001I like to call the order the Saline Area Schools Board of Education meeting of August 8 2023 would as you're able would you please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you just a couple of notes from the president uh I do want to say publicly at this point uh thank you very much to everybody all School administrators who were extraordinarily prompt at locking down the schools during our incredibly tragic and sad uh moment that we had earlier this week I've heard from a few parents who were just grateful that we were on top of that and secondly anyone who is following along at the policy committee there was a note that we would be discussing policy 2240 tonight but that's not going to
002be discussed this evening and we'll hear more details about that later but it will it will not be on tonight's report or on our agenda so thank you um weird time or public comment a member of the public May address the board briefly for up to three minutes or a request to be scheduled on the agenda for a future meeting please note that students will be given priority to speak on any topic the first public participation portion of the meeting will be limited to one half hour 30 minutes normally and limited to agenda items a second public participation portion will be offered at the end of the agenda to allow for any other comment individuals addressing the board should take into consideration's rules of common courtesy the public participation portion of the meeting cannot be
003used to make personal attacks against a board member district employee or student we have two this evening Chen Ming fan followed by Lisa Slauson floor is yours sir and I know you're an expert at this so we won't tell you about the cards okay sorry do I start over all right um I had honor to participate the two meetings last hour Mr Garber garbage and give the good news and the governor have the increase of the budget especially I think it is 25 million dollars for increment vocational technology and Career Training this increased dramatically have the impact of everything especially vocational training I also have not meeting today with the committee director Ben Harrison and here's what I had learned how he prepared for tomorrow's meeting of the master plan for the city of Celine
004second part especially look at Future land use and tries to anticipate growth and change the reason I mentioned these two things together is that here we have money prepared here we have the city really want to have next five years to have them creativity and it's important for us to utilize the advantage we have Celine City located such a wonderful place we have a lot of open space and also Celine education system is open and I have good ideas and Governor have the money prepare for us I'm talking about the vocational training education part for example Aviation I mentioned that for the last Finance meeting I think and if you guys can remember why I mentioned about this to put it simple is train the young people to fly not fly cars but fly drones
005why is that important why is that good for our economy for our environment for everything I think it is we have to compete with not only private schools and also compete with the rest of the world China have the event have ten thousand drones to fly all of this with light and you can mark the Long Live Channel or long list whatever it is so U.S have public school health advantages to really have the good thing and we should put into some kind of plan maybe 2025 we can do that that's all I want to say thank you thank you Mr fan hello um I live in Maplewood Farms um right next door to the incident that happened last week and I do want to Echo what president McVeigh said we thank you so much
006for your quick response I expect nothing less because I know you all are trained in this but there were a lot of moms in my neighborhood who were very very worried and we were also right next door so things could have gone bad very quickly and so we thank you for your quick response and for caring about our kids all the time even in the summer so also I wanted to give a shout out to trustee Susan Estep she was asked to speak and she spoke at Ann Arbor Pride at the opening ceremony and she spoke with the mayor Pro tem of Ann Arbor a congresswoman Dingle and a state Senator Jeff Irwin and she made a lovely speech to the fat point where a friend of mine from Metro Detroit wanted me to tell
007you that he was inspired by what you said so thank you we thank you for doing that the work it means a lot to those of us in the community so thank you you did a great job so thank you I also attended the policy committee meeting once again that's good governance when you all talk that's what the board is supposed to be doing and I really appreciate you know the back and forth having us watch you because that's transparency and that's important and I think you ran you run a good meeting and so um thank you for that because when that's when people get angry and upset when we don't see you in action and so we appreciate that we appreciate you taking your time because I felt like when I was on board
008all I did was attend meetings so I know how you feel so thanks again thank you for the positive comments we have one extended public comment from Mr Larry osterling the floor is yours sir you have up to 10 minutes but I understand you're going to take three minutes and 42 seconds come somewhere around I brought my own cheering session here we have a very accurate clock up there so we will be watching I'm watching no peeking um the topic of my discussion is going to seem a little off the track but actually it does pertain a lot to that um things that we all do in the community and the school board and that's namely our three service clubs the Rotary the Lions and the Kiwanis and I actually got to thinking about maybe
009some of the information that's out there that I've recently accumulated would be of interest to you first of all I gotta say I do appreciate this time I know you always have a full agenda I've attended a lot of school board meetings I Know It Go on so yeah I'm shooting for 342. um and I I I like I said I do appreciate the time uh what you have before you is just an information sheet and it's basically an accumulation of three paragraphs written Brittany by each of our three main service clubs the Kiwanis the rotary the Lions I collected it I asked for it actually I visited each Club because I can I have friends there and usually they buy my dinner too so it was kind of fun um but what you see
010is a conglomeration of me putting that together and then taking it around and it's already on file in places like uh City Hall the library Pittsfield Township Hall any place I could think of I even put it on the bulletin board of Brookside Golf Course and places like that so it's nothing new but it's information I was just kind of hoping you would keep on file and I started thinking about this maybe it's useful information to you during the scholarship awards at the Ellen Ewing Auditorium this last spring because each of these three service clubs were there making generous donations to kids graduating and they have a fund uh they want to have a good relationship with the school system and I think the reverse of that too is I think if you can think
011of them as also being a resource and one of the things from visiting the three clubs that I got and there was a lot of commonality in this they all started talking about um we're really down on our membership one of the club meetings I went to was like six which is really small for what I remember service clubs in our area and I'd hate to lose one um but it does happen in communities it's happened in Chelsea but that aside we have some pretty neat clubs um in fact the lions are serving ice cream as we speak down at the library right now in front of the Fiddlers you'd see the weenie wagon from the Kiwanis they're going to be at the community fair and the Lions they serve the ice rotary has a
012big presence um for those Community Affairs so I think I I guess I don't want to preach the choir here other than they do a lot of really good things and so here's the real reason I'm here here's my spiel all of them said kind of got to the subject or somehow came about that they're really hurting from Members um maybe it's covered maybe they don't tell enough people maybe they don't publicize themselves enough but for whatever reason um they need they need help in finding you know places to find those replacement members and by the way retired teachers and administrators retired school people are like a really big breeding ground for people that maintain a high profile in the community I mean people like Taylor Jacobson and Charlotte well it's Paul Thibault people like
013that Betsy Morrow Social Service I mean they all had this community thing so I think I'm talking to the right people and saying the right things here but that's basically I just wanted to to share that information actually the three the three clubs I visited this is a sort of a side comment the golden members are the ones uh like you folks that have jobs and other responsibilities but yet still find time to put in dedication like this so those are really cool members for the service clubs I know Steve is a rotarian I see him at chamber meetings here or there everywhere he's even driving us is he driving a school bus is that right yeah I don't think the guy ever sleeps I mean frankly he's in the Christmas parade so kudos to
014you that's that's a really good example for our community so um that's really all I have unless there's questions you've got the information call me my email's there I'm around um and if there's nothing more I might have 342 343 3 4 minutes and 10 seconds that's great you you did a long pause right at 3 42 and I was saying well first of all let's not talk about that thank you very much for the ice cream I actually read the notes here and there's a free ice cream waiting for uh we board members I wanted to thank you for uh first of all I you invited me last week or two weeks ago to the Lions Club and it was great I got to watch some of our students receive scholarships from them my
015dad was a a lion he was also a a kiwanian for years and years and years and I I know it's sort of in my blood but I just haven't joined yet so I feel a little shamed but oh I wanted to mention too about former School parents of which I'm one I have three kids are all grown they went through the school system did very well but um if there's if there's a parent crowd out there you know people that maybe you've been active in PTA and sports and all that stuff you do that all of a sudden when your kid graduates what are you going to do next service Club is a great road to go it's a lot of fun um kind of fills the Gap and we're looking for those kind
016of people so that's the information I well thank you any questions from the rest of the board Michael I was just wondering um since since Larry passed out this form but we didn't read what the three service clubs are if you could just kind of put them into their records so people can get more information and by no means do I mean these are the clubs that do every I mean these are the main service clubs in our community and open pretty much to you know the entire demographic of the same demographic you folks serve but there's the Celine area Lions Club they meet they've been around for a really long time their Charter is on the wall down at Max in the basement and there's some old-time people there they're really pretty cool the
017rotary is the same way um Saline Area Rotary Club you'll see them at the saline Community Fair Manning the gate you're running around the golf carts they do a lot there and then there's this Celine Kiwanis Club and um they're the ones that serve the hot food you'll see them at Summerfest this weekend Community fair you've seen all kinds of places and sometimes you wonder where these people come from well they're volunteers and they volunteered their money and usually they're having a pretty good time doing it so I would add that as a plus to it but um anyway did I answer your question just wanted it listed so the people if they happen to be listening the video back since they didn't have the paper they know which the clubs are yeah the um
018and I the information I gave you was actually on poster form so it's at the library I think the library even volunteered they told me they would put it on their website even I'm not sure how to publicize it beyond that other than to be places like this and I think we may go out to the Pittsfield board and the city council too just to kind of clue them in so but you're that you're the big you know them you've got the biggest demographic you know the most people so we're looking for members well thank you very much Mr thank you I appreciate it uh just quick response to our previous public comments several parents that the last board meeting spoke regarding 2240 the policy and I just want to say thank you for your
019input uh regarding the agenda items may be added or deleted from the agenda that most of you have in front of you and or the order may be changed at the request of an individual board member or the superintendent the agenda must be approved before proceeding farther I'd like to recommend a motion to achieve the approve the agenda as printed so be it Kirby uh uh support Miller Jennifer Miller all in favor please say aye aye any opposed okay that's oh seven tonight eight seven one we have an agenda we have four items that are uh action items this evening uh the first I'd like to uh entertain a motion to approve the recommendation by executive director of teaching and learning per board policy 2510 approval of the textbook and Associated ebook digital license biology
020for the AP course first edition 2022 James Morris Dominic castagnetti and John laprio and Rick yeah do we have a biology teacher recommends or motion motion gerby support stubborn support stabbing so oh um Pardon Me Do we have any discussion about this or any questions apparently not well I guess if we're ready to vote uh all in favor please say aye aye aye opposed all right seven zero thank you you have a textbook um I'd like to entertain a motion to approve the purchase of additional security cameras in the amount of 119 thousand dollars one 119 144.20 to Sentinel Technologies Incorporated as recommended by Jay Grossman directory director of Technology who is in the building this evening oh second uh so who moved so I'll give that to uh Jennifer stebbin moved and Tim Tim
021Austin second any discussion any questions I know Mr Grossman is ready yeah it's just a change request correct if I'm reading this correctly from do you want to give some details just and and adding a little bit correct but just so the Republic yes it is a a change request going through once we approve the order um there were a few additional cameras or spots that we missed so we're adding a couple cameras correcting some of our in interior one was ordered and exterior one was needed so this is just to make everything whole for the next 10 years sure alrighty hi thank you the July 11 2023 closed session for the purpose of the school board to consider security planning to address existing threats or prevent potential threats to the safety of the students
022and staff under Section 8K these are the reasons that we met our secretary Miller is handing out the minutes of that meeting we are going to do a quick review of them and return them to her after we voted first of all there's a motion on there's no motion on the table yet anybody going to move thank you steban support stevin all right please do a clarifying question this is our closed session meetings if I see an error how do I is it what would we call a scrivener's error yes it is well then I think you could just note the correct spelling error or okay to uh to um secretary Miller we'll make the changes okay well I don't mind if we misspell one of our associate superintendents names incorrectly is that what we're
023looking at okay okay it's okay I'll throw myself under that bus I sent you the notes and at least the bus has a lot of cameras on it thank you Mr Grossman we got an extra calm after your name too nice but is it an Oxford comma when she collects them we'll take the vote all in favor please say aye aye aye opposed all right we have minutes thank you very much uh recommended motion move to appoint the throne Law Firm PC of Lance oh I'd like to entertain ment oh those motions are made by Susan Estep and seconded by Jennifer stebbin um I'd like to entertain a motion a to a point through Law Firm PC of Lansing Michigan and Collins PC as legal counsel for the school district or board for the 2023-2024
024school year in addition the district is authorized to utilize other law firms pending areas of expertise you not yet we don't have a motion on the table would you like to move I'll make that motion and I'll second it so we can have the discussion thank you open for discussion so I just wanted to say that the um at the request of the board the policy committee did look at this motion and um uh trustee Estep had informed us of the policy that matched this um this motion and so we made the change so that the two were um in congruence with one another and I guess I'll chime in and say on behalf of the finance committee we also engaged in some conversation also because there is a financial piece and component and we
