001I'm gonna try people in the boardroom I'd like to start the meeting in a rather unusual way could David please come up all the way David all the way up here because this is the gavel and you are going to do the official banging in of the meeting and there's and there's the recipient right here of the band ready to give David what's your last name what's your David Russell is going to lead is going to open the meeting ready David hit it once thank you [Applause] so as I told folks before this this gavel came from my dad when he was a young young person and and he passed it on to me and I'm letting you bore it for just a day thank you David so I'd like to call the Warder David
002and I would like to call to order the Saline Area Schools Board of Education meeting of April 11th 2023 at 6 30 p.m as you are able please stand for the pledge I pledge I know that's a very robust pledge thank you so much uh I do have a brief message that I'd like to share with the whole Community those listening at home and tomorrow on YouTube I would like to take a moment to remind voters that Celine area schools will be on the ballot on Tuesday May 2nd just 21 short sleeps away for an operating millage renewal now it's important to clarify this is not a bond this is Celine area schools ongoing renewal request for our operating millage which covers our day-to-day operations the millage is part of how the state of Michigan
003organizes school funding and it was determined by proposal a in 1994. there will be no change to your current taxes by voting yes if approved it is a renewal to continue the operating millage for another 10 years and if approved the millage would be paid by second homes businesses and all other non-principal residence properties so if you own one home in the area you would not pay this millage I'm urging you all to vote Yes on this Village on May 2nd or to fill out your absentee ballot and mail it in or drop it off at the appropriate location and for more information please visit celineschools.org and click on the box titled millage renewal May 2023 thank you so much for your patience um uh this is the time for a public comment a member
004of 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 public participation portion of the meeting will be limited to a half an hour 30 minutes normally and limited to agenda items a second public participation portion will be offered at the end of the agenda to follow for any comment um any 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 district employee or student so are there any student speakers are there any public stakehold there are nothing I could have skipped that whole thing then
005did you see that I stopped Midway through that's when I was thinking I should have checked with Betty so I have no response to previous public comment because there were none except for one at the end um items they're review this is the time for the revision or approval of the agenda items can be added or deleted from the meeting agenda and or the order of items can be changed at the request of an individual board member or the superintendent the agendas must be approved before proceeding further I'd like to entertain a motion to approve the agenda as printed most in gerby support Estep thank you uh there's no discussion all in favor please say aye aye opposed and seeing no opposition we have an agenda uh Brad Kirby thank you um we have a
006a two student showcases this evening and uh one is the star group and the other is Heritage leadership so I would like to let the or coordinators uh just take their turns and come on up and you've been trained on how to use the microphone is it working great um hi if most of you know me I'm Megan degrand some of you I travel all the way to Florida to see apparently um I am the very proud principal of Heritage School and I have many reasons in here to be very proud with this show of awesome students um it has been a wild ride to get on this schedule um but we appreciate you allowing us to celebrate and share two great student-centered programs with you thank you to Allison Doran for getting this going
007earlier in the fall um tonight I am proud to kick off with our heritage star program this program was designed by Kim Munn a high school speech pathologist years ago and is still going strong all throughout the district last year Barry Burnett Brooke gilb and I got things going at Heritage in January it began with it began with bi-weekly meetings with where students were able to engage and socialize with peers that are different from themselves this year we have upped it a little bit and we have grown in our capacity we meet each week this year and once a week is purely social connecting with students with a very diverse group of students on the off week we have been fortunate enough to welcome guest speakers who teach our group about exceptionalities disabilities and inclusiveness
008for all we'll share a video and then this year's coordinators Barry Burnett Amanda McKinney Lindy torvin and Brook gilb and Ava Wilkos along with two star Representatives can answer questions for you so you can go ahead and roll that video [Music] star stands for students talking and relating [Music] at Star we learn about disabilities and differences we make friends and support each other we had fun [Music] we learn about confidentiality respect and disability awareness we are reading the book just ask by Sonia Sotomayor it is awesome last week we learned about diabetes last week we had a guest pickle coming about disparities my name is Zach and I've been a type 1 diabetic for a few years now this would be my fourth year having type 1 diabetes get a glucose sensor which automatically basically
009delivers a notification every five minutes about what my blood sugar level is we we will have special guest teachers teaching us about disabilities all year long [Music] marriage is pay games my favorite thing about star is that I get to learn about everyone and I'll get to eat learn about more people my favorite thing about star is that all of us in the lunchroom good to have fun together every single Wednesday my favorite thing about stuff is that you can eat your lunch and play with friends like um you can make meets new friends and you can learn about disabilities that others can have and and meet other people that has the same disabilities as you foreign so we have some bookmarks that we made where all the kids signed on them and um Mrs
010McKinney who has a very nice touch made him look nice and they're for you guys to keep to remember our program but now if you anyone has any questions you feel free to ask and we will do our best to answer I just have a quick comment um first of all Alison yay all right and uh and you know Bravo to your team you know when I think about we've really talked a lot in the last couple years about social emotional supports and mental health and and so I I see a lot of things in here that you know I I saw you know there was a literacy component there was a building Community component empathy right like so anyway so I applaud you and it takes like such good leaders to do this and
011so I'm looking at the young man in the center and you guys around like just you know like thank you for taking the initiative to do this work because it's not easy but it really does make an impact on our school community so thanks thank you so first we can only have a few of you at the microphone right but if you are in Star and you're sitting in a chair could you stand up so we can see all of you thank you thanks Joey awesome and I know many others are in the club obviously we can see in the pictures but that you couldn't um couldn't be here tonight so thanks for joining us we want to celebrate that I remember when Star was started because my oldest daughter who's now in college was
012at Woodland Meadows and I'm I know Mrs degrand was there too and I maybe Mr Burnett was there as a as a TA then or a para educator then um so I remember when it was started and what a remarkable program it was for my own three children but for the connections that they've made and carried on to this day my daughter has a really good friend that she keeps in contact with that she met through star so um just the connections are long lasting and the the key being having relationships and and building those relationships with people who you might not have um encountered otherwise um I also love that you included um Zach Lindemann I know that's been quite a journey for him and what a special thing for him to be able
013to model how he can share and raise awareness for others so thanks for including him um I want to give a special plug too that if you're if you're starting in Star now you can continue to be involved in clubs through the middle school and my two younger kids their twins their Juniors now they're both on the executive Council for a club called connecting which is a lot like Star so you can continue to be involved like this and because I'm their mom they would love for me to tell you to be involved and to continue to be involved in that as you get older so Bravo to you for seeking this out Bravo to the advisors I don't know all of you but I'm so thankful for you and the work that you do
014to build to build another facet of of learning for our students so thank you I noticed that you read just ask I heard that in the video that's one of my favorite books and I think very very appropriate my question for you is how do you get involved how do you select advisors and how do you invite students to participate in the program so last year Mrs degrand and I were talking and I know a lot of the other elementaries have a star and actually Middle School does as well so we saw a need for it and um she kind of I guess asked me to do it so I was like all right I need I need I need good support so miss Guild was like the first person I asked she's our school
015social worker so that made a lot of sense and then um we kind of got it off and running last year it was kind of a shell of a program I'd say um definitely didn't dive this deep into disabilities and awareness um so this summer we saw an opportunity to grow with both staff and students last year teachers nominated the students this year we had applications which really kind of figured out who had a real interest in it because it took it wasn't an easy application there was quite a few questions to answer what was really hard was going through the applications and choosing kids because we had tons of tons of them um and we had to cap our our program I think we have 80 people in it for shirts and just logistical
016reasons of space so it was it was hard to turn away kids hoping we can grow but we'll see yeah so I also have a couple of really was so great for them and they still use language then I know they learned at Woodland Meadows and with Mrs Mon and so Bravo um to ask a brad Kirby question what do you need from us how can we help how can we support this program and expanding because I think this is really helpful for students in our community that's that's a really good question I think just getting it out there making it known I think Kevin's done a good job this year last year we kind of had our own shirts and this year every Elementary has the same shirt so we're kind of unifying that
017making it a whole school district approach um and I'd like to see like the seamless transitions from lower L to us to middle school and so forth so just just being aware of it and getting the word out that this is an opportunity for kids are there snacks involved there are that that actually is a good point this Guild might be able to answer how we acquire those snacks um but that's very important that's the number one question we probably get asked when kids come is what is a snack so how do we acquire snacks so we have been very fortunate to have a lot of parents donate snacks this year um special ed department has purchased some snacks but we are always in need of snacks so that is that would be a great
018way to support um and so like Megan said we have lunch groups tomorrow we have lunch groups and then the opposite Wednesdays we have it at three o'clock where we have guest speakers or play games and stuff so you are all welcome to come see us sometime or join a group that's me volunteering um thank you for presenting on this um you all talking to the students are creating um an environment for those um in the elementary schools below um and I do like that idea of like the seamless you know um unifying fine with the shirts and everything but you are creating like a really great environment for students coming into Heritage and um hopefully can move that on to the middle school as well and continue that I think that's wonderful I'm excited
