Saline Area Schools: Board of Education Meeting (10.25.2022)

001I'd like to call to order please the Board of Education meeting for October 25th 2022 at 6 30 PM if everyone could please rise for our Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all welcome everybody um this is our first opportunity please for public comment a member of the public May address the board briefly for up to three minutes or request to be scheduled on the agenda of a future meeting please note that students will be given priority to speak on any topic the first public participation portion of the meeting will be limited to one half hour 30 minutes and limited to agenda items a second public participation portion

002will be offered at the end of the agenda to allow for any other comment the presiding officer is Guided by the rules set forth and policy 167.3 which has been reprinted on the public comment form collected this evening 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 I am seeing no student forms I am seeing one parent form Ben Goodman and but I'm pretty sure you know how that works so whenever you're ready uh good evening board thank you for inviting me to speak about two to three weeks ago I was asked to participate and create a video about the past present and future of our amazing special education

003department tonight you will watch the first part of this video this in no way is what the final version will look like please be patient and understand that the world of special education is very fast-paced fluid and high energy the final product will truly be something our district will be proud of I want to thank Anna Britt Now Kevin Musson and Monica Ellis for trusting me to create this video I also want to thank our amazing special Educators for the job that you do for our kids and the compassion you show you all are truly doing right by kids as a parent of two kids with IEPs who are currently receiving special education services in Saline Area Schools this district is what parents dreams are made of my kids are thriving and it's because of

004the amazing staff curriculum and services you provide at the beginning of last year my daughter faced a one grade level reading deficit I'm proud to say she is now reading slightly above grade level last year my son struggled to transition to the middle school and his anxiety was at all at an all-time high he now walks into SMS like he owns the place and this is all because of you the board the foundation and amazing Educators that he has access to particular curriculums that will help him through puberty and into adulthood he is making friends expanding his sense of humor and socializing with peers like he's never done before and did I mention friends yes I said friends not many people know what it's like to be a parent of a child with autism spectrum

005disorder the fears we have the unknowns we can never find answers for or the negative comments we receive throughout this community however salinary schools and the special education department has always validated our feelings and supported us above and beyond thank you thanks Ben seeing no other public comment just in response to previous public comment we always thank you for emails to sasport celineschools.org or through the let's talk app on our website moving on to our agenda I'd like to please uh oops items may be added or deleted from the meeting agenda and or the order of items may be changed at the request of an individual board member or the superintendent the agendas must be approved before proceeding further I'd like to please entertain a motion to approve the agenda as printed so moved McVay

006second Derby okay Michael thank you Brad thank you all those in favor please say hi hi opposed hearing none motion carries 7-0 moving on to our student showcase for this evening students Against Racism Club if I can have our students come up uh Ashna am I pronouncing that correctly all right excellent and Kirsten all right whenever you're ready just make sure the um perfect and the mic should have the green light okay hello everyone um so we are students Against Racism my name is Ashna my name is Sia I'm Carson um and we want to talk to you today about some of the things that we do and just in general how we feel like we make a difference in the community so who are we and what do we do we're a student-led organization

007under the advisor Miss Sparks who can't be here today but she is her um hellos and basically what we do is we try to create a more inclusive environment here at Celine not only just in the high school but in the middle school and elementary schools as well it's our goal to make every student feel comfortable in in the district and that means everybody not just P people of color we stand for inclusivity in general some of the activities that we do along with monthly activities such as readings and posters and announcements is we also do special activities that we're going to be talking about a little bit later but one of the things we do is monthly activities now this is um just a small slide describing some of the monthly activities that we

008do so first we like to do posters that highlight some things about um certain months like for example September 15th to October 15th was Hispanic Heritage Month and for that we wanted to make posters and make a slideshow and put it across put it up on the um sorry put it up project it over the lunch room so that everyone could see it in the high school so that was just something that we thought would bring attention to it in the past we've done announcements over the loudspeaker where we've tried to highlight important figures in each community and yeah we also have discussions inside our club in general where we talk about current issues and in general just things that we feel like should be addressed in the school district so yeah one of the

009most important activities we do through our club is interrupter training and basically what interrupter training is is it's a method to teach students how to confront others when they hear them say problematic comments that usually tend to be racist which in our community we've had a problem with in the past so in our district we use the Clara method which is a de-escalating method we give students a chance to practice it in the club by putting them in groups of three like we are here one person will simulate being the perpetrator and they'll simulate saying a comment that is problematic and students may have heard in the community the second person will then be the interrupter who practices responding to them using the steps of the Clara method in order to get them to see

010why their comment may be problematic and just let them be aware our goal isn't necessarily to change their opinion it's more education and planting those seeds of thought so that everyone in our community can be better educated overall the third person serves as a listener who listens to the exchange between the perpetrator and the interrupter and gives feedback at the end because our goal is always for improvement there's always something you can improve and confronting someone in any situation is scary especially when you're going about sensitive topics which is why we feel like it's so important to practice it within a club setting our future goals are to expand this practice to teachers and the middle school just letting everyone know how to like be able to confront someone outside of even high school and

011starting that education younger could maybe lead to less of these comments being made in general in the future and over the past couple of years in the district we have had some racist outbreaks in the community and our hope is that by spreading interrupter training people will either think twice before making these comments or others will stand up to them and let them know hey you can't say stuff like this and this is why it's harmful to the community yeah and um another thing that we do in our club is Elementary Book readings um I was here last year and I did a little bit of description about this but um we are just starting to do this again this year we're choosing our groups and our books and what teachers we want to read

012too but basically for those who don't know we work to diversify the material in the um in the elementary school and this can look like books that contain that have students of color in them or are written by people of color and it's it's to show the students representation of other cultures that they may not see in the school and to also represent the students of color in our school so they are seeing people that look like them um we have done this for several years and we're really excited to do it again this year we are trying to broaden our like the variety of books that we have this year look for some new books and we we go through um we go from kindergarten to fourth grade sixth grade and so we go

013from like difficulty levels like in the books so younger elementary kids students we do more picture books and books that suggest um bringing representation and for older students we bring in books that may like specifically talk about racism and problems within communities and so yeah our end goal is just to bring representation in elementary school where it might not be already and yeah any questions very very nice job ladies thank you excellent work questions or comments oh I saw Susan and Jenny that will go over here I just wanted to um thank you for your presentation tonight but also for your leadership in the in your school and in the district um I know that it's it's making an impact and um you're leaving a legacy for a younger younger kids so I appreciate the

014work that you're doing and the the way that you are taking some difficult situations and making our community stronger for it um I am interested in hearing more about the interrupter training so that would be something I think that could be really helpful um and you know just a little bit that you that you shared here but but maybe expanding that beyond your Club to you know maybe some Community organizations as well that could be really helpful and then I'm also wondering um how you get funding for some of your activities um specifically the books that you purchase to to share and read in classrooms um so I don't know if you want to share that um yeah so for funding right now we rely on the members of our club to either get the

015books from library a lot a lot of the books you can find in the library we make it so it's accessible for people and or to buy off online or in a bookstore we're always looking for funding from people it makes it easier for us so we can have books and on our bookshelves and it's easier for people to get the motivation to go into classroom so that's something we're always looking for and if you want to address the interrupter training um So currently I'm doing an independent study based on race and ethnicity and through that and um through that I'm actually trying to make a video resource for interrupter training that we can maybe put on the school website just so it's more accessible the ideal would be to for us to do in-person

016training for teachers and go to the middle school so that students have like an actual real life opportunity to practice this and interrupter training really only takes a couple minutes you can do it by yourself in your head Ms Sparks does it all the time and it's just a good practice to keep in mind so we would love to expand it outside the club and have that like space in order to just make sure that everyone's really getting the point of what we do and practicing it correctly because the Clara method does have a lot of like intricacies because we're not trying to insult the person that we are trying to help we're trying to get them to see why what they said might be harmful but not necessarily criticize them we want to de-escalate

017not make them feel defensive so yes and our intent with the interrupter training is not to just do it once it's helpful to um to introduce it but you really need to practice to get to know how to do it it's really difficult at first it's a really awkward situation to be put in and to put yourself in and be vulnerable but we've done a lot of training and it definitely gets easier and it just prepares you for when you do have to um if you do stand up to people and if you practice more it makes it easier and to stand up to people as well I actually um had a chance to participate in in this training through um Justice leaders and Mr Lampman ended up in my zoom room and put me

018through the ropes so so it was good I learned a lot but uh I was lucky enough to be in a room with him so so that was great um thank you again I just really appreciate your leadership and how you're extending beyond the walls of your own School into um into other you know into other schools so thank you hello thank you for um your presentation um I was excited um that you brought them um and uh to see it on the agenda um so I have a question um so I guess more of an idea I work in student affairs um but as far as so University of Michigan Dearborn I worked like worked in the activities um they would do like upstandard training to like other student leaders so um whether that's

019um you know the um student government or um just the presidents of each organization um but that's like an idea if you all haven't um maybe a start too so you're getting those student leaders trained or even an opportunity to go to their group um and you know give them that um yes yes tying it all in um and then um I guess uh that you are aware of the hate speech statement in the books um so I don't know if that's a component that you all talk about as well but um just putting that out there but thank you um just one comments about the books I didn't know if you're addressing the Elementary Book readings but whenever we are talking about those and we are talking about sensitive topics like that we do

