Saline Area Schools: Board of Education Meeting (05.24.2022)

001hold on test i'd like to please call to order the saline area schools board of education meeting for may 24th 2022 at 6 30 pm getting a little upset um i'd like to pause for just a second dr latch and i wanted to pause and take a moment of silence i'm sure my other board trustees and everyone in this room are heartbroken with the shooting this afternoon in texas at the elementary school if we can take a moment of silence please thank you very much um dr latch wanted to say a few words before we get started right so our thoughts and prayers go out to the families and the victims in the texas elementary shooting that occurred today we are heartbroken and thinking about those families and students we have already been in touch

002with local law enforcement both with sling pd and pittsfield police department and they will be extra vigilant in patrolling our near and in our school buildings tomorrow in addition we will have our counselors social workers and admin on alert and ready to provide counseling to any students or staff that need additional support so we do want the community to know that we are we are prepared for tomorrow and we will be ready to go all right thank you steve um if everyone could please rise for our pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you this is our first opportunity please for public comment a member of the

003public may address the board briefly for up to three minutes or request to be scheduled on the agenda of a future meeting please note that students will be given priority to speak on any topic the first public participation portion of the meeting will be limited to one half hour 30 minutes and limited to agenda items a second public participation portion will be offered at the end of the agenda for allow to allow for any other comment the presiding officer is guided by the rules set forth in po167.3 which has been reprinted on the public comment form collected this evening individuals addressing the board should take into the consideration the rules of common courtesy the public participation portion of the meeting cannot be used to make personal attacks against a board member district employee or student

004carter harris we'd like to start with you if you could um if you could please toggle on the mic so the green light is on secretary jones will time you for three minutes when you're 30 seconds out she'll show the yellow card when you're at three minutes you'll see the red card if you could just complete your thought i think you've done this before and i was talking with a community member today who had a good question we are not allowed to respond to public comments so that's why we thank people for their feedback and move on to the next one so i said i would clarify that tonight so whenever you are ready all right so of course thank you for everyone's time tonight but i just wanted to come tonight and offer my

005support um and encourage everyone for the bond renewal as submitted by uh mr raph dr lotch and everyone else who worked out at the school of course it addresses a ton of things that are important to students be it kind of improving infrastructure at schools um and countless other things but i really wanted to focus on tonight um the opportunities providing within stem of course it's no secret that stem is such a growing area especially in this especially around here with uh u of m ann arbor um being a hub for this with automotive and everything and just giving people better opportunities while they're in high school still and at middle school and in elementary school to gain those skills early because the benefits of doing that are clear from any of the people in

006the various organizations represented tonight can attest to whether it be experience the scholarship opportunities provided or numerous other things so and then of course it has stem in the title but the benefits are far beyond stem two especially within robotics which i've been involved in the opportunities for leadership leading our team really entirely student-run community outreach earlier this week we presented to the saline chamber of commerce and we just got back me and a couple of the other robotics team members from mis from working with them for a robotic showcase event there so it's really teaching students not just how to build a robot how to win how to do great but how to be great members of their community and be involved too and approving this bond giving greater money for this is going

007to help um uh help everyone kind of build up the level of these programs throughout and allow much more people to be involved and kind of build up these things within stem and outside of stem um and yeah give our kind of embrace the future focused that we are claimed so yeah thank you thank you carter happy almost graduation um next we have parent volunteer and sponsor mitchell rhode mitchell did i pronounce your last name correctly okay thank you very much whenever you're ready absolutely it's a hard act to follow there so uh i'll just i'll introduce myself my name is mitch road i'm a local engineer and entrepreneur i run a robotics company up the block i'm also the caretaker and owner of union school i'm also a volunteer mentor and sponsor of a

008lot of these steam and stem activities here in the schools so uh my company's logo as well as my personal funds go into a lot of those things i wanted to address the board tonight as i see for a long time i've been looking at what i see as a problem in saline area schools which is a lack of sufficient support for academic extracurricular activities especially in the steam area i see a lot of the coaching that goes on in these events while there are some teachers involved a lot of it is volunteer coaches there's very little teacher involvement in a lot of the very big big activities there's very little financial support that goes toward these activities and there's no dedicated facilities and that is one of the reasons i'm here tonight these programs

009by the way have survived and thrived nonetheless and and i'm very very proud to say that uh been having been affiliated sponsored the science olympiad team uh they were first in the region and third in the state at the high school level and the middle schoolers also scored quite well and and had effectively their best year ever at the saline high school as far as scoring goes so i was very happy to be affiliated with that and work with those guys but you know they win medal after medal after medal they compete these championships i see that the first robotics kids compete and do great work the destination imagination etc um hundreds of your brightest students have done super well and benefited from these programs for the past three years i've been meeting with a

010bunch of the different parents and volunteers working with the celine area schools administration for scott grade now steve and dave i found that they are willing to listen and make changes with regard to supporting these programs and looking at what's going on they are also we've been working with them on on talking about as you guys know constructing purpose-built dedicated areas for these steam teams so they're not stuck in borrowing classrooms and working in hallways and uh and frankly rat infested closets in the middle school and uh and so uh you know and that that's literal not figurative uh so um i've been very happy to see that dr loch and raft have presented a bond plan to include this space which i think is fantastic um i really support their approach uh i i'm

011i'm very enthusiastic about the the plans that they have on that front and i think it's fantastic and will be a big step forward um i did want to touch on one comment that i made in my email uh that you received i think about a week and a half ago um there was this notion early on of a field house construction and and as i expressed in my email i think that that's a catastrophically bad idea and a financial albatross for the the district and i speak as someone who knows how much it costs to run a school building i will say that as i said previously and i know i know steve and dave heard this that should a field house be inserted in this in this millage or in this bond i

012will actively work against it and i will redirect resources to inform the public uh so so this millage does not go in the way that we might hope i certainly don't want to do that i want to see the kids uh succeed i want to see the bond succeed and i want a better stronger sling area schools so if anyone has any questions or wants to talk to me afterwards i'm around and i'm always available so thank you very much for your consideration and i appreciate your time thanks okay thank you very much for your feedback um next we have parent michael lehmann michael did i pronounce your last name correctly okay like lemon perfect whenever you're ready all right uh well thank you i'm a celine parent and long time volunteer with academic competitive

013programs like we just heard about and i rise in strong support of the bond issue as presented on may 10th i think that the inclusion of the steam labs facilities for every school building the upgrade of the science labs at the high school and the technical education facilities are fantastic and that this will allow our students to get the scientific and technical expertise and the creative experiences that will allow them to be leaders uh in their future careers so it but it is a big bond it's uh but there are many renovations in there for the existing facilities uh the but as we saw in the survey from uh presented on may 10th as well there's strong voter support for it and so i i just rise to say i i greatly appreciate this bond

014issue i hope that it goes through and and the elements that are in it and i would strongly encourage you to not do anything that would jeopardize uh this bond from going forward thanks all right thank you for your feedback um we do have no other public comment on agenda items i have one piece for that would have been for the second um the parent has a conflict and asked to go first so i remember that we did that one other time so i just do a little little vote and see if we have majority that would allow one public comment pulled up from second to the first is there any opposition to that do you want a formal motion i i don't know if we need a formal motion if we did that i

015don't believe we did that last time i'm fine with allowing it because we have the extra time up front i will say that mrs sherman and mrs samp have asked to be rescheduled to the june meeting they will be presenting with the district parents council on the same topic they would like to be with their families tonight after what happened this afternoon so i respect respect their choice are there any objections to pulling one from second to first okay thank you uh amy sontag parent whenever you're ready thank you so much for letting me go on not an agenda item so hello my name is amy sontag i wanted to voice a few concerns that i have regarding a survey that our seventh grade children will be given on june 1st i emailed two weeks

016ago asking if we would be participating in the michigan profile for healthy youth survey i had several other questions as well the response to my email was you will have to give me more time to answer these questions this reply was completely fine however if you are going to give going to give a such a survey to our children then you should already know these answers when i did receive a response of back to my questions they were not even in complete sentences a link was provided to the fact sheet for the survey before i even emailed i had already done my research as a parent and reviewed the fact sheets my questions were not answered based off of the fact sheet and therefore i emailed asking my questions why has celine decided to participate

017in this survey is it just for funding purposes then which program will be implemented to better support our children how will we give support to the children that desperately need it if this survey is anonymous i felt that these were pretty straightforward questions and would be answered in a detailed and concise way i didn't expect to receive a generic link to the fact sheet i'm not sure if have you guys read the questions that the children will need to answer if not here are just a few in the past 30 days how many times did you use marijuana like that question just almost seems like the children are using marijuana have you ever tried cocaine have you ever attempted to kill yourself have you ever had sexual intercourse and if so how old was your

018partner are you comfortable hearing these questions right now think of how a 12 year old would feel i am definitely not comfortable with any of these questions and i cannot imagine my sweet seventh grader having to read these questions silently in her science class where she feels loved and safe this survey is completely inappropriate and we as parents need clear and honest reasons as to why this is even necessary i understand that we are able to opt out of this survey i am most concerned though about the parents that have not read the email or will not read the email and then their child will be subjected to it i believe our children need more from us all of our children the children that need support the children that need to be challenged academically and

019the children that need a safe place to be we cannot provide anything to them when there isn't clear and honest information given to the parents the parent will always be their child's first and their last teacher we need to come together side by side to give our children the best and brightest future ahead please let's just get back to the basics thank you all right thank you for your feedback amy um moving on as i said the extended public comment will become part of our district appearance council report on the june agenda response to public comment response to previous public comment um because we've had a lot i decided to write something and give give some information the board has been receiving feedback from the community on the bond proposal so i wanted to thank

020you for that and for sharing personal experiences with us i also wanted to provide some additional information for clarity the board of education saw the proposal for the first time on may 10th to my knowledge trustees were not involved with the community focus groups that happened earlier this year so when it came to the table this was our first opportunity to ask questions we were also not involved with the coordination of the community survey it is typical to have a big agenda item across a couple of agendas to allow for public comment twice either here in the boardroom or via email after may 10th after the may 10th meeting we were also able to ask questions individually of dr lodge and or principal raft and as a group tonight we will hear another presentation by

021principal raft and have the ability to ask more questions in this open meeting and possibly vote if the recommendat if the recommended motion moves forward on the topic of the bond i learned from several steam friends that some of our community members were under the impression that there was a new proposal for a 43 million dollar field house or steam support in either or scenario that was being crafted by the board the current proposal before the board was created by the administration in conjunction with the partners who attended our last meeting it does not include a field house so this information was inaccurate there is not an alternative proposal that has been sent to us for a review board packets and agendas are always posted on the saline area schools website and this is a

