Saline Area Schools: Board of Education Meeting (8-9.2022)

001like to please call to order the board of education meeting for saline area schools for august 9th 22 at 6 30 pm if everyone could all 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 happy august everybody and a very very warm welcome to our new student board of education representative allison doran will be with us for um the whole school year so and and thank you for wanting to jump in and start early as we prepare to go back to school and also a very happy birthday to vice president mcveigh today's the day sweet 16. um betty do we have any forms for public comment

002okay then i'm going to actually skip over that section acknowledging no public comment forms have been turned in and moving into the approval of the agenda you may notice that we pulled up the action items before the scheduled reports tonight to be cognizant of guests speaking to possible questions that trustees may have stephen i've been talking about trying to accommodate the staff and long wait sometimes after schedule reports because they have a lot to do especially as we get back to get back to school so we move those forward just to kind of pull that to your attention i'd like to please entertain a motion to approve the agenda as printed so moved kirby support mcveigh brad thank you michael all those in favor please say aye aye aye opposed hearing none motion carries 7-0

003moving on to our first action item i'd like to please entertain emotion to adopt the resolution from trune law firm for the purpose of placing on the november 8th 2022 ballot consideration for the approval of a 180 million dollar bond issue reviewed and approved by the state of michigan and authorized the board secretary to sign such documents as necessary so moved miller jenny thank you second susan thank you um discussion well any can just add that this is the language that will go on the ballot um approved by troon and um you know it does list through all the information on it and it does show that it's a 7.5 mills but we did check and there's no method of saying this is a reduction from a previous so it's just this is the valve

004language it's important to know that okay any questions or comments christy okay seeing none move to vote all those in favor please say aye aye opposed hearing none motion carries 7-0 i'd like to next please entertain emotion and move to approve the purchase of orchestra instruments from shar products company for the total cost of twenty four thousand nine hundred twenty one dollars and zero cents the purchase of banned instruments from marshall music for the total cost of twenty nine thousand three hundred and seventy dollars and zero cents and the purchase of music stands and cart from port huron music center for the total cost of two thousand three hundred and fifty two dollars and zero cents as submitted by matthew matthew breyer saline area schools music department coordinator these purchases will provide students in the

005saline area schools with decades of musical education so move jones candace thank you brad thank you um any discussion i have a question oh so are these all replacement instruments or are these in gonna be added to the existing repertoire of tools yeah it's a normal cycle of at at one point especially look these larger instruments become where we need to be replacing and updating and this is part of that normal cycle students still with the smaller instruments right that they're they're providing their own or working out a payment plan with um char and other other music companies but this is part of that normal cycle of you know replacing the larger instruments over time and to add to that i believe the instruments go down to the the younger grades as well so um

006the the instruments that are being replaced so it'll still be in use so i thought that was good right that they'll continue to move right because what a really great thing about our music program is all students start taking music in fifth grade every day so you're right they need those at the lower levels too and just keep that cycle almost like i won't say it's the equivalent of bus replacements but you know it's musical instruments wear out and we cycle them through so we can have a great music program great any other questions or comments all right seeing none move to vote all those in favor please say aye aye opposed hearing on motion carries 7-0 i'd like to please entertain a motion to accept the recommendation of assistant student services director monica ellis

007to appoint daisy sharman to fulfill a two-year term in the role of saline area schools representative for the wisd parent advisory council support jenny thank you i guess i'm making the motion not so making the motion i'm making the motion fully and i think daisy is a great choice i uh concur with with us i guess uh inter assistance super nintendo what is monica assistant student assistant student but she's interim right now yes but monica i can i concur with that nomination i think daisy will be great thank you uh support i'll support the motion susan thank you any questions or comments okay secretly has daisy served do you know does anyone know if daisy sherman has served this book i i believe no thank you okay seeing no other questions or comments moving to

008vote all those in favor please say aye aye opposed hearing none motion carry 7-0 moving on to scheduled reports k-12 insight school quality survey results dr lotch okay we're loading our presentation for this as many of you recall k-12 insight is our survey company that we've been using for years and this survey is the annual end of the year school well it used to be called climate but it's now school quality and what we're trying to do with this is revamp the way we've um we've been seeking information from the public to make sure that it's relevant not only to the building conditions but also the environment the climate in schools our educational program our equity inclusion efforts so we've really taken what previously was called the climate survey and have tried to make all

009the questions more relevant to the information we need to gather and so this report actually is i guess i would say a benchmarking year really the first year that we're giving this type of school quality survey and then we're going to continue to do that over the next you know sequence of each year moving forward so that we can try to get better in any of the areas that the you know whether it's the students the staff or the community are are suggesting that we need to improvement and also look at the strengths and determine what we need to continue doing to to build upon that so uh some of this is somewhat difficult to read but um i'll give you the gist of this so this this first slide is just the overview of

010the research study and it talks about how it's put together and how it's organized and then when you go to the next slide and i will say this there was a formatting issue with um k12 insight in putting this forward requiring us to do a pdf so that's why it's a little bit tricky and i think i am going to have to jump over to is there by chance the portable mic that we could use a little too uh too small okay so anna can you scroll back to three to give me that whole effort okay perfect so what k-12 insight does after the survey is administrated is they go and pull out the important insights that they've developed from um looking at you know how people answered and they also try to look at

011how the different groups of people are answering so you start off by saying overall school quality rating excellent or good and you see that you know 92 percent of the elementary students that was in grades four and five because we we don't survey down lower than that primarily because uh the survey company has told us over and over again that that's not statistically significant data when the kids are that young for the way in which they're trying to gather this information and then followed by 89 of the parent and guardians which we think is a really high number um staff at 90 and secondary students at 74 percent we're going to talk a little bit about how next year we need to make sure we're bolstering the number of secondary students that actually take the

012survey but with that said when we talk to k-12 insight and we say well how does that compare to other districts around the nation because they have many many districts they were they feel like that's a really overall a really good rating for for the district and so you're going to see different areas as we go through this that look lower than others you might say wow that particular area needs some work yes for certain but we do need to keep in perspective the overall school quality is what we're looking here and and that's very high across the board and then they went into some specifics about which types of groups within the academic support dimension and we see some pretty high ratings there as well you talk about participant groups within academic support and

013we want kids to feel that we are challenging and we want the community to feel that way as well and believe that we are doing those things and this supports that in in many ways within student support dimension you look at campus-based staff 93 89 of secondary students 87 percent of parents and guardians said that students have a staff member to go to with the school problem um and it does say however fewer parent guardians at 76 and secondary students at 70 said students had a staff member to go with a personal problem however i do want to point this out that a while back and i brought this up a number of times we had a review this was six or seven years ago actually where this question was asked to our high school

014staff and also asked to our students and only 40 around 40 of the students at the time said they had a trusted adult that they've identified that they could go to so this actually is very positive information we feel because we're comparing it to a question that was asked a while back and now that is good news now is it problematic that you know 30 of the students surveyed say they don't have a go-to person yes and that's what we'll want to try to build on but this information we thought is an important insight that we need to work on in terms of safety and behavior dimension it talks about 12 percent of guardians parents and guardians 40 14 of secondary said they don't know if their school is safe that concerns us in that

015okay we want to make sure that we are you know everybody's understanding what our safety protocols are making sure that students know they're being protected in this way in that way and so that will be something that we'll be looking to build on too district operations got favorable ratings uh this is a great one technological resources high saying um 95 are feeling that you know that's a really high um group saying excellent or good back you know 10 years ago that would not be the rating for our tech department so that that's showing a real solid mark for technology which i think is which is excellent and then this bottom part says the net promoter score is public confidence in the school district and can be connected to growth and that this positive score indicates

016more people are promoting their school or district than detracting from it which is which is important too that's actually a slide that happens later in the presentation okay so we can scroll to the next one okay this is where we need to do a little bit of work as it relates to who's taking the survey we feel strong about that this parent guardian number is a good response very statistically significant in that you know we did have 1132 parents and guardians take the survey out of 6 000. now would we want more yes but um this is a is a good number according to k-12 insight and we know that trustee hayward has some background in this too um campus-based staff 212 out of 665. that looks good our concern is what happened here with

017the secondary students with 20 surveys delivered to our secondary students only um you know 200 responding that tells us that we need to do better next year in being very organized around the timing of the year when we do the survey and also how we roll it out and provide time in school to take the survey now it's it's always going to be optional but you're going to see that the elementary students in heritage out of 683 567 took it meaning there was a more coordinated effort during school to have the kids take the survey or at least they were invited to take it and providing time so that is something that we know we need to make an adjustment for next year moving forward okay if we go to the next one okay so