019about the guest speakers um that you know just even seeing a little bit of that clip um you know you're not putting the onus on like the students necessarily right to to explain like how they're like the differences in everything and so um having those guest speakers to um for others to see themselves or to learn about um you know others who experience different things in in their life so thank you for providing that and I'm excited to see it expand more across the whole District thanks would you like to stay for the next brief presentation and then go leave with the rest that would be great we'd love for you to stick around for the next short presentation thank you so much [Applause] nice nice seamless transition for principal to Grant good evening everybody
020my name is Cameron Cochran I am the proud assistant principal at Heritage School thank you to my colleagues and the wonderful students who presented on Star it's my honor to introduce our next group here which is our heritage student leadership cohort I'm going to do less of an intro here because they've worked really hard on a slide deck in collaboration with their staff advisors Mrs Allison Pete and Mrs Nicole Gibson this should be a really easy thing for our students because they're actually used to presenting in front of a group of over 650 students one Friday a month at our community meetings so without further Ado I'm going to pass it over to Mrs Pete Mrs Gibson and Gwyneth that's right hi I'm Gwyneth and I'm Natalia we are going to tell you what we
021love about student leadership one thing we love is being creative for every charity and Foundation we support we get to make posters about that and hang them around the school it's fun to share our creativity with others and doing it with friends that's another thing we love building friendships being in leadership lets us bond with one another and make friends with other students while having fun in leadership we help support our community at Heritage and in Saline we also support communities outside of Celine for example we donated books for the book drive to many different schools in other cities another part we love is when we present in front of the whole school at Community meetings and help make decisions about what we can do to help our community we are working hard to bring
022positivity and Community to our school in our city these are just a few things that we love about leadership hello I'm Bree and I'm Kenzie we will be talking about Heritage Community meetings at Heritage we gather together for a community meeting each month Community meetings are a chance for our whole school to come together and share positive messages and celebrate Student Success at Community meetings we celebrate classes for being respectful responsible and kind of unnecessary some of our heritage award includes The Golden Shoe golden lunch tray and the golden Reese's award in the golden dust pant let me tell you about one of these Awards The Golden Shoe is an award that is given to classes one fourth grade and one fifth grade class who demonstrate respectful and responsible behavior when walking in the hallway
023or for showing respect responsibility and kindness in their specialist classes um classes earn gold tickets for these behaviors the classes with the most gold tickets at the end of each month will receive the golden shoe that is how we do community meetings at Heritage hi I'm Kenley hi I'm Sydney and I'm Olivia and we're here to talk about the school store the school store is a place where students can come and spend their blue tickets teachers and staff at Heritage give out blue tickets when they notice students being respectful responsible and Kinder than necessary students can earn blue tickets in their classroom at lunch or recess the hallway and at specials these tickets are very important once students collect collect enough tickets to buy stuff in the school store including toys stickers pencils backpacks notepads
024and many other cool items thank you for listening to our presentation each October Heritage student leadership has a collection for Halloween candy called treats for trips we partnered with celine's orthodontist to raise over 500 pounds of candy that was shipped to troops overseas so that they could enjoy a Halloween treat hello I'm Abby and I am Emily we are going to tell you about uh our winter toy drive over the last seven years we have raised several thousand toys for children in local communities we have worked with Toys for Tots saline Social Services to bring toys to our community we raise these to help children in need to have wonderful holidays we try every year to be our previous record of toys raised so we can help more children each year for more toys the
025more toys we can donate the more children will be happy it's like Heritage Santa leadership does this fundraiser every winter this is still just one fundraiser that we do we do so many more foreign biggest student leadership fundraisers of the year is candy grams candy grams are a fun fun way for students to send positive messages to their friends with a special treat for Valentine's Day what's also special about candy grams is that students can color and decorate them how they like we can send them to anyone in the building which is a great way to connect with friends that we haven't seen since third grade no all of the funds raised goes toward purchasing items for our school store students love when we purchase more items for our school store to buy this year
026we sold and delivered almost 3 000 candygrams we love passing them out to others this heat we love passing them out to others and spreading positivity in our classroom at Heritage we make sure each student receives a candygram thank you hi our names are Lily and Eliza we wanted to share about the March's reading month book drive each March we collect books for the dean Ledford Memorial Foundation which collects books for schools in need the books we collected this year went to schools in Dearborn Heights in Detroit they also went to the wisd we complete this book drive every March for March's reading month School raised a grand total of 4479 books that was about a thousand books more than last year we would like to send a special thank you to all Celine community
027members and students at Heritage for donating the dean Ledford Foundation was overjoyed by the generosity of everyone in the school after loading all the books into the car we celebrated with donuts and juice the students from Dearborn Heights Detroit and the wisd were Amazed by everyone helping the schools thank you for listening to our presentation about the book Drive coming to a new school can sometimes be a little scary this is why we think it is important for third grade students to see Heritage before the start of the school year in May Heritage House a special transition night where students and families get to see what heritage is all about they get to take a tour of the building see specialist classroom and see some fourth grade classrooms the leadership stands will be present in
028rooms and stations throughout the hallway this allows third graders to ask more questions about the school and what they can expect Mrs P and Mrs Gibson are are also there to help answer any questions and meet the families Celine Thurgood third graders also have the chance to come visit Heritage during the school day in May each Elementary School brings all their third graders to Heritage to get a building tour our student leadership Representatives take students on a tour of the building and answer any questions that they may have we love meeting the new students and helping them feel more comfortable to start their fourth grades their fourth grade year at Heritage transition night is super important and a fun way for students to feel ready to come to Heritage [Applause] thank you hi thank you
029so much for having us I'm Allison Heaton we are so proud of them they worked a long time and I know they were really nervous and we can't say enough how much we put them on the spot and like demand so much of them on a weekly or daily basis some of them were like grab an extra shirt you're standing at the community meeting like stand up you got to go right now here's your script and they're like okay and they go and they don't complain and they are so hard working and they have done so much for our community in our school and we are very proud of them yes um and I'm Mrs Nicole Gibson and uh just to kind of add on to that not only are they presenting at Community meetings
030but they also take this information back to their classrooms and their share it with all of their classes they kind of are willing to go above and beyond to help their class and anyone else in need so thank you so much for having us and at this time we'll take any questions um very impressed with everything that they do uh so how many members are there did I miss them uh 25 25 we have one from each class okay so so they do a lot of 25 people do a lot of work yep there was responsible for like bringing everything like it's their job to tell everything we learn and do back to their class on top of all the other things so that's great I so I I was wondering how many there were
031because I was looking at the list of everything they're doing and the number of books and the you know effort that's great congratulations that's awesome all right so first of all um you made me think about okay so how are those individuals from each class selected um well we usually ask all their classroom teachers they give them like a little bit of a feel about like what we're looking for for student leadership and then these kids have to give a speech to their classes or they at least have to write one um showing why they should be a good representation for their classroom and why they're responsible and ready to take on this job and be able to commit to we have before school meetings every other Tuesday so they also have to be ready
032to commit to like coming in at 7 45 every other Tuesday and so they have to present that to their class and then a lot of times the class has like a an anonymous vote and then they decide who it's going to be and then we get our lucky members all right well my Bryce I could tell you really misses blue tickets right like that that that that helped his with his uh his behavioral things and all kinds of things so um I love the confidence so each of you should be incredibly proud of yourself for being willing to stand up here and being willing to to do that in front of like this big room of all these people so first of all I want to make sure I say that now you said
033that the bar for the toy drive is always set a little higher what's the current number of the toy drive bar oh gosh yes yes Bravo guys awesome you did great all right so I just wanted to say a couple of things too I always have to relate it back to my own personal experience too so my Juniors were on the leadership team at least one of them and then the other one came in the very first year do you remember Allison yes Drew Drew uh kicked it off with you and Mrs Turner and um so that was the first year that there was Heritage leadership and Drew is still the class president and hoping to be class president again um and I know that his his roots from Heritage have carried him in his
034leadership since then it just has created um someone who like you said wants to create positivity um and community at their school and in their community at large so I really appreciate the work that the two of you do to instill that in in these kids and to really bring all students together through those 25 leaders um I especially just wanted to mention that it is um extremely special to see the dean Ledford Memorial Foundation um I knew Dean personally and know his mom and I just it is really really special to me that this group of kids who may not have even known Dean um are carrying his legacy forward and he would love this so thank you so much for doing that and especially books being the literacy person I'm I'm loving that
035it's connected to books so thank you so much as a mom you're making me really miss this age because I'm not gonna get it again um you're doing really important work it's really difficult to get up in front of 600 of your peers sometimes it's harder to speak in front of people that you know versus people that you don't know so I wanted to acknowledge what a great job you're doing and I wanted to let you know how impactful the work that you're doing is on the future Generations because I'm I'm loving that the the third grade transition night slide is up here because I remember when my twins came from Pleasant Ridge to Heritage they went to this transition night and they felt so much more comfortable because the leadership students welcome them they
036knew a couple back from PR and they felt so comfortable and it made them less scared so you're really helping other students and my Sydney was in in leadership and I had a wonderful time so thank you very much to the principal's advisors and all of the kids good job sure um so great job everybody um I'm just wondering where these kids get the time and energy [Laughter] um but uh just keep doing what you're doing and keep leading in the community and this is what makes sling great put in a plug real quick too because I forgot to say this and I should have every single one of you hopefully since you're doing those things like Transitions and all that web leaders and Link crew right like this really will funnel into those things