025are in support uh and please speak up if I misconstruous but we are in support of the change for or board but we would seek some clarification with regards to a preponderance of the board or some type of you know that it's a majority of the board action rather than individual um so as long as it's consistent with our policies as long as it's we just we were wondering if we needed to have a little bit of clarification with regards to what does or board could I could I just add that I think our board operating procedures basically say I agree where who makes those uh requests for the lawyers and no individual does it goes it always goes through either the Committees and then through the president and then to Dr Lodge I guess
026I just wanted that on the public record all right which board operating procedure zero one three one point one that's policy specifically about making policies it's a policy about making policies and that's the only which is just a committee piece so all the other things that come up aside from policy that we're actively working on or revision suggested wouldn't be relevant to anything else on the board so are you suggesting what you're looking at me or no I'm just saying I mean it's not just generally about um legal so I don't know if if I'm I'm proposing that um someone considering uh consider maybe adding it to our current policy or um that a board operating procedure actually be created to where you know that it comes to whoever um in that way so it's
027very clear because this has come up multiple times um so I'm just suggesting that I'm not saying I'm taking it on I'm just well let me make a promise right now that I will uh draft a policy or a board operating procedure note see if 0131 can be edited or maybe we start our own a brand new operating element yes ma'am I was just going to read policy 0172 just so everyone listening can hear that it's just a sentence and I think it was right at the last meeting too the Board of Education May employ an attorney to represent the school district or board in actions brought for or against the district and to render other legal services for the welfare of the school district so perhaps that policy would be the one to be
028revised or have some additions made to it for clarification all right well perhaps this time next year we'll have a more robust policy it'll only be two paragraphs long but at least it'll parallel what we have in our existing policy so it sounds like there are policies that exist now that that we can address yeah and another spot may be under the president responsibilities to in that policy great thank you appreciate that thanks for the discussion all in favor please say aye aye opposed okay we have modified that no seven zero um we have two scheduled reports this evening uh please excuse me I am deathly ill um hey everyone I am propped up on medications like you would not believe I'm no I'm okay I'm okay I've got I've had one head cold in
029the last three years thanks Mom I know uh so the handbook review please I'd like to threw it at me of all the we have uh five staff members coming to talk about the a handbook review or sorry I hope I didn't make it too light here but that's if I cough that's what's going on we said a Deneen ninth grade principle you can start you're working your way up now we said a Deneen ninth grade principal at Celine High School James rafko assistant principal at Celine High School Michelle chakowicz Celine Middle School principal Emily sickler Harvest principle and Ashley mantha our athletic director did I say beloved athletic director should I have yes okay yeah thank you got a thumbs up so um we've all reviewed and I hope that if anyone in the
030board asked questions they had sent them to a superintendent Lodge uh when we're when you're done with your presentation we'll if there are any questions we'll try and keep track of them all and um go from there thank you all right well thank you so much I'm glad that you're able to do some of this review we'll go through our presentation here quickly to give you some of the information that we have worked really hard over the past year as we start why review handbooks because our handbooks between our elementary secondary Athletics extracurricular our 50 plus pages so there's a lot of them so really thinking about that idea of why do we refer to those handbooks they set those expectations and provide guidance and a whole variety of pieces they are looking at creating
031that Cornerstone and of our missions of our values they really set the stage of who we are from our very youngest Learners all the way up in all of the different spaces that we learn that we play where we grow they show our building and District Operations again in all the different spaces where we are they show the codes of conduct and then they just show the programming because there are lots of different spots that you see where we do this learning and we want to make sure that no matter where you are we can talk about what that looks like and all of that type of learning in all of the different spaces and so we've done that work in those handbooks so that families can know exactly what we're looking at no matter
032where they are so what is the process that we take to review our handbooks so we have a cyclical process our handbooks are not a stagnant document document but they are Dynamic and changing when they need to throughout the year so in may we review feedback and input from our Learning Community across the district and all of the different buildings we review the changes and updates that have happened in policies and procedures across the district we also update language Personnel shifts and changes to keep our handbooks current so if you're trying to access a particular individual in the district you have that current information we review the data and needs from the past year that have occurred across the district we reviewed the young fives through fifth grade meet in a task force to take
033a look at their needs and grades 6 through 12 meet into task force our athletic and curricular work to come together to take a look and collaborate with the other groups that help govern our school functioning and programming in June and July we then finalized that language so that we can put that out to our learning community in all of our newsletters and out through our website and the return to learn verification forms so we're very excited to share that process with you today and for those of you who love Venn diagrams we know we've got some Educators up there I know that Ms Deneen and Mr rafka are going to talk a little bit about how they're similar and how they are different hi good afternoon um and oh I'm sorry I think I
034gotta all right so one way in which our handbooks are similar is that they're a source for both the building and District information so that you can find that they're going to be similar that we want them to be worded similarly because we don't want to be in a situation where our handbook at the high school looks different than what the district actually supports you'll also be able to find codes of conduct for different levels so that you can find what we expect out of students when they're on our grounds and also District program how we do business at the school level so that anyone coming or interested in coming to the district whether it be through school of choice or moving to the area that they know how Saline Area Schools does school while
035their student may be coming to us also contains a lot of useful information again to help those that might be coming to the school district or in want a little bit more information they can dig a little bit deeper within that 50-page document they can find a lot of ways in which we handle situations codes of conduct whichever situation they may be may be interested in look talking up and also we did a lot of things based on board policy to make sure that they're linked together so that we can uh whether we did a lot of time linking specific board policies so that in those codes of conducts you can be directed straight to the board policy that you all make so I'll get to talk about some of the differences so as Mr
036rafko mentioned when it comes to expectations for behaviors we do make sure that the language that we use in our handbook is developmentally appropriate and so you'll notice that if you look at our elementary level handbooks and our secondary level handbooks other things that would be unique or the idea of recess you will not see recess I know in the 912 secondary handbook or the middle school right they would be happy about that but that's kind of an example of age-appropriate things you would that would be different in some of the handbooks also specific to building operations so each building they do have some unique things based on their culture and the grade level so for example I know that Heritage the students are issued lockers I know it's the first time they get to
037practice that so that's you know detailed pretty thoroughly in their handbook I'm at the high school level credits for classes so there's the counselor and guidance counselor section is a bit more thorough in terms of credits that students need to earn who they can communicate with so again another example about that building Logistics look very different at the different levels also you'll have a lot of information around pickup and drop off at the elementary level and maps and routes for that high school it's more of like make sure you have a parking pass and you park in the student parking lot kind of thing expectations and then criteria So based on activity and developmental age one great example lived that in Mrs mantha will speak more specifically to that is sometimes there's certain guidelines and
038governances over different organizations so our mhsaa really does influence what that athletic and extracurricular handbook looks like so you might see some differences in that way so those are some of the differences and now what we'll do is talk specifically about the different grade levels and what we did throughout this year to make some updates for everyone one of the biggest changes we did in the elementary handbooks is that we were completely alphabetical handbook and so that looked really nice in the table of contents but it wasn't super user friendly so we went through and categorized it and really looked at putting pieces together so families could look and really pull up like oh here's the daily operations I'm really thinking about at that Elementary level we are welcoming new fam a lot of families
039for the very first time there are pieces about programming there are pieces that we just want to have but sometimes you just need to know like do I bring birthday treats the answer is no and that's because of board policy that we don't do that anymore and so we wanted to make this handbook really user friendly and so not having that like scroll scroll scroll scroll scroll where's the birthday treat part like here's the whole section um what Mrs Dineen talked about about the drop off and pick up that's very important so like let's have that in those spaces so we reworked that whole section of Elementary area to make our handbook very user friendly we also did spaces for it to have hyperlinks obviously it's digital so like let's use the technology and bookmarks
040so people can just like move around those 50 pages with relative ease also looking at adding details to our Behavior expectations obviously that's really important for families and the daily operations again drop off pickup all of those pieces that we're really thinking about at that Elementary level how can we really make sure that families feel really comfortable about the pieces here to connect with our school so that they really know how that they can partner with us so those are the things that we did this year so highlights for the 6th through 12th grade handbooks are so similar where we know that there were some updates made are still at the elementary level moving it from alphabetical ours still remain primarily alphabetical but we did do some groupings of things that kind of Belong Together
041ideas that belong together um because ours has so much um information in there we felt alphabetical might be the best way and easier way for people to to sort through that we did edit edit and format so that it could be easier to read and navigate through it by making changes like that additionally we rearrange some of that information so that we could group it to be found near similar subjects we updated our school staff information due to retirees and new hires and we also updated our definition section to include micro and macro aggressions we also edited it to use the same language as board policy to include those hyperlinks so that you can get back and forth from what our district policy is and how that relates to our handbook guidelines we added updates
042to our digital Vice guidelines and all of the edits to the document were changed to reflect situations that had occurred throughout the year and to align our policy with the Board of Education hello everyone um so for athletics as well it's been many years actually since our handbook has been updated um and so ours is not 50 pages I'll save you the reading but um it did go from 10 pages to 16. so like I said that's a little more content in there that you'll see a lot of those sections up here that we've updated just because we're kind of getting with the times right it's been so many years some things just naturally had to be included for example online classes and great eligibility you know 10 years ago you weren't really checking online
043classes and did they follow the same trimester schedule as our other current classes right or nil deals maintain your amateur status kind of thing some things have just naturally occurred that need to be updated but there are some bigger sections that we're missing as well and through our 18 months in this department we've kind of found some pieces that needed to be placed in there to cover us going forward and some of those are our core values our philosophy goals of our athletic participation and Celine eligibility standards as Miss Dean just mentioned kind of mhsa as well as Saline Area Schools kind of thing so we do answer to that level and even a bigger governing body as well as our board policy and so we do have we actually added the Celine bridge to
044civility as well just kind of having that part of our addressing a concern having those tough conversations and basically a chain of command that kind of thing so we brought in a lot of as mentioned before about in stakeholders specifically our coaches and community members back in February all the way to June to kind of address what was missing what was needing to be adding what was need to be edited since we kind of took many hours in our department and coaches to kind of reevaluate and edit this updated handbook and it does match the Celine middle school and Celine High School handbooks and the Board of Education language and policies and then to go on with that as well the extracurricular so some of you might have already known this I'm not going to
045speak on behalf of I guess you know Community Ed and Lori Dawson of clubs and activities but we are one big cohesive unit kind of thing so I'm going to speak of it today but if you have more questions about how they're using that they can definitely answer that too but last year we started this very cohesive Saline Area Schools extracurricular kind of handbook so Athletics is driving that Force so when you open it you're going to see basically it looks like the athletic handbook but we started to see some situations last year in the past actually a couple years um where clubs and activities and Community Ed activities need to be underneath the similar guidance so to speak for example we have you know High School boys volleyball they're under Community Ed no one's
046checking grades no one's checking you know their consequence and so forth so now there were more cohesive together so to speak right and so we're basically one united front with athletic department clubs and activities and Community Education and that was united front basically started last year and we're going forward with our edits as one big group as I mentioned cohesive and very consistent so what it's me again so as you can see our handbooks are really comprehensive and they're really helpful resources for our family for Board of Ed members for administrators and teachers so they're wonderful resource for you to refer to so how do you find the handbooks you can look at any handbook throughout the district by going to the district website when you first get onto our landing page you're going to
047want to go to the Schools page you can select any school and then you can see in the image there's a yellow toolbar kind of along the bottom of the screen there and I've drawn a red arrow there to indicate it'll say handbooks and when you click that link it'll take you to all of the handbooks across the district and you can select whichever handbook it is that you would like to view so that's how to access them if you'd ever want to take a look and read through those handbooks there's a lot of really wonderful information in there they're very rich and comprehensive and so with that being said if there's any further information on guidelines policy handbook information that you'd like us like us to research for you feel free to submit any
048questions to Dr Lodge and we'll be happy to gather that information and get back with you with it thank you team mother thank you very much if there if there are one or two slight clarifying questions I think there might be some time for that oh have you finished yeah great I just wanted to say that as I was looking through the presentation and and the associated links um I just really the thing that kept coming back to me was how responsive you've all been to a lot of the things that um that have come up over the last couple of years and I know um athletic director rampant mentioned that too that that as things come up we're responsive so I just really appreciated like I could see that in each of the handbooks
