Saline Area Schools: Board of Education Meeting (3.8.2022)

001hello i'd like to please call to order the board of education meeting for march 8 2022 at 6 30 p.m if everyone could please rise for our pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all welcome all to our first meeting of march lots of things going on first as cara reminded me this morning it is international women's day so i'm celebrating that today also celebrating women's history month overall and march's reading month so lots of lots of favorites um also wanted to be cognizant that next week is our two-year anniversary of um kind of when when this all started um when we closed the buildings on march 13th 2020

002um so just a a a shout out and appreciation of thanks for everyone in our school community getting by together for these last two years we have some very very special guests and thank you to our friends at sparr who who agreed that they could go up in our agenda so they don't have to stand there for 20 minutes since they're all prepared and looking wonderful so without further ado julian we're going to go to the student showcase all right so today we have our saline high school chamber choir directed by mr briere and it's just another one of our great programs within a program so take it away guys i am sorry i saline high school chamber orchestra clear clearly there we go dr lodge board of education members thank you so much for

003having us here as i said the saline high school chamber orchestra we've had a really productive and fun year this year and i want to thank you so much for all you've done to get us in school and give us everything we needed over the last couple years to make it work thank you so much um it's been so awesome to work with these students um over their high school career and i'm really looking forward to everything we're going to do for the rest of the year i just want to highlight a few things that have happened in the orchestra world here in saline we started fifth and sixth grade this year as beginners and we have two about 100 person groups in each grade level we're really excited um and they're working with myself

004and mr garrison who we've welcomed on board he's been a dynamic and energetic presence in the orchestra room at the middle school in heritage and we're really excited to have him we were able to do our costume concert this year and put on our outfits masks included masks previously had been banned from our costume concert so we made an exception this year we were able to do uh middle school high school collaboration concerts so our seventh grade performed with our symphony orchestra and our nth grade orchestra and the eighth grade got to perform at the chamber orchestra this year which was a really fun way to connect the grade levels across the buildings and we're able to do our masterworks concert with the chamber orchestra and the celine high school choirs this year we performed

005frostiana by randall thompson which is seven poems of robert frost set to beautiful orchestral music with the chamber or sorry the wind ensemble winds and the chamber orchestra and the full choirs it was a beautiful work in december we had msbuys solon ensemble this year and all the students in the orchestra that participated in high school so in ensemble meddled earning either a first division rating or second division rating and just a quick show of bose who who participated in slow ensemble this year yeah bravo and we just finished our festival experience this year we did that virtually uh each of the high school orchestras recorded three works at various grade levels um that we're submitting for adjudication in this next week and the middle school did the same thing and we've accomplished so much

006musically this year so much to be proud of but we've got even more we're going to do our string fling concert on march 22nd we're going to have our may concerts we're doing a concert on april 6th with the accidentals a rock band that's currently out on tour they just got back from the west coast there's a violinist and a cellist in that band we're really excited to work with them and learn some more about the creative process and songwriting with our instruments and we'll have our may concerts and graduation it's hard to believe that's coming up so quick so i'm so fortunate to work with some of the most intelligent people in sleaner schools i mean these are dynamic awesome young individuals and i wanted to know what they thought you should know about

007orchestra and celine and so asking the high school orchestras i'm going to paraphrase some answers i got and i was expecting many things and they really touched my heart with these answers so they said they feel safe it's an hour they know they can show up and make music and they don't stress about it they told me they feel creative it's different than the other classes it's so important and my favorite one is they work hard to sound good and so i'm going to transition to that we're going to play a form for you a short work from the john rutter suite for strings it's called a roving hope you enjoy [Music] world [Music] good [Music] [Applause] that's fantastic i can't think of a better way to start a meeting can you come next time

008we have lots of we have a rotation going excellent um i thought you looked great but you sound even better very very very well done um thank you very much you are very welcome to stay or very welcome to go and do homework and oh that's right we give lots of a's so thank you thank you very much um okay so we're going to move a little bit backwards public comment a member of the public may address the board briefly for up to three minutes or request to be scheduled on the agenda of a future meeting please note that students will be given priority to speak on any topic the first public public participation portion of the meeting will be limited to one half hour 30 minutes normally and limited to agenda items a second

009public participation portion will be offered at the end of the agenda to allow for any other comment individuals addressing the board should take into consideration the rules of common courtesy the public participation portion of the meeting cannot be used to make personal attacks against a board member district employee or student i believe we do not have any student or community stakeholder public comment forms is that right okay thanks betty so we were going to move directly to our extended public comment spar celine parents against racism if you can approach the podium and kristen if you can toggle um toggle the mic on for the green light the green light is already on all right whenever you are ready to go um and just because it's a little bit different with extended public comment uh secretary

010jones keeps the the time for 15 minutes instead of three minutes and then um a minute out she'll show the yellow card so you know where you're at in the time if you get to that point okay thank you thanks um so like you said we are spar we're slain parents against racism hi my name is kirsten whitside i'm one of the leaders and i'm leah hogan and i'm another one of the leaders of the group uh just to kind of frame the conversation today we're really here to do is i think a couple of things first is really to introduce spar and what it is that we're really working through on behalf of students in the district who are you know of color and really primarily our goal is to advocate for the students

011and families of marginalized communities here starting with those who are of african descent but i think that we really want to bring together the voices of people across the spectrum of you know intersectional identity so we're really here to advocate on behalf of the students in the district um who you know really are experiencing right now i think an additional layer of trauma above and beyond what's what's going on with the pandemic so we're really wanting to ensure that we create a safe environment for students that is free from racism and and that is our our primary goal yeah we're a parent-led group so we're all parents in the district of students that are either um either of african descent but like likely i was saying we stand against all for um against all acts