018this is the overall school quality comparison by respondent type and you know you get concerned when you have a lot of yellow and red over here saying fair or poor these are pretty high overall ratings about how parents and guardians campus-based staff and students in grades four through five are feeling about the schools now you know do we look and say okay 200 students at the high school and middle school level took the survey and there is a greater percentage saying that we need to work on school quality yes we definitely want to look into that but another thing we need to do is make sure we have more more respondents which i think is going to be a key focus moving forward next year as well okay let's go to the next one please

019okay i'll keep going a little bit further okay so this is called dimension scores comparison by respondent type so there are these general buckets of questions that were asked an academic support future focused skills student support social emotional learning school leadership family involvement and safety and behavior and that's what i meant by revising the survey we didn't used to have it set up in those buckets quite like this but now we we wanted to make sure that we were getting at a variety of different topics as it relates to what we were asking people and we've separated in this way feeling like these are really important areas that we're working on now you notice that it doesn't say in particular an equity category that doesn't mean that there aren't those questions embedded in this survey

020however we gave a separate survey this year about equity so we were trying to make sure that we're not always duplicating our efforts when we're asking questions to our students families and and our teachers as well and staff so if you look here you're largely looking at these categories and you're trying to look at outlying areas that you would want to address so one in particular that we are going to want to address is okay we've been talking about social emotional learning and our students and again a smaller number there at the secondary level said you know 51 percent are strongly agreeing or agreeing that um we're doing a good job in an area yup something to look at but again we got to make sure that we have a a sample size that we

021feel is strong for you know how many people we actually have the students that we have at the secondary level but anyway what we do is we then go through and look at these results as a teaching and learning team central admin team and with our admin team as well and we start talking about well why do we feel like this area is higher than that area and we do want the public to know that we do pour over this data i think sometimes people think that we give surveys and nothing happens with it we we spend time looking at this because we do want to improve and our goal is to get better we talk all the time about lifelong learning and the district believes that not only about for our students but for

022our staff as well okay so we go to the next slide this actually looks at just what the heritage student said and so we'll look at this and we're going to look at we're going to look at a couple things here we're going to say okay glad that we have a pretty strong showing of safety and behavior but you know 70 percent talking about academic support you know we're going to dive into why do 30 percent feel that maybe we don't provide as much academic support as we would we would want and you know that includes things like are they challenged in school are the topics relevant to them again these are buckets of questions but we're going to be looking at all that information as well okay we'll go to the next one and

023this identifies if you scroll down just a touch um or the other way just a little bit more so we can see the the cat there we go so this is parents and guardians out of all the items that were asked these were the highest ranking items and it talks about agreement level i'm not going to read through all of them but one of them that we think is great is we talk a lot about how we want families involved and this speaks to that with 91 teachers having high learning standards and expectations for all students parents and guardians um saying that 88 of the time that's true that's that's that's good and so we look at these and say okay we want to build on that information and then we also go to the

024next one so now we say well what are the areas that they are most concerned about our parent and guardian base this is one that we've been talking about for a while but the financial literacy piece we've talked a little bit briefly that this is actually going to be a required course in high school in 2024 i believe at any rate this is not just salinary schools parents and guardians that share this concern but it's really something across the state so we look at that and then we also talk about social emotional and behavioral support individual needs support that would be known more as differentiation and how we're helping with meet the needs of all students and then how we're enforcing discipline and then finally assessment report card feedback accurately communicating what a student is

025mastered how does that show how do parents understand what that looks like now you could say well well how low ranking is this i mean he still had for this one 82 on the assessment report card that didn't report that there was a concern but with that said we still need to look at what areas are lowest and then determine why and what are some improvements that we can make moving forward okay so we go to the next one okay and so this is our staff so that that's the group reporting so the highest ranking consistent with the other group on high learning standards we thought this was a good one that school administrators are courteous when they have a concern as staff members it shows that our administrative team is providing strong response to

026that this is great there's a teacher counselor other staff member who a student can go to for help with a school problem again we we spoke about you know seven six or seven years ago forty percent of the students reporting that they could they have a person this is our staff saying that they feel confident that the staff is available for our kids when they have specific concerns they want to go talk to and that students are challenged with their work and this is a if they have a technology problem again i kind of think that speaks to our strong technology department and really making themselves available to not only our staff but but our students to help them too okay if we go to the next one okay now we look at some areas

027that are when it says campus-based staff that means anybody that is employed in the selenary schools that took the survey okay so they spoke about this um we saw this before that enforcement of discipline and seeing maybe some inconsistency they also mentioned financial literacy uh some additional support and social emotional behaviors this one demonstrating understandings of the complexities of culture and global issues and also effective communication skills we're talking about the importance of that as students are moving you know out of our high schools and moving into jobs a communication piece is really important so these will be some areas that we analyze moving forward okay if we go to the next one now we're looking at students and again this is a smaller sample size but these are some of the areas that they

028said were really ranked high and that is this is positive when we say there's a teacher or counselor that they can go to with a school with a problem that's a strong number same thing with technology a wide variety of extracurricular activities being offered a variety of academic courses we pride ourselves at in particular at the high school level on the through all of this still being able to offer students with so many different experiences whether it's a cte experience ap courses uh you know health pe just just the the magnitude and the number of courses we feel is very strong and and we feel like that reflects that the students feel that way too and then the high learning standards and expectations for students that's great to see that so we go to the

029the next part this is lower ranking items this is an important one that we need to look at that you know although a sample size of around 200 of the students are feeling like they do not always understand how lessons relate to life outside of school and as we talk about the importance of you know being global learners global leaders our compass that's going to be an important one that we continue to have you know our teaching staff address we look at this as we talk a little bit well quite a bit about diversity equity and inclusion and that how students are treated fairly regardless of race cultural religion sexual orientation gender gender expression or disability and a fairly high number don't agree that that's happening staff in my schools teach students how to care

030for themselves this is sort of that social emotional wellness piece that that could be improved the discipline being enforced fail fairly that kind of connects to some of the um part about treating fairly regardless of their race and so forth and then school-wide strategies that teach model and reinforce social-emotional skills outside of the classroom so these were some of the areas that we would want to look at to improve in okay if we go to the next one so this is our last section here with students at the heritage level um being able to speak highly to all these areas feeling safe and knowing about security putting forth my best effort not allowing bullying to occur talking to an adult if they need help with technology and being treated with respect that's all very positive

031information and then if we go to the next slide we look at some areas that we do want to look at so when this question about my schoolwork is challenging most of the time 33 of the students and there were a fair number that took this survey said that wasn't the case so we really want to do we do want to look at that one and if you recall one of the first slides spoke about 70 percent saying that they were you know they supported everything that was happened in the academic environment while this does speak that there's this 30 percent out there at least at the heritage level that says that's something that we need to be looking at talking to adults about a personal problem giving more feedback on how they're doing responding

032quickly when a student is bullied and giving real life examples in class but you can see that largely these students were ranking the school highly because these are still pretty strong numbers i mean 91 were saying that teachers were giving real life examples in class so i do think we have to consider you know how many students were taking the survey and um you know you're you're you're you're sometimes picking for areas that need to be focused on when the vast majority is reporting you're reporting that things are going really well in the school okay if we go to the next one this is just looking at district operations so these are things that um you know maintenance of school buildings so we look and report this type of information back to rex and his

033team and you know you look at this and yep the students are definitely more critical of these areas they just are but but i think this really is positive that you know out of the pretty large percentage of parents and guardians that took the survey their outward feeling about maintenance or school buildings is very positive in 91 so you got to look at you know who's who's answering the questions and so forth and some strong support in some of these other areas you know you look at this transportation piece and you say well you know why are some students feeling like that's not the case there's no question that we're working on and we talk to rex about this all the time the the ability to staff our um you know our buses and bus

034drivers is really challenging um never been more challenging not just in this district but all districts and a point of pride for rex and his team is last year we didn't we weren't canceling any routes this year we're looking at that are we going to need to make some adjustment with routes because of the shortage of drivers that is not improving it's good it's we're going the other way there despite you know rex's i'd say heroic efforts to make sure that we are really doing everything we can to hire bus drivers so you know um if you know people that can drive a bus we we need that support moving forward okay if we look at the next slide we're coming to the end here so we go to the next one okay this is

