearing the same argument in support of religious freedoms have any of you read policy 2270 on religion
006in the curriculum religious opt-outs are already covered in the policy and it is a beautifully written policy why on Earth do we need to have an even broader opt-out policy that provides no limits on the topics to be opted out of a policy that is written such that any old bigot can opt their kid out of materials containing LGBTQ or black people thank you thank you very much um Cory Belote followed by David Rosenfeld all right good evening in regards to the opt-out policy I've considered myself lucky I don't have to stress over getting my kids lesson plan or book list for the trimester so that I can research the list for a topic to opt out of I believe every child deserves to see themselves represented in their school and that my blue-eyed white
007children need to learn about and be around kids who are different from them I always thought that it must be fear that caused parents to have their kid opt out of a story are they that afraid that their kid will become gay or transgender because they hear a story read to them or they read a book themselves about an LGBTQ person or family recently though a friend explained to me that she thought it wasn't fear so much as it was her strong religious conviction that caused them to opt out of a topic that made me think about my family and my religion I left the Catholic church that we had been members of since 2000 because it did not accept my child I chose my child over my church God created my child and gave
008that child to me so I found a new church recently one that is welcoming accepting and best of all loving interestingly enough the prayers are basically the same most of the songs are the same there's less kneeling but the major major difference between my new Christian church and the last is inclusion everyone is welcome our Bishop is a woman and she happens to be a lesbian so now I'm thinking that I should follow what other parents are doing and in the name of my religion get a list of my kids books and lesson plans because now I'm going to have to opt my kid out of all books based on heterosexual cisgender families because I find that material to be personably personally objectionable thank you thank you Cory Belote David Rosenfeld and on deck Viva
009Rosenfelt the bottom line is this can you hear me okay allowing parents to opt their kids out of lessons and or teaching materials merely because they contain LGBTQ representation or because they contain let's say the truth about racism in our country is wrong it's contrary to best practices it's contrary to Michigan Board of Education guidance and is contrary to Saline Area School's own mission and compass it also harms kids it harms LGBTQ kids and other marginalized kids the most but really for reasons that have been explained to you by myself and others it harms all SAS students across the board and yet that is precisely what the board seems poised to do against your own legal counsel's advice by ratifying the policy that is under consideration tonight the ability to opt students out of public
010school curricula is not as has been made abundantly clear a right parents have under the law rather it is a privilege which you seem prepared to extend to them even though you know or should know that doing so will continue to make SAS a hostile environment for many marginalized students as has been pointed out to you by others this policy is being exploited by certain Saline parents as a part of a Nation as part of a nationwide effort by elements of the far right to either prevent or severely restrict inclusive education in public schools the battle Is by no means unique to our district if you truly believe what you say that you want our schools to be inclusive spaces where all Saline students can feel safe and learn and receive the highest quality education
011possible then I suggest you take a hard stand tonight do what you are elected to do and tell parents that they cannot opt their kids out of educationally and developmentally appropriate inclusive lessons and if they do so no alternative lessons will be provided and the lessons will not be excused thank you thank you Mr Rosenfeld Viva Viva Rosenfeld followed by Ken Ming Fan um seems like there's a common theme tonight so far with statements um this has been something that's been on my mind for several months now and I'm gonna start off with Former School Board trustee Candace Jones in February of 2022 sat there on the at those tables with most of you all and talked about her child's experience of being called the n-word School Board came up with a statement and people
012on this board talked about how disgusting that was then we come almost a year later May 2023 and one of your colleagues partners spouses get up gets up here and tells you about their child's bullying and harassment and there's silence from this board who mostly all of you ran on DEI platforms the disgust that I have that you've shown is beyond and and by now um passing this policy you are codifying what you were showing the District is okay your anti-harassment your anti-bullying and your hate speech policies much voided by this policy because you have said it's okay to opt out of lessons that pertain to someone don't call yourselves allies if you can't actually represent the people you said you're representing I mean the environment you're creating is going to continue to trickle down
013and not leave this District at all that is why I pulled my children out of this District and in no way am I going to tell anyone to send their child here if they are from a marginalized group because you all are showing them you don't support them it's a disgrace shame on you for not acknowledging the child that was harassed of your colleague but shame on you even more for not protecting the rest of the kids out there that need to be protected from the parents that stand up here and speak their hate week after week [Applause] I'm the last one Sunny Indo and followed by Tiffany Alexander thank you Ken Ming Fan local residents local social entrepreneurs I have three things to share with you number one I want to thank the wonderful
014world by Tracy director of FSAS I try to sell and tell the city council everybody brought a million dollars and have a wonderful lunch we need to raise money and there is such I'm here one of the reason is that we really have to think bigger picture Saline is great school a lot of people have all kinds of opinion come over and send the kid to the public school use taxpayers money but that's not enough that's why FSA FSAS it is about however the bigger picture is there are tons of more money down there the nice couple Eric and Wendy Schmidt they have the foundation kind of right talented people can apply good project comply they will support why don't we try to get that money so on behind that this is the first thing
015second thing is I want to thank the trustee Susan and Jenny the good work allow we have a chance to talk about all of the racial discrimination things but there are some schedule we have more urgent things because when they graduate they got together jobs the school have three things more than just one thing education education education education first they have to learn at least stamps and also other things such as biomimics and other things secondly they can educate by themselves and thirdly they educate us so AI chat GPT all of the neither younger people to lead us which is last time I talked to you guys are a volunteer at we met so both of them are the student leaders I think we should have three because if they should have one vote three
016of them if agree worth one vote to decide but anyway they joined people like me to follow the queen of volunteering this town and they raised a lot of money so we have to say that this is positive things everybody should learn I learned a lot from them so the volunteerism is the spirit of this town not just liberation freedoms so time if so everything you guys from rock and roll from Bible we need to consider time is what did I say it's time for everything so now we should really really think about what is most urgent things thank you so much Tiffany Alexander thank you hello so everybody knows where I stand and what this policy needs and should be about um one sentence it needs to have teeth that says you cannot just
017opt out of identities um so I'm not going to repeat everything I've ever said clearly people are going to opt out of my child so I'm going to tell you a little bit about my child and if anybody wants to opt out I guess they can just walk out because that's the only thing they can do unlike applying to opt out of my child my child has multiple identities they are black they are non-binary they are pansexual they turn 17 in November they just got their driver's license my child served on SEAB for this school district my child currently serves on a youth council um and we'll be interviewing that should be interviewing right now with MOASH for their sex education youth Council my child took a pre-college college course at College for Creative Studies
018this summer in transportation design which is their long-term goal they were one of eight children in the entire country to receive a full scholarship for that they are currently in the dual enrollment program that Saline provides that's where they just came from and another college course they are one of two kids in the entire class who are high school students the rest are all freshmen and sophomore um my child is kind courageous my child chooses to not be on social media they were not allowed until last year but have chosen not to because I did not like the drama my child is miraculously impervious to peer pressure if you try to pressure them into something they just don't want anything to do with you my child has stood up to conversion therapists who told them
019to their face that their opinions didn't matter people in the room said we were going to stand up for your kid but they did not need any help my child is plight well respected by their teachers their admin during COVID when I was sick for 27 days and my husband still had to work they raised their little sister for those 27 days because there was nobody else to do it what you're encouraging some of you anyway is opting out of my child the reality is my child is not a harm when they say it's my parents rights to protect my kid this is the child you want to protect them from my child has never harmed anybody in this District although my child has a lot of things to say to certain people in this
020District they would never be rude or disrespectful to anyone they were raised better than that they deserved to walk into the school and see themselves thank you [Applause] thank you Tiffany we have two items for the an extended public comment this evening and Mr Kavin Arul will join us he is a Saline Middle School student 8th grader senior patrol leader Troop 416. Cool Kids Say the 416. I don't know I just is that actually I don't know I'm sorry thanks for joining us tonight we've been working at trying to get Kevin here for for quite a while and I'm glad it worked out to move the slide I gotta do I just oh sorry he's working on some technical issues foreign good evening everyone my name's Kavin Arul um I'm I go to Saline Middle
021School I am currently in eighth grade I've been part of The Scouting Organization for around eight years now I've been part of troop 416s or Boy Scouts for three years and I've been a part of Cub Scouts for five I'm the senior patrol leader of troop 416 which means which is the highest youth leadership position in our troop currently before we start I would like to talk about what Boy Scouts is or noun it now it is called Scouts BSA I don't think a lot of people understand how big the scouting organization is the BSA organization is one of the largest scouting youth organizations in the United States being a part of a troop is just one unit of that Boy Scouts was founded in 1910 and in February 19 2019 girls were able to
022join this organization so now if you go around you may see not only boys troops but now girls troops I'd like to talk a bit about our troops history I'm part of troop 416 like I said on the top the dragon patch is our emblem you will see it on the back of our neckerchiefs and our trailer has it on the side we have this emblem because in Welsh, Wales we have a troop that is the exact same troop which is troop 416. our troop has served the community for over 50 years for Saline Area Schools and not only Saline Area Schools but the whole Saline community our troop was established in 1970 by the Saline Jaycees club with only six Scouts which is not allowed to start with we presented our first Eagle Scout
023in in 1976 which is the highest rank you can earn in scouting on January 1st 2020 Mr. Josh Fraley became our scout master and since our troop was established we have we have presented over 70 Eagle Scouts our troop is a very youth-led troop so which means all of us here as you can see run the troop as SPL I'm in charge of the whole rroop which means I have the most responsibility in the troop for doing this I have the help of my assistant senior patrol leader Nick would you like to stand up for this that's my assistant senior patrol leader and I also have Xander Powers who couldn't make it today but he helps with all the new Scouts that join our troop and show them around our troop and make sure they
024feel comfortable Nick Gehringer helps me run the meetings all the way to campouts we have then we have our three official patrols which we have our three patrol leaders only one of them could make it Drew DeCaro would you like to stand up so he runs one specific patrol so there's around like seven people let's say in a patrol and they make sure all the jobs get done with using those uh scouts then we have our two other Patrol Leaders and then we have our Assistant Patrol Leaders who help them out now that none of them could make it today but all of us right here make up the PLC or the Patrol Leader Council the Patrol Leader Council gets together once a month to plan meetings all the way to campouts all the way
025to High Adventures for that month nope nope like I said our troop is a very youth-led troop and before I get into any of these activities I would like to explain what a youth-led troop means to us a youth-led troop means that our troop like I said runs all the thing activities and service projects for the whole troop but we do have some adult leaders our Adult Leadership pPositions are Scout Masters Assistant Scout Masters Community Committee Chairman and all the committee members our Scout Masters Mr. Josh Fraley and then we have our assistant scout master Chris Myers Doug Franklin and at one of our Scout Masters could make it today Mr DeCaro would you like to stand up for this he is one of our Scout Assistant Scout Masters who also helps Mr Josh Fraley
026supervise us we have our adult leadership positions to supervise us for safety and they're the people who really book our campouts so um then we have our Committee Chairman Christopher Wall he is in charge of the committee the committee has over 15 members and I couldn't fit all of their names and everything so I put 15 members now we can get into the activities we do as a troop our troop does a lot of service projects for Saline Area Schools and most of them are Eagle Projects these projects have benefited Saline Schools by we had one of our Eagle Scouts landscape the west entrance of the high school we had another of our Eagle Scouts make portable steps for the rowing team and not only that not only Eagle Projects but us as a troop
027give service to our churches where we meet up Christ Our King Church is where we have our meetings and we help our Cub Scout Packs around us and many more a big thing about our troop is we take leadership very seriously this gives a chance for each and every scout who joins our troop to really know what it means to be a leader for that once you earn a certain rank you go on it around a week-long weekend camp out called NYLT or National Youth Leadership Training in this they will teach you how to be a leader for the position you have taken or will be taking they'll train you for that whole week our trip also teaches a lot of citizenship skills self-confidence and public speaking for example today I will be speaking in
028front of all of you today our troop goes camping year round which means we go on at least one camp out per month we've gone on over 12 campouts in the past year and we go on one thing that our troop really likes summer camp summer camp is where you go on a week-long campout in the summer and this year we went to Camp Rotary in Clare, Michigan and our troop that goes camping year round we also go camping in the summer I mean in the winter our troop goes camping in the winter under 32 degrees Fahrenheit over 24 hours and once you do that reach that requirement you earn a polar bear award and our troop has earned over four of them in the past year our troop goes on High Adventures towards the
029end of uh summer to last year we went to Florida National High Adventure Sea Base where we got to get on a boat for a week and snorkel and swim in the ocean for a week which was really nice and then two weeks ago we came back from our Great Lake Sailing Adventure trip where we also got on a boat did a bunch of sailing in the Great Lakes and got to go to Mackinac City Mackinac Island and a few places in the upper peninsula next year we are planning to go to Northern Tier High Adventure it's where you take canoe you go canoeing with all your gear and have to carry that canoe it's a lot um and then we go in 2025 we go to Philmont Scout Ranch which is one of the
030highest which is the most known High Adventures around the US it's where you go hiking on different elevations for around 100 miles and then there's Summit Summit is another hiking kind of high adventure you also do for a week our troop does many more activities during campouts and outside of campouts a one that's picked every year and the way we pick campouts the PLC comes up well our leaders come up with a bunch of places we could possibly go and put it in a form and send it out to our troops so our troop gets to decide where we go for that year a place that always gets picked is indoor biking at Ray's Indoor Mountain Biking Park in Cleveland Ohio this place had amazing time where every year all of us get to go
031biking inside and they took a factory took everything out and just put a bunch of biking stuff in it another thing our troop does like I said is help our Cub Scouts around us and a big thing they do is the Pinewood Derby Pinewood Derby they make a little car put it down on track and see who's goes the fastest some people aim for aim for creativity and this we open a workshop for around three days and each morning all the way to like six o'clock in the afternoon we have people come in and we help them build their cars and everything then our troop goes canoeing and kayaking a lot during campouts and we go winter sports in the winter shooting sports horse riding hiking and swimming these were some pictures we did like
032that top picture is from the Memorial Day Parade and then we have snow camp out hiking bottom picture snorkeling these are all the pictures from our activities we've done before I conclude this presentation I would like to talk about one of my favorite things to do in this troupe I really think a really good thing I love about this troop is our leadership I like how everyone takes it very seriously and everybody gets to learn even if they didn't take a leadership position how to become a leader our troop goes on many high adventures and the past one two I put down were the past two I've been to amazing experience you will never forget our troop as many community service feels amazing to give back to your community and schools and all the activities