022great resource it is an opportunity to review the data and the specifics about the pieces of business that are coming before our board in this instance on page 27 of the packet there was a breakdown of some of the items proposed as part of the highlighted bond tonight of course it is a trustee's writing responsibility to ask questions and deliberations at the table so i expect questions will come up on a myriad of facets on this topic tonight but i wanted to provide a little bit of clarity here because this has come up frequently in the last week or so thank you for sharing your feedback and your experiences with us and for partnering with us to provide resources for our children in saline area schools point of order which i probably should have did

023earlier um the response to public comment is not on the oh just kidding it is yep okay i'm number four and so just real quick um clarity on response to public comment um was there a public comment specifically on that topic last week so response to previous public comment public comment is considered at the board table and the emails that we receive and just because of the amount i thought providing some clarity on where we are in the process was a was a nice idea um i also received feedback from parents that the agenda and packet was very helpful to be able to review and i'm not sure if everybody knows that we post the packet so good information to share okay moving forward i'd like to please move towards a recommended motion to approve

024the agenda items may be added or deleted from the meeting agenda and or the order of items may be changed at the request of an individual board member or the superintendent the agendas must be approved before proceeding further i'd like to please entertain a motion to approve the agenda as printed motion gerby brian thank you second jones all right candace thank you and we have everyone here all those in favor please say aye i would like to i would like to make a motion to revise the agenda sorry i'm looking at my eyes here so we have a current motion on the floor with a first and second so i think we probably need to take a vote on that and i didn't have an opportunity to say anything so okay brad and candace do

025you you made the motion and the second do you want to pull it back okay okay so we have a motion to approve the agenda as printed uh moved kirby seconded candace and um secretary jones and would you like to make a comment yes so under i'm having trouble reading today under action item e recommended motion is moved to approve the millage renewal proposal and so um i would like to be more descriptive as to where we are in that process from my understanding we're not approving the millage renewal proposal to go on the ballot and we are still in the preliminary phases of we haven't applied for the preliminary qualification and so i believe that it needs to be revised to say that we're approving the millage renewal proposal to move forward with the

026process so i'm sorry what is your exact language for item e do you want to discuss that first or do you understand what what i'm saying this seems incomplete to me as to what we are approving because if we're approving a millage renewal proposal we don't have the language that's going on the ballot and are we there in that process yeah yeah steve steve can speak to this if i can just clarify for anybody watching if they might not have the agenda in front of them so the item in question is item e recommended motion move to approve the millage renewal proposal with a 0.5 mill reduction that will generate 180 mil to be used on future bond projects as submitted by david raf principle of operations just to clarify if anybody's watching but yeah

027steve go ahead in its simplest form you'd be approving the preliminary budget that was uh provided so that it can be put on the ballot in november and then we will be working out all the details after that that's that's the that's the question for tonight so could we change the language to proposed budget proposal you know just to clarify i i'm fine with it as is because a proposal is is something that is evolving and it does say 180 so it wouldn't exceed and it does mention the reduction the specific reduction in a commitment to the community um i'm i'm fine as is i guess i actually think i would like your guys's thoughts on that mr raft and the leadership from king scott like what's normal so in our presentation we will go

028over next steps put to what you're speaking to what you're really approving tonight is the bond scope that we will then use to prepare the treasury application because i would keep it that simple because you will be asked to approve the actual proposal after treasury process is complete so so hopefully that helps remind me your name i'm sorry rob rob hi rob welcome back um so move to approve the millage renewal scope so changing the word proposal to scope yes okay that and and the other the other part of it is we will be preparing the application for a 0.5 mil decrease that will result in 180 million dollars and that comes from your financial consultant so those are really the two things that you're you're um approving tonight and then we go through a

029whole process to prepare the application and we'll go over that in the presentation so so should it say should it say renewal scope and 8.5 yeah mill reduction instead of width so those are two different things so it should say and instead of with yes okay that would work okay just by changing those two okay any objection to changing the language to move to approve the millage renewal scope and a 0.5 mill reduction etc same same thank you i appreciate your your very clear language that that helps okay and betty betty's got all that all right okay so back to our motion um motion made gerbie second jones um all those in favor please yeah it's it's now a recommended motion to approve the agenda as revised yep and i make it kirby okay all

030those in favor please say aye aye opposed hearing nonemotion carry 7-0 moving on to uh julian our board of education student representatives last night welcome to your final time at the table i guess um would you like to introduce your guests all right yes so we have uh allison duran joining us she will be the new and upcoming student representative do we want to do girls who code first oh we're doing garage one jump ahead that's okay no let's do um girls who code and then we want to recognize you before we move yes okay perfect i apologize all right today we have girls who code um presenting we have michelle cook and laura englehuber if you guys would like to go up there and love to see your presentation hi i'm laura englehuber i

031am one of the coaches of girls who code along with karen black who could not be here tonight we did want to thank you for your continued support of girls who code and also we wanted to thank the foundation for their donation that allowed us to buy books for each and every member of girls who code and then i wanted to introduce michelle one of our amazing coders who's going to do our presentation for tonight oh hi i'm michelle um i'm in eighth grade and i did girls to code for one year so what is the girls who called club the girls to code club is a club that encourages girls to get into computer science which is currently a male-dominated field during go-to code you learn various skills including certain how to use certain

032programming languages and how to work on coding projects with others what we strive to be as girls who code members as girls are called members we aim to all have the ability to be brave resilient curious emotionally intelligent and socially just meet the team our group leaders were mrs block and mrs anglehuber as mrs angle hebrew said and they were amazing thanks to youtube for leading the group and we also had some high school helpers nia block and sadie walton and thanks to them as well for coming out to help us why are you drawing girls to code i joined girls who code because i wanted to learn more about coding i already knew some things like how to use scratch html and i need a little bit of javascript but i wanted to learn

033more what i personally gained after being a girl suit code i gained a lot in the 10 weeks i had girl suit code i gained not only coding knowledge including how to use python better and how to use scratch better but i also i also learned how to work with others on code better and they made new friends so this is what growthy code has accomplished this year at the beginning of girls who code we split into groups to work on various projects these projects or these groups are based on what project you want to make a topic about we ended up with five projects endangered species lgbtq awareness what type of dog are you drawing prompt and astronomy and math i was in the endangered species group the groups mostly use scratch for their

034projects but some groups also use google sites and html my group use scratch and html in summer girls through code is a great club and it provides valuable knowledge and memories and i'll never forget my amazing experience with it thank you thanks for listening thank you both so much um any questions or comments from trustees at least one okay sure um well two things first of all i'm a big fan big supporter and every time i receive a book on coding i make sure that karen block gets it or you get it somebody gets it and i hope you're developing a nice big library and as long as i'm sitting here i will definitely be continuing to do that and i've got my little girls who code pin which i care a little jealous of

035that you got all the swag i've got well some of the swag apparently there's more and beyond girls who code of course there's also digital divas and there's some great organizations in detroit and so when you leave the school uh you you will you'll be welcomed and with your coding skills there's a great large community out there and i'm so glad to see that you're a part of it and and thanks very much and the other thing i want to add was that i maybe this is a flex i don't know i met mitch resnick a couple of years ago and if you don't know who he is he is the inventor of scratch we gave him a little award and it was it was very cool he was so delighted to see what has

036happened with his his little program and how many young people had inspired to uh to get into coding so thanks very much for carrying on with that yes so i have a question about your recruitment or outreach to [Music] your peers who may not be in the program so i don't know if you connect with maybe younger girls or how your out outreach is currently or maybe ideas that you have for in the future we haven't been outreaching to girls that are younger yet but what we have done is the girls that have graduated from the middle school and gone to the high school we have them come back and they're helping bring up the middle school level but we haven't gone younger yet that could be something we've looked into but we have the

037girls that continue at the high school level come back and that's how nia and sadie sadie thank you lost her name for a minute neon city came back to help us this year and i think michelle is planning on coming back next year awesome yeah second michael and the programs that are out there for women in engineering for stem programs especially at the college level so i think that's great that they're offering these opportunities and good to have a network and a support in those those fields thanks thank you so we are about to have a discussion here in a little while about a bond that has a pretty big allocation proposed for stem and steam clubs so a question that um my colleague treasurer gerby always asks and this is a perfect opportunity so

038what sorts of things would be things that would help to grow your club or to help your club to thrive um i think do you have any ideas too okay i'll let you start um better access to like coding classes like we have the girls code website which is great they have a lot of really good basic tutorials but if we could have access to like more in-depth tutorials from a wider variety of languages that would be really helpful and good it was and it was mentioned earlier that a lot of the coaches are volunteers karen and i both were volunteers this year and karen last year so having increased funds that would also be helpful thank you excellent thank you so much any other questions or comments all right thank you appreciate you um

039julian we would like to celebrate your year with us on the board so i'm going to turn it over to dr ledge thank you very much yep julian we want to celebrate you and thank you for your tremendous uh support of the board of education in the school district this year you your vibrant personality you're a great collaborator you've helped with the student showcase and generally just being a good ambassador for the students and the connection between the board of education and the student body so thank you very much we want to present you with some edge goodies a scholarship and a plaque and then we wish you the best of luck at the university of kentucky next year [Applause] and the plaque does say julian it doesn't say buggy so do you want to

040do you want to say anything about your experience before you introduce your guest uh yeah uh so well to start i appreciate how welcoming the the board and all the school administrators have been throughout my journey as the student rep to have everybody know me my name and then also treat me as a fellow board member or collaborator in something that we're doing has just made the role far more enjoyable um and it's been a true honor to represent uh each and every student here and from from kindergarten to junior year i i didn't really know what like the board was to be honest and like whenever i'd say like you know let's go on a random field trip here or there they'd be like well i gotta talk to my boss and i never

041thought teachers really had bosses um and then i ended up here and i and i and i and i kind of saw uh you know how it how it all worked so i i didn't really appreciate how much goes into every aspect of you know the education that we get at celine so seeing that has just reminded me again how lucky i am to be a celine hornet um and then to have the opportunity to work with you guys and work on the inside of the school district um and then see the the involvement of the community as well uh is is an experience that to say the least is it's priceless i've learned more than i can comprehend you know each day or a conversation i have with somebody an experience comes up that

042i've had here that just that just plays in and i'm like oh i you know i kind of know how that works i kind of have a bit of insight into that so that that's that's something that i hope will continue uh to help me out in the future uh so once again thank you to all the teachers staff administrators uh and board members uh for working with me as a trustee and i'm incredibly proud to to have the opportunity to call myself the student representative and this is a role that is incredibly valuable and once more it's something that i've been very proud and thankful to be able to do so thank you guys very much thank you julian and without further ado would you like to introduce the new board of education representative

043for the 2022-2023 school year well you already heard the first part of it but yes so allison duran she's a current junior here at saline high school just a little bit of insight she's committed to both academics and the community she's a member of the shs uh nhs drives committee where she and her fellow committee members donated 13 000 pounds of food and home goods to celine social services last december and also volunteered at the saline area safety town for the past five summers her goal as a student representative for the board includes addressing the social emotional health of young students and supporting a diverse rich curriculum for all students so please welcome the upcoming student representative allison duran come on up allison all right allison are you ready for your debut say a few