037so I'm putting a plug in your guys's ears the web and Link crew think about them no no pressure no pressure well I just wanted to say first of all I'm incredibly proud of all of the students and the teachers for for organizing them and perhaps sometimes they organize you I get that I get that I just wanted to say to all the the young folks in the audience you've not only made your classrooms better and your school's a better place but you have made Celine a better place and when I heard about the candy drive for the troops I can now say that you have made the world a better place so thank you thank you thank you now if you wish to excuse yourself go right ahead we do have a one scheduled
038report after this but we'll wait a minute or so until you all clear out and have a photo op and whatever else you need to do thank you so much [Applause] it's it's uh we're having a debate Lauren and Susan we're having a debate that's Peach right the color coral Coral coral Coral salmon what are you wearing Brett Ben that's salmon it is Coral infused salmon he'd like to move a little closer except I was gonna say this is this is a little daunting when everybody walks out not gonna say it's the first time this has happened but at any rate in the back activate yeah we got to put one over there for you to just entertain us between Kurt there's a step stool there if you need it yeah thanks all right well
039on that note this is a tough act to follow so um I appreciate the opportunity to come and give you a brief update on Safety and Security um there are kind of two elements that we focus on with regard to Safety and Security there's an operational side to things which is kind of how we do business and then there's more of the infrastructure and I think tonight we're going to focus a little bit more on the infrastructure side of things but certainly there'll be some operational highlights that I'll share earlier today Mr Clary myself and Mrs Melcher had the opportunity to go to a training session over Ann Arbor Pioneer High School that was put on by some folks from Oakland County and one of the concepts that they talked about was doing what they
040call Blue Sky day planning meaning you don't make plans when you're in the midst of Crisis you make the plans when things are going well and and we've tried really hard since that previous bond in 2015 to do just that um I'll go through kind of each of these in brief and then have a little deeper dive on all of them but we'll talk a little bit about the safety team that continues to meet and it's a pretty broad-based team that serves the entire Community not just the school district we'll talk a little bit about informacast some things relative to the video system that we're going to be bringing before you here tonight for approval as well as our visitor and volunteer management there's a mapping solution that we're pursuing through a state Grant we
041have another Alice training or a critical incident training session coming up here next Monday night and then our SEC security assessment and last but not least this collaborative training event that we're planning right now as a joint operation between ourselves Pittsfield and Celine our safety team as I said continues to meet on a very regular basis I'm sorry for drifting away from this we've met six times since July 1st which is that Cadence is probably a little more than normal but there's just a lot more going on these days and so we're trying to continue to to be responsive to that we can continue to review our emergency communications as well as our medical things I know when people think about Emergency Operations we often think about these big incidents like occurred in Nashville but
042the reality is most of our Emergency Operations Things fall into the category of medical emergencies we have them very regularly you often get updates as board members that an ambulance was called here or there and we could not be more fortunate but to have nurse care and Herbie and a small team of people that are are really really exceptional at what they do the biggest update for our medical operation side of things is we have Narcan in all of our buildings now board policy has for a long time supported the ability to have that in the buildings to treat opioid overdoses and all of our staff that are on those First Response teams at the building level are receiving that training now from nurse hervey so that is in place the group that meets on
043a regular basis is Mr Clary John decaro from Pittsfield myself officer Gasaway Matt harshberger from Pittsfield Chuck Mccalla from the district Mrs Melcher Karen hervey Jason Hohner from Pittsfield Marlene radzik police chief here and then Aaron Roth who's a detective at Pittsfield and Jason sperley who is the saline chief of fire chief uh informacast as you know we've got a new addition to the boardroom here a couple of weeks ago it is the system that we have have brought into the district that is a part of our emergency notification system it's not a standalone operation it's a part of what we do and and really the reason that we brought that system into the district was to provide visual cues for people who couldn't hear and or in spaces where hearing is just difficult if
044you've been in a gym with a couple hundred people announcements don't play well in there if you've been in the cafeteria during the school day at lunch when there's 600 students and their announcements don't play very well in there so we brought in formicast in to provide that visual cue it has worked I will tell you that right now the high school is operational Pleasant ridges operational we're about 50 percent done in this building continue to kind of Peck away at it they're doing most of this work at night so it's not interrupting the the instructional day at all we do have some implementation issues and I want to make sure that I address that just so you you hear it from us you'll recall there was an incident this fall at the high school
045where we lost power and what happened is that that loss of power signaled to the system that there was a problem and so an alert was sent out it happened to really unfortunately be on the exact anniversary of the Oxford shooting and I know that that really really caused some panic at the high school but two things have happened since then weren't we have taken steps to make sure that the system was not going to trigger that again and two I know that that Mrs Steger the principal of the high school and that staff have worked really hard to make sure that our staff and students know what to do in the event of an emergency I think there are really two problems one is that system went off and two because nobody was expecting
046it to go off nobody knew what to do and so we have taken steps to make sure that it doesn't go off again and so that it if it does that our staff knows what to do with the students in that type of a situation here are some examples of what those visual cues look like in kind of real time in real space and obviously we've got one here in this space that you can see as well um from a video standpoint this might be like the most intensive in in some respects kind of exciting stuff that we've got going on we currently have about 350 cameras deployed through the district um often in space you see there's a little bubble just like you see at malls and whatnot they're in our hallways they're all
047over outside and whatnot our new system that that you're going to have brought before you as a proposal here tonight has 435 plus cameras and they have all kinds of capabilities that our current system does not they have artificial intelligence or AI capabilities and and to be clear that doesn't mean that you know we can identify Steve lotch when he walks in the door and follow him all through the district but what it does allow our administrators and our and our school resource officers to do is to follow incidents so if something happens you can follow that through the building you can you can identify kind of areas where there's unusual activity I think one of the things that we're the most excited about is we can set alerts for spaces that shouldn't be occupied
048at certain times and if something happens in those spaces then an alert can go out right now there are a lot of you know big Districts The High School alone we've got over half million square feet and and there are places that people just shouldn't be at certain times and if they are we would get an alert to tell us that we're there the other thing that really we're excited about this new solution is that it has remote accessibility and so not that principal stagger's looking for things to do when she's at home but but things do happen on weekends um exactly but people do things do happen on the weekends and the ability to be able to take a look and see what that is before you know hopping in the car and running
049out there deploying somebody is something that will be very very helpful in the event there is a a bad situation we can also allow law enforcement to have that remote accessibility before they get on site so they have a sense of what they're walking into I do want to make it clear though that we don't have the capacity or the manpower to monitor cameras 24 7. this is not going to be a live monitored situation and so I want to make sure that that's clear to people but again our partners in law enforcement will have access in those types of emergency situations another really exciting part for us as as you know we have had Raptor in our buildings for about three years now we had a Pleasant Ridge pilot program almost a decade ago
050but we've been using Raptor for almost three years now as our visitor and volunteer management system and it's really served us well um but I think that there are things that we can do that will make it better one is to integrate it more with our intercom system and two we'd really like to be able to move that capacity out into the vestibule right now the people come into the buildings and they get processed by one of our office assistants and that puts the office assistance in a really awkward spot and candidly the people are already in the building by the time that interaction takes place and so the system that we're looking at does integrate very very well with the camera system people can pre-check before they get to the building which they'll appreciate
051they'll be able to save them some time the the system will be able to allow users or visitors that maybe check in at Heritage to then come check in at the middle school later where right now our system is pretty building specific so we're really excited about this and I think our office assistance will really feel a lot better as well when that system gets implemented building mapping this was something that the county had had put together some information on there was a Statewide grant that we applied for and we did receive that will fund this and basically what it does is it takes the the building schematics that we have creates a digital mapping solution and then we can share that with law enforcement you know I can sit there and say hey when
052you go to the high school enter door number one and I may know what that means but somebody coming from Washington County would have no idea and this would allow them to have more information and more access I think as the city of Celine entertains the concept of going to a more county-wide dispatch this could have value because right now when you call the city of Celine I often know the person I'm talking to I don't know that that's always going to be the case and so having that building mapping for all seven of our buildings will really really be important for us and it'll be a nice asset for those Partnerships we have with law enforcement critical incident response training this is something we've done annually since I want to say 2013-14 ish we've
053continued to partner with secure education Consultants we had a session this fall where we invited all of our new hires and anybody who had not received training or wanted to get a refresher to come and and we had I think 50-ish people come to that we have another one scheduled Monday in this room at four o'clock if any of you want to come you're welcome to feel free just let me know but that that training you know we continue to provide for our staff I guess we said that we've been doing this since 2015 so I was close there um we did and I know we've mentioned this briefly briefly in the past but we did a security assessment with secure education Consultants they came in and spent about three days on campus I know