020like to always mention like hey either I am or am not from this community be sure to look out for like we're not trying to make these people seem like a victim necessarily we're trying to educate you about problems that exist within this community but of course not like every person in a community will have the same experiences and we're just trying to like make sure students are aware that like this is more just to be aware of representation and less about hey we like these people we don't like these people stuff like that one more thing um Welcome to our Dei committee as well thank you great um just wanted to say wow this is I'm really glad to see that you're doing interrupter training so because I really believe it will help create

021a safe space in Celine for all students because there's there are going to be missteps you know there's going to be comments that are made but when you create an environment where where everyone eventually you know this is just the normal response and everyone has the tools to um to help de-escalate I loved that you described it that way because that's exactly what it is and in a calm way that is not combative that's going to be really powerful just for this District as a whole so I'm really pleased to see that and excited about it expanding we talked about doing something similar in the city which I know you're part of the city Dei committee so this will just be great it'll be community-wide Interrupters and then uh just for the the books that

022you're reading at the elementary level just want you to know how powerful that is and meaningful to students to actually see see someone that looks like them or see you know a child of color as you know if they're sitting there as a child of color in a room of students that don't look like them it just it means so much I remember when I was younger and there was one book my teacher read and I was just like that looks like me so um that's really powerful and I just want to thank you all for continuing to spread the love in the district all right well I will back that up and say also it is powerful right it's it's important work that you're doing and I applaud you for it okay um you

023know I love that it's student-led right and so I think anything we can do where it comes from the students it hits home it really it just works so I I'm impressed with you guys I would like to know a couple things well number one what year are you in school and then the other thing I want to know is this based upon that how do you guys like train because you're you're obviously very well versed in this how so do you have a Leadership Council do you guys have a you know a next group of leaders that come after you that kind of thing um so basically what we try and do for I can talk about specifically interrupter training we have slideshows that we make and we do like supplementary research we make

024sure we're citing articles we make sure that we are doing it correctly and we use that combined with our own personal experience to First Walk students through it step by step so that they feel comfortable with the idea because of course like we know the incoming freshmen they've probably never heard anything like this they don't have four years like us we're all seniors by the way um yeah and so we always make sure that first they're comfortable with the topic and then we go into implementation which is why then we do practice within the club after us how we got elected was that the last year there was four leaders who are all also seniors so at the end of the year they slowly just started reaching out to us and letting us know like

025here's what you're responsible for we know you've been in the club so here's what we're like trying to implement and then we've slowly just kind of transitioned so we'll do the same at the the end of this year we'll pick students who we know are involved and like have been in the club for a while and we'll just hand over basically our responsibilities to them and like walk them through that by giving them the resources we use this year for the upcoming years just so we can like continue the Legacy um yeah I also think I was I've been in students Against Racism since my freshman year so I and that's when it started so I kind of got to be educated each year and then build up to the leadership position and I think

026our club does a really good job of educating first and then building them up and it's really um it's helpful when you've done it a lot of times because then you can teach the people that are younger because freshmen aren't going to want to talk about these big things as much as seniors are especially us because we've involved ourselves so much in it um but yeah I think we take initiative by the end of the year to explain to them their roles that Co was saying and let them know what the expectations are and how because we want to keep our the work that we've done keep it going in the district so we try to train them well we're going to try them train them well enough to carry that on well thank you

027your preparedness and maturity light comes through and so I appreciate that I appreciate Ms Sparks wherever you are for for leaning an appointment but uh hey I get it but thank you appreciate it uh first and foremost I invited the intelligent strong welcome and I think that presentation really I already knew but I think it just showed everyone else uh for I know most people were talking about the interrupter training but I think it's just such a cool and awesome idea because I think there are a lot of privileged people in this community that don't have to think about race and don't have to think about racism and I think giving those people first of all the knowledge that they that this is happening and that you know that kind of cloud of ignorance is

028being popped and I think that's something that's really important but I also think it's really important to give people the language to be an interrupter because I think a lot of people don't have that and it stops them from speaking up even when they know something wrong is happening um and if you wanted to make a video that you would could spread out throughout the district I will do whatever I can to make that happen or just spread it however I can because I think it's just a really cool thing to do so thank you yes of course um what I was just gonna say is I I really like that you said that because um there have been situations where I think in Celine especially when we're surrounded with so little diversity which is

029being worked on slowly but surely but sometimes we don't see our own privilege and I think it's really important that we address that like just the other day I actually use interrupter training in in a conversation with someone about affirmative action and it's interesting because they you know you never want to make the other person the villain in the situation and most people are not trying to be harmful they just need to learn and so I think that interrupter training is an amazing technique to just show people how to you know maybe rephrase things or how to maybe understand the other side so yeah absolutely thank you very much very proud of your passion and your Poise um very good job thank you got great things in your future I suspect thanks ladies um moving

030on to scheduled reports we'd like to warmly welcome our special education department um Kevin mussom interim director of special education and Monica Ellis assistant director of special education we heard there's a grid video we're excited part one part one part one whenever you're ready Kevin yeah first we just wanted to thank you for the opportunity to present to you tonight I'm Kevin Mustin the interim director of special education Monica Ellis the assistant director education we also have some more people in the back that I wanted to stand up if you're in special education yeah I'm going to point you out and I want you to stand up and be a part of this we've got teaching staff para Educators speech and language Pathologists a lot of people with a lot of years of experience instead

031of talking about special education we thought it best to actually show you this time and uh be available for questions and answers afterwards and Ben we want to thank you for your work on this video it means a lot to us and and our students and teachers so thank you so thanks [Music] thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you foreign [Music] hi I'm Deb Budnick and I am here to speak with you about our very early efforts with the inclusion program in Saline Area Schools I had a long very rewarding career in Saline and did a number of different things started special ed at the high school in October of 84. and then was tapped to get in to this particular Community with bringing in this program through a Federal grant the inclusive Ed program

032right we would take the kids who were low incidence kids identified as low incidents and bring them back into the Saline Area Schools family I would have to say first of all that I think the reason in Saline we were so successful with what we did was because we had I believe the grant that this was a federal Grant it was almost a million dollars and it was meant to get this our program up and running it was meant for us to go somewhere else where this was being done successfully and in this case it was Vermont um it was meant to hire specifically transition Consultants that would be exclusive to Celine to work with teachers and then probably even most importantly besides our own training it was meant for us to create these what

033we call these summer institutes where we were training and supporting the teachers the teaching assistants which at the time were new classroom assistance really had you walked into a classroom in Celine in 1985 I'm not sure you would have seen a classroom assistant um all of us are pretty much aware of what that looks like now so as we trained classroom assistance and we trained these teams to wrap around support for each student and and parent and teacher staff everybody we also were looking at training teaching assistants to be classroom assistants not just focused in on that particular child because and as time went on we knew why in Vermont they knew why right from the get-go and it took us a while to figure it out but when you put another individual on anybody

034imagine if you were followed around all day long by someone it would not be healthy for you and you would begin to react to just that presence of that person and not only that but here you have this other set of hands in a classroom think of all the other needs in the classroom that are are there that this person can also be working with so it was really a collaborative effort as far as that went I think one of the things that struck me and I loved every every part of it at the time was that this was going to be requiring huge Paradigm shifts the Paradigm Shift really involved three questions um our intent was never to take children from High Point or New Horizons and put them in the classroom and expect

035everything just to be fine we knew that we had to change our learning teaching culture and Celine for that to work so one of the questions that was pretty Apparent from the get-go was how do we make all classrooms a better place for all learners a second question was how do we really help other kids and our community and our parent Community understand that um some behaviors that we might think would distract totally from learning actually can be not a distraction but something that moves learning along in the classroom for everyone and then thirdly and I this probably was my most my big takeaway from this time I I didn't realize how much you know programming for the for kids who had been identified as low incidents revolved around functional everyday learning skills you know

036real world how do we operate in the real world and and you know collectively then make the world a better place as I look back over this historically as a historian I am realizing the impact really this program initially had on Celine this is the early 90s we had all kinds of trainings about learning centered classrooms at that point that became a nationally driven thing and um any any time you see a learner Center classroom I think at this point in Celine you had to give a little bit of credit to this inclusive Ed program our it was the first time too that all of our teachers were kind of forced to take a look at this we'd always had teachers who ran what we would call now a learner Center classroom but this was

037the first time collectively that is a district we said we want this to be intentional and then if you were to look back at all the different trainings we had in the 90s and even the 2000s and I would imagine now you're going to find that if there's something that connects all of them it probably has to do with it being you know learner-centered and functional based in reality things like that I think for me I was I was ready for the learner Center classroom because as a special ed teacher that's kind of what you do a little bit more you have that that's what you're trained to do we knew that we had to have skill sets available for teachers now the question was how do we make this actually work and there was

038a social kind of end of it I'm kind of simplifying this but the social end and then the IEP goal functional aspect to it so the the social aspect of it really dealt with circle of friends was that was the dynamic was the process that we used and so for me one of the big takeaways was watching this process with parents the first time I sat down and did this with parents and I had seen it on video and seen this done in Vermont during our Institute there and the beginning of that process is asking a parent what are your hopes and dreams for this child and it was very hard to get through these initially I mean I had to brace myself because I just had never really thought about it and for the