044words and introduce yourself to the team and the community so like julian said my name is allison doran and thank you for the introduction um when i got the call from superintendent lodch while i was feeding my dogs a scoop of dog food i was a little bit surprised but i was mostly just honored for the opportunity to represent my community and the student body i've always been dedicated to supporting my community as well as my fellow students and i'm incredibly honored to have this opportunity to do so for the entire school district thank you oh stay up there i'm sure people might want to say hello um so i was i was so pleased to be able to participate in the interviews with dr lach and with julian and i wanted to thank every

045candidate who came forward for an interview and thank you principal staker didn't say interim did i um for uh for doing the screening and bringing those wonderful students to us um one thing i would like to tell the board before you guys can ask her any questions or say hello and introduce yourselves um she was the student representative on the community esser committee so treasurer gerby will probably like that one um she did that because she likes um decision making um she is part of our careers in education curriculum and spends time with first graders fifth graders and seventh graders so i loved that she has a passion for education and for little ones and i thought that would resonate with this team and she just seemed very motivated and very self-directed so welcome and

046um i'd like to open it up if anybody would like to introduce themselves or ask her any questions well as it was prompted i am i'm i'm brad kirby treasurer whatever uh and yeah like we keep me in line right as part of the you know with your esser you know committee expectation or expertise and all of that but welcome glad to have you thank you just want to say welcome thank you um appreciate that you have a focus on the mental health and social emotional supports because that is so important after you know these trying times that we've been through the last couple years so glad to have you as a partner on the on the board and looking forward to working with you thank you very much i had a question i wondered

047um which elementary school did you attend i went to pleasant ridge i thought you were a pleasant ridge kiddo well it's great to have you here and representing all of the kids um like president stebbins said i think it's you're uniquely positioned in having um having close contact with kids in in a variety of buildings in a variety of spaces and and the teachers and the administrators in those buildings so um you'll be able to offer us um some insight thank you thank you i just wanted to say very nice to meet you i'm looking forward to working with you thank you since michael point was like here you go um yeah i'm super excited um for um you volunteering um to do this role um and um happy that you you were part of

048it this year um and so uh welcome i'm looking forward to getting to know you and yeah thank you very much yeah um welcome and uh thank you for stepping up to take on this role it's always great to see our wonderful high school kids getting involved i'm always impressed to see all the great things that everybody's doing thank you thank you all right you're officially off the spot until august and we'll see you later have a wonderful summer and i'm sure we'll be in touch and give you all sorts of dates times thank you all right moving on to our next scheduled report millage renewal presentation principal raft thank you very much i'd be remiss if i didn't congratulate principal stagger for being come that new high school principal saline high school been a

049sidekick of mine for six years that deserves it just that being with me so uh congratulations streets you'll be great so here we are we're back again we're kind of go through kind of what we were asking um a recap from last board meeting on the 10th of may we are looking for a for our board of education to approve the millage renewal scope uh for 180 million dollars which is an actual 0.5 decrease from our 8 mill we'll be looking to going down to a 7.5 0. this is a millage that will be for the next 10 years so it's a scope of 10 years as well so when you look at how far 10 years is we're looking at ending our ending this in 2023 thanks that was the math good thing we

050have a lot of steam involved in this just kidding all right so uh we did talk about uh just a quick recap on why the decrease uh one we want to continue to live within our means and being fiscally responsible as a district commitment to our saline community uh in 2015 we did talk about not myself in general but former administration and board talked about if we ever came back for a bond that we would reduce down our millage um city of saline has an upcoming utility increase which many people are hearing about regarding water and of course i live in the city of slain so i understand what they're talking about um we also have surrounding entities that dr lotch talked about last time that potentially will be coming looking for more money as

051we look at our fire potential fire bond in different other pieces around the county as well and then actively we continue to actively look for other ways to fund things we like we talked about our 245 thousand dollar security grant that that uh jay grossman and uh mr cleary rex clary and miranda uh usually we're sorry miranda how are you uh applied for there's other things that we continue to look for to help support our district in a financial responsible way um so i'm just going to go into the bond proposal in a little bit more depth than we did last then on may 10th i appreciated the time that i spent with many of the board members with very good questions um and i know that there's continue to have questions as well our

052focus really is as an educational entity this is what we we do this is what we are here for we we did not we in 2015 we're really focused on the safe warm and dry concept we want to build in a lot more education into this one as we went through not only our focus groups but also a survey and talking to a number of people throughout so one of the things we did talk about um is looking into steam spaces that can be used if you're familiar with our our electives we start in kindergarten with an innovation lab class which is very steam oriented and this is an opportunity to obviously start k and work through their graduating years adding classes robotics at saline high school we got we have intro to engineering some

053people have asked what does a steam space look like i want to be real clear to everybody that's here and also who's listening these are just these are just concepts that have been provided for us nothing has been designed nothing will be designed until the board of ed gives approval to move forward and then we'll have a design committee with students staff community members to help look at the different pieces we have i just want to make sure that when they see a picture that's not what exactly it will look like these are just concepts that are done so they can project budgets from our construction management side so this is just a just different different setups and i'm sure carter could explain more of these he's here so yeah a number of students who

054can explain a lot more about how these things could really be useful within the school day and then carry over into the into the evening and on the weekends these are just different spaces there are a number of places that we'd like to visit especially when we start designing this to see where where what things we could do to be innovative and creative and that's part of the king scott responsibility as they look forward with our committees i'm just going to kind of go through the buildings that that you guys have seen but no one else has seen publicly well if they looked on the website right everything's on the website um i don't think um i don't think the images are in the packet oopsie i think the um i know the page 27

055is the allocation per building great but these are good to include thank you yeah so we'll start with pleasant ridge this is a building that is right now at a capacity uh one of the things that we know is that we use spaces differently than we did when president ridge was created and opened back in i think 89 so we have a spa opportunity to add a couple spaces out to the side parking lot if you're familiar with the area that will be first for steam innovative lab uh classes that will be happening in the morning during the school day but also at the evening there's opportunities to enter from the outside and and storage and all sorts of good spaces there again not designed that that's a location that we've we've talked about what

056it looks like on the inside will be part of a bigger design committee and team we look at pleasantry or woodland metals same similar piece um adding again two large steam labs storage and in space that is accessible from the outside entrance and there's some storage in the back as well heritage is our 4-5 building uh it is again at full capacity at this point and we're looking at adding not only five classrooms out the front to reduce the strain within the classrooms and lower class sizes as well uh we have also steam space that has developed on the on the corner there again a concept that we can look with and see if it fits it just seemed to be like this the right location at that time we have added on to this

057school a couple different times in the back or at least one time in the back with the band in music rooms the current middle school and this is a piece that we looked at where our transportation station or transportation building is at this time uh looking we'll talk a little bit about the relocation of transportation to provide us the opportunity to work with in our senior centers now our senior center is part of our saline schools we have employees that work for us we we embrace the partnership between our senior center and so this will be an opportunity that potentially will have not only a steam center but a cosmetology program that we have that's located through our cte program along with some other things that are tied in again this is the concept that

058we will we'll go with but the design team will help design and we are looking at expanding our cafeteria uh if you've ever been in the cafeteria with 400 students it's a pretty tight especially middle schoolers but we're looking at taking some space that we have there and expanding that as well and also along with renovating and updating the the locker rooms and our bathrooms as well that doesn't there's no representation there but that's part of this scope here the high school looking at expanding out the front of the high school by where the where the the sign is now one of the questions did come up is why wouldn't you put it in the back of the building well you could and that may be where it goes but at this point really showcasing

059our steam and our and our science technology you know engineering arts and mathematic component in the front of our building when people go by uh they really get to see that it also will be located where our new weight room will be again we talked about the weight room being on the second floor where structurally is starting to move a little bit in the fact that we needed to get it to the main floor as well um that would reallocate our weight room currently and it would be a multi-purpose room we currently have dance and cheerleading they always get seemed to be misplaced and moved around it would be nice to have a spot for them as well so this is a space that we could use it's a again 2 500 square feet or

060close that's kind of the focus on on the area of steam and and the education components that we will be building within our buildings uh over the next several years another area that we talked about which was very um vocal is our playground and outdoor learning spaces but this is a picture of one of our locations and i can speak as as an elementary principal in both buildings and listening and having a wife of 29 years as a kindergarten teacher our playgrounds are kind of and i will say it kind of rough this was an area that usually ptas help support if you have any history with uh with heritage in the woodland meadows campus that was a rock quarry back in the 80s and before i know that because i happen to maybe got

061myself in that area a few times but they were not able to fund a playground when they passed a bond back in 97 so all the money for playgrounds were taken out so that really is like a rock quarry out there if you actually go out and walk around so it would be nice to be able to enhance that playground now before anybody gets really excited that's not what the playgrounds will look like i watch rex's blood pressure go up but we are able to we are we do have some funding involved that will help really bring these to a higher scope and in rec i know we talked about the amount that playgrounds do cost with with different materials but uh that is a that is an actual uh playground on the lower here

062in metro park and i know mr clary's been there and visited but there will be concepts like that we're going to try to enhance all of our playgrounds case k5 to where they have safe spaces and inclusive spaces to be out on um projects for our facilities and this is kind of where we leave the education we go to our facility portion uh our our campus we're on here currently if if you if you really drive around it's a beautiful saturday morning drive you it's beautiful to watch the sunrise and set but in the same sense we have um middle school tennis courts that things are rising and lifting from all different directions cracks are all over um we know that we are looking at a short-term support for this currently but um our track

063hasn't been redone in a number of years so we do know that our middle campus needs some attention over the next several years as well again proof of concepts are coming up this is not this this is not an actual what happens but we do currently on our middle school complex liberty complex we surround it with four buildings that are 2 400 plus students in a daily uh daily operations um we are looking at obviously redoing our track now tran don't get that out there it's not this is this is a proof of concept i've been putting it everywhere but i will say we are looking at putting uh tennis courts and a new tennis court with with obviously pickleball and we know that's a becoming up-and-coming uh game they're even having community eds running

064pickleball for our young kids now but we have adding a new track getting a new football stadium not soccer football lacrosse field hockey we have a foot we have a baseball field out there currently two softball fields we have a soccer field we have empty we're looking at making a complex that really embraces all of our schools our community ed programming that we use and also our community we have walking paths through the whole thing that would connect everything uh but again this will be a committee of people with an architectural design say how what what is the best layout that we can do with this beautiful piece of land that we've had here and see where we can do and and really make this a great piece and a revenue income piece from our