049that all of you have really taken to heart um not just those experiences but also the different voices student voices parent voices staff voices and included those and made it very clear and then the other thing that I just really appreciated and I think I think Emily were the one who mentioned this that it's not a static document and so as policies such as our policy 2240 that's being discussed currently so as policies come up those changes can be made and that is really nice now that we have all of these things in electronic form so I wonder so um and if you're if you don't want to answer tonight you can let us know but as changes are made if it's made throughout the school year is there like some sort of notification that
050goes to students or family so they're aware of those changes and can make adjustments accordingly I can speak just really quickly um just I guess it would be dependent upon what specifically the situation was and how urgent the need for immediate change would be I think that for the changes that we have made that have come up we follow the cycle and come together in May this this situation happened this is something we need to come together and review and have that discussion on what the policy is what the guidelines are and make a decision to make that change for the following school year yep thank you I'll make a quick comment then I also would like to Echo the thoughts that like you really do like change and modify and move with the things
051that happen in our school I and I'm thankful for your dedication to that and your continuous Improvement I think is what we would call it as Educators and I just wanted you to hear that for me I also want you to hear from me as a board member on the diligence to the handbooks can really be helpful to us Also regarding procedures and regarding if there's ever appeals and things that ever happen where we are involved so I just want you to hear the appreciation for this work that goes into this and that you really do stay on top of it so thank you foreign yes um so I guess I'm going to ask a couple questions so because policy um hat right here um never can get it off um but um you know
052I think there's like just confusion in general in the district and I've seen like on the Dei like advisory committee um that you know and this is important for the community um in general that you know and you all touched on it a little bit but policy like then there's administrative guidelines through the superintendent and then um the student handbooks um and do we have employee and family handbooks or I'm not sure okay um question for later um but that you know um comes directly you know uh what's in in the handbooks um is trickled down from you know what's what the policy says um and so um I know sometimes there's things that I guess uh I'll give an example um with bullying um that it is like defined in our policies um but
053it seems that and maybe it's just a different wording across the board um but that that's defined not necessarily word for word in the policy and looks different across handbooks so that was something I noticed and a policy from 2021 that hasn't um you know uh been changed so I guess a question with that would be um oversight as far as you know we're changing policies all the time and it might not be like a huge major thing that comes to the attention um of you know admin and just kind of pass through and it may be something minor which is the one that I I found um that's just a word literally that was taken out but it's still in there and so I'm wondering um I know with our Neola policy um vendor
054that we sometimes get handbooks and it's not approved by the board but is there to reflect um and I don't know if you all have seen those to reflect what changes there were for that year or um if we have a policy you know packet of 20 policies that we're looking through if that impacts the handbook that's going to be reflected in that so I don't know um if you all know or if superintendent Lodge how that is communicated and handled to make sure that we're right on top and communicating that appropriately great they're gonna look into that um I did have a question that I'm going to throw it your way and expect it to land and superintendent Lodge's desk and it's chat GPT I looked real oh okay I'm seeing the faces now
055um I looked at the the cheating and academic Integrity issues and so forth and I know this is a quickly moving Target and it's changing every single day at some point um I'm fully expecting you all to come to the board and ask for a solid policy from us for how to deal with it and I think everyone at this point is looking over their shoulders so at some point if you have if you have a plan going forward could you just share it with Dr Lodge and I'm happy to look at it listen to it at something oh I'm sorry I didn't realize you were not done I thought I heard a period um so just uh real quick with um well I think it's been brought to our attention about um and it's
056probably major all's um lives very difficult um because it looks different from the actual policy to um actually under the Dei statement which I think we've had in the handbooks for maybe since 2019 um and it's like you know we're we're accepting and um great curriculum and then there's a sentence that says if any student or family is sensitive to any particular topic so associated with the Dei um that they're encouraged to discuss this matter with the teacher um that's an example of like our policy is totally not that and so if you know families are seeing just that right that's um that looks very different and more it's something we're working on now but even this isn't reflected correctly from the current policy or the one that we're working on and so you know
057those are kind of some things to to look for if you're like well there's not really much information there like maybe like thinking about the policy and how that um interacts with it because yeah that's I don't even think of students allowed to do that so you know like that's an example um and uh I had a question about the micro macro definitions and um if Dei advisory committee was involved in that um I guess how does it impact like our the hate speech acts uh statement in in the hand guys so I'm just curious about how that came about if you're able to answer that can you speak on the I don't think everybody we can research all those questions and get back to the board as soon as possible I just wanted to
058say it's great to see all of you happy summer and thank you for setting the table for a safe and efficient year I know that this annual review is really important takes a lot of time but it's incredibly beneficial for the families especially as Emily said when when families are coming into our school district so thank you and um happy August almost a few weeks thank you hearing no more questions I just want to say thank you very much for the presentation I appreciate it I'm going to call up Ms Cara Davis oh you know what one thing I should add too though before everybody goes thank you the five of you Laura Washington was actively involved in this too and did a lot of coordinating with handbook reviews and couldn't be here tonight because
059of the death in her family so I just wanted to point out she she's been active with it too and we appreciate her so akara Davis has got a presentation on the K-12 Insight School quality survey report yes good evening board it's so wonderful to see all of you I hope everybody has enjoyed the summer months and continues to for a few more weeks here spoiler alert the report that I'm summarizing is 217 pages so after you've gone through all of that um much much longer however I have compressed it into about 27 slides or so so I'm gonna do my best to summarize some of our key highlights from our district quality survey this evening and I've got quite a bit of information to share with you so I hopefully have answered quite a
060few questions within the report itself and then I'm happy to jot additional questions down at the end in this summary report um my hope is to explain the district quality survey to you just as a reminder of what the tenants of the survey process is review our district strategic frames as well as the correlated highlights to those frames from the survey results themselves and then considerations for market for our continuous Improvement planning and at the end of the report there is a link to it if you would like to dive in even deeper so essentially the process with our district school quality survey is that we are partnered with K-12 insight to help us create an annual survey that we administer in the spring is administered annually to monitor growth on our goals and to
061ensure that we are using data to drive decision making across the district through across the year within our continuous Improvement plan in the last couple of years we have really strived to use the same survey with the intent to better compare results and we also have Incorporated under the guide of K-12 insight and some nationally Norm questions so that we have a wider perspective on how our district compares to other districts nationally as well in terms of participation this year we had a little bit lower participation you can see there there's a comparison between 2021 and 22 and then 22 and 23. we've actually been giving this survey for a lot longer and when I look back in some of our files I could go back to you know 2011 2013. it was it's been
062under different names we've cut out we've called it our Compass survey at one point in time we've we actually call it school quality survey and also has District quality survey information in it in this case we've we've tried on a variety of different means to administer the survey so different times across the year mostly in the spring where we're trying to get end of year information so in 2019 for example we tried March and April in 2022 we tried May and June and in 2023 we tried April and May all of those are us trying to find the right Cadence and approach for getting increased participation in this case Dr bull does say that our number of responses is trending with the national Norm we'll get those actual reports from the national all norming later
063this fall and I'll be able to share those with you electronically however she wasn't overly concerned she's our partner in the work with K-12 Insight she was feeling like we were on track with what other districts were experiencing as well in terms of response rates we did consider extending the survey this year however due to some of the circumstances in May that we were experiencing we really did feel with the number of emails that were much more critical about some of the situations we had in the district that that was what our priority was in that moment and we also felt like that the survey results might be biased as a result of that are skewed if nothing else because of the events that were happening specifically at the high school and middle school so
064with that I do have the the feedback in terms of having looked at a number of these different surveys and having being able to compare them to also our internal surveys that we give to our staff on an annual basis it does seem like the information that I'm providing tonight is on Trend year over year with what we're seeing so I feel pretty confident in the results that we have with that in mind we're always striking um the balance of trying to improve and so one of the things are when we think about considerations for improvement in 2324 so this year itself I do want to make you where I'm like really a wary of solutionitis however because we have committed to a dedicated Improvement plan we actually and we are using the same survey
065we've already started to think about some of the ways in which we can improve some of the results that we're seeing and seeing Trend year over year so in terms of improving participation we're going to continue to think about determining the best window of opportunity there's a lot of factors at the end of the year that influence the results such as State Testing our students have a lot of different required activities and our extension activities like camps and field trips and activities that are closing up the year spring Sports of course don't just make families lives busy also the students themselves are very busy so in order for us to find that sweet spot where we can get our you know best results that we can get that's one of the things we're going to
066continue to examine is what does that best window of opportunity look like and then I think that consistently administering the survey and using data to drive decision making is another great way to increase participation the number of years that we do this over and over again and people see that we're using the data and that we're connecting the decisions that we're making to the data I think will increase participation because we're showing the value that the district places on stakeholder feedback and their participation in decision making and then of course one of the opportunities that we see some success in is when we are specifying a schedule for student completion it does have to rement optional and we are really committed to that we do send a survey out ahead of time in a PDF
067form for families to preview as part of our just guidance around how we do surveys in the district however we do want to look at ways that we could say they can take it during this science class or during this advisory time and still find a way to make it comfortable for families who opt out for their students to not feel like they're being ostracized or out on the out of that particular experience as well so those are some things that we're looking at regarding participation in the survey um some additional information that is worth noting we worked a few years ago with a team here actually Michelle and Teresa in terms of determining Cadence of District surveys that felt like we could commit to across time and that's again coming back to the district
068really being intentional and strategic about when are we putting surveys out how are we not overwhelming our stakeholders and how are we ensuring that we're getting the valuable input that we need to make informed decisions that involves a wide variety of perspectives so in the fall we all the alternating years we alternate between the diac perceptions of equity survey and the sex Advisory Board survey so this fall our stakeholders will see in the diac perceptions of equity survey come out I would anticipate that based on the timelines sometime in October winter as needed we have a potential Wellness survey listening session some other feedback opportunities that we might put in if we feel like they are needed and then the spring annually we have the continuous learning survey which is Celine staff only that's internal
069and then we have the SAS qualities starting which goes out to all the staff and that is the one I'm presenting on tonight so I'm not presenting any other information but we have all of these other data points as well another interesting piece of information that's worth noting before I launch in I didn't use the graphs from the 217 Pages there were a lot of them so I instead decided to make sort of tables of Trends bright spots and data that we would consider and we're interrogating as a district so it's worthy of noting that the degree of don't know influences the result so if you are going to dive further in you'll see and I've made some notes in the slides that there are some categories where our participants who responded just had a
070higher degree of don't know and in this particular example you can see how that influences the potential when you look at the green so that's 65 percent there of whether or not the respondents agreed that there were school-wide strategies that teach model and reinforce students social and emotional skills outside the classroom if I just put 65 percent it would seem like that was a really low percentage but what we're actually looking at is there's 21 percent of people who don't know and that's important for us to be aware of as we look at these results because it actually speaks to some of the action steps that we can make in terms of increasing our communication and being really transparent in what our work is on a district-wide level okay so with that in mind so
071I've got some background there another thing with all of this information is we have been really trying to build our muscle of using data to drive decision making and often that starts with knowing what we're looking for and what our why is and I felt like with this degree of our survey results it was really important for us to have some frames and it feels really important for us to use the frames that we developed as a strategic Council back in 2020 and 2021 and so we have four frames as a district essentially they boil down to developing adaptive Learners strengthening families community and school relationships enhance new positive School environment and then demonstrating fiscal responsibility so I'm broken down or oriented the data around those four frames just to give us some lenses by