033we do but most importantly I really enjoy spending time with my friends and my troop thank you thank you very much Kavin um I I just want to say very quickly before I open to quick questions from the group I want to thank you for being a scout I was a scout for years and years as well I think I may I probably tell you that every time I see you and my friends in in Tucson Arizona say what's the big deal about a winter campout you know but I know what a winter camp outs like at minus 30 degrees it's it's it's a challenge indeed so I want to thank you for also for supporting Saline Area Schools and the community as well and if there are any questions from the rest of the
034crew please feel free to grab my attention Ms Estep can you give me tips on public speaking I think I've personally thought is I've never memorized any scripts I've always kept a few bullet points but that's it just a lot of practice oh my gosh Trustee Miller thanks for coming tonight I'll echo like the amazing public speaking incredible and and what a representative you are for our community and for Boy Scouts um I was just going to say that um I've appreciated many of the Eagle Scouts um uh projects that have really transformed a lot of spaces in our schools but also in our community at large and so um I applaud all of you for your efforts in that and I know that that takes a lot of time and commitment and it isn't
035just the project but it's all of the pieces that go along with that so um Bravo to all of those Eagle Scouts and then I just wanted to say that I think that um the Boy Scouts especially those who've reached the status the highest status in honor of Eagle Scout just go on to do incredible things and um I think that that Philmont Scout Ranch the the hiking a friend of ours did it a couple of years ago I think his dad had to train for six months so he could so he could join him and it was like a training like a marathon training program so if any of your dads or moms or anyone is going with you I recommend uh training ahead of time but that young man went on to be
036awarded a spot at the Air Force Academy and so I think that that just speaks to the incredible opportunity that Boy Scouts does in preparing future generations so congratulations thank you for coming tonight and and sharing about your troop in particular thank you our student representative um I am a part of Lithuanian Boy Scouts so I understand like all the community service and all that stuff and it's super cool I just have a quick question about your winter campouts so when you winter camp out do you stay in tents or have you ever made like an igloo to stay out and so the most of us stay in tents but Nick do you want to stand up so Nick almost hasn't stayed intent in almost like two years now he's taking it you want to
037talk about it hey Nick if you're gonna talk can you come up and talk at the podium that way if anyone's watching on live stream they can hear you as well we want to hear the story and a couple of other of our scouts do around some trees or some scout staves which are just poles and we just stake down the tarp and sleep underneath it thank you very much my my first tent I had to throw out because a bear tore a hole in it while we were in it so um yeah it's a story if if just before you all leave if the whole troop could stand up and then we can just say thanks very much go right ahead and then thank you very much Mr Caro for [Applause] thanks Kavin I
038appreciate that thank you oh there you are hiding hiding behind Libby good evening so I'm Stacy Rumpsa the Executive Director for the Foundation for Saline Area Schools and we have a lot going on in the next few months that I wanted to bring everybody up to speed on first is our Hall of Fame that's going to be coming up on September the 22nd that's the party on the patio where we honor the inductees and their family and friends it's an alumni event but the next night on the 23rd at seven o'clock is the induction ceremony at the auditorium at the high school which is where the the six inductees will be able to talk about their experience in the district years ago and we're going to have a dessert buffet after that those being represent
039are those being inducted are Meg A Jeryc-Scaling and she was she's a distinguished alumni as well as Amalie Nash and then we have Jake I'm sorry I can't read Jeré “Doc” Hassberger some of you may remember him as well as Joe Schwartz Ann Pellegrino and Bruce Ross who are all distinguished educators so we have that coming up the um next big thing that we have coming up you'll see here is the uh the Foundation luncheon cultivating lifelong Learners with the tagline from Little Acorns Mighty Oaks Grow so this is a free lunch that is uh sponsored by brood Awakenings and it's going to be in a new location it's going to be at the Saline Middle School gymnasium to show off the recent renovation and it's open to everybody and again it's free it
040is October the 5th as you'll see up there um yeah from 12 to 1 and we're also going to be highlighting four grants um to kind of give everyone a snapshot of what the foundation's funds are used for and we'll have teachers and some of their students on hand to present those grants um the next thing that we have coming up well I shouldn't say the next but we are bringing blue jeans and bling back so that is going to be at the Sheraton this time and it's on March the 9th and so our committee is actively working on all the details and so more information will be coming about out about that as well I did forget to mention there are postcards out there on the table that give all the information QR code
041to register on the back or you can go to our website so anyone interested can pick up that and then the last thing that I have is this morning our Board of dress T Board of Trustees met and have agreed to they approved a budget of ninety thousand dollars for this school year for grants so a lot going on does anybody have any questions the date in March where there will not be an ice storm yes those of you who are not aware the last one got canceled because of power so and yet you you managed to raise a lot of money we did you forget those efforts you continued on that's right we're gonna try it again and this time I have power [Laughter] well thank you thank you thank you um I did
042have a response to public comment but I'm going to postpone that and to hold that in under a balance until next meeting um revisions and approval of the agenda items may be added or deleted from the meeting agenda and or the order may be changed at the request of an individual board member or the superintendent the agenda must be approved before uh proceeding further I think there are some changes I'd I could like to entertain a motion to approve the agenda as revised um yes as revised to add a finance report to discussion should we could we just have the motion first Association I'd like to recommend a motion to revise the agenda and support supported by Jenny Miller thank you uh so let's have your let's have your rationale man uh we had our
043finance committee meeting today so um Treasurer Gerby could report out discussion item number two in addition to our policy team and then I believe you wanted number seven student showcase removed yes student showcase uh will be postponed this evening thank you and I will say that I'm prepared to to provide said report so and I understand it we'll be brief and to the point I will try my best thank you very much sir all right all in favor please say aye aye aye opposed and we have an agenda thank you the uh Mr Ellis you are on uh this evening every as as we've done every year since I've ever been on this board we've got a chance to meet the newest hires to the district and I'll let you take it away sir thank
044you thank you I am really happy and proud to introduce to you tonight a number of our new hires who have been patiently waiting out in the hallway um we have a number of them here tonight not all of them as you might suspect um but you're going to see a group of people that some of whom have been working diligently all summer doing professional development some of whom were hired very very recently so they're going to come in introduce themselves to you I hope we all give them the warm Saline welcome that we're famous for so if you want to come on in and introduce yourselves it's a long line of people I can tell you that yeah hi good afternoon my name is Jacqueline Larios I have a masters from the University of
045Michigan and I'm the new Spanish teacher hi I'm Kathryn Souders I graduated from Eastern Michigan University and I am joining the Alternative Liberty School team good evening everybody my name is Jeff Harwood I'm a graduate of Oakland University and Eastern Michigan University and I'll be the new counselor at the middle school hello I'm Mike Mortensen I graduated from Eastern Michigan I have my masters from Marygrove and I'm teaching sixth grade at Saline Middle School good evening I'm Mike Sekerak I graduated from Eastern Michigan University and I'm a para educator at Heritage Hi my name is Danielle Indurante and I graduate from the Saline Young Adult Program and I am at transportation hi I'm Cadence Jones and I graduated from Tecumseh and I am a para at Heritage hi I'm Nicole Foster I went to Eastern
046Michigan University and I'm the art teacher at Harvest Elementary I'm Karly Melkonian I graduated from Alma College and I'm a new Literacy Interventionalist at Harvest hi I'm Allie Holecek I went to Wayne State University and I'm one of the speech pathologists at Woodland Meadows this year hi I'm Emma Stafne graduated from Saline last year and I'm going to Washtenaw right now and I'm one of the Paras at Woodland Meadows uh hi I'm Alayna Musson I graduated from Saline High School I currently attending EMU and I am a para at Woodland Meadows hi I'm Kristi Campbell and I'm from Manchester and I am a para educator over at Woodland Meadows hi I'm Christine Kane a military family just moved back in the area and I'm a para at Woodland Meadows hello I'm Gabrielle Udell I went
047to school at Adrian College and I am hired through the SWWC as an Exercise Science and Sports Medicine technician hi my name is Justice Manchester I got my bachelor's from Siena Heights University and my master's from Barry University and I am the social emotional learning coach at Heritage and at Woodland Meadows hi I'm Kathryn Irfan I went to Virginia and Wesleyan University and I am also a social emotional learning coach and I'm at Harvest and Pleasant Ridge hi I'm Stacey Williamson-Carotta I graduated from U of M and I'm the school social worker at Heritage good evening Gary Scheske Building Trades technician and I have extensive work knowledge in the industry hi I'm Alyssa Baird and I am a fifth grade teacher at Heritage hi my name is Adam Ditri I graduated from Albion College and
048I also help teach the exercise science and Sports Med class with Miss Udell so hi I'm Emily Cohen I got my bachelor's and master's degree from Michigan State University and I am a school social worker at Saline Middle School and the ECSC program at Liberty hi I'm Alyssa Ballestero I am a special education teacher at Saline Middle School and I graduated from Eastern Michigan hi I'm Monica Sullivan I got my bachelor's at the University of Cincinnati and my Master's at the University of Toledo and I'm the social emotional learning coach at the middle school hi I'm Sara Forche I graduated from Western Michigan University and I'm a resource room teacher at the middle school hi I'm Nicole Rogan I graduated from the University of Michigan and Eastern Michigan University and I'm teaching English at the
049high school hi I'm Brian Stukey and I got my bachelor's degrees in master's degrees from Michigan State and I'm coming from Birmingham after 17 years there and I'm excited to be teaching physics at the high school hi my name is Katelyn DaMour I just graduated with my master's from Eastern Michigan University and I'm teaching special education at the high school hi there my name is Nate Gala I'm a Saline grad a Michigan State grad I'll be teaching math the high school hello my name is Jamie DeBrincat I'm a University of Michigan grad and I'm also teaching math at Saline High School hi I'm Lauren Williams I graduated with my undergrad at Western and then my Master's at Northern and I will be teaching family and consumer science at the high school hi I'm Carmen Chubb
050I graduated from Eastern Michigan University I actually did my student teaching here a long time ago with Patina Hopes at Saline and I'm happy to be back taking over the German program at Saline middle school and Saline High School I'm Abby Miller I graduated from Kent State University and I am an HR coordinator here at Liberty hello I'm Kara Stemmer former marketing teacher and I am currently the Director of the South South and West Washtenaw Consortium thanks thank you hello I am Kyle Zagata I attended Eastern Michigan University I am a dean of students at both the high school and the middle school hello everyone I'm Lukas Coker I went to Augusta University and I teach special ed at the high school fitting that I'm the last and some probably the most recent hire oh
051really okay okay I'm Donald Colucci our retired attorney from San Francisco and I've just been hired as a school bus driver [Applause] [Music] [Applause] we saved school bus driver for last and we've hired another one since we're working on those I'm telling you but this represents about half the people that we've hired and so really happy to have them here and again if you just continue to give them that warm Saline welcome I'm going to go out front and take a picture of them while you continue the meeting so thank you thank you very much Donald Colucci will attest this I gave him a big hug when I saw him oh my gosh yeah there you go there you go and that's why and I have been keeping track I count 11 from Eastern Michigan
052University where I teach so I thank you hey hey it's just it's it's a an 11 and and three from other places um but there's no gambling of course uh we have a couple of action items one as this is you're on the um is uh I like to entertain a motion to approve the minutes of the August 22nd closed session for the purposes of collective bargaining 8C of the open meetings act do we have those minutes oh that's why I was saying you're wrong motion first of all motion Gerbe thank you Mr Gerbe and second second Mr Austin thank you those of you who are in the audience new to this this is a closed session so we can't share the uh the uh the top secret minutes but uh we'll do a quick
053review of them hand them back and uh you may sit there yes oh Mr Fan I have something for you sir Mr Fan I have something for you yeah I did I have yeah I'll make sure they get it Mr Fan took photographs of our joint retreat so thank you thank you sir thank you all in favor of approving the minutes of our closed session of August 22nd please say aye aye opposed all right hearing none we have minutes thank you we have one scheduled report this evening from Kara Davis Director of Teaching and Learning this is our update on the continuous Improvement back to school edition I love that thank you I know and it is a part of our annual cadence of reports in terms of our continuous improvement process so we're really
054looking forward to presenting to you this evening when I say we tonight I have with me Caroline Stout our District MTSS Coordinator who'll be jumping up here momentarily along with Jennifer Nelson our Literacy Coach who's halftime Literacy Coach and also halftime Instructional Designer and then Beth Russo our Secondary MTSS Coordinator so we'll be alternating back and forth and as usual for my normal presentation there are a lot of slides Our intention is not to go through every single slide with you this evening but to have them on record and for reference especially for those folks who might see them after the board report posted online thank you so our hopes for this presentation are to review our district continuous Improvement plan because this is about the sixth time that I've given this presentation because we're
055in a really good cadence now I'm going to go through it pretty quickly while also highlighting our 22/23 data story so for both local data as well as our state assessment data and then our continuous Improvement plan which includes our action steps and our strategies to address areas that we've identified as focus needs as a reminder for listeners and for new people in the audience Dr Laatsch had identified District Focus areas as of last year and we're sticking with a continuous focus on these four areas academic rigor culture of equity civility and unity and improving SAS for the future and these four areas alongside of our District Continuous Improvement Goals really help guide our work in our professional development and our work towards student success they act as our guide rails in one way shape
056or another in terms of how we define our time and energy at the district level as well as at the building level and and also with our funding choices that we're making so at this time of year we are really setting up for success and launching so part of quarter three is where we are resetting our as a district after having reviewed all of our district data from the past year including the survey results from our quality survey that I presented on in August and our actual testing results including our local and state testing assessment results onboarding all of our teacher leaders and our building administrators so that they are aware and a part of the conversation and have some voice inside of the planning process and then inspiring actions for the upcoming year which
057is now this academic year and clarifying that path so at this point in time we've already done a couple of iterations with our ability our district level staff internally in terms of sharing these goals with them and we've also started to roll out the data as well so our Continuous Improvement Goals we have two in our Michigan Continuous Improvement plan one of which is increase the overall rates of mastery and content areas as measured by local assessments course grades among students regardless of subgroup by increasing staff competency in the use of evidence-based cultural responsive instruction and the other is strengthen social emotional support models in order to positively impact stakeholder reporting of SAS Services is measured by the biennial perceptions of equity survey in the annual District quality survey and as reported on in August
058we did shift our focus at the district level to focusing our resources towards the social emotional learning that our teachers were asking for support in regards to creating safe supportive spaces for all of our students having the tools and strategies that they need to be responsive inside of our school buildings and be able to provide those spaces where our students can really thrive academically academically our focus areas for that particular goal tend to happen within our curriculum review department meetings and then of course admin meeting as well with that I'm going to turn it over to Caroline thank you hi thank you for having us so we wanted to highlight this slide because this is something that we used last fall actually with a lot of our teachers and we used again this year we
059are really trying to shift a culture here around the use of assessment and data to drive instruction in our district for reasons that are far beyond us we have had some confusion some fear around assessment and testing data in the past and sometimes some conflicting priorities where folks have felt like maybe assessment or using data as the enemy innovation or you can be data driven and also focused on the whole child or SEL so we're trying really hard to not only demystify some of those increase coordination around this align our goals district-wide um but also developed a shared understanding of what we're measuring why um and align that with everything from our goals that we report on at the state level down to the work happening with each individual student to ensure that they get