065side of community ad in other areas so that piece is important for our for our journey going forward as well but it's it's a long process involved um all this has to happen for this to even happen our transportation uh facilities would need to move as well and and for the best in in the interest of moving it towards um in our industrial park more likely we do own a piece of property which did come up and that will still be a part of the discussion when we come to is what are all our what are our options we have a piece of property in the corner of michigan ave and industrial personally i don't know if that's a great location for a transportation center trying to get out there one it's a very valuable

066piece of land but it's also a tough area to get in and out there the city does have pieces of land and property that mr clary has talked to over the years that potentially could be very good a good place to be able to move our transportation get it off the complex get it away from our senior center and our students and then obviously have something a little bit more up-to-date i know that we've looked at solar panels on top of the roofings we've looked at electric which is an area of cons is an area that we should be focusing more and more on i do know that the electric buses cost two times what a a regular bus would cost ups in the 300 000 mr cleary and then a regular bus would cost

067about 105. 120. so there's that piece but there are also rebates and things that we can get along the way as well so that's something we're looking into again nothing said i just googled that and found it and it was pretty nice actually so we've kind of moved forward with that but anyways and then just the projects projects for the future we've got and these are just the three things i want to throw out there you got safety and security you've got technology and infrastructure we will continue to always look at what's trending and what's going on and what we need to do to keep our facilities moving forward and i know the ticket for 180 million is a large ticket but when you look at the reduction uh in the mill and the amount

068of things we can get over the next 10 years um i think we're we'll be continuing being in a good spot from an academic in facilities standpoint at this time again the board i know we'll be talking and asking questions we're looking for a 0.5 mill renewal reduction for the salinary schools to move forward with planning the 180 million bond spanning for the next 10 years i'm going to turn this over to the big uh the president of king scott who will talk a little bit about our next steps okay i'll go over next steps and then we can open it up for questions for the by the board so as we touched on earlier um what tonight is is really the board approving this scope and approving a 0.5 mil decrease that will generate

069180 million to execute this scope then that triggers the king scott clark team to start the treasury process and so what that means is we will prepare the actual um bond app as we call it but it's a preliminary qualification a bond application so we will prepare that and then we are we will go through a treasury review process once that process is completed then it will come back to the board of ed for approval of the bond app which will then trigger going to the next step and that's getting it on the november ballot so uh timeline wise in june as we're preparing the bond app we'll also start preparing for the campaign so that's where we start planning and we start developing our messaging and our visuals that we will then use in

070the campaign july we will look to finalize the campaign materials because quickly in august is when we would actually start to execute the campaign and if you remember in the last meeting we do campaigns differently now absentee voters is a large part of elections so we do what we call a soft start and we focus getting information out to the absentee voters so they're informed before they vote um and then after that we then start the formal campaign for informing the electorate of what the bond proposal's about so when they do go vote in person they're informed and that's the main goal of a campaign is to inform the voters also in july is when the board of ed will now have the formal bond app we have gone through the treasury process that meeting

071is actually set for july 12th and we the board will be formally asked to approve that and then that's when it gets formally submitted to treasury and then on august 9th you'll be asked to actually vote to call the election and that's how you get it on the november ballot so those are two key dates as board members that july 12th and august 9th but there's a lot of work that we'll be doing to prepare everything so that you can then take that action and then august is really the final planning of the campaign and then we start to execute it um and again just like the process we went through to develop this bond scope the campaign is going to be very similar from a sense of we will outreach to not only the

072focus groups but also we will outreach to community groups to inform them of this bond so that we can start to ideally generate support but really inform the voters and and that's the most important thing so that that is our basic timeline moving forward and then september and october we'll be in full campaign mode and board members will also be armed with information because you i know you guys get a lot of input from the community you'll get a lot of questions and it's our job to make sure you're informed so then you can help communicate what this bond proposal is about okay well we'll open it up to questions and be happy to answer anything further thanks first thank you uh for providing information um i know we had a lot of questions last

073time and and thank you for the additional documentation and images and things like that i realized their draft imagery right um this is really exciting i get excited when i can help kids and i see an opportunity to help kids so i had a quick follow-up question and i want to open it up to the trustees david mentioned carter um sitting there and so it made me think my first question is with all this excitement clearly these students and families are sitting here and excited about this how do you if this moves forward how do you use the students as part of this campaign and is part also not just to get votes but how do you use them as subject matter experts since they are the ones that are living in these spaces and

074the spaces would be created for so can you talk a little bit about students yeah we um we really welcome and students are probably the most effective uh people that we can access for a campaign because they can really speak to what it benefits to them so carter and some other students we met with in the focus groups which led to a lot of the the steam improvements that we now have in the bond and i must say this bond um is unique from a standpoint with all the districts that king scott works with this is the largest commitment that we've seen by a district to take steam at all grade levels and um so i think that is um something that we're really gonna promote for this bond and carter will and his other

075fellow students will be key in helping promote the benefits of what steam provides for students now for the actual design process we we do a very collaborative effort in they will we will form what we call design input committees and those committees will be made up of students other volunteers that are in and i'll use steem as an example other volunteers that are in the steam programs and that's when we really get to the detail so everything we've done now again is proof of concept you notice we gave that term to mr raff so he would continue to because we need to manage expectations as well you heard me yeah yeah but i mean um now when we get into the design input committees that's when we really um do a collaborative process where they

076have input in really every square foot of the improvement and then we will share our expertise and our experiences of where we've had success but then take their ideas and then together we will create a steam facility that you know every student is gonna love being in and um so that's just an example in every space that we design in this bond we go with that same process so you know we'll be working with the seniors when we're looking at helping to improve that space so um but we we look for student involvement everywhere we can all right thank you very much i would also say that yeah you know people their series that we're dealing with so you know if you guys are aware we're wrapping up series three which is our middle school

077gymnasium at this point but they'll be different series so some of this will happen down the road always based on what the determination on the series is which we'll be starting to plan as soon as we know to move forward i just wanted to highlight a couple of of things um that i've been thinking about and also for my conversation um with mr raft so would it be possible to go back to the picture of the woodland meadows playground it was woodland yeah right there yep um so this is um this is a playground that i'm very familiar with because i spent a lot of a lot of days out there with students so i wanted to just point out a couple of things mr raft stated that the two schools while beautiful when they

078were when they were built there were some decisions that had to be had to be made because i think it went to the voters twice is that is that how that happened so the first time it went it was not approved so then it went back and when it went back um the buildings um as as we know them today were approved but the surrounding area was not so we know that we've had to go back and we've had to do some different things like for example to the parking lots and and to the to the drop off and pick up loops but this particular picture um reminded me of a few things so the first is when i was teaching there um we had talked to our um partners in the pto because um

079it's actually it's actually kind of dangerous out there for some of our kids so because that is built on what used to be a rock quarry there's no topsoil or very limited topsoil and the topsoil that was there has been washed away so i think mr cleary could probably say how difficult it is to maintain that space but also when it rains and every time it rains it becomes harder it's almost like cement out there and the kids are playing on that and multiple times multiple times we had kids who who would get hurt um you know running and falling on something that's like cement um you know is is difficult and we talked about bringing in topsoil but the expense to bring in the topsoil for that area was more than a pto budget

080could afford and also because of the way that it's designed it would have just washed away so it is extremely important for the safety of our kids that our our playgrounds are attended to but also um for inclusiveness so the the playgrounds and um the way that they're designed right now um was done with the shoestring budget so so coming back to our our commitment to inclusivity um this picture in particular really spoke volumes to me about the need for this particular aspect so it isn't something frivolous we know we need to get our kids outside more there's there's a problem with kids being sedentary so if we can provide spaces that are motivating and engaging for kids to get outside um this piece is is a big piece for me that's not to say

081that the steam piece is not the steam piece i think we're hearing a lot from community groups and and um in my own house about about the different spaces that that could be added but i didn't want this to be overshadowed as being minuscule because this is something that our kids are on every single day so i wanted to highlight that piece in particular and i might have more later but this piece was something that was important to me thanks it's mr ellis's drone took a nice shot of that comments or questions yeah michael sure um thank you very much first of all thank you to mr clary and mr raff for answering my uh questions i i was really stuck on the uh proof of concept for what was crabtree field and all that

082area and i appreciate that so i want to go back to the the very last slide july 12th i think it is where the app the bond app goes to treasury could you please explain that just a little bit for us having never put a bond app toward treasury i'm not really sure what that process i assume there will be a packet of financial details and yeah and the other thing is well let me ask all the little questions is there anything you anticipate that could slow the process down or have it bounce back to us or any issues that you anticipate that we might be able to assist with and i th and how long does the process usually take before approval is granted i assume i hope before august it is yes yeah

083it's a very structured process so let me speak first to the bond application um so one section of it is the financials and your financial consultant pfm does roughly nine to ten sheets of data on the actual bond app so they um that those financials represent your current debt and how that debt falls off and then how the the new bond up to what would be a 0.5 mil decrease uh because this proposal you're not proposing to recapture everything that's falling off you're recap capturing everything minus 0.5 and i'll let miranda she can speak to that a lot better than i can so you'll have a group of financial information there all their projections it's for those that are really big into finance i'm sure those are very exciting sheets to look at you know

084i just look at the bottom line how much money are we going to generate the other thing those financials will also outlay is the series this is a multi-series bond that your financial consultant is recommending so you'll see the timeline of when those bond proceeds will become available to the district so following that we have to as the architect we prepare with clark construction detailed estimate sheets that are in the treasury format for all the bond scope improvements and it outlines everything the construction costs it outlines the professional services the construction services the other part of the finances the election costs are figured figured in this as well every dollar needed to execute the bond is counted for every dollar and of that 180 million so we'll have these project information sheets with detailed estimate

085sheets for each of the series you'll see how each series is broke out we also have to provide enrollment projections whenever we do additions on buildings we have to do an enrollment analysis so we'll get enrollment projection information uh and then we do a calculation on building utilization so you'll see that as well and again these are things that treasury reviews and checks did you have a question i no i just didn't want us to get into too much detail i'm sure there are a lot of questions coming up but i i got the good sense okay of what's coming up and what we're going to be having put in front of our eyes so i i appreciate it yeah and and then you also asked do i see any issues um no because it's

086a very structured process we're very familiar your attorneys will also be involved along with us because they draft the ballot language and they make sure that's in accordance with state statute and all that so it's a pretty formal packet and that's what goes to treasury and that's what ultimately becomes the ballot proposal all right i have a couple of specific items and then i don't know if this is the right time for me to share my general thoughts but you guys can decide if you want me to like go away and come back but um pool repairs are listed as one of the items under the scope for the high school can you give some specifics on to on those pool repairs so we met and there are some definite repairs needed rex i don't

087know if you want to speak to that as far as exactly what we met with them and our team came up with a number of items i swear i've heard something about like because of the floor on our pool something about hosting events or anything like that that's you're saying that that's not heard that but okay then i then that's a done deal all right um i appreciate you covering my second question which was the cost of a bus so that was good electric 300 and regular 120 and then talk to me about um air conditioning improvements and things for the gymnasium and in the athletic wing do we not currently we do not have air conditioning in our high school gymnasium and if you've ever been in that facility in the summer at any