039most part if you have a child at High Point or at New Horizons really it came down to I want my child to have friends I want my child to be part of the community when we started actually using as a tool the circle of friends it's a concentric map it's concentric circles and so if you were to map in your own life um who are the closest people to you who are the closest who are the people you see all the time you know the people you see all the time would be the closest Circle obviously your family but then that next element if you have a if you're the parent of a child who has really very special needs your second and third concentric circle out are professionals they're doctors they're psychologists okay

040they're teachers they're paraprofessionals and maybe if you get six or seven circles out you might have a friend somewhere there so that struck me and the hopes and dreams and then the circle of friends process then the second thing that was uh really moving for me was that the curriculum Matrix and I loved it because I like structure and I I know I need to get the job done and so with that curriculum Matrix we would juxtaposition that in elementary school the daily schedule then we'd look at the IEP goals of the child and we would find out where we could we would put the goals in the course of the day and for the most part I would say usually 90 of those goals we were able to embed now this is elementary school

041not high school or middle school but in Elementary School classrooms the younger they are the easier it is developmentally to embed a lot of these skills one reason I've been passionate about this um ability for parents to make a choice about inclusion or a center-based program um if you have a child that has no who has no language or very little language and you want your child to learn language believe me the Professionals in the center-based schools are doing everything they can but it's not like having five other children right around that child's speaking language so the child can intuitively pick up what's being said the syntax the vocabulary the innuendos the inferences none of that happens or very little of that can happen in a natural way in a center-based program with all of

042our efforts professionally this has always been a community that has appreciated and supported their children we know we love our children we love them dearly I think change is hard sometimes this was a period of time I don't want to be pollyannaish about this it required a lot and there were people who were scared by this um if I was a teacher and I hadn't had the intense Trinity for example that I had had in Vermont and then part of the trainer trainers model I could see yes you know trepidation people were fearful but in this community we also tend to pull together you know we do what's right here well I was thinking about this lately and this change issue is currently we have that going on even in Celine now it's kind of

043a different iteration of the same question and I know as a community we will be able to pull this through and we will become a better more inclusive place because of the people who make up our community and because of our leadership our leadership in Saline is a strong leadership group [Music] hi I'm Kyle Erickson the student service assistant I'm responsible for Medicaid compliance for billing purposes which generates 250 000 to 500 000 per year for the district collect behavioral data for the Department to evaluate our interventions to help teams make decisions on how to better serve our students send out IEP invites to All Families in the district log IEP documents and process record requests process transportation and staff reimbursements support staff and parents by answering questions to provide programming information hi I'm Moana

044foots the student services specialist for Saline schools I have been with the district for almost 21 years and this will be my 13th year in special education some of my responsibilities as the student service specialists include monitoring the special education Supply budget also the special education fundraising and young adult fundraising accounts we have a new office assistant who I'm training and supervising I also am responsible for setting up and maintaining all teacher and student accounts in our special education database and I ensure that all documents are finalized and data is updated and correct and in doing that I also make sure that that data is Flowing correctly into PowerSchool I work with the wisd when problems occur in the database and I'm also the go-to person for staff when they have questions or problems I

045also set up and maintain all staff case loads in both PowerSchool and our special education database which is pssp one of my other responsibilities is being in charge of compliance and completeness of all special education documents IEPs reads evaluation reports Etc I am also responsible for monitoring the upcoming annual and re-evaluation IEP due dates to ensure compliance if staff have questions regarding the documents and compliance they contact me another big responsibility is the people accounting for special education I've created some District systems to use along with the reports we have in our database to ensure that our information is accurate everything that we report directly impacts our funding I also report all homebound people accounting data for both special education and general education students and I work closely with the school buildings office professionals so

046that they have the data they need for their people accounting records if there are ever any questions from staff regarding people accounting special education students the offices contact me I am also responsible for purchasing the staff materials and supplies and that's for all of the special education staff I work with the vendors I process invoices for purchasing and also for the contracts services staff I also work with Karen hervey our district nurse and purchase all of the nursing supplies including the covid PPE supplies we are actually the office for our ecsc and young adult programs they come to us when they're general office questions we also monitor their daily attendance and send the sub reports every morning some other few little details that I take care of is the young adult out of District service

047agreements and provide the finance office with the quarterly billing information 105c agreements Washington Christian Academy yearly service agreements and I work very closely with the transportation department with the special transportation and also with Community Education with our esy eligible students hi there my name is Monica Ellis and I'm the assistant director for special education I have been employed in Saline area schools for about 24 years I started as a special education teacher and then most recently moved into the role of assistant director some of my job responsibilities include supporting post-secondary transition plans for students whether that might be work college or our young adult programs I connect parents to adult agencies and resources I am a liaison for our Michigan Rehabilitation partnership with the state of Michigan I attend IEPs on a weekly basis and

048I get to know a lot of our students and families which is a great part of my job one of the other things that I do is I hire and evaluate our special education certified staff and para Educators I also look at the compliance for our transition portion of the IEPs which is known as spp13 I'm very active in the buildings with providing behavioral support for our building teams I'm also responsible for summer programming and homework assistance and I work collaboratively with Community Education to do so uh some of the things that I'm most proud of in this position and in this district is our exceptional staff we have one of the most dedicated staff around and I think that what they do in terms of programming is so unique it's very creative it's very

049individualized and they're always looking for ways to improve and make the best experience for our students another point of Pride for us is is that we consistently have one of the highest graduation rates of our special education students in Washington County and we are very proud of that and we continue to evaluate our programs to make sure that we are meeting those benchmarks I think lastly um the thing that is most rewarding in this district is to hear the success stories of our students and Families It's Not Unusual to hear from students that have graduated they come back and they let us know what they're doing or perhaps the family has reached out to tell us that we have made such an impact in their family's life by providing resources or helping them access Community

050agencies and I think those are the things that are most rewarding in this position and I'm just very proud of to be a part of the Saline Area Schools tradition and um I look forward to working in the district and continuing to provide exceptional programming for our students and Families I'm Kevin Musson the interim director of special education the role of the director of special education is the education and compliance of over 810 special education students in our district we oversee over 185 staff members we are responsible for a budget that is over 14 million dollars we are responsible for State reporting where we pride ourselves as a district on exceptional compliance rates including behavioral data transitional outcomes and IEPs we provide opportunity for professional development for teachers para Educators and ancillary staff [Music] we

051hire and evaluate special education staff members we are the liaison to central office including board policy we meet with parents our special education advisory committee and our Pac members and make sure that we listen to all parent concerns and set up trainings accordingly we Monitor and allocate resources for all Special Education team members and the students to make sure that we're meeting their growing needs we attend weekly IEPs we are an inclusive Continuum of services the need of our students have changed dramatically over the last few years as our numbers continue to grow we adapt and adjust our practices to continue to meet the growing needs of our students [Music] hi my name is Savannah per zondek and I am one of the Early Childhood special education teachers we are preschool and we provide services

052for preschool-aged children that live in the Celine Area School District we we begin taking referrals for children at age two and a half years old these referrals are made through a variety of avenues including daycares parents pediatricians the wasd ETC we provide screenings as well as comprehensive developmental evaluations in the areas of Developmental fine motor gross motor communication cognitive self-help and social emotional development children may be found eligible for a variety of services such as speech and language occupational therapy social work and physical therapy hi I'm Alicia Zack I am one of the Early Childhood special education teachers the ecsc classroom is designed to meet the unique strengths and needs of children ages two and a half years to six years old children must meet the eligibility requirements established by the state of Michigan administrative

053rules for special education the team uses a play-based curriculum that includes focusing on the development of individual skills such as communication motor skills and social skills you might see us at Circle time out on the playground doing centers and just having a blast [Music] hi my name is Olivia Harrison I am a resource room teacher at Pleasant Ridge I'm excited to talk to you today hello I'm Beth Musson I'm the teach consultant here at Woodland Meadows Elementary we have a Continuum that includes life skills Services resource room services and teacher consultant services this allows us to really meet kids where they're at in their development and lets us work really collaboratively as a team our students that are in the life skills room are students that um come in to work on life skills with

054the special education teacher the school social worker the OT and the in the speech path our resource room model or students for students that um need a little additional support as far as maybe they are in the third grade but they need second grade reading or second grade math curriculum then we would teach that in the resource room our TC model is more of a service where we are supporting our students that are working in the in their general education classroom with the general education curriculum and then those students might come out to work on Independent work skills with the teacher consultant they might have reading intervention at that time or test accommodations as well we also have our star program which is our peer-to-peer program here at Pleasant Ridge at the elementary level this

055is kind of like the very beginnings of what could eventually turn into the connecting club or the connecting program at the high school so in Star we teach kids all about inclusivity and acceptance we also have some really unique experiences happening students from the young adult program are using our school as a job site and they help us do some various jobs within our building that's really helpful and it's nice to see that process come full circle Mrs Phelps who is our life skills teacher here actually had many of the young adults that now are coming back to job site way back when they were in preschool so that's a pretty neat experience for them as a teacher consultant at Heritage School I will work with students that have exceptional learning needs and benefit from

