001ladies and gentlemen we're going to be starting the board meeting in one minute one minute so if you're an elementary school student or a middle school student you can peel yourself off the ceiling yeah I know I didn't even have to tap thank you all for coming this evening uh I'd like to call to order the uh salinary Schools Board of Education meeting on May 23rd at 6 31 so standing as you are able uh please recite the Pledge of Allegiance allegiance of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you very much before we get started we have a brief message from our superintendent Stephen Lodge okay I would like to present to Allison Doran in appreciation for serving as the
002high school student representative to the Celine board of education for this past year she's done a tremendous job foreign we wanted the board of education is presenting you with a 500 scholarship to apply to Grand Valley [Applause] Allison I know a few Folks at the table may want to say something nice to you well you're getting your picture taken or after we um I hear from a lot of board members around Washington and every time they pop in to see our board meetings and see what our student representative does they are absolutely amazed you see what this she she has a report and I said yeah and and she's responsible for the student showcase yeah what do you guys doing like that so well done Allison you've you've raised the bar even higher uh and
003now we were uh we are still looking for your replacement we are still doing interviews for that so we won't be able to make an announcement tonight and June 13th June 13th the June 13th meeting what about it we're going to announce oh we hope to make the announcement on the June 13th meeting there we go so yes you are irreplaceable but we'll replace you as soon as we can [Laughter] are there there may be some others who have something to say please just pipe right up I'll pipe up oh Jenny go ahead go ahead I just I already talked to you at the beginning of this meeting but from the first time that we were doing the interviews and and Steve and Julian and I met you um we were so excited and you
004have exceeded expectations as probable and um we wish you all the best um really proud of you I just wanted to say that I think I met you back in your Pleasant Ridge days and back then you were Ali but here we've been calling you Allison so yes I think I think I think cat does too so that's might be why I say that but anyways mutual friend who calls her Ally Dorn um anyways I just wanted to say that um in particular I have just appreciated your authenticity and um how you just positively have um showcased the wonderful things that are happening all over the school district I appreciate the invitations that you've extended to a variety of student groups so that we can get a fuller clearer picture of what's happening and your
005advocacy for things like the blood drive um just are really important things that you've you've been able to share with our entire community so thank you for your gift of time that you've given us I know this is a big commitment and I wish you all of the best at Grand Valley I'll turn in one nice yeah I also want to Echo that and and just say I appreciate the fact that like you've been bold when you've wanted to be a little bold and you've you know given us insight to the to the student mind and that's who we serve right ultimately and so I could tell you from from me as a trustee that Insight was always welcomed it was always useful and it was always really helpful to me so thank you foreign
006yeah thank you so much for serving the Board of Education um I I do appreciate um all the work that you've done and that you've included you know the elementary schools as well and the middle school so that's been really helpful um and good luck with everything and hopefully we'll see you back around well thank you all um if that's it we've come to the public comment section a member of the public May address the board briefly for up to three minutes or request to be scheduled on the agenda of a future meeting please note that students will be given priority to speak on any topic the first in the first sorry on any topic the first public participation portion of the meeting will be limited to one half hour 30 minutes normally and limited
007to 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 the rules of common courtesy the public participation portion of the meeting cannot be used to make personal attacks against a board member a district employee or a student so we have one student and one non-student and Alia just press the I did you had three minutes before just a heads up one minute to go or 30 seconds 30 seconds to go you'll get the yellow card and the red card when your time is up thank you okay thank you my name is Alia crayo Taylor I'm a sophomore at Celine High School I've came here today to speak out the racism that happens in the
008high school and how it's pushed under the rug back in October I was called a monkey and instead of acting off of emotion like most people would I went and told the school and later on she was given one day of ISS and the following two days I made a noise at her and I was given lunch detention and ever since then she has used false accusations as retaliation to get me in trouble um with no proof I've been suspended now twice um from false accusations and I've also gathered when I was suspended last was two weeks ago I gathered minority statements from students at Celine and one thing that caught my eye is every single statement said how they feel about Celine pushing everything under the rug they feel like people don't listen to
009them they don't they feel very unheard and if they are heard the student who gets the punishment is going to act with retaliation to get the student in trouble and it's allowed and it affects students a lot so while all this has been happening I have gathered minorities at Celine and made a black student union and I plan on helping Celine grow with this and plan on growing as a community but it all starts at home as well this Behavior the racism starts at home and it affects students so much more than it's talked about the mental health fact of it and how hard it is to focus on your academics when you're looked at as a minority instead of a human it it's really hard actually I've struggled extremely hard with academics because I
010just feel very unheard in the school so in the school I'm more on self-defense mode than academic mode and it's been more of a struggle than I could explain in speaking to the other students who are minorities they say they deal with the same struggle I have a friend who's an exchange student from Brazil and she was telling me she's like I'm always they're always talking about my accident telling me I'm not Brazilian because my Skin's too white or they're asking me um how to cuss people out or they're just being just saying stuff that's uncomfortable I had a teacher Pat her head and tell me is this how you guys do it when you wear a weave you guys as and who was what I was wondering but I walked away and reported it
011to the school and it was pushed under the rug because she didn't mean it like that according to the school and that's what I mean when everything is unheard thank you but I hope we can look at the policies and have something done so that minorities feel like human walking inside of saline High School thank you thank you very much [Applause] I'd like to welcome Bridget Corey thank you good evening I am here on behalf of the saline Education Association so this will be very quick um actually board appreciation is in January and we are rather late on that but we didn't want to go we didn't want to let the school year go without saying a thank you I've already talked to Allison Allison I'm making it up to you um but I have
012the distinct privilege of representing the Educators here in Celine and we do not take lightly the work that you do we know the hours that you put in the meetings that you attend the knowledge it takes to run a school and we are forever really thankful and we appreciate the partnership that you have extended to us and we hope that we can continue that in the future so a small token of our appreciation um to send you off for summer we have made you some nice Celine beach towels so thank you thank you very much yeah we were wondering back in January I don't think we always feel greatly appreciated by you all think while you're handing those out I can read the next part um I'd like to seek to approve the agenda items
013may be added or deleted from the meeting agenda and or the order of items may be changed at the request of an individual board member or the superintendent the agendas must be approved before proceeding further though do I have a yes please there was no response public because there was no thank you yeah I'm on it good job um so the agenda must be approved before proceeding further I'd like to entertain a motion to approve the agenda as printed motion Kirby second stubborn all in favor aye thank you opposed um we have an agenda uh second please thank you we have one student president student showcase presentation this evening the SAS robotics team presentation it is not just the high school it's not just the middle school and the high school it's the elementary the
014middle and the high school students so I will let you or will is there a light show or Smokey facts or anything I know I saw you preparing beforehand well I do I I have I have spoken at the robotics a few times and I was a little disappointed each time that there were no uh flamethrowers but maybe it's a good thing but I'll let you give your presentation sir and introduce yourself all right this one is extra special that would go to miss gold all right you can leave these uh here okay let's move these over here you can put it out if you want okay so okay you've got your clicker okay maybe we'll set it right here those of you who've ever walked into a classroom sometimes wonder where on Earth is
015the teacher because everybody's up and around and busy and this is the best example of that I've seen in a long time thank you so okay so as stated we are the robotics teams from Celine we have elementary middle and high school here and we'd like to give you an update on our season so here we go so first because we know there's some new board members we just wanted to give a quick recap of what first is first stands for for inspiration and recognition of Science and Technology and it is the overarching program that runs all of our sub programs so they are dedicated to giving students hands-on experience in stem and Robotics and creating the next generation of leaders so there are three different levels of first there is Elementary first Lego League
016where they build little Lego robots as you can see over there there is FTC First Tech Challenge that's the middle school they build robots like these um they play on a 12 by 12 field and lastly we have the high school we've uh we are first robotics competition and as the uh as you can probably tell as the age ranges go up um the robots get more complicated and more intricate so yeah just robots and this is we'll talk about this little little bit later but this is really summed up in the term that they've coined gracious professionalism as well as the term cooperation and the meaning of those is just basically even while you're competing we want everyone to do their best so competitions are unique in the way that teams go around even
017if you are competing against a different team to help them to make sure that everyone can have a robot on the field and everyone has a fair chance at getting the same distance so with that we will get into the different teams we have three like sections and then the end would you do us a quick favor and introduce yourselves unless that was coming up and I apologize if it was no that wasn't um start there it's not easy well they can't hear you on the internet we can pres we can say our names at the beginning of each slide that we talk about that would be perfect that's exactly what I actually meant I apologize this is all right I will introduce the first Lego league so I have all my first Lego Leaguers
018right here all right say hi everybody um all right what's the oh okay so uh first Lego league is open to fourth and fifth graders okay we have three teams this year which is up one whole team which uh of course is great that we have that much participation but it's even better that we have that many coaches dot dot dot uh yeah so um I think maybe it would be a good time for you guys to come up and maybe introduce yourselves maybe say what team you're on hi my name is Kai budai and I am team wobble Hornets Quinn Trader and I'm on team robo my name is Dania Wan and I'm on team roboswarm foreign and I'm on team Robo swarm my name is Victoria Perez and I'm on team Rebel swarm
019my name is Caroline D'Agostino and I'm on team Robo swarm my my name is charity aldib and my team is robo's a stink my name is Franklin Wong and I am in robusting my name is Lily and I'm on Robo swarm my name is Aaron Atkinson I'm a coach all right thanks everyone I'm I'm Chris Myers also a coach so yes this this program fourth and fifth graders as you can see um this this level is particularly amazing because of our costumery and our our adornments generally we have a lot of fun okay so uh the kids learn more than just robots right guys we we got two facets to our program right what's the first thing we build yeah it's an innovation project um Carolyn you want to you want to come up and
020just explain what this so our Innovation project so at the at the beginning of the year we learned that our Innovation project had to follow the guidelines of solving a problem in energy and so our team have decided to build a kinetic footfall tile where when somebody steps on it we have Piezo discs and when somebody steps on it the Piezo discs flex and the enter and then when they Flex they produce energy and that energy goes into a battery and a fan and the fan blows a blows air through a box full of sodalite pellets so those sodalite pellets collect CO2 and then they push out the cleaner air well said thank you um and then and of course the most visible part of first Lego league is the Legos and the robots um
021uh Kai do you want do you want to talk tell us about your robot and Quinn you guys want to come up and bring your robot oh owlbot it is called uh Kata and it so the first prototype we had a little trouble making the lift system so that took a little while to figure out and then we finally we did it and then we ran into another problem with Twista like making the energy drop down onto the board and that was a little trampoline so yeah do you guys want to show them some of our game elements this year windmill what do you got to do with this windmill you gotta push and then what happens when you push it the energy drops I hope you hope right there it goes right then what
022do you got to do with the energy you got to get it you got to pick it up and then you got to get it to the home space wherever it goes right and that's how we win all right so you guys enough hopefully get a sense right okay great thank you thank you um so you know again this is this is um we're updating you on the results of the Season it was a fantastic season and yes there are a lot of uh trophies on this on this cart here and some of them yes are amazing um Lego trophies uh but that's not what it's all about um so the the kids uh compete at the regional state and uh this year even the international level so um you could see that we we
023did really well at the regional level um the robo swarm took first place in the state for both their robot and overall and that's what sent them on to an international competition so we just got back from what was it called guys yeah it was the the Razorback Invitational does anybody want to tell us about some one of those 80 teams from around the world I think Lily does come on up Lily well just tell what was fun what was it I think what was really fun was just meeting everybody from the different teams and listening about their robot and yeah it's really cool to know so I got a high five from someone from Australia it was called super mate like Superman but Australian so I think the best part is definitely just meeting