088time from about now on it's it baffles me that that wasn't put in the concept back in 2002 but it it isn't and it's it's time to have that added and mr clary thought about that as we're putting the hba pieces together yeah i can speak to that it's unbearable it's it's it's to the point of being concerning for the the students that are in in the wrestling room the strength and conditioning room gymnastics and the basketball area yeah and the only room that really likes that that way is the wrestling room during the season but it's that way after that so my students haven't gotten to the high school quite yet so uh but we're going right now so i'll i'll defer for a little bit if anybody wants to ask any questions but

089i'd like to make some comments at the right at some time i'll follow up his bus question that got answered and don't need this information tonight but in general moving forward for our group i think especially for the finance committee to understand is if we do move towards electric buses or things like that like does that designate a cost savings down the road like what does the long-term forecast look like on transportation costs overall would be a great thing to know in finance and then for the whole board do you want to come up just in case anybody happens to be watching so we will be applying for the grants those opened up on monday or tuesday of this week on today's tuesday so it was last thursday it was last thursday when they opened

090up so we will be applying we are not a prioritized district on that list but non-prioritized districts are eligible for 250 000 per bus and thirteen thousand dollars of infrastructure from the meter forward so there is funds available i don't know it is a lottery system um and we'll have to see where we rank in that but we will apply for two or three electric buses in this first round and we talked about with region 12 this morning with tracy mulcair our rep for region 12 collaborating with other districts tracy was successful in getting a hundred thousand dollar grant collaborating with i think 10 other districts with brown yale or brown city leading that charge but so we hope to do that again hopefully we come out on top anything more than three requires significant

091infrastructure before the meter for charging stations so that's what if we do have a new facility i think we'll have the framework in place and we'll know more at that time next fall is where we stand and how we move forward with that i did attend a michigan school business officials conference in grand rapids and they had a rep from bluebird and very knowledgeable and they had a worksheet and if you get the proper amount of grant funds he listed a hundred and fifty thousand dollars and fifteen-year use of the bus you will save roughly half a million dollars that was on his worksheet but that's what he showed as a savings over 15 years of useful life of the school bus with grant funds available to you to purchase that plus perfect answer thank

092you questions comments candace yeah don't have questions but just um i wasn't here last time and just wanted to note that i did go back and watch the last board meeting to watch her presentation and appreciated the additional detail this time about the timeline and just what's what's to come that helped me my questions were around that but just appreciate all of the work and time and effort that was put into the process the surveying of the community and really understanding what what the community's desires were and building the plan based on that so i really see that represented here and just wanted to say thank you all for that any other questions comments yeah dave oh david susan then brad how's that that's who i saw first okay sure so um just one uh

093quick uh question and then a few comments um so and we discussed this a little bit um before but i just wanted to kind of um get it out there and also clarify for anybody who might have been reading along in the packet and having the same question that i i did but um [Music] looking at the idea of getting steam labs into every single school we have a line item for every school except for liberty school in the packet but when we were talking we talked that there might also be the potential for there being some space opened up through some of those mechanical upgrades that there could be some potential for for some steam space to be opened up uh here as well so yeah no i yeah and that's something i forgot

094to add to this piece after we had our conversation we do is if if the transportation location was to move we do have a space that's an hvac space that was was our old wood shop back in the day when we were here that we could look at how we would redesign that and use that space that was there for the building here as well so yeah i apologize for that but there is some funds in the and and allotted to liberty for those things as well yeah and that would be um obviously great for for every every grade and every school to to get uh the steam lab space so um yeah just to move on then to my comments thank you obviously for all the the hard work that went into putting this

095proposal together i was especially interested because it's kind of meshes with my professional experience and looking at the polling that was done of the community to see how you know how this would be received and i was i'm impressed looking over the technical details at um what a good job i epic mri did in um capturing accurately the demographics of um the voters in the community and i was also um happy to see that um you know you guys were looking at trying to to you to be cautious in um in the threshold that you wanted to to to get not not just to get it to 50 of of voters because we're looking at a margin of error but to to get to more like 60 or 65 percent of voters so that that

096seems like a good approach and a approach that i like to see because obviously um we want to to get something passed it needs to be something that the voters will accept otherwise it's not going to to do any good and um you know just my kind of process in looking at this the the things that i was looking for were you know are we looking at a millage are we looking at a proposal that meets the needs of students and the district as a whole and clearly it looks like this does especially with you know a big focus on necessary facilities upgrades and on educational upgrades especially you know coming out of out of um the pandemic out of um the the losses that kids have had with respect to education that's something we

097need to kind of boost so that's something that's that's wonderful to see and then secondly is it a and equally importantly is it a responsible use of our taxpayer dollars and and finances and um you know given that this is going to be a reduction in the overall millage that we're looking at that seems like it is too so i'm happy with what's with what we're looking at thank you i have a lot so um i'll try to maybe pause so i am super excited about um the electric buses and the solar panels um i believe like um rex clary said um that we're getting two or three and i know we had a conversation about that funding and so i'm i'm super excited about about that i hope that we the 20 plus other

098buses that we're planning to get that aren't electric um that will be able to to um yeah do more electric than um uh the other ones i think that's a really good investment in our community's health and also our world and lowering greenhouse gases and so i think that's something hopefully um with with the um that that's been looked at across all of the facilities thinking about that you know what things that we can can do with with lowering the emissions so that's really a statement i know some districts are doing exciting things with um with with their funding and i know one district and michigan like completely did electric and that but that was super exciting of course it was you know like very financially supported but um i thought that was um a

099good model for for us to you know eventually move to um let's see the middle school it says that there is allotment for r for bathrooms so the bathrooms and sinks and everything in the middle school is having being a parent coming in for the first time in the middle school and using facilities when when i visit it's awful and disgusting and so whenever we talk about that allotment for bathrooms is it not just the locker rooms is it all of the middle school it's all the middle school and we will have that we're going to change that word obviously we i talked to rob about that just before the meeting so it will be no i'm with you because i know it's a 50 year old building so uh no the concept of the

100spaces are in there are is are set to be renovated and looking a little different okay cool um and so um thank you i know that was some questions that i got from uh parents and couple children so that's good um so i guess another question sticking with the middle school i know i had asked this question about it's kind of a combination about the middle school out from that with the senior center the cte programs with the cosmetology super excited excited about both of those items and so i i know in earlier plans that that were shared um i guess from from my constituents one of one of the items on the middle school's senior center cte it said special education and um i'm wondering um why that would have come off um i

101yeah i don't know so and this ties into liberty school as well which is not receiving a lot of funding and houses our community community programs including poo corner and then additionally so the community has access to liberty and there is the alt high school liberty club so special education programs early childhood special education and also a community daycare um i know that that spit you know as as we talk i'm going a couple places sorry um so i'm just i know you know early there's especially early childhood education there's a real um need and actually funding was this past week with gretchen whitmer who is you know has allotted a lot of funds for day cares and early childhood programs because it's a growing need with people moving into you know we're building and

102constructing around here and i think a lot of young families may be hopefully moving in and that may be their first introduction to um our facilities right um with programs coming in i'm excited that we have we're expanding the great start readiness program but that pushes that crams this space here um with with our other programs and so um i i just were there conversations with special education programs um were there any sort of thoughts about the the the space and um yeah so yeah i think that there was a proof of concept that was developed that showed that potentially the senior center would move to here to liberty and that we'd move parts of our special ed programs up to the liberty where they were at uh over the course of our testing it

103and talking about it didn't work for for mrs garcia and the special ed staff felt they had a good space here we didn't think the cost of bringing the senior center down and revamping the whole area that we have down here made sense as well where we were thinking about where we could add the concept of the cosmetology program and then adding a steam center built onto that same big space that we have down there so i think that got washed earlier in the whole process but looks like rex has something we're good so early on the concept we did have a concept for our master planning piece is that piece across from robert blice was going to be an early childhood center we were developing that center we were developing that prototype yeah proof

104of concept proof of concept um along with the t with the field house concept along with other things that we were looking at we visited novi early childhood center where they host their cows the community admits their first point of reference to into the district uh excellent facility great facility we just we made decisions and we moved worked through it but liberty would be a perfect concept for that if we moved to the early childhood center to liberty and expanded that in this in this general area but what would that look like what would the domino effect for that be of moving special ed and that kind of stuff so it just didn't work at the time so if that makes sense but yes we did have several conversations about and it's proof of concept

105on drawings and i did talk to molly garcia our director of special education she is going to i think she's going to reach out to you as well because i know you have concerns with some of the spacing and some of the shared spacing and um she's prioritizing prioritizing and she wants to talk with you about that get more information about this so yeah and we did do we did do i know a number of renovations in this building including those spaces in the 2015 bond i wasn't part of the renovation piece but brought the return of high school up to district standards that was uh superintendent graden's goal was to bring the alternative high school up to the same standards that the high school had the liberty um administration hub attracting top tier talent

106was one of the one of the board's models i think at that time was trying to get to make it more professional in that administration hub so and then the ecs and of course the ecsc program yeah i know that a playground was made more accessible which was really exciting but there's still accessibility issues which is one another another thing with with the sports complex and everything making sure that all of our schools are accessible to getting there safely for all of our students but also our students with you know wheelchairs and i know we talked about that briefly even in this space it's there's an excessive accessibility issue and with the playground that that was um created as well you know that's also a shared space with you know multiple programs um additionally this

107might be a separate conversation um but liberty schools if i'm not mistaken you can get through all through all um all of the doors throughout that it's for fire code reasons right it's opened up but given that community members are here while our students are in session like school is in session i have great concerns about security and i think it's a really big issue that needs to be addressed election day i get anxious as i'll get out because our buildings are open to the public and to my knowledge are not secure um you know so so i that's a whole other thing but um i can i can also look into that with mrs melcher so i'm sorry just to clarify the question is about the the improvements for liberty the liberty building as

108part of this bond okay yeah and tech and security is one of our top things that what we've done but then and are continuing to do so what's your question about i just didn't understand what the question to david was what there's security issues in this building sorry this is a point of clarification with the liberty security when the building opened we did design those two passage doorways where we secured those and as you alluded to the fire marshal asked us not to do that and so in response to that we then shut the front door the front door had operated as an open building so this was the only building in the district that the public could walk into freely without being buzzed in and the other six buildings in the district you had

109to be buzzed into it now this building operates like every other school building so as far as the access once you're inside the building it's just like the other six school buildings so now anybody that comes in during school hours has to buzz in at the front door just like they do at harvest or pleasant ridge or woodland meadows but once you're inside just like the other buildings you do have access to the building so during the school day the only other door that people can get access in is down by ecsc or poo corner and that's got a facial recognition system so that too is clocked during the school day so we've changed that in result or as a response to that fire code issue so when people come into this space so anybody