060the best education that they can so for that it involves a lot of little Kara and I meeting and T&LT meeting and a lot of meetings with everybody but a lot of aligning practices and systems and just making sure that we are doing this work for the right reasons not just to check a compliance box and really working this year on shared ownership and mutual support and collaboration around this so Jenn Nelson is going to describe some of the professional development that we've launched on this and some of the work that we're going to be doing with teachers around a new data protocol there's only three questions that we're going to be doing throughout the year with teachers so now for a whole bunch of slides with a whole bunch of numbers on them um
061and we so some of these are the same we left some of these slides in here because we are aware that sometimes these get shared and so we always wanted to have that context so here's one slide with uh understanding Acadience understanding NWEA if by now you still have questions feel free to ask them um this slide I had I had shown last year just kind of talking about how each of our assessments kind of measures something slightly different and I feel that you know some of the assessments that we've chosen here that we're going to interpret first are the ones that are probably easiest for us to really use to measure and understand the impact of the shifts that we've made with curriculum and instruction over the years so first we're going to go
062over the kind of local data trends and then we're going to go over what we term state assessment but these local data trends again because we're trying to be better and and coordinate better we actually also use these for our state assessments so this is a snapshot and then the graphs are coming next so we're going to look at Acadience first and then NWEA and reading first and then math so with Acadience um you know there's a lot of good news to celebrate here we have a lot of areas that have improved last year over the year before in a couple of short weeks we'll have updated scores for the fall we actually just started collecting that data this week um and so there's a lot to celebrate there's also a lot to celebrate in
063the foundational skills which is an area that Jenn Nelson has led a lot of professional development around we've been doing a lot with um curriculum shifts there which is very exciting um in for NWEA which we use fourth through eighth we have students who continue to outperform the norm which is really exciting especially because the Norms haven't been updated since the summer of 2020. um so we do still have most grades where at least 80 percent of our students score above the 40th percentile not all of them but most there are some grades in which for a couple years we were seeing a downward trend during the pandemic and that has started to correct and there's some grades like 7th and eighth that are not correcting that yet so that's something I'm eager to dig
064into with T&LT um and then another that we are considering how to start reporting differently on is We are continuing to see disproportionality in our assessment outcomes for students with minoritized and marginalized identities um what we haven't quite figured out is how to track that over the years without showing you 35 different graphs and like what are some good markers of that so I'm going to show you that but again know that this is kind of a work in progress so um we're going to go pretty quick through these again I think you you had access to this back in the spring but hopefully you weren't spending your whole summer on it um so this is uh kindergarten you can see the very last Red Bar was last year so fall winter spring this was
065this in Reading in terms of K3 this is probably a most challenging grade and not just with reading that's why it was challenging these are the students who are two and three when the pandemic hit I don't have a perfect explanation for it we've hypothesized here what that could be um you know we are continuing to see some good outcomes but not like some of the next slides that you'll see so here if you focus especially on Spring and first grade you see a nice like stair going up with the highest step being the last one which we're almost to near pre-pandemic levels same with second grade so when we hit that 80 percent and above benchmark that's really what we're aiming for we know we're we're always going to aim for 100 but we're
066probably not going to get there consistently but at least 80 percent is a sign of a healthy system overall third grade again trending up which is really lovely to see especially for the last three years in a row um this is the the graph that I create that shows that disproportionality so again green in this case our code is always green meaning at benchmark so the minimum level to have a good chance of meeting the next big reading goal year out yellow meaning some risk where there's a 50 50 kind of chance of being that reading goal year out and then red meaning significant risk so we continue to see certain groups for instance students with IEPs who continue to show more risk you know some of that does make sense but obviously we want
067to we want to work on that we have accelerated supports for a reason there um now we go into NWEA so again NWEA has always been harder for us to affect directly it's a computer adaptive test so the test is different for every student and the students just keep going going until they hit that wall so some of it we can account for based on what we're teaching them some of it is the stuff that they've gotten outside of of their time with us but again if you look at you know the last three Falls versus the last three Springs that's kind of the trend that I'm that I'm trying to observe so it's a little bit of a less you know less decrease than we have seen before and some grades look better than
068others and then these are the two that um I don't have an explanation for and again we're going to be looking into more um that one in eighth grade here which is the the lowest that we've seen by the end of the year um this is the same kind of disproportionality graph with NWEA where the colors are broken out into five where red is still the the lowest in terms of percentile is 20th and below and blue is the highest 81st to 100th percentile not the 100 percentile exists but all right thanks Caroline so in terms of our state assessments I'm going to start with evidence-based reading and writing because that is measured on the M-Step the PSAT the SAT and then on some of our AP tests where you see a combination of skills
069there also very optimistic about the results that we're seeing via these data assessments they are harder to use to drive decision making because they we only get the results actually just in August right before school starts so we have to quickly process them and turn them around and align them to the data that we've collected from the previous spring so some you'll see some of the bright spots and areas that we continue to interrogate in terms of needs for improvement so in terms of evidence-based reading and writings Saline students continue to outperform the state overall on all three of those different tests when I talk about third through sixth grade results that's year over year so third to third to third to third so different kids but in the same grade so third through sixth
070grade are starting growth from pre-pandemic to Spring and effectively achieving the results at pre-pandemic levels our seventh grade year-over-year results show a negative trend line across the three years again those are different seventh graders but from 2021 to 22 to 23 so on so forth but what's interesting is that that pattern of low seventh grade performance is consistent with each graduating class I've got a couple of different slides to show you and some you know we've hypothesized on why that might be the case our 8th through 11th grade year over year results show a steady trend line at or above 80 percent official 80 proficient are advanced across the last two years and then our current seventh graders and the 9th through 12th graders outperform their pre-pandemic selves on their respect of 2023 state assessments
071and then of course we still see the continued disproportionality because that is a work in progress in our district So within this slide deck it's always a challenge to know how to tell our data story in a way that makes the most sense so while we look at the Acadience and NWEA results through the lens of year over year but within that same grade level I've got a combination here where on the left hand side you can see the third grade you know fourth grade fifth grade trending across the same grade level and that's where we talk about year over year we can see improvements from the pand from 2019 to now in some of those grade levels and then I also have included the class of we'll call it class of data and I'm
072not going to go through all of them but it gives you a little bit of a story because I know this is something that we've been monitoring really closely is how our of our students responded to the pandemic what is the district done in terms of supports in order to increase their performance as a result of the experience they had in 2020 2021 so in this case you can see that the seventh graders well where they hit the pandemic they were actually in third grade so there wasn't an M-Step test there and um they these are our seventh graders now so this you need to know when we talk about class of that this particular is this is M-Step and these kiddos just took their tests in sixth grade and now they've started seventh grade
073so we're talking about class of that's what what we're referencing there um so you can see there's a positive trend line in that particular area whereas our current 8th graders there there isn't but this is where I mentioned that when you look at seventh grade across time and just an interesting data point and especially for somebody who taught seventh grade for 20 years is that seventh grade seems to be a very difficult year to take a state assessment it could be because of the transition time but as we go through these next graphs you can see like 7th grade in 2022 for our current ninth graders and seventh grade in 2021 for our current 10th graders there tends to be a dip so our hope will be that with our seventh graders this year that
074we see that same up tip because there's great Improvement in the class of 2027 and 2026 as relates to their Reading Writing we're getting at 82 over 82 and then 88 percent proficient and advanced and those are again moving through the test you're moving from M-Step in Middle School to PSAT starting in eighth grade and then on to SAT by the time you get to 11th grade so that's not the same test over and over again but similar concepts here are 11th graders and our current seniors so positive trend line up still outperforming their pre-pandemic selves because we have the data going back that far and still maintaining a high level of performance right at 85 percent for our 11th graders and then almost 79.7 I didn't round um 80 for our current seniors and
075with our current seniors the bigger line there is that we had disrupted testing due to our hybrid year where our testing was optional so we don't have as clear results for those particular years with that particular class I also wanted to incorporate science while science is a targeted test inside of the reading and writing test you have a lot of science and social studies and I wanted to pop this out because again in terms of what we can really look to celebrate as a district we look at science and the story that our science scores are telling and you can see that our science teachers as well as our English teachers are doing such a great job in terms of providing them the skills that they need to be successful so our science scores have
076consistently gone up across the last three years that the test has been given consistently and with the same set of questions and in social studies this is not inconsistent with what we're seeing across the state and in our peer districts in terms of social studies being a lot harder for students to get that passing score on but we are seeing trends in the positive direction so while eighth grade is varied they had a little bump in 2020 uh 2022 and again these are 8th graders eighth graders eighth graders fifth graders fifth third graders so it's not a class of um there's not enough data to do that yet we are seeing improvement in our social studies scores as well and this is frankly an area we spend a lot of time in science a lot
077of time in math and a lot of time in reading and writing and social studies is on the docket for next year as we're part of our curriculum review um yet we are still seeing an improvement with the across the last couple of years where you get those positive trend lines and reducing the number of students who are not demonstrating proficiency so this is just a quick look at our state assessment results I'm going to turn it over to Jenn and Beth to talk a little bit about when we when we notice where there's areas to improve the kinds of steps the district's taking to focus on those areas and impact positive growth good evening everyone so while Kara and Caroline are walking us through the data Beth and I really want to just like
078pause and make sure that we're also centering the work that teachers and students are doing so that we're not just looking at numbers and forgetting about the the students and the teachers um behind that so if you look at this slide you're going to see some literacy related things that was happening in the district last year or might be starting this year and I'm just going to highlight two of those so the first one that I'm going to highlight I'm going to pick two from elementary and then Beth's going to highlight some secondary things on this slide the first thing I want to highlight is I'm going to also give a shout out to the Foundation for Saline Area Schools if you want the full story for this you have to come to the luncheon
079but a little preview and something we're celebrating is that with their partnership we were able to provide more decodable texts for all of our K-2 classrooms and decodable text their books that allow students to practice the specific phonic skills that they're working on and we were able to purchase some really high quality ones that students are really enjoying teachers are using in small group instruction and then on top of that they supported a grant that I wrote with some of the department chairs so that all teachers could have some magnetic letters and materials to teach phonics and phonemic awareness in small groups in a way that's really engaging and impactful and then the second thing that I'm going to highlight is some work that Caroline and I have been doing in the last year which
080is working with a team of kindergarten and first grade teachers to look at the diagnostic assessments that we use at the K-3 level to determine if they were the best fit and make some revisions so through lots of learning with these teachers multiple iterations of possible assessments and then getting feedback from the entire K-3 staff we actually rolled them out this school year which was really exciting we did some training before school started and if you're in a building you'll even see teachers starting to use them right now we're really hopeful that the feedback and the information that's going to be provided on the assessments is going to help teachers better pinpoint the next spot of instruction in literacy and so far our teachers have been really positive about what they're seeing we also are
081pairing that with some of our professional development in K-3 this year so that teachers feel supported on how to use the new assessments but then once they have the results what to do in response to the results I could keep going here but I'm going to pass it on to Beth who's going to highlight some things happening at the secondary level one I'm happy to be here today with a voice for once since last time I was here I wasn't able to actually speak so I will highlight a few things we've been doing at a secondary level as you know this is just the start of year two it's Secondary MTSS so some of the things we're doing are kind of what are some immediate things we can put in place and look at so
082I'll highlight a few things one of which I talked a little bit about this last year but we're using aimswebPlus as a as a tool we can use as a screener benchmarker and progress monitoring we're starting with that mostly with our special ed students the secondary as those teachers were ready to jump in but we trained about I think it was about 25 teachers and it was not all special ed teachers so it's not exclusively those teachers but we're hoping to expand that as we move forward I also want to highlight the way we're using data so we collect the literacy data and we've started to use that and look at how we can use that to inform our students scheduling so two things we did with that data this year were to to look
083at students who struggled in freshman science which is typically biology and see if we could we could put all the data we could years and years all different kinds of data and see if we could find that one thing that pointed to students who maybe need a different track in science because freshman science doesn't have to be biology so we use we found it to be our literacy skills and we really were able to work with the science teachers and the counselors and with parents and students and look at how we can schedule them into their freshman year and start them off on a better foot hopefully another thing we kicked back into action last year was Homework Hive which is after school programming two to three days a week it's run by our teachers
084and we use our at-risk data to determine which students should be invited it used to be a teacher referral process or a council referral process but we're really using data now to drive that that selection process and our Middle School school psychologist really dug into the data as you can imagine and we actually had 95 percent of our students who regularly attended Homework Hive come off of our at-risk list by the end of the by the end of the year so that was exciting foreign thing that I want to point out thank you Beth for for that and Jenn is that when we talk about uh referral versus um using screening data this is something that came up last week I had a meeting of the Washington MTSS collaborative which is a group that I've
085started around the county that now has all the two districts in it which is very exciting um the reason that we do that is because we don't we can know that we don't miss as many kids right if we wait for individual folks to refer there's the potential that we might not be catching everyone that we want to catch but if we use our data instead to look at who's starting to maybe fall behind in their classes or whose attendance is starting to slip then we can make sure that we are casting a big enough net to kind of give the supports to all those who need it not just those that have happened to kind of come up so now going into math and I'm mindful that there's a cricket reminding me of how