024everybody thank you um so yes it was a fantastic season does anybody have one last any anybody I missed that wanted to say something about how much fun they had or what they learned anybody all right no it's okay it's okay all right I'm gonna hand it off to the middle school here hi my name is Alicia I'm in seventh grade and I'm part of the middle school team or First Tech Challenge nationally FTC is 8th through 12th grade but since Michigan has so many teams competing they made it sixth through eighth grade due to the large number and our team has 40 members so we split it up into three teams and there's 15 members per team we build our robot right there with an aluminum kit of Parts a 12 volt system and
025up to eight Motors or 12 servos and we also have a running Android yes um hi my name is Quinn Myers and this season was called a power play and it was in my opinion such a fun season because there were four robots all competing to have their colored cone on top of like extremely high poles so you had to have your robot pick it up and put it on the super high pole while also keeping your eyes on these three other robots trying to do the same as you there there could be these like intricate designs that you could do with the poles like if you had a diagonal line you could get extra points and it was just such a fun season and yeah I'm doing it again next year [Music] what is
026going in the black rocker right there take it away from the Blues how many numbers right hi my name is Laila odib and I'm going to talk about um how we trained the robot to recognize different photos in the first part of our competition so basically the first part of the round is called autonomous period where you have the robot complete missions on its own we used tensorflow and different photos to train the robot to recognize our photos that we designed so that it can do different missions on its own uh hi I'm Emerson as you probably heard earlier um some more things that we learned is a lot of perseverance and grit the season is very long there's a lot of practices so you have to power through it and you eventually get to
027the fun part where your robot is built and you can go compete at these amazing competitions we also learned about uh friendship and teamwork working together one example of this is our coach told us that if we manage to get a perfect score we replaced all of our cones he would buy the whole team ice cream so we worked together and we got it during our state's competition and so we all got ice cream um the final thing is to be cool Under Pressure there's you are under a surprising amount of pressure during these competitions you have hundreds of people watching you and if you do something wrong then your team might be a little upset so we train a lot and we develop these skills and we get very good at them so um
028my name is Arjun siddirkapam and so we did really well these competitions we got a few Awards two out of three of our teams went to States in Grand Rapids yeah Grand Rapids and um both teams made it to play offset States we became division finalists which was pretty good for our team we did really well at that part um and we were the autonomous as Layla talked about earlier we both of our teams were able to complete one of the more advanced guides such as able for the robot to automatically place multiple codes on polls without us giving any extra instruction other than the pre-coded examples um anybody else want to introduce themselves and say hi um my name is sadak Singh I'm in sixth grade and this is my first year robotics um
029during the year I was working on the coding and especially on the tensorflow part which was the AI that we used for the autonomous period and I liked learning about robotics a lot because I got to learn new skills such as coding and I also learned how to be cool under pressure as Emerson said because when you're driving especially at states there were tons of people watching you and you had to be cool under the pressure of having to drive the robot and also a lot was on stake because either you could advance from winning a game or you could go down in the rink from losing a game hi my name is Vadim Marshall I'm in sixth grade and this is my first year of Robotics so uh I was one of the builders
030building our robot and my favorite thing about that was that I learned how to be able to build something with other people instead of hogging it all to myself and uh during competition I was um a driver I was the one that put cones on the poles and that took a very steady hand which I do not have my name is Owen scatting I'm in eighth grade and I worked on the slideshow presentation and a lot of other random things about the bot my name's Levi I'm in sixth grade this was my first year in robotics and I really like States and I helped with lots of things like building parts of the robot and I did lots of the slideshow stuff um on my you already and I've been doing robotics for two years
031I'm in seventh grade and I um did a lot of building especially with the team so lastly we have Celine Singularity we are the high school team tonight we have myself I'm will Alberti I'm the main driver and also meghanistan archipom she's the business lead um so in high school robotics it's first robotics challenge we're the most expensive and the most similar to battle bots out of all three levels uh so on the high school team uh our title is Celine Singularity we split ourselves into six different sub teams electrical they do the wiring mechanical they do the building of the robot programming obviously they do all the code cat and design they do the initial designs and they also work with the mechanical team on bringing our ideas to life we have scouting um
032and lastly business business does all the money management and also presentations such as these we have 24 students and five mentors and one of the things we really pride ourselves on is that we're very student-led um for example it's Megan and I here tonight megano runs a vast majority of all of our events and then she also leads all of our practices um so each week during our main season we meet between 18 to 20 hours so four days a week and it's a lot but it's a lot of fun as well and we also have six weeks from when our challenge is actually released to our first competition so we're working pretty hard then Susan we attended two events this year one in Jackson and then the one we hosted in Celine mature we'll
033talk about in a second in Jackson We placed 7th out of 40 teams and we're at the fifth Alliance Captain meaning we got to choose our team for finals that was a first for us we also got the industrial design award in Jackson for our robot because we had custom like design in the bottom We spelled the robot's name along the base of it and then in Celine we were picked for the fourth Alliance and we made it to semi-finals so like Megan I just mentioned uh we this was our second year hosting our slain event we had over 40 teams come which means 1400 students and at least 4 500 people overall including parents volunteers refs all that sort of stuff and according to Miss Dawson it's the largest event held through salinary schools
034in total so that's pretty impressive especially considering it's mostly led by students I'm an organized by Megan and also one of our previous students and we already have plans underway for next year um it's going to be around spring break so put it on your calendars so we just want to highlight the impact that our programs have on students last year we had 12 graduates from the team and all of them went into engineering this year we have five again all going into engineering fields we also have mentors on the middle school team will and I Mentor the middle school team as well as one of our alumni comes back to Mentor the middle school team and we have Middle School mentors for the younger teams giving students the ability to have up to seven
035years in the robotics in the program now and when these guys get to high school they will have up to nine if they've gone all the way through oh this is also me and then of course we couldn't do this with our sponsors all of these teams are sponsored by a number of programs a number of organizations in the community highlight on on the screen are some of them but not all of them so we just wanted to say thank you to them too and like to say thank you to all of our FLL program sponsors as well they're we're very fortunate so like I said at the beginning first is about more than just robots and this is also showcased in our Outreach all of our teams here do Outreach to tell the community
036more about stem and Robotics like this event we love doing this it's quite an honor and it's a great way to let the school know more about what we do in addition to that you can see some pictures up there this summer the team went to Michigan International Speedway for their stem education day we had our robot there and we got to see thousands of people and show them our robot we also host workshops we're hoping to host one this summer and we have competed in lots of competitions and walked in parades so we also like to highlight how robotics really does connect to every facet of the compass we have we are critical thinkers we're creative and we're collaborative leaders in everything that we do in every single meeting so we just like to
037highlight that the values Celine showcases are something that we use every day and then finally we just want to say thank you thank you for your time tonight listening to us and thank you for all the support that you give us we would love to see you at any of our events well thank you I'm sure there might be some really really brief questions around the board table I could start at one end and go to the other or you can just pipe up there she is all right first and foremost I can't help but not notice all the pins I I hear them a lot uh if you have an explanation for that I'm very curious as to what it is so the reason we got all these pins is because we had different
038people on our teams assigned to a different category of like what makes up gracious professionalism and we made badges for each different kind and if you got like four marks then you would get a badge for it oh that's super cool thank you um I guess I can direct this to any of the teams if one of you wants to answer all of you do have a favorite project you've done ever or just this year in particular favorite one project okay my favorite project was probably the Innovation project because you do a lot of things you get to so we painted ours to be brighter and also you get to build it which is really fun and you also get to draw and design it out one of my favorite projects was for the salinary
039Social Services they're having like a food drive and everyone just sort of gave like a little basket with different things in it but as a robotics team we decided to go a little overboard so we had cereal boxes and uh different cans and we made Wally from the Pixar movie out of lots of different foods and it was really fun to go and donate thanks Allison yes I'll speak I guess um so I think it's great that we're starting at such a young age and giving the kids the opportunity to go for seven years now potentially and get into high school I encourage everybody to go out to one of the robotics competitions especially the one here in Saline two years ago I went and I was really unsure what I was going to experience
040and I didn't want to leave honestly because it was a lot of fun well I will tell you that um I'm super excited about like what the future brings for for you guys right like we're gonna do some really really cool things because of our community with regards to steam programs and building additions and and I guys I'm super excited that we have such quality people that are going to utilize it and so thank you for that okay like we don't we build these things for you right and so that that makes me very excited to to see that it's going to be done with with students who does do high level things and with great advisors and all that I guess the only question I would ask you and I tend to ask this
041a lot is how can we support you what can we do to you know you have an open Pulpit here what what can we do well you've already done so much with passing the bond that was a year ago today actually so thank you so much for passing that and we're glad it passed in the community and we're really looking forward to all of the space and materials that we'll be getting for that good so hi Aaron Atkinson at first Dr Loch I want to say thank you for all your support and to the board you guys have been very generous uh with us over the years we appreciate that also we appreciate the Grace from the cleaning staff and the teachers when we've bombarded their spaces that's been appreciated um I I would recommend
042you might look into some educational programs there's a lot of districts around the country around the world who offer first or other stem programs as part of their curriculum my understanding is that you need to start at the high school level is what I've heard and trickle down I think taking that seriously and integrating that into your program would be interesting so thank you awesome so I just um I wanted to I have a couple of um things that I wanted to say and then I do have one question so the first is I'm really proud of your Meyer my year was in my class and I'm really proud that he has stuck with us this was an interest that he had at a young age and each year he comes back it just gives
043me a lot of joy to see him enjoying that um and I also want to say I know um coach Meyer and Coach Atkinson I just want to voice my appreciation to the two of you um I've known the two of you for a little while and I can I can testify that uh Mr Atkinson was in our classroom when I was a teacher and did some projects through a grant from Toyota and um it was uh what do I want to say it was um it was a learning experience coupled with chaos but really fun but really fun so one thing that I remember our students um students building uh helicopters out of natural items found in nature and standing on countertops to see who could fly the highest and being so encouraged by
044Mr Atkinson to take those risks to get higher so so I know I can I can just imagine the fun that you have at your meetings and your competitions um and so I just that brings me a lot of joy to see that too so the question that I have is if someone can speak and I know will you've spoken to us before Megan I think you've spoken to us before so if you want to take the raids on this since you've lived this program so long or if someone else wants to speak to it but I want to know how will these new steam centers impact your Club um so one of the things firstly we again I just really want to thank you guys for having us especially be a part of the
045bond design especially with Miss Kara Davis um having Megan and I in the um on the like sort of committee design that has been been a massive massive help um but what I've seen especially with other schools specifically with Chelsea um is they have a whole Chelsea robotic Center um and I've talked to people that go to Chelsea and that are in robotics there and they really connect between the different age levels between Middle School Robotics and Elementary Robotics and high school robotics a lot more than I think what we're doing now and I really think that there's a lot more to come and that we can build pretty much a whole Community just around Robotics and we can become a lot more connected as one unit instead of sort of separating ourselves I was
046really expecting you to say like we'll be able to build bigger and better things and I am really really pleased with your response that it's really about community and I've been saying I've been saying over and over again it really is about the people in our lives and how um how we can build community that really propels us forward so thanks for sharing that well I just wanted to amplify that thank you voters for passing the bond um I think you're all excellent communicators and I appreciate how you tied it back to the compass so thank you um and I would just Echo what I heard about the need for coaches that's probably a real with these numbers and two of you standing here I'm sure you have other help so let us know if
047we can help push that out in the community news and notes or anything that that that Steve and Betty put out in the area it's just some help thank you yeah real quick um I keep saying that but it's not but um so thank you all for being here and um doing all of the creative things that you do um I appreciate art and music and crafts but I'm not very good at it so I'm the appreciator so it's like super cool uh projects that you all do um so you all have come in the past and seem to be smaller groups are you seeing growth now and your your teams yes the younger program has grown from one team to three teams in the four years in the middle school program added a third