056extra support in the general education setting I collaborate with general education teachers working together to incorporate graphic organizers visuals and other supports throughout upcoming lessons to help all students to be successful I mainly push in which means I support them in their homeroom class on grade level content while scaffolding as needed to work on their individualized goals my students have goals in academic areas such as Reading Writing and math and some students have goals such as executive functioning and social skills I provide targeted reading and intervention for those with reading goals and a pull-out model during team time a critical part of my role is ensuring that students IEPs are fully implemented and that students have the necessary accommodations to be successful throughout their school day during district and state testing I pull students to

057my classroom that have testing accommodations such as small group or alternate setting which provides them with a quieter testing environment I also ensure that they have movement breaks text to speech or any other accommodations that their IEP encompasses being a teacher consultant in Saline Area Schools is a very unique and rewarding role here at Heritage we have four resource rooms in addition to having three teacher Consultants students will often come to these classrooms to receive individualized support in the areas of need resource room teachers work with the students general education teachers to ensure each child is getting a meaningful learning experience at their level at Heritage we prioritize a team approach with case managers and teachers communicating frequently to assure the provided services are appropriate in providing specialized Services we aim to have each child

058included in their general education classroom as much as possible while learning at their level flexibility is key in this role as schedules can change frequently and the needs of each student could be vast foreign [Music] hi I'm Melanie Hensley and I'm a teacher consultant at Saline Middle School and also a co-department chair at sling Middle School hi I'm Rachel Smeltzer I'm a full-time social worker at Celine middle school and co-department chair for the middle school special ed Department teacher Consultants push into the general education classroom and or co-teach with the general education teacher to support student participation and access the curriculum using accommodations and modifications in addition in 7th and 8th grade academic support class is offered in place of an elective class for those needing additional assistance and learning and executive functioning skills such

059as time management note-taking organization test taking strategies and self-advocacy resource room classes are offered for English language arts and math in 6th through 8th grade resource classes are taught by certified special education teachers which allows students to receive direct instruction and intervention in these content areas if they are performing below grade level life skills programming is a resource room option for students who also benefit from direct instruction in functional or adaptive skills the SMS life skills program collaborates with the high school to provide students with robust learning experiences such as school-based jobs and Community outings in addition to academics at their level Additionally the SMS ancillary Services team which includes speech Social Work occupational therapy and physical therapy work with students and collaborate with staff in both General and special education classrooms to address various

060student needs throughout the school day peer assisted learning or Pals is our peer-to-peer program that promotes kindness respect and inclusion for all children within Middle School facilitated by the speech pathologists participants learn about different abilities as well as verbal non-verbal and Alternate augmentative communication by learning about varying communication Styles and needs students are able to better connect with peers and increase their social connections throughout the day Pals students work together in classrooms at lunch and extracurricularly SMS uses the social thinking framework for common language to increase social cognition teach and reinforce expected social behaviors social thinking groups are available to students both within classrooms and structured groups throughout the day we still have a few more programs to go so you'll get to see the edited version in the end but we appreciate the opportunity

061wanted to know if there was any questions that we could help answer that was really really well done um like the care and the love and the commitment I just want to all of us I'm sure want to acknowledge again all of the staff that are here and the staff that aren't here as well um that that serve these students every day really really well done thank you yeah Brad uh so what comes through for me the biggest in this presentation and just in general as a as an educator too who works with special education Educators and parent professionals and is how well special education staff members work together right like there is just a special level of trust a special level of understanding of Grace of of all of those things and so I

062want you to know that that came through huge in that presentation for me and it's something that I will you know lend my own experience I guess to is this idea that inclusive environments are beneficial for all students right and so for me as an educator I'm always thinking about about that I've learned a lot from my colleagues who have helped me to to break down you know best practices for special education students but then became just things I did like breaking assignments down into junks and targeted vocabulary and essential learning targets and goals and and and I really appreciate the fact that you spent this time with us to just give us a small glimpse into that because from a day in day out standpoint right you know you are creative and individualized and

063uh so I want you to know that I think that the reason why our families are so supported here and why they're so you know pleased with our graduation rates and all those kinds of things is because of the extraordinary work that you do and and that is that so I guess my last thing would be this there are a lot of motivated people who are necessary to do these three things as you could see how we doing on Staffing stuff how are we doing on on those kinds of things and I'm giving you a platform too here you are yeah I can't offer 500 like Transportation if anyone has a reference but but I wish I could uh right now we have filled and have uh still some some supplemental Subs in place we

064have a couple more interviews for some para Educators still uh this week alone so uh being such an inclusive District uh we we are met with challenges of a lot of a lot of move-ins right our numbers continue to increase and during that time finding appropriate Staffing right now is much more difficult before I had a choice of 100 teachers when I was director of special education we always took the best of the best no different you see them sitting around us and right now it is much more difficult for us uh even in the Realms of a para educator where I would pick from 30 or 40 people now Monica and I pray that we look in the system and find someone that's interested and right now we have been very blessed I say

065this year to really hire some great people uh in terms of what is available and what is out there so Staffing always remains a difficult to situation special ed yeah do you have anything specific I'm just out of retirement I'm trying to be cautious here right now okay I I would say one thing that we've tried to do is um really create an environment to invite our student teachers to want to stay here and currently we have some really excellent student teachers right now that very openly we're grooming right for the next step so I think that's another partnership that we need to continue to explore the moment so um I saw one of my daughters in the video a couple times shout out to Ben for capturing her but uh I I just you

066know seeing um her teachers um and knowing how amazing um they are and the team members that you know weren't even shown um it just I so I have two daughters with IEPs and one at Woodland and one in the um Early Childhood Program and um I can't say I can't say enough great things about them and the program and I really don't think my children would be where they are um without them without the staff and their support and I just really appreciate it thank you right well on that note now that I'm already like choked up a little bit so um a couple of things that I just wanted to note um when I came to Celine debudnick was in charge of the mentor mentee program and um really was even though she

067wasn't my mentor became a mentor to me and I did not know this history I knew that she had been a special education teacher but it makes sense that Deb started this because her heart and her soul are students first and um and she is just such a strong Advocate and has been for my own daughter so I just appreciate knowing that that it's just I don't know it just it makes sense that Deb Deb was so involved at the beginning and has created such a legacy for others to to come on board and to continue the vision so that was really exceptional to see um I also just appreciate how intentional this all started and continues to be um you know Deb I think mentioned in the history that um this didn't just happen

068overnight but it took a lot of careful planning and I see that still I see the professional development and the collaboration that's happening with all of the special education staff like you even mentioned even our student teachers who aren't officially on staff yet but um just you can see when you're in classrooms and I've had the privilege of of getting to see these these as the video said angels in action and um there's just something so special about that and when parents send their kids here they know that they're going to be cared for and loved so that was that was really clear um I guess the last thing I'll say without hopefully getting too emotional is that as a classroom teacher I've had the opportunity to work with a lot of special education staff

069starting in college right um and one particular moment um I felt really alone with the student um I had tried everything and it just wasn't working and I think it was your wife actually who came and said you don't have to do this alone we're here for you so they work together as a team but they also support the classroom teachers in a way that helps us to feel empowered and helps us to support students so that they can live their fullest potential so thank you to our special education teachers to our directors and administrators in special education to Luana who who I started with at home um and uh to each and every one of you that I've had a chance to work with and who have impacted kids thank you the last time

070I was a special education teacher was a century ago well literally the last century and uh I I was wondering why I used to go home exhausted at the end of every day and then I listened to where's Luana are you here oh my gosh I was listening to the list of things you did and I was thinking I used to do the district support and had to do the paperwork support and the medication monitoring and the compliance support and liaising with board policies so I just wanted to say all of the work all the spending that this District does carefully and wisely behind the scenes is absolutely essential to making these programs work so the teachers can work and focus on the teaching and not having to stroll around inside a dark Vault to

071try and find the right IEP at the right time and get it back by the end of the day it it's hard work it really is hard challenging mental work and I do appreciate every absolutely every single thing you guys do and I'm looking forward to seeing the rest of the video thank you Ben audience members oh he is yeah yeah he's in it um I also wanted to thank you for having as one of the goals that Deb Budnick noted earlier was helping the community to understand the value and of of our community of special needs and special education students so it's great it's wonderful thank you um I had a question so um Kevin so Kevin first of all thank you for coming back and and helping and partnering with Monica and team

072um I was very pleased when I saw the email um but but I guess my question is what when in talking with Monica and the rest of the staff what do you want to do first I mean so you've been away from this particular role for a little while um and thank you for being principal Pleasant Ridge um what do you what do you want to tackle first like what's on the agenda for for the strategy over the next trimester part of the thing that we did coming back in was Monica and I sat and met and we talked about our special education advisory committee and how beneficial that was to us in the past working together collaboratively with families so we went through the application process again and we revamped that and we'll have

073our first meeting uh the beginning of November during that time also we created a survey that we had done years ago and we recreated that survey and we've sent that out to our parents so they've had that for the past two weeks right now we've got about 200 parents that have filled out that survey and that's given us good valuable information for what's going on inside of each and every one of our school buildings and the data looks amazing but again we have very high standards so when we're looking at this and we're seeing only about a 70 percent uh success rate right now for what we're doing for parents and training that that tells me that we need to meet we've met with Michigan Alliance for families we're going to be reaching out and