086boring I am right now um so the math trends again local assessments but by this we also mean the ones that we're using for State compliance it's just k eight so in math there's a lot of really exciting things to celebrate um in part because we have have started in a different spot than than with reading so we talked last year about the fact that with the start of using acadians math in the pandemic we have understood that there were some gaps in our foundational numeracy skills that needed to be addressed and so we have done already some work there and planning to do more with the consultation with Dr Sarah Powell who's a leading researcher in the field this year and so we're starting to see some nice consistent growth not only fall to
087spring but spring to spring for the last two years and that's very exciting um we also are going to see some increase in our NWEA scores and even in NWEA compared to reading which is really exciting um and just about across the board so I'm going to get to the slides here so this is kindergarten acadians math composite so again like in reading the composite score is going to take all the assessments given at that time together as an overall measure of performance and and risk so if you look at that nice stair step at the end of the year that's what I'm most excited about same thing in first grade same thing in second grade and same thing in third grade and the other exciting thing is that year after year you can see
088over the grades that that's getting higher and higher and then this is again our disproportionality data which is something we're we're trying to work on what format would be better to present it and we're open to suggestions on this one so this is NWEA again if we look at the blue was two years ago there's a nice step down there that was the middle of the pandemic I mean now we're starting to see that correct itself which is really lovely that's fifth grade sixth grade in the same seventh grade is kind of staying flat throughout the year but it was decreasing which is really nice and again this is the percent of students who are scoring at least average so when we're looking at our goal is 80% that means that 80% of our student
089students are scoring above the 40th percentile mark which is a really good place to be and there's this portionality now Kara is going to talk about the state assessments thank you appreciate it and in terms of that last slide we're talking about this and running through this pretty quickly we did put it on our agenda for our December report this year to dig into disproportionality a little bit more and talk more in depth about what we are going to do to address the disproportionality and try to create some growth charts that will give us and tell the story the same way that we're able to tell with the broader population and these results tonight so just so you are aware that as we're rushing through those it's not dismissing the fact that it's there however
090we do have a plan to address it in the future at our December board meeting so in terms of State assessments similar to what Caroline's just presented there's a lot of things where we feel like our our bright spots a lot of things to celebrate as well as areas that give us some opportunity to ask some questions and dig in a little bit deeper so as with the evidence-based reading and writing our Saline students continue to outperform our overall State results however we are noticing that our state our Saline student results are not returning to pre-pandemic levels as quickly as their evidence-based reading and writing and some hunches around that was we spent a lot more time reading and writing in science and social studies and the math skills that are used at this kind
091of level on these types of tests are very different than what you might experience and they're very targeted to the particular course sequence and or work so that's something that we're looking at a little bit more closely but there are spaces where we can see the year-over-year trends from third fourth fifth and sixth grade are showing a positive trend line from Spring 2021 to Spring 2023 yet are not quite back to pre-pandemic levels yet our 7th 8th and 11th grade results are fairly flat year over year hovering around 60 percent proficient in advance for the last three years yet we do have a handful of classes that are making positive gains from pre-pandemic to now so our current seventh graders eighth graders ninth graders and 10th graders whereas our current sixth graders 11th graders and
092seniors are have a more negative trend line from pre-pandemic to Spring and now and there's graphs to represent that as well and then we see the similar disproportionality for our state assessment outcomes as we do with our local outcomes which is to be expected so again on the left hand side this shows you in the two graphs the left-hand side is the year over year across the grade level so and this I feel like it's important I somewhat color coded it's hard to see there that under 2023 that when we talk about a positive trend line but not quite back to pre-pandemic if you look at third grade they're at 70.6 percent proficient in advance they were at 75 percent in 2019 19. so they are really approaching um that pre-pandemic level but they're not
093quite there yet similarly if you look at 2023 for our fourth graders they are um they're not quite they went from 55 to 68 and they're all there at 65 5.7 but they're not the same kids in that but what they aren't is back at that 70 pre-pandemic so that's what the chart on the left-hand side shows and then we have our class of graphs and here you'll see that where we talk about the flat trend line of around 60 percent sort of this this landing area for Math and again we are outperforming the state results by quite a lot and we're on point with what our peer districts are doing however we of course feel like we can do we'd like to invest a lot more time and energy in this which we are
094in order to impact positive results for all of our students because we feel like they are very capable and very able and our teachers have all the skills that they need in order to boost these scores in the future class of 2027 our current 9th graders and current 10th graders you can see that they are making gains in a positive direction even though technically the trend line is down or is trending down from pre-pandemic their post-pandemic scores are going up more variable in our 11th grade in our senior classes here so a little bit more flat across the years so these are areas that we are examining and Jenn and Beth will be talking through some of the strategies that we're using to dig into our math work with our teachers in order to impact
095these scores and I would be remiss if I didn't include our AP test as a part of this presentation as well and that is really positive results so when you think about our gains in advanced placement exams there's just a quick look at all of the AP classes we offer at the high school level this does include independent studies we've had 506 students take the AP test last year with a 92 percent pass rate which is up across the last two years moving from 85% to 87% to 92 percent scoring of three four or five I'm across the last three years which is really wonderful and I'd like to turn it back to Jenn and Beth to talk through some of the similar supports what we do with literacy through the math lens again on
096this slide you're going to see some work that teachers and students are involved in but this time through the lens of mathematics and I'm going to highlight two things here but this time I'm thinking about teachers K-12 not just elementary teachers first I want to mention the curriculum review process that has been mentioned a few times this evening so we're in year two of our curriculum review process for Math and Science I'm just focusing on math tonight and we had a really incredibly powerful year of learning with our staff last year it was a time where teachers K-12 could get together talk about math to do some alignment K-12 and to work on our practice during that time we identified some areas that we want to look at more closely and this year we're excited
097to partner with Dr Sarah Powell from the University of Texas Dr Powell has been able to look at our data as well and is going to provide some training to our students through the curriculum review process in the areas of mathematics that our data suggests that we need to continue to work towards so we're looking forward to her partnership but also the time with the K-12 teacher leaders taking on this task for their department and then secondly Caroline Kara and I have been collaborating for the last year on creating a data protocol to get teachers looking at data more regularly and we try this out with our building administrators last year and refined the protocol throughout the year and we were able to train teachers and give them a chance to practice it at our
098teacher leader meeting in August and that was really positive and we've already started to meet with teacher leaders this year so that they can do it with their grade level or department want them to feel really supported in the process and our ultimate goal is that we just have regular routines in our grade level and department meetings where we're regularly looking at data in a safe way that ultimately focuses on what we can do to impact student learning I'm going to pass it on to Beth okay so at the secondary level from the summer 2022 through last school year to Summer 2023 we partnered with Great Lakes Educational group to provide one-on-one tutoring with our students predominantly in math so again we use our data to figure out which students need the most support we
099hook them up with Great Lakes and they did virtual tutoring that way and we had great success and we would bring students in for item or whatever and they would respond to the intervention and but then we come to the school year and that funding is no longer there so we're now talking about what are we going to do next for our secondary students and we're in close talks um with Kara and the building admin teams and the Math teachers at both buildings to start a math learning lab which will hope to come again we'll use our data to decide which students will be invited and to do a balance of both remediation and give them the help on the homework and the tests that they have coming because we know that's what gets the
100students there right if it's going to be after school that's where we're standing right now but we are having a very robust discussion and both really the literacy and the math how can we bring this in into the building during the day so right now a lot of our things are immediate again year two what can we do to help students right now within the context of the secondary schedule but there's more talks to about what we can do in terms of classes and within classes in both buildings to help support our students in math and build those skills back up so I realized that when I'm presenting these slides sometimes I try to go fast and sometimes I try to add a little humor because I'm probably the only one that finds it actually
101exciting but I wanted to show some faces of the people who do the actual work and also just underscore what Kara and others have said which is this tells part of the story these graphs are representative of children of students we're not going to stop until all of those graphs are looking all perfect and so here's some of the people who are tirelessly working to try to work themselves out of a job um it doesn't represent everyone but we wanted to highlight especially some that you might not see as often you might not know you met one of these today Karly Melkonian who is one of our four new interventionists so these are our MTSS tutors who work with students K5 we have four new interventions this year it seems like the last couple years
102we've lost a fourth to a third of our team so it takes several weeks to get us get us back but we've really been able to have some amazing hires um and I just wanted to give them some some major kudos because this year among training on all the evidence-based interventions on all the DEI content and making sure that they know how to really serve the whole child work as a team collaborate with teachers we also are just now changing to administering Acadience on an iPad which as it turns out is like really hard for me to learn but they're doing a really excellent job with it so there's a lot of benefits and that I'm making that plug because next time you see the graphs they're going to look different the whole website got
103a facelift um so they've been doing an excellent job um and and kind of behind the scenes another team that I want to highlight is our EL team thank you Ben um similarly these are are Stu are teachers who are working with our multilingual students we partner with them a lot the last couple years we've worked really hard to make sure that we are um right in step so that our students who are multilingual learning English and how to speak are also learning how to read and that we have the right dose of everything so that they're still included and they're still learning from their peers and from exposure and being in the classroom while having us remediate at times that make sense and and collaborating so that the parents of these students have also
104one not five different go-to's so these folks work not only with students but also with families to really bridge that homeschool partnership and and support them and and any needs that they have related to language and learning and so again this is these are not all the teams we didn't highlight our special ed staff we didn't highlight our teaching team but you might see those more often than these guys and then this is Phil to be just fine to say thank you for your time and recognize that we've taken up quite a bit of screen time at home and air time up here so if there's anything you'd like me to jot down in terms of questions to get back to you on I'm happy to take those now thank you very much I have
105no questions right now but I'm opening up to the table I just wanted to say thank you that that was so in depth I remember the presentation last year I I recognized some of the feedback that was given last year and it's been Incorporated so thank you very much I'm gonna dig back in after I heard it from you all and I know you are all available for questions so thank you all right uh first of all I certainly also echo that and appreciate the efforts of our teaching and learning team this is what we do for kids and all kinds of other things so thank you so much for the work you do so I have a wonderment a comment and a few questions but again don't spend time on them right now but
106here we go wonderbank kindergarten acadience so you were saying we don't know what's causing it I wonder if this is tied to preparation that students have prior to coming to our schools now right so again just a wonderment that I have about preschool engagement in COVID times and so again my brain just kind of went there too my a comment I really love especially as a science educator hearing us talk to the use of literacy to influence scheduling and talking about it in a secondary lens because as a secondary teacher myself I could tell you my students as as ninth graders as 10th graders they're still learning to read they're learning how to decode challenging vocabulary they're learning how to they're doing more of like how did they decode something and then tell me what
107it meant and you know that kind of thing so like I'm I have to tell you like I think that that's an outstanding thing to to talk about is how do we serve those students best with their schedule and not just keep pushing them ahead and not supporting that so uh Bravo I thought about the same thing with math and that learning lab right about you know that into scheduling so there's that all right here are my quick questions please do not spend like send me an email or do whatever here we go um slide 9 talked about assessments linked directly curricula I wonder are those aligned with our SLOs for our Educators and tied to like our improvements and that kind of thing so I wondered about that um I wondered about the M-Step
108PSAT and SATs and if we could do anything as like as a voice as leaders to be able to through our legislative coffees or anything like that to talk to our legislators about how do we get that data sooner so that we can implement it prior to the to the when we create our professional development plans and when we think about what we want to do for the school year so that's one thing that was on my mind as a question I am really intrigued but I don't know a whole lot about decodable texts I read about them as I I was naughty and read for a second because I was intrigued um and and the difference with that and then the last thing is about openings do we still have openings in MTSS and
109Literacy and do you want to take a second and say hey we're really looking for somebody in these areas they were always looking just barely got like our last appreciate that very much thank you for my questions and for everything yes and we're monitoring in terms of our EL supports the increased number of students who are English Learners and the income the incoming newcomers and the impact on our services that we're providing the staff we have to do that well so it's something we're constantly analyzing you're welcome thank you I just wanted to acknowledge and applaud something that you shared in in this particular presentation tonight around shifting the culture around assessment and how difficult that can be and how it's been made even more difficult since it's been linked to teacher evaluation and when
110we talk about SLOs that's what that is that's the data that is tied to teacher evaluation and so um I I think that um because there's been some fear and anxiousness around that we've lost sight of um of using assessment to drive instruction and individualizing things for kids and I and when I say we I mean collectively as educators globally we've we've we've kind of shifted away from that so I just want to really applaud your efforts and I um I know that that is going to be um a relief to a lot of teachers to start thinking about assessment in another way so thank you for that I would love to learn from you more about that too because we're doing some of the same work um and then I my only other question
111I would love to talk to someone more about AP testing and accommodations for those kiddos who need it um I've talked to a few people but continuing to have that conversation and then lastly a question and you can answer it now if you want too quickly but when you mentioned um near the end you were talking about the graphs and how we're looking for 80 percent or above and then Caroline I think it was you who mentioned something about um with NWEA you're looking for kids who are scoring above average and you said 40 is that they're scoring above the Writ Norm or they're scoring 40 percent 40th percentile and above I just didn't if you're going to answer it length could you use the mic I just was confused that's all quick or you
112can answer so it's based on the normative data with the 40th percentile being the cut point for what they consider the average range perfect but the the problem and the reason that that matters is because the 40th percentile if you followed anything about literacy instruction in the country as a whole is at risk yes reading professionally so that's why that cutoff is there okay perfect that's I was just a little confused because I was like wait a minute that just set me off kilter so now I understand thank you so much thank you and uh for the update too oh I was gonna one more thing I was just gonna say you mentioned this and I'll just affirm this that um both of my seniors have taken the SAT twice and they both told me