048team this year for because they're capped at 15 so they needed another team so yes we are seeing a solid amount of growth throughout all of the teams in the district that's exciting I noticed already so I'm sure it's gonna grow even more yeah to build on that for the Lego we've added a third team this past season I expect Chris we probably have a waiting list for four maybe five so if you're not if you're free on Tuesdays and Thursdays we're looking for coaches so locations some some sort of vehicle that can carry a lot of things you'll provide a whistle of course sure sure Dr gold congratulations to everyone you all look great it's so nice to see this group of young scientists um I'm just wondering how is it going to work
049with the young students coming up to be leaders in the next levels is it still going to be possible for do you all think for kids to start in middle school or even in high school with trying something new and how does it work if somebody comes new to a team so we always always welcome new members we actually had a senior join this year who basically did all of the work for our industrial design award and he's pretty awesome and he just he came and volunteered at our competition last year and he was like I just wanted to join this I know I'm a rookie as a senior but it's totally worth it and he was a real leader on our mechanical team so yes people can still join we don't know everything well
050we're so happy to new ideas so yeah well thank you all one oh there's more uh to add on to what Magna said on the middle school team we had a huge number of first-year uh kids who had never been in robotics before and they were all a huge help in helping our teams to grow and they learn I know that they learned a lot we ended up with an amazing bot thanks to their help and if you want to try it out you should come check us out we appreciate the invitation and you may see us soon I'm sure well I just want to say thank you once again to Mr Myers and Mr Atkinson and all of you uh wrote Let's see if I got this right Robo swarm cyborgs Hornet hackers and
051Celine Singularity all right well thank you very much and I know there's going to be a bit of noise as we disassemble and get out of here so we'll we'll just pause would I miss robusting Global horns I knew where there was some I missed who who'd I miss all right so I was gonna say which one to ask which is the best one but obviously that would be troubleship no I appreciate I absolutely appreciate all of your efforts and hard work and so forth so thank you so much I'm looking forward to the next time you make the news thank you [Applause] football's your dad where should I take this um so we have a few action items uh the first to the board you will see a paper that says official ballot it's
052a bit tricky I actually talked to Stephen Olson yesterday I thought it was going to be a slam dunk vote but apparently not uh first of all before we get started I like to entertain a motion to approve the resolution authorizing Michael McVeigh or Jenny Miller as alternate to cast a vote in the wasd biennial election on June 5th 2023 for at this point we have one candidate Stephen well we have we're going to leave the names blank at this point on behalf of this board we'll fill the names in after discussion do I have somebody to move to make some moved who is that old or gold thank you support Estep thank you just point of clarification so we make the motion and then we will amend the motion once we discuss it correct
053we'll have a discussion about the names thank you pardon me so as best as I know there are two positions open at the wisd board uh that election will be held on June 5th uh the the deadline filing deadline came and went Stephen Olson was the only name on the ballot which left one opening at this point it could be any anyone from Washington with the exception of anybody from Ann Arbor not that we're being mean to Ann Arbor folks but because we already have two Ann arborites on the board uh so one person Serena Shivers uh put her name forward as officially as a write-in candidate she lives in Lincoln uh she and she comes highly recommended anyone who's read her background she and I have worked worked together on the association for supervision
054and curriculum development uh board of directors and um now we can put both of those names in this evening however after talking to superintendent Naomi Norman yesterday here's what could happen we could have call there there will be a call from the floor for anybody who wishes to also put their name forward and um I'll make things even more difficult it is technically possible for any board member also from another District to be on the wisd board and serve in their own board I suspect it won't happen for us because their board meetings are exactly the same night as ours so we're off that hook so uh and now here's the other thing already back at the beginning I thought it would be a slam dunk for me to go up there on June 5th
055sadly I cannot make it that night so if somebody wants to be the alternate to the alternate they're welcome to put their names for it but we're going to just stick with this right now as as authorizing myself or Jenny to vote so I'll leave the floor open for any other discussion or questions um I'm prepared just to recommend that we put just these two names in because no other write-in names have come forward at this point and anyone who is serious my personal opinion anyone who's serious enough about it would have done so by now and uh as I said earlier I can only say wonderful things about Serena Shivers she actually started the uh the she worked at the wisd no Steve you've worked with her many times she started the Alice training
056here in the district um and I'll just leave it at that so any I'll leave it open for a discussion at this point so Michael just a point of clarification we we would take your name off of this if you're not available and we would just have Jenny's correct no we'll keep my name on because there's always that chance that I could still be doing it but it looks quite likely that we will need our alternate so forget what I said earlier about an alternate to the alternate uh it just it doesn't matter who from our board and in fact it could even be uh Betty Yankee uh if she wants to do it any person from The District can come up and place the place the names it's a very simple process they have
057a physical box you fill out the the slip this slip put drop it in the box and somebody counts them it's over we say thank you congratulations and we we all go back home Betty suggested and asked that we keep it as written just for um documentation and it works for me too there is there is always a chance that I was told that it's a a very short procedure and I may actually be able to go but I'll make sure we clarify that too so I guess what I would say is so at you know a 12-year Chelsea board member seems like a pretty good choice to me and then I I think I read about a Serena Shivers that's how it's pronounced correct about the fact if it's the same one that's been
058like a teacher an assistant principal a superintendental for like Redford Union like to me that's a pretty strong individual too as far as you know knowledge of school districts and that kind of thing so for me I'm I will say that I am comfortable with the two in addition Stephen Olson has served as the president of the wisd this aboard this year yeah so yeah so it sounds like if you are prepared we can amend this motion to read to insert the names uh Stephen Olson and Serena shavers in pH and Serena s-a-r-e-n-a-s-h-i-v-e-r-s just just like it's on the yeah how do you say it how she just said call me Serena when I met her a few months ago for the first time so all that said we trust whoever's going to be up
059there that have motions come from the floor but at this point I think we should just lock in our vote right now um so all in favor of this amendment oh do we have to move all right but uh I think we need so let's let's move again to to uh to move to sorry let's let's entertain a motion to approve this amended motion was that okay just tell me what to say I approve the amendment you approve the amended amen yeah the amendment sorry thank you I second that thank you Susan so all in favor please say aye aye opposed nay all right all in favor so we uh it's unanimous we will whoever is up there we'll be voting for those two people thank you and right now all across Washington they're having
060the same discussion and they're scratching their heads pretty well the same way I'd like to also entertain a motion to approve the recommendation to purchase and install 15 REI complete camera systems in the amount of sixty seven thousand six hundred and seventy five dollars and 80 cents from Unity School Bus Parts Incorporated as submitted by director of operations Rex Clary I'll make it Kirby Kirby second uh Austin thank you do we have any discussion there he is sir is there anything you can add to this uh brilliant document that you let us look at earlier um first I'd like to bring up Tracy mulcair director of our transportation supervisor um the we currently have eight of these cameras in our school buses now and they've proven to be a game changer for us as far
061as Clarity uh license plate our red light Runners our prosecution although they really don't share it with us if we actually get tickets the result um but the the results are crystal clear when we submit the video and that can be used against to keep our kids safe on and off the bus um uh anything to add to that I don't think so um it's significantly better technology than we have in our buses that we're replacing these hoping to replace and like Rex said we just we have the ability to pull in the video via Wi-Fi we don't have to go out physically and get a SD card from the from the bus and we've had dozens of red light runners in fact it really happens almost every day so um the ability to just
062pull that information quickly save it for our local police agencies and for them to issue the tickets is is just a lot easier here and we'd like to think think Washtenaw County Sheriff Michigan State Police and the city Celine for their support as well they've been great at Gathering data and prosecution any questions I have one quick comment just for the community's sake and I also just for being Innovative I appreciate the fact that the funds for this are from Safety and Security grant that we received from the state of Michigan so I appreciate the fact that we're on top of that and we're applying for those kinds of things and I think it's great that we're utilizing these Monies to keep students in in our community safe so thank you trustee um I appreciate
063I know it was a lot to go through but I really appreciate um that you put all of the information about um requesting you know putting a request out um for this um particular purchase and so um I thought that was interesting and um very helpful to understand that process and having that all in front of us thank you any other discussion bidding process that's what I was looking for so hearing no other discussion let's put this to a vote all in favor please say aye hi hi opposed all right it's unanimous thank you very much congratulations on new cameras thank you thank you thank you I like so I'd like to entertain a motion to um approve oh this is for you now oh sorry to accept the recommendation of interim special education director
064Kevin Musson to appoint Ann babcocked to fulfill the term originally held by Misty gray as the Saline Area Schools representative for the wisd parent advisory Council motion Miller second step in seven thank you any discussion uh from you just that I I feel Anne will do a great job in your board packet you'll see that she's a parent of three students attending slinginary schools and that she's a speech-language pathologist and works for Milan area schools so she's well equipped to do a very good job in this role the comment that I was I don't know in but I was very impressed with her background and having wearing both of those hats of being both a parent and a special education health professional I thought that was kind of an amazing person to have at that
065seat I have I have worked with Anne and she is as remarkable as as you think I think she'll be a great person for this role well thank you hearing no further discussion uh I'd like to uh all in favor please say aye opposed hearing no opposition we we have ourselves a new person a new representative finally I'd like to uh recommend to approve the minutes from the May 9th close session for the purpose of discussing a Personnel matter under Section 8A and how we do that is secretary Miller will hand us a paper copy which we will read and review and then vote on and then return to her let's um do we have somebody to make this motion I still moved second got it thank you foreign all in favor please say aye
066aye opposed thank you all in favor um we have one schedule report this evening on restorative practices discipline Title IX and our presenters are in the agenda but I'll let them introduce themselves while they're making their presentation thank you certain ball stand up and that's your guy's turn isn't that what we talked about doing well good evening everyone I'm happy to present tonight on starting off our presentation we have a team here to talk about eight things to know about Saline schools and you'll note that our cover slide talks about our commitment to student safety and well-being this is primarily about restorative practices discipline and the law as we provide better supports for students now I don't normally do this but I am going to reflect and make a comment on the public comment we
067heard from one of our students tonight in that my job as superintendent is to create the conditions for our students to be both safe feel safe and successful and therefore as described tonight by the student and some of her peers I certainly have work to do and so as we think about that tonight as we work through this presentation we will be reflective because we are trying to create all of these conditions to make sure that all of our students are feeling safe and successful and so that will be the premise of the presentation if we go to the next slide oh you know what Goodman has you know we're going to start with looking at our I'm not going to read the entire thing but we look at a statement that we have in
068our Dei handbooks and we talk about the importance of making sure that all of our students feel supported and see themselves in the curriculum and that's a that very important point but students also need to feel safe to be able to access their curriculum and Thrive so if we reflect on I know that's a little bit small but the superintendent goals the goals that I've set at the beginning of the school year reflect the following that we want to see the academic rigor centered around our salinary schools compass we're centering around a culture of equity we talk about Civility and unity to bring us all together and finally creating the conditions to improve salinary schools for the future and you think about the bond passing and some of the things that we want to be
069able to do but again we need to create the conditions for students to feel safe in order for them to be successful in accomplishing the superintendent's goals and so with that said I'm going to turn it over to Cara our director of teaching and learning she's going to talk next good evening as Steve said I'm Kara Davis executive director of teaching and learning so as we strive to be really proactive around creating an educational environment in which we can actualize our Celine Vision Celine has invested in a number of measures proactively K-12 in the hopes of helping students grow as developmentally appropriate dispositions such as self-management self-awareness social awareness responsible decision making sorry and some examples of our investment include professional development so supporting staff understanding of Developmental needs as well as instructional strategies and
070management as well as the policy and law as relates to creating these safe and inclusive environments fostering positive relationships between peers themselves as well as with adults in our communities incorporating whole building and our grade level opportunities in and out of the classroom for students to connect with other students in healthy ways and to exercise positive collaboration and communication skills as well as integrating experiences that amplify our high expectations for positive behaviors and civility within an educational setting so our hope is always to create an educational Community as Steve said that has high expectations that are clear for all of our students regardless of their grade level and centering students as ethical and responsible citizens and so our building principles and direct director Representatives tonight are here to help us and dive into this a