110really in in the public um could come in right and not be a volunteer or anything like that right so there's there's two security points you know there's so basically somebody could come in be wrong in and and that's great but there's still going to be access to our students and it's the same as the other six school buildings is it volunteers or somebody coming to pay something for community ed we verify their need to be in the building so if if if somebody says i'm here to pay community head they get buzzed in they sign in in the office they go to community and if they're coming in to play pickleball they sign in they go down to pickleball so we verify what their need to be in the building is just like we

111do in the other buildings and then we send them to those specific locations so like i said we did make that change because of the fire marshal's situation so yeah but it goes back to the spacing and there being a need and not pushing these programs and special population students in small spaces and and not adequate security in my opinion okay as far as the elections come i will double check with mrs melcher i know she has plans in place for when we do have a large population of people coming in um can i can i clarify is the issue that it doesn't have the same security as the other buildings or this one needs different security because what what um assistant superintendent ellis is pointing out is you know for example if you were

112to get buzzed into heritage then a parent volunteer whoever it is that gets access to the building is able to walk throughout the paths just like this building the difference is we used to have the front door open in this building with the idea that people could not get to the other areas but now that the you know fire is coming and said hey you can't do that now we've secured the front entrance in addition brought on additional staff to help manage the door so we feel that the security is the same in this building as as it is to the for the others so i think the there's a several differences um but you don't walk directly into the office here for one for two our volunteers or parent volunteers go through the raptor

113system does everybody that comes through those doors get the background check even if they're just stopping by community ed or going to play in the gym or you know i that would be a i assume a huge difference well i do think we could look at having i mean i hear what you're asking right now and sitting down with i think myself carol melcher and we really think mr ellis and talking about what we need to do maybe here mr clary to upgrade but there are finances in this bond to help make it more secure and if this is something there's something out there that they might know or someone else might know we might be a good way to start so just to hit your complex area we are looking at inclusive that whole

114design process will embed all of us making sure it's a safe place for any student that would be coming this way and inclusive we've talked about uh for one of my conversations with one of the board members is including an inclusive field for fam for students as well so i think that's something that's important to have as part of this complex as well great so with the steam space which i'm excited about and clearly families and the community is and i think it's great that we are you know a district that is spending money on that and and hopefully prioritizing um our furnace like the furnishings and supplies and everything included into that space yeah that's all part of it that's yeah you know part of all of it and again part of the design

115team and then obviously we they have people that represent like what we want in those spaces as well great um and then let me see and right now i'm just going to ask carter [Laughter] put on the list what you what you need um and then um so so with you know i want to um i know we have different groups and everything that you all have spent time with um and so i don't know if in that group any of the board advisory committees were included specifically our dei advisory committee who would probably be able to speak to the accessibility pieces and making sure that for example the facilities are there are some gender neutral facilities those kind of things and also with our wellness committee and strategic planning and our vision and goals

116around that as well well that i i can't speak to all the people that were in what groups they represented except that is something we can definitely be part of when we design spaces and doing some of the other pieces that we are looking at doing moving down the road as well so that's a good point to remember thank you [Music] all right 180 million dollars so i take it pretty darn seriously do you want to say something go ahead on the security piece security is something we take very seriously and we meet with the pittsfield police saline police fire department every four to six weeks and you know jay and i did a lot of work for that grant but it was kurt's leadership that kept getting us together to make sure that we

117were applying for those type of things leading the way is to moving forward in security because we we talk about it every month it's very important in that team and um just very important to us so we do meet monthly to talk through it and we address concerns um and these doors you know liberty is a concern every we talk about it so it's very important thank you i see carol hiding back there too and i know how important security and alice training and everything is in this building and your involvement so thank you um i'm glad we thank you all right so as i was saying you know i take 180 million bond scope incredibly seriously especially this group has entrusted me as treasurer here and all that so um first of all i

118want to thank you for uh the the time we spent together right the questions got answered about specific cost usages versatilities um you know the survey i i thought the information about cold vote versus inform vote was was interesting uh and you know and i thought it was really interesting 89 of our our electorate voted votes so that's great so that's important the success of our our bond and i guess my comments on on this are as follows so when i think about this this bond scope i think about two things i think about my children and students and then i think about how does this you know how is this attractive to our community and so uh you know when i think about my gram he's math science cad programs project lead the ways

119but my brice is more of like a drawing and architecture and engineering and that kind of thing so i think my versatile kids and i'm sure a lot of families have versatile kids and yet my kids are also playing sports and and and doing all that kind of thing so i i see a lot of pieces to this bond that make us a both and district and i i really like that piece i like that it's a versatile bond and so um i want to specifically state how much i appreciate the feedback we've gotten from from our pr from our steam parents you know that you spent a lot of time with us in the last couple of years visiting us robotics girls who code i'm sure i'm gonna leave out a whole science olympiad

120and what have you and these groups are high-performing and high-achieving groups that i will tell you i'm just super excited i'm a science teacher too so full disclosure but i'm super excited because i think that helps us to to i think about jobs and i think about creating the next generation of scientists engineers medical professionals and so i think about our community and the to pay off to the talent pool that we will produce as part of of of these programs and supporting these programs and so i i think about that i think about the volunteers and teachers and and students who who are doing these things and they're doing it at a really high level so i will tell you if i think about you know you know i love athletic programs but i

121also think that these steam programs are incredibly deserving of our support financially and structurally so like i'm i'm all on board with that i i love the additions to the elementaries i like that this addresses some crowd overcrowding issues that we have so we can then look at class sizes and how do we manage those things i i think about covet and i think about like what we had to do with cafeterias and all that i hope we never go back to that but at the same time i like the versatility of that space um you know i think about consortium i think about a lot of things so long story short like i i guess i wanted to say that i am appreciative of the work that is here and i'm appreciative that there

122were things about this proposal that were were well thought out for example like i would have preferred on on the transportation center i heard tonight that that would have used our own land but then you think about right last time you brought to us that might not be a great use long term for that financial resource well i want us to make those kinds of decisions in this proposal right and so like i could tell you as the as treasurer i i like that i appreciate the long-term thought that went into that so anyway you know i took a walk the other day and i went up to the i walked the middle school track and i will tell you it's about 10 minutes from my house and and it is you know like i

123said in the last meeting it's breaking down and so i think prioritizing that facility and i love the idea of revenue generation utilizing some of those kinds of things and partnering with our our community ed so i applaud that i applaud the cosmetology program that the cheerleaders will have their own space like i think about technology and how that requires like regular refurbishment right it's just i feel like that's just the price of business in the 21st century in classrooms so anyway so i i think of this proposal as just being incredibly versatile and having a lot of things that support all the things that because i know a lot of our families have students and have kids who are just like mine where they like this and they like that and so anyway so

124when i think about my home i think about i want us to be cutting edge i want us to be leaders i want us to be able to be a place where it's that's all right we chose to come here so i think that this bond proposal continues to make us a destination place and so for that reason i it has my total and full support as presented thank you unfortunately i have to burst a little brad's bubble um i i did uh did get feedback from cheer that that space won't work we can talk about this offline just in case the coach and any other of the cheer team are watching it has to be a a specific sized mat which is the size that's in the wrestling room we can we can talk

125about this but i appreciate you thinking of them um my only remaining question is not what will you prioritize because i understand that there's a lot more work and a long journey to go down and i love the idea of these design design input committees i love that but what's the structure how do you begin the work of prioritization of this passes great question there are three series i'm gonna let the president here but there are things that we'll put as priorities but based on certain things like for the transportation might have to leave sooner than later to get the middle school stuff going as well but all that so what there's a lot of things we look at um first we have to look at how the series um the bond series unfold so

126you know we own the first series gets sold you get um x number of dollars part of that 180 million and we have to have a scope to match that so that's the first thing we look at and then the second thing is what are some critical things that have to be done first in order to allow other improvements to happen so that is kind of inherently part of the prioritization process the other thing is we do look at initially what are some projects that we can easily deliver quickly because you know we often get asked the day after the vote you know when when is that field going to be done when is that you know renovation going to be completed now certain things take a lot longer time to design and build but

127there are some things in the bond that we can execute early so we do identify that and then see if it makes sense and we will do that um i i really can't put into context the amount of work that we're going to have to do after tonight's decision in order to get the application done because we have to make all the scope everything bounced to the penny on every series and we have to lay it out um and make sure those critical things are done first so it's a very involved process and we weigh a lot of things but that you know that's a real general description of what we go through that's perfect thank you any other comments questions yes susan and jenny oh i just um i want to be clear about

128um i think this is great um this this bond proposal um we're going to vote here soon but i did i did want to point out um things that maybe i i want to make sure that we don't leave um groups behind um and so if anything does open up um you know as far as maneuvering anything please keep that at the top of your mind um so yeah i i think this is a very exciting um bond proposal i really do um and think our community will be behind it so my family has lived in the community about 20 years now i think maybe a little more and i think right around 20 years but one thing that has always impressed me um is the partnership between the schools and the community and i

129think that um the responsiveness that the committee who has been doing this work to get this proposal in front of us has really continued to embrace that idea that um we are a community and the community and schools have the partnership so i appreciate the work that has been done to to think about the needs of the senior center and to think about the the community walking paths and how the facilities can be accessed on during times that are not school hours so thinking about the positioning of the spaces um in the building so that our our clubs can can have access to those those um buildings and and spaces on the weekends is is just another um another way of connecting our community and our schools instead of having the two separate things i

130think the reduction in the millage also speaks to the physical responsibility and how other things in the community are going to have an impact on on wallets um i also just wanted to note how beautiful the progression of um of steam has been in in our community that has gotten us to this point i think it's a really exciting day i think about my my career here and how um you know things started small with and and we've heard from lots of people about the grassroots clubs destination imagination and and the steam clubs robotics clubs girls that who code who came tonight i think about how the schools really embraced pltw even in our kindergartens and young fives classrooms all the way through high school the move to the innovation labs and even the partnerships

131with our media specialists and how that just has opened up opportunities for our kids and how they have now started to seek out even more of those opportunities in and outside of school we we almost every board meeting have a club um i'm i'm looking around and i see lots of faces who have been here to present to us many multiple times sometimes right um uh and also thinking about um just the opportunities that that this lends um for us to be leaders which we've we've been leaders you know throughout throughout the 20 years that we've been here celine has been an anchor in the state for leadership and so this is an opportunity for us to embrace something that is going to have lifelong impact on many of our kids so i appreciate and

132applaud the work that the committee has done and and i i think it is an inclusive plan i i think that there is some room for for continued consideration and that's why we'll continue to have groups who have input but i i just want to say that you have my support and that i just really appreciate the work that's been done so far so thank you thank you julian do you want to say anything no he's like you guys said it all he's like you guys talked enough i've known him a long time it's the first time you said he didn't have anything i love seeing senioritis live and in front of us and we're going to leave on a high note okay all right excellent um thank you very much everybody so um i