054they interviewed both of our well the principals that are here but all the rest of them as well and and just observed operations um and I think they gave us I know they gave us a lengthy report but the the real key finding was that we need to create more structure in our evening activities um if you go to the high school during the school day it's very obvious who's in charge if you go to harvest during a school day it's very obvious who's in charge and you know who to ask if there are questions um our buildings are used 24 7 at the high school middle school about 361 days a year and there are times you can go in there and you're hard-pressed to find somebody who's in charge and that was one
055of the things that they felt we really needed to address and so we're taking steps to do that it's not necessarily going to be a person it's going to be a collaborative effort I think that we've got to make sure that our custodians have a a good sense of what their expectations are our Community Education Department who's often renting those spaces needs to play a part in that and then the rest of us need to make sure that we're communicating those expectations as well but we do need to create more structure in those after school and evening hours so that when there are incidents that come up we can help out one of the other things that I think we're going to I should say I think we're going to do next year is is
056when people want to come in and use our buildings we're going to have them submit a security plan for us and what that plan will do is it will make them identify you know what the exits are what the spaces they're going to use it'll make them take a more active role in knowing the space that they're going to be in and some you know a lot of our users are our own people but the fact that they'll have to do that I think will be something that will be a real asset for us and then the last piece I wanted to highlight to you today and you're going to see more about this as it comes up we're going to want to make sure this is very public because it's going to be a
057really big I think event is we have been working for the better part of this school year to plan this collaborative training event with Pittsfield Celine both Pittsfield and Pittsfield and Celine fire as well as police they intend to bring Washtenaw County in as well and they'll do multiple scenarios at the high school it's going to be a training event for them they're going to ask us as staff to be a part of it to both observe and to participate as as role players for lack of a better way to describe it but it's it's their training event they're using our facility and I think the value for us is we can see how they deal with emergencies it's very very different than what schools do and I think it's important that our folks know
058that they have a role to play um and and I think it's really really important that we provide that opportunity for those folks to get into our buildings to see more about what we're doing but also for us to be able to observe them kind of doing their work as well so that will take place we've tentatively scheduled it for June 28th in May spill over into the 29th a little bit but we'll have a an opportunity to share more information with that as it comes because there will be a lot of law enforcement there and we'll make sure that that everybody knows why that they're there so that was a mile high view of this and be happy to entertain anything we're four miles high yeah pretty good uh quick question about this collaborative
059training event which I've seen a few in in some schools I think we've done it on smaller levels this sounds big so will there be uh I don't mean will there be students involved because a lot of times you see I remember Columbine and other times students exiting from Windows and being let out into certain safety areas will will there be students involved not with this one at least not in this iteration of it um I think what they'd like to do this and then talk through how to include students in the future but not in this one yep sure oh sorry a shelf on your papers um so I guess uh Also regarding the training I know um University of Michigan Dearborn would do these and um you know with my history of um
060you know like Virginia Tech um it's triggering right to kind of see that outside of your office window um so um I know you were mentioning like um making sure that everybody knows that it's on campus so if there's like any summer camps or anything that we could put that out to our community or something would be helpful um because yeah I would drive past and be like ah what's going on uh but yeah I remember a lot of a lot of um you know um vehicles and and cops on campus and stuff like that so um and then I had a question about and since that's one of the items uh tonight the cameras and so I had a question about um I mean I guess it's very specific um but uh when cameras
061are needing to be replaced um and I don't know if it'll look different from the ones we have now and the ones coming up how quickly do those do we expect for those to be replaced like in a high traffic area if it you know goes down or whatever um how that happens yeah I would anticipate that the ability to replace them would be relatively quick um the way and Jay is here as well uh and again what's that 24 hours oh yeah um the way this the program is structured and you correct me if I'm wrong the way the program is structured the camera has a license and if if the camera goes bad you can replace the device and it just replaces within that same license um but but the service is very
062very quick because it's a matter of staff reporting it too right correct yep all right great thank you yep you're welcome uh are the students aware like at the high school level or that there are cameras is that something that students are aware of out they're aware where they are and they're also where they aren't okay uh and I just wondered like it you know they're being used for security are they used for disciplinary purposes and like I'm just wondering about student privacy concerns like how are we balancing all of that so in terms of I'll go back to what I said before we don't monitor them in real time so if there's we we can't predict that there's going to be a fight based on the behaviors that we're watching um if there is
063a fight yes we will go back and watch that video to determine who was involved and things along those lines it's often we would refer as like after action analysis um and so if if something was reported stolen we can go back and see okay that bag was sitting there and you can see somebody go and pick it up so there there is the students are well aware that the cameras there as Mrs Sager said they know or they're not as well um I can tell you one of the things we went and viewed a security Center just a week ago and one of the concepts that this particular um site had put in place is they have cameras and they have sensors and then they have W cameras and dummy sensors and they move
064them and it deals with exactly what Mrs Steger talked about is people know that there are certain areas that are and so they just move them um and uh it helps with that but no we don't we don't use them to to try to curb behaviors it's it's after the action type stuff to the um the cameras when we're using them if we're using them as a part of the due process for the students but the students don't view that we view them the students aren't looking to your point of student privacy the students are watching the cameras it's purely for us or law enforcement if it has to be a part of that the only other thing I would add to that is that they're also not in instructional spaces generally there are gyms
065and I know gyms we do teach in those spaces but uh they're generally not in classrooms our student rep has a quick question sure I would just say as a high school student I mean I'm not really swinging at people at like 10 30 on a Tuesday but I'm not super aware of where the cameras are but I would say I am aware that they're like our cameras because I've heard of people who have got caught on that sheds any light on the situation I think I think you know on this for those of us that can remember a day when there weren't these bubbles on ceilings everywhere um there they stand out a little bit I think when you're a certain age they've just always been and and so they're they're there and I
066don't know that people pay a lot of attention to them unless they're trying to avoid detection I was just going to mention too since we're talking about all different kinds of scenarios not just um scenarios that would need discipline I was a part of a a review of video footage when we had a medical emergency so again that after action but we were able to um watch how quickly the team responded to attend to a student who was in a dire situation so I remember it's been a few years but Karen hervey met with us and shared with us all mostly the things that we did right and a few things that we could do differently the next time and we're thankful that that team went into action and the rest of us could support
067them and that the student had a good outcome so I think that they're important for more than just disciplinary reasons but also for a lot of other really um you know a lot of other reasons that we would like to improve student outcomes no question thank you so first of all Narcan in every building so first of all so first of all before I get too far I want you to know how much I appreciate like this has been something and it is something that's very important to me as you've heard and I appreciate our commitment to what you called Blue Sky planning all right I want to make sure I say that okay I'm really proud of informacast and I'm proud of raptor and I'm proud of the way that we're utilizing you know
068Technologies and in our community quite frankly by funding bonds and doing these types of things has helped us to stay safe warm dry Etc so anyway I want to make sure I say that first so back to Narcan in every building um what is the process to obtain it and is there an update is there an expiration I guess that's my first question yes to both um it's obtained through the the nurse program if the the closest analogy I can give to you is it's very similar to the epipens we have Epi you know students have epipens if if you're a student who has anaphylaxis you may have an EpiPen that you bring from home but we also have epipens in the office that nurse hervey is in charge of procuring she makes sure that
069they don't expire and when they do she goes out and gets that supply and restocks that if there is the need to administer then there's the whole reporting procedure that goes along with but it's all done through the office and through the nurse it's not something where there's one in a classroom or something along those so those items are in the office correct and then we have a critical Response Team correct at every building that is trained to know where those things are and Implement that correct yep okay so the other thing the next question was regarding uh critical response training do we you said that we've offered one and now we're offering another one what is our requirement as far as participation in that because it's after school right and do we provide funding
070and pay for those individuals who are hourly individuals who would want to take advantage of those things as far maybe everybody is yeah the people who come to it are paid and so when we did it in Mass a year and a half ago two years ago those people were paid when we've done these sessions since um certified staff get paid their curriculum hourly rate hourly people get paid their hourly rate to be there there's a sign in and a sign out so nobody's doing it you know they're certainly coming because they want to to be better informed um but they are compensated for it and are all can we say confidently that all I mean what but what percentage I guess of our employees could we say are trained in this it um I
071I don't mean that yeah I I would say more than 75 percent okay um I can tell you it vacillates just because our turnover is so regular that you guys see the Personnel reports it's it's pretty regular we're doing twice a year so um yeah at one point we were well over 95 and then as turnover continues to happen we try to keep up with the twice a year thing well I will say that loud as a as a trustee as an individual like that spending money on this is would be important to me yeah and it would be something that I appreciate you offering it and I appreciate it if you you want to offer this more than twice a year sure you've got a you know you've got someone who would support that
072all the way from a financial side I guess and from wherever um collaborative training I appreciate that are they going to give us a report back on any of their observations or feedback for areas where we could improve our own um safety with our buildings yeah I don't know if that session would be one that would provide that because it's going to be they're going to set the scenarios um I think that that feedback is included in the SEC assessment that we had done and I could certainly share that with the board I think that would be something that you know we've gone into closed session in the past to talk about Safety and Security and if we wanted to take a deep dive into that report I think that would be an appropriate way