113that the ELA test is a science test so there you go thank you the science teacher shout out right there yes are there into the table Yeah I just want to say you know a lot of a lot of data and you guys probably go home with a headache looking at some of the stuff it is nice to see um the trends going up yes we're not pre-pandemic but we weren't expecting to get there overnight either interesting on the um from the beginning of the school year to the end on English or yeah that one went down and it looks like that for every year but then on the math it was going up so I don't I don't know what what the difference is there NWEA versus our state assessments they don't tell the
114same story which is interesting yeah okay but I I was also encouraged with the um Hornet Hive and the um kind of the how how that's been helpful for people and pulling people out of there and I'm hoping that maybe the math Learning Hub could kind of maybe serve the same purpose and help them as well too so that's encouraging thanks Tim thank you very much um we we spoke earlier about uh flat scores in math flat flat I can I can live with for now um but thank you so much you're welcome thank you all very much the team thank you I appreciate your support give me one moment right oh well we're going to do the finance after I I inquired of our Treasurer so we have two discussion items tonight uh the
115one is the second reading of the policy 2240 controversial issues formally controversial issues with any luck called the instructional materials: opt out uh and um trustee Miller will will facilitate this one and following that there will be a the finance committee update thank you foreign so I think this is the second reading so I think that because it's the second reading that we'll just open the floor for dialogue questions or not even questions just too many questions to our the colleagues at the table if you have them and um any further discussion so uh I didn't resend the documents because you had them from the last meeting if anybody needs those I can support that the most recent language I think is in the packet oh great great yeah yes sorry I did see that
116but I didn't send it ahead of time without colors without colors if you need the colors you can go back to the previous meeting okay anyone want to get us started with the second reading you can go ahead Jen yeah Jennifer did you say I have something to say Jennifer sure okay I was just I was deferring if our two other policy committee members wanted to say anything first I was asking them if they wanted to say anything um I I just had I wanted to of course listen to everything that you had to say um I went and reread it while I was listening to our public comment earlier um and something struck me about not opting out of identities um and so I went back and I read this and it doesn't speak
117to exactly the language that that I heard um but there was something that struck me that I would like us to consider changing and it was if after careful review of these instructional materials a parent/ guardian/student 18 or older identifies that the instructional materials are quote personally objectionable and it was those two words that I paused at because I've long thought we should change the name of this policy from controversial issues to something else and those two words also work led me to to believe that people could construe that as calling a person personally objectable and that didn't set quite right with me in the lens of reflecting on those comments so I would like us to consider a slight change there um and then I wanted to ask a clarifying question because some of
118the things that I've been reading online and hearing from people in the community and hearing here tonight um give me the perception that there might be an understanding that this is a new policy which it is not correct because we've had this since 2012 the the other policy wasn't called opt out but that's what it was intended to do is that correct so this policy is now called instructional material instructional materials opt out it is different than the controversial issues policy so it would replace the so if my proposal if this is if the if some version of this policy is accepted I would I would like to make a motion that we rescind the current controversial issues policy thank you um so if I look back at the current one um which is also
1192240 and understand this would replace so that's great um it does say that the board recognizes that a course of study or certain instructional materials may contain Etc I use the word objectionable which I don't love um but it said a written request will be considered for particular classes for specified reasons so it is we do have an opt-out policy and I guess some of the flavor of comments that I've been listening to not just tonight but in the last few months I guess I've heard um I I just didn't want there to be a perception that this was something completely new um that it is based off of something that allows for opt-out um and then the other thing that I did want to comment on is I'm extremely aware of um how to
120put this um the censorship of LGBTQIA plus characters in literature of policies being discussed in in boardrooms like this um I know that it doesn't have that language in either policy and I'm not saying it should but I also want to say that we should recognize that but we should also really recognize that there could be a myriad of reasons why people would want to opt out of a particular curriculum we did mention some Lauren I think you mentioned eating disorders that came up tonight I amplified that um coming off the heels of a presentation from our athletics department where um as many as four in ten high school students have an eating disorder I think is something if there's something triggering in in any type of curriculum whether it be that whether it be sexual
121assault or sexual harassment where eight out of 10 students encounter that death of a parent I don't care what it is um so I just want to recognize that there are many topics that we should be considering and I just want to make sure that anyone's point of views whether they have a personal experience or trauma is recognized to speak to that the there were a couple reasons I brought that up specifically so uh one because it is such a large and growing problem that I deal with every day post pandemic and two probably most importantly is that we had a student's we had a student speak about that when we solicited feedback so it didn't just come from something that I just randomly made up or it came from feedback from the students um
122yes we have had a a policy that was called opt out for a while um and this is not new and I think the major question that we face tonight after hearing you know is whether we go back and try to add specific language regarding identities we have like tried to figure that out a lot so I was not saying much more because I'd like to hear what other people think about that okay Susan thank you um so I guess a little um clear clarity um on the current policy um well there's a whole history I know I've touched touched on it um that it came to us actually to the policy meeting when I began the board and um after everything with I am Jazz and a whole um each elementary school you know
123basically promoting the the opt out for families who didn't really understand like the whole purpose and um so and things that happened after that but that was brought to the policy committee to consider re removal of the policy um and so I know there were questions about changing because controversial issues when we've heard uh awful comments um at at the podium about LGBTQ and specifically um more over transgender students that when when people said my kids aren't controversial issues right because that that was being used and elevated so I understand the name change and that's something we were talking about in 2019 um and it got glitched off because it was supposed to go to DEI all that good stuff um but one of one of the um pieces of that that's different from this
124one is that I mean it's pretty much I don't know if we have anything um from the current policy in this revised policy um because with the controversial issues policy um it was it's centered on encouraging our teachers to be able to uh teach you know these um topics that may um you know things that are going on in the country today um uh you know news and applying that you know I listened to my child's social studies uh teacher and um talking about you know applying all of those real world um things going on and having those discussions um so anyways I'm going on a tangent here but um it's more like that specific policy um is more incur is encouraging for our teachers to do it one section that had was not in
125there that um previously could have been accepted was the right of students to be able to have free speech as well um and so I was kind of advocating if we were gonna stick with that policy um to put that piece back in because I think that's important um so uh to research whatever topic they want and um not have to notify the teacher for the teacher to notify the parent that you know the student's going to talk about supporting gay marriage um you know but there's a tiny piece that is the opt out component um so that that was something um you know that could could have been taking out um and uh and so that that was being explored and um so now the policy is strictly opt out um there's no language
126about the encouragement of you know tackling difficult topics and what that would look like and um and so uh yeah if that does that help like I mean it's it's totally a piece of it of the opt out is now this entire instructional materials policy thank you thank you Lauren Trustee Gold I'm sorry yeah it's an it's it's been in the packet so yes okay so I can I'm just because it does say you know um properly introduced and conducted complex instructional materials can help students learn to identify important issues explore fully in fairly all sides of an issue we carefully the values and factors involved and develop techniques for formulating and evaluating positions so I thought that came from I thought that came from the prior okay is that sorry is that a sentence
127like no no no I'm just asking because I thought that was the part that was like encouraging teachers to teach is there something else you were referring to that's not in it anymore about encouraging teachers to explore I was talking about the entire policy so not like oh no we pretty much it didn't do edits of like the line thing that we would do if it if we did it pretty much wouldn't be here I mean maybe that sentence do you know what I mean like no that's why that's why I'm asking am I honestly just clarifying so yeah we have like this entire like the current policy um and what we have now is sort of we didn't really completely focus on this policy and then start working at it we had a whole
128other um you know policy worked out can you explain like I mean yeah I guess I I have some question on that too yeah it's on just I mean I see that I see you know embracing diversity and inclusion as we as it strives to provide a variety of perspectives for students to consider encourages the use of resources from different backgrounds and topics I I guess I'm a little confused as well I think I think what is um I think what what Trustee Estep is saying is that um we didn't take the original policy and red line and or green line it we took parts of that policy and parts of other policies or parts of other um documents and created this new document along with you know our own along with our own ideas
129and different pieces that were brought in along over the course of the last 10 months so I think what I think is that what you're saying that we didn't red line in green line like this is a new policy instead of even though parts and pieces of it might be there but I think if I could also just um echo what Trustee Gold and what Treasurer Gerbe are saying is that it does and I agree with them that it does seem to be encouraging teachers to embrace identities of students in their teaching and taking risks in that way yeah I'll even go further on to say that right and so I want to get back if you don't mind me interjecting about so as far as the personally personally objectable language I read that and
130I understand what you're saying about like I certainly don't want individuals to think that you are per they are personally objectionable the the hard part for me is you just talked about you know this policy reflects for me nine months of collective work and like no no it's but my point is like I guess I'd want to know what language specifically we'd want to replace that with and the second thing is I will tell you that I want to hear from our community about any changes that we might make then to it and from the team of you if we were to change it now so I I I can respond with an idea so I would just make it that that's um I would just neutralize that sentence so I would just make it
131very neutral in saying that identifies that instructional materials are um I would rephrase it perhaps like after reviewing materials after careful review of the instructional materials a parent guardian student has identified sections that they would like to either have a discussion I would just neutralize it because the the term the terms personally objectable are like yeah so I I can I can just neutralize yeah I can respond to that piece because that's a piece that we had discussion we had lots of discussion on those two and I would not know that because I didn't know them exactly so we did have a lot of um discussion around the table um that and and again we're we have decided whether or not we're taking at different um pieces of the legal team's um advice or not
132those two particular words were um identified as words that legal thought needed to be in there because they have legal bearing um on and and have been used in other um not necessarily policies here but um over the last couple of years especially but I I think Lauren and and I think Trustee Gold and Trustee Estep and I well I don't want to speak for you I would be fine with neutralizing that and removing that also because I do feel like um my my opinion on whether or not this policy is um is put into practice in the district is really about allowing for those conversations um to happen between our teaching and learning team including teachers and families so that we can meet the individual needs of students regardless of um you know their
133personal objections so I I my and I'll I guess I'll just speak for a minute on this guy didn't know I don't know I'll just say it I I hesitate to even say anything because I feel like um and my husband hates it when I say I feel like so I'll just say because he's like it doesn't matter what you feel just say what it is so I'll just say that I hesitate to say much because it it has happened over the course of the time that we've been working on this policy that um lots of misinterpretation has happened so what I will say is that when we were talking about removing controversial issues it was important to me both professionally and personally that people were not seen as the target of this policy um
134and I hesitate to put in a list of protected classes because I don't want to give a checklist for people to say yep yep yep I want to check out of all of these things and that has historically been something that people have used with other forms that have circulated nationally um and so I just want to I just want to say that that was my thinking behind this um the other the other piece that I want to say is that um well I uh I don't know I'm gonna stop right there for now and then I'll come back to it later but I did want to say that piece that that I did not intend to um open a door for people to opt out of identities however I didn't I also didn't want
135to provide a list so that was that was my thinking that's I'll own that um the other I guess one other thing that I'll say is that um we do have and I'm not centering religion so I want to explain this clearly we do have a policy that allows people to opt out of things based on personal objections including their religion and when they do so there is not an obligation to provide an alternative assignment it is also not you can read through those policies but those are legal legally required opt-outs um and parents can choose to use those and it ends the conversation so if a parent claims that they are that there it is a violation of their religious freedom then um the conversation ends this policy should parents decide to use this
136policy versus that one it allows for a conversation between the teaching and learning staff and the family and what has been noted by our teaching and learning team is that when families have been open to those conversations a couple of things happen perspective is is often um is often revealed and sometimes through those conversations mines start to change and I'll be completely honest that my mind has changed a lot through conversations like that and I think a lot of us have experienced growth in that area when we have those conversations so my intent was to at least allow for those conversations to start happening and to allow for it to start happening in a space that is supportive of our teaching of our teachers because when those conversations are happening when a parent approaches a
137teacher independently um we we don't have we don't have the outcome that this policy provides and in fact we don't have consistency from one classroom to the next or from one building to the next and the outcomes that have been shared with us um based on those conversations to me the things that are happening are not the the outcomes even with the best of intentions from teachers and parents would not be acceptable um in my opinion under this policy and so that's what I'll say about this for now if anyone else wants to say anything or if you have any questions I'm happy to ask or answer I just wanted to clarify um did you say that the religion and the curriculum policy doesn't give opportunity for an no what I'm saying is that that
138under the when we when we had the list of things that um from the legal the things that are legally required to opt out of um the religion and the curriculum if parents deem that something violates their religion it doesn't need to be um there doesn't need to be a discussion they are legally they are legally allowed to opt out of that then where this there could be a discussion but they don't have to have that discussion according to when the lawyer sent us the list of items that um that are legally obligated okay so um so the school will honor a written request for his her child to be excused yeah it doesn't say may honor it says will honor yeah and I think it's it's word for word the current yeah so it's
139like that pretty much that paragraph um except for in the religious sorry religion and the curriculum um it's like the opposite it says no student shall be Exempted from attendance and a required course of study on the grounds that the instruction they're in interferes with the free speech of his or her religion um and so but then it's like however after careful review then we're going to honor the request so um yeah I thought the major difference was that if someone had a religious objection they I mean you never your child never has to sit at any I mean you have you know they don't have to sit anymore but there wasn't an alternative assignment that was given right I thought that was kind of the the divide the dividing line between the two reasons