012of bigotry so whether it's racism or hate crime you know any type of thing it's not just you know the african students it's a lot of other things too so we just want to make sure that we point that out with intersectionality so spar visually came into being a couple of years ago because uh and as you remember aroma day as well as karen brown came together and reached out to the district and parents and families across the district to address some of the concerns that families had raised specifically around some of the incidents that were happening in the schools and really at that point in time we put together a list of next steps and action items and things that we would like to see done and we worked with at that point the

013administration and the board and with each other to start to make some progress against these goals then obviously both karen and aramade moved out of celine and the leadership came to rest with both kirsten and i as well as tiffany alexander and ashley baylor who unfortunately couldn't be here this evening right so we're on a bit of a hiatus while we're trying to figure out new leadership we are back clearly we are needed in the schools based on everything we've been hearing so um we just want to talk about some of our asks so right now we want to talk about our school system um to us to parents of children who are of african descent in the school district we're in crisis our children are hurting it's really a shame that selena is one

014of the best school districts in the state great test scores people come from all over to try to come to school here and learn but our children can't learn and our children can't learn because of the environment they've been put into they can't be educationally sound when they're not feeling supported when they're feeling intimidated and when they feel like they always have to watch their backs you cannot sit there and gain knowledge and information when you're sitting there worried about what's going to happen next to me who's behind me who's looking at me who's saying what um this is a huge problem and these are lived experiences this isn't just my story of my children this isn't just leah's story of her children or tiffany's story of her children these are the experiences that we've

015that we all know of i mean we can just talk about candace speaking up recently again and the fact that she had a fight to have her voice be heard when she was saying something happened to her i think says a lot so like i said these aren't limited to just one student one school one issue and we know i did some quick calculations before this and i could easily think of 20 incidences i know this year from parents i've spoken to probably about 10 just from the four of us plus talking with candace and working with her on the dei um and these issues can go from microaggressions wearing the do-rags you know asking people for cards and passes all the way up to hate crimes and slurs you know my daughter was sexually

016assaulted in a racially charged incident that happened so these aren't just one of and these aren't just small incidences you know and what do they want people to understand that impact and how many happen every single day in all of the schools at the different levels that they have to deal with so i think one of the reasons that i i wouldn't say that hiring a a dei position on a full-time basis is a complete panacea but i think it would help us to make progress around creating an environment that is a more even playing field for all of the students in the community and while our focus primarily has been on the diversity side the equity inclusion piece is also critical so we're asking that the district hire someone who would be responsible for

017creating programming that addresses the educational needs of the staff the policy needs so helping to ensure that we have policies that are being evenly applied across the students in across all the schools that we have a strategy for educating staff and students and parents to ensure that we can create a safe environment for all the students we know strides have been me have been made things are not as stagnant as it were you know years ago when we first started and spar first started but it's just not enough it's not enough and it's not very coordinated we've got equity teams in different schools we've got the deic we've got you know who who do you go to when things happen who's ultimately responsible for all of this who's going to coordinate all of everything into

018one big issue we focus heavily on curriculum right now and listening sessions and um some education pieces but that's only one small component to what the dei person would do and what's needed like leah was talking about things like retention and plans and a coordinated effort between the entire school district every school being included um having one person to deal with that and and for people to take us seriously for our students to take us seriously when we say we're going to make these changes and help them this is a big statement to them and and the safety and knowing that they can come to school and feel better so part of the value of having a person who is specialized and has education and background in this discipline is that they can bring and

019i think an additional level of skill and awareness and professionalism too creating um really at the program level um policy and structure and process that will help to create a safer environment for all the students and you know this is something that is i think an ongoing trend that we're seeing in different educational environments of both the secondary you know the primary and the post-secondary level and also it's becoming very normal in the corporate environment as well and so you know essentially what we'd like to do is ensure that we have a holistic strategy that addresses you know all of the constituencies in the community and that takes into account the the needs of the people who are here and also anticipates the needs of the people who are coming here as well you know

020we have a couple of very large developments that are happening in town and hopefully that means that we will get some new students in in town as well i think that equally important is to make sure that you know we have a sense for not only the stories and the anecdotes that um that we are experiencing but also an understanding of what at a higher level if any differences that we're seeing in the uh outcomes across different types of student groups and so i think you know i'm a david i'm a data person by day and what i'd like to see is more data that helps me to understand kind of on a quantitative basis how the outcomes for students across different intersectional identities differ because i feel like you know anecdotally it feels different

021but i would like to see that data as well and that would be i think an important part of this role yes we've listed some of the overviews and some of the ideas we have this isn't new this is actually something that was presented some of these were actually presented to scott when he was here so this is some of these are word-for-word wants that we've been asking for for a while from our community and other communities like i said these are just some examples like working with the families and um you know working with other groups within saline too to be comprehensive communicate and we'll send this out to all of you at the board too so you can take a look at this and anyone else who wants one um the end of

022it all is that the di position like like i said we're here for spa but we're here for other students too and the dei position would help more than just students that are black in the district it would help students that are that are gay in the district it would help the transgender students it would help the students that are involved in secluded restraint this is something that would help everything this would help the white cisgendered students you know this is something that would help every single body person in this district and i think that's really important to think about i'm not asking you just to look out for the the small amount of children who who look like my family that are in here although that's quite important especially because they are a smaller

023population and tend to be overlooked um it's going to help teachers administration and all saline area school staff right now there is burden being put on the staff to know more about dei than i think that they're prepared to know or should no need to know this person would be able to be the expert help the teachers make sure the training gets done um and just help you in general it'll also help with the deic that's presenting later on this is something that the dei coordinator would work alongside of them helping them with policies and changes and like leah was saying someone who knows this work who's done it for a long time who doesn't have any questions or what ifs who really has the experience that someone that's had the experience that celine has