035that you saw something at the very beginning about net promoter score this is kind of looking at the whole thing about it how likely you're going to recommend the school to a family or friend and they break it down by this promoters like giving the highest rating positive passive being more in the good to average area and detractors being in this you know not going to be recommending at all and so i did ask amy ball she's our our person who does surveys i said well what what does this mean is this is this of high quality she feels she says yes that this would be um really strong results for this type of question this is by school and then if you go to the next slide which is one of the last slides

036this next one looks about about identical but it's district and that's actually positive because you do want there to be this correlation between you know strong schools and overall you want people to have a sense that all the schools are strong and that the overall recommendation to support the district is is there okay i think that is the end let's go to the last slide but i believe that's yes there we go so that's that's the conclusion of what we have now there were she actually had all sorts of different reports and slides this is the snapshot that was put together to share with the board of education so questions about the survey data susan oh yes um so just a couple questions um so i noticed that i'm gonna give an example um so

037the social social emotional um or whatever topic it may be where the staff are like yeah we're doing super like you know we're supporting the students but then we get a response where the students are like i totally don't feel supported um and so i'm just wondering how i guess that's taken as far as how we can change perspectives of you know why we're working on this specifically and that communication between the staff and the reasons why um they may be focusing on a certain issue so so an example another i guess this goes into my next question the wellness committee for example asked one of those questions and it was i believe just to the students of do you have someone to go to and so they were able to provide you know anonymous

038or their email if they wanted to connect with someone so that was great um so i guess that's a question about if we only had like that's a super small number with the sixth through twelfth grade if there's any sort of like mid-year assessments that we're looking at for those grades that we had a lack of response i don't know if you've thought about that or if i'm missing something on well i think what we would do here is probably not a mid-year because we are trying to be sensitive about you know how much we're surveying students but for certain when we get to the next spring cycle we're going to be you know more cons more concerned about how do we make sure the students are having the opportunity to take it at school

039because we i mean in theory we should have that number up to 75 percent 75 to 80 of the students taking it that would be ideal because you just feel like we'll get a better picture of overall of what's happening there um so we're going to we're going to really focus on that next spring but in the interim you're right there is this question about why do sometimes the teaching staff or just our staff in general answer um you know is more supportive than what students are saying and sometimes you're seeing that with the parents and guardians too giving i think the school maintenance one is a good example here's the students feeling like well you know that they don't feel like the the the schools are up to par but 91 percent of the

040parents do like that's a really strong number and the parents are the ones that are entering the building and probably being critical because they have some lens of what it should look like based on other districts and others communities so i think there just sometimes is a disconnect on what students think and what the other adults think and i do think it's something we need to look into because why is that why do why is there a greater percentage of students that feel like their social emotional needs aren't being met than the teaching staff i can't answer that for certain but i do think it's something that we need we should be exploring thank you yeah i'm concerned too about the sel i'm less concerned about the student the disconnect with the maintenance of the

041building so rex but i am concerned i'm curious to hear i mean one of the questions really begs deeper digging and it's the fact that both the staff and the students said as high as 35 and 39 that discipline was not fairly enforced do the administrators had did they have any insight into that number because that seems pretty high or there are a lot of people in the school with concerns well i will say this we just got this data i mean the final reports just came through so it will be something that we explore with them to look at we do talk a lot about the need as we move into next year to reset some of the structures in the school i mean we were you know coming out of some of the

042ways in which we were trying to get kids back into the buildings um through through the cove pandemic and i i get that it's not it's not over but we are trying to get back to a more i guess i'd say normal start of the school year and one of the things we are trying to make sure that we are focused on is the structure of the school and so that there is greater consistency with you know whether it's discipline or you know some of you are seeing on social media the plan to move with a different cell phone policy so i do think that will help as we move to um you know more structure in the buildings as we get ready to start this year to potentially have more uniform enforcement of discipline

043and fairer i wasn't hoping for you to speculate at this early stage but i'm i i'm glad it's on everyone's radar going forward thank you okay um i want to underscore the point that um secretary eustep made or i'm calling you secretary i'm so used to saying secretary trustee is that former secretary made about the social emotional piece because i think that's so important and it was a theme throughout so i'm glad to hear that you will be looking into that and exploring more because i think the students feeling like they're not supported or a large majority of students feeling like they aren't supported is is important to look at one of the things that i thought would be helpful and i wasn't sure if this survey did that but for when they answered either

044fair or poor was there an option by question to add a comment because i think it would be helpful in addition to like a general comments at the end to have it aligned to the question so that if their specific feedback related to that safety and behavior or social emotional et cetera they could enter that information so maybe for further future iterations i just think that would be really helpful yeah or potentially pulling out some of the questions that we're most concerned about and figuring out ways to get more commentary because that that's not exactly how these are set up to gather that additional feedback but as we identify areas that we're more concerned about or areas that we feel like we're doing you know great in we do want to see more narrative feedback

045as to why i think that's important go ahead i was just going to ask out of curiosity how specifically concepts such as financial literacy would be included in a curriculum especially in the high school level would it be incorporated in a different class would it be in hornet time or would it just be a new class added to the curriculum yeah that actually has not been determined but i do think that that's a good point when um you know the michigan department of education says the districts need to offer that the question is does that mean to every student in a certain way embedded in math class as a separate class those will be all things that we will explore because i think you're right how we roll that out does that mean it's going

046to influence all students or is it going to be an elective so there'll be there'll be um you know discussion about how that plays out okay jenny i was just going to mention um that you had mentioned that this was a benchmark survey so i i know that we've learned a lot from this and i think one of the key things that we're learning is how can we how can we er exploring is how can we get more student participation so i want to just mention that i appreciate that it's a benchmark and look forward to seeing that improvement um next year i also think in hearing this report that it just echoes what we've heard from both from anecdotally from parents and students and staff from a state and national research over the last

047year that the three major concerns are academic behavior or discipline and social emotional and um so i appreciate that while we didn't have a high sample size of students we had a pretty good sample size of teachers or staff and parents and that we can we can also have in the back of our minds that this is echoing what we're hearing nationally and statewide too so a focus on sel especially is going to then impact the academic achievement and behavior in classrooms i believe so one thing that i forgot to mention that's reminding me is that in me talking with cara davis about another survey that we did give earlier which is the equity survey there are some still consistent themes in this one even with the smaller number of students so it's not to

048try to act like the state is not important because it was only 200 secondary students it still is important and we need to dive into it um and we will yeah and that's just kind of what i was thinking that it echoes what we've been hearing so we can continue on with the plans that support those those areas so i appreciate the work that people are doing to support students especially in the area of sel i know that that our classroom teachers and our guidance counselors and social workers are all really focused on improving the experiences and you know just overall experiences for our students i will add with that that we've used some of our esser funding to bring in some you know behavior intervention in this specialist and also a heritage counselor so

049um we are making some moves to make sure that we're addressing addressing it i know you had a question all right yeah there are a couple things that have come up that are important to me number one i'm glad to hear you talk about like survey fatigue about making sure that when we're surveying it's pointed and it's important that we that people know the response rate is important because we only give surveys that are quote unquote important right so i'm happy to see about that uh i was going to ask allison about what she thinks with regards to high schoolers and improved like response rate do you think just administering during the school day is enough do you have other thoughts or ideas i think to some extent if you start to force the students

050to take the results i think inadvertently they might change because i think having it not be optional changes the way people respond because i think part of the reason why the results may look the way they do is that it was an optional survey taken at the end of the school year and so i think if you're a student taking this you're taking it because you have a very high or very low opinion of the school and that you're using the survey as kind of a sounding board for that and so i think it could be an option to explore to present it during hornet time or a specific class but i also don't know if it becomes required that it would have the same i guess validity well then for people that participate i

051mean i don't know just just a point of clarification so dinner with a trustee no maybe so allison great answer um but i just had a point of clarification there even if there was possible time allotted for secondary students to complete the survey it would never be required it would always be optional correct okay correct even if we said hey we're allowing 30 minutes in hornet time for students to take this survey we encourage you if you would like to participate but it will never be required and then the last thing i want to ask about is this uh you know the 40 of students who said that they wanted to have more information about how to care for themselves via emotional health physical health and stress management so i guess this is really like