140between the general opt out policy versus the religious policy is that right so it says the student will be provided with Alternative Learning activities during the times of such parent requested absence so it's the same it's the and that's from the religion one okay okay all right so I have a couple things um we don't keep a lawyer here with us like other districts it would be really helpful to me right now to be able to ask this question um that 2270 language I was in here when we when it was adopted or I wonder if that language reflects state law and if that's the reason why that language is there if somebody so is 20 hang on one second is 2270 the religious one that okay so perhaps a point of order to President
141McVey would be that we we've shifted policies no I don't mean to like ask that question like no no but but I I think that we should I realize there are tentacles between the two right but I I think we should primarily focus on the reading of this one um and if the committee would like to take the other one up super um their choice but I just wanted well and I can I'll just say for for clarification that in the legal document from the lawyer and this is in state law so I'm not violating that but it says that um schools may be required to opt out of certain requirements when necessary to accommodate a student's ability or religion and so if you look at that document that was sent a while ago it's
142on page two where it lists each of the legally required um recognized opt-outs so at least five and then it's down into the paragraph underneath that so can I say um that was something that we talked about like right off um that there's no Michigan Law um about it does list what can be opted out of like the sex ed like there's a whole opt out with that um and then uh or what is required as well but yeah um even under you know we read like the parent rights um thing and um laws and everything and um it yeah regardless sorry just to make sure when you say parent rights you're referring to MCL 380 is that 380 10 um there's a couple okay that's okay I just wanted to clarify yep 380 10
143and then um the power of parents and legal guardians policy and guidelines which is three zero section three Z sorry section three eight zero one one three seven um but yeah that that was one of the things and federally there's no and that's like on anything so it's not um religious specific it's not um personal objectable specific um so so yeah and I think that was confirmed by the law firm that yeah we're not legally to even I mean required to have that little section that's popped in that policy as well um with the opt out but yeah we're not con like talking about that considering it um so I guess on this topic right now um just a couple weeks ago a federal judge made a decision to not overturn the decision of a
144super brave school board who took a stand against allowing families to opt out of inclusive curriculum specifically they were up one wanting to opt out of um gender identity and sexual orientation with books that it had been approved and they have like amazing you know DEI policies and so they were like hey we have these policies here and we do not um that's the opposite of like what we're trying to do here in this district and um so the the people who were challenging this decision this was in Maryland um at Montgomery County Schools District and um and so they the specific families who were suing um and it's still that was kind of like an injunct injunction thing but um they um it was based on religion um so in fact whenever I mean
145that that was a component when we're talking about um religious right to do it um that federally was they made a statement that um that that is not um aligned with uh with the Constitution and stuff so if I may jump back in um so I appreciate the bravery of that and I I think to pivot back to 2240 um the reality of or the for me like I I see the last line of this opt-out request must of impact the education of our students by removing instructional materials supported by SAS vision from the class classroom at large so I'm hoping we're also kind of capturing the the essence of that there and um I I want to make sure I say one more thing and then I'll probably say it a lot but wholeheartedly
146I want to say how much I agree as an educator with the perspective that that Jenny offered regarding conversations that can be difficult for educators to have and that the pop this policy is designed to attempt to allow those to encourage those conversations that's how I read this right is that we are encouraging people to say okay this is what we see and let's talk about it let's and it's not just about it's about a whole lot of different kinds of issues that we've talked about over the last few weeks and I wholeheartedly want like this policy in my that's that's probably my favorite part of this whole thing is that it empowers our educators and empowers our our leadership to have a process for how those things occur and I guess what I would
147say to us is is that we're an evolving District all the time right so 2240 I doubt this is the last time we if we passed this it could very easily then become the next policy committee and they say okay we evaluate it we look at how it's being applied and we say okay this wasn't you know perfect and this wasn't our entirety of our intent and we say okay then let's sharpen it up and let's let's modify it I so to me I see every policy that we have is something that we I I like this because it does that strength for our staff and for our leaders and then it says okay and if it's not perfect then we'll evaluate it anyway that that's my two cents so this is a form it's
148not so we we opted for it doesn't say written request anymore it says form so I think that kind of goes out of our hands at that point so I don't know I mean we could say that there's going to be these conversations and family like families um like kids aren't going to be allowed to opt out of advisory time or you know Hornet time when in fact they are um and maybe it's because we didn't change the handbook to reflect the current policy um but that is in fact happening um and so um you know I think we could sit here all day and say like for instance the teacher last year who for a parent of one child um only allowed LGBTQ books to be read once a month so that that parent
149for their child could bring them in later and make sure that they weren't able to hear that one story so if my child's my family is in there we're queer like LGBTQ family if my child was in that class um you're limiting it to one day a month like that's just pathetic um so that has been allowed to go on um you know uh the book George which is now called Melissa um you know this this happened it was after the I am Jazz thing um and it was a book that was read out loud in sixth grade as all other books were read out loud um and so then that book because of a complaint of a couple of parents and went public that book had to have options offered so um and it
150wasn't allowed to be read out loud um so and and I I'm able to affirm that because my child was in that class later um and I was like oh you know they have the book like Melissa and um and so she was super excited and then it was like you know nope I haven't read it yet nope teacher hasn't read it um and then there were like five options of different books that children could choose to read silently you're totally impacting my family you're impacting um you know the the families that that we heard from tonight and the families who honestly even more now than you know before are probably afraid to speak out with the things going on across the country and so we can't those decisions are like all I've heard is
151yep that's the right decision that like that was okay to to do that to have a teacher do it one read it once a month um and not even thinking about like how that impacts others um and you know honestly I think about the children who um don't who aren't LGBTQ and don't have supportive parents at home and we're saying we're gonna take that book or that you know representation that um you know may may make them feel seen um we're going to take them and put them in the library that student because a parent may think that you know oh you know I think my child's gender expression um you know I'm worried that you know their LGBTQ or whatever and and and so that doesn't align with um you know our current policies
152so so I'm just saying like with the administrative guidelines um that could go anywhere um I think this is where the answers are is our policy and how we allow that um so you know you're talking about the the list Jenny and um and listing like this is what you can opt out of like right the checklist but um not about what you can't opt out of um before we started working on this policy officially um this was beginning of the year um anybody can Google this great schools initiatives where they were using the opt out um for sex ed which is legally required and actually with the book George they were trying to hear they were trying to take it out Sex Ed Advisory Board and say this is a book that's for the
153Sex Ed Advisory Board to seek approval from the board um so that's happening with the Great Schools initiatives which allow well there's a form and we've had at least one be turned in here where you can well you you have to disclose you know your child's um if you're if the school finds out your child is um you know LGBTQ you have to contact the parent um you don't want your child to hear announcements about you know the Gay Straight Alliance meeting you don't want your child to see a rainbow flag um you know it was and I I unders like why are we working on this now like right when that came out and and you know I just you cannot be neutral I'm sorry like there there's no that's like there's a flag
154policy out there from Neola and fortunately we didn't take it up um but you know it's neutral so you check you know Michigan flag American flag but then you're saying all of these other flags are not allowed to be hung up so you're basically so I'm gonna call us back to the point of order again because I think we're getting off the topic of the current policy and I I apologize for interrupting you um but I would like to bring us back to this current policy so if we could just bring our time and attention back to the the policy at hand this is how the policy is being implemented okay I thought we were getting on to policies that that we have not adopted so just a couple of things um first just so
155it's clear to everyone um the part of my part of what inspired me to look at this were the examples that are being shared tonight so Hornet Time a blanket opt out um Pleasant Ridge only um in one classroom teaching a topic one time a day once a month those were things that um were were that were brought out of discussions with individual teachers and so that was one of the things that I wanted us to bring back together so that our teaching and learning team can work together with families and with teachers to support um plans that honor all of the students in that classroom and that they don't remove curriculum that might or or resources that might impact the students at whole as a whole in terms of the GSI form that is
156that is a checklist it's a blanket opt out we specifically say in this draft that we would not allow for blank adapt outs that it is instructional materials that that parents can look at and as far as I'm as I know flags and general announcements and Hornet Time what could not be opted out of as a blanket opt-out that it would have to be a specific instructional material in terms of this particular policy so I'll respond to those in terms of this particular policy this policy also specifically states that our form the form that has been developed by the teaching and learning team is the only form that can be submitted for an opt-out not other forms like the GSI Dr Laatsch right I don't want to try to influence specifically how you determine what
157we do next with this policy but I do want to provide a little bit of context just with like how often is opting out happening in the district very rarely how many kids are currently opting out of Advisory Time at the Middle School zero GSI forms we don't sign them so I just want to provide that context well I talked to Principal Szczechowicz I asked how many people are opting out of advisory time at this current moment and she had said zero so I do want to provide that context and and just to extend on when you're saying parents are rarely opting out I do think that that is true in terms of like a um in terms of a general opt out like when they're contacting the the superintendent or the principal or the
158board of education for an opt-out I I can say as a as a former educator here and in talking with educators that it's happening more frequently in a situation where parents are approaching a teacher individually and then parents are having to make adjustments and that might not be reported in the data and so this policy would support teachers um and so that and and I brought this up before but when a teacher and and um you know we have teachers on this board but when a parent approaches a teacher one-on-one and says can you do this for me it's a difficult um it's a difficult conversation that can create a wedge or barrier between parents and school and that is not good for kids and so this particular policy invites other other voices to the
159table so that it isn't a one against one or um you know that's that situation so um so for one if people are very rarely opting out why are we spending so much time and energy and resources and possibly have to spend money um to open it up even further to a point that um I mean I guess that's the purpose that you can't just say you know whatever language is currently now um I I don't know what where where has this huge push been from then I think that's that's what I was talking about um with the GSI Forum that we received or sorry that that was brought out in January February is this like in response to that we're actually working on the policy like that I mean there's connection there um what
160I'm just I'll wait for you to finish I don't get the connection yet sorry between the GSI forms and you all working on the policy is that what you're saying well I think that's what um like Jenny said that um that's where the things that came in um I mean I actively worked on this policy um to to make it as best as it could possibly be but we're still missing the um in my in my opinion and why we were hoping to keep this policy and work together was not to make it so it to make sure that you cannot opt out of um people individuals um marginalized groups um who are protected class of citizens that you could not just opt out of those families or um those people like you know it's
161like okay let me go through here and see how many um you know uh topics or you know like that are about black families I want to opt out of that like that's horrible and I think that's kind of where um you know that statement um you know should be included to be clear that um because otherwise we're stating that that is okay because this has been a conversation and this has been why we've talked about this policy um because we've seen it play out um I mean publicly there were a couple people who who spoke out um and here and at the policy meeting I heard horrible things about gender transition and um you know uh just like it's been awful like so so whenever we you know we hear a lot from from
162that um that's what I'm hearing so if it's very rare and those are the people who are tending to opt out um with those concerns um hateful bigot bigotry um comments I'm not saying all comments that have come up why aren't we being responsible and inclusive of people um who are um you know protected classes it's just I don't know um I did want to just while I'm here I just want to read this it's our current policy um and it's very linked to what I'm talking about um on the transgender and non-binary students policy um and I believe I read this in the policy meeting um Saline Area School supports students in becoming ethical and responsible citizens students demonstrate this attribute when they see beyond themselves to the needs of others contribute to their
163community promote equity take responsibility for the environment and demonstrate respect empathy and compassion this is from the SAS Compass at the goal and responsible citizen research shows that LGBTQ students who attend schools with curriculum that is inclusive of LGBTQ people history and events experience a better school climate and improved academic outcomes curriculum serves as a mirror when it reflects individuals and their experiences back to themselves at the same time curriculum serves as a window when it introduces and provides the opportunity to understand the experiences and perspectives of those who possess different identities that's from the GLSEN for supports um we did not include this specifically but the inclusive curricular standards under GLSEN um says inclusive curriculum sorry it improves School climate it is essential that we oppose discriminatory curriculum bans and call them what they
164are prohibitions on truthful teaching about our country's history and truthful representations of human diversity that promote racism homophobia and transphobia discriminatory curriculum bands ill prepare all students to live work and thrive in our diverse society and particularly harm students who are BIPOC and LGBTQ+ um so I I you know again things that are going on across the country I know um GLSEN has also um spoke out against um what I talked about at the last meeting um against the curriculum opt-out laws um and states that have had that they have moved forward to do the don't say gay um and trans laws so um I feel like if we don't specifically um name that because we know that that is what's happening maybe it's rare but it's happening um and so um I I just
165I'm gonna leave leave it with that okay before I say anything I just wanted to open the floor to people who maybe haven't had an opportunity to to add to the discussion this evening anything nope Dr McVey I just wanted to apologize for having to leave the table and and um I will go back I know we're not voting on this tonight I will go back and watch the footage from what I missed briefly um just dealing with uh being only parent around and having a situation at home that I needed to respond to I think yeah no problem Dr McVey um earlier uh uh Vice President Steben said she wanted to neutralize a term personally objectable well let's just focus on the one where it is objectionable that is a fraught term it really
166is I get that and I've been trying to as an English major I've been trying to find other words for it and I that fit with the whole concept here and anything I'm saying now is not to uh to cast aside anything that that uh Trustee Estep had said too but the word I think about is is challenging personally challenging and something that Dr Gold had said in the last meeting was that sometimes things come up bubble up that are short-term short-lived just it's happening now a trauma happened uh everything from a dog dying to a divorce happening to whatever and as a result the student the parent thinks that the student is going to find the curriculum particularly overwhelmingly challenging those are the situations that I imagine that this applies to overwhelmingly challenged can
167we just take a break from this can I kid be excused can you find him something else or her something else to do this is where I see and the other thing I want to say so I don't know if we have time to change the language especially in light of what you had said uh Secretary Miller that this is the language that the lawyers think it's going to work so I don't know what to do with the word objectionable I I mean but if the table agrees I would be fine also with it just saying if after careful review uh it could just say just after careful review a parent or guardian etc may fill out a district doc form we could just take that piece out completely I well the policy committee be