024had needs right because lean area schools does have a reputation out there unfortunately right now that we're all working very hard to fix and we need to work harder to fix it quicker but also so that the students that are in school are not harmed still and that's really the key part students are being harmed every single day right now we just can't keep having that happen and the other thing is you know i've heard no other schools in washington county have this position right now that is not a reason not to have one that's an awesome reason they have one we can be a leader we can say look at everything that's happened to us and that not only are we saying we're going to do this but we are and we can be

025the people that others look to you know right now i'm also on the um the dei for the city of saline i've got people from chelsea milan uh dexter coming to me looking at us for leaders because we're one of the first groups that have done this in that sort of capacity senior school should be that same type of leader to everyone else in the county if you've been talking to people at the wisd who love this idea who want to help us who want to work with us on this not only that but i've spoken to people at different school districts that are in oakland county that are very similar to our district and makeup and size and they all have these are three schools birmingham public schools choice school district and royal oak

026schools all have a dei professional administrative level position in their schools and they're all showing is everything fixed and everything better no that takes time you're always going to have issues but they are showing measured results their children are doing better the school districts are thriving and we want that for our district we want that for our children i cannot tell you how many days i have to wake up and force my child to go to school right now because she is scared she is uncomfortable and she does not feel safe i have to make a choice every day between sending maya to school and being emotionally harmed potentially or staying at home and not actually learning and most of the time she wins out because she's not learning anything when she's in school i

027want you guys to think about the other factor that sits i've got a son cabba who you all know he will not come visit me in this town he is so he's still in therapy right now and that's another issue of equity you know how expensive therapy is for these students the only reason they're in therapy is because what's happened to them in the hallways of the schools that you guys are in charge of that's it's not okay for so many reasons but i want you to really think about the impact you know some of these things happened a mile long ago and she's still dealing with them every day cabo's been on and he's doing great and he's got straight a's and he still will not visit his mom because she is in selene

028i have to go out and find him so it's not just a one-off it happens all the time in every building to students all everywhere and the impact is great and it lasts forever and any person of color can tell you they remember all the times they've been called something all the time things happen to make them feel attempted to feel less than these are things we take with us forever and these students deserve to and should feel safe in these schools and be able to learn i don't know if i can top that so but we have to say i appreciate you guys taking the time to talk to us i will send out the presentations to you and we would love to sit down the spar leaders and talk to everyone on the

029board we've talked to steve already we meet with him regularly about these things but um i would love to sit down and talk with you anytime about going on more personal stories and and see how we can all help and get this to happen together we open all need each other thanks thank you thank you both appreciate um appreciate your presentation and um the two of you i think have presented here before so you know that we don't usually respond to public comment not because we we don't have questions or support so um we look forward to receiving the presentation thank you very much um moving on to response to public comment i just had a couple of quick things i just wanted to thank everybody for the flexibility especially the students and the staff

030in the buildings that the guidance has been changing rapidly over the past couple of weeks and the feedback this morning was our foundation for saline area schools meeting we got to hear from some students there with their experience julian shared a little bit from the board table last time and um we hear it's it's it's going well and the students and the staff are being flexible as they always are in these times of covet so just wanted to to thank you for your comments around the changing guidance and also for the student and students and the staff being so flexible during this challenging time the other thing i wanted to mention is we received an email that that had a very good point in it i thought so i just wanted to talk a little

031bit about public comment and timing on agendas and things like that so when the county came down with their announcement that they were removing the mandate we were between board meetings um so it gave dr lotch and his team a short window to operationalize what they wanted to propose that they would do for the to the board and it was between board meetings so we were able to take public comment that evening but as you saw dr lodge had a proposed um a proposed plan uh ready to go for conversation usually when we have things that are larger decisions we do try to be cognizant of spreading them out across a couple of agendas so we can get public comment and we did take more public comment up front i remember susan suggesting that last

032time but i thought it was a good comment when we have big decisions to try to have at least an opportunity for public comment before we come to the presentation so i thought that that was good feedback to to think about and we did have the survey also that was due the day before the board meeting so we were able to to read all of that as well um however at any time if you have any feedback that you would like to give the board or the administration or any of our building principles etc um the let's talk is a really good resource or our email of course as i've said before is sas board salineschools.org moving forward i wanted to pause just for a minute i think before we went into approval or revisions

033on agenda michael okay do you want to go ahead are we ready yeah i just want to adjust the agenda a little obviously we moved the student showcase but i'd like to ask that we removed 10 b which was a discussion item about establishing professional development advisory committee apparently it's not ready for prime time yet so thank you yeah thank you very much so i'd like to please entertain a motion to approve the revised agenda eliminating item 10b establishment of professional development advisory committee from the agenda so 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 can i please have a motion to approve the agenda

034as revised by vice president mcveigh motion gerby thank you brad support jones thank you candace all those in favor please say aye opposed hearing on motion carries 7-0 um we will move forward through the student showcase thank you very much to the very fine chamber orchestra and we're scheduled reports continue to learn plan and our focus on literacy dr lodge and i'd also like to invite up at um jen caroline and kara who are part of our teaching and learning team lead and i'm going to go ahead and kick it off but first i'd like to thank the chamber orchestra for playing tonight they did a great job and spar for presenting it's a good way to start our meeting this evening we're going to start with the continue to learn update the first part

035is largely an update on covet protocols and then we're going to move into the larger part of the presentation which is all about literacy so we have caroline jen and cara here to talk about that so we'll go ahead and start with this part so as we've been looking at seven day totals across washington county these are updated as of today so we see that that case count is dropping which is really good news and that um positivity rate going down too so the the conditions in washington county although still in the high transmission phase are certainly looking uh better and moving moving in a better direction in terms of the chart that we've been showing or the graph we've been showing from cobot act now you can also see that the trend pattern is