133have a point of order are you gonna are we gonna move forward i was going to so i'm wondering if under action items in offices you can do you want to open it if we could move e and just do it now okay um we just had the discussion i feel like yeah i it just makes sense to roll into okay but all right step on your toes here so brad wants to move item e up to item a i'll second that okay support thank you um so motion was made gerby second jenny to move right yeah and susan and susan's susan's the third um so brad the the motion will read recommended motion to move item um e in the agenda under action item eight to item a okay and i don't think we

134need any discussion unless i'm wrong all those in favor please say aye aye opposed hearing none motion carry 7-0 okay so we would like to entertain a motion please um to approve the millage renewal scope uh and i can't read my own writing and a 0.5 0.5 mill reduction that will generate 180 880 million to be used on future bond projects as submitted by david raft principal of operations so moved big support move mcvay susan support i'm going to assume no further discussion all those in favor please say aye opposed hearing none motion carries 7-0 this is when you can say yay if you like that especially our presenters that just had to answer a lot of questions and do a lot of work for us last last week so thank you very much okay

135now i'm going to flip back to the second action item i'd like to please entertain a motion to approve the purchase of two 2023 ford transit 10 10 passenger vans for first uh alternative high school program and also swwc for the combined total amount not to exceed 105 820 from feldman for detroit michigan i'll make that motion johnny thank you second jones candace thank you uh any discussion or conversation on this one he's ready i i have one question go ahead so in our board packet it says that one of the buses is covered by a donation the other one funds come from the six other districts will share in that cost and the upkeep and maintenance of that vehicle correct correct and i just like the gift who pays for the other one yeah

136so the safest way to and from school with or without seat belts is a school bus we firmly believe that moving students on a school bus is the most safest way to get people to and from school and and events but in today's world of shortage of bus drivers um these vans are crucial to the one van that we bought in 2017 um is used four out of the five days of the week um and there's multiple requests for the tennis for golf for the consortium for alternative high school they are a luxury to have and they're a luxury to use to get students to and from service learning events competitions you know during the winter i put my foot down we we moved to people with buses um especially we have with weather but

137um the vans are with the shortage of drivers they still do we still do a background check on their driver's license i run those numbers i approve them as drivers or not approve them as drivers and then it's up and then we move them forward from there so they still are driver license checked before they drive the bank um all those in favor please say aye aye opposed hearing none motion carries seven zero i'd like to please entertain a motion uh and move to approve the purchase of inclusive playground equipment at pleasant ridge for one hundred nineteen thousand eight hundred and seventy five dollars from pentura as submitted by david raft principal of operations so moved jenny thank you support susan susan thank you any discussion yes being our bond person and talking about our

138inclusive playgrounds that are in the future um will this be something that is incorporated into that concept um just to make sure it's we're not approving it tonight and then you know series two we're getting rid of it oh great question we did talk about that as a committee of crew this is done with uh it's a two year old initiative coming from nicole phelps and special ed department there uh the foundation award 25 000 the pta award at 20 and uh with mr clary's leadership and this piece designing the facility so we knew that if when we bring in the new potential playground that this place will be staying there and it will also be a nice piece to showcase people when we talk about the bond and what other places could also have

139as well so it'll be three uh inclusive units uh that will be there with soft almost like padding kind of material around the playground and stuff and so and two swing new swings uh that'll be also part of that and it kind of flows in that path uh i think pleasant ridge has done a really nice job over the years of trying to build that playground as well so uh this would be a good concept to look at as well that won't be a won't be uh it's this won't be the it won't be fake it'll actually be what it looks like so we'll be able to see that soon this summer actually awesome thank you david i just want to say thank you i was at a high point school last week at the

140community event and got a chance to see their version of an occlusive playground and it was fantastic and i think ours is going to be right along the same line absolutely necessary for our special needs students and medically fragile and so forth so great well done thanks i just want to know one thing that this is a combination effort too with like the pleasant ridge pta and it looks like the foundation for selenary schools and so like i want to make sure we know those programs that are assisting with this purchase as well and a lot of leadership from nicole i was going to say in special accolades coal has been driving this and obviously covet slowed some of this process down uh but it's been on mr clary's list for quite some time to

141get this done so all right let's go uh all those in favor please say aye aye opposed hearing none motion carry 7-0 uh moving on to the next item i'd like uh like to entertain a motion please and move to approve the purchase submitted by rex clary director of operations to furnish the hvac building management system for the saline high school in the amount of 947 through a purchasing cooperative awarded to train us incorporated so move jones candace thank you support miller jenny thank you um any discussion any questions so this is just to move forward to replace the windows xp unit at the high school that will be unsupported after january 1st these controls uh have been pieced together since we updated harvest schools we brought those controls over to keep the high school

142going it's it's it's a big budget but we're buying the controls that are in five other buildings so the district will be the same controls throughout so consistency will be very important for visibility for my hvac staff to keep a positive learning environment going we'll come to one we'll have one more bid for labor to actually install this and the cabling and then we'll hopefully get it installed before that january first deadline so funding for this coming from this was scheduled phase three of the bond it was phase three of the bond okay okay all those in favor please say aye hi opposed hearing none motion carry 7-0 um our last thank you important things not to forget about that right our last action item i'd like to please move to approve policy 2340 field

143and other district sponsored field trips as as recommended by the board policy committee motion gerby bread thank you support e-step susan thank you um michael you want to take the discussion i do uh first of all uh we looked at this last two weeks ago uh policy 2340 field and other district sponsored field trips and here the four points uh we've generally tightened the language in the policy number two the board of education will no longer approve overnight or out of district trips number three uh as is a clarifying point in-state and district-sponsored trips will be approved by the principal slash the administrator of the school or the program requesting it and finally the superintendent will provide regular updates to the board of education informing us of all overnight out of state trips uh we're

144still working on the details but probably will be on the weekly weekly message to the board plus all those trips will be logged on a spreadsheet of some sort great thank you perfect and i love that this move forward um the spirit of this is that i i believe i can speak for the board when we do not want to hold any student back from attending extracurricular activities field trips are incredibly important to clubs sports classes and and experiences overall and and in support of our salinary schools compass and sometimes things come up at the last minute so we don't want to have to say no so thank you very much um all right any other comments questions on this one i think just to note that we had two or was it two special

145meetings because because of um yes and so i was going to say uh that one of them um a team was actually waiting in a parking lot for us to approve the field trip and so when jennifer's talking about um you know we don't want to hold hold our students back from these opportunities had we not been able to get a quorum that night that that would have held them back from competing in their in their competition so um this is a good move and it also is um really an operations uh situation so it's falling to the people that um really have the most intimate knowledge of what needs to happen so i think um i said this at the last meeting because we we discussed this um previously but the legality piece i'm

146so thankful that they came back and said that it isn't a requirement for the board to approve so i think that's a huge relief for when we talk about um not wanting to hold students back just because of you know yeah something with i thank you oversight so um i'm glad that that's no longer on us and that um you know we'll continuously get the updates and everything it is kind of exciting to see all the the places that um what sports teams are going and um what uh um you know what what people are doing out of state and field trips and all of all of that good stuff so okay um moving to vote all those in favor please say aye aye opposed hearing none motion carry 7-0 discussion items of vice president

147cafe the policy committee met this afternoon down the hall in room 33 and uh here are the five points i just want to make sure you all know we decided to pass along a policy regarding dress and grooming to the dei committee for their input we think it's time for their insights uh we heard from our law firm of collins and balaha and discussed recommended language we receive from them regarding compliance officers and we hope to get the changes to a set of 13 or so policies into a future consent agenda item um next we began a review of policy 0167.3 public participation at board meetings just to ensure that it's clear there's a long road ahead we have a lot of tweaking to do and as as trustee iset pointed out we've been tweaking

148and modifying this ever since her first day on in which is great which is fine we want to make sure everybody's heard properly number four we unraveled a mystery about the use of forms for early graduation and the board should the rest of the board should now note that we that we noticed eagle eyes over here noticed that board approval is not required for early graduation so your packets are going to be considerably lighter uh going forward and finally now of course you can always challenge that but that's what this is for we are finally we're going to pass along to the dei for input regarding a set of policies regarding related to uh anti-harassment the policies that are out there now so there's a little work to be done there and we're looking forward

149to getting their input and that's it and we adjourned at 606. nothing to vote on perfect any questions comments or concerns all right thank you very much moving forward administration updates dr lynch okay i along with um assistant superintendent ellis have some comments tonight mine are fairly likely so we'll start with that and then um assistant superintendent ellis is going to take the floor and introduce our next official high school principal anyway i will start with a diversity equity and inclusion update and uh recently we we sent a short survey to the community and held five focus groups related to racism discrimination and microaggressions in the school district and community the five focus groups conducted by myself and chen in washington who's our culturally resound responsive responsive consultant included parents and guardians who have students

150who identify as black students who identify as asian students who identify as hispanic latinx and native american students who have religious views and students who have a disability or identify as lgbtq those were the groups that we met with we plan to share all of these findings in greater detail at the july 12 board of education meeting we've also contacted the city of saline and mayor marl's office and their dai committee is going to do a joint presentation with us on this evening in conjunction with the saline area schools deiac we need to be working together school district and city of celine to continue to address inclusion one thing that's very clear to me is that all our students need to feel part of the school district we cannot have students looking over their shoulders

151to be on guard when someone is going to make a racial slur and we can't have our students searching far and wide for a gender neutral bathroom and we also can't have students who have conservative or religious values feel like they cannot express their views for fear of retribution we need to work on finding common ground to support all our students this is why i'm announcing that effective immediately we are strengthening our commitment to the saline bridge to civility and making a big push to get the nine norms within the bridge disability practice with our student staff and community as many of you recall the saline bridge civility was developed a few years back based on a model from ellington ellington connecticut public schools by a small group of diverse thinking community members in this

152community including law enforcement officials and the goal is to address issues with civility within the community however we only rolled this out so far to a small group of adults the sling bridge disability will be part of our rollout and orientation plan at the beginning of next school year with our students staff and community members we have a tremendous community one that i'm very very proud to be a part of yet with a stronger unification effort i am very confident that we can make all our students feel included feel more included and i'm going to add one more comment and then turn it over to mr ellis so i want to address the end of the school year district quality survey so on month this past monday may 23rd slain area schools invited people to

153participate in the final survey of the academic year the survey is our annual end of the year school district quality survey we want to hear your thoughts on critical school issues including academic support student support family involvement school and district leadership including my own safety and behavior and we recognize that it can seem like there are a lot of surveys we realize that with that said we're working together to create a systemic approach on how we collect feedback from stakeholders and we're creating targeted surveys revising the line of questioning and being intentional about the timing of surveys so thank you for that and now i want to turn it over to assistant superintendent ellis thank you superintendent lotch it's my pleasure to come before the board here tonight to announce to you what is not