074offering more family trainings not just for our staff but also for our families so we're going to try to use that data and work collaboratively with our special education advisory committee we typically try to create about three goals a year and when we do that we want to make sure that we have achievable goals that we get the work done so that's really been one of the goals that we see the other thing that we were talking about is the entrance process into salinary schools creating pretty much a packet or a folder welcoming our parents providing them with mentors inside of this District not Advocates but mentors parents that are here to help them to partner with them and to kind of show them the ropes so we know those are two goals right now

075that we have and as we continue to look at the data once they're done they have until Friday we'll continue to look through that to see what other information is provided and what we need to do differently but right now the numbers that we see due to this amazing staff are outstanding our parent Communications through the roof we see these great things that we're doing we see our compliance behind the scenes consistently one of the most compliant districts inside of the state of Michigan all right and that's because of the hard work that they do without the one on that laundry list of things that she does it's not possible so again it's because of such a great team that we have so sorry maybe I forgot this before so I want to just circle

076back to this but um one thing that struck me when we were um when I was able to visit schools and and see um students in classrooms with teachers and um teacher para Educators um is just the uniqueness of of the the services that are provided from you know early childhood through um Beyond young adult right um and so a couple of things I noted were um with the bond some uh some specific needs for our special education population such as inclusive playgrounds and potentially an expansion of um of the Liberty club which is technically it's independent part but what we know is that you have all created such an extremely supportive environment for students that the wait list for students into Liberty Club um is sometimes it creates such a hardship for many of

077our families so so those things are really exciting but the thing that I want to come back to is that um in looking at the numbers there are a number of students who are coming in as School of Choice and because of the uniqueness and because of the wraparound services that are available that are unique in this in this environment so how how can Celine be a lighthouse just as Vermont was a million years ago in the 80s as Vermont as that school district in Vermont was for our special education inclusivity how can we be a lighthouse to um to others so that um there are there are um opportunities for even more right I like how you're talking about other districts and in the same thing is us being able to support them we'd

078love nothing more to do that you know our numbers continue to grow at a rapid rate and that is concerning uh but ultimately we have been available in the past for trainings you know we have created our own training mechanisms within our uh buildings we don't send people out for non-violent Crisis Intervention training we have our own trainers that's what we do here and we have offered those services to other districts along with some co-teaching strategies that we went to uh Las Vegas for a conference we did go to the conference Steve no and we did that you know to to work and partner inside of of with others and and we worked with Milan schools on on some of those things so hopefully we can continue to expand maybe some of uh you know

079their abilities inside of those programs now that you mentioned it I am aware that the young adult program was started in Milan as a model modeled after this right yes correct yeah yeah well Bravo thank you any other questions or comments uh Allison and Susan uh I was just going to say I have some family members who had some undiagnosed learning disabilities that kind of slipped under the radar in their schools because they didn't have a special education program as diligent and as good as ours frankly um and I think there's just something to me that's important as just a life philosophy is equality versus equity and so I think I've seen a lot of equity in the special education program and that we adapt the teaching to fit the learner as opposed to the

080other way around and I think that stops students with learning disabilities from having to work twice as hard as everyone else too you know just try and get through the day and so just personally it's really nice to hear that in this District it's made a priority of people to make sure that doesn't happen to people and I think our graduation rates reflect that I think um so I just two things um I'm excited about and I don't know how long you've been offering the academic skills class for the Celine middle schoolers I would love to see that and maybe there is like a community ad not putting it on you because it's not special education but maybe for the general ed students as well or students with 504 plans but yeah I love that

081you all offer that like in place of an elective I think that's great um and then speaking of high standards um I love that you are emailing and communicating with parents um that I've seen that um a lot come through and um you know just just that um partnership um and yeah I appreciate that um so high standards if you're not here interim forever um with hiring I think we should definitely make sure that we have someone that will keep that communication up and um you know we know that you're there and supporting and the whole team's involved so I think that's great thank you we look forward to part two thank you very much thank you for coming everybody [Applause] all right moving on to our second scheduled report bond proposal update Dr latch

082okay and we have a number of our core team that's going to be helping out with this presentation as you've seen from just about every board meeting we've had in the last several months we've been talking about the bond proposal as it is really important and we want to make certain that um we've done everything we can to communicate out the benefits of this upcoming board a bond proposal and tonight we want to go through a more detailed look at the history of how bonds have really helped accelerate the district to where we are now with this path of Excellence if you can go to that you know if I can go to the next slide yes I can um so again we talk about the pursuit of Excellence we feel like that Pursuit involves

083providing the best facilities grounds and opportunities for our kids and so we keep that in the back of our mind as we're planning as we're going through the process of really mapping the course for the district not only in the past but also moving forward to today and in the present uh one thing we do want to point out is that we we obviously know the date of the election is November 8th and myself and a number of our core team will be taking personal days because we will be at the polls we want uh the community to make sure they see us and that we are visible to support what we feel is an important vote and we want everybody to exercise their right to vote and and and we want to be present

084for that so we will be at the various polls around the community so next we're going to talk about what we call our proven track record and that means that we are going to map out from what we have already accomplished by 2000 to 2015 to the proposed 2022 Bond so I'm going to turn it over to Kurt next so as Dr Lott said just over 22 years ago in in the beginning of the 99 2000 school year I ran across a a Blog that superintendent Grayden had written in preparation for that Bond and in that year we had just completed our ninth consecutive year of growing by 100 students or more so the population within salinary schools was absolutely exploding at that time and the facilities that we had in place just simply would

085not continue to meet our needs and so as a part of project 2000 Celine High School it was built in that building through the last 22 years has housed you know over 4 000 students has seen a number of students you know academically prepare for the next phase of their life that building has unbelievable academic spaces and it has unbelievable career and Technology technological education space isn't it it also has unbelievable Fine Arts and athletic facilities and so that building has really served us well for the last 22 years and in kudos to the leaders of the district 22 23 years ago who who put that building on the radar for everybody also at this time very close to the high school we've built our developed and built Harvest Elementary School which houses young fives

086through third grade and is currently led by principal sickler it is our only two-story Elementary building that we have with a great playground lots of space for our students to learn and grow alongside of each other and some fabulous spaces out back for exploring project-based learning and authentic Gardens and whatnot that the teachers have designed in addition we were able to add the Heritage choir and band rooms to continue to support the Arts and continue to generate a lot of enthusiasm for our musicians and you can see the impact of that because we start with this our instruments in Heritage School so you can see how that blossoms across the entire District foreign and now the 2015 save form and dry before 2015 we had roughly 12 doors that had access controls throughout the entire

087district there were 12 doors we didn't have any lockdown buttons you if you get with the office of Pleasant Ridge you had to walk through the school to get to the office by the end of 2016 we had access controls across the entire District we had secure vestibules in four of the seven buildings and by the end of 2017 we had secure vestibules in all the buildings um cameras were added to all buildings before that we only probably had a handful at the high school um and uh and we also added the transportation communication system which was a game changer for my department not being able to talk to somebody a bus that was past Pleasant Ridge and Zeb are we extend out to Parker and you know Parker and style church for the most

088part um you know that was a game changer for my team and my crew to communicate with those buses um sorry this is just a picture of one of the secure festivals here at Liberty roofs over the last seven years we've put over almost a half million square foot under new roofs of which I would say almost 75 percent yeah I'd say 75 of that is steel roofs lifetime of a steel rough is 30 years with proper maintenance and upkeep you can get 50 years we're going to double what we did on our asphalt roofs when they were installed new boilers uh mechanical projects so everything we built in 97 with Woodland and Heritage and along with 2000 with harvest in the high school is 22 years old 25 years old at the end of

089this bound it'll be 35 years old so we did some upgrades with boilers Energy Efficiency with hot water heaters LED lights we started with the parking lots we went to the gyms and band rooms The Commons at the high school and now we're finishing up the classrooms at the high school and the middle school which will have that done in phase three and 100 of the district except for outdoor athletic lighting will be led throughout the district along with building automation controls building that you know that positive learning environment that we want you know I was looking I look at the pictures from their private movie from the special ed and I just see great learning spaces really great learning spaces and don't forget about next Generation what we did there who attended the foundation

090for Saline Area Schools event um you know that next Generation thing was 2014 2015. we brought that through fruition through the middle school and the high school will be next doing a lot of great things in the classroom parking lots again with a purpose we've done this main campus all the parking lots here have been changed or redesigned for school for student safety Woodland heritage the young ecsc program and the young fives program here at the middle school not young fives but the ecsc program you know protecting them how you come in how you go out there's sidewalks that keep them safe and keep everyone safe High School the same way creating a a pathway to the stadium with speed bumps and you know controlling that piece of how people come in and out of

091those out of that area on 2022. so now we come to a present time and we're thinking about the importance of what's next for the district and so we've talked a lot about some of these next steps we want to really equip our students with proper steam spaces includes playgrounds which was mentioned in the special education department report and video and and so forth so we're excited about this opportunity and we're going to talk a little bit more about it I think one thing we forgot to mention with that 2015 is that beautiful Middle School gym that we will reveal to the community on Thursday and I hope you all can make it that's going to be great they've worked really hard and it's come together and it's going to be an awesome space for