036moving in a good direction now with that said yes we are going to be ready for a potential uptick after spring break but at this point we're not seeing that and feeling like the direction certainly is good as to where we're at right now okay i didn't know that i could do that whoa one button that's an efficient presentation oh wait wait i didn't mean to do that it's done it's over okay we're gonna we're gonna back this up here okay uh yeah yeah why don't we just have it often no spoiler alerts don't don't read those slides okay okay so um so the good news is and i i did update with district nurse karen herbie this is the first day in a long long time we haven't any positive cases in the district

037so um if if if you look here we still have two students that are in isolation as they tested positive the previous day on monday but um i think we can see that the the trend pattern is is much improved um with hardly any any cases in the district um for both students and staff so that's certainly positive okay we'll go to the next one here so um the other part that president steuben alluded to earlier is that the students the staff our community have been doing a very good job of working with us on these constantly changing metrics the cdc has now changed the way in which they're categorizing risk within counties and ultimately michigan in general is in this medium phase now it used to be where we were looking simply at um

038low substantial um and then moderate and high and that was all and now it's a three-tiered approach that we're looking at and michigan including washington county are medium which gives a number of things that you should be considering so we go to the next one and the last one related to guidance here this is directly from the washington county health department updated school guidance but i think three things are important here number one the current community covid level the level of in-school transmission which is low and the capacity of schools facilities staff and resources they're really looking at that as they're providing guidance moving forward the other thing they're looking at too is vaccination rate and also hospital capacity and that's all factoring into some of these new systems on how they're categorizing risk as

039it continues to evolve and as we think it is moving from pandemic towards endemic so that's that's the general update of the covet update and now we're going to go ahead and fast forward to the literacy uh side of things appreciate it good evening for thanks for having us this evening we're looking forward to our presentation as we're really proud of the work that we are doing here in saline schools in our buildings and in our classrooms across three incredibly challenging years anna thanks so our goals this evening as our part of the presentation are to really center the broader behavioral and social context as relates to our academic focus areas to really elevate the qualitative and quantitative data points that we consider when we think about student progress identify the variety of approaches we

040take to support student success and to highlight of course next steps so as we got ready for this presentation we were really struck by the need to continue to elevate the attention to whole child needs because the pandemic has been ongoing our students staff and families have experienced the pandemic in a variety of different ways the impacts have been different for all families and so we continue to hold true to our mission to take care of the whole child the image on the left is from the new michigan integrated continuous improvement process that the state of michigan is now using for our school improvement and district improvement plans statewide so we have adopted that and this is an image that they have used as a part of their programming but i thought it illustrated our

041saline area schools focus really well in a nice image too to think about how we create healthy safe spaces that are engaged supportive and challenging as well in addition on the right hand side throughout steve's continue to learn presentations he's continued to bring back the fact that we also want to create as we move through the pandemic learning spaces that are rich engaging authentic for our students so bringing back our our concentration on the compass and reinvigorating that in our classroom so it really is a both and when we think about the academic growth of our students specifically as related to literacy tonight that it's not happening in a vacuum that it's really important for us to remember that the pandemic is ongoing and we're going to really hold tight to the values around whole

042child attention and creating enthusiastic and authentic learning spaces for our students good evening i'm jen nelson i am in a new role this year as a literacy coach and instructional designer previously taught in the district for 18 years before being in this position so while building back during the pandemic has been challenging there have been some structures that we've had in place in sleen area schools for a long time that we've been able to really hold on to and i'm going to highlight a few of those here the first is our best fit model also known as team time in some buildings or win this is a time in the day for k-3 and some 4-5 students to get targeted literacy instruction based on what they need using acadiance data and fonts and panel data

043we're able to target specifically what students need whether they need a small group setting with working with our mtss coordinators and literacy tutors whether they need on grade level support with teachers or they need to be advanced and work on extension work around literacy just this year we've had 327 students participate in the small group sessions we're getting support in a small group setting and we've already had 83 of those students exit needing those services in addition we use a workshop framework for our literacy for our reading and writing curriculum and this is especially important because a workshop framework allows for short 10 to 15 minutes of explicit instruction and then extended time for students to read and write while teachers then get to support students in an individual one-on-one setting or small group setting

044this is important too because that small group setting with the teachers with students with other students helps to also develop the social emotional growth that we know is also needed this time is also spent working with partners small groups students participate in book clubs third if you walk into k-8 literacy classrooms in sleem one thing we pride ourselves is our extensive classroom libraries this has been something that we've had in place because celine has valued that and prioritized money for it this lease the sleet the foundation for saline area schools continues to support it just supporting a new initiative at woodland meadows to update their book room this year they recently um supported a granite harvest updating our the third grade book club units to be more diverse ptas also play a role in this

045just highlighting one at pleasant ridge this year they funded a grant for a teacher on graphic novels where she was using graphic novels to teach phonological awareness to an upper grades classroom fourth we have had and continue to have explicit instruction and phonics happening across the day so in a k through classroom you would have best fit literacy instruction tailored to your needs reading instruction writing instruction and then also time for phonics we know that this is critical to have in place and something we've had in place lastly and most importantly are incredible teaching staff in my new role i'm able to be in lots of different classes every day and so seeing teachers and support staff meet students where they are and create joyful learning experiences that are rich in literacy is one of

046the most important parts of this presentation so just keeping those in mind kara's going to highlight some structures happening at the secondary level at the secondary level we think about student success meetings as an integral part of meeting student needs where staff inside the building analyze data such as attendance course grades and behavioral needs are incidents that have come up to identify students who need supports and then respond accordingly those they're called different things inside the buildings but it's an opportunity to really elevate the needs of specific students based on the data they have the pbis system so the positive behavior intervention system that's in place at our secondary level is a as a partner to somewhat of the mtss system but related to behavior which essentially identifies student patterns and behavioral choices or incidents