071little bit more hello thank you for having us I'm usetta Janine I'm one of the assistant principals at saline High School and I'm Lindsay Gentner the assistant principal at Celine Middle School what we'd like to share with you this evening is how positive behavior is fostered in our schools and how we respond to negative behaviors when we look at behavior in general we have to look at the environments in which our students access these environments include classrooms hallways bathrooms Community spaces such as lunchrooms and media centers school buses in any other area that is used for Community Education events in addition we know that all of our students share a digital space as well and that's incredibly impactful on their ability to navigate the world and sometimes significantly impacts their educational experience our teachers and
072our staff work incredibly hard to lay the foundation of expectations in their classrooms and throughout our buildings while building relationships with their students relationships are fostered through community building activities icebreakers teaching their students to be contributing citizens and other activities our staff develop educational experiences that help students to advocate for themselves research other perspectives have empathy and understand the meaning of giving back to both their school and outside communities as an Administration team we also work to educate our staff our students families and community members about what our expectations are regarding behavior and our response through discipline education and restorative practices we continuously ask for partnership as we know that takes an entire Village to help raise our young people into healthy participating citizens once they leave their K-12 education our goal is to promote
073positive behavior in students exhibiting positive behavior at a building-wide level and also respond to negative behaviors through discipline education and restorative practices some of the prohibited behaviors that we've been providing an elevated level of education on this year in addition to the other two prongs of our three-pronged approach including discipline and restorative practices our hate speech acts academic integrity and substance abuse and bullying both in the personal and digital space when working with students regarding discipline in addition to education and restorative practices we also provide behavior consequences when deciding on what consequences a student is given we utilize our student handbooks as our foundation and we also consider the following the development of the student both age and cognitive ability prior discipline the impact of their behavior and access to their education we also understand
074that every Behavior communicates something and at times this is when Administration discretion is used and it's also stated in each of our handbooks so disciplinary actions that are used throughout our buildings but not are but not limited to out-of-school suspensions in school suspensions lunch detentions after school detentions and warnings restorative practices are used throughout our buildings to help repair harm and allow those involved to move forward in a positive way we don't push friendships but more so a positive coexistence to maintain a safe learning environment so questions that are asked to restorative sessions and even when investigating Behavior incidents are what happened what were you thinking at the time what have you thought about since who has been affected by what you've done and in what way and what do you think you need to
075do to make things right so restorative sessions are never forced on both parties they do have to agree in order to meet guidelines and Norms are set by the adult that's facilitating the restorative session if one of the parties does not feel comfortable participating in the session the session does not occur we want to continue to increase our education around our expectations to all of our stakeholders and the policies and guidelines that we follow and most of which is outlined in our handbooks and so we do encourage all of our stakeholders to review the student handbook start our district with their students let's go hello everyone I am Ashley mantha athletic director at the high school as well as the middle school and so I am going to be talking about this positive supports we
076have at in the athletic level first off Athletics it is a privilege it is not a right and so within our own Handbook of the athletic we have our other additional standards that you might see already outlined in the student handbook both at the middle school as well as the high school but additional ones that Lindsay and musetta just outlined as well an example be great eligibility not just any student Community athlete we do have other additional standards that we put Place Upon Our saline student athletes so any violation to the Celine athletic department rules the high school middle school student handbooks or mhsa rules that result in some form of discipline education or restorative practices School actions and behavior directly affect extracurricular activities not just Athletics clubs and so forth because they are an
077extension of the classroom we are educational Athletics and that's why there's that education piece as well as that discipline right and vice versa sometimes you see things happening on the field the court the pool they can also School discipline can be brought in or police action depending on severity of that leveling up of behaviors um so anytime our department is presented with a situation we kind of ask ourselves what is being violated what tier so to speak we do start with that basic level of our team conduct code of conduct so team rules our coaches are enforcing those it might be something you know as simple as they skipped practice on sportsmanlike conduct right team suspension right then we obviously enforce that with our athletic department which goes the next one our athletic handbook right
078our parents and our students do sign off on this when they register they might not read it thoroughly until they need it but they do sign off and that they have received it and have read it quote unquote but like I said department rules might be you know skipping class well you can't be participating in activities that day then right we're checking grade checks is there hazing season suspensions right that kind of comes from our department we still answer to mhsa as well right so we are there are certain things that we need to be aware of for the Michigan State so if we have players getting ejected from the games or banned or unsportsmanlike right there are certain things where you're not allowed to play their sportsmanship courses required to come back um there's
079transfer rules there's all those kind of things that we have to answer that's above Celine as well it's the whole state of Michigan for all schools that are part of mhsa and then of course School of handbooks that musetta and Lindsay just touched upon and our Board of Education policies that we kind of bring into our athletic as well and so it kind of goes hand in hand if we have an in-school suspension or an out of school suspension or an extracurricular suspension it makes my job very easy so to speak when I talk to the principals and it just naturally kind of coincides with well you're no longer part of this team or practicing that day or participating that day and so forth once again depending on that activity or severity and then obviously
080the law comes into play right so if we're dealing with something bigger whether it happens because it's a student athlete or because it happened actually at the event a school sanction event that comes kind of in play we might have to deal with some more outside help as well so that's why that we have the Who's involved it definitely depends on the severity whether it's you know coach handling some inner team turmoil or more of a school discipline or more of a police action kind of thing so we kind of bring in people as we needed depending on the severity and that like I said depends on the situation and that is a little bit looking into how we like to support positive behavior from the athletic perspective so I thank you for this good
081evening I am Dr Shannon Washington director of culturally responsive instruction equity and inclusion and while I'm not a building principal or the athletic director and I'm not responsible for disciplining students directly I have worked closely with Celine area schools since 2019 on looking at how Saline Area Schools disciplined students through the lens of equity with the focus on restoring children back to learning as a classroom teacher for 20 years I know that kids cannot learn if they do not feel safe and we as Educators like Dr Loch said are responsible for providing that safety and so my part of this presentation is to look at how Saline schools protect students rights and I'll be focusing mostly on the policy and law and I'll be using bullying as kind of my example to dig into how
082our policies are rooted in law so our learner framework helps us to frame the relationship between educating the whole child their identities in our educational values um I'm going to just read a little part of it because it says that we're committed to supporting the academic social and emotional development of all students valuing race ethnicity ability gender class sexual orientation religion and other social identities to ensure they acquire the essential skills to be continuous Learners and productive citizens in an increasingly Global Society so when we look then closely at our school board policy one of the first statements on that policy is that it is the policy of the district to provide a safe in nurturing educational environment for all of its students um we care about all of our students and we care about
083the whole student however when Educators use the term care we need to be clear that to care is an ethical practice that includes providing students with discipline and it aids there and sorry that discipline AIDS in their educational development as this is a public institution we are subject to state federal and case law and if we look really carefully at Michigan law the law demands requires that we have an anti-bullying policy so the state requires that our anti-bullying policy has some key elements such as appropriate investigations those are carried out by our principals and assistant principals that we maintain confidentiality and there's even a provision for the school system to provide education about bullying to both students and parents and caregivers our policy here in Celine Begins by stating that we will provide a safe
084and nurturing educational environment for all its students rooted in-state law Saline Area Schools defines bullying or other aggressive behavior as that which can be written physical verbal psychological including hazing gestures comets threats or actions which can cause or threaten bodily harm and reasonable fear of personal safety bullying may be stalking intimidation menacing coercion name-calling taunting making threats and hitting or pushing and kind of like director mantha said this can be on the school property during school school related activities or if it disrupts the school environment so this is a very rich thick explanation for what bullying could look like per state law student confidentiality must be maintained throughout the process however Anonymous reports are not enough to apply consequences and have to be corroborated within the investigation if it's found that a student has been
085bullied state law and our school board policy require consequences which are student student code of conduct clearly articulates however administrators are how to use discretion which they spoke about just a few minutes ago state law and our school board policy provides for the education and restoration of students as part of the disciplinary process through restorative practices however those are voluntary um if bullying involves a social identity so the social identities listed in our learner framework actually mere state law federal law and case law and so if bullying involves a social identity it may be deemed as discriminatory federal law and the receipt of federal funds requires the district under title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Title IX of the education Amendments of 1972 for big discrimination based on identities and we
086have several layers of identities introduced over time so these include race sex gender nation of origin first language religion the Michigan Elliott Larson Civil Rights Act adds to that age color height weight or familial status these identity specific laws and policies are designed to provide an equitable and inclusive learning environment if it's found that a student has been bullied or harassed based on their Identity or School leaders will apply the disciplinary process as outlined in the code of conduct which includes education in order to provide students with the safe and nurturing education environment the district takes great care to teach students what it means to bully harass or use hate speech a student may be found in violation of title VI or Title IX in which case there could be a formal civil rights complaint
087the district I'm sorry we also rely on the partnership of parents and caregivers it's all of our job together and truly our primary responsibility is to educate children in the environment as free of bullying as systemically possible so that they are free to learn good evening my name is Carol Melcher I'm the principal at the saline Alternative High School and also the district's Title IX coordinator thank you for the opportunity to speak to you this evening about how Title IX protects students within the Saline Area Schools I'm also going to talk a little bit later about how we record and archive the students disciplinary record Saline Area Schools believes very strongly in providing Equitable access to all programs regardless of sex Title IX is governed by the office of civil rights you may or may
088not be familiar with Title IX and the scope of Title IX but this is actually Public Law 92 318 of the educational amendments Act of 1972. it was a broadly written prohibition on gender discrimination in educational institutions at that time we assumed that meant Athletics so there were not many programs for females to participate in sports back in 1972. 51 years ago the law was passed on June 23rd so it's coming up on year 51. Title IX allows for equal access in sports participation however it also pertains to safeguarding the rights of students in a wide range of educational settings and here's a brief summary of how Title IX protects students number one of course we all know the best way that Title IX protects students is through its requirement that schools provide equal opportunity
089to participate in athletics in particular to historically underrepresented underrepresented athletes number two Title IX protects students by requiring that schools also provide to the underrepresentative Athletics athletes females um equivalence and athletic benefits and opportunities that accompany Sports participation such as equipment uniforms facilities locker rooms tutoring Services quality of coaches and scheduling just to name a few Title IX also protects students by prohibiting sexual harassment and sexual violence in educational settings Title IX also requires schools to develop policies to safeguard students from such Behavior and to effectively address misconduct this section of Title IX is addressed in our school board policy number 2266 Title IX also protects students from hazing to bullying cyber bullying and educational settings such as initiation rituals that sometimes are imposed on students in sports in clubs and extracurriculars words or actions
090of a sexual nature that result in The Hazing causing a hostile environment are prohibited these actions disciplinary consequences that may include restorative practices are explained in board policy number 5517. Title IX also protects students against any type of gender discrimination in other school programs such as stem or steam programs Fine Arts Theater and so forth Title IX protects the rights of pregnant and parenting teens of any gender by prohibiting schools from applying or invoking any rule concerning parental family or marital status that treats persons differently on the basis of sex Title IX prohibits or protects all students who experience sexual harassment or gender-oriented bullying this includes instances of sexual harassment or bullying where the perpetrator and the victim are of the same gender lgbtq plus students have the same rights as any other student under