072which to consider the data itself I also included the Norms that we use so because there is so much data and I want you to be really transparent about the process we're using internally because we are increasing the amount of data that we're using inside of the conversations we're having and the planning that we're doing and we also incorporate Norms because data can be very you know it could be very interesting it can be very alarming it can bring up a lot of thoughts and feelings and so I invite you today as I share the information from this survey to consider the Norms that we invite our staff to use when we look at data which is allow for some emotion the students belong to all of us data is not reflection of one person
073one entity one building observe and reflect so seeing the data into trends that exist and trying to stay open without assuming causality assume good intentions District officials staff and students are all working towards Improvement and anticipate unfinished business data informs practice our data form practice is a journey and we won't finish this in a single work session or in a single year so our strategic frame number one is developing adaptive learners and essentially this involves instructional strategies Tech integration the classroom environment community and then our physical learning spaces some of the data that I found as bright spots that I popped out for that have been popping out for our groups internally is thinking about the overall quality of Education you can see really positive Trends there of parents feeling sorry of parents reading that
074the schools is excellent or good campus-based staff rating the schools is quality is excellent as good or good same as secondary students and our elementary students so you see high percentages there in terms of the perception of overall quality similarly respondents indicating that teachers have high learning standards and expectations for the school that the students are actively challenged by their schoolwork and that respondents sorry there's a repeat there but all the students are actively challenged by the schoolwork and that they can demonstrate collaborative leadership effective communication skills creativity complex thinking and problem solving and digital literacy 85 of our parents and Guardians believe and teachers believe Core Curriculum is rigorous students are more around less than 75 percent and then 80 the school offers a variety of opportunities I I should also share with you
075because in my head you know when you do something like this it makes a lot of sense that we use 80 as our Benchmark for discussion points in the district and we've even talked about it should be 85 but we are often using 80 of that Benchmark for the data that I'm sharing with you today I am using that um Loosely but I'm also looking at Trends and I'm looking at deviations and gaps between groups and then that consideration of the rate of don't know so when you look at this you might see that I've used the 70 on one slide another but it's because we're looking at as Trends and connections to make and then as well as things to integrate and ask questions about in terms of Trends to sorry in terms of
076areas to interrogate more closely some things that popped out as interested in me and also connected to some of the work that we've been doing across the last two years is this idea that World Language curriculum is less rigorous that was really reflected by our parent and guardian group there wasn't a high degree of don't know in that particular category whereas students and teachers were greater than 80 percent less than 40 percent of student respondents indicate that teachers successfully show students how lessons relate to life outside of school that has been a data point that has been trending across multiple years now in multiple different surveys and one that we're considering very closely and then thinking about the the areas in our compass in terms of our student attributes where we had less positive response
077was financial literacy and understanding complexities of cultures and Global issues as well as understand or demonstrating ethical and responsible citizenship um there was definitely perception gap between staff and families and students feelings of feedback and assessment communication is helpful and timely which essentially when I say that because this comes up on a couple slides what I mean is staff and families felt like it's higher and that it's helpful and students feel like it's less again Dr Bull from K-12 Insight indicates that students are a little harsher and so they might give a little bit different feedback on some of the questions we ask them families and staff and then of course like perceptionally families are on the outside of the school district and the teachers are living it so when I talk about perception gaps
078there's lots of reasons why in this particular area foreign some of the things that we're thinking about are really addressing the you know the range of World Language staff that's available and what the reality is as well as what we can do creatively to invest in opportunities to manage providing still excellent World Language options for our students thinking about ways to bring Multicultural and lingual experiences to our students such as field trips and guest speakers in order to bring languages and cultural experiences to our schools if the staff are not available and then of course having explicit conversations sort of in an advertising way one of the things we talk a lot about a lot about is how many wonderful real world applications of learning that we have in our classrooms and somehow students always
079have a sense of that doesn't relate to the real world and we're trying so hard so how do we help really make those connections for them a lot of it just pointed out really bringing in those outside speakers making connections to actual examples of how the work that we're doing in the classroom relates to the real world I see so many examples of this it's a matter of getting our students to also feel that as well and then of course this year adding the financial literacy so I imagine that will change so we are increasing the curriculum around financial literacy specifically at the high school level and then we still have our Junior Achievement pieces at the middle school and elementary schools strategic frame number two it relates to school family and Community relationships this
080has to do with our communication strategies as well as our Partnerships that we create external with local community organizations and learning institutions as well as our volunteers themselves from the quality survey some of the bright spots that I'm noting when thinking about the relationships that we have with our families High degree of belief about building leadership in terms of building administrators being visible at school events and school campus parents and Gardens feeling that the building administrator clearly communicates goals the parents and Guardians and staff feeling the building administrators make decisions in the best interests of the students again a little bit of I don't know there because again just with families living outside of the school during the school day sometimes they don't know exactly what's happening and they honestly said they don't know and
081so there is an increase of response rate in that greater than 80 of our parents and Guardians and staff agree that the school informs families about school sponsored activities promotes volunteering is welcoming is one in which staff members and families treat each other with respect and then greater than 70 percent of respondents indicate that principals and assistant principles are available when they have I'm sorry you're not on the slide that oh I'm so sorry sorry that's what I'm double you know I've got the two things going so I can actually see and not yes yeah thank you thank you thank you thank you I appreciate that um so in terms of the respondents to indicated that the SAS principles and assistant principles are available are responsive and courteous those responses reflected um folks who had
082actually reached out specifically with a concern our third through fifth grade students feel like their family talks to them about things going on at their school and a high percentage of people feel like the schools offer a variety of opportunities for students so a lot of great things going on there in terms of us building relationships within our community and communicating that out some information that I'm popping out just as things for us to look at more closely and one thing and again this has to do with this particular one again you see those don't knows at the bottom students don't feel as confident in the building administrator clearly communicating their goals or making decisions in the best interests of their students however in that one I want to say there's like 15 to 20
083percent of students that don't know um which is you know one of the things that we can do is help make that more explicit which is in my considerations there is a perception gap between staff and families and students feeling as those staff are available to help with personal individuals so staff and families feel like there are staff available to help with personal individual needs whereas um students don't feel quite as high in that particular area so there's a perception Gap there 70 or less than 70 percent of parents and Guardians and students feel the school values and uses input provided by families to improve the school experience that one there's a high degree of don't know on that one and then approximately 15 of parents and guardian respondents indicate that they don't know whether
084the school values input has opportunities to participate in decision making and R has opportunities to provide input on the improvement process so when thinking about considerations for this coming year even in looking at the handbook work that was just presented and how valuable that is and communicating more clearly that's a step that was already in action because we were seeing some of this last year so in thinking about our considerations for you know reducing the amount of don't knows and increasing the sense that there's a this they are valued and are involved improving our communication with our students involving them in meaningful ways and conversations around school Improvement so they're the and taking ownership over their own buildings so including them actually building level goal setting and action planning working with our social emotional Wellness
085professionals and the wellness committee to design and then redesign if they already exist the availability of resources and accessible formats explicitly and frequently advertising to families regarding opportunities for input and being really transparent on what data is collected and how it's being used to drive decision making because while we are doing this and I stand in front of you as the board we can get better about actually making it accessible to our families and showcasing it so they recognize the ways in which their voices are really mattering and having an impact on the work that we're doing for their children strategic frame three is about enhancing a positive School environment essentially staff and student well-being and positive morale this one involves the providing safe secure emotional and physical environments fostering initiatives that enhance a positive
086School Community for students and staff creating a cloud source of inclusivity and then providing district-wide leadership opportunities the data that felt most correlated to this one that I popped out has to do with thinking about overall student support So High degree of respondents indicating that students had a staff member who they could go to for a school problem the data the point that I given to you before was a personal problem that's distinguished in the survey so it does feel like students have somebody when I say respondents it means the families respondents the staff respondents and the student respondents were all above 80 percent in that particular question area so that they feel confident that there's a staff member they can go to a first school problem they can go to somebody for a technology
087problem and that they believe that the schools offer a variety of extracurricular activities so there's things for them to do more than 70 percent of the five percent of the parents and Guardians indicate that their children almost always are always enjoy School and that we have a high degree of staff and students feeling like in grades three through twelve that school staff members are aware of the Safety and Security procedures over 70 of our respondents indicate that SAS students demonstrate collaborative leadership effective communication creative creativity and complex problem solving and then over 80 percent of respondents indicate teachers are available to discuss their children's learning needs with me so in making those correlations just thinking about these are all the ways in which we're creating safe spaces that are inclusive that we feel really proud
088of and then in the category of thinking about what we can interrogate more closely then this particular category and it's made me really thoughtful about the work that we have to do in terms of again being really transparent and really inviting our parents and families and Guardians into the conversation um and we've talked a lot about this as just continuing to advertise and you know shout from the rooftops like here are all the things that are available because this particular category was heavily impacted by a high percentages of adult nose so when you go to the 200 Page report you see really large swaths of the gray and multiple in both like the students the staff and the families in many many areas so the respondents that you see here are ones that are connected
089again trending across multiple data points and the feedback that we get across the gear and some of the other opportunities that we have anecdotally so when we're thinking about the agreeing or strongly agreed with whether or not school-wide strategies are in place whether or not there's partnership with communities whether there's the availability of information for SEL services or understanding of the referral process mostly there was like less than 70 percent of folks responding believing or understanding or agreeing that those things were in place I want to say that it was varying somewhere between 10 and 20 percent on the don't know there so you can see how that would vary the final percentage is there um between 15 40 and 53 of the student respondents and third through 12th grade indicated that they sometimes enjoy
090school so then when I talk about perception gaps you saw that on the other slides of families and the staff feel like they do enjoy School whereas the the students themselves sometimes enjoy school and then 40 let's approximately 45 percent of the staff in the 6-12 student respondents disagree with a statement that discipline is import enforce fairly for all students and then while staff identify being responsive when students report report bullying and tolerance of bullying students and families indicate much higher rates of don't know in that which does make sense again situationally staff are in the buildings they're talking with the principals so it's like thinking about again what some of the transparency pieces from the handbook that we're talking about some of the discipline work we did a report this spring on our discipline
091practices and some of the work that we do to create positive environments these are all methods and which we're trying to be much more clear about how this work happens within our public institution and to be transparent with our stakeholders and then this last one approximately 40 of staff and six to twelve student respondents disagree strongly are disagree or strongly disagree with a statement that students treat staff members with respect family members responded more positively than that so to think about coming up this year some of the things that we are focusing on we are making a district level shift in terms of focusing additional District level PD on social emotional components this has been happening um vastly at the building level more intentionally and strategically so we're adding some components there which I will
092expound upon in my next report in September when we do our continuous learning report about our continuous Improvement glows goals we've been attending to building level educational opportunities for students in advisory-like experiences incorporating parent educational series to partner with families in different categories so we'll be starting that this fall explicit and frequent you see this often advertising families and students regarding what resources we have available for them and then ongoing cross-sister's alignment to gain consistency and transparency as relates to behavior and discipline and you've seen many examples of that just in the last 12 months around the work that we've been attempting inside of the district to get at that goal and then finally fiscal strategic frame number four is fiscal responsibility in this particular case there wasn't um you know there aren't direct related
093questions necessarily on the quality survey so I made some correlations so there's only one slide this one has to do with our proactive planning strategies sustaining the overall health of the district and identifying ways to communicate with our stakeholders about our financial plans so some of the data I was able to lift out to share with you this evening is our retention of our sense of whether or not you would refer salinary schools to a family member or friend so I had to squeeze it onto that slide but there is a high degree of referral the potential referral for our stakeholders and respondents so it goes from extremely likely down to not likely at all and it stays with that same Rhythm staff is blue families are green and then yellow is students staff and