073to do that it's about 13 pages long and again most of it you know kind of as as you know we've noted mostly it's pretty complementary about the things that we're doing um which you would expect since we've been engaged with this company for seven years but um there were some some things that needed to be improved and most notably the evening stuff so yeah we could certainly take a deep dive into that well again you have my appreciation thank you thanks um I definitely want to kind of piggyback what Brad said here and thank the community for especially in the 2016 but it really kind of started a lot of this I know that's when you kind of started that relationship with secure education consultants and um one of the things I remember learning
074back then was the threats are constantly changing so you're constantly having to change kind of what your where things are going and and what was maybe a a good school Plan before changes and now you got to adjust that plan so with all the square footage I mean that that's a lot of work so um I appreciate you bringing up the uh informacast situation at the high school even after I got on the board I got some people you know reaching out to me and asking about it and I know I've talked to Steve about it so I appreciate you you informing everybody in the community about that um and then also I really do like the idea of having people submit a security plan when they're they're using these buildings so because a lot
075of times like like up above secure education is saying that we need you know more of a person more structure behind some of this um after hours as well when other organizations are using our buildings as well so thanks thanks I guess I would add to that real quickly like because I think we did in the fall didn't we agree like we're gonna revisit our security plan on an annual basis so we put it in our our Emergency Operations plan yeah we're correct yep oh one more card oh safety is one of my favorites so Kurt to you and Carol and the rest of the team I know how seriously you take this of course so thank you thank you very much so I had a couple comments and a question um the community event
076I did I want to amplify what I heard over here from either Lauren or Susan with regards to Communications to anyone who might be in the building um we have a lot of sports teams that'll be there the 28th and 29th probably is my guess uh even though we're out of school so thank you in advance for making sure that you communicate with the coaches and those families um you aren't using any type of rubber bullets or anything at that okay because we do see things like that on the news so I just wanted to make sure all right excellent I also wanted to thank you for the pre-check idea for visitors specifically in our elementary school buildings but in any building because it does put the office staff at risk my mom was a
077school secretary so um Frontline they deal with a whole lot so appreciate you thinking of them I had a question with regards to the positive comments that I consistently hear about officer gas away and Community liaison Don Lupi and just wanted to know if you had other ideas or plans for SRO and or Community Liaisons in those buildings for more or other buildings yeah so our hope would be that officer gasway wants to continue in his current role I don't know how well known it is but the contract that he originally agreed to was four days a week so he was working Monday through Thursday and often was off on Fridays and we approached Chief or director harshberger and asked for five days a week and and his initial reply was I'm sure I could
078get somebody to cover that for you but officer Gasaway agreed to change his schedule and go to five days a week which I think speaks volumes about him as a person and certainly has solidified you know our our appreciation for him so our hope would be that he stays and Don lupai's role right now in the community liaison is something that we're going to have to evaluate at the end of the year we were very very overt with him when we when we created that position that our goal is to have a second SRO and we have conducted those interviews with the city of saline uh I don't think it's any surprise to to folks Officer Morgan siegewa was the person that the city has selected that they want to put into that role and
079so the intent would be that that would start on July 1st if there was a scenario where we wanted to continue with that Community liaison component it just becomes you know a funding component but if we wanted to do that there's no reason that those two roles couldn't mingle as you're seeing right now with with officer Gasaway and and Mr lupai the capacity to co-mingle certainly exists it's just going to be incumbent upon us to identify that as a priority for funding can I ask real quick was that a new position the community liaison yes it was this year was okay Kurt Ellis thank you so much for this great presentation I had a couple more questions but that's more about timing and I'll I'll shoot them out later thank you so much uh we
080have really thank you I appreciate that you're keeping an eye on things I'd like to have a recommended motion to approve the minutes from the February oh nice to approve the minutes from the February 28 2023 closed session for the purpose of considering purchase or lease of real property under 8D and considering a confidential attorney client communication pursuant to 8h of the open meetings Act so move Stephen second thank you at this point our secretary she's got it that's why I was I was looking for you will will provide us a copy of the minutes and so it'll be a little bit of a Down time for the audience while we review the minutes and then hand them back to her and uh go ahead Bree if you're still here at the end I don't
081know Dr McVay might let you uh gavel us out we will be speedy speedy-ish secretary Miller have all the documents being collected and I'd like to we'd like to put this to a vote now all in favor say aye aye opposed oppose saying a abstaining one that would be me can I abstain because you were here I wasn't yeah I wasn't here we could or I could show my support from my colleagues but I'll just abstain this time entertain a second motion of three to approve the purchase get ready Mr Grossman uh to approve the purchase proposal is submitted by the director of Technology Jay Grossman for the replacement of existing camera system visitor management system and entrance intercom system in the amount of one million two hundred and eleven thousand twenty one dollars and
082twenty seven cents from Sentinel Technologies that's for cada cameras so moved Miller is that Kim Kirby do we I'd like uh Mr Grossman do you have any can we grill you there may not be any objections we may have a camera or two a question or two sorry I do have a question that came to me from a member of the community um I noticed that on there is a note about uh a camera on the scoreboard that caught some members of the community a little they were most interested in that I understand that principal Stager may have something to say about that as well regarding blind spots on the scoreboard of the at the field and that has been unmonitored to this point with the camera okay thank you I asked all of these
083administrators technology there we go it's brighter green now sorry um in the assessment of the camera system I asked all the administrators to provide me with a list of some spots that were lacking in views and one that came back actually both from Athletics as well as the high school was that there was some areas on the football field behind and around the scoreboard that are currently don't have good view or monitoring us we elected to add some there we're adding some underneath the bleachers just to give more visibility as you noticed in keralis's report we're going from about 350 cameras to about 435 so we're adding everywhere to try and cut down some of those blind spots and that was just one of the needs that came up from it I appreciate that I
084noticed that these are also new cameras for the building the parts of the buildings that don't exist yet correct great correct yeah so we built some alternates in there to uh since this is a 10-year plan so we wanted to make sure we account for all those new uh structures that were coming during this Bond and secretary Miller uh just because you run up the the football field do we ever have to post anything that says like this area is monitored by cameras like for example for our visitors who might not be aware I don't know if there's a guideline for it um but I believe we actually have some signage but we okay we would love to check that and I think that's a great idea okay I just was wondering when you mentioned
085the student section if you're expanding that then it's probably going to capture people who aren't necessarily a part of our community okay thanks appreciate that any others I'd like to put this to a vote then all in favor say aye aye aye opposed nay uh in favor then thank you very much thank you you weren't sweating that one were you or we would like you to stay here we have I'd like to recommend a motion to approve the proposed audio video component package in the amount of 109 000 and 90 from sound planning communication as submitted by director of Technology Jay Grossman so it moves Devin second was it Tim Austin thank you sir what can you tell us about this sure so uh as we're also getting ready for another one of our bond
086projects which is standardizing to classrooms there's also a need that we found in a number of our classrooms where inferior wiring is already in the walls that's been failing so before we get to designing and really bringing in the upgrade inside the classroom we want to make sure all the wiring and audio components are going to work so we went through we assessed the rooms are having these issues and identified what we will need to purchase to get this in there so they basically all have a same starting point with the equipment in there and then we'll be we'll actually be hearing about this and I'm sure upcoming board means as we move towards the standardization of the classroom package that we're going to be looking at super any questions I do have one oh
087we have one from uh okay so are these Bond dollars or is this because it's Improvement of current infrastructures this just general uh actually it's cabling so be syncing sinking fun okay so yes this package will not be coming out of the new Bob this is this portion of it is separate is it sad that I think 109 000.90 oh sorry ninety dollars um doesn't seem like a lot compared to all of the you know million dollar uh approvals that we do so I just wanted to make a a joke are you guys I agree I'm hoping this one flies right through yes well thank you for abandoning the tin can and wire approach we had in the past I appreciate that so if hearing no other questions I'd like to put this to a
088vote all in favor say aye opposed hearing none this past thank you very much Mr Grossman for your time this evening and for your Splendid work that you're doing thank you I really appreciate it so we have uh two uh discussion items well two buckets of discussion items I'd like to invite a finance committee uh meeting update from uh Treasurer Brad Kirby who is also the committee chair yep all right uh so we we met today at five o'clock and we discussed uh a few items and we have a few things still on our quote unquote to-do list but that's always good so the first thing we talked about was there's a bulletin called Bullington 1014 bulletin 1014 takes a look at expenditures with regards to other school districts so for example so for our
089instructional support right we rank 59th out of 822 school districts in the state of Michigan so it ranks us on the following things I didn't give you just a few of it it ranks us on our um our general fund revenues per pupil it also we pay it ranks us on basic programs needs Adult Ed instructional salaries average teacher salaries and then it also goes through and it looks at instructional support it looks at business and administrative costs operation and maintenance and then our like total supports taxable information Etc and there's a lot in this I'll flight I'll tell you there's like category after category but I guess the big thing that I would say to you from the finance team is this we talk about students all the time and they're our students in