091the Title IX regulations in fact in May of 2016 the U.S Department of Education and the U.S Department of Justice jointly issued guidance clarifying that the definition of gender was gender identity and not gender assigned at Birth and although this guidance was rescinded in 2017 the Department of Education explicitly states that Title IX protects all students with regard to equal access issues and educational programs Title IX also protects students by providing a cause of action for financial damage damages to anyone who is retaliated against for reporting a violation of the statute and finally Title IX coordinators Title IX also protects students through the Mandate that all schools in the in the country must have in place a Title IX coordinator whose role is to develop policies to protect young people from all forms of gender
092discrimination to implement in-service programs to educate all the adults in the in the district and also the students and to develop the process for receiving any complaints and to conduct substantive And Timely investigations for any complaints and finally to implement legally valid dispute resolution processes Title IX protects all students from discrimination on the basis of sex Celine schools looks at Title IX as a primary responsibility in affording equal access to programs did it go uh the former slide referred to title VI which was referenced earlier um I just want to explain it title six is part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and it says in brief no student in the United States shell on the basis of Color Race or national origin be excluded from participation in be denied the benefits of or
093be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance this law is also governed by the office of civil rights and enforces title VI as it applies to programs and activities funded by the Federal Department of Education title VI prohibits discrimination on the basis of race color or national origin in any program or any activity for any institution that receives federal funds and then we talk about the process for filing a complaint under Title IX or title VI or any of the other board policies regarding discrimination any person who feels that they may have been discriminated against harassed or bullied based on sex May file a Title IX complaint with the district specific procedures are listed on the salinary schools website under Family Resources typically a complainant will start by bringing the
094concern to a building administrator a formal complaint then comes to me we review that that complaint thoroughly if you have questions anyone hear about the process or procedures regarding supportive measures about investigations decision making non-retaliation policy please contact your building administrator or feel free to contact me and then finally sly10 talks about how we partner with our families to make sure that everyone is aware of policies and procedures and how we can better understand who the students are in our district we truly believe that we are better together shared student-centered knowledge helps build Bridges between home and school and the focus of our work is to educate better and more in a proactive manner we do advocate for a shared responsibility and a shared partnership with all families the more we know and the stronger
095our relationship the more successful each child would be it takes all of us to grow responsible humans into adults sometimes in spite of our best efforts kids make mistakes kids are kids sometimes make mistakes that need correction and sometimes need corrective action under our discipline policies now is the best time for kids to make mistakes now is the time to learn from those mistakes and that's why we have restorative practices first as the go-to for how we can help students understand what they did how to correct their behavior and how to move forward in a positive manner with all actions that may require correction or disciplinary consequences there's a process for recording that data the bulk of student misconduct is resolved through restorative practices conflict resolution counseling and guidance we seek to determine the root
096cause for that misconduct kids misbehave for a reason there's always some underlying cause and so we seek to find that out determine the why working with partners with families maybe they can help us understand the why of the misbehavior and then put a plan in place to correct the behaviors and also hold them accountable under the student code of conduct the Saline Area Schools student code of conduct includes a suggested list of disciplinary consequences which is suggested but as you heard earlier not necessarily cast in stone so what happens when a student does something where corrective action or Consequences are indicated number one meet with the building administrator counselor social worker case manager Dean or Community liaison and depending on the infraction pair notification isn't involved in the discussion we review the evidence we fight
097first and foremost ask for cooperation with restorative practices so that we can resolve the conflicts and then move on and as mentioned in musetta and Lindsay's section principles are required to consider seven factors before assigning any school suspension we must consider the student's age the disciplinary history on the student whether or not the student has a disability seriousness of the behavior safety risk use of restorative practices and the level of intervention when students elect to enroll in a saline alternative I do an intake interview with every family and I tell them it's rare very rare that I suspend a student from school we want students in school and suspension is the last thing we want to do with any student so um you know what happens you did something we've got to find a restorative
098measure we have to have some sort of a consequence but what happens with that information we had a conversation but unless it's archived and recorded somewhere it's lost so school-based discipline is most often documented in the power school SMS the student management system PowerSchool is used for most School discipline threat assessments grade level changes teacher Administration administrative communication and health plans these are called log entries in PowerSchool the log entries are part of the student's educational record and this information is shared between teachers and administrators as the students move from building to building on occasion that log entry record is shared with another school if they request it when a student moves to another District but it's rare that those disciplinary logs are requested in short the principal or the principles designee will document the
099date time and place of the incident and the consequences that were issued this PowerSchool record helps administrators to determine the appropriateness of future disciplinary consequences the disciplinary record does not appear on a report card it'll never show up on a transcript it is or it should be a record of infractions and efforts to educate the student on how to correct their behaviors confidentiality is maintained throughout the process if several students are involved in altercation for example the record remains confidential reflects only student X and student y that were involved with a fist fight with John whose record we are recording and finally the ca-60 the ca-60 is the student's permanent record this is a paper file that is initiated when any student enters a public school in the state of Michigan that School record is
100updated at least annually and follows the student from building to building contains the resident District archive for 99 years documents included in the ca60 our attendance records report cards enrollment records health records test scores and if indicated a 504 plan threat assessments name changes custody decisions and other legal matters ca60s are housed at the building level until the student graduates archives are now at Celine high school for all any student who's graduated from Celine and they are now being stored electronically and then the final archives are Title IX investigations and all of those investigations letters of notice decisions and sanctions are housed separately from the student's permanent record they will never appear in a student's personal record it's a file that's stored in a separate location for seven years so that's a lot of information
101a ton of things that maybe you wanted to know maybe you didn't but that's the way that we operate our student disciplinary procedures and hopefully it's been informative for you I'll take a step aside and ask Kara to summarize our presentation for you thank you all right so as you've heard thus far Celine schools is committed to our practices and procedures that Foster safe and nurturing spaces for students in a diverse Community while supporting positive behaviors and also helping students become responsible and ethical citizens we embrace the complexities of this role in supporting student growth from an early age and through adulthood and we are committed of course to continuous and ongoing evaluation and reflection of our practices and procedures from collecting data via surveys and feedback from Individual experiences to integrating social emotional health
102and wellness as a part of our district Improvement plan to building positive Partnerships with our families parents and students we're always striving to improve and we're open for questions very much that was a very thorough very thorough um are there any questions clarifying questions or otherwise at the uh we'll discuss we're going to work down the table I lean to the right I'd like to thank all the presenters for this information which was very helpful to me and um I'd like you to think thank you for using what seems to me in my limited knowledge as an educator but somebody who likes to look at the scientific literature so I went and looked a little bit um at restorative practices and the community might like to know that um because I didn't really know much
103about it to be honest with you um and I would like to hear a little bit more about which ones we're using because I read about like peer mediation circles counseling director direct so that would be interesting I think um but when I looked at the studies you know this leads rather than severe punishment it's less absenteeism less inequity for students who can be marginalized fewer School crime fewer cases of violent Behavior interestingly enough to me um and this is from an NIH study um fewer um uh instances of using drugs and alcohol so you know just like across the board many uh positives to using this sort of framework so I'd like to congratulate our excellent Educators uh on using best practices and um it was really very um profoundly impactful to me looking
104at some of the evidence and hearing more in more detail what we're doing and I hope it will be to members of the community because as I shared I think one of the first questions I hear from families that I talk to is like well what happens we hear about things we hear about things happening and so I'm really glad that we're you're commuting this to us and we can you know hopefully people are watching and we can communicate it back to the uh to the community I'd also expect and hope and appreciate any feedback that we get back for the students effect from the students themselves affected both as um students who have received education for making mistakes which we all do and students who have been on the hurt end of these kinds
105of incidents it'd be really interested to hear both in um like data form or narrative form how the process feels the one thing I didn't see in the studies that I looked at and I'm sure there's more because I don't know the educational literature I just look for NIH but it'd be really interesting for me to know as a pediatrician like how does it feel going through that process to the students involved on both ends do we have students who are repeat offended offenders is the uh is the how does it feel to be sort of to get that education that I've gotten about saying something that was uh unintentionally harmful but intent as we learned is less important than impact so like how does that feedback feel do those students learn and grow from
106the experience and also I you know I think it'd be nice to know um like what their time at home is spent doing because I think you know giving students education is one thing but like is there an assignment do you go re write something about what you learned Etc so I'd love to hear I'd love to keep learning about this and how we're doing it in the community I'm thrilled that we've heard about it I'm not saying I want to hit this was a very complete presentation I'm very grateful but I I will look forward to hearing how uh continuing these processes help our community grow and so thank you very much thank you Dr Paul um I have a lot of questions um so I guess speaking about the hate speech Acts um
107sorry hate hate speech and acts um handbook statement um I know we have that education component um and so a question that's come up because you know I was there when that was created and um I know the deiac Committees um advisory committee has been um you know looking at that providing suggestions and everything um so my question is um because these are like harassment bullying based on protected classes um and those cases should be elevated by whoever's investigating if they feel that it is harassment based on protected class and it should be referred to compliance officers is that typically happening here or it's like what's that process in more detail I guess sure so um I actually did kind of the first study of the hate speech guidance act um in the fall where
108I spent some time with each principal um individually collecting data about how they used it how they used the guidance um and whatever data I could gather about the frequency of use and the effectiveness of it and so and that report was provided back to the administrative staff to then go ahead and start to study what needs to be done here and so what what I learned is that rarely are things escalated to a title six complaint because either particularly at the K through five level really I think maybe through the k through eight level kids choose to go through the restorative process and go through the education and they kind of Meet the expectation both um both students meet the expectation that there was a lesson learned and the harm has been repaired and
109so rarely it has to my knowledge um there was there's not been an increase in the escalation to um title VI complaints um I can't necessarily Say Never but in my interviews with principals that is usually the case in fact when we looked at all of the elementary schools and the Alternative High School students participated almost at a 100 rate to participate in restorative practices though to Dr Gold's point it is voluntary and so when students choose not to participate we honor that because there are a variety of reasons that they're choosing not to participate and so title VI has really been a very distant option because there has been a focus on education and restoration I think that answers your question sort of I mean yes perfect scenario that yeah that that it was
110even investigated honestly um but I guess in in situation that you know the restorative um piece um isn't working um I guess sometimes even even not under hate speech I guess at any time right under a bullying policy that's it you know it doesn't have to be a very specific like oh you you know this person has to report this person whatever that's the admin if they they are recognizing that that needs to be put escalated yes absolutely that would be within the administrator's purview to escalate um a complaint of discrimination based on those identities to a title VI complaint and then that's that's what Carol was talking about like then you start a formal process there um that I have not really investigated as much when I asked for um information about that most