047and then responds accordingly with positive behavioral supports at the secondary level we also have more targeted classes that aren't available at the elementary levels specified to student needs whether it be classes that are elevated or advanced and our academic strategies class to help students who might need more attention to academic skills such as studying or reading textbooks or even just organizational issues such as organizing binders and keeping units of study in order focus group meetings which are typically held by counselors or staff inside the buildings with identified groups of students where they might have social emotional issues that are getting the way of being academically successful because we understand that again as i mentioned at the beginning that those two are in partnership so to be successful academically we also have to have really socially

048emotionally well students too and then of course at the secondary level incredible teaching and support staff from our certified teachers to our parents to our tutors who are all providing supports in the moment as they present themselves with the students in a responsive and relevant way hi caroline stone mtss coordinator for the district thank you for having us so my part of the presentation is talking a little bit about some of the quantitative data that we have we're going to give a snapshot k8 focus especially on literacy which is not to say that the other pieces aren't important we wanted to present this for a couple of reasons one because we continue and will continue for a number of years to see an impact of covid on student learning and student progress also to show

049what all the structures that jen described and care described are doing to combat that so you can see the triangle in the upper right you know i don't travel without a triangle representing the mtss model whether it's for academics or behavioral social emotional support support and it really encompasses everything from the tier one instruction that we described all the way to special education el supports and uh intervention all of that together um is uh what we are kind of focusing on um in terms of the outcomes that will show we know that there's been an impact in many different areas not just literacy we know at the secondary level there's been a tremendous impact on social emotional behavioral health but and this is just kind of a small part so the first couple slides are

050going to be presenting a cadence data k3 so the way to interpret that is i'm going to show the percent of students who are at benchmark for the last several years at benchmark meaning that they are on track for meeting important literacy goals so if you know my next slide anna so we'll start with kindergarten as you can imagine when the pandemic hit and some students were still learning to read the impact on them was greater we can see in the purple color 2020 2021 school year and our kindergartners had some of the hardest time benefiting from virtual instruction and and were impacted severely by the learning loss with school closures so um our current year is the the last one that's kind of that second red color and so you can see that our

051students we are very fortunate many of them come to us already with a great foundation for what's to come and we're really excited that by the middle of the year we have um more than 75 percent of our students who are still on track our goal is at any point in time to have at least 80 percent of students there because then we know that our triangle is indeed a triangle and so we can give that extra support to all the students who need it so if you don't mind going to the next one then for each of the younger grades i'm going to remind us of this progression of foundational skills when it comes to learning how to read this isn't the only important piece but it's certainly a big part of it so

052our students in kindergarten are still working on phonemic awareness and phonics especially hearing and manipulating sounds and words and matching those fluently to letters in order to be able to read next slide we'll talk about first grade so again one of the ones that was really impacted last year so we can see that our entering first graders that was that purple graph from the kindergarten slide came in with a lower percentage at benchmark than we've had in recent years but we're really excited that we have been able to to grow almost to the level of mid-year last year and if you click to the next slide you can see that some of the things we're still working on here are segmenting and fluently applying that letter sound relationship in phonics in order to read connected

053text accurately and derive meaning in second grade again we are now seeing over 80 of students being benchmark which is really uh wonderful not quite to pre-pandemic levels but it we know it's going to take a while to get there um if you click on the next slide the things we're focusing on here in addition to basic and advanced phonic patterns is accuracy and fluency in connected text in order to again be able to make sure that they're making meaning out of what they're reading in the next slide we'll focus on third grade so here again you can see the purple last year was really tough to get to that 80 percent and so our entering third graders this year were significantly impacted again so far and yet we've been able by mid-year to have

054a higher percent of students at benchmark than we were last year even though the students came in higher and the last slide for the k-3 shows that in third grade the main focus here is on making sure that our students are really accurate as they leave us in third grade and go into fourth and fifth grade where the focus is more on reading to learn than learning to read and so that involves all sorts of different things that our third grade teachers are working on and if you click on the next slide we'll go into fourth grade so in fourth grade our state assessment that we're using is nwea that has a different metric so there we're talking in terms of writ units the range there is from 100 to 350 so instead of looking

055at percent of students at benchmark they kind of meet that minimum expectation we compare our performance to national norms one thing that's important to note is that the national norms were made in 2020 before the pandemic and have not been updated so when we compare how selena's doing to the national norm we're not comparing it to the average of students right now who've also experienced the pandemic i also created these graphs for math so if you want you can click on that third bullet point to get those later not now we can do that later we don't have time if we had five hours i could give you a lot more if you click on the next one no nobody has that kind of time so here again we're showing the mean so the average

056celine ritz score over the last six years compared to the national norm in red and then i just put a star on the pandemic years in case anyone forgot when this thing started and what you can see here is obviously it's a different metric so first of all this is a computer-based assessment so it is not going to be a direct measure of the students foundational skills or their accuracy fluency and things like that but our students in fourth grade and up are actually performing quite well still on this measure which is really nice to see we did not give this in the winter or spring of last year so if you click on the next one you can see fifth grade and if it looks like things are going way up it's just because

057i had to change you'll see like this graph goes from 190 to 230 so that's a little deceiving so just look at within one graph to compare those but again we're not in a horrible place this winter compared to where we were before this isn't even really our lowest score so that's really nice to see and if you click on the next one you can see the pattern in sixth grade is is similar and in seventh grade and eighth grade as well so and if you want to go ahead and click to the next that seventh grade in eighth grade i'll let you have five second photo op and um so this is my last slide i wanted to finish on this quote that i find very compelling and also let you know i i