090the room earlier and we put our money in the classroom and the reality for us is if you look at our bulletin 1014 I can tell you it confirms it like it confirms it it confirms it big time you know like I said our administrative and business we're 752 out of 822. so you know now that's not to say that that won't fluctuate a little bit year to year based on the needs of our district needs of our students Etc but historically I mean it even gives us this thing gives us a five-year and we're 752 771 726 you get the idea so long story short um you know our our costs in those areas we run lean but we put our money in classrooms and we support instruction and I that that excites me
091as a parent as a board member the whole way the second thing we talked about was we talked about our spring count our spring count uh the the funding is kind of backwards in the regard that we count our spring count which is 10 of our funding before we count the big one which is our 90 this upcoming fall so you know I I'm all that I mean there are two things that we can track really for our budget number one is our student count and number two is what is our per pupil allocation from the state I mean those are our two big Revenue gender or those are our two operating uh pools of your buckets and so the reality for me is we don't see anything with that 10 count I guess I
092would tell you 48.47 that gives us any reason or any cause for concerns about being able to meet or exceed um enrollment as it's currently stated in our budget so that that's positive and that's a good thing uh let's see you know we even talked about there are a lot prospective families and tours and things happening about students and people wanting to come to our school district so from an attractiveness standpoint Bravo and then the last things we talked about we talked about we're this is a to-do item for us I'm not going to share it out but one of the things that we're having conversations about is revenue generation how do we maximize Revenue generation well also understanding that we have uh you know building and operation and maintenance that ranks 525 out of
093822 and and so making sure that our individuals are we're maximizing their talents in the ways that they're hired and empowered to do so but at the same time like if we can generate some revenues and we can find some ways to you know fifty thousand dollars generated here is fifty thousand dollars we can spend somewhere else and so long story short we're just being creative and we're talking about those things that's being let up I shouldn't take any credit for that is being led up and by by vice president stevin I thank her for that and uh so and that's that and then our uh we're gonna have some homework on that or we're talking about it but but that's it so we'll come back to you maybe with some Revenue stuff if we
094find some things that are really really great ideas that but I just you know I don't want to make promise I can't keep yet so I anticipate will bring something just I don't want to put a timeline on it yet so that is that uh we have a good name thank you thank you thank you Treasurer gerby we're going to move over to the policy committee now and we have a uh you're going to walk us through these four slash five uh proposals two of which are been heavily edited or somewhat edited thank you so first let me just uh say that uh you know how we joke about like having a policy on policy we might actually need to have a manual on how to how to lead the policy committee because this uh
095doing doing the um policy work and the secretary work has been a bit of a learning curve so I apologize for some of the missteps that have happened so we're going to begin with one of those which is um the wellness policy and uh after our last read we did a first read at our last meeting and some edits were suggested by you and there were some edits that had happened in the policy committee meeting and unfortunately the system has changed so those edits no longer come to us automatically in red and green so Betty um very kindly was able to put some of those highlights in for us however it was noted tonight uh by one of the things that um uh trustee Estep Founders that some of the edits weren't made so you
096do have a hard copy and we will be sure to get that published if this moves toward an action item so you have a hard copy that has mostly formatting you might remember in the policy that you had there was some like letters where there should have been numbers for different points and so those were not changed so I did go ahead and make those changes so where there should be letters hopefully there are letters and where there should be numbers there are numbers but if we look at either the hard copy or the copy that you have um on your computers the red and green highlights you should be able to see now you'll notice a couple of the changes if you look down under two item two c it says with regard to
097other school activities we moved the item about free water to number three uh is that correct four sorry number four so you can see that we moved that now to be consistent with the other items that were already there um and then in the hard copy that you have you can see where the numbers that are highlighted in green those were changed from letters um the other items were there before we just didn't have the highlights for you um so if you have questions about those highlights for me or for the committee we can take discussion on policy 8510 the revision of policy 8510 now um so I I have um an addition here um so like for example the drinking water was actually added by like these Suggestions by the current Wellness committee and
098um so that was you know something we received and um you know took back to that Wellness committee and said hey make make some of these changes um and so that was yeah something that we just moved in a different section and I I will say um because I kind of caught this and questioned it before um this meeting but um I think it's the last green highlight yes next to the last page and at school Level Health advisory teams May assist in the planning and implementation of these Wellness initiatives in just a brief discussion with um uh trustee gold before um we we think that that wasn't there initially when it came to the committee but then in changing um placements and stuff that it was added it just wasn't highlighted got it um
099yeah so and I I was sharing with um trustee Estep that I because these were inherited and this agenda was inherited by this current committee I didn't have the historical uh I didn't have the document to go back to look at the history to see where the changes had been made um so I wasn't sure when or where that had been added so thank you for for bringing that to us too if if I could note that the original was 2017 which was probably the year that we transferred over from the masb policies to this so okay it just yeah if that helps thanks that's basically the only question I had as well is is I understand why I might say 2017 but why would it say 2021 is that that the year why wouldn't
100it say 2023 if a revising that was probably the last time Neola had an update for us that's my guess is that is that what you think too yes we did have this come um I don't quite remember it must the date must not have been changed I know we did have some changes legal changes that were added um based on like the government and stuff that we had put in in 2021 um so I think that's why that but it will say it'll say 2023. if we if we approve it it will now change to 2023. and could you walk us through the process of approval we're going to let this sit for another two weeks and perhaps put it on the consent agenda next time if the board um has no further uh
101no further um questions or concerns then we will move this forward to um so they can do are we so help me out are we moving it to the consent agenda or are we moving it to an action item oh in this case since there were reviews and lots of edits we should probably make it an action that's what I thought too okay that's what my understanding thank you that someone had mentioned consent okay just wanted to make sure okay I wanted to add with the Neola 2021 it will stay Neola 2021 because that was a Neola update but there will be a date from when it was um updated at the top correct okay at the top of um in the actual policy manual I just want to reiterate um in the past because
102we've had this conversation I really well and I appreciate this and too it's really important to me um that we have two clean readings of a policy prior to voting on that's that's something that I you know we talked about previously with policies in the past this is this is clean today clean in two weeks but I just wanted to reiterate that that is a strong preference for me so today it's it should be to you the way other than for a little bit of formatting I know my font was really small so um Betty feel free to take whatever it needs to happen there and adjust the page numbers but other than that if there are no further revisions or questions this will then move forward to our next agenda as an action item
103and we're going to put it forward without the color coding and everything it's just going to be a straight clean like you say clean correct thank you so much yes okay if you do have any questions or comments in the meantime you can always bring that to the policy chair or committee yes I know that's fine I can't explain yes so so this is this is the issue that we're having right now the system is not performing in a way that is um easy to manage for Betty and then today I just finally took it to a clean Google doc and tried to make the edits because the way the system is working is not user friendly yes they do okay on the formatting okay great okay so yes foreign if we can have correct
104me if I'm wrong since you were since you brought up the clean copy I think if we can have that document or at least the notes the language that we are submitting to Neola without the red and green at our next table at our next action item um that well that be sufficient for the rest of the board yeah I'll clarify my comment real quick about what I mean by when I say a clean copy is I mean we have not changed any language so we did not change any words tonight we did not because to me that would mean that we then are still in debate on this and I would want our public to be able to to comment and that kind of thing so that's what I mean by clean I'm not
105talking about like letters and little Neola you know I would call that minutia if you will I'm talking about we did not change this document and its interpretation its language it's anything the tonight I'm all in favor I'm sorry for interesting I'm all in favor of making your life as easy as possible board recording secretary yeah thank you um I just had a question I thought in the past we had talked and I know you're having formatting issues absolutely understand that have we talked about putting draft watermark on on things until it's ready for Prime Time discussion before okay just to signify for public-facing documents that's not something that's adopted memories yeah that was what um we did with my policies yeah okay okay and and Jenny I'm happy to I know the transition was
106with Michael but I'm happy to um kind of go through go back through my organizing and how um we did that and work with you on them yeah I just it's been a bit of a learning curve especially when the red and greens stopped working you know it was just some little surprises the other thing that I just wanted to since we're discussing this today if anyone has anything else to say about this but um the purpose of bringing these to my understanding is the purpose of bringing these policies to the table twice is so that there are two opportunities for discussion with revision and then the third time it comes to the table it's the final edit because if we want it to be two times at the table before it becomes an action
107item that's going to be six weeks that it takes a policy and if it's not clean at those two times it could take us months to get a policy through so right now it was my understanding that we bring it to the table for discussion and if there are any revisions we make revisions then publicly then we bring it back to the table again for discussion and potential revisions and then the third time it comes to the table it is ready for an action item and it is clean at that time no no we make no changes to it that evening then right none but you're saying Susan that it has to be at the table three times with no changes no there's no um in our policy and our board operating procedure it's twice
108um and some of those can go on consent um which is like the Neola yes changes or if there were like minor changes um but and that's the consent agenda but it's supposed to come for to the table twice for discussion so what happens like for example we if this is the first time we brought a policy and somebody was like wow I don't like this you know wording there should be consensus at the table um not like let's make a change that one person said and then come back and discuss it but it would be something like consensus hear that first discussion the policy committee going back to it um making those changes and being okay with it and sending it back for a second time um which could be an action item but