111most of the reporting I got from every principal was we we continue to use the three-pronged approach as it relates to the guidance um there is not necessarily um the same restorative practice processes in every building because every building may have different Personnel or different process this but that is the information that has been shared with me so obviously legally parents students and administrators can work together to determine whether or not there is a title VI claim there or further like Title IX within that and also leave Section 504 um all of that yes okay thank you you're welcome um so questions um I guess about um and I don't know if this would involve you well maybe um so is there education on the expectations and procedures um that are provided I guess at
112a district level um also at a building level and a classroom level so we have these different approaches and if you know you know in the past we've had where like teachers may not have acted you know appropriately um and just you know pass them along real quickly um so I'm wondering what kind of um educations going on and support around that and you know does each I guess building this would be a further thing right um have like you know somebody who reports it to an office staff member do they know what they need to do um you know somebody um like working in food services that they know um who to report to you know even with our compliance officers we've stopped putting names in our policy um but uh you know if
113there's not a name there like you know so I'm just curious if there's any sort of structure in that to make sure that we're responding the best way possible sure um you can start and then I'll be at the end yeah so from a district lens in terms of the professional development one of the moves that we made this past year as a part of our inclusion is professional development must start to begin to operationalize the policy that we have in place starting with the transgender and non-binary policy as long as well as with some of our handbook policy our handbook guidelines in order to help really Elevate that to a conversation that we're having in the Forefront so that our staff have the opportunity to ask questions and get the support that they need
114in understanding what the language is within that that is an ongoing process and I see us continuing that as a part of our professional develop development work this coming year in addition at a district level in terms of our administrative team some of our goal areas have included calibrating our approaches our language and our understanding of policy at the building levels and looking at that horizontally and vertically in order to make sure that we're aligned where we need to be that has included developing some toolkits for both our administration at the building level and at the district level some work that Shannon Dr Washington has done related to pulling policy language into one place to creating flow charts for navigating disciplinary steps as well as creating some tip sheets for how to handle certain situations
115and that require some delicacy so there are some pieces in place and I do feel that this is an area that we can continue to grow so for example where I talked about doing the ongoing evaluation and reflection we get feedback through our school quality survey through our perceptions of equity survey both have questions related to discipline and equity in our buildings that we can eval research analyze and then reflect upon and also examine for disproportionality we're doing some self-studies internally Kevin Musson director of special education is recently looked at some data to help us but understand where we might have some spaces that we can grow and then we will continue to look at the the feedback that we get just from everyday incidents we learn every day I mean it's a very complex
116society complex behaviors teaching in K-12 space is I would like to say it's the same day to day but it's not and certainly students have varying responses inside of a school setting with different peers as they change and they grow across the years and so we do really value the feedback that each of those experiences brings to us and then we often come back to evaluate and reflect on that in our admin meetings okay so um so there are or will be because I mean since I moved to the school district bullying has been going on um especially publicly um based on um protected classes um race uh sexual orientation gender identity um and so I guess I would expect I know you are building and working on everything but I would expect that there's
117some sort of process before that point but I don't yeah um and I'll speak to so we the the hate speech guidance is just administrative guidance um to my knowledge the policy as it's written in the policy um manual um we are taking a piece of the anti-bullying policy and kind of developing that out into what hate speech is and so now we're in our we have just completed our full second year with this guidance and now we are actively studying it to see um where we need to grow and so this will be our second summer really looking at some areas that we can improve and there is some really preliminary data that we can study based on what's Happening Here um and we have um quite a good collection of qualitative data from
118students and from parents that we can reflect on the what's difficult is it takes time to do that and it takes space to do that for administrators to do it and it is um imperative that administrators do it because they're the ones who have to actually act in the policy so I can like you know write up all the things but they have to actually bring it to life and so that's where we are and um I mean I do often reflect on the fact that just three years ago this guidance did not exist and there really wasn't a real recognition in Celine that there's a difference between bullying and being bullied for your social identity in terms of the impact it has on students and the learning environment and now that we are recognizing
119it now we need to study how um how we can continue to build strengthen Empower our leaders to be able to use it effectively and so that it actually causes the incidence of hate speech to decrease over time that's what we're looking for and so in order to do that we do have to put some systems in place to measure both qualitatively and quantitatively and we are right we are right there starting to do that yeah no I yeah no no I I know and like support like that's great sure um I think I was more so talking um also about the bullying and harassment in general too um but yeah you've like done great work and research and have done a really good job on that um but yeah in general just kind of
120the responding to any sort of bullying I guess yeah um have a couple more things here that was important um I believe this this came up um about a staff member um some staff members doing bullying I've heard that as well um so when a staff member is is found to be doing the bullying will these be the same procedures in place with the bullying and harassment so yeah so there is a separate policy that relates to staff um the particular incidents that you heard about tonight I just learned about them myself and so I do have questions about how that policy um is actualized let me know um but there there's board policy about adult bullying um and so we have to take a look at that um there and and I will be
121honest because that's all I know how to be like when or if we have incidents where adults are bullying children because of identity that is cause for title six because there is power in that uh adult that a child does not have and that that could be problematic so we we have to look at it there's more to learn there yeah there wouldn't be a restorative practice thing right away I don't have an answer to that yes um and my last question because I asked um in December about this sort of presentation um but what I had said was at the state level I believe we reported it I didn't say the number but it was like one for one year we reported one case of bullying and this is any type of bullying and
122then like zero the year prior I don't know if what I found was correct um so just coming from the policy 5517.01 bullying and other aggressive behavior towards students um the district shall report incidents of bullying to the Department of Education on an annual basis also the superintendent shall submit a compiled report to the board on an annual basis I've been on the board for four years and I haven't seen such a document do you know like is that in process or I brought it up a couple of times no you won't know I don't haven't answered that but no I'm as superintendent I can speak that we submit each year a sid report which is where we report instances of those type of offenses um if there is an expectation that it it comes
123to the board in that way I will make sure to correct that and find out specifically what we're supposed to submit directly to the board and then I would just like to share and I think I share this my last board report when Beth Russo was here as our secondary mtss coordinator um one of the things that we've been working on is our systems so internally our Logistics Carol Mulcher mentioned the you know power school and our logging and power school and so as we align those systems and strengthen how our data is collected at a district level it makes it much easier to report track and be responsive to do we have a number that of bullying incidents I mean right off the top of anyone's head no okay well if you could send
124that information that'd be great there's been a request to have a bio break soon so what we're going to try to do is to expedite our questions or ask just brief clarifying questions if possible and then move for a brief recess all right vice president yes so first of all welcome back musada it's really good to see you and congratulations again excuse me um so this is my fifth year on the board and I wanted to amplify something that Lauren said because I would also like to see this a little bit more often I don't remember seeing this this was very comprehensive doesn't that need to be this deep but just an annual what have you I think it would be a good thing to see um again very very comprehensive it is clear that
125this is being taken seriously and this is the law so that we should do that I think Carol clearly demonstrates a very deep experience and understanding and appreciated all of the um the details that you provided I also really liked that we talked about inside and outside of the classroom so thank you Ashley for adding on to that and Lindsay you specifically mentioned sharing a digital space uh fellow Middle School I hear you hear you big time so thank you for being very cognizant of that always and mentioning that tonight um I guess what I would ask is this deep dive was great for us and very important um just to socialize this in the schools with the students as well and to kind of think about that perspective because it's important that parents and
126Guardians hear this it's important that we hear that it's important that they live this and understand this process that's my only request and if you wanted to comment on that that's yes I do actually because I was feeling like I didn't amplify that enough as a part of our reflection and ongoing evaluation one of the pieces that we are looking to strengthen is the parent education piece Dr Washington has done a fabulous job related to her family education pieces around our di work this year and the last year before on this one and so we're looking at that as a model as to bring to our families and our students to continue to read some of this this deep knowledge that we're bringing to our staff and our administrator also to our students and to
127our family so that they understand and have the same language that we have and understanding of the laws and policies that guide public schools and so we'll be starting that in August with our welcome back materials in fact we actually took a presentation that we had started with that in mind and adapted it for this presentation tonight but you'll see pieces of this come back for our family and student education education pieces as well great thank you very much welcome I have three questions that I can email too okay secretary Miller I just wanted to say welcome to the Washingtons thanks for being here tonight supporting Dr Washington I also wanted to Echo what Dr uh what um vice president stevin said my two high school students are really excited that Miss Deneen is back
128so congratulations and welcome back um the other thing that I'm interested in and maybe this will be a lengthy or conversation that we can have at another time but I wondered about when you were sharing the questions that are used in the restoration process um I think Miss Deneen was sharing those um I just was wondering how that looks at a developmental level that might not be the high school so um if you want to talk with me later about that that's fine if you want to address it a little bit tonight that's fine too yeah I can give you a very general answer when I did explore each building to look at how different buildings did their restorative piece and um just in general what I found is that it is actually more routinized
129in the elementary school because they are already conditioned to do Circle time and are you conditioned to have face-to-face conversations and it's a part of their regular practice so it is a very um um seamless process in the K5 buildings and then it looks different at the other levels but that's in general exactly what happens is there is this face-to-face conversation that is um that has some intermediation there some mediation there thank you and just another note if I wasn't looking at you making eye contact Betty is gone so I am taking notes oh okay I apologize if my eye contact was off for anyone I appreciate all of your reports and for your efforts all right I just have a couple of quick thoughts and uh and things so the teacher in me the
130slide three spoke volumes to me where you're talking about all supports start with building relationships first right like this is what we do as human beings right and so as a teacher myself right my job is to connect with kids in a connected kid is going to be a kid who will not exhibit the types of behaviors and we talked about some of those things and I I want you to know I really appreciate that you highlighted that relationship building piece first okay I really do um you know I I will also say this out loud and maybe I shouldn't but I'm going to anyway sometimes sometimes when you have discipline issues with students you want to know right like it could just be kind of unsatisfying to me at times right to be like
131what happened to that person what happened to that staff member what happened to that that kid and what I really loved that I heard tonight was that we talked about there these are complicated matters right these are matters where student privacy and FERPA and Title IX and the law says that look we we would love to tell you we did this this this and this to this student but we just we choose not to do that one because every student has the right to to try to move forward right and to and that's part of the education piece for me and number two it's just like we're trying to to learn and do better and so anyway so I I guess that's just a general comment for me is that I have learned especially as
132a board member that sometimes I just have to have support for for Steve for the leadership team and and know that this presentation shows they're they're they're being thorough and thoughtful about the things they're doing so that that I guess that's my generals um I did have a couple of questions Lauren thank you for speaking to feedback I think that that is a a big deal um I I like that Susan uh spoke to you know um about like just what I'm gonna move on I like that carrot spoke to like you know questions being answered by families and parents and those kinds of things and then I like that Jennifer spoke to the idea of strengthening that parent education piece as well all right and so I guess the only thing that I would
133have a question of you guys is how often are we involving our students and providing them an input opportunity about how we're doing on this right and what could we do and how do we change it and how do we involve the link crew how do we involve leadership how are we finding kids for the mediation piece like I guess I'd like to hear a little bit more about that piece um I know and Kara can add to this I know that we um there is there are two surveys that students have access to one is the perceptions of equity survey where there are questions about whether or not students believe discipline is applied fairly um and we have looked at um that and disaggregated it by identity in order to get a even closer