058remember there was a board member last time we presented that asked if we could speak to the impact of covet on student outcomes beyond celine so is that you ben um so i did a little research and now some of that data has been published so i have three slides for you and you don't have to click on them now but where that says covet impact in the us and worldwide you can click there and i tried to just give a snapshot of what i found and just verbally what i can tell you is that there's a lot of different estimates and it's super interesting people are estimating the learning loss in terms of time lost so some are giving estimates of four to six months of students being behind others are estimating it based

059on lost income of the students over the course of their lives which is another really interesting way to look at it the bottom line is that almost every study that i found showed that this pandemic has widened disparities widened gaps so that the students who are most negatively affected were those from minority groups so race was a big factor from lower income groups girls more affected than boys and all of the things that we kind of feared going into this and had a sense would happen have happened and not just to us which is to say it's more important than ever as sparr has said as as we continue to do to focus on improving and building on the efficient equitable and resilient systems that we have and we've been very excited to already have

060a foundation there with what jen and cair have described and with our partnership with shannon washington and what she's been able to do with cultural response instruction guiding us there but i'm really excited with the progress we've made we know we still have a lot of work so just pausing on this slide to use some of the beautiful pictures that anna's been taking as she visits classrooms and spotlights does spotlights on teachers we want to ground this in just the work that's happening every day in the classroom so while we're happy to share this recent data it's just you know in some cases two and three weeks old it's our most recent data and we're happy with the progress students are making we know that it's because of these experiences that they're getting in the

061classroom and that there is time for small group instruction that we're paying attention to social emotional learning and making time for that that we have these rich components of literacy happening in classrooms and that we're differentiating one thing that we notice is that students need different things and so the models that we're using allow us to give students what they need we also want to just anchor that this is not everything so we get to see a lot in the data we get to see growth with fluency comprehension automaticity we don't get to see the whole reader and writer so in talking with teachers and being in classrooms we're also celebrating other things like increased stamina that kids can read and write for longer amounts of time in one sitting that students are becoming more

062independent that partnership and group work skills the ability to communicate and collaborate are improving that we have time for creativity and innovation that we're fostering a true love of reading that students are getting exposure to new book genres authors and creating identities as readers and writers that students are taking time to set goals that we're writing for authentic audiences and that there's time for project-based learning so at our last board meeting i when we were doing the debrief on how we were going to use esser funds we talked about some of the pieces we were going to leverage to continue to support our students and so i want to bring those forward in this presentation as well i'm of course continuing our strong programming and existing structures that we've described tonight to continue to build

063upon on the successes that we've had and to keep going to keep providing the supports that we as we identify them and supporting our students to layer individualized supports to make sure that every student has what they need in order to be successful to increase mentor and community oriented time to address some of the social emotional wellness needs and then to target academic summer programming to reach students in a different way outside of the school year based upon the needs that we have identified so those are from our asset presentation and at the same time as we're thinking about how to support students we're thinking about how to support staff in this as well so thinking about collaboration that can happen across our team has been a real highlight to have the teaching and learning

064team come together from different focus areas and collaborate but greater collaboration between our mtss team and our english language learner team professional development opportunities for staff while still really holding and prioritizing staff wellness and then thinking about building goals for next year connected to our next steps that we want for students that's it thank you so much i'm sure we have a few questions and comments up here um i i really liked on the two slides the one was elementary it had the the buttons on it and then one other one was secondary and you talked about the talented and dedicated staff totally agree including you all in that and your team as well of course um jenny i i don't know if you wanna this is it this is this is this is your

065your subject matter expertise so i don't know if you want to go first or anybody uh well thank you all for coming and for preparing this for us and and your team too um i know that the i think the creation of the teaching and learning team has really just coordinated and accelerated the areas of teaching and learning and that directly impacts students daily in the classroom so giving access to professional development and not just the professional development that happens in an hour after school when people are tired but the job embedded professional development that we know is what really impacts change and student learning so i just wrote down a couple of things um i i really enjoyed the image from my kip and thinking about how the academic needs i think carrie you

066said it's both and like we're not thinking about either or when in terms of social emotional wellness or physical wellness academic wellness we're thinking about all the needs of the whole child um i was also um thinking a lot about what um caroline elevated just that um you know again we've heard about the health disparities we've heard about financial disparities but hearing about academic disparities and how that could really um shift things globally for for a long time so um seeing how we're responding to that i have to say i'm really excited to see the data that shows that we're beyond where we were last year which shows that we're closing some of those um i hate to say gap but for lack of a better term right now um we're we're really we're really

067providing targeted support for students to allow them to reach their a higher level of achievement than they were last year so that's exciting to see and i wonder i think there's probably a lot of pieces to that puzzle or that recipe but being back in school full time and then also having your team really support in the classroom i wondered if um if there had been thought to the my kip for next year and how the design of that is going to be reflected with the information that you've learned this year and i know the thing that is a little different than before is we would have like you know like you showed years of data but the data is so different because of the last two years so how that might impact our goals

068moving forward i'm actually going to have cara come up and talk about that but one thing i did want to point out that you are alluding to trustee miller is that this teaching and learning team is incredible we haven't had a team quite like this before and i think it's because it encompasses so many different staff members that represent so many different students in other words we have our special education department on this team our el coordinator katie o'keefe shannon washington our culturally responsive consultant mtss literacy teaching and learning team lead it really hasn't come together like this in the past and so it's really now able to really it's like a powerful team that that is really out to better support our students and our staff with that they can answer all the questions