052a teaching and learning team but are we going to do some type of professional developments and things that are targeted to our staff to provide those resources to our students because it appears to me like we need to provide those resources we need to to dedicate time to it this is where you end up sharing that information with our counseling staff our social work staff and brainstorming ways to okay this is being asked what are the current ways that we that we do that and um what are ways that we can bolster that so it would be you know analyzed by the team and then they would go out and determine who else needs to be involved in making decisions about how we could improve in that area or explore more about that particular question

053christie hayward sure thanks um so since this is kind of uh where my professional background lies um i'd just like to uh take the opportunity to say that um i i think you've done a great job and i'm glad that um you know you you really flagged up um both um the big methodological concern that i i would have looking at this which is that seven percent response rate in secondary students which we all know is bad and needs to be improved um and also the big um kind of content takeaways from this which are um you know those areas of strength and those areas that um [Music] the other trustees flagged up about especially discipline and equity and social emotional learning that are being brought up both by staff and by students so you

054know just going back to the the low response rate in the secondary student um population obviously you know we we heard about the wellness survey um a couple of months ago and we did a lot better job at the high school level anyway of getting responses there because that hornet time was was given to to um students to to to um respond to that so that looks like a good a good possibility going going forward but i also wonder if you know given the number of these these surveys and the concern about survey fatigue if we could think about spacing these out how we're spacing these things out through the year and whether it would be worth kind of doing um a focus group with a few high school students and middle school students at

055the beginning of the year maybe to to kind of generate some ideas about what might motivate them to to be be more interested in responding to these things let me address the first question though i think it's an important one and that is there's is there more of a scheduled way in which we're going to do surveys yes the teaching and learning team um shannon and cara have looked at that and are now putting that in practice that's saying yep this this um survey that we just gave the school quality survey given every year in the spring this is the timing and this is the way we're going to administer it like that's now in place along with a rotation of every other year for an equity survey and then we ask the community about

056a sex education survey so rotation on that so we're not every year coming up with four or five different surveys really we think there there is you know maybe the window for two a year type of thing if you start getting into four and five people are not paying attention anymore and and they're feeling like you either don't need the data or aren't going to look at it so i think that's important and then the part about the focus group we can certainly be talking to high school students about it we do meet with them every so often especially with some of the leadership teams and we do ask questions about the high school and what can we do better to improve this can be one of those areas we bring up and i would

057just like to um you know say that that a big area of strength is obviously for uh for heritage an 83 response rate is is incredible in any in any survey context so whatever whatever they were doing there um that looks like a great model to try and extend to um to other places to the extent that's possible obviously it's very different environments yeah i think it we covered everything here thank you for thinking about the schedule of surveys that that was going to be my number one comment that this came in the midst of others and it was very late in the year so and being cognizant of when it's being given to students around testing and things like that just so we can keep keep that in mind um the only other thing

058i wanted to say is there were i appreciate all of us focusing on our opportunities for improvement because there are some challenges that were revealed here there were many many positives as well so just wanted to thank buildings and grounds and administration and staff for some really good scores and some important areas as well i i think that's important to note that we're often um looking at the areas that we can improve and i do that all the time to focus on my own growth as a superintendent but when you do talk to somebody like amy who does the analysis for a living she does state that the salinaria schools do do great with this survey overall you know and certainly there are some areas to improve on but i think i appreciate you pointing

059that out okay thank you all right oh gently well and just in that vein they're always going to look for like because some of those percentages even for the most concern were were really minimally concerned so they're always going to look you're always going to have something that falls into that area of of of improvement so um i think that's important to note too that there's there are always going to be four or five things that pop up because we're looking for where do we focus our efforts and our energies to improve yeah and i think that's great that's a great strength of our staff whether it's our admin team or our um teachers and support staff they are always trying to get better and it's part of what we do in the school district

060so i appreciate it all right thank you moving to our second scheduled report back to school report anna brittnell director of communications kara davis director of teaching and learning and kurt ellis assistant superintendent for human resources whenever you're ready as you'll see here in a minute we've all been very very busy since we met last time seems like a long time ago too thank you ben from my end in human resources i'll be relatively quick since we met last time we've had 52 employee transitions and just kind of for the record that includes those who have separated from the district those who are new hires or those who have changed assignments and i highlight that number because in and of itself it doesn't sound like a lot but every one of those things touches a

061lot of other areas and so if there's a new hire we need to issue a laptop we need to issue an aup we need to create a an email address we need to assign a room we need to assign a phone number etc and so these things sound really really easy when they're in my office but they literally touch just about every area of the district when that stuff happens the same thing happens when somebody separates there's the process of collecting all that information and and again it seems very very easy but but even the change of assignment somebody moving from one room to another one building to another generates a lot of work for other folks within the office specifically you'll remember when we executed our last contract with the sca step and lane

062changes are scheduled to take place here at the end of this month so we have one more pay on our on our 18 month bridge that we've done and then starting in september we moved to the new pay scale and because it's an entirely new pay scale it involved 311 individual moves for people and so amy tyson in particular has done a great job with that but the rest of that team with kelly shelley and carly have done really well with that as well and and even though the end is near we're going to start school right after right before labor day whether we're ready or not we still have some holes to fill and and i want to kind of echo what superintendent lodge said a little bit ago here we do have some

063really really important things that we need to get done before we start school we're looking for a french teacher and i know the high school's interviewing this week to look at that but but we literally had one applicant for that position gone are the days with some of these positions where we have 30 40 applicants they're just not out there and to superintendent lodge's point earlier it's not a saline phenomenon there's nobody that has these positions we're looking for special education from the director down to teachers into the paraeducator world one of the things that has occurred in the last two weeks july 25th the legislature passed pa 184 of 2022 which allows retirees to come back to work my phone has not run off the hook since that happened nobody is saying hey i'm

064glad to have this out here but it does create some opportunities for some people um there is a bit of a hiccup to it in the sense that you have to have been retired for at least nine months and so we had as an example we had an individual who retired for us in june with the july 1st effective date that had every intention of coaching crew or rowing for us in the fall and on july 25th he and the team found out that that could not happen without jeopardizing his pension and his healthcare subsidy which is obviously a big deal so we've had to scramble to fill that i think ultimately it will provide some relief for us but temporarily it's caused a little bit of heartache for that one particular program and that

065one particular individual i would caution the board and i know you guys engage politically with our legislators i think that this has some impact for us on the short term but when you have a pension system that's contingent on people feeding the pension system so that the people who are receiving it can get one having people that are not feeding that pension system take holes or slots that used to be filled by others is not a long-term solution that we want to be a part of so as you talk to the your legislators please do um share your thoughts on that um most significantly in terms of need as bus drivers and uh uh and the runs um i know superintendent lotch mentioned that we did a great job last year i cannot overstate the

066work that rex and tracy and that entire crew do every morning it's who's not here who can take what run etc etc and that rubber band is stretched just about as far as it's going to go and so he's working on some some contingency plans um i know that it's not for today's discussion but there are also some things happening in the city relative to road closures and construction that are going to complicate things for us so bus drivers is an area of critical need and so if you know people that are interested in doing that we obviously need them and lastly in terms of us being able to kind of fill our holes and serve our students well we need pair educators that's a long standing ongoing need and again not specific to slain

067it's it's everywhere but it is a real need it was interesting i had a conference call this afternoon with my colleagues from dexter and chelsea and in chelsea just in the last two weeks they've lost their payroll specialist their benefit specialist and their accounts payable person in ann arbor they don't have a benefits coordinator or a payroll person so i hope that doesn't have a negative impact on you mrs miller yeah um but but it's it's just a really really interesting time uh in the k-12 and in fairness it's everywhere i mean you go to a restaurant it's hard to get service because they can't find people to work so it is a challenge for us but we're continuing to work at it and will all year long i think that we used to have

068this cycle of hiring that went on in june and july and then we get ready to go in august i think cycling now is a 12-month process but we're really excited about the people that we're bringing on board a enthusiastic crew that wants to be in saline and i think that's really important for us so that is what our summer has looked like since we last met i'm going to turn it over to mrs davis thank you and i do have to credit assistant superintendent ellis for you know getting all the puzzle pieces of all the people where they need to be to the extent that we can because it has been a non-stop summer of interviewing and hiring and providing information to our staff so that we can do the really energizing and fun