109also during that action item um there's still ability for changes or for that to go back to committee right I know there was the ability for it to go back to committee I just wanted to make sure that at the discussion we could have changes yes yes okay and I want to be very clear I don't want to bog us down for like you're probably like six weeks to get a policy approved I just don't want to if I if I would prefer not to be in a position where I have to vote on something that is currently being changed yes I hear you anyway okay I think I think they're both getting at the same thing so it's it's it's two action it's it's reason for discussion whether there is some or not an
110opportunity for public comment and at any time a trustee can move to create a new agenda item and move it to consent that that evening the second if they would like or it goes on the third as consent yes yeah but consent or action yeah okay okay Neola updates are okay so moving on to the next policy that we're discussing tonight it is policy 8390 it is animals on District property this is also a revision you can see where there was a red strikeout on page two number five and then that was moved to c you can see the green light green highlight there and then on the last page you can see where the red was was struck and it was moved to the bottom you can see the green there and since we're
111not arguing formatting the only thing I was going to say about this is page numbers but Neola will get that all for us correct yep okay perfect I just want to say thank you for those clarifications on this it's I think it's a pretty sound policy and as I mentioned before we ran it by some of the folks who bring Critters on campus and they they could which is the really the appropriate title for Critters on campus yes yes but I'm okay with the old timer okay um and and they said it was they were not an onerous List of Demands in fact they're all things that they were doing anyway so thank you and we also had some clarification correct to me if I'm wrong Steve with legal about clarifying that this was not
112a student um that the animals uh this one says though if the animals Handler oh is not a student thank you thank you okay clarification thank you that's on the next one which is related to this one so discussion on 83.90 great thank you so much okay we'll move that one then forward as well okay and then we have um 83 90.1 this is a new um a new policy uh and so um the green that you're going to see um were recommendations or changes that we made and this is where we had um uh legal advice on this because we wanted to be sure that um the therapy dog was the handler was an adult owner and that this did not pertain to students bringing therapy dogs to school um not a service dog
113there's a difference between service dog and therapy dogs so this pertains to strictly a therapy dog and in fact I think the policy came from Troon didn't it or originally this is one of their policies so if it's okay if it's a new that's fine I have no more questions okay any other questions all right so this one there is the next one it's actually two policies because it would go in two different sections on our board docs um because it would be for professional staff and for support staff so there is a bit of a discrepancy in the policy committee meeting minutes from the last time we discussed this where it said it was coming to the meeting for discussion but that it was also going back to the policy committee which would be
114kind of um uh we we probably should have brought it for discussion and then decided if it needed to go back to the policy committee so there's a little bit of a discrepancy in the minutes however we're bringing it here for discussion and if it needs to go back to the policy committee after that then we will take it back there if not then we will proceed with it forward so this was given to you last time this is a new policy so you're not going to see a lot of Reds and greens however there are a couple of strikeouts where you can see and one of the questions that we got just from the community is why we would have this because if it was threatening behavior towards staff why wouldn't we involve law
115enforcement or authorities and the reason is that there are often incidents that are learning opportunities and restoration opportunities and there are staff members who wish not to press charges but would like to have restoration or opportunities for Education with those involved so this is an opportunity for the school district to support our staff our students and families and community members without necessarily involving law enforcement however if law enforcement needs to be involved then they'll be involved but again as you know sometimes people choose not to press charges so that was um that was one of the items that we discussed this I will also say that this is coming to us at the request of the sca and they would like to see they were hoping for support for their membership with a policy like
116this the um if I can add also the policy language is found in many many many districts across Michigan for some reason some chose not to adopt it years back and um I I think we made that decision as well I'm not sure exactly when but uh we would like to rectify that that Omission at this point I think my question last time was the you know striking out the reference policy 3362 anti-harassment but then I think you explained it since it's 33 62.01 it is automatically it's it's so that's what gives us yeah so 3362 this is that's the like header policy and this is the sub header yeah because I because this was this is very vague on its own yes we need that context constituted yeah and I think that's initially in
117the committee we we're going to add that and then we realized that it was redundant yeah oh okay say thank you but if you have more to add please oh yeah um so I I guess I was thinking about why we would bring it back to the policy committee and I think maybe part of that conversation um was that there was a strong um interest uh comments we had a few comments on it and so um I don't know if that's why we were kind of giving an additional opportunity on that and I know this was added today it was added it was on our last agenda and then added again today and if we decide to move forward it will be added again as an action item so the public is welcome to continue
118to comment and we do have an upcoming public or upcoming public comment here today again at our next meeting and also at our policy committee meeting on the 19th yeah I guess I would say that too and if our sea is saying to us that this is a matter of importance then I think that I'd want to prioritize that so I know from my perspective I'd I'd be ready well still because we haven't met as a policy committee so for the next time exactly yeah that's why when you raise that concern I thought well since we have now a couple of opportunities for public to either and and of course public can always contact us independent of those meetings either um at SAS board email or um you know they can contact us individually absolutely
119I agree we give lots of opportunities [Music] foreign hearing no further discussion I want to thank you for this work I'm looking forward to seeing this as these as action items in two weeks uh so the next section is on I really can I because it's the policy report can I do or do I can do it at our I'll do it at the board okay some updates okay thank you I hope that felt less clunky it felt less clunky to me I'm working to be more prepared at these meetings um and learning as we go so thank you thank you for your graciousness and for Betty I even thanked her with a flower because she's putting up with a lot for me she has to deal with me on policy and as secretary so
120can't thank her enough for everything she does for us so thank you and is also historically this goes back to uh Paul heineck and I when we were on the policy committee decided we needed a policy about making policies and this is still a work in progress and I don't believe it will ever totally land and that's okay it's it's a yes it's the way it works Tim Brad and I are like looking at each other [Music] this isn't this is not your finance committee I know Finance doesn't have any policies on policies or operating procedures I I would like to invite the administration to make comments and the board to add updates before we get to the contention go go ahead Dr Lodge please okay I have three first off April is Autism Awareness
121Month so that's great and obviously we have a very strong special education program that always helps support our students so I want to bring awareness to that uh also Celine High School um principal stegler got a memo the other day that congratulating her on the high school being one of U.S news and World Report top 250 stem schools in the country actually number 102 and this is through the national stem Honor Society so that's outstanding and then to sort of piggyback on that and bringing Neil mogdal back into uh the fold because he had there's an article uh recently written in CNN and it talks about it was more geared towards the second place winner in this case but Neil was in a two maybe because he had so many uh publicity already happening in
122in some of his other uh press releases and and videos and is just wonderful but um this talks about a talent searches first place winner Neil Modell told CNN the research done by the teenagers across the U.S is essential to helping solve some of society's greatest challenges and then he quotes I firmly believe that science is going to be the solution to a lot of our problems his prize-winning project was a computer model that projects the structure of RNA molecules to help develop tests and drugs for diseases such as cancer autoimmune autoimmune diseases and viral infections and we're looking forward to having Neil be the students showcase at the next board meeting talk about your homework Mr gerby yeah so it's not a volcano project I assure you it is not right as a science
123fair judge for many years the rule is no more volcanoes thank you we'll start with Allison thanks trying to remember what my science fair project was I think there was something involving die I feel like I did different color dyes to try and make you think it's different flavors anyway random memory uh first and foremost a happy and blessed Ramadan to everyone who celebrates uh the there's a blood drive at the high school yesterday it was pretty successful I was really sad because the Snoopy shirts ran out by the time I donated but if you do want a Red Cross Snoopy shirt those are available throughout the month of April if you want to donate some blood it's testing week at the high school as well not for me because I'm a senior so don't
124envy you guys but good luck for the SAT m-step act where Keys all that stuff I sympathize I did it last year these High School choir went on a trip to Chicago I believe last week so that looks like it was a good time and speaking of Celine High School doing stem March mammal Madness was this month in AP environmental science and my animal The Wolverine did Reign Victorious so not to brag but you know um I just want to say that uh so I think it was um March 31st and April 1st the stem again they had the robotics competition here in Saline and the Stagger kind of started it off and I mean it's just exciting to see all those kids I mean I don't know how many kids there were but just
125they they put so much into it and Celine did a good job I mean they they I think they placed in the top four so with their alliances so it's it's fun to watch all right just have a couple quick items number one um Mr Ellis again I want to reiterate my thanks to you for the Safety and Security report that we received tonight like that so paramountally on my mind and of importance to me so thank you for that um since I have to give the SAT tomorrow I want to say good luck to our testers as well and I'll even go as far as to give this comment of using our Educators talents for a full week of testing to me is uh uh well I will just I'll just build on that
126as the parent of two Juniors whoever decided that the Juniors should take tests all week long probably never lived with two Juniors at one time um it has been a stressful week not to mention that it comes on um the heels of a long Easter weekend where families were busy um it's in the middle of Ramadan like all of these things so we know for sure that it was not decided by Educators or students and that we should maybe get the ear of our lawmakers and uh see see if they have thought that through and speaking of the junior class I just want to say a special um special good luck to all of them eat your breakfast get some good sleep and just do the best you can life moves forward we'll be okay