092our students and our staff and our community um so we want to just go through these one more time here before the election and these big projects and I asked the team to really focus on how each of these projects will impact students and the learning during the day the community in the after hours and on the weekends and then you know what is the potential fiscal part of each project that might be able to benefit us long term as a district I think I drew the easy straw with this facility I did put the presentation together so um so you know from a student aspect obviously the Middle School Liberty Heritage Woodland all the all the schools on this campus are going to be able to benefit from this during the day it's a

093beautiful space physical education classes will be able to get outside hopefully if they like our building admin can plan for events that are outside at these facilities and just use a Greener better space that that has stronger facilities to hold the number of kids that we have that go to school in these four buildings that are on site beyond that we talked about the Middle School marching band and they're currently doing things in the parking lot and they're able to get on this space have a real Turf and really treat that as a transition from middle school into high school when we look at the community obviously this is just screams community space one thing that I know a lot of people are excited about is a potential walking path that goes around the entire

094parameter of all of these fields we have very very passionate pickleball tennis group in the community who have given us all of their thoughts and feelings and plans about about pickleball and how that should look both indoors and Outdoors and then of course you know the ability to host things here from a community standpoint it expands the ability to program and bring teams in and host big things between this campus and what we have over at the at the high school and harvest area from a from a fiscal standpoint we it really ex I mean this this is a game changer for rentals and the ability to generate revenue for our district I think if this Bond passes and we're able to build this facility it will um really change the way that we look

095at how we rent things and and what those structures uh become so that we can use it as a as a revenue um generator and ability to really bring people into our community not only for for district gain but also for the broader Community to be able to have people come into town at the high school much has been made about the steam centers that we intend to build at each of the buildings and certainly the renderings that we're showing you here tonight depict that um in the on the left-hand photo there you'll see the brick piece on the bottom left is is a proposed steam center it's a rendering for that and inside that space there'll be instructional space as well as space for those groups to compete one of the things that we're

096really excited about about this particular model is that those spaces will have separate entries so they will be open to people to use on nights and weekends as we know they do but we won't have to open the whole building to do that we'll be able to have separate entries into those spaces so they can utilize them without compromising the Safety and Security of the other build or the rest of the building the other space on the side of that is a rendering of a strength and conditioning Center that would be used for all students during the day and after hours as well and if you've ever been to a basketball game a cheerleading competition anything in the high school gym one of the real drawbacks to our current setup is that when we use

097that weight room during a competition it's incredibly distracting we don't do that to a lot of our other sports teams and it's always been a real problem for us to have that set up the way it is there are also some structural issues that have have developed over the last 22 years with having all that weight on the second floor and so having that weight room on the ground floor with its own entry will really allow us to address a lot of those issues Operation Center um this facility will will greatly improve the traffic flow and the safety of student pickup and drop off at the middle school overnight once we are out of the mix and we can improve the drives and the the how we process students how students get dropped off and

098delivered and how they get picked up I think one of the getting us out of this campus to allows the steam center to take place at the middle school enhanced Senior Center at the middle school and maybe we have a lounge that maybe bus drivers want to stay in maybe we recruit we were able to recruit some staff um you know a stove dishwasher who knows we do have fun food Fridays if everyone wants to protect partake it's a great great culture great group of great team at the middle of Transportation so as Kurt mentioned in the high school that left picture is of the high school steam center like a competition space so you'll see there's um it's set up in in the image as a robotics competition those are things that we hold

099so the same thing that um it will be useful for our clubs as they do that but also like Anna mentioned for our athletic conventions bringing people to our community so not only does the school benefit from that and our teams and our clubs but also it brings people using restaurants hotels things like that throughout our community on the right hand side is more depiction of our elementary esteem centers and those kind of are a double use as well because during the day we have an innovation lab which is one of the specials that the kids go to and so those spaces are more intentionally built and designed to do the things that they're doing currently in spaces that aren't designed to do that currently and then as well as in the evenings we have

100throughout you've heard from many of the different steam groups that go all the way down through elementary kids so that this these spaces will be greatly used and then as well hit our rental ability as well technology said right there but um in truth students use it in every building every day throughout the day it's integrated into their curriculum it's part of their lives even outside of school they are constantly in their technology and we need to make sure that we are not only providing them the technology they need but also maintaining the infrastructure so that it's running correctly we just saw a wonderful presentation from special ed the technology that they use in their program is essential for those students we have talkers we have interactive display boards the technology they use helps them

101get through the day and be inclusive in those classrooms our community even when the school day ends they have a need for technology we have a number of events that we know of that run after school is out they are expecting consistent Wi-Fi access they are expecting to be able to project their device during Banquets and have their slideshows going on and then we've also talked about Safety and Security all that stuff requires technology all of these vestibules all of these badge readers that requires the infrastructure to keep that up and running and we need the bond to help keep those things going I feel like that special education presentation really teed us up nicely we got to see some live video of students using our inclusive and accessible equipment at Pleasant Ridge because this

102is also a project on our bond and so much as we would like to scale this to all of our buildings because each and every student deserves to have an accessible and inclusive playground and thinking about what that means it means that there's equipment that is designed to be both safe and fun and peer-to-peer play so kids can be together regardless of what their needs are and accessible and so much as kids can access the play equipment either via the pathway the groundwork and or the height of the play equipment that is available to them I think as far as what it does for our community I think we you know to the question before are a model of what it means to be inclusive and when we have public spaces where our kids are

103playing together regardless of physical social or emotional needs in a play Space learning growing having fun together we are a model of what every school district should look like and it says a lot to bring that together in a space that's accessible from the potential Liberty complex and for us to be able to say to adults and children alike this is what it means to stand shoulder to shoulder with everybody in our community and and be proud of what we have so really quick before we take questions I just want to do a little campaign recap I know you like to hear what we've been doing and where we've been doing it um Steve I know Matt went individually with the Celine high school PTO group last week one a couple of us met with

104the sabies group as on an individual basis uh the last last week we were at two different Performing Arts concerts we were at the choir concert and we were at the costume concert then tomorrow we have a meeting at the high school during Hornet time with all of the seniors who will be 18 and eligible to vote so we're going to give them a nice presentation and talk about the importance of of voting tomorrow evening in the hopefully not rainy 50 degree weather we will be at Trunk or Treat giving out some candy and and not promoting the bond but just educating um and then what else do we have left we will also be at the performance of clue which will be the final weekend before before the vote so we we've the last

105two weeks have been have been really crazy and then we've got a few more things in the last 10 days here so that is our campaign update yeah Susan are you going to take vacation after this y'all if it passes or if it doesn't fast hopefully it passes everyone is very tired of the late night calendar invites um oh okay come back to me I forgot that question my um 19 year old is voting in her first November election she she voted just a little while ago but um she for those of you who don't know she is a graduate of Celine and um in addition to being now in nursing school and um and having a great year she also plays field hockey and so when she saw the rendering of Crabtree she was

106like the middle school kids will get to play on Turf because that was always such a difficult thing they would have competitions rained out because the fields would flood the ball doesn't roll the same way on grass especially you know even as even as much work as Rex and his team do it's it's not always it's lumpy it's just the nature of soil and grass so when she saw that she just got really excited for the opportunities for kids coming up her lens was on field hockey but but in addition just looking and seeing the potential for hosting um I mean this community is baseball right so baseball softball so having the ability to host host events in in that way is really exciting I also know since I've been on the board there's been

107some desire for bathroom access and Concession access out at our high school facilities for baseball and softball and I know I've heard from grandparents who have found it difficult to have to you know get in a car and actually drive to a bathroom so it's just really exciting to see the inclusivity and the forward thinking that has been our history included in this proposal yeah thanks and I think Rex one he actually sent me a text that I was supposed to mention this is that with that 2015 Bond a lot of our high school facilities were given a facelift or an upgrade with part of that warm safe and dry and these obviously youth middle school facilities were not touched so they're due oh and and by the way I did get a preview of

108The Middle School gym when I was on my tour last week and uh that's amazing knocked it out of the park wow wow beautiful I can't wait for everybody to see it I remembered um my next comment um so I went to the foundation of salinary schools luncheon and I was super excited to be sitting with the robotics group so whenever I said I saw I was like students so they um showed a presentation the students and the foundation had supported them with um space and that was part of it and so when they were showing the space it made me so sad and happy at the same time because I I was just envisioning you know everything like we've talked about and um you know what we're doing um to provide that space for

109these students if the bond passes um and it was just really just interesting um thinking you know about that lack of space and what this bond is going to be able to do for these students um so I'm super excited and I'm going to tell everybody to go vote Yes and we had a couple meetings today related to activities in athletic space and usage and how that works and you would not believe the Matrix that we have to try to put together to fit in athletics community and activities and try to get gym space for things that we're all trying to do and accomplish so it's not um I just want to say vote on November 8th and don't be complacent so another excellent presentation but but I don't think the community should be complacent

110and just assume oh this will pass people support the schools people always who's not for kids right go vote don't assume um thank you appreciate it we'll let Steve get back here moving on to our action items our first action item is if I could please recommend a motion to approve the appointment of Leslie Hundley to the Celine District Library board for a two-year term beginning December 1st 2022 as recommended by superintendent latch I'm glad to make that motion Kirby McAfee thank you Michael discussion I'll say something I've volunteered with Leslie for years and I was pleased to see this recommendation so wish wish her luck let me just mention the process quickly though too there there are a number of applications that came in and I met with Carrie warrella who is the uh