069things like professional development and learning which is as you'll see later about culture and climate competency um and really bringing our staff on board so we are committed to fostering a positive culture of professional growth and promoting collective district level momentum around continuous improvement so now that we are here in august this is considered our launch month but i would be remiss if i did not say that the amount of self-learning that teachers and staff do across the summer months is absolutely incredible especially here in saline we have had teachers in ap training pltw training summit training doing on their own curriculum hours that they have where they've set some goals and worked with partnerships across the district in order to improve their craft and their curriculum so that they are continuing to meet the

070needs of our students in a ever-changing environment so our launch is often on the heels of some incredible work that's happened in the last couple of summer summer months so we do thank you have a really robust professional development cycle to bring staff back on board and while this is a snapshot of our year-long professional development opportunities we're really focusing on our intros so our opening days our teacher leader work and then of course our new teacher a cohort success series and we've worked really hard as a teaching and learning team to put our heads together to be really responsive to the feedback that our staff has given to us and that our building principals and our district leaders has given to us about what makes the best professional development and we've learned that having

071some additional flexibility being able to differentiate based upon your role and being cognizant about how we're running professional development makes a really big difference so when we think about what we're coming into to set up for success again culture climate competency and of course confidence as well and starting the year off well the left side is kind of covering some of our new staff opportunities we're going to be launching with a new staff induction that assistant superintendent superintendent ellis will be running on the morning of august 17th i mean this is a great one because it brings all of our new hires together we're also really being intentional about who's where when we're our teachers and our para educators and our food service providers and transportation are together in the same room because we're all

072serving students so that induction will kick off on the 17th um with some logistical training in the afternoon for our certified teachers we're involving of course some luncheons food makes a really big difference especially when we're making them working luncheons where we've got our admin team coming in to partner with our new staff and then of course our we're partnering with the saline education association for lunch and with a certified staff on the 18th we have onboarding schedule all ready to go jen and kelly take the lead on this our two instructional designers and we also partner with our instructional technology team and the mentors as well last year we started inviting the mentors to the new teacher training so that they have an additional opportunity and a structured way to start again off with

073success to set up for that success and know what the expectations were for the year another opportunity for them to see the bigger picture so we're doing that again this year and then even in the new staff training we are really cognizant about some of the feedback we've received from the different roles so if you're a social worker or a counselor you have a slightly different responsibility to start the school year than you might if you're a gen ed teacher or a special ed teacher so we work to make sure that the schedule that we have for professional training is attentive to that and then we set up for success inside of that new teacher training knowing that that cycle will be ongoing throughout the year we did learn early on in our staff development

074cycles with new teachers that of course the fire hose syndrome is real so too much information right from the get-go is not always the best way to support our teachers so we've really worked closely with human resources to decide on the best in special education deciding what is the best schedule and cadence of training so that teachers get what they need when they need it um not all at once necessarily and coming out in a variety of different formats then on the right hand side we of course are also supporting all of our professionals at a whole district level so this year's whole district professional development theme is inclusion is from policy to practice we actually are starting tomorrow morning at 8 a.m so we'll be here we have about 100 educators who signed up

075for what we call a flex pd which is this is part of that flex idea in which they are able to elect tomorrow to come earlier and that is in lieu of coming in the afternoon on the 24th which is also our elementary open house so it gives them a little bit more time back they're still doing the required pd but it's not a constrained time that was also creating stress when they really wanted to be doing that so that's starting tomorrow morning shannon steve and i will be leading that we'll be doing some stations around the transgender policy bridge to civility and our new digital device guidelines to talk about some of the policy and guidelines that we put in place to create safe spaces safe and include inclusive spaces as well as doing

076some direct whole group instruction as a part of that then we'll also incorporate before school starts building level professional development that's oriented around building goals and that is generally led by building principles and the vision that they have for their buildings that is primarily starting on august 25th but there's a launch portion on the 24th as well and then we have a variety of role specific training between here and there and i should stop to mention that in the next 50 years the 15 days starting on august 8th through august 25th out of the 15 days we have 10 days where professional development is offered so it's quite a robust schedule that we are running with a lot of different players involved to make sure that our staff have what they need karen hervey monica

077ellis um steve shannon myself julie kelly essentially kelly jen kurt anna and then our our departments too so it's a real team effort to make sure that everybody has what they need and then we are also partner with the wisd of course offering a county-wide professional development opportunity this is optional for our staff and that is on august 22nd it's the monday before we start our own launch days on the 24th and the 25th all right that feels dangerous it's the wrong button anna so i'm going to turn over to anna who has to give her presentation without any slides that might be a sign the theme is for the wisd's training what is a culturally responsive classroom look like got it okay we're in business i think so just sticking with a little bit

078of the team theme that cara um just spoke to um i wanna i wanna talk on behalf of the core team here at central office and you heard a little bit from curtin the hr team and what they've been doing all summer and what they still have to do between now and really that's continuous throughout the year cara and and teaching and learning in that team and everything that they have to do we have rex clary here who has been operating short staff forever for what it seems to me and he's driving a bus twice a day and still doing his job and making sure nothing nothing ever fails miranda i don't know how you do your job i don't think anyone else on earth can do it jay grossman's a part of that team

079and from a technology standpoint the work that his team has to do to get tech devices ready for students and staff to come back um it's a it's a big load and then of course you know steve he's a superintendent so the the expectation level from both our internal kind of school community and our broader community i don't think is going to change it's going to be high expectations and all the things that we do and then you're going to throw on the largest bond ever in school history starting really last week we regrouped and talked about what this is going to look like and what the best way is to launch a successful campaign that will get us from now through november 8th so i'm just going to speak a little bit to it

080i'm sure that you'll be involved in a lot of things that are going to come up in the next eight to 10 weeks and then if you if you need any reports between now and then someone from our team will be happy to do that so kind of a two-prong approach um school and community um just go through a few of the things the the classroom model is uh a suggestion from king scott and clark in a way that they have found it to be very successful especially in a community like ours where the school is so tightly aligned and our parents are super involved so we'll talk a little bit about that later kara and steve have been working to arrange staff meetings quickly they're going to have to get out to the buildings

081right away because really we're in a campaign period now where because absentee has become so much more popular our campaign is really one in the month of september not so much october and november anymore so september is crucial and right away we're going to have to get into some of those staff meetings and really pull from some of the things that kara's talked about rpd and our you know all that stuff that happens up front for a teaching staff and building administrators building leaders we will lean on them we had an admin meeting today and we talked at length about their role and some supplies and things that we can give them to be successful to be able to answer questions and and support us at the building level friends in the classroom this is

082uh this is this kind of goes with that classroom model where basically every k5 teacher will be asked to identify one to two classroom leaders some of them will be the room parent or the room guardian and some of them may just be parents who are passionate about school bonds and understand what this means for the future of celine so they will identify one to two parents that want to get involved and then we will lean on them heavily to be that liaison between our message and what needs to get out there and that entire classroom list and and king scott and clark really believe that that model is is successful and has proven to be successful in other districts that they've worked with um from the 612 it's a little bit harder because the

083classroom model doesn't work as well with with obviously multiple classes so we're going to hit heavy on extracurriculars meeting with those groups that have parent groups who are generally really involved and passionate about some of the projects that are going to be happening from this bond and then of course we always lean heavily on our dpc group which is our district parent council that steve and i meet with once a month that involves all of our ptos and ptas k-12 from a community standpoint again celine community is always very very supportive and we we have a huge footprint in the community already so there's a long list of different things that we're going to get involved with be present at set up different booths and tables and informational and informational things for them to to

084really understand what this is for and what it does for our district and the broader community just some general marketing materials so obviously from the digital side with lots of social media we'll provide our building administrators our community ed steve and his what he does weekly with graphics that go out often with a cadence between now and november those will all be scheduled we're building a bond website we recently purchased a district level remind subscription so we were able to use the remind app in an entirely new way if you you may be receiving some of those messages in the coming weeks as we as we launch it off the ground that's another thing that needs to happen between now and the first day of school and then we will utilize our let's talk platform

085where we actually have a very bond specific let's talk page so people can just look for interest areas is what we call them on let's talk to get questions answered and then what's nice about let's talk is as a team we can collaborate so they may send something to superintendent lodge where he knows miranda has the best answer because it's finance related we can share it with her loop her in and then it really just makes us stronger as a team because we're all learning as we're answering questions together from a print side of things which you'll see in a minute bond boards are something that are provided actually by clark construction and king scott they have a liaison that we work with and they build the bond boards so in all seven of our