094parent comparison data over two years because we've been asking the questions is steadily positive so if you were to dig into the 200 Pages you would see that there's not a significant variance Dr bull did say we're looking for more than three percent variance in the response so when I say steadily positive it's it's holding steady in terms of the sense of positivity around our school quality our academic support availability of resources maintenance of the buildings and superintendent communication and then over 80 percent of the adult respondents so not including our student respondents indicate that academic support positively impacted their District recommendation data to interrogate so this slide has both and on here if the parent had responded that they were not remaining insulin area schools they indicated that the primary reason was there was
095another option it was 48 seeking a more positive building culture or anti-building bullying support 23 improved academics 12 and then the last group was all about the same moving they were either moving increased mental health support class is a religious education was around four five percent um there was a lot of don't know responses and this one when it pertained to the work being done to ensure the district's sustainability and the maintenance of fiscal responsibility so that's just something for us to think about in terms of the work that we're doing as um in our you know Communications around this particular area and then students had higher ratings of fair or poor in comparison to staff and parents as relates to the quality of the resources Building Maintenance and such so in considering thoughts for
096the upcoming year and our ongoing goal work we have contracted with Galapagos which we've talked about before to gather data on the in-district students who are not enrolled in the Y's behind that to get that other piece so that's that's going on right now through Galapagos we were thinking about improving our communication in terms of making it more accessible regarding our district initiatives and the barriers that we might be facing the strategies and goals that we have for overcoming those we're looking to seek increased participation in District level committees the listening sessions the surveys that we put out in order to have an even more thorough robust sense not only of the data being more reflective of a wider variety of perspectives but also that thinking about how do we help people join us in
097the work that we're doing because often that one-to-one experience is whether you're in the building or participating in a committee is so insightful and it really helps you understand the bigger picture of the district overall improve communication I just mentioned that and then amplifying gratitude and centering asset-based approach to overcoming current challenges in public education and what I mean by that is that we have some real realities in terms of the challenges that we're facing so when you look at the report the students might have a less positive report on Building Maintenance and and we have some real realities around that in terms of Staffing and this isn't anything new so how do we develop an asset-based mindset and a team effort around like how do we overcome some of the challenges that public schools
098are facing as well as other Industries Beyond public education so just very quickly I know I've been up here for quite a while thank you for being with me um again in September or October we'll come back around our continuous Improvement plan we are sticking with it so one of the great things about us adapting the Michigan integrated continuous improvement process is that we are staying with the goals that we have developed and that continuous dedicated cycle to answer this particular question like how can we better connect stakeholders to create interdependent and align processes and people working towards a common goal to bring about desired results saw a great movement this past year and I'm looking forward to continuing to work in a few cohesive manner moving into this upcoming school year we follow this
099process so you've seen this for me before in terms of there's a very specific pattern I'm In Cadence to the work that we're doing setting up for Success we Monitor and adjust we look at our assessments and make adjustments as needed and then we are monitoring our data at the end of the year summarizing that and then redetermining what adjustments we need to make to our goals to continue to make improvements our district goals will maintain what they were in this past year I did just a little bit of language on them to be reflective of the survey feedback again that sense of responsive and dynamic and not stagnant we have two goals increase overall rates of mastering content areas as measured by local assessments regardless of subgroup by increasing staff competency and use of
100evidence-based cultural response instruction and then the other one strengthens 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 clearly there you can see we've got some work to do in that particular area so that's where we'll we'll be sharing more about that in the fall and then as a preview we know we're on the journey right so it is already August we're bringing in our new teachers our new staff this coming Monday and so as we start this journey you've actually seen some evidence of this already some action steps to support our success as a part of our continuous Improvement um plan enter be responsive to the feedback data that we are receiving it's
101just continued alignment between our buildings and across the district ongoing communication transparency professional learning plan that is aligned to address our goals we're going to maintain the curriculum cycle by subject area and then striving for improved systems that increase our Effectiveness and efficiency and then we'll obviously continue to gather data monitor it reflect on it and then make adjustments as needed if you would like to see the 217 Pages there you go you can click there so thank you very much if I know that was a lot a lot a lot of information so I'm happy promised myself I would bring my pen up I don't know that I did but maybe Steve can jot them down for me if you have questions that I can come back to later I do want to say
102thank you for that thorough analysis as thorough as it can be and whatever length presentations was I appreciated the asset based approach I appreciate it also the alignment goals of creating alignment and in transparency and I'm sure the rest of the board may have some other statements too on that thank you thank you so much so we'll start with Jennifer steppen that was a lot thank you to amplify what Michael already said um I just had one clarification question um if you could pull up frame one areas of bigquery additional inquiry with regards to financial literacy I just wanted to it was it's hard to read on the yellow and so I just wanted to come back to it for a second because it's an important piece um there you go yep um the last
103one adding increasing financial literacy component for high school graduation so last year Governor Whitmer signed House Bill 5190 which requires financial literacy for our class of 2028 so incoming freshmen fall 2024 is your idea there to pull that forward and make that a requirement for our incoming freshmen forward or or to still wait until it's required by the state we are not trumping the state's requirement for graduation so when that happens we'll be a line to it but we are running the classes starting Pull It Forward like I I think I think financial literacy in high school is I think incredibly important I think that's a board decision so yeah um so we are pulling forward the classes in the curriculum we'll be starting that this fall okay all right thanks I just wanted to
104make a little note that um because this is a report that um probably myself and Brad have seen similar reports before so I did Deep dive into the into the report just because it's something I'm used to reading so maybe it wasn't as cumbersome but the thing that I wanted to just say that I really really appreciated in this presentation is that you noted the pages that referenced each of your items and that was extremely helpful in finding the correlated data so I just wanted to know that that I know that probably took a lot of time and it is noted and appreciated so thank you for doing that for us I appreciate that I thought you might like the reference points you know yes um so I'm interested in how this data is I
105guess being um sent out to maybe like other groups um uh you know I'm thinking like the wellness committee or um you know different I guess groups or people who are doing the work that this information would be valuable to them so I'm just curious about how that's done throughout the year yeah absolutely so um the the spiral of informing our stakeholders sort of works like this internal first teaching and learning team so we get the Raw results then we process them typically take it to Administration first or the administration seeing the Raw results that I produce or the team produces or a cohort of people depending on what the topic is produces something that's much more manageable like this board report and now we'll post it to our district website and share it more
106widely so the internal survey that as just for our staff and so the board report we did all of those pieces and then it was emailed at the end of the year First full staff review if they wanted to dig into that you're welcome well thank you so much I appreciate your oh sorry Tim um real quick on the number the respondents obviously that's down from last year does it get sent out to people through Power School like what how do you because I noticed that was from 5900 to 5100 yeah so there is an active link and it actually took me two years to figure this out so I'm glad that you're asking so the number of responses that you see there and then there's a Public Access Link as well you do get
107it emailed directly to you as a staff member or a member a family member of a student in Saline Area Schools and you can fill it out more than one time if you have more than one student in order to get the building level data there's also a Public Access Link so like something for social media that we could post so you don't get the their unique responses but you don't get that response rate which you just noted they're in very small print that I can't read to you right now and then the students we have used a QR code because it's oriented by their they've entered their student ID and that is how we are able to navigate if our students have been opted out of surveys then their student ID will not work
108so it's a little bit murky Mucky in terms of like making sure that that all happens ahead of time um and so that's the current process that we're using so the 5100 those would be people that were in a database those emails like PowerSchool correct okay yeah thank you foreign thank you this was a great presentation and I like data um I am hardened by the fact that the experts say that the these numbers are okay and um but I would like more uh for this to be you know we would talk about power and number needed to treat make major decisions on this um and I wondered are there um like are there incentivizing or do you feel like that would interfere with the data like you know you fill out the form and
109your name gets put into a raffle for free I mean kids you know so that's one question I have and then another question I have is what you think the barriers are for staff specifically because although um you know the staff numbers were I guess maybe it's hard to see the response rate percentage but the staff numbers maybe the percentages are better than parent and family response rate I might have expected them to be a little bit higher um so what do you think the barriers are do you think that's because the staff already just answered your own internal survey and they were surveyed out I was just curious so I first have to save Dr bull's name she did not say it was okay she said it was on Trend with what she was
110seeing nationally um so you know some of the things that we're thinking about is you know I want to look at the numbers that we got in March and April when we did that in 2019 we did not give this survey in 2020 because of the pandemic or 2021. it matters right so it's like this whole dance around spring break like where are we gonna get it before spring break but then we're losing you have to think we've only taught two trimesters and a little bit if we give it in March and so is that data reflect of our of our entire year but if we wait now we're into the really true that Springtime craze that I'm sorry um you know Springs where we have all of these different different events that students are
111expected to participate and we know our families are incredibly busy during that time including our staff they are wrapping up and yes I would say in this particular one we close the internal survey which was fabulous we had a fantastic percentage I actually have the percentages of our staff that's certified staff only it doesn't go to the full to any of the other different roles so it is reflective of the teaching learning pieces that we use that data to determine for a professional learning plan we closed it and then we turned around and we opened up this one the very next week and we had acknowledged that as a part of the process and invited them to also answer this survey and they're both very long that's the other thing so one of the barriers
112is when you start to open it you can get like you know a little bit into it then you close it and you forget about it and you're like oh I can't go back to that so Dr Bowles talk to us a little bit about that in terms of the efficiency of the survey itself so we have some things to weigh and we do have some strap some strategies to apply before we get to any incentives which would likely yes excuse some of the results that we can well if that's it thank you so much thank you so much you are very very welcome thank you for letting me have this time to share it on Tuesday we have uh three uh discussion items to follow and uh I don't think it's quite time for
113a bio break yet but uh finance committee meeting update policy and then I've got a quick thing to deal with with true and legal services uh so I actually have a visual for the team tonight for the the public uh we are fortunate in the regard that we have a sign pre uh Pre-K to 12th grade education budget so some years that has not always been the case prior to the start of school this year July 20th Governor Whitmer uh signed that into into law so there are a few things that are important to our team and to our Financial Health as a district first of all I won't give a general comment and the general comment is that you're going to see that the the state is in a good fiscal place to provide
114a strong education uh you know school aid fund budget however you know like they're like I think we're always you know hopeful for more so the first thing you're going to see is the 611 million dollar increase to the per people funding that's important to us because quite frankly there are two things that drive our revenues right it is the school fund allowing or the school allow the allowance the per pupil and that is currently nine thousand six hundred eight dollars which is a 458 dollar increase uh you will see later on in my notes at the very end that is the exact number that we budgeted for so that is very much in line with where our budget was created uh that is 22 percent up since the governor took office 450 million dollars
115I I have to admit I like this deposit into a rainy day fund because there could become a time where uh where revenues and where you know this is all every year the state goes through what they call um fund conferences uh gosh what's the revenue conferences and where they make estimates about the state tax and about how those things are going to come into play for schools and and so I hope that there's never a time where uh those you know the money for schools is is not present but I think it's good of us to think about the future so that is that so we'll move on to the next thing 370 million dollars to support teacher programs uh I will give my own two cents on this as an educator myself I
116am happy to see that the profession of education is being promoted and is being uh you know that we're trying to do some Innovative things growing your own programs such as if we have Innovative uh parapros and people are outstanding with our students finding ways to support those individuals so that they can then become certified Educators and and do those types of of jobs for us as well so um that is there I'm really excited about some of the stuff we're doing for student teachers right who just make nothing right but still have bills in their lives to pay so I'm excited to see that there are some mentoring programs and some things that are there to support the profession as a whole continuing on 328 million dollars for mental health and school safety and
117I'll talk about this in a minute or actually I guess I'll talk about now so you see a 328 million dollars the thing for us that we have to keep in mind and there's going to be some things later on is that sometimes the details don't get to us for a long time so for example this is signed into July but last November and December we were finding out how to apply for grants that were provided in the education budget and signed for in July so I guess what I'm saying to the public is some we might need some time to operationalize some of these things there's going to be something on the next slide that I'm really going to speak to on that but um I'm excited about expanding Pre-K free pre-k for up