069better than i can so i'm gonna sit down no i just to build on that like looking at that graphic from my kip which is um which is an a really great visual but looking at that you can see representation of of the teaching and learning team right on that um on that visual so i think that that's what you're saying steve like we recognize that these are the things the state the world recognizes that these are the things that kids need and selena's responding to that with that teaching and learning team ana could you navigate back to that slide just people who might have joined us late thank you you know we're actually really excited about the serendipitous timing of my kip and how the change at the state level aligns to our goals

070as a district and some of the patterns that we've had in place as you know in the fall we just renewed our strategic framework goals and the my kit plan essentially we'll be using those we're actually going to shift the language to frames and the building strategies which we've previously called goals will help us achieve those strategic frames that we have outlined for the district and the mykip also calls us to really pull together an entire data story and it's no longer just on state assessments and so we know that any given test on any given day reflects the social emotional state of the student on that day and where they're at maybe possibly what they've eaten what their family situation is and so we've known that for a really long time that one test

071doesn't illustrate a student's progress or growth and that it's really looking at the bigger picture and a variety of different data points and again caroline said we would have need five hours to go through all of them with you tonight um so what mykip has asked us to do is really create data stories and pull that data together so one of the great things about having a whole group of people who are working with the interests of the district in mind from a standpoint of growth is where we're able to curate a variety of different data points that are both qualitative and quantitative to consider and bringing those forward to our strategic framework groups our district leadership and our teaching and learning teams inside of each of the buildings um it's we are actually in

072a a goal renewal year this year so it's a great time like i said very serendipitous for us to bring this data forward look at it from a variety of different lenses a variety of different data points and then allow the building leaders to decide what do their students at that developmental level need next based upon that data story okay and one last thing i just want to say is um congratulations i don't want this to be lost but how many students have been exited this year from intervention say it again 83 not to be unnoticed so good work to the team and congratulations to those students and their families yeah thanks yeah it's funny i noted the same thing right those 83 students and 327 so 240 more right and we'll be working on

073that so i noticed a number of things i i so as you were flipping through the charts one of the things that i thought i picked up that was important to me was when we looked at our kindergarten covid number and then if i looked right they went to maroon the next year in that first grade and i thought i saw a ten percent like increase there and if i don't think it flip back to that and it was bigger than the increases that i thought i had seen in the previous times and so for me what that speaks to is the importance of our in-person we wanted we we prioritized being in person and we thought that that was important and i think our data demonstrates and shows that from k or am i

074right like the so you're going to talk about the ping correct and i thought i saw a 10 increase so but so sorry kudos um there there were some really interesting trends from the spring of last year to the fall of this year right so that was an increase but it was less of a loss than we usually get so usually between kindergarten and first grade we've noticed about a 10 drop there right and we've had a million discussions on why we think that is you know students if anyone has a kindergartner or had a kindergarten recently it's really hard to they don't really read independently for pleasure in that summer between two after screen so some of those games are harder to maintain or maybe yours do mine didn't um some of those games

075are hard to maintain their skills are still very fresh and new um but this is less than we expected but what's really interesting is between this end of first rate so 69 benchmark now go to the case yeah um here 78 percent so um actually when we were going to present this in february i had like three slides on this because it's so interesting um i was really struck by that like our second graders came in much higher than we expected on the whole again you know i can't say enough this is on the whole we're trying to speak globally and i thought well man did we just like what happened there did a lot of those first days who were struggling move you know and it wasn't the case we actually had a good

076number of students in the future i could send you this lesson um make growth over the summer i'd like to say that that was because super summer scholars i can't take credit for it i think that it is a combination you know that's one of those beautiful stories i think everyone really working together i think absolutely last summer i think was really a turning point for a lot of us realizing what had happened to all of us and what happened to those young kids so i give a lot of credit that spoke to me and all spoke to engagement of our families and wanting to be right like noticing that you know that that speaks to the quality of celine right and and what have you so i i appreciate that and i you know

077literacy is something that i'm i'm i i will use the word obsessed with like it's just something that between you know we we have to get that right it's just something that where for the rest of our students lives it's important right to be able i want you know of course when they get to me as biology students you know like just the terminologies and all the but i but i i really applaud the work being done you know there's so much i would also say that there's so much instructional delivery change that has happened for educators and for that i think that we've had to be so much more creative when we had to meet students in different locations we've had to you know and so like i really applaud like our instructional team

078i agree with what dr lott was saying about you know having our now having our instructional team be multi-faceted has allowed us to to deal with some of those if you will equity things that are there now i will having said that i appreciated the research you shared with me and boy now like i'm gonna want to like pay attention now to those equity gaps that we that you said you know could potentially be there due to loss of time due to loss of income those types of things so now like you've given me like a whole another thing to to spend my time at night awake about but i appreciate that and uh but i appreciate that research so thank you very much for that okay and uh i i agree that i the

079my kip is gonna provide more flexibility i think to me for us to be able to make changes on the fly and be able to adjust and modify you know before i used to be like locked into goals whether it was like for a two-year cycle a three you know whatever you wanted your cycles to be and so i think that that's going to be a a big thing and then i guess a couple other things that i you know i i said i'm so glad that we keep supports in place not just for our k3 students but for our for our students k-12 right like literacy is something that does impact our middle school and our high school learners and i spoke to biology and some of those terminology things that are there and

080and i guess the last thing i'll say is i want to give a shout out again to something you said about the foundation for your saline area schools i know that they're they're they're meeting and supporting our schools and thank you for classroom libraries and helping our our teachers and our students mostly to have engaging materials so anyway so thank you for this presentation like this is so important to me great yes i'll echo the gratitude for for all of your work i have a question that's focused on family engagement brad talked a little bit about that or trustee gerby talked a little bit about the importance of family engagement and i'm thinking about all the great work that's happening in the classroom the wind time and the you know all the things that are