111Library director to go over those applications and then based on uh criteria that the library board had set selected Leslie to this role so that that's how that process works and so we're pleased that she will be joining great any other questions or comments for Steve all right go ahead sir yeah that was going to be a question of mine so thank you for um saying what that process is and that we had multiple applicants and um thanks libraries pretty great so good work um okay moving to vote all those in favor please say aye aye opposed hearing none motion carry 7-0 um Item B I'd like to please entertain a motion to approve the recommendation submitted by Jake Grossman director of technology for the purchase and installation of the informacast notification system at Celine

112Middle School Liberty Heritage Harvest and Woodland Meadows for a total cost of 255 000 255 thousand forty dollars and zero cents there's a comma there yes so moved Jenny thank you support Jones Candace thank you um any questions for Jay oh yeah I do too yeah right I just want to make one note uh that the majority of the funding for this is coming from the security and safety grant that we were awarded this past summer and so that was a tremendous Grant and I appreciate our fourth right uh not to to apply between you and Miranda and anyone else was there anybody else involved in that because it's really an exciting thing that we're doing this curtain Rex also we're on the Forefront of this so anyways so obviously from the funding standpoint I

113wanna I wanna thank those individuals and that's so this is from the Michigan State Police security and safety Grant majority of the funding for this uh I just wanted um to note just to make sure but um I know that I know for my own students who are at the high school that this is already in place at the high school but I see that Pleasant Ridge isn't isn't mentioned here is it already in place there Pleasant Ridge was done first they were the pilot great great thank you this is one of these great pieces of technology I hope we never have to use thanks well it is that we hope to never use it for the emergency system but it's also for bells and paging too so those get used every day yes all

114right moving to vote all those in favor please say aye aye opposed hearing none motion carry 7-0 thanks Jay moving on to our first discussion item of the evening policy committee meeting update vice president Michael McVeigh thank you very much we had our monthly policy committee meeting we convened at 502 we made some a few updates and by the way just a refresher the members of the committee are trustee Miller and trustee Estep uh we made updates to policies regarding board compensation that's coming to us to discuss uh on November 8th and then to vote on in December we also added a few things to the consent agenda on the fair labor standards act an update there preferred vendors visitors to campus electronic fund transfers um and I'm happy to answer any questions about those

115if as you're reviewing those policies in fact we'll get them to you as soon as possible I'm looking at Betty we'll get them out soon so you can see what we're talking about uh and of course there are two or three issues that are going to affect the board operating procedure coming up as well in addition we had a brief discussion about a house bill 5703 which was passed and signed by the governor uh where we must post a legislative statements on parental rights somewhere in this room somewhere in Dr loch's office and in every principal's office around this uh district and Quest around every school in the state that'll be done by January 1st you'll see it in here then also we touched very briefly on the controversial issues policy Dr Lodge is going

116to reach out to Neola and Troon law and we also have some we've asked the deiac for input now that they've got their new members I'm looking forward to getting some feedback from them this actually though marks the final meeting of the policy committee until January 24th 2023 and I was been the chair this year I was the chair of three years back and four years back and it's been my honor to serve in that role and um thank you very much that's it that was sure um I have a question why why until January in case others because we do not have a second meeting in Tuesday in November and we do not have a second meeting in December and we have gone through all of the Neola issues and I would like us

117to do the next time we meet we'll be um the second Tuesday in January the second Tuesday board meeting okay yeah yeah guys um so that doesn't mean that the policy committee won't still be working on the back end so um yes so uh as uh Nick yes vice president I'm like I know your last name vice president McVeigh was saying that Dr Loch is going to reach out to Neola and Throne um those those pieces will come back um to us and Jenny and I are actively going to be working on that and looking at that language um as moving forward hopefully something with the controversial issues policy with either editing and there's a couple of great documents that we still need to see from Neola associated with the current policy so yeah I

118was just going to mention that we have plans to continue as as um as information comes to us that's still a policy that is one that we really would like to work through as as vice president McBee noted it's been a six-year Journey so far and we'd like to see that come to the table sooner rather than later but we also want to make sure that we get it right so that it's not continuing to come back as it has over the last six years and the good news is that when vice president McVay talked to Neola this was something that they're very interested in working on as not just a policy for Saline Area Schools but something that they would potentially share with with the other districts that they work with and and thank

119you very much and if I could add one more thing my colleagues on the policy committee there are there are a lot of items that came through that I thought would just be rubber stamped or whooshed through but they said wait wait wait wait wait we have to do more research and we had the time and we did the research and so when we recommend something for the consent agenda you can guarantee that it has been thoroughly researched and if something needs to come to a vote in a discussion it will come to a vote and discussion in the proper sequence um oh my gosh there was one other thing about that but I just want to say thank you to them uh in addition when you reach the uh the fair labor standards act

120part please know that I did have a long conversation with Bridget Corey and Brian Bowes about uh about that particular issue that you'll read about through the the Union's perspective so we we do do our homework and they're quite right to say yeah this the committee never sleeps thank you and and because we won't be meeting but also because we have a policy on how to make policy you will be seeing at the next two meetings the policies that we've been working on either in the discussion or in the consent agenda so that we hope that these become part of our policy in the December meeting so even though the committee isn't formally meeting there's a lot of work that will happen before the end of December thanks for that because I had a question

121on that so if you can just let us know what's coming for the agenda for November 8th and then the first week in December that would be great uh yes our recording secretary will take good care of you regarding that okay all right and Michael and and Steve know this we've gotten a couple of comments uh um requests for the agendas for the policy committee to be posted earlier um I think that would be great for finance committee too I'm pretty sure ours go up um that Monday when the packet goes up and I know that Michael said that that was the goal for them as well that when the general packet went up the policy agenda would go up to for future reference no just so you know it's not just the goal it's

122been the practice uh to post them around noon but I'm not sure what happened this time but not not a problem we will make sure they're out there I will double check on Monday at 1201 to see that they are there and I would like to add that it is not required legally to post even post an agenda for committees so just letting you know yeah I want to acknowledge that Susan is correct it's just a practice so the community can see what's on the agenda yeah so that won't hit us you know with the Oma right it it doesn't happen that stinks right but just you know and we want want to keep that practice right but it's not going to hurt the board if it doesn't get posted um so I I wanted

123to um thank um the committee since this is what we're talking about and it's going to be our last or it was our last um today um just I I really enjoyed working with trustee Miller and vice president McVeigh and how we were able to yeah something simple and bring it back to the table if we had questions I appreciate that vice president McVeigh reached out and worked with um you know staff across the district who were either proposing some changes or we thought it was really important to get their voice and also the fair laborers standards act yes um Jenny and I were sharing our own experiences because it was based on putting a like time for breastfeeding you know coming back from maternity leave and um you know vice president McVeigh was like

124oh you know you like I'm gonna kind of sit back and let you all guide the conversation and so I thought that was really admirable um to let like you know put our voices um forward in that conversation I appreciate that so thank you yes thanks difficult to go after that uh are you all right so I'm appreciative of women in that uh so I want to make sure I clearly stay on behalf of finance and I'm going to speak freely here for on behalf of Finance but we have historically met the first meeting or the first week or for first meeting of the month and if we had to split those up in some way to accommodate anything that came your guys's way I think I could speak on behalf of of finance and

125say we would work together I know that Steve would want to be there or whatever so I just want to say we're a team and and if we can assist do you or support you in any way let us know I appreciate that but I'm just tired and and there is nothing I mean as as as uh my colleague said that we're doing a lot of the homework behind the scenes so yeah okay thank you okay all set all right thank you very much um discussion Item B is our 2023 Board of Education calendar so this is one thing that needs to be collaborated on with the secretary before the end of the year um as we know um secretary Jones will be leaving us on November 8th so this is one thing like our

126superintendent evaluation that we wanted to pull up forward so she could participate so we collaborated on this document over email um I just to there's a couple of asterisks on it so March 2023 is a five-week month the second Tuesday or I'm sorry the fourth Tuesday would have been during spring break I hope our staff and our board is enjoying a spring break somewhere so the March dates were altered so that's why that is and then the Cadence of one meeting for June July November and December transferred over in our recommendation um so we just wanted to open it up for discussion and then this would probably go on consent next next meeting so she could vote on it as well and sign off I am pleased with this calendar I don't see any issues

127with it thank you for noting this spring break and adjusting that no no offense everyone should have some rest exactly exactly thank you all right any changes or questions all right wonderful moving on Administration updates Dr lutch I don't have any specific updates tonight wow let the bond presentation speak for itself correct Allison I'm just gonna speedrun my first three because they've all already convention tonight but if you haven't noticed there is going to be an election on November 8th I don't know if we pushed that I've never heard it um unfortunately I am 17 so I will not be participating I do want the bond to be passed but not enough to break the law for it I'm very sorry um and once again the ribbon cutting event for the Middle School gym is

128on the 27th so that's very exciting um I just wanted to say a Happy Diwali it was yesterday so happy Diwali to anyone who celebrates and I've been informed by the chair of the NHS blood drive committee that the blood drive is on Friday the 28th not Thursday the 27th I was given a Stern talking to you about that one so uh yeah that will be on Friday and I will be giving blood so if you see someone lying on the ground crying it's probably me any trustees with updates yeah Susan yes so I came back from the beautiful warm fall leather in Traverse City um so I was there at the masb annual leadership conference um beginning on Thursday morning because we had a committee meeting for the resolutions and bylaws and then later