127um one of my kids was saying that they were cramming and I said you've been preparing for this since you were five years old don't worry about this this is this is just digging deep all of those things your teachers are going to be proud of you we are we already are so to those Juniors good luck and uh if you know a junior you might give them a little extra love this week or drop off a box of goldfish snacks or let's see what are the other popular ones Cheez-Its are popular drop off some Stacks at the high school they would uh they would definitely be put to good use um I also uh building on what Tim was saying about uh the um blanking now the stem activity robotics thank you robotics activities
128that happened I just want to give a special shout out while a lot of us were on vacation and enjoying some down time Lori Dawson once again was working tirelessly to make sure that these things went off without a hitch not to mention all of the coaches and adults who were in attendance to support those students and speaking of safety that training is helping to keep those events like you were mentioning Mr Ellis um off off hours we need those measures of safety and training to support events like that so thank you for that I wanted to mention that Celine City Dei is having a training coming up and it really complements the Dei work that Dr Washington is doing so if you are available on April 19th if you are not here at the
129policy committee meeting on April 19th there is going to be a training and it is based on book called understanding privilege so that is coming up and Grace Wu had sent me that information um speaking of policy our next policy meeting will be on Wednesday April 19th you'll note that it is not before board meeting like our normal meetings because our board meetings typically happen twice in a month but there's been some different kind of timing happening and we wanted to get that on the calendar sooner rather than later so it is going to be April 19th from six o'clock to 7 30 ish we don't really usually have an ending time but that's what we have in our calendars right now but of course we will stay and listen to public comment um we
130will at the Forefront be continuing our discussion and our work on the current policy that is called controversial issues we do have a couple of other policies that should time allow the agenda will be posted soon but we we have a whole list of policies that we want to review we're finding that as we review one policy there's some inconsistencies or some other things that we might want to look at in other policies to make sure that we have consistency um lastly I wanted to just say that Governor Whitmer is doing some work around education and and in her budget she has um she is planning for she'd like to see Pre-K for all right now typically young fives programs are for kids with a birth date that falls within a certain range and so
131it is not available for other students or it is limited to students with special circumstances so that would be really wonderful to have Pre-K for all of our students and to have that be something that is afforded by the state so that it is accessible for all kids would be wonderful she also this is something that's really important and I don't think a lot of people in other Industries realize this but as I have kids who are now growing up and getting ready to do internships those are often paid internships because when you are working a full-time job preparing for a career you often don't have the hours needed to work another job and that is the same in student teaching when you are working all day but currently student teaching is a class and
132so not only are you not paid for those hours but you pay for those hours so there is um some work being done and some proposals being made to have a student teacher stipend which just again gives credit to the occupation and to the service that teachers are planning to provide and are currently providing in our classrooms and those student teachers do a lot of work a lot of work so that would be a nice thing for them and finally this one is near and dear to me there is an intention or the idea that the literacy coaches in the state of Michigan would be tripled and that is important to me because in case you don't know Michigan is not leading the way in literacy and literacy coaches do a lot of work and
133are doing a lot of work to support teachers in aligning with research that we know benefits all of our students and so that is exciting work and so that maybe rather than being at the lower end of our 50 we could move towards the higher end of our 50 or maybe just we could all be I don't know I like the idea that everyone and would be successful so um so that that was some good news too so I'm excited to see that and how that might translate for us here in Saline so that's my report thank you I made my comment at the beginning of the meeting but I just wanted to add that we had our first planning meeting for a Youth Forum for Washington uh Youth and uh it went extraordinarily well
134we have the support of Naomi Norman and Jennifer banks at wisd and the and Ethan Lowenstein at Eastern Michigan University we have a lot of excellent people who are willing to step up and get it working and it won't be for every young person in Washington but representative people from across the the county I'm looking forward to seeing that happen more information on that as we go along I'll pass the mic along uh yesterday evening we had the foundation for Saline area schools superintendent Circle dinner that I got to attend um big thanks to Wally at Mac's Seafood Shack Kitty and Seafood Shack and Chef for a wonderful meal and thank you to all of the donors who were there the philanthropy and volunteerism that we continue to see in this community is unparalleled and
135I really appreciate that number two I would like to remind my colleagues here at the table of our wonderful conversations that are our guests from be smart it was called sparked another time and encourage us to remember to put on a future agenda for talking talking about gun safety the Opera operational side of that but also what we can do on the board side I have not forgotten that and then I would also like everyone to please keep our class of 2027 in mind as we embark on our trip to Washington DC at 4 a.m on Tuesday morning I am absolutely absolutely I'm like gonna dance I am absolutely thrilled that our class trips and field trips around all of our buildings are occurring it's so needed and the class of 2027 which has two
136of my little ones in it who aren't so little anymore um this is the only class trip because of covid so fifth grade Camp was missed Chicago Cedar Point Toronto you name it this is it and so please think of all of them for their safety and their fun and their well-being on this trip and we're thankful to everyone who is lifting a whole lot to to make this happen so think about those buses rolling out very early and I'll take lots of pictures as I'm sure everyone knows okay um so let me see um earlier well last week because we had spring break so I'm all confused um I attended an event hosted by Senator Sue shink and some other um State reps and Senators to celebrate the addition of sexual orientation gender identity
137and expression to the Elliot Larson Civil Rights Act um Governor Whitmer signed that recently and that does play into um our employees and students and supporting them against discrimination and so that's having a very big effect um and I'm super excited about it it's been a long time coming um let's see uh my I wanted to to share that my wife and our family were invited to attend a dinner hosted by the University of Michigan's newest Provost Macaulay and um and why I'm sharing that this um is that it was a very unique opportunity um because the Provost invited specifically faculty who have young children and so um it was you know that I mean like one of her you know first events um and that that was kind of the the theme um but
138our children were also invited and the towsley center um uh Child Care on campus um also um they got some you know macaroni and cheese um but they they watched them during the event and so um it was really nice I know we have a lot of employees who work at U of M and um so I think it kind of shows um that commitment from the Provost and higher ups at U of M um that you know they're thinking about the families and how to support the needs of them so that was that was exciting all right one last thing um my March 31st which was during spring break was transgender visibility day I want to recognize our transgender students families and community members thank you for your bravery and a very difficult climate
139across the U.S I'm here for you and I stand with you um it was a great spring break I'm happy that the weather is turning nice it's been fun seeing some of the spring Sports announcements I haven't gotten out yet but I saw the lacrosse one and I know tryouts have happened and softball and baseball getting soccer all getting started so um I know that it's nice seeing the kids outside again and I'm hoping that's going to bring down our viral load for all the stuff I've been seeing in my office and have maybe a little less busy in my other job um and I wanted to also mention that it is Earth month and Earth Day so thank you for educators who I know talk to the kids about environmental impacts because they come
140home and educate me sometimes and um I hope that we can as a country do a good job of preserving the planet for our kids thank you Dr gold your comment about viral load just made me laugh because you have no off button I love it thank you good morning yeah I wanna um I want to add one more thing um I had a teacher contact me with my child on on the other end and so you know I see that seven three four four you know and I'm like oh like what is it which kid like you know and so um it was uh my child's math teacher um and she said I have your child here in the office like everything's okay and she just told me how well they're doing and um
141just you know that they're participating in class and how she enjoys having my child in class and um you know like that really meant a lot like I you know it it's usually something right that like some emergency or you know and I I understand that there's like so much to do in a day for for a teacher but um that meant a lot for for me and my child and um so shout out to that person I didn't ask if I could give their name so um I just and I know we have a lot of great teachers like that but it was a surprise and caught me off guard and I was I cried afterwards so it meant a lot that's good news thank you for sharing uh the consent agenda the consent
142agenda is listed in this agenda and will not be read aloud the motion noted will allow for the authorization of all listed items without discussion unless a member of the board requests that any one or all be considered individually do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda so moved Miller yeah thank you support gold uh LG thank you very much um all in favor say aye opposed say nay hearing none we have the consent agenda has been approved so uh items scheduled on the next agenda Sir Mr Lodge and the main schedule report report is a teaching and learning Update LED by Cara and her team excellent it sounds sounds like a a fun event [Laughter] ain't no party like a data party yes um I'm asking now board secretary if there are
143any there are no public comments in the queue so uh I guess wow I wasn't expecting that Paige Turner um the next Board of Education meeting will be held on April 25th 23 at 6 30. uh I'd like to recommend a motion to enter into closed session of the board at eight we'll oh my gosh what time is that well look I've got the big clock up there yeah eight at 8 28 P.M my muscle memory aims for the round one 828 my 29 now haha uh with the intent to reopen uh Open session at approximately what do you think it'll take about 30 minutes 30 minutes for the purpose of superintendent evaluation section 8A under Section 8 a simple majority vote is sufficient to enter in a closed session and if I might also
144note that there will be no nothing to vote on so if if you've been hanging pardon there'll be no access and non-action items did I say that thank you you want me to use the big words okay it's not an act there's there'll be no action item coming back to the floor how's that do we have a motion I would like to make a motion to enter closed session pretty much all in favor hi sounds like a simple majority I'll opposed oh closed session in about do we have to do um roll call on those not for a simple majority but there are occasionally there are ones where we need to do a roll call you um so I'll ask everybody to leave the building and actually I should have said 8 35 we're going
145to take a bio break for about five to ten minutes and then start thank you Heaven's Sake I'd like to entertain a motion to adjourn the regular Board of Education meeting of April 11 2023 at 9 14. support Stephen Jennifer Miller Jay steban all in favor say aye we are opposed we are adjourned