134picture to that and then in the climate survey students are also asked about that so we do have some data in that regard um however I don't think that with since I've been here I don't necessarily know that we have qualitative data from a focus group or input from particular student groups on that which is something that we can absolutely um do to get that feedback and involve students in because I mean tonight we heard from a student who wants us to do better right and and so like that I I would imagine there are students who could help us to do better and give us those insights of what it's like to be a student what what are the mechanisms that we have for reporting incidents when they occur okay to say comes to
135mind and some of those kinds of things but what do we do that you know someone could support or directly tell Ashley or directly tell Miss guitner or directly tell you know anyone this is what's happening to me and help me or so anyway that's all thank you for your presence um highlight our Wellness committee as well which there is an intersection between behavior and discipline and social emotional Wellness in our environment um in terms of our educational communities and we do have students who sit on the wellness committee um and the wellness committee does some work around getting student input thank you um just real quick um I forgot the the one highlighted thing in all caps to say um and it kind of goes with Brad and I would like to see this
136um I don't know if you can get it to us but what prevention um as far as like uh up standard um type of trainings I know at the elementary levels you know it's like be nice and responsible and all of those types of things um but when in the middle school and high school hallways people are hearing um the n-word the f word like against the lgbtq children and it's um even children not you know it's come up about children who um are possibly participating in this because they're seeing their friends do that right like how are we stepping in like not simply saying hate speech right um what does that mean and what does it look like for um you know a peer to stand up and um so what are we do
137doing there at like all levels because I think it's desperately needed especially in the middle school and high school so um yeah that's just and yeah if it could come later that's fine I just think it's like super important and kind of hits on some of the things Brad mentioned yeah and I I what I'm hearing you say is that you'd like a more robust list than what we've provided you this evening and I would be happy to get that for you because there's some really great work happening at the building level in some spaces where we've set some goals as well thanks I'd very much like to thank the seven of you for your report this evening thank you so much and answering your question so well and and pleasantly assuming no objection I
138like to call a 10-minute recess uh and resume the meeting at 8 45 please and thank you thank you foreign Mr Goodman are we ready we're ready to rock and roll thank you very much uh give me just a moment please and thank you great we have some discussion items I'm going to pass this over to the chairperson of the policy committee for a brief update they met this afternoon and thank you um so as many of you know it has been several months and even years since I'm in some iterations that the controversial the currently titled controversial issue policy has been on the table off the table back on the table and as of late we have spent the last several months um working through edits and revisions and um and getting lots of
139public comment in a very in a variety of forms we had an alternate style or format for a meeting to to help guide or to help support more voices being heard um and then the last several meetings we've had a variety of drafts and at our last meeting um there was a request made for a legal opinion on the work that we had been doing so we drafted um questions or or notes that we wanted legal to respond to and Steve and I had an opportunity to meet with Rob dietzel of the throne Law Firm so we met and as per requested these legal Communications then are um were it was requested that they'd be given to us in writing unfortunately there was a delay from Troon and so we did not get these until
140today so there hasn't been a lot of time from our team to completely digest or to look more thoroughly through these um so today at our meeting we had a had an opportunity to review the policy as um as drafted or as revised by legal we also compared that to the policy at the policy draft at the previous meeting and we entertained some questions about the meeting that was not fleshed out in the opinion that was given to us from legal there were a few items that were left off and Steve and I will be preparing to document and record those items that were left off this opinion for the remainder of the committee but with that being said we've had a ample opportunity for public opinion we've had lots of of meetings at the
141table and now we have a legal opinion and so for a number of reasons some being that there is a lot of other work that the policy committee needs to be doing too and so like for example tonight we had two other really important policies that have been tabled for a while that we needed to bring back to the table and they are pushed to the next meeting because we ran out of time so so um with that said as the policy chair I am moving this current draft to the um to the next I'm requesting that it be placed on the next agenda if there are members of the committee or other members of the board who have dissenting opinions they are welcome to share those at that time um so on our next
142agenda in June I'm requesting that President McVeigh put this policy on the agenda for a discussion of the full board and to clarify it's not we um I said I okay well okay this is my report thank you okay but are you done I'm not no okay I just want to clarify that the committee was not part of thank you for Susan and I'm going to finish thank you there is not a consensus to bring it to the table at this time however as the policy chair it is my right and my discrete at my discretion to bring this to the board for further discussion if it needs to come back to the policy committee after further discussion from the board we can decide to do that at that time that is the end of
143my report I do have a quick question for you regarding that um we a few of us received the the legal uh notes from Troon uh do you is it would it be um acceptable now to share to and to help inform the policy would it be wise to share that with the rest of the board then I have requested and I believe that um attorney-client privilege Communications extend to the full board and I do think that it would be helpful for the full board to read these especially as it pertains to this policy and MCL 38010 um I think it would be exceptionally helpful for the board to have these notes and Steve is in agreement that we will send these to the rest of the board all right thank you I have a
144comment the chair recognizes Susan thank you um so like I said that um is a decision based on the chair I didn't know there was any sort of right or discretion on that I do want to say that yes we received from a request a month ago at the last meeting received uh a four-page response from Throne it wasn't inclusive of everything that we asked to be put together for questions um during our meeting pieces of that were kind of thrown in from the meeting that occurred between the policy chair legal and the superintendent but that's not information that we even had coming here today to the meeting and also the draft that Throne um went through today and from the draft from our last meeting things were edited and moved around and we were
145not able to see even what those changes were completely so I do not feel the the committee um is ready to move it forward in this format but so I just want that to be on the record thank you trustee Estep oh okay um yes vice president I was I thought the discussion was over but guess not no nope I have a discussion and I don't know if anybody else does um so Jenny thank you I appreciate uh the documents being sent to the full board um not being a part of the policy committee and walking into a room with lots of folks I I would appreciate um understanding a little bit more um I had let Michael and Steven and I actually just let Jenny know I will not be here on June 13th
146I have a required international trip for work um so while I don't want to pause any work of the board I just wanted to signify that I won't be here I won't be able to watch it live but I will watch it and I would look very forward to contributing to the discussion um at a future meeting or whatever it's put on the agenda anyways as and as is the process it will be at the board at least two times for discussion at the board table may I recommend that you could uh still pepper the the policy committee with questions ahead of time I believe that's acceptable if you have any like clarifying questions about the policy as long as we don't deliberate I think that's yeah it as long as we get a draft
147a revised draft Yeah because once you see the dress okay yeah we'll send yeah we'll send the two drafts the previous draft and the draft from legal great we are now at the administration slash board updates uh do you have anything to report Dr lutch yes a few a few items just want to thank everyone who was involved with the uh prom we had uh this past Saturday they did an excellent job I think the kids had a great time which is really important as we close out the year also we've been doing a great job with our kindergarten open houses young fives in kindergarten open houses at all three of our buildings with Harvest happening tomorrow night so I think everybody who's involved in that to create welcoming environments for our primarily our new
148families in addition I want to point out that tomorrow night I'm going to why High graduation the International High School and I think sometimes we forget that we have students in Saline that are part of our county-wide programs and we want to make sure we recognize them too throughout the other thing is we've been talking a lot about Safety and Security lately and myself and working in conjunction with Mr Ellis are going to be organizing a safety Forum at the beginning of the next school year so we can really bring the community together and talk about ways that we can all contribute to creating a safer saline and a safer school district and then finally I'm looking forward to our upcoming graduation on June 4th EP I do have a few quick uh notes but
149I will start with our student representative her last official statement thank you so first and foremost just a preemptive happy Memorial Day and the start of pride month is on June 1st so you know our next meeting is coming in June 13th so for people who choose to choose to happy celebration for those events I suppose like Dr a lot said promise on Saturday as someone who did go to prom it was really fun the DJ was good this year and culinary made some cupcakes which were really good I actually got to have a few extra ones on Monday because I know a few people in the kitchen but um for yearbooks are being distributed at the high school today and as someone who has a few friends on the yearbook um in the yearbook
150class they've been very stressed all year and they've been very frantic just to reading the last few days so for everyone who's helped make that happen from the sponsors to students in the yearbook classes we see you we appreciate you I did your book in eighth grade and it was too much for me I can't imagine what it's like to do a high school yearbook for the seniors we have two and a half more days before our last day of high school graduation is going to be next Sunday so big time to be a senior and the saline High School we're having our extracurricular showcase on on May 30th so basically all the clubs at the high school are gonna have like a little booth and if you're an eighth grader or even a freshman
151or if you just want to know what clubs we have there it's a really great event to go to and you will probably see me there for at least one of the things I'm in so thank you Allison um come by at the start of the 13th the meeting and maybe even later to get uh his step and we'll sign your yearbook if you bring it special page just for us right I'll say I'll I'll take me three weeks just to come up with something brilliant they still they still do that right I'm going to jump ahead and say I I want to say thank you to David mellor uh for um uh inducting me I received a Future Farmers of America degree a special one and a certificate uh just last week it was
152a wonderful celebration uh Dr Ryan Rowe also received one and uh I just want to comment compliment the uh the incredible work that the the FFA students at our school do their their remarkable group people and I do have one one brief announcement uh the Michigan Association of school boards yesterday uh had a legislative coffee in the morning actually was a whole breakfast and uh during the meeting I was given this special envelope with a certificate of achievement for Susan Estep and uh for taking uh four or more 200 or 300 level classes and uh gathering together a minimum of 208 educational credits ladies and gentle men [Applause] that's all I have to add tonight thank you all right uh real quickly I want to thank our abandoned Orchestra programs for the Fantastic concerts that
153I was able to attend I my kid's a band kid but uh I I know that both programs do great things and then I would say that this past week I feel like I've seen like post after post after post recognizing some of the success of our our Sports programs and championships and SEC red titles and all those kinds of things so there's great things that are happening out there and uh 10 and I wait 11 and a half more days of school so yay for that kids keep going but I am so I just wanted to Echo um the sentiments about prom um my to our junior class officers and so um trying to navigate and plan prom has been a big a big load for them and so they were very happy to
154see it come to fruition on Saturday and to see all their friends and classmates enjoying themselves the pictures I think if you haven't seen them on MLive I think the pictures speak a thousand words or more it looked like the kids were having a great time so make sure you catch those I also wanted to make a special mention tonight my kids are Juniors at the high school so it's been an interesting couple of weeks and and one highlight in particular happened on Friday night so I wanted to share this with you that on Friday night officer Gasaway our high school school resource officer who is beloved by many and in fact has participated in our graduation ceremonies before at the request of students to hand them their diploma rather than one of us which
155is great we are happy to see that but on Friday night officer gasway after a couple of weeks of um of of I'm sure emotional and overtime hours took the time out of his personal time to come to the dance recital on Friday night and it was the evening show and for those of you who are in dance Dr Washington remembers the evening show is the long show so he was there for over three hours watching them and then came down afterwards to congratulate them and take pictures and they abandoned their grandparents and siblings and friends who had come to watch the show in a rush to get to officer Gasaway they were chatting with him and talking with him and asking them what his favorite numbers were and he was joking with them because
156when the high school student said what was your favorite number he named a number that they weren't in and they were like hey we weren't in that number and he smiled and said I know and then named one of their numbers but anyways um I just am so impressed with his connection to the students he knew each one of them not just their name but their personal circumstances and connects with them on a daily basis when I asked my juniors after returning to school after a couple of tumultuous days who their safe people were officer Gasaway and I don't know if she's still here behind the podium but miss miss Deneen was one of their people that they mentioned Jen Barnes or Barnard sorry and Patty Waltz amongst other teachers but those people who are