086buildings and the senior center you'll see eight different bond boards that are large and on display as soon as you walk in the building and we kind of extract everything from there there's first day folders we're going to work with building level admin to not only have something to stuff in those first day folders k5 but also available registration for 612. and that's going to happen fairly quickly obviously your flyers and postcards newsletters such as the senior center and then we are working to put together two to three mailers that will go out to the broader community in the mail based on the timeline and how we want to do it and then this is just an example so this is a bond board this is specific to heritage school kind of on the left

087on the left side they show a map or a or a yeah i guess a building map that shows exactly what's going to be happening based on um what that school needs and that was all established through the assessments and you can get we'll send you all of these so you have one of of each school to the right we've kind of identified three areas for education for facilities and for the future so in every building we like to list out what things are related to education what's related to the facility and what's related to the future oh perfect okay it goes to the let's talk and then at the bottom there's some renderings of some of the projects that might be happening in that building so every building will have one of these including

088liberty and then also the senior center and then we are able to extract this information to build some of those other items that i just talked about one thing that we have found to be interesting is obviously we we want to move quickly and get a lot of stuff off the ground but everything every single thing we do has to go through legal so we have to we have to create it we have to send it we have to draft it and everything goes everything from a small graphic to something as complicated as this so it's a it's a turn turn key type thing so and that is it for the bond for right now that's kind of where we are and if you have any questions please let me know that's it i'm just

089kidding i was also yeah that's i love these so i've heard about the bond boards and this is the first time i'm seeing it and i absolutely love the idea of building marketing and rising up through um through all of the schools to really make sure that the parents understand what the bond is about so i think that that's really great i love the idea of friends in the classroom that's wonderful and maybe they would all like to have free lunch with the foundation for saline area schools at the fall fundraiser because they are going to earn their lunch um so i appreciate that a quick thing for kara i just figured i'd go first this time i guess um i really really like how intentional you all are being around onboarding that can be

090an incredibly difficult but also fantastic experience and that they can bond together to support each other and that they can have other staff who have been here for longer really really mentor them so i really really liked this slide um and appreciate it the setting up for success that's exactly the slide that i saw i just wanted to say to kurt thank you for all of the work that you've been doing this summer i actually was talking with some community members out and about in the beautiful summer and they specifically brought you up by name and said they can't imagine how busy you are right now and that so people are talking about you and appreciate the staffing challenges that we have in many areas but really getting um everybody ready so the kids can

091go back so thanks questions comments i was just going to say that that flex pd idea is amazing i think that uh as a former classroom teacher that would have been something i would have definitely taken advantage of because those days when you're just pulling out every second that you can to get the classroom ready and especially an open house you want to make a great first impression so i really appreciate that you're offering that for staff and that's an idea i hope other districts will capitalize on because i know i would still appreciate that now even my 20-something year of teaching absolutely thanks um oh you need my paper in front of me um i guess sticking with the prefer professional development i like how you're looking at doing that throughout the year as

092well i think that's i think you all have already been doing that um that's super important and i appreciate it um so for hr um sorry i have my notes here um are there any like upcoming recruitment fairs um that we can like promote at the state or local level yeah we don't have any scheduled right now we've done hourly recruitment fairs some of the positions that we have and i'll use a couple specific examples we've had premier substitutes and building substitutes for the last probably eight to nine months and those positions are typically filled with people who were looking for teaching jobs and didn't find one that they wanted and so for us to hire for those right now is very difficult we will do an hourly job fair before the school year starts

093in the past we've partnered with the city and we'll certainly explore doing that again and when we do those hourly job fairs as predominantly bus drivers custodians and paras that we hire at those we literally will make offers on the spot we just haven't had tremendous turnout from those in the last couple of sessions that we've had but but we will certainly do that yeah let us know how we can promote on social media thank you yeah actually can we can we just take a minute for that for the two of you since you're here like tell us uh what uh what is required for a bus driver what is the in what are their incentives what is the typical hourly rate like can we kind of promote that a little bit right here sure

094so rex you can come on up and help me out here but um in terms of incentives yes we do offer a signing bonus which is pretty standard in that industry that number depends on whether you're certified or not and so as a prospective bus driver you kind of fall into one of two categories you're either a bus driver that's already got a cdl and has been driving some place or for somebody else or you're somebody that just is interested in starting this the people that are interested in starting it it's a little longer road as you might imagine because there's a lot of training involved in it what's that sorry it just comes naturally i guess um anyway but it does take a little while longer to get those folks trained and ready to

095go and it ends up we end up investing about 1700 just to get them certified while they're getting certified we typically use them as monitors on the bus so they can figure out what that cadence looks like we also have referral bonuses so if an employee refers somebody to us the thing that's really hard for us right now and i know this is really sensitive for rex because you know he interacts with his peers throughout the county it's a finite number of people and what ends up happening is they just keep going from one to the other to the other where we're really struggling right now and you as a board of education know this and so is our community people are privatizing transportation and a lot of other core services all over the county

096and we've not privatized anything and we feel like it's really important for our community and most of the people that work for us live in the community or live very close by and so we're really proud of the fact that we haven't privatized anything and as a result of that you know our wage might be a little bit lower than a private company is but we still have that pension system the tough part for us is that a lot of the people that are coming into the system it's really hard to see the value of a pension when you're 25 years old um and and it's it's hard to explain that to somebody who doesn't see that um in in a strange twist the affordable care act has had a negative impact on us hiring

097from the standpoint that benefits is also something that stands out in the k-12 world because our benefit packages are so so rich and so positive and yet i have people every day come and say i really don't care about that i'm still on my mom and dad's benefits and you can until you're 26 and so um but yeah we do have some of those programs in place directly money it's a six to eight week process to get somebody trained and to bring them in and to start that process the earlier the better and we like you said we use them as bus monitors we help them pass the cdl test at the secretary of state and at that point we can start training them as a bus driver it is a process though it doesn't

098happen and take in our incentive signing bonus we don't want to take other drivers from other districts but and we just don't get traction that way either so um and it's district-wide if anybody if you were up north this summer i'm sure you heard advertisement if you listen to the radio if you drove by bus lots there's always advertisements for need bus driver need bus driver need bus driver what's our retention rate then on that of putting in 1700 doing the training do we do we retain them and keep them year after year after year we have had good retention um i think that that it's certainly dipped in the last few years we have if you were to look at our staff and i'd be happy to bring this back to you this would

099be actually kind of interesting data to have like the seniority list of our drivers it's really become quite the spirit we have people that are 15 plus years which is a long time to drive a bus um and then we have a bunch that are in the first three or four years it's that kind of middle ground that seems to shrink and so if we can get past a certain point they stay um and and and i think the other thing that we've really tried to do in addition you know to go back into the one things we asked was the wage and we start just over 19 an hour so it's not a it's not an insignificant amount of money but i think one of the other things that we have really tried to

100highlight is is just how rewarding it can be if you see a bus driver that that has a great rapport with the students on their bus it really is kind of heartwarming to see those children go to that person out in the community um and those are the kinds of stories when we talk to the bus drivers they're the first face of the district every morning and they're the last face every morning and we have people that really embrace that and take great pride in that um but it is it is you know sometimes you're driving with 60 kids behind you on an icy road too so yep i'm gonna put you on the spot here a little bit so we have a sign-on bonus would some type of retention incentive assist us on in

101that regard or do you think that yeah no and we've done that in collective bargaining in the past in different ways i think what we saw from the union this year is they preferred just to have a different wage as opposed to a retention bonus and so we had in the previous contract there was a loyalty bonus um in what we've done and it's really because of the market um the market kind of demanded that we raise the the rate for everybody and so we did that i think we used to start at 15 15 45 an hour and went up to almost 19 and so we just converted what had been loyalty bonuses into that yeah yep yep no it's good questions one other thing that um that i was thinking about that you've

102mentioned before is that the number of hours can sometimes be an inhibitor because people need more hours so i know that in the past you've worked with other departments or other areas to supply more hours in a different way so it might not be driving bus can you talk a little bit about that rex so right now we currently have three bus drivers that do morning and afternoons and then they work either in the cafeteria or they do nighttime custodial work and we found we've got some traction with that that are eligible for benefits or they're always able to take the cash and loot for health benefits but then there are those that just want to work in the morning and work in the afternoon and not work on the weekends and not work on