118to 5 600 students that is a big deal for for students of Young Learners and I'm really excited about that the next slide is going to talk about academically at-risk and economically disadvantaged students there is categorical funding dedicated to that and then here is the bullet that all right I don't know about you but not having to make my kids school lunch every night is a win so the reality for me is 160 million dollars to provide all 1.4 million Public Schools free breakfast and lunch and I make a joke but the big thing about that is I'm excited to see that there won't be food insecurity for any student who attends schools in the state of Michigan that's a big deal to me and so anyway so that is that 150 50 million dollars
119for individualized tutoring um expand this 140.3 million for continued uh supportive education students and one of the things that's really important about this is the last line about a full Foundation allowance plus required cost reimbursements for each student sometimes those students can need specialized services that require significant financial um you know responsibility by the schools and we provide them and this maintains and says that we're going to make those districts whole so I or at least attempts to best it can so uh Bravo on that front all right 125 million dollars to modernize bus fleets uh I would anticipate that will continue to be on some type of Grant funded basis so I know that we've applied for those Grant funds and I know that well I I imagine that we will continue to attempt
120to do so uh the one thing that I will say to our Pub public it excites me about that line item is that the reality is that by passing the bond the creation of our new operations building is going to allow us to be really forthright in our thinking about being able to access those kinds of things because we are going to have charging stations as part of the of the architecture and the the creation so I'm really excited about our the opportunity that could come could come could front them from that uh there's some literacy programs for Detroit's Public Schools the ability to there's literacy grants and literacy coaches again how will that money be funded and received and some of those kinds of things I think some of this stuff could end up
121going to the ISD and then the ISD saying as a county we're going to allot the money based upon needs of each of the schools etc etc so new math intervention pension programs and then on the last slide 25 million dollars which we all agree it could be could be more for vocational education and Career Technical but I'm glad to see some money that is being given to those that is a place where probably it'll be a lot of county by county and then the counties and the schools within it will be able to access those funds and I love the last one 50 increase in funding for English language Learners because every student matters to us and and that is that so um now I I so I'm very encouraged by by this budget
122obviously um there are two things at the end so number one I'm happy to see that the Purple People increase is in line with the approach approved budget and then folks I can't help but say this like student count matters right and so our student count this fall we need every student in our in our district to to strongly you know think about the quality that we talked about out in the report of our schools and the reality is that I think we provide a top-notch education in this in this school district and so we need to capture them we need to have students who you know we need to be attractive to them and all those kinds of things so our student count will be a big deal to us so I I will
123transition so thank you for I want to make sure that I give a shout out Mr Mr Goodman creates all the I did not create this and so he goes above and beyond for us and I want him to hear me say that so thank you um all right so so that is that um the other thing that I will say as part of the finance update is we are talking about enrollment and we have a superintendent we have people like it is something that we are continuously monitoring continuously looking at we're looking at you know a graph with birth rates in Washington County all the way back to 2003 and just trying to see about you know I'll give you an example in 2003 total bursts in Washington County 4243 in 2021 3347. all
124right you know so that's a 900 birth differential in our County so the reality for us is we do want to keep looking at those data we want to keep looking at those kinds of things and how do we be attractive how do we do those kinds of things but I will tell you enrollment is going to be something that the finance team is going to look at and continue to look at and I don't really want to get a the card ahead of the horse here I want to find out um you know we have processes in place in the state for figuring out what is our enrollment and ftes and and I trust our team and our leadership to to do that but the reality for us is folks that number for us
125in the fall could cause us to have to have conversations and do different things I don't know if it's if it were above or if we're there then we're good if we fall below it we'll have to react to it I don't know where to fall so like long story short stay tuned on enrollment and then the last thing uh well yeah we're good so if any of you guys any questions or if the team wants to add anything trustee Estep can you send this to us after the meeting certainly can thanks I can't say credit for it though but I will send it well you gotta you got it I appreciated the Highlight document but yeah you have it in a single sheet um I just want to say that I know that some
126of our uh neighboring districts in the great white you know the great north of Wisconsin not Canada but the up and other places are are singing happy songs tonight because of the fact that transportation and buses are now considered a categorical expense I mean it really when when kids are spending two hours to get to schools uh up there and the transportation costs are outrageous so I don't think it's going to affect us any but I know it will affect a lot of the schools up north so uh we'll go over to the policy committee thank you okay so we just have a quick update um as president McVeigh stated um at the at the front of the meeting at our last policy meeting in July it was July um 25th we did discuss um
127the opt-out materials instructional materials opt-out policy and at that time we um were we had decided to move it forward to the agenda today however the other thing that we had said is that we wanted to send it out to legal counsel for one last look over and when we sent it out to legal counsel although there they were words that had been on the policy from the beginning um and had been discussed in documents the they there is about a handful of words that legal just wants us to look at one more time so um in order for us to present a clean copy at our board table to all of you um and in order to maintain transparency and governance and Oma we are meeting tomorrow with the um with the idea of
128discussing that recommendation from legal so that is why it's not on the agenda today I'm hopeful that we will decide to move it to the next agenda at the end of this month but that will be determined in our discussion tomorrow I didn't check but is that the only agenda item it is so a three-hour meeting then oh well I hope it'll be fairly sure okay I hope um the other thing is that tomorrow's meeting is at 5 30 and it is not in this room it is in room 33 so for anyone who is planning on attending tomorrow um 33 is just down the hall correct Room 33 yeah okay thanks yeah I just wanted to make sure I think it's just down the hall and to the left okay so um next item
129that I wanted to discuss is at our last policy meeting we discussed um uh a draft of a new policy 5511 on dress and grooming and we have a draft of a policy and we also had notes from the deiac so we had a conversation around that and it will remain on our agenda not tomorrow but in the following meeting um for us to discuss after having time to review the draft and the recommendations from the deiac we do have other policies relating to dress and grooming for other categories in our policy so staff um I believe that now I'm now I'm calling myself out so I believe that it's administrators teaching staff and support staff that we have uh current policies so this policy is for students and we're reviewing that um finally I
130wanted to address tonight um some concerns over a policy that was passed in the consent agenda in the fall and some concerns were raised at the policy table um in public comment and so we wanted to Circle back to review that policy and also um I did some um did some searching for the reason for the recommended change and also when I when Steve and I had the opportunity to meet with legal um regarding policy 2240 this did come up and so I was also kind of given some um some just very briefly some indication as to why there might have been a change so I looked at that so I wanted to bring this to you this is a policy on school visitors it is policy 9150 and there were some changes made to
131be in compliance with the new laws to Sora so Sora is the sex offender registry Act and basically what happened was um there were some pieces of the sex offender registry act that were found unconstitutional or constitutionally vague and so one of the laws that was in place was the 1000 feet um that that people who were on the sex offender registry could not be within one thousand feet of the school and that was found to be constitutionally unconstitutionally vague because um how do you measure 1000 feet and is it door-to-door is it as the bird flies how is that done and also what is the definition of loitering what does that mean and so it was successfully argued that um that 1000 feet boundary was no longer um defendable in court basically it couldn't
132be defendable in court so what would happen now is if someone who is on the sex offender registry were on school property and we called the police the police could not remove them from the property simply because they're on that registry if they were found to have um if it was found to have a direct um if there was something found that would be directly dangerous to our students then they could remove them for that purpose but not not simply for being on school property also another thing that came up is that parental rights and students and parents ability to participate in things like parent-teacher conferences or school events and so what what happened then is that changed our policy and so what looked like the policy becoming looser actually is the policy becoming tighter
133for us so our policy when enacted would go something like this if someone wanted to enter the schools they would come to the vestibules and we have the new system it's we had Raptor before and Stephen I'm okay is the new system so they would come they would present their ID their ID would be alerted that they're on the sex offender registry and so they would not be permitted access to the school grounds on that day however if they felt the need to appeal that then it could be appealed to the superintendent and the superintendent would then follow the safety plan to determine how and if access could be granted to that particular person and it's not just um not just parents because what was found by this new by judge Cleland in this case
134is that we can't limit it or exclude it to just parents that would not be um upheld in court so this is for any member of the community they would follow this process and Steve would ultimately determine along with our partners and our safety plan um how or if that person could have access to school grounds so by having this policy and by updating this policy we're actually creating more safety and more safeguards by having that final approval go through our superintendent so um what was kind of stated in public opinion or public comment before is that it seemed like you know we've moved it from parents to community members well because that wouldn't be upheld in court so we have to do it that way and also why are they allowed well because as
135of this ruling by judge Cleland so this actually was passed in 2021 and we responded to it in Fall of 2022 so we are up to date now and in compliance with the state law and have ensured that there are safety measures in place for our students so that is the update from the policy committee if you have any questions um I did if you want to do a deep cert a deep dive you can look for house bill um 56.79 you can also look for a ruling on Sora from Judge Cleland and I'm happy to share any links there's also Troon legal also has a document that they published in March of 2021 that provides guidance so that's the update from policy if you have any questions let me know well thank you I
136guess it's my turn now I'd like um to give you a little background and have you if you're following along with your packet to go to page 11. a few months back I asked for volunteers for a quick ad hoc committee and Susan Estep volunteer thank you Susan uh to consider the idea of moving from Neola legal services to something else we had a sit down via conference call with true and legal services or Throne I not quite 100 sure how we're calling it these days um now that ad hoc committee is now officially disbanded so I just want to say thank you for your service uh trustee Estep for it's all done um there won't be a vote tonight but I wanted to just go over some of the issues that came up uh
137during the discussions and we'll be asking uh so it's going to be two-way if you have questions to ask me I'll either generate a bunch of answers I might be able to answer really quickly um and my homework for you all on this board and anyone listening is to check out the other two services and do some comparisons so let's just do a quick check the the three we have focused on are Miller Johnson Neola of course and Troon Legal Services um I want to just talk briefly about Miller Johnson for just a minute if you're interested please and I said sadly the link isn't working here from to Lincoln Consolidated schools are near down the street neighbor they uh I'm sure they'd be very interested in talking to you about it I give you
138a sense of the cost of the manual itself and that the fact that they do have administrative regs and a yearly update of about four thousand dollars Neola your comfort you know well you know very well and uh biannual updates are about thirteen hundred dollars probably a little higher right now and then uh we really do want to talk about uh Throne uh they have two ways of creating they have a policy manual I asked them a great many questions about how do we transfer over do we retain our old policies the answer is yes we can re retain our bespoke policies that we've created you know the Dei Community transgender non-binary et cetera et cetera all those policies can be ported over um interestingly they said you can pull over any policy you want
139as long as legal takes a look at it well legal this is one of the issues legal tune lawyers have their fingerprints on a lot of our newer newer policies the policy manual itself is about eight thousand dollars oh here what I wanted to say about that there's two ways of doing this one is we can post all of their policies like a gigantic PDF and I'm trying not to give any bias in what I say the gigantic PDF file versus using a tool called board book which is a little similar to board docs that we use with Neola so my recommendation to us as we have this discussion going forward is for you to look at certain policies not the ones that are unique to to Celine but in general the sense of what
140policies are out there I called up too I'm flagging here one I just for the heck of it looked up conflict of interest and another was parental review of curriculum since that's a little fresh and the policy committee's mind uh just a quick review as we go down to the next page the true and policy manual has five sections you know the one thousands to the five thousands and you can see how they're broken down Neola has uh nine separate sections ten if you count the zeros now here's here's one of the reasons that prompted this from the beginning was that Dr Lodge did a real an issue came up in another school district about student safety he did a quick search on Neola and found so many policies related to it here there falling
141under different categories and different bundles and he he raised the question at that time is that perhaps surely there is a better way a cleaner way so let's go on to the next page after that here's Miller Johnson's version and you'll wonder why this is exactly how the Thousand sections work this is under organization and functioning of the board the entire policy for the conflict of interest is a is that one sentence I think it's just one sentence uh some I um some boards I heard one one smaller District said they absolutely love this because it's simple it's short it's to the point it can almost commit it to memory um uh others have said it's it's more it reads more like a haiku when you're reading the other policies scrolling down and in fact