157not in the classroom who go out of their way to make those connections I keep saying as my kids are exiting their junior year and heading into their senior year that it's all about the people it's all about those connections and those experiences and so after these couple of days thank you to Dr or to officer Gasaway and to each of the staff members who have gone the extra mile to help our students feel safe and supported in in their school environment so thank you treasure treasurer trusty gold just needs that go ahead I've been enjoying teaching Junior Achievement so I just wanted to give Mrs finicaro and Mrs Marshall's classes a shout out at Woodland Meadows um I wanted to say a very happy graduation to Allison and a shout out to all of
158our seniors you are loved and will be missed and wish you well in the world and whatever your endeavors are and just a little bit of a call to action Bridget and I were talking a little bit when I walked back in just a little call to action parents students be kind to the staff it's the end of the year is very very exciting um but it's it's a whole lot and we're experiencing it in our house and I'm sure everybody else is too a lot of excitement but um but let's all work together to finish the school year on a strong note that's it congratulations yes there are a couple committee updates that I almost forgot because that's what we typically talk about so um the Dei advisory committee met and will be met
159will be meeting beginning of January beginning of June um so um that we will soon um be putting out a call for applications um we'll be meeting um to see what that will look like because some members because you could do two consecutive uh two-year terms and so um but it should kind of work out nicely with you know people who maybe don't want to apply again and come off and then we can open it up to more spots as well and then the sex ed Advisory Board met the one from the past three years met and kind of talked about um some um you know things that they accomplished and kind of recognizing that um and then a new chair will be coming on um which will be uh assistant principal Cameron Cochran assistant
160principal from uh Heritage and so he'll be taking that new role on so I'm excited to to you know help with League like law and board policy on on that component as he needs um and that application process has been extended because there were not a lot of people to apply initially so that was extended out to beginning of June so if you want to apply a three-year term there's you know people um who give a lot of time and energy and thoughtfulness on our committees and I really appreciate that and so look out for those applications that will be um promoted hopefully on social media and we can also promote it as board members as well to get the word out for people to apply thank you and that deadline is now June 2nd
161thank you uh hearing nothing else we'll move on to the consent agenda the consent agenda is listed uh in this agenda and will not be read aloud the motion noted will allow for the authorization of all listed items without discussion unless a member of the board requests that any one or all be considered individually so I'd like to entertain a motion to authorize a consent agenda as printed so moves Devin okay support Miller thank you uh so all in favor please say aye aye opposed thank you uh we have a consent agenda thank you uh item scheduled on the next agenda Dr Lodge uh only one meeting in June uh so June 13th budget hearing earlier at 6 pm and then uh District retirees uh Bond update and the budget amendment great thank you we
162have we have several wonderful 154 five public comments uh and I'm gonna go in the order they were presented to me uh Chan Ming fan will be number first and you know the rules sir go ahead wait sorry good evening okay let's change where the student goes first all right thank you pardon me we're going our student is going to go first Aaliyah Carrero Corral no Corral yes corio Taylor yes Korea Taylor yeah my name is Alia crayo Taylor I'm a sophomore at saline High School I've been just listening to you guys speak about policies and everything that you guys go by and I think when it comes to racism the policy should extend a little bit these students are receiving one day of ISS their first offense or two days of ISS and they're
163not learning anything but yet they're retaliating against minorities when they are re when people report it and I think something more should be done I've been a victim of multiple racist things at Celine I mean since I've been here since seventh grade I'm a sophomore now and I could tell you guys countless stories of things I've dealt with and celine's procedures to deal with it when I speak up I am I'm punished at the end of the day because I'm always suspended because of false retaliation of false accusations use retaliation um and they go by the restorative conversations and nothing is learned from those restorative conversations they're just there to kind of speak I mean I've sat in kids faces and talked and we've kind of discussed what the problem is but it's still taken
164further um last year for example I was there was a party thrown about me they put on their shirt I like Leah Correo did they did a white lie party and I reported this to the school I took it into the school and they gave me a restorative conversation and I thought everything was good but it was taken to social media again and they used my body to mock me on social media and when I reported it to the school the girl only got one day of lunch attention and I received a suspension I think two days later for a false accusation and that's when I say it I've been I'm a third time Defender but for defending myself I've defended myself and for some reason I'm always punished for it I'm always put in
165the the dark of everything and it's always pushed onto the rug and it's not heard and it's time something is heard because it's not right to go inside of a school building and feel like you're walking in there not being human you're walking in there as a Target on your back it's very uncomfortable I've struggled academically for the past two years now at Saline Area Schools because of the racism I've dealt with I came to school more focused on fitting in than my academics I straightened my hair every day I did certain things to just fit in with celine's students when in reality I should just be myself I am a minority I am African-American and thank you and we deserve to be heard and I have a black student union and I plan on
166working with Celine as a district and as a community on growing and I hope that we can all come together and grow because I attend on graduating from Celine but it's really hard I'll focused on graduating when I'm dealing with racism daily thank you Julia Chang Ming fan my name is changing fan as usual I said I am social entrepreneur locally a hundred percent satisfaction about your leadership and extremely excited to see the wonderful student here present their wisdom their hard work with the support by all of you especially the policy of Celine star or Celine campus if you look at very carefully to the ground critical thinking to the left of that somehow we can zoom up is globally connected so therefore I want to continue the concept of Siam you all remember Celine
167area young ambassadors so this is the concept what I want to simplify into nine characters yen not more young investors not the war successfully reached this High think the best school best board best parents but one thing we have to say we are in a war not just Coral viruses War but also also living reward the Young People Inc what is that bank herd or give it's not like we are lucky so how we're going to do can we continue accelerating the world use weapons or viruses or we want to want to use the peaceful way send the young investors imagine student director Alex another leader two plus eight like white six to what is it 12th grade with parents participate go to Beijing go to Taipei go to uh Keith to say that this
168is we come from America we want to bring the peace I just chat with Dr Washington why don't I see this thing again black singer what his name Jackson We are the world we are the children so right now we have to think how peaceful time that was I want to tell one thing do I have 30 seconds right now okay my personal experience is come to the United States when I saw 29 American students from University of Michigan went to China I would say I want to go back go to United States I'm here many years so I know that until you globally connected we're separated so please let's continue to go to another ping pong not the panda but yam young ambassadors thank you very much Megan gunderson's up I don't know if
169I should say Gunderson on deck or something like that yeah I don't understand you're probably like again so I stand before you again um specifically about the bullying policy I did listen to Dr Washington's presentation and the other administrators and I am concerned that one of your students came and took the time to not speak just once but twice about her experiences in the high school our family has had negative experiences with more than one child in more than one building in more than one academic year so we all kind of personalize our experiences and hope for better in the community I guess I I believe that part of the algorithm might be restorative justice but it can't be all of the algorithm um behaviors keep escalating and there needs to be a deterrent um
170at the Palestinian or at a focus group Dr last Dr latch also um discussed that escalated behaviors are happening in in the younger grades too so um it's concerning when kids get frustrated they act out more I have concerns for continued violence in the high school and in the Middle School Dr Washington one of your presentations you talked about that the kids stop decrease their numbers of reporting of incidents I don't believe for one instance that the incidents are actually going down I think that the kids are just fed up and perception really is everything the perception in your community is that there's a double standard repeatedly we've seen repeat offenders who are part of specific programs or have certain ties to the community who are treated differently than other kids who are participating in
171the same less than best choices again I would just encourage that whatever your algorithm is for discipline that it actually include discipline in addition to restorative practices um I liken it to a pip in the community when I put people on a performance Improvement plan there are positive and Progressive benchmarks and then eventually there's disciplinary action I don't see that second piece and while I I understand that the students deserve confidentiality kids talk and right now they're talking about nothing happening and it's just a continuation of day in and day out and nothing happens fights are real and they're scary and you know we closed our school for two days because of a threat and it was credible and it is frightening to send your kids every day thank you Ann Jeffers Dr Jeffers feeling
172a little bit emboldened by the student who presented tonight um and so as you as you all know I'm Susan eastep's wife um and I'm here to say the things that she's not able to say as a board member um I do want to apologize that this uh short speech has some language in it as well as a mention of suicide um so my child is uh 12 years old and she is transgender um and I want to give you a sense of what it looks like on the ground as a parent as having a student in the schools so the framework that was presented by Dr Washington and others it all sounds great and it all sounds like yes this is going to solve The Bullying problem but the reality is that in the
173past year she has been kicked pitched to the point of being bruised shoved into lockers spata called a and a dead named um misgendered and so on our child has reported this these incidents to adults in the school building she has filled out reports we as parents have had uh have reported the incidents to the dish to the school administration the building Administration we've even met with the school principal and the school acts in some incidents and in others it doesn't do anything um and in the times when it doesn't do anything uh there are cases called quote unsubstantiated or a first-hand account is not enough we need video evidence we need to you know whatever so so it just gets brushed aside and the bullying continues and I want to let you know the
174impact that this has had on our child um so as of October um I want to paint a picture for you I was sitting in the car with my child and um it was October so the leaves were changing it was a windy day and uh my child had lost it she started crying and I pulled the car over she looked me in the eyes and she said please Mom I don't want to live anymore please just kill me um and that was the night probably the second of four evenings that we ended up in the psychiatric er um so you know I'm here tonight to tell you that the bullying has real consequences and it has really does real harm to these children our child is in a much better place now but as
175we heard tonight several individuals have talked about bullying in the school schools there was a city council meeting on May 15th where a student talked about bullying in the Saline schools again and so why is it so persistent right why is it why does it keep happening and so my question to you is what can we do to take that nice framework that was presented tonight and actually put it into action and to stop the bullying um I was asked at one point why do you stay in Celine why do you keep your schools and your student your kids in the Saline schools um and I just want to let you know that this is where we bought our house and we're committed to the district we have so many positive things to report about
176the Saline schools we Susan and I really are committed to the Celine schools and we want our kids to grow up here and we want to bring about change but but at the same time what we've experienced this past year has just been unbearable um and so I I think this is sort of a last-ditch effort of bringing it to the school board tonight um hopefully you all will take it seriously and I'm happy to continue the conversation at a later time thank you thank you very much uh and the last public comment is Sarah Castellanos thank you I have to start by saying I hate public speaking so this is really hard for me to even come up here and say but I'm relating to people in here and especially my son um it
177was sexually assaulted on multiple occasions and I feel like nothing was done um he's 12. loves School more than anything and I just feel like I've lost him a little bit his incident one of them was caught on camera nothing was done to these kids I do feel like I can relate to what Lauren said about you know what's done at home is there something done at home with these kids obviously there's something wrong there's something going on with them but if we're just doing these restorative conversations what's happening to these kids at home are they writing something are they what are we doing what is what is what is happening behind the scenes I didn't write anything tonight I don't speak I don't do this this is not my territory but as a mom
178of a kid who's been assaulted on more than one occasion and finally came to me and told me and finally told the administration and finally we ended up going to the police and he's speaking like an unbelievably Brave child he sees nothing done he goes back to school and the same things are happening not to him but to other kids and he sees it and he can't do anything about it and these are sexual assault incidences it is bullying it's horrific and I'm asked the same thing why are you here why why on Earth are you staying here I grew up here my family's here my home is here my friends are here his friends are here he loves school but um I want to homeschool him and I listened to this all night long
179and I don't I I don't know what to feel I feel like there's a lot of talk about positive things I feel very deeply that these teachers are having a difficult time I and uh I don't know I guess I'm here because I just I just wanted to hear what happens at these meetings I've never been to me this was a good one for me to come to and I would also like to like to see how much of this is actually going on I want to know I want to know I want more to happen these conversations Aren't Enough period [Applause] thank you very much the next meeting the next Board of Education building will be held June 13th at 6 30 pm here I'd like to entertain a motion to adjourn the regular
180Education meeting uh Board of Education meeting on May 23rd at 9 23. all in favor hi I opposed hearing none thank you everybody you may