168then wordsmithing that chunk for us to come back to the table yet again that is up to the table all right and the other thing I'd like to note for Trustee Treasurer gerbe made a comment that made me think about this sort of policy and all policies like it it's not it's not permanent it's not we're not carved we're not chipping this into stone by any means and then what what uh Trustee Estep noted was that the U.S District Court of the State of Maryland and August 9th said hey uh parents can't opt out of LGBTQ stuff so the laws governing all of this stuff are are changing rapidly we're we really are as a district on the cutting edge and we are going to see this again and this is a a first a
169best first draft or a best latest draft of a policy that's difficult and challenging and Trustee Estep has has noted many many many possible situations where it could be challenging and difficult to implement and disruptive and difficult for our LGBTQ students got it absolutely get it and then Dr Laatsch said well it's extraordinarily rare and the the GIS forms that came out is a GIS I think I got that right GSI sorry GSI forums that came out we have one or two come to the front office and they were summarily dismissed so we have students who have tried to opt out of things like Horvet Hive Hornet Hive Hornet Time it has not worked there or they've changed their minds or things have happened so again so Advisory I'm sorry extraordinary rare rare rare but
170still possibly other and then I've heard from the parents who said I want to know that I can if there's an issue whether it's LGBTQ or anything I need to know that I have the right to be able to to to press pause and enter a negotiation with the teachers I also absolutely get that as well so I and the last thing and I'll be quiet for the rest of this I do want to thank the policy committee uh first names Susan Jennifer and Lauren for twisting and working and molding this language to what it is now but it's not the final step it's it's two years from now some board is going to be at this again talking about it yes please so I think the question as to as far as I understood
171as the newest member of the policy committee as to why we were taking it up now was because people didn't like the title controversial issues so we were actually trying to make it better now I guess maybe that's not you know but that was my understanding is that we were trying to make that part of things better in terms of the personably objectionable I think we landed on that because uh some of us really wanted something that said cause potential harm so that it spoke to a specificity of the situation whether that was that a family wanted to deal with questions around gender sex sexuality at home for a while or whether it was that a family there was a child with an eating disorder or whether that it was that somebody had been assaulted
172that there would be some conversation and my hope was and when we talked about harm that that would stop blanket opt-outs because it would be like this particular book has language in it that we feel would be harmful to our child right now for whatever reason and I know there was some feedback from parents like we don't want to explain our child's trauma to you and I get that but I just think it would be more like take my word for it my child would have trauma around this or harm and you know that was trying to make it go for these very specific scenarios so I think that was the reason we put personally objectionable because I think it started out with objectionable and that seemed worse so then we said personally objectionable like
173for whatever reason it's not ideal but I just want to give you some sense of where that language my fear about leaving it as just uh a parent submits a form is then like to some extent why are we even writing a policy because if the policy has nothing specific about it as to what the board's vision for the administrative guidelines might be do we even write a policy I mean I thought we were kind of trying to set out some sort of vision of or guidelines so I don't know I don't know the answer to that but I think that would be the counter argument to leaving it very vague like submit a form well what is the form supposed to look like that you know if we leave it that big um I
174don't know I keep going back and forth on it because I don't think it's easy I do think people can have different times or small objections like I heard some objections to Melissa not because of the overall all theme regarding transgender people but because of some normalization of pornography for example so I don't think all objections are automatically I feel like we get into these boxes where it's like if you object to anything then you object to everything and I thought that was what we were trying to get at was trying to make it a narrowly drawn process I I don't know that that's where we landed but that is I think was the intent that I had anyways so Dr Gold a kind of semi quasi answer that question I think that the policies
175are created to provide guidance to the administrators who have to implement them and it was drawn in my attention that I during my my two-minute ramble I may have said LGBTQ issued and my apologies that didn't mean to say that LGBTQ people are an issue so just to clarify that to muddy that okay I I think um what I would like to propose is that we um do a once more if anybody has anything else to say and then if anyone has um a motion as to what we do next if that's if that's how we move forward or however we move forward Dr McVey you can decide that because that will fall to you so I think if we do a once more down the down the table if anybody has anything to say
176final words uh Trustee Estep um so with the controversial issues title and language I want to point out that you've heard here tonight and over this past year during meetings from some of those same parents it was not it's not about the name it's about the harm of opting out and contacting families and saying hey you know we're about to do this just FYI you can opt out um and so I I want to be very clear about that um and maybe conversations have changed on that but um so um and you know I'm hearing about the ability to opt out of these these other um topics or I mean I think Dr Gold and I have have shared experience with um you know talking about like kindergartners or first graders and 9/11 like you
177know my child brought him a book of 9/11 and was into all of these military things and I'm like holy cow like um so you know I understand those situations and and stories and like be a social emotional piece of it right um but if that's what we're saying here and that's what we're trying to go for why are we not saying you can't opt out of identities based on bias anyone else with a final final word okay I just wanted to clarify one thing that um in terms of uh and I I really I hate to even speak about all of this but I do feel like there have been a lot of allegations and accusations so I'm just going to say that this particular policy does um provide for inclusive curriculum and in
178fact um does not support a ban of curriculum it it provides for a way for teachers to be more inclusive and not impact the greater majority of students by accommodating um the minority or one or two parents who may request for something different so I guess I read that a little bit differently that when I look at um well what I hear uh the the um report from GLSEN that you've shared that I hear that we are through this policy opening doors and avenues for teachers to be more more inclusive and if if at all possible I would still love to see the um report that you're referring to from GLSEN because I haven't received that so if there's some if there's a way that you can I know I could look it up and
179I've tried but if you can send me directly that would be helpful for me to read that and process that so absolutely oh sorry for interrupting oh my gosh Treasure Gerbe I guess I would say if I was making one last comment as I would say that like well I don't think you know personally objectify or object objectionable and and all of that is like I I think this reflects nine a lot of work in nine months and a team coming together and building this and and so I guess I I guess if you're asking this Trustee right here I think it's time for us to to say yes or no on it at some point so that's kind of where I'm at on it um is that like it's going to evolve and but
180like over the years but I agree I want to open those doors and I so for me like I'm ready I'd like to make a motion that if it's acceptable I can talk right now about that okay I like to make a motion that this policy returns to the policy committee for a final review of the language based on our discussions and then be brought back for a final action vote or a final vote or a vote sorry pardon the language is a bit scrappy right now so in order for us to be um completely clear on what that means can you speak specifically to the pieces that you would like us to address because I think when we send it back and forth and back and forth it just becomes more of the same
181um if you want specifically the line that begins if after careful review and ends with the word form I'd like you as a policy committee to review that let's one last time I've heard changing words and I've heard cutting out so if you could just like land on something and bring it back to the to us um do you want a proper motion for that because I don't think any of the other phrases are going to be changed but to go to action it probably needs to be solidified on second reading that's fine I I'll just speak again to what what Dr Gold what trustee gold had said that we've been round and round on that and this is what we've landed on so we can continue to to go back and go round and
182round if someone here at the table apart from the three of us has language I think that that's what needs to happen because we have spent multiple meetings on this particular phrasing well then that being the case let's just take a temperature on it because I'll withdraw the request if I appreciated Lauren's framing of of it um I just didn't want to have the same situation where we had a title that was controversial issues and have a child or a person feel that they were a controversial issue um but I appreciated some of the clarification I feel like I still have the floor over this motion so if I could I've not heard a second yet and if that's the case then it just dies and we just leave it well the motion was to
183go to send it back to the committee for a review and at this point hearing what uh what what Secretary Miller says I'm going to withdraw that motion at this point foreign it's going to be on the is an action item on the next agenda if there are no major edits to it I suppose I think the bigger question that or if we were going to have a motion is whether or not the language regarding identities needs to be that's really the sticking point with the community that that's a tougher issue I mean that's a but that's that's what Trustee Estep has been highlighting and that's the that's a tougher issue versus that one phrase if we were going to take anything back to committee that's the that's the sticking point that's the issue we
184hear most about I have to think about this because we're not exactly tabling it I'm hearing that the language isn't going to be changed or that particular sentence do you think there are other parts that are going to be changed should I make them I did okay you don't think that language is going to be changed so there's no need then to bring it back to the policy committee meeting so I think I guess we should just point this close the discussion for the evening yeah and then go on to the next item which would be Treasurer Gerby's brilliant two-minute report yep I'm gonna do my best all right so I appreciate the the Finance Committee at five o'clock and we had a pretty full agenda I've got a few things I would like to
185to talk about number one we're looking at our count and we're looking at all the time and we're tracking close to projections but uh the official count day is October the 4th so we will hope to present more solid numbers um you know at a later time but October 4th is the official count and like I said all projections are are looking like we'll be close if you remember we projected somewhere 67 to 69 students of a loss okay and then for as far we talked about hiring and FTE adjustments and we also and and when we did that were were developing and we need some time to do this the Finance Committee is developing and I shouldn't take any credit for it it's really Dr Laatsch a restructuring plan for what would be our
186goals for if we had to make decisions or make you know restructuring decisions based on a one-year plan but we'd actually like to develop something that has like a vision for a multi-year process we're in a really weird spot with our finances where with this one-time money and you know but our structures don't reflect this one-time money it's it's really a weird time to be I'll be honest to be involved with Finance in that regard because we can't live forever on one-time money and we can't expect it to keep coming in either so like I really appreciate that Dr Loch is leading that discussion with his team and he anticipates said that sometime in November we think or we hope we'll be able to to talk more about that restructuring plan with the uh with
187the board as a whole so there's that uh number three we talked about brains we talked about Support Personnel the reality for us is that we've had some challenges with bussing custodial I was so happy to meet the parapros and thank you for driving a bus and like okay like these are so important to our students and to our families and I um so anyway so we looked a lot at benchmarking and like where are our salaries and where are our wages and our benefits and our you know opt-outs of you know how much are we paying if people opt out of health insurance and all that and the reality for us if I just might speak freely is that we need to look to be more competitive with these things if you look at
188them I mean there are some things where it's like okay yeah because other districts are out competing us financially for bus drivers yeah so like anyway so that that's something we looked at and that's just my reflection of the team I believe today or at least from the Chairs perspective um and then the last thing I need to or would like to talk I have two more things one more thing um District that it is super important if I may have like the ability for our District to still identify our free and reduced individuals and the reason for that is because I am so excited about the lunch changes by the State to provide food and you know to to make sure that no students has food it's insecurity but there are other things we
189do to support students as well such as reduced athletic fees community ed supports and we want to provide those things to all of our students still and so like we need to identify those students those things so that we can provide the those things to anybody would benefit from that so if you know I if you're hearing me out there please help us with providing that information we want to do that and then the last thing is um audit so we anticipate coming to the Board with an audit present with our audit presentation it's hap it's kind of uh closing up right now and uh I would anticipate the audit report sometime the end late October or early in November and you should know that I conducted the audit call with our auditing firm and
190I was happy to I at state law that I have to like tell them I don't suspect fraud or anything of that sort so uh yeah that's did I miss anything no just a quick note Treasurer Gerbe you may always speak freely um and you do um and so I thank you for reminding us about the uh the free and reduced school lunch aspect and that TA TAN F money the Temporary Aid to needy families that we need to keep track of uh board and administration reports we'll let Dr Laatsch start I just want to thank everybody for a great start to the school year I really have again a lot of positive feedback when I've been out in the buildings I feel like the structures um in great order in the buildings and just
191feeling very positive about what I'm seeing there so thank you all for a great start to the school year I did just want to read one letter that I received the other day and it says uh Dear Mr Laatsch on behalf of Michigan School of Business officials it's my pleasure to inform you that Miranda Owsley has met the requirements for renewing the Chief Financial Officer Certification under the MSBO Voluntary Certification Program [Applause] this is a commitment of 150 hours of professional development established by the MSBO Board of Directors through our Professional Development Committee and the certificate will be valid from July 1st 2023 to June 30th 2028. I hope you'll join us in celebrating Miss owsley's accomplishment You may wish to inform your District's Board of Education which I'm doing tonight and our local media so
192congratulations for all your hard work with professional development Miranda down the table we'll start at that end if you have anything to report please do um I enjoyed going to the football game and watching the band and the dance team and all the little kids running in and excited always for the amount of medical research supported by the Chad Tough Foundation so that was fun to be out and I'd like to wish those of us celebrating the Jewish New Year this weekend a sweet and happy New Year uh I'll just say and um September 26th from five to six will be our next policy committee meeting for those of you who want to attend and I also wanted to um thank everyone for a great start to the school year and one thing that I
193noticed today and I think this might be the second or third time that this has happened but when I was at Skyline this afternoon to cheer on the Hornets on the tennis courts I noted that they rode a bus together as a team so I wanted to again shout out the Transportation Department and uh Dr Laatsch and I were talking before the meeting that they left before four o'clock so this meant that we had a bus that was in addition to our regular uh elementary school routes so thank you uh for that and I think that's all I have all right uh I also want to echo how much fun orange and I love I love color orange and Chad Tough and this past Friday night and uh you know I'm excited for this weekend
194and the run and and all those things so I I just appreciate our community for for that I read an incredible article about our SORO officer Officer Morgan and I was really excited to see Officer Morgan receive the love in this this article and what have you I know Officer Gasaway is outstanding so if you get a chance to see the Sun Times News I I really enjoyed that and her commitment to to our students um and lastly uh as as uh secretary Miller just said bussing right I want to say how much I appreciate the community working with us that that first week when we cancel two routes not that is not ideal that is not our goal is not what we want to do and and so I'm thankful for the efforts to
195to fill routes I'm thankful for our continued recruiting efforts and I am thankful for Rex Clary who gets on a bus from time to time and and Steve Laatsch who's still waiting to finish up that CDL because the state's taking forever and and just little things like that so thank you to everyone involved appreciate it staff uh you know especially like uh Trustee Gerby that just said the busing I know our our Transportation Department they tend to get very thin during the busing routes because a lot of them are out there doing the busing themselves and so I appreciate that extra effort that they're putting into to make sure all our busting routes are run and um then kind of like uh Trustee Gold mentioned is nice going to the football game and hearing the