142everything that's in a box and it's there those are their boxes are the way their policies are lined up are this is just straight off their pages going to the so it's a much shorter document next we look at the Neola version of conflicts of interest zero one four four point three uh and as you scroll down you're fairly familiar with the way it's laid out and at the very bottom of the page they address the Michigan compiled law or state statute MCL or state statutes or even U.S codes that are and occasionally even letters from what do they call them queries to Attorneys General anyway now we get to Troon and same same conflict of interest policy under board member conflict or conduct and this is what they have now I'm not a big
143fan of right justification but hey if we have if we have control over the PDF and we do uh we can make it any way we want uh as you scroll down the page you will see you know you'll you can crosswalk the policy yourself with Neola but you get a sense that they it's it's longer it's and they also cite the legal legal Authority at the bottom um so the oag Office of the Attorney General and and certain letters and reach outs to to them going to the next one uh parental objections Miller Johnson had again a single sentence and as you scroll down some more you will see the atroon uh policy and I'll just leave that with you I don't want us to dive into or do any of those things the
144the costs first of all the costs are roughly the equivalent if you if you look at the prices they're at I think I have a sheet somewhere the prices are pretty well at the very top of the page page 11. um they're they're all roughly similar they have a fleet of lawyers reviewing all of the uh all of the various statutes that come through and legislation and and offer updates uh usually once a year uh in neola's case we get the updates twice a year and work at them at our own pace and one issue that's come up over the past I should note about Neola is that they sometimes have been slow and a bit clunky to update I don't know what the process how it looks for Troon but I did want to
145let you know that that's one of the concerns that we had is how do how quickly can they turn around an update um so I'll open it to any questions that I might be able to ask and I'll just make I may have to just jot them down and get back to you but in the meantime can I do it I will ask you before we have the next discussion about this and hold I may be even here tonight whether we're really Keen to move ahead or or not keen I just want to put everything out on the table and hear your thoughts on it so I'll be quiet now I'll go so may I ask what was it that prompted because we did a big switch Tim what was it five it was yeah
146it was right when we came on so what prompted are you doing the switch before that when I first got on board the policy committee spent six or so months uh transferring from the old masb policies to the to the new Neola policies right they had a series of check boxes and so do we want this do we want that here are your options there were a lot of options those meetings lasted a long long time but we finally finished all nine volumes what prompted it is what I said earlier the safety thing well is it is it easier uh do we do we need yeah the school safety thing do we need fewer policies is five volumes better than nine uh are we satisfied with what we've been getting from Neola now I know
147Dr gold is well familiar with Neola now as as is Susan a step and almost all of us we've had some experiences with the policies so uh I but I really do I hope that answered your question yeah it did and I just wanted to clarify too because I'm seeing 2 600 per year for Neola and I'm seeing a much higher um rate for Miller Johnson and for Troon so how are they comparable they're with their under ten thousand dollars roughly um the administrative regulations manual for Miller Johnson is is pretty pricey we that's an option that's an upsell um the biannual updates for Neola are 1300 the it looks like the annual updates from Troon are about 2700 so uh twice as much Troon also offers a video conference they also offer a Title
148IX uh manual and guideline for for uh for teachers and administrators sorry thank you well yeah it looks a lot cheaper for Neola but there was an original cost when we moved over to Neil I don't remember what that was originally around in that neighborhood yeah I think it was around twenty thousand it was pretty pricey okay so I'm not really sure I don't know the price at the time but this is what they're looking at right now after many years of doing this they probably got it they were able to drop the prices a bit so Brad Susan I'm just making sure vice president's done okay um I will ask one thing so are you saying that I get when I look at the prices for this obviously for me all yeah Neola the
1491300 versus the thousands on the other jumps out so I'm glad to hear the clarification about we've already paid 20-ish thousand or whatever for through but you're saying that we or Neil I mean so we do not have to adopt all of this you're saying this is like these are Cadillac packages that you said because you just said to like okay the policy manual is 6 000 but the administrative regulations mail is 11 000 and I don't want to miss quote you a few minutes but we don't mean we don't have to do all of that that's correct we don't need to do the student employee handbooks they offer it we don't need to we do we do need the annual updates obviously which are that the price is there um and the there and
150the Title IX thingy uh I think I haven't actually printed up somewhere I I'm happy to dig that up for you later I don't have to dig it up now but I guess we do have some options for us yes sir I guess what I'm saying is if before I can fully digest this I think I need to know exactly what we would be paying for and what we would be receiving not like what you know what I'm saying like what is the cost of this one versus this one versus this one as it will be directly to us okay I will generate a little table that might just my ask that's all right I will generate a little table that might clarify that and I'll send that out and if I gather together a
151bunch of questions I'll I'll send that out for your consideration I appreciate that thanks Tim um so I just wanted to to I guess give some more um information so Neola who we've been with um and it was switched in 2018 because masb stopped offering um policies through like a policy service and so at that point I think they recommended through to take on Neola and so that's a little background information and then also Neola I believe serves several States many clients in here in Michigan and other states they have superintendent like former superintendents and lawyers who um work on updating you know laws coming through and updating policies before they get to us and those biannual updates um so pretty broad team it seems like um with throne for my understanding they started this
152a couple years ago I think they have their Michigan only and I don't I want to say the numbers under a hundred clients I'm not sure don't quote me on that at all so um that's kind of I think that's a significant and considering as well so I just wanted to pass those details along so you're pointing at that through in his Michigan Centric it's it's only focused on Michigan laws okay yeah and just real quick um would we continue if we do say we went with Throne um would we continue to heavily use them as our lawyer um throughout that time but in fact uh yes if we are um I've forgotten the term they use if if they are our regular attorneys yeah we'll continue to use them and it's it'll just be
153an additional cost yeah so I just want to say I guess I'll give my thoughts so there are a lot of redundancy policies in Neola and so the idea of having less policies is important but it's a huge undertaking like you said uh president McVeigh with all that's on the plate of the policy committee I mean I know when we went from masb to Neola some policies just kind of maybe not got worded the same or missed it missed going through unintentionally um because you're looking at thousands of pages of documents so I don't know from from a dollar standpoint I don't you know that's not a huge dollar amount what makes you know to make things run smoothly I just you know is it the right time based on everything else going on I
154don't know just to address that yeah we did recently discover one little bit of a policy one policy from masb got broken into four different five different policies but one chunk of it was left out so we're trying to address that but this means that as we move policies over from Neola detrone that we have to space a huge amount of attention to which policies have we worked on here in this District so we don't lose any and they're not to 10 perhaps not just the regular updates but our own unique saline flavor and so we we really have to be cautious not to do this because when we move over to the new policies we rescind the old ones and they don't exist anymore and uh but then is so I mean it's possible
155to bring them back if they're fresh in our heads but uh it's work it is a lot of work and I'm if the board says let's do it then I'm up for being back on the policy committee to work on that and I'll co-opt everyone anyone I can to help yes ma'am just in in looking since we got this packet and looking at the three options I just wanted to say that in my um brief look at these um different options I I am hesitant to have us continue to look at the Miller Johnson policies simply because as we've been working on policies since I've been on the policy committee um I do feel like our policies provide a greater depth of clarification for the operationalizing of those policies and guidance for our district and
156administrative guidelines and I find that the brevity of the Miller Johnson policies leaves a lot for interpretation I totally agree with Jenny it's Elementary it's it's surprisingly Elementary I I don't have a strong I mean I'm interested in everybody's opinions I have no appetite to change policy providers I prefer to keep the money in the classroom and the conversation on academics and well-being of the students and staff if there's no other comments I'm I would I ask you to do some I I'm not I'm not really sure I get a sense of the board but let's just we will probably have to put this to a vote in a couple of weeks or maybe a month just to be certain that once you've had a chance to spend some time looking at it take a
157look at Lincoln take a look at the others talk to other folks uh who use these policies and I'll try and generate number one the list of clients and then a real clear sense of the table of prices so thank you so yes ma'am so um somebody's planning to bring this as a recommended motion is that what because you mentioned a vote yeah possibly I'm I will put it forth as a recommended motion just to say let's um make a decision that night once and for all that we're going to move or not move so that it's clear but I want us to be thinking about it between now and uh when we put the motion out there okay okay foreign would it be helpful to narrow it in light of trustee Miller and trustee
158stevins get to two instead of the one I mean if we're looking and in the interest of our time if I mean unless there's anyone disagreeing with what trustee Miller and trustee Stebbins said which I agree with in terms of looking at these three it just seems like for clarity to give us two rather than three options to consider it seems like a waste of time for me to spend a whole lot of time looking at Lincoln's if we generally have the sense from now right that that's not something we're interested in well I'm hearing the the the mood of this board at this point is to not consider Miller Johnson but to uh at least give you all some time to dig into Troon versus Neil do some side-by-side comparisons and just see what
159you think and then we'll just bring it to a vote and decide if we're going to move on or not right thank you very much administrative Administration board updates I think that's me okay yeah I do have three tonight um a few are sort of critical with our our staffing situation the verses with our bus drivers um with the long-standing difficulty in finding bus drivers and custodians were faced with the reality of canceling routes this year and not being able to sufficiently clean our school buildings in an effort to bridge the gap between our current Staffing level and our need will be meeting with driver gent and delta T these are staffing agencies that are capable of providing drivers and custodians without requiring a contract while we're doing that we're going to continue and engage
160with ESP to develop long-term solutions to attract permanent drivers and custodians as these discussions will focus on short-term plans to address our needs with more information to come on this topic I mean we're in a real serious spot with with not being able to fill the bus driver need and our custodial staff need my next comment is about the traffic pattern on Maple Road South of Celine Middle School this is problematic and as people are already starting to experience the word now is it's going to go through December so with that said um Rex is working with Jackie and other city planners to determine okay how are we going to guide our parents and Community as they enter an exit that campus and yes we will they'll put together a plan as to how we
161will do it but I can say with almost 100 percent certainty that the first two weeks are going to be a lot of Discovery we're going to end up sending out a plan and be encouraging everybody to follow it but what it will be problematic for the first couple weeks and then people will start to figure out their own adjustment of their time schedule their own patterns and it will start to settle down but I think we do need to be prepared for a rocky start to how people are entering and exit that campus even with the guidance we're going to provide so once that guidance is provided we will publish it why widely through social media and email loops and we'll ask the Board of Education to do the same uh with that said
162I'm really excited excited for the start of the school year um yes we have some staffing and roadway challenges but I'm loving watching our athletic and music program starting back up now school shopping is in full effect we have stuff the boss Gathering supplies for some of our families in need and the staff itself has been working really really hard to get our buildings and grounds ready Jay and the technology team to get everything in order there we're talk we're talking working a lot with our safety and security measures for the beginning of the school year and some Community engagement sessions around Safety and Security this year and Rex Clary and his team are actively working on implementing those phase one Bond projects so very excited to have our students back beginning on August 28th
163just around the corner yeah I know I'll just work down the table trustee Austin do you have anything to um I guess kind of like what Dr latch just said uh the traffic pattern that's definitely a concern of mine um you're hearing about that all over right now so that that will be interesting and it'll hopefully um a lot of our middle school students parents will will catch on quickly and how to how to navigate that I also want to Circle back to a comment I made or a question I asked during the last board about the the blend between the Consortium and our bond money on purchasing like CAD programs or CAD equipment and stuff so I met with Dr Rowe for about an hour and explored deeper into the whole Southwest Western Consortium
164budget and stuff and um wow that's enlightening to kind of get into that and I completely support the bond money being used for that CAD um for the CAD software computers and whatnot it was just it you know wanting to be make sure we're we're using our money our bond money correctly and then getting into the Southwest Washington Consortium budget is there definitely is I would say even though the Consortium is held in slain the amount of time other districts are actually using that equipment is very limited because it's mostly all over saline students and I think Dr Lots you kind of touched on that as well but I just want to clarify because I know that was it was printed in in a report and then um you know Dr Rowe called me and
165so we we sat down talked about it and it's money well spent uh Treasurer Kirby secretary Miller I just want to say welcome back to all of our athletes and our extracurricular activities I know at our house we have tennis starting student council starting link crew starting marching band is not at our house but I know lots of families are starting that so welcome back it's exciting to see the fields in the building starting to come to life again um I also just wanted to reiterate what was already mentioned about stuff the bus and Summerfest coming up and how those stuff the bus donations really serve our students throughout the year welcome to new teachers starting very soon where it's exciting to see the HR report and see see those new teachers that are joining
166our staff and I wanted to give a special thanks to our buildings and grounds people for doing all the prep that they do throughout the year but especially during the summer months and leading up to um to schools reopening so thank you um I I understand that we're at a crisis level um Rex has come to us for the last couple of years as long as I've been on the board talking to us about Staffing and so if you know anyone who is looking for employment or um recently retired and would want to consider uh driving a bus or serving lunch etc etc I I am not uh I am I am hesitant for us to engage with um contracted services and I know that the staffing agency that we're talking about is a different