154a secret any longer and that is the fact that theresa stager has emerged as the top candidate to become the high school principal of saline high school for those of you that don't know teresa's background she's been with the district for about six years she was hired as an assistant principal and i'll never forget the day she interviewed we had one of the worst summer thunderstorms ever she was sitting over in the office and it had to stay for an hour or so after that because the rain was just coming down sideways and we thought the building was going to go away but theresa really did distinguish herself she's done a great job as an assistant principal and then this year uh when mr raff transitioned over to the principal of operations uh mrs stager

155took over as the interim principal and and then also lost another assistant principal to another change of assignment and has done a really really nice job garnering the support of her faculty and staff as well as her co-workers and so we're really excited about teresa stepping into this new role in conjunction with that teresa has also spoken with us about some of the needs at the high school after being there for six years and so in addition to the announcement that theresa will be the principal we are also going to further clarify musera deneen's role as an assistant principal she'll be essentially the principal of ninth grade we know that that's an important transition for students as they come into the high school and we want to make sure that we are laser focused on

156their needs as we as we transition them into the high school so we're excited theresa will then lead the process to backfill some assistant super assistant principals and deans of students but we're really excited to have teresa on our team and want to congratulate her theresa come on up here you're not getting off the hook theresa have you accepted the offer i i have accepted the offer and yes i know what i'm in for would you like to say anything principles taker um i just thank you for the opportunity to continue leading this amazing school in this amazing community and um it it warms my heart and i'm so thrilled to just be able to jump in and then move forward so thank you very much thank you teresa all right you're all set julian

157well my my uh board update's a bit short to start off prom for everybody wondering uh a lot of parents and teachers and everybody always was curious on how that went it was inside the high school absolutely beautiful venue miss steger you can laugh i'm serious the it was it was emerald city themed i walk in there are green flyers everywhere it was the outside they spray painted you know the yellow brick road it was awesome i got to party inside the cafeteria i got to dance with all my friends it was awesome so prom prom was prom was unbelievable so thank you to everybody who set that up and made the quick change from outside to inside i can't imagine that was too easy so i i don't know a single person that didn't

158have a blast there so we thank you very much um and then lastly as a student representative on behalf of the class of 2022 we'd like to thank the saline community and the board um and i'm just gonna use this as a platform real quick so thank you to the parents who supported us chaperone field trips and participated in the classroom thank you to the administration staff maintenance crew janitorial staff bus drivers and cafeteria staff for keeping our schools beautiful clean and safe and then thank you to all the coaches and volunteers that led us through all the extracurriculars that we are very lucky to have the opportunity to participate in and then thank you to the teachers who supported us throughout our phenomenal educational journey here in saline so we're thankful to have such

159a strong and consistent support system here in saline and the entire class of 2022 appreciates your support so thank you guys very much and that concludes my final board update well done oh my god we're all gonna cry when you graduate it's gonna be like compass night jenny when cam was up there talking it's gonna be bad um any trusty comments tonight yeah go ahead i just had a couple of things i wanted to mention um just to build on what um julian just said thank you to lori dawson and the junior class for the quick quick move when when weather wasn't going to support the outside venue moving that indoors um i had the chance to kind of see it before students arrived and it looked beautiful so i'm sure that they enjoyed that

160and it sounds like everyone had a wonderful time um i also wanted to just say and i've shared this with with superintendent lotch but i wanted to share that this past weekend officer lamarr who is our student resource officer at the high school and we've heard um we've heard throughout his tenure um that he's the time that he has been here that he's made an incredible impact on students in their in their daily lives at the high school and i got to see that firsthand on friday night my children participate in dance my twins drew and laney are dancers at dance alliance and their company held their recitals on friday saturday and sunday and a number of the dancers invited officer lamar because they hang out with him at lunch and they talk with him

161in the hallways and and he came and he stayed for the entire three hours and posed for pictures afterwards and connected with families and shook hands and introduced himself and i can't tell you um what an impact that made on on my own children but also um just to feel supported by by someone at the school i mean they've had they have had teachers come before which is always appreciated and definitely not necessary so if you're listening to this don't think that you have to attend everything i know we're all busy but just to take that time on his time off to come and to support the kids meant the world and just continues to build that relationship between um between police and and our kids and creates a safe opportunity for them to have

162someone as an outlet so thank you to officer lamarr um i wanted to say congratulations to teresa and to musetta also for that for uh for their new roles at the high school i'm very impressed so far and can can't wait to continue to see what's next and then i just wanted to say on on today how thankful i am to the community um for the last campaign that was safe warm and dry and on a day like today knowing that our kids are safe in the buildings and that we repositioned entrances and we repositioned the office at pleasant ridge so that there was an extra measure of safety and that is a direct result of the community passing the last bond so on a day like today we're reminded of how important those things

163are so thank you for that and thank you um that we can send our kids to school tomorrow with that added measure of safety so thank you jenny wellset any other trustee comments yep i just wanted to note that um monday morning bright and early superintendent lodge jennifer steppen and myself attended the legislative coffee hosted by the washington association of school boards many superintendents and board reps from across washtenaw were in attendance legislators included jeff irwin felicia brabeck donald lizinski debbie dingle and haley from davy dingle's office we had actually a wonderful discussion about mental health mental health workers and the state of public education across the county the state and the nation and i'm looking forward to the next one in six months and we also recognized trustee gerby and board president stefan on

164their accomplishments through masb and thank you i hope you get your hardware soon it's right here oh oh awesome will superintendent lodge pin you i don't know thank you thank you for that call out and congratulations brad welcome yeah candace yeah and jenny you got me all teary-eyed now so i'm like and mine was kind of a teary thing too but um i wanted to give a shout out to our all of the staff that support our affinity groups um this week my darn it i was trying i was like no because i was already teary i'm not gonna look at you but this week my son who's at the middle school uh participated in the black student union and it was his first time attending and he just came home just raving about the

165support having a safe space just to be able to fully be himself to share things that he's experienced in the school and you know just all of that so i i really really appreciate that and in light of superintendent lotch and all the work you've been doing to understand what's happening in the community and what a variety of groups have been experiencing just knowing that we have these safe spaces for multiple groups of students where they can really show up and and be themselves and feel like they have community and he's like i'm definitely going to the next meeting so that was just so encouraging so thank you shout out to andrea collins who runs that she wanted to share that awesome thank you anybody else nope susan um so i think last time i

166mentioned that i was a chaperone on the chicago field trip sixth grade and um that was amazing um i had a group of very energetic um children um and uh so i was really on on my toes the whole time um but you know um the organization of the trip was awesome um lori dawson of course was part of that so i want to give a shout out to her also the admin and teachers and all the volunteers on the trip um you know you they were really um really great and then also a parent nurse or parent nurses volunteering one who helped me with my boo-boo [Music] [Laughter] um i was so excited about the zoo i guess that um i like fell down on the concrete and um so she was amazing and

167we had uh i volunteered for the woodland meadows field day last week and it was great because it was scheduled on a day that it was pouring down gonna pour down rain and miss chekowitz um emailed and was like pretty much i i heard we are not going to miss field day and moving it inside so um rescheduled it for the next day um and it was an absolutely beautiful day you know the field day hasn't been held in a while so i'm super excited that that kicked off and you know it was great for the end of the year and yeah i'm excited about um all of the i can't believe it's like almost the end of the the school year and um looking forward to uh attending um being part of graduation and

168um enjoying seeing those pictures of prom and so yeah i'm having a lot of positive energy things you know going on in the districts and um in this sorry in the district and hope that we have a great kickoff in the fall as well all right um i just want to keep this about the students because this is the last board meeting that we will be in session during the school year so i wanted to say goodbye to all of them um including our very own julian but i am so incredibly impressed whenever i'm in the buildings i got to finish up ja i got to go to um the connecting club with with michael and and steve and see those students get to participate and compass night and hand out medals and and watch

169jenny and michael give certificates to the students and hear their stories about not only what they've been accomplishing oh yeah and teresa you should have seen a smile on teresa's face the entire night she loves these kids but to see their parents and guardians and to see their staff members sitting next to them that they came that they honored and not only did they talk about their accomplishments which were fantastic and where where they intended to go after school or what they intended to do but they they talked about who they are as people as they leave saline high school and i couldn't be more proud so goodbye to the class of 2022 and we will see you on june 3rd i'll see you twice as we say goodbye to our track friends in the

170morning and say goodbye to everybody else at 6 pm on friday night so thank you very much good job hard year good job moving on to our consent agenda the following are offered as part of the consent agenda the motion noted will allow for the authorization of all listed items without discussion unless a member of the board requests that anyone or all be considered individually these items will not be read aloud but 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 following listed items as part of the consent agenda motion gerby brad thank you support jones candace thank you all those in favor please say aye aye aye opposed hearing none motion carries 7-0 items on our next agenda

171steve okay so in june we have one meeting therefore we have a series of updates that will occur canada to close out the year and that would include sex education advisory board update wellness committee update foundation for saline area schools update and a district parent council update all right is truth and taxation max or is that budget hearing budget hearing 6 pm budget hearing and i think everybody has that early early one on their calendars okay perfect um now is our second opportunity for public comments same rule same rules will apply and secretary jones has has the cards we'd like to welcome community member ching ming fan whenever you're ready did i pronounce your name correctly try to make it can you hear me yeah you're great mr president mr mc way dr large board

172and friends my name is chiang ming fan local residence local entrepreneur president of tiny light world inc i rise first thank you so much for your great leadership and congratulations for all of your success and also today is a big day this board of the bound today's decision you just modify the code it is very important to move forward for this proposal i fully support this proposal and hopefully in november you will just like me both yes it is very very important for our students local residents young and old and local entrepreneur if anything i can do to work with you let me know and also wanna echo brett talk about this it is so important think technically steam s-t-e-a-n technology is so important we need money but also we need a vision so that's

173important to understand we need two things what i want to add material and land all of these need money so detail i will talk later i hope that i can have opportunity to present our technology and uh mr mcveigh is a supportive for the idea of seoul s s-a-l-t which is saline area light tower let me just say one thing is that sling school area have the good vision and a good campus which is create creativity collaboration communication and critical thinking all of this we need move forward from safe warm dry now we need high level let's work together make this thing work i will see you november and hope that we can contribute it technically let me know if i can be used at your disposal to support this proposal thank you for your

174feedback um our next meeting the next regular board of education meeting will be held on june 14th 2022 at 6 30 p.m i'd like to please entertain a motion to adjourn the board of education meeting of may 24th 2022 at 9 01 pm support miller thank you jenny i guess motion miller motion miller second support jones okay candace thank you all those in favor please say aye aye opposed hearing