129that evening we had the delegate assembly um in which I was a delegate and was able to vote as well and then I had a presentation on Saturday and then did a couple of cbas so um yeah it was it was tiring but um energizing as well um I know a lot of I didn't meet one board member who wasn't having a contentious um election in their district and so there was a lot of you know a lot of mentioning of that and how board members are um you know dealing with um things that keep Focus away from the students um which is unfortunate um so just know that everybody is kind of in this situation and um and so um so anyways I I have a couple other things sorry so one um the

130delegate assembly uh passed a new bylaw and I wanted to tell you all about that it's the inclusive literature the Michigan Association of school boards urges school media centers and building and classroom libraries to include literature that reflects the student population and broader Society this should include identifying and creating access to educational materials that reflect all Races ethnicities religions abilities genders sexual orientations gender identities and gender Expressions I'm happy to say that after some discussion and a couple of people kind of standing up for the importance of um of that me along with a couple of other people um and so it was resounding support for this and so um I think you know that was super important especially um you know things going on uh across the country and I think people were really

131excited about that um secondly I was going to mention the clinic session that I did which was lgbtq school board members talk sex and gender um we had there were three of us we had over 70 people attend um they were bringing in extra chairs people were standing sitting and it was amazing um so we talked about um kind of the sex ed laws the sex ed advisory boards I got to talk a little bit about my experience on the sex ed Advisory Board and um you know there was quite I just have to put this in here there was questions about um clergy right and we're like well that's a state law um but you know people they were talking about the makeup of the committee and they're like well you know um can

132we get you know more like neutral like how does that look like we don't want to have somebody who's you know completely against or whatever so I I incur I said you know finally I raised up my hand we were having conversation and I said you know I said it's okay to have people who have a conservative voice or who disagree I said that's why we have a committee and you know make sure that their voices are heard like our committee allowed um and you know they're they're able to you know public comment able to you know say that they disagreed but don't haunt the work of the committee or of the board and their work don't hold it back continue with it um and so um you know I think people were kind of

133like oh okay so I think there's a tendency to you know like pull back because they don't want to bring it because there's disagreement like you know on the committee or in the community but you know we still got to keep moving forward and making sure that we're still hitting those laws and expectations um so that was good to put that in there like y'all don't be scared like but you can still move forward um so they were super excited about our transgender and non-binary students policy and how we incorporated the compass and I think there were some that were excited about the compass so um you know and and I think the important message as well um was making sure that students voices um who are lgbtq that when we're making decisions based on

134them that's going to impact them we need to have their voices at the table and so I think you know that was a super important message to to get across we we had great questions I was super excited had a lot of people stay over who are interested in in doing this work and you know I I was really excited um about that and um with that that 70 for school board members in the state of Michigan which could represent 70 school like school districts um with those school board members that want to go back and make change to support their lgbtq students and have the tools that they need to be able to move that forward um and I think it's wonderful and so I'm really really excited about that work I think it

135may be a session next year it may be a little more interesting you know um Dynamic but um you know I think I think people are are needing that and excited about it and I want to say um happy uh lgbtq History Month um I think you know that's kind of um I guess lgbtq students need to know that here in our community and the Saline Area School Districts that we support them and if not you know give me a call um but you know I I I'm just proud of the work that we've done I know Candace you're leaving and um so so it was um David and I just appreciate the work that you've done and the support that you've done here um to make history we made history with these policies and

136history by you all being on the board and I just want to thank you all right thanks Susan anyone else I just had a very short thank you to the foundation for Saline area schools for the wonderful fall kickoff luncheon that they had it was executive director Stacy rums's first fundraiser I thought her the trustees and all of the volunteers did a fabulous job so thank you to the foundation and their constant efforts and their steadfast support of our our staff really appreciate it moving on to our consent agenda the following are offered as part of the consent agenda the motion noted will allow for the authorization of all listed items without discussion unless a member of the board requests that anyone or all be considered individually these items will not be read aloud but

137will continue to be listed out individually in the minutes for this meeting I'd like to please entertain emotion to authorize the listed items as part of our consent agenda so moved Miller Jenny thank you support Jones Candace thank you all those in favor please say aye aye aye opposed hearing none Motion curies 7-0 in closing items on our next agenda Dr latch yep that's election night so it's going to be reasonably short agenda primarily audit um from assistant superintendent and obviously uh will be the primary focus item all right well ready for a Miranda is that the night that plant Moran are going to be here okay yep yep okay now is our second opportunity for public comment a member of the public May address the board briefly for up to three minutes or request

138to be scheduled on the agenda of a future meeting seeing no students we have one um Mr van oh there you are hello I was I was looking yeah I was so secretary Jones is is definitely in control of the time um oh yeah yep so so what secretary Jones will do is when you have 30 seconds left she'll put up the yellow card um when three minutes is up she'll put up the red card if you can just complete your thought and then um we'll be done thanks is the green light on oh keep pulling through it you got three minutes yep I think we can hear you keep going okay thank you what I want to support the update for the policy I think that everything is covered especially is very important for

139the Celine area to follow this policy and have confidence of that thank you so much for the wonderful work in the Susan and everybody else you might use me next time for free because I love to do research and that's one thing which is please and also I want to talk to Dr Large use me at your disposal I will be there for whatever I can do to let this bound proposal been passed so just just to say this is great the reason I support that both of that because of this is the great area maybe we can say Saline Area education should be the Lighthouse of the nation and very very practical um I would say creative so one thing I want to add is that we need to take advantage of here we

140have Land one for people geographic location is the best but we need maybe a little even more aggressive or ambitious the last five years or 10 years which is safe warm and dry the next will be safe super and soft salt is the proposal I skipped but also I like to know that if possible we can include in two things one is that for the senior center maybe we should create some program for the life learn teaching because this area have a lot of this is one thing nothing is a thought project is not just a tower the light but it's almost everything technically and I like to have opportunity to talk to our wonderful drug he just gave the day yes from and there's more detail if you look at that background of that

141is they try the hexang shape that is the salt project going to be can be used for Honeycutt people too for special education thank you thank you I appreciate your comments um our next meeting the next Board of Education meeting will be held on November 8th 2022 at 6 30 PM I'd now like to please entertain a motion to enter closed session of the board of education at 8 33 with intent to reopen re-enter open session at approximately 9 30 for the purpose of superintendent evaluation under Section 8A of oma under Section 8A a simple majority vote is sufficient to enter into closed session oh sure sure yeah we'll we'll enter into closed session as soon as we take a brief recess um um Can someone make the motion I I will support them got

142it uh second Susan thank you all those in favor please say aye aye opposed hearing none motion carries 7-0 we are in brief recess for approximately five minutes and then closed session all right right we are back there was a recommended motion to re-enter Open session of the regular Board of Education meeting at 10 16 motion made by Jenny second by Susan um 7-0 vote so we are now back in Open Session I'd like to please entertain a motion to add a discussion item to our agenda superintendent evaluation results second that's okay Candace thank you Susan thank you all those in favor please say aye aye opposed hearing on motion carries 7-0 um with regards to advice from the Michigan Association of school boards we'll do the procedure that we did last year where I

143will read each line items heading and then our combined rating as a board of education and then the roll-up rating so on the worksheet with regards to governance and board relations policy involvement actually this is done a scale of up to four just to ineffective would be one point minimally effective would be two points effective would be three points highly effective would be four points uh with results for governance and board relations item policy involvement 3.71 goal development 3.5 information 3.71 materials and background 3.79 word questions 3.71 for development 3.57 for a total combined score of 3.665 for that section governance and board relations for community relations parent feedback 3.64 communication with community 3.71 community feedback 3.57 media relations 3.71 District image 3.75 approachability 3.79 for a roll-up score of 3.695 overall for community relations

144moving on to staff relations staff feedback 3.9 staff Communications 3.9 Personnel matters 3.5 delegation of Duties 3.9 recruitment 3.5 Labor Relations and bargaining 3.8 visibility in District 4 perfect score overall category category rating for staff relations Is 3.7571 business and finance budget development and management rating 3.9 budget reports 3.8 Financial controls for facility management also for resource allocation 3.8 for a roll-up of 3.9 instructional leadership performance evaluation system 3.68 building level leadership 3.68 staff development 3.86 School Improvement 3.71 curriculum 3.61 instruction 3.68 student feedback 3.64 student attendance 3.61 support for students 3.57 Professional Knowledge 4. category rating for instructional leadership is 3.704 so for our professional practice rating Steve is at a 94 percent other required components of the evaluation are student growth weighted at 40 percent 3.25 and progress towards district-wide goals 4. overall

145effectiveness rating 89 our evaluation rate rating criteria is as follows 90 to 100 would be highly effective 75 to 89 would be effective Etc so um this would be 89 effective um any questions or comments all right hopefully we didn't miss any um I'd like to now entertain emotion please to adjourn the Board of Education meeting for October 25th 2022 at 10 23 PM so moved Miller Jenny thank you second Derby Brad thank you all those in favor please say aye aye opposed hearing non-motion Curie 7-0 we are adjourned