167situation but um that is something that I think uh is a slippery slope so please please please talk to your community talk to your people and send them to Rex so that he can send them in the right direction um in terms of the traffic pattern I just hope that level heads prevail and that we bring our patients for those first couple of weeks as we navigate that new system and um I I want to reiterate what Dr or what president McVeigh said at the beginning of our board meeting that I'm extremely thankful to the to the fast and quick actions that were taken at the school district to keep our staff what oh to keep our staff and students safe and the communication around that to the community um was was extremely helpful so
168thank you to Dr latch and the team and I just want to extend our condolences to the family of the victim and to the community at Linden Square thank you um secretary Miller let me just make a quick quick comment this past week I was uh notified by Michigan Association of school boards that I've been appointed to the governmental Relations Committee I'm not sure how often we're going to meet but uh yay another committee but I'm looking for I'm looking forward to they're gonna they're gonna pay my mileage so I'll take that I'll take that thank you um I just wanted to acknowledge what's going on in the Ann Arbor Public School System and our friends just to the north it's not appropriate for me as a trustee to comment on another school district and
169get involved there but I did want to thank Steve for his service at Saline Area Schools and I'm very very glad that you're here taking care of their staff and students so thank you and wishing you the best year with the team okay um so I wanted to also um thank the First Responders and um the school and the city's response to the tragedy that occurred last week um I my thoughts and heart goes out to the family of Amber Joe Thomas and the staff and families in the Linden Square Assisted Living Center and I know you know it the community as a whole um you know are impacted by the things that that came out and information was quickly gotten out to them and I think that that was wonderful um and you know
170um violence against women is real and um you know I think whenever we talk about um things in in the schools and we talk about um you know um sex ed and when we're considering um things about um consent and um you know relationships um and boundaries and all of that like I think that's something we need to to think about when you know we're we're talking to our young folks here here in the schools um and um you know it just really um makes me sad and hopefully we can the community and um you know provide some some education or how you know uh in the schools um if you know responding to abuse and Reporting and stuff um so and um as uh Lisa Slawson mentioned um I was um invited to speak
171at Ann Arbor Pride to help with the welcome and the kickoff so in addition to um uh Lisa named off um Congress um woman Dingle we had uh State Rep Jason Morgan um and uh yes um Irwin and and so it was um it was great to you know at this this high level that um you know things are really happening in the state um and uh that's supportive of our lgbtq community and then bringing that down to a local level um when you know nationally we're looking at um things that are are being implemented at state and local level um nationally regarding um harmful policies and laws um that is an attempt to um basically erase identities of lgbtq Youth um but also the the history and the Greater Community and so it was
172really great to to speak to that and I think I one more thing all right I think we're good I just want to take a minute to highlight something I've been thinking about over the last couple of weeks earlier this year the Surgeon General and it tied in nicely with tonight's opening presentation earlier this year the Surgeon General of the United States released a statement a sort of surgeon general's warning regarding loneliness and the epidemic of loneliness in the country and if you have a chance to take a look at either the summary of it or the New York Times article around it I found it really really interesting and in light with a lot of what I see in my office among young people and you know the pace of our the pace of
173Our Lives the distrust of Institutions and get the lack of gathering places the way that we now live further often from family and extended family these are all and then the pandemic sort of this started before the pandemic but is uh has been exacerbated uh post pandemic so it's really interesting I think it's going to become more and more the question of our times how we remain connected as smaller communities and as a country and I bring it here because I think that um one of the beautiful things about our school district and teachers and parenting is that it is one of the few institutions that we can generally agree on uh you know repeatedly teachers are and educators are among our most trusted um people and uh ptos are a place where people can
174come together for a common good I often say the reason that I'm a pediatrician is that people will do all sorts of stupid things to their own bodies but uh parents and families generally want what's best for their kids and are willing to go to a Great Lengths to make that happen they may we may come at that in different ways but I I find that to be a truth so I'm talking a lot but what I wanted to get at is that it really just hit home to me with Mr osterling's report that this is exactly the kind of thing that the Surgeon General is highlighting uh you know the Kiwanis Club the Rotary Club the Saline Area Lions Club Celine supports our parent-teacher organizations sitting on the board of um the music booster
175the kids being in Builders club Local religious organizations there's any number of ways that people can get involved in the community and I think uh we don't all have to agree on every single thing to work together on some things and I would like to see uh us all kind of model that for our kids so I'd like to thank Mr osterling for his presentation I'd like to thank those parents and community members who come out and volunteer at our schools I'd like to thank the teachers and staff members who stay after and work extra hours to be part of building these kinds of communities because I think this is where we start combating loneliness that is affecting our kids to a great degree thanks thank you very much Dr gold um the consent agenda
176the consent agenda is listed on this agenda it will not be read aloud the motion node will allow for the authorization of all listed items without discussion unless a member of the board requests that any one or all be considered individually I'd entertain a motion please to authorize the consent agenda as printed so moved Miller um Miller and support stubborn support steban um all in favor please say aye I suppose okay we have a consent agenda passed items on the next agenda Dr Lodge yeah primary schedule report is I'm going to be discussing last Spring's superintendent listening session data and talking about the bridge to civility super a member of the public may now address the board briefly for up to three minutes a request to be scheduled on the agenda for future meetings we
177have three I'm going to list your names this is the order uh Libby Williams followed by Megan Gunderson followed by John Ming fan and person X so oh sorry you're just getting yourself together I'm sorry good afternoon board members last week parents of students in Saline Middle School uh received among their back-to-school announcements uh a statement from the deic that Susan had mentioned directly contradicted what was indicated by the policy committee I understand that attempts to write this opt-out policy have been challenging it was never going to be possible to please every party and hopefully I was hopeful that you would listen to the fears of the lgbtq and bipot communities with regards to the policy being used as a tool um to subvert educational materials designed to teach tolerance and in turn discourage bullying
178the milk toast policy we've heard is exactly the opposite by not listening to the concerns voiced by trustee Easter regarding more explicit Language by not specifying Hornet time and other Dei and SEL programs as mandatory you have given those that perpetuate the bullying and hateful rhetoric and out from learning ways to deal with these emotions and issues and not doing so you have announced to certain groups that the lgbtq plus and bipot communities are controversial and something anyone can opt out of you have relegated these marginal groups marginalized groups to the class of sensitive topics something optional to be dismissed not important enough to be seen or heard the effects of this are already evident as as you can see Celine needs a school board that listens to those who need support the most and
179one who listens to their own board members when they stand up for the lgbtq and bipod communities thank you thank you Megan Gunderson it's not today um hi so I have a couple questions about the handbook presentation that was given tonight and I'll rely on the ongoing list of questions regarding feedback I was happy to see that the high school now includes the athletic code of conduct in addition to their own handbook because historically we've noticed that if there was an issue the school kicks to the athletic department for discipline and then the athletic department will take it back to the school for discipline so hopefully they'll be a little bit more on dovetailing this year I did have a couple of questions or comments though um this the algorithm relating to student academic Integrity
180is very clear that's a one two three um situation for offenses but there isn't a one two three for social constructs and I'm a little bit for um surprised by that given the amount of time energy and public discussion regarding policy 5571.01 that have gone on both at this meeting at other meetings and then in your community at large there's a very specific policy for discipline related to alcohol drugs and paraphernalia that's very delineated with framework and consequences but there's no delineation or framework or a matrix for bullying as a whole I've for you multiple times as have dozens of members of your community just asking for an algorithm of some sort not necessarily divulging student breaking student confidentiality but just knowing that there's something there it was a little bit disappointing just to me
181as a mom that I didn't see any kind of again framework or Matrix specifically related to bullying the new handbook also didn't say how these situations or complaints are going to be counted as District numbers again my opinion but the anecdotal admission or recognition of um the low reported numbers in last month's presentation I mean it was a paltry number of five offenses in the high school I think all of us kind of like don't pee on my shoes and tell me it's raining I mean and I know that sounds crass but just it was kind of ridiculous overall I want to know where the data is and how the data is going to be collected if a child comes to you and says I'm a super conservative kid and I'm getting picked on and
182having death threats which a girl stood here and told you all about her number wasn't in there either how it doesn't matter if you as a whole as with the adult believe that that's a valid one or not they have to be counted and then worked and then that number needs to be submitted and then I was also wondering since we combine the athletic handbook with the student handbook if athletic um situations were going to be counted as well because it seems like if you combine those two together then they should all be in that greater end thank you Mr fan okay I Rise Again I did last night at city council meeting I'm want to repeat the same thing to you about the dealing with the subset body based on the new development of
183Technology AI artificial intelligence and for those people who might not care or not know a whole lot about artificial intelligence technology development let me just briefly introduce keyword GPT is generative pre-trained Transformer transform the language into large language model huge very very big language model another term of the artificial intelligence this is not just regular machine but it is machine will transform our civilization our Humanity completely very very short time Two Gentlemen before me probably can talk more president mcway always standing Forefront of Technology change especially new one Dr Large last time talked about two numbers 85 and 91. 85 lost 91 gain in the term of jobs I remember you talk about percentage or millions in very few years this is not small change this is earthquake this change will make so many people
184more miserable or suddenly happy but regardless I think individual wisdom to the crossroad whether you're stupid or you're smart you got a job online people lose the job we as a stakeholder not the shareholders we have the Ken together like Benjamin Franklin said that whether we hand together will hand separately you cannot escape this so I propose it again to this body I think especially also the the parents should be and then what is happening is whether your kid going to be 85 which is no job lose job unemployed or 91 percent nobody know until we work together so therefore I think we have as as a God said that and also as the Lord Lauren said that same thing we had to do some practically and also use the money wisely and together thank
185you and Miss Lawson oh again I just want to touch on your discussion item about Throne when I got on the board in 2004 we use a Carver model that model is not appropriate for an elected Board of Trustees it's very appropriate for for example a hospital board or a community board such as maybe Chad tough could use it so it wasn't really appropriate so when we hired Scott in 2008 I gave him a big laundry list and one of the things we were going to do was we were going to change that governance model we were going to write a new policy manual because we have two manuals about this big that we would haul around with us and we would also create the student board member scholarship in in position so we also
186looked at law firms I am a lawyer um I would caution you not to use the room because of potential conflicts of interest if they're going to be your main lawyer there will be conflicts of interest arise also Mr gerby in a very informative uh thing about the finance committee and you said that maybe next year there might be some tough decisions to be made please don't spend our money on Throne stick with the experts Neola they're giving you a bargain they do this all day every day your lawyers at Throne do not this is they lawyers are great for law they're not great for policy this is a tiny kind of law making that you do so I would urge you to stick with Neola because that's what they do also just uh piggybacking
187off what Lauren said there's a new group in town a new Facebook group called Celine unsalted for all we are Advocates and we advocate for public education and for all marginalized groups we invite you all every single one of you to join our group we would love to have that you all in there having discussions because you know we don't want four of you at a time but we could have one of you at a time having discussions uh we're almost up to 300 people there's real time posting going on all day every day and you are a topic in addition to the city so we would invite you all to join and talk with us uh Jacqueline we would love to have her send us information and we can post it to our Facebook
188group so that you get parents you know involved and 10 things and so we will also start with events in the fall and so that's a group that's run the administrators are Libby myself and Dr Ann Jeffers so uh I understand that feeling of loneliness especially when your kids leave your nest you know so um join us join your constituents and we would be we would love to talk to you and hear what you have to say on things thank you very much the next Board of Education meeting will be held on August 22nd 2023 at 6 30 PM I'd like to we are now going to move into closed session if we approve the following recommended motion to enter closed session of the Board of Ed at about nine let's say about 9 15
189with the intent to reopen at a pro anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes for the purpose of the school board to review attorney client privilege communication pursuant to Section 8 of the Michigan open meetings act under Section 8 h a two-thirds rule call vote of members elected or appointed and serving is required so I'm just going to use the alphabetized I think it's alphabetized roll call vote uh trustee Austin oh yes thank you let's have the motion oh seven and I'll support support either one Miller and Devin thank you so much so the vote um uh Mr Austin aye Mr oh sorry Ms Estep hi Mr gerby aye um Dr gold Dr McVeigh says aye um Ms Miller aye and Jennifer Steven hi all right 7-0 um so we will see you all about in
190quarter after nine for a closed session the only people in this meeting will be Dr Lodge and the school board yeah today I would like to entertain a motion to adjourn the regular Board of Education meeting of August 8 23 at 9 37. so move Stephen second gerby all in favor hi thank you so much we'll see you in a couple of weeks when do the new teachers come the new teacher no I mean when do the new teachers get presented when do we do the uh the new teacher roll call okay