196fight song by the um marching band that's always great and of course how did I forget our Student Representatives I won't I won't make that mistake again I'll in fact I'll have you start start the kick us off the next time foreign showcase prepared but she ended up being sick today so that's unfortunate yeah I understand you have one already lined up for next week and then the one tonight's perhaps two weeks ago she would like to reschedule I have heard that she would like to reschedule she's prepared when she's feeling better that you're already a month ahead well done well done um I'd like to move on to the consent agenda the consent agenda is listed in this agenda and will not be read aloud the motion noted will allow for the authorization of
197all listed items without discussion unless a member of the board requested any one of them be considered individually like to entertain a motion to authorize the consent agenda as printed support Estep Estep support and oh second Steben in seconded um all in favor please say aye aye opposed all right we have a consent agenda and let me just see item schedule in the next agenda sir yeah the first one is I will provide an enrollment update and then the second order of business is the SEAB Sex Education Advisory Board we'll have a meet and greet goal setting presentation and then that will be followed by the public hearing number one they're having which and I want to define this because the specific topic is body safety curriculum it's to prevent child abuse and neglect the
198main components include teaching children that they're the boss of their bodies to identifying private parts and using proper terms for these parts and three how to recognize and respond to inappropriate behavior so the SEAB will be doing their presentation to the to the board of education at the next meeting that would be hearing number one and I understand that if we have questions and the audience raises questions that they'll be addressed in the second board meeting uh following that the next Board Meeting thank you uh public comment a member of the public may address the board briefly for up to three minutes we have a few uh Corey Beliot is first you're still here yay um and we have we have eight screen oh not now it's green okay so we moved from Clinton to
199Saline in 2009 just in time for my oldest son to start kindergarten and we intentionally chose Saline for its proximity to Ann Arbor the good schools the athletic program and music programs plus it's bigger than Clinton and therefore had to be more diverse and again as I spoke before I believe all children need to be able to see themselves represented in the classroom my cisgender heterosexual boys deserve to see families like theirs with a transgender non-binary sibling and perhaps if they did when they were in elementary school my now almost 17 year old wouldn't have been so stressed out if in fifth grade when his twin Ev came out as non-binary if kids had read or listened to more stories about non-binary transgender kids perhaps they wouldn't have tormented him so much he was asked
200so many questions about Ev that he started growling at kids and running away he grew very hateful of his twin and a twin that hadn't changed since the two were old enough to express who they were in our house Batman wore a tutu boys slept in Princess nightgowns dressed as witches and fairies my son didn't learn to question or dislike his twin because they were different in our house no it was at school and at the bus stop the kids questioned him about Ev no one asked Ev no one Ev would have happily told anybody who asked the many questions all about who they were but they went to Owen instead and so my biggest concern with the opt-out policy is the additional work that it will have on teachers and that it may cause
201them to change their lesson plans will a teacher look at their class list and say and recognize that they'll have at least one to two or more kids will opt out of a book and then they'll come up with an alternate have to come up with an alternative assignment so they'll just decide we're not going to read that book the policy is ambiguous it allows for opt-out based on something being personally objectionable and I know that you've been talking about that a lot I missed in the policy though where it talks about bringing a discussion with the families and the teacher and the um I think that would be great um it just it does the policy doesn't seem to define or give any guidance or requirement around what personally objectionable means it sometimes seems
202that Saline is pro-DEI but have pushed on the matter allows for an opt-out and so what happens when these kids grow up and leave Saline because school is so much more than just academics thank you Corey Chanming Fan you are next sir followed by Libby Williams Fan I thank you so much give me a second opportunity to continue what first I like to give a praise of the learning and training that report is much better than last time which I understand thank you which is brought up the learning and training of public school and not only I support it when I add something one of the word I want to say is 70 20 10 rule children learn and develop 70 based on the challenge 20 based on relationship interchange among the peers 10 percent
203based on course work and training solid initiative is one of the things is challenge everybody for the new initiative you all have the copies but both of you our students leader don't have yet and the parents of this Scout and they also want to know more so first thing I want to ask that is it possible with your former approval I will give the third draft to our wonderful student leaders and also scout leaders of the way which is the important for me to give the younger people as I said last time they represent the future you represent tomorrow what happened is that we have to challenge us in order to reach the new development of technology and also quite a lot of environmental change need to consider this kind of structure so Saline Area
204like Tower so I want to have an answer before I do next move Mr Mayor and just like also Mr McVey and Trustee Estep support this idea where beginning one a to have some kind of presentation but I do want to make sure we go step by step the SALT initiative Saline Area Light Tower is the intended to create a to based on the cluster of innovation and cluster of creativity not just Changming Fan have some ideas of good wish no it's a lot of accumulation so therefore please give me the answer so I can move forward also your leadership participation is critical and the volunteerism is the whole thing south should be the largest social gathering place the largest school for us to learn and the best way to change the environment reduce the
205gap between rich and poor have and have not so please I need your support and leadership and I will give both of you first with your permission the third draft if that is possible thank you thank you Mr Fan Libby Williams is up and Meghan Gunnerson is on Deck good evening um I understand that there are many reasons parents or students may want to opt out of a particular lesson um I also understand that a policy without the teeth mentioned by other parents today that protects marginalized groups will absolutely be used to opt out of actual people some parents find objectionable um this is not um just going to happen at this policy is as inevitable as it seems um it is already actually happening I have actually had parents tell me they've opted out
206of anything that a quote DEI teacher is teaching blanket statement whether or not it works I don't know but that is their intention and has already done it these parents don't want conversations with educators I understand it's the intention but they don't they no longer trust them at all um these parental groups are already ridiculing the new SEL staff that was introduced here tonight it's already online um they don't want conversations what will be done when this policy is used not for religious or trauma reasons but political or bigoted ones that's my question to this board what were you what would you do about it when it when it does happen that it is happening what will you do now that you know it's being used this way if diversity equity and inclusion and social
207emotional learning are imperative to student health and societal education it should be mandatory people aren't optional and it's important that students understand that and it shouldn't be opted out of thank you thank you Libby Williams after Meghan Gunnerson is Tiffany Alexander don't let green lights on yeah I just have um two topics one is about uh Trustee Gerbe's Financial plea I just wanted to highlight that kids get captured and identified through the reduced and free lunch program for a variety of things including healthcare options it's a it's kind of a sidebar way for kids to get health care and so for families who may not have that they may not know that that's a perk of actually filling out this form so I did just want to publicly make that statement and then also I
208know that the I'm not going to say this right but the school athletics versus the club athletics the school athletics you get a scholarship for and through Community Ed but I wondered if there was any way for extracurricular clubs or club sport teams to also have their players also benefit from some type of scholarship I did ask that question to the athletic department and it was kind of like oh that's a good idea I just didn't know how that funding could also be helped because not everybody throws or kicks a ball some kids do other things and it would be nice for them to be able to participate if the financials are rare finances were available and then um I may have misunderstood but if this was the second reading of this policy and I
209can't remember the number um I just wondered if next week is the vote when would the probable timeline for implementation be I just wondered if there were drafts for the opera operational side being kind of loosely put together because it seems like it's been on the table for a really long time and um it just would be nice to know if if whatever voted in or wrote it out that there's um operationalization that's going to take place in a sort of a timely fashion so I just wanted to plant that seed thanks I heard a recent workshop that I am allowed to intervene and make comments from the table if I can and we will get back to you very quickly on that one all right thank you after Tiffany would be David thank you
210thank you hello so I wrote down a whole bunch of stuff and I think I'm probably scrapping most of it um first of all uh I want to say that I did not catch the personally objectionable language so I liked that thank you for catching that um and I wasn't really sure what I thought about it because one it is offensive two the reality is they do find us personally objectionable and that's the whole entire problem is that's what they're objecting to so I realize that I've talked to the policy committee a lot about this but I really haven't spoken to the board very much so I'm actually for an opt-out policy I've actually opted out of things I'm actually for parents rights what I'm not for is weaponizing parents rights and using it as
211an excuse to attack various communities and that's what this is the reason you don't see a whole lot of people opting out is because they don't really care they don't really think my child's harmful because at Saline we've gotten to the point you're not allowed to say not allowed because it's it's it's not well received we don't like these people we don't want them here so the next thing is well you know we want everybody to have rights no they don't no they do not they personally object to me I've had these same people who've come talk to you tell me that I've never dealt with racism and I'm lying and making it up they don't want us here but the community what you're hearing from the community about identities what you're hearing from us
212and I want to be clear this impacts black students other children of color When Miss Washington was here one of the things they said was we want to opt out of all things Channon what do you think that meant what the community is telling you is that the protections inside this policy are not enough and you're not listening it's not enough because this is going to be used to attack children like mine and there are some people who that is their intent and you know it it's not enough I'm glad that it protects flags that's a great thing that's really important I'm glad that it does not cover large swaths of the curriculum that is really important I'm glad that it is specific to assignments that's all really great language that is very important it
213does not need to go away but it's not enough and I'm telling you it's not because this is going to impact children like mine families like mine it is going to harm them so what you do with this by not sending it back by not adding a language about harm about identities you are not listening Dr Hayward followed by Darcy Berwick who I don't think is here so you came back okay thank you all right thank you um this opt-out policy or the struggle over this opt-out policy has really become a microcosm of a larger national and even international fight but ultimately it's a symbolic fight strip away all that symbolic baggage and what are we actually talking about we're talking about the kids in this district today who are feeling attacked and unsupported materials
214are taken out of their class rooms that are reflecting their gender their race their ethnicity their religion their language that they speak at home or their socioeconomic status and if you don't think that it refers to this thing that it's just about LGBTQ kids look at what's going on in Florida and Texas and other states across this country because we don't live in a microcosm what that does is make kids feel stigmatized it makes them feel invisible because kids are smart and they're part of this world and part of this country and when they see that happening they think that all the people in this room think that their existence is something that should be invisible and they should be ashamed of and that they are personally objectionable I don't know that's that sounds worse
215to me than uh controversial now and teachers also are feeling a lack of support and direction from this District to to support their students which is leading them to take stuff out preemptively it's causing a cycle of harm can any policy solve this can this policy solve this no you were in a position to craft a policy to support teachers and empower them to support their students the fact that you have chosen not to send the the policy back to to craft it to do the right thing is disappointing frankly and hopefully that's something that will be revisited in the near future thank you thank you very much Darcy Berwick followed by Shawna Nichols Darcy Berwick parent um I did speak about this a few weeks ago and I come back essentially to say the
216same thing which is that um I don't believe that the opt-out policy is perfect that there is room for improvement and I think that will always be the case but as it is this policy is significantly better than the current opt-out policy and we have been going at this for about five years it's not cropped up all of the sudden it's been with us since at least 2018 and you have spent a significant amount of time and resources and put a lot of work into getting this policy to where it's at um I feel like this gives parents structure and sets expectations for what parents need to do for what teachers need to do that's missing in what we have right now and whether or not someone wants to have a conversation there are people
217who do and there are people that at conversation will be impactful for don't discount the positive things that can come from this because there could be disaster my hope is that you know we do recognize that opting out of some work is a valuable thing we have statutory opt out for sex ed and a few other things so we know that this is something we value and I think that it deserves to be honored whether it is what what your reasoning is there are valid reasons to want an opt-out and that should be honored I think that if this policy is being abused that needs to be acknowledged and it needs to be addressed I think that I am disappointed to hear that you know a teacher at Pleasant Ridge was opting someone out for
218but using this policy rather than the religion policy my hope Is that when you have these conversations you will funnel them down the correct path um and I know that I will be coming back and asking for accountability I want to know how this is working out if it's being used if it's being abused and I guess I would love to see an acknowledgment that this is it's not perfect but that you also will be looking into it and making improvements as we go thank you thank you Darcy Berwick Shonda Nichols I don't recognize you so you know the rules 30 seconds before the three minutes is up you get the yellow card cool cool thank you all right this is my first time ever speaking at one of these so bear with me a
219little nervous um thank you guys all um I just have I have a few thoughts um listening to this my question is why are BIPOC LGBTQ plus people or anything DEI related lumped into the same issues as sexual assault trauma eating disorders etc and allowing people who are triggered by our existence to opt out of educational instruction um that's just something that I just can't I'm having a hard time sitting with so why are we being lumped into that why are we a big piece of that trauma um we shouldn't be but we are um you know it's really upsetting to know that kids in this community are looked at as a trigger for just existing in their own skin and as their own selves it continues to target marginalized people in a community as
220a problem and enable those who might disagree with people who are different from them to continue hateful behavior and stay uneducated against their neighbors another thought I have is maybe we should have a checkbox system of what you can opt out of maybe we should have that and maybe we should start leaving BIPOC people and LGBTQ people education out of that um another little thing that I was thinking about was I don't agree that the opt-out policy encourages conversation with their teacher I didn't really see anything um mentioning that I mean it will happen because you obviously have to talk to the teacher but um I think it puts a lot of pressure on teachers to face that one-on-one as well so I think it's putting a lot of pressure on the teachers but that's
221all I have to say so thank you thank you very much the next scheduled Board of Education meeting will be on September 26th at 6:30 however we do have a special meeting planned for September 18th at 5:15. it's one quick item and then a closed session with possibly some action afterwards the room is to be determined and with that said I'll use my one of my three gavels to adjourn this well we're getting there I could also say without objection however I'd like to without objection I'd like to adjourn the regular Board of Education meeting of September 12th at what is this 9:44. I'm hearing no objection so oh I was just going to move move I said okay without it yeah you're getting tricky now if you wanted to object and then make a
222motion that would be cool I don't know don't look like they want to try don't I've got a gavel and I'm not I've got three gavels and I'm not afraid to use any of them thank you very much everyone I'm special one's from here once