103sundays not working evenings not doing sports trips so each person and substitute frank carries in the back row here frank is one of our super substitutes drives every day he's in the district but he also goes to florida he went to yellowstone this summer he didn't get washed away um but uh you know there are drivers like that will show up every day they're around but they also want to take their vacation time as well but that model we have reached out we have three drivers that are eligible for benefits and that do work in both departments and that's one thing that it was nice being in operations that i can do that i can work with larry in food service and make that mix as well so and i think one other thing that

104i just want to know is that privatization doesn't doesn't necessarily solve this problem it just takes this problem off of rex's plate and i think that the benefit of having rex in charge and having people with relationships to our community makes a huge impact and i can say that because i work in a district where things are privatized and the turnover rate and the lack of connection is is is noticeable compared to when to when i was here so i appreciate your efforts i know they're getting harder and harder and harder so if we can do anything to support to support you especially in in the areas that we've mentioned but also in in other areas um i know i have two kids who are being impacted by the french situation so um so you

105know if the board can do anything to help promote um let us know absolutely thank you it is a great opportunity to highlight the fact that we have not privatized things i know that is an ongoing fear i hear it all the time and i and i kind of and i'm not trying to make light of it but i say it's you know kind of like when my kids were afraid of the monster under their bed at some point you figure out it's not there and and we haven't privatized anything we're obligated by law to go out to bid on things but the reality is in transportation i'm not aware of a single success story anywhere in michigan where it's gotten better you get this influx of cash because you generally sell your fleet and

106then when you figure out it's not working you have no buses and and so it's just it's not a viable option for us the better option is to figure out who the people like frank are in our community and get them working for us and that's part of what we're doing is trying to to identify that kind of profile and be more targeted in our recruiting so thank you thank you frank and friends um any other questions for for curtin rexens we have had them up here excuse me i just had a um another question but um but it wasn't related to kurt it's anna my third okay i was going in threes with the hrpd and then i threw okay go ahead i may not have it that's why the whole team's here but

107i will do my best oh no i think you will um so you mentioned throne checking everything so um i obviously that's great and keeps us you know um keeps us in line and not you know um crossing so so part of that is um the way that staff right can talk about the bond as far as informing versus board members can go out and say vote yes you know so um i don't know if there's um like what kind of communication goes out i guess to the staff to make sure um that they're you know keeping things um not politicizing the the following not saying vote yes yeah and then how can we um i'm sure we'll be pulled in as board members and help help support that campaign where we can say oh

108yes sure yeah so starting with building admin and working down everything's going to kind of trickle down when we provide them with that first batch of materials digital and and hard print they will also kind of have a tips and tricks sheet what you can and cannot do another thing that we've done is even we don't expect we don't know all the answers we often will have to to to get counsel on how this works so we don't expect our building administrators or our teachers to have all the answers either so that's really the the goal of that qr code both on all of our items but then we also want to give every building administrator and staff member that would need them um little business cards that have the qr code and we want

109to let them know that they can be comfortable in saying i don't know the answer to that you know or if they're not comfortable answering in a way that may be supportive they can just hand them that qr code please submit your your question to to the through the let's talk and it'll be answered in a way that that we know will be on the up and up all right thank you might as well stay up there for a second i have one other thing i thought of um can you tell us how students will be involved in this so last year and i would love allison's perspective and you don't have to have an answer now but please think about this because this would be a wonderful area for you to get involved possibly

110with your your student body i remember we had about 350 seniors who turned 18 and registered to vote and that was a wonderful thing to see um and we look forward to them voting this year um how will you involve them i mean this bond is for them and we we talk about being student-led how do we how do we use them um to get what can help their studies and and help their um their future classes behind them sure i think if anything it will be a great experience we always talk about you know what happens after the bell and those experiences that we provide to students that will long term probably impact some of their learning more than what they do in the classroom sometimes so we've talked about involving them in the

111campaign process to the extent that we can there's obviously many student groups that require service hours and things like that and then there's the students that are just on the kind of political trail and and have interest in potentially going into some type of government job and are already interested in this so really getting with i think the addition of the activities coordinator position has helped us in many ways in getting students involved so we will lean heavily on those nhs groups and any service related groups to find out if there are students who want to be a part of what we're calling our champions team who can attend events with us and and there's nothing better than seeing a smiling kid at a tent as opposed to one of the eight of us so

112no offense but yeah we love seeing kids i was just going to share anecdotally that when i was a senior in high school i was i was on a team that was promoting a bond and so when i was just back home my brother and i were back home and my brother was talking about like different parts of the high school and i said um those weren't there when i was in high school we fought for those for you to have those so um it was a wonderful experience and and i think even more than just political aspirations just a connection to the community and um leaving a legacy on on a place that that you've spent a lot of time at so um i appreciate that that kids can choose to be involved if

113they'd like to be involved and share what their dreams and hopes might be absolutely any other final thoughts questions yeah allison you want to be on our campaign home allison let's go i will certainly look into it that's something you're interested in i was just going to say i think it's been shown historically that when students are given an opportunity to give back to their community and be more educated in the process that it happens um i'm speaking largely from a perspective of nhs because it's a group that i'm part of but we have blood drives where we get all these pints from students that really don't get a lot of incentive other than missing class and getting cookies which admittedly is an incentive but it's not monetarily it's it's mostly out of a concern

114for your community and there's also with nhs you have the the drives where we have our food drive in december where we got 13 000 pounds of food for this lean community last year and i think the selene student body something that i'm personally very proud of us for being part of is that when we have the opportunity we give back to the community and i think it would definitely be interesting to look into students to help promote these bonds because i think it's definitely something that we would have interest in awesome thank you sold sold i already wrote your name down any other questions or comments for the group all right we know you're busy so get back to it um thank you so much um moving on to our first and only discussion

115item tonight finance committee meeting update treasurer gerby all righty i'll try to give you a few things so finance committee met today and uh we had three things that we primarily focused on number one was the the bond and anna has done an awesome job of talking about the the boards and some of the promotional things so we talked about some of those kinds of things uh we talked about we've we've had some conversation about it's called administrative bulletin 1014 and it's basically a way that michigan public schools are ranked by by their financial data and we looked specifically at instructional support we looked at our instructional salaries our administrative costs those kinds of things and and i will tell you we continue to do what i i when i when i join the team

116one of the the strengths and it continues to be a strength is we spend our money in the classroom right like we really do and it it comes through in here at a you know school districts and were in the you know top 125 there on instructional services and 50 for for instructional supports and and our our administrative costs are relative are affordable you know we're 7.71 so out of 821 so now those things will be transient sometimes they'll change and go up or down depending on you know the support that our staff needs support that our students need those kinds of things but at the same time like we're spending our money where where we should and so that we wanted to look at that as a as a finance team and we did

117and i think we even talked about that a little bit at a previous meeting and uh so i think it was good that we we visited that and then the last thing that i'll highlight on the budget side obviously is we we care about the per the state a budget right and so the state a budget was signed into law july 14th by the governor and i'll give a few just highlights she proposed a 450 dollar increase for for students so that's a that's a good and solid increase per student that'll obviously help a lot and uh they are making uh specific investments in a couple of areas that are that in my opinion incredibly welcome number one um an increase to 75 percent funding for for special ed services in the school so that's

118a significant commitment being made to assist you know to special education services for students and i'm happy about that but there's some at-risk also increases and and i i i know that some of you know what i attended this meeting on the 20th of uh of july and that was also with trustee mcveigh and trustee estep was there as well and you know one of the questions was well then how are we going to get it right like and they asked us to kind of slow down and say well we haven't figured out is it going to funnel through the isd is it going to be grants and so miranda gets to have all the fun of that and she does her job incredibly but uh man i i'm sure she just loves that process

119but uh it is what it is and there are other things that are in here i don't want to get to in the you know spending forever a couple of things i thought were exciting they're they're trying to do some things to address educator education or educator shortages so some creative things around growing your own programs around student teacher compensation uh being able to to to do some of those things and and i think that those are things that will you know help the education profession to to be more marketable to be more uh we'll we'll obtain quality and great people in classrooms and that's the idea there's a there's troops to teachers and i'm just kind of scrolling through some of the notes and some of the things i have about early on education

120career and technical school safety grants they are making a significant change in my opinion with regards to school and safety grants and that is that before student school districts had to apply for these grants now what they're going to do is they're going to allot the money on a per pupil basis so you know every school will have access to that money and i think it's what it should be so so that is that and then the other thing is about mipser rates there was some pretty significant changes with regards to uh mipsers and funding and those kinds of things then the last thing we talked about on the 20th uh mr ellis already talked about this uh about this that pretty significant change with regards to uh the nine months and i guess i

121would back up and say you know yeah we're in need of parapros and bus drivers and custodians and guest teachers and and those people who would like to get into those areas who have been out of education for for nine months and want to do that we there is no longer a critical shortage list right so uh we would appreciate that support to staff classrooms so that if anybody has questions i mean there are like i said there's other things but those are the highlights brad mr trusty sec treasurer gerby you've been holding on to this information about bulletin 1014 i've i've just spent the last five minutes scrolling through it it's fascinating it really is interesting stuff i think i'd like to be in the finance committee next time any questions or comments for

122brad a lot of good info and he's clearly passionate about it so thank you very much um administration updates dr latch mine's very brief i'm really excited for the start of the school year and i really do want to thank um sort of the core team that was presenting tonight all the work that they have to put into getting the school year prepped is incredible a lot of people taking no vacation time because they can't although i will be encouraging that in the fall at any rate it's because we're trying to staff the district or even the financial piece with miranda and you know getting things rolled out communications for the bond we in buildings and grounds uh figuring out how we're going to approach the bus driver shortage so there's just a lot of

123work and then you already heard the heavy lift that the teaching and learning department is doing as it relates to professional development kara shannon and so forth just everybody's doing an incredible job and i'm lucky to be a part of it thank you moving on to board updates alison we usually have students go first do you want to do it first okay go ahead so my update again it's pretty short because the school year hasn't actually started yet but mostly i'm talking about our freshman orientation which is next thursday august 18th where our link leaders including myself will be orient orienting our freshmen to the new school so we're really excited about that and i believe on the same day the web leaders are going to be doing their sixth grade orientation for the sixth

124graders in the middle school and it's mostly for both of them it's just to get them used to the building and get them used to other people especially with the high school it's this huge giant building that's you know it's three floors it's so much bigger than anything the middle schoolers have been in before and so it's really important for this orientation for us specifically just to get them ready for the school year the high school sports began yesterday on the 8th or at least most of the fall ones including cross country cheer football soccer equestrian field hockey golf and rowing and then swimming begins on the 15th and the middle school sports are also starting to be also starting soon with volleyball cross-country and football starting i think yesterday as well and then finally

125we have our open houses coming up which we talked about a little bit and i know that pleasant ridge harvest and woodland meadows and heritage are on the 24th which i believe was mentioned earlier and the middle school will have their open house on the 30th and the high school will have and the alternative high school will have theirs on september 8th so again not a lot of information because the school year hasn't started yet but yeah i think that was a lot of information good work anyone want to follow that with a board update yeah jenny go ahead i would be um i would be taken to task at home if i didn't add that tennis also started yesterday because i have a tennis player so um so good luck to all the fall

126athletes and coaches thank you for uh you know your efforts for those i did not realize until i had a fall athlete for those of you with younger kids the best week to take vacation is the week before this so first week in august so as your kids are nearing uh the upper grades secondary grades um knowing that fall sports start this early is is uh sometimes a surprise so um stuff the bus is this friday so you might have been seeing boxes around town or your neighborhood might have a drop off i think there's a drop off at uh treasure gerby's house up the road oh and that and secretary jones okay and candace and there you go i i have uh i have a candidate for miscellane at my house so she will

127be here uh at stuff the bus on friday and then moving through the community to help uh with those uh with the other 15 or 14 candidates um there's 15 totals so they'll be helping and assisting with that stuff the bus which then leads us into our summerfest which i think um being a part of this community summerfest is kind of um i don't know it's kind of like it reminds me of like a reunion i i see kids and families coming back together downtown and seeing each other maybe for the first time since school got out so keeping in mind that those activities are happening this weekend um and then i just wanted to make a quick quick note um that while we have a lot of excitement and and we're talking a lot

128about fall i know in particular that there are some families that fall is going to look a little different for them this year um some of our staff members and so i just wanted to just publicly say that for families or for community members that fall is looking a little different um that you are in our hearts and minds as we approach this fall in addition to celebrating the return for many of our staff and students all right thanks jenny any other board updates yeah candace i have a quick one now that the cat is out of the bag that i'm not running for um school board this this fall um just have enjoyed my time serving on the board and it certainly has nothing to do with my experience here and just my love

129for this district and passion for this work but i have a lot of work travel coming up and just balancing that with being there for for my kids and wanting to be at all their activities and all of that so made that tough decision but um i'm excited for the the slate of candidates that are that are coming forward and and look forward to to the work ahead for them and continuing to be engaged as a parent but you're not going anywhere yet no yes this is not goodbye but i did want to address it now that it's public that's nice thank you candace um i'll go next um so today was our foundation for saline area schools monthly meeting um we take a month off in the summer um it was the official goodbye

130to anne hearst as our executive director um so wishing her well and i hope to see her around town and i know she's gonna be continuing to volunteer we welcome stacey ramsa as the new executive director excellent excellent choice hiring team she is an amazing volunteer and parent in the district and look forward to supporting her and the rest of the team and then we welcomed two new trustees one was able to join us today julie simon um the other will join us next time astria lilly and really looking forward to working with them as well the foundation for selenary schools had their best year on record 308 000 was the final number that did include one large gift of 100 000. um our sponsors are at 34. um so those are corporate sponsors that

131get back to our district um equaling 84 hundred dollars which is incredibly significant um a few dates that i know stacy and amherst would want me to mention summerfest as jenny said is coming up this weekend they will be at henny field from 10 to 2 please stop by as we talk about getting to a quote normal school year one of the key tenets of that is community involvement parents guardians and families and community members supporting the district and supporting the students so swing by and i'm sure they have lots of volunteer opportunities they can talk to you about on september 9th at the football game they will do the patio so you can stop by and get a little get a little wash and that's also our chad tough orange out night coincidentally so

132it's a great night to come out and support the hornets and then on october 13th we're having uh the fall fundraiser here at liberty uh lunch and conversation about all of our wonderful district building and teacher grants so please mark your calendars especially the trustees that are sitting up here and hopefully some of our classroom ambassadors or i forget what you called them kira maybe some of those folks can come the classroom bond ambassadors champions that would be that would be great and then finally steve and i worked together to onboard allison the other day and just talked a little bit about student showcase and setting those up for the year as well as kind of going through the agenda so she didn't come in completely cold and i knew she was going to soar

133and i'm really really glad that she's here so again welcome to her welcome any other trusty comments susan yes so a couple things on masb the budget that was so long ago in july when we attended the budget update with masb webinar so i won't talk much about that because i'm on policy and not finance and so i only catch part of it and i'm like yeah that sounds good so thursday i will be attending the masb legal workshop so i'm super excited about that touching on topics um you know over the past that have come up over the past year and um there's a panel on hot topics so i can't wait to to hear that um so and then um just a couple of things i have been reappointed for a third year

134to the masb resolutions and bylaws committee so i'm super excited about continuing doing that work and then also the masb annual leadership conference coming up in october in trevor city the program is now available and if you take a peek you will see my name in it so i'm presenting with two other trustees in other districts the session title is lgbtq plus school board members talk sex and gender just a little description here join three of michigan's lgbtq plus school board members as they delve into policies and practices that boards boards of education can take to continually support their lgbtq plus students so i'm excited to be partnering with some other board members and um i know it's come come up in webinars people have questions about um committees like the the cab or siebe

135um and so um that's come up um just within the webinars and so i think there's a an interest in that and especially um you know things going on um in the us and stuff so yeah that is all any other comments from trustees all right um moving on to consent agenda the following are offered as part of 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 will continue to be listed out individually in the minutes for this meeting i'd like to please entertain a motion and move to authorize the file oh i don't have to read it i'm so used to reading it i'd like

136to please entertain emotion to authorize approval of the consent agenda so mood michael thank you support miller jenny thank you all those in favor please say aye aye opposed hearing none motion carry 7-0 it's always a habit to still read those items scheduled on our next agenda dr latch so we will do a deeper dive into the bond proposal and also another back to school update all right this is our second opportunity for public comment betty do we have any slips all right so i will acknowledge that there is no second public comment tonight our next meeting the next meeting of the board of education will be held here on august 23rd 2022 at 6 30 pm i'd like to now please entertain a motion to adjourn the board of education meeting for august 9th

1372022 at 8 18 pm so move to miller support jones thank you candace all those in favor please say aye aye opposed hearing none motion carries 7-0 we are adjourned you