081being done to support students that are um that need additional support but there are a number of families that we've been hearing from that i've been personally hearing from that feel like their children are really struggling and we're we see that in the numbers we see that there's improvement but there's also um the pandemic has has had an impact on on students and and their performance and i'm thinking about the the alignment to family support and and that communication to families we know we have the regular parent conferencing times but i'm just thinking for the additional support that may be needed that uh the communication lines and how we're how we're incorporating new strategies maybe to to think about engaging families in in the learning process as it relates to literacy yeah thank you for

082asking that question i know caroline can speak more to this as well obviously at the classroom level you know teachers are the main communicators to families in terms of how their students are doing how they're progressing and we encourage all families to reach out to the classroom teacher to seek extra support or ask questions in terms of the data shared this evening as well as into course work at the secondary level families are notified of the assessment results so we did send out some notifications and talked at length about how could we wrap some educational pieces or even resources into that the next time we do that one of those pushes of data out to families so that when they see the data and there are some questions some of them are pre-loaded from the

083systems themselves but we also see it as a great opportunity to provide resources and to provide connections in a way that we haven't before we do also have at the secondary level there's course completion and course grade letters that go out mid-trimester at the end of the trimester to alert families to their students successes in addition to the classroom communication and again that might be another place for us to layer in some additional resources for families to leverage at home we've talked about infographics and suggestions at the secondary level related to wellness and the connection to student success how we can get the parent education piece stronger so they can feel like they have the resources they need and the tools at their fingertips to better support their student on the home front so it's

084definitely an area that we can grow in and that will look at putting into miss anything putting into practice more extensively in the yeah future we've had um can i i'll just start by saying that we can never engage parents and families enough that we will always be failing basically in that regard which doesn't say that we're not trying to do better but um it's never going to be enough so a couple of things that have happened since the pandemic started we shifted very quickly we realized very quickly that one of the things that was really tricky especially for families of students who were struggling in some way that had some extra support was to have many points of contact in the school so we really try to streamline it and have like one or

085two points of contact at most especially when from virtual to hybrid it was really hard to keep track so we tried to share the information about you know what the supports were but then say say for el families for instance that your contact is going to be your el tutor because they'll be able to translate literally and figuratively everything that you know is happening and that's your one direct line for the most part for our students who are receiving intervention outside of special education or outside of yale we're really trying to make the teacher that contact and that's for a couple reasons one is because it's easier on parents to know there's one email one contact one name but also because if we're really truly working as a team then we should i realize i'm

086sorry i'm standing like really close to microphone is that better sorry um for the for the teacher you know if we're really working as a team they will know everything about all the other supports that are happening so backtracking to what you first said which is there's a lot of parents who are very concerned about what's going on with their students one of the reasons i'm really excited about this opportunity just to speak to you to the public about this is that not all students who look like they're still struggling are at the point where they need intervention now some of it is just that now the average first grader looks different than the average first grader did two years ago um and that's not just us again that you know the the data if

087you click on those slides about the impact of this in the world and and the us broadly um it's everywhere and so i think it's really hard when you have multiple children you know you remember when your fifth grader was in first grade and oh my gosh they were already reading you know pick your chapter book right and now this first grader is not and so part of the discussion i think we need to have is just um you know it it's going to take time we will get there um but not all first graders are going to need an iep right now even though sometimes it feels like we're panicking i think it's very encouraging i'm glad that brad pointed out that some of those summer pieces i think we are all being responsive

088um but i too have had a lot of conversation with parents about this is what is going on this is what we have in place here is the you know here's the data qualitatively and quantitatively showing that we are meeting those needs of students i know it's hard not to say close the gap but we are meeting the needs of students um it's going to take some time um we have talked a lot about different ways to partner with families to educate them and what other things can be done you know at home and where to get the biggest bang for your buck i actually tried out one of my trainings that i do with all of our brand new mtss tutors last fall with a couple parents just to kind of see is this

089too much is this enough um and and i'm tweaking it still and um i'm really excited um in the future to partner more with our el department um and with each building to offer more parent-facing information in the meantime we do have our sis mtss website our curriculum website that has a lot of resources and we have been trying out some new ways of sending some of this information to parents trying to put everything we can on school messenger um so that's how kara alluded to that's how we send out our cadence data with a letter explaining it we tried to be really detailed there and then right after that we sent out all of our intervention letters so students who were getting reading invention they got a letter stating what was the focus what

090was the tier what were we going to be doing and then students who are on irip so not special end plans but individual reading improvement plans we also have those read-at-home plans that detail very specific things that can be done to support what's going on at school and kind of just elevate the benefits of all of that so there's a lot of different pieces but it's still very much work in practice thank you for bringing that up that was exactly the area that i wanted to ask about too and if i could build on it just a little bit um you said something about you know recognizing that the impact on student ex student success will be felt for several years and i think that that's a very transparent thing to say and i think

091we are not unique in this situation this is this is a global thing um and just us realizing that and us meeting those students where they're at is incredibly important and and like trustee jones secretary jones said um i also hear from a lot of families about what can we do what can we do at home but what can we do in the classrooms as well so whether through the foundation or the ptas we used to have curriculum nights uh with with ptas maybe partnering with with them particularly in elementary levels might be something that we could do we used to have a lot of um i had little reading buddies and a lot of folks would volunteer and we'd come in to the schools and sit down and read with kids and and make

092notes and the teacher would let let you know okay here's what to look for and here's what you should record and and how many pages and how many minutes and anything you're noticing like if we can do more of that and you can provide um maybe through news and notes or or communications to the families ideas for volunteering and and really being there in the classrooms and supporting at home for for those who would like to and those who are able to do that um it's a great thing for grandparents and aunts and uncles and all sorts of guardians and things like that too um that could be really really beneficial um because that impact i think will be seen and i am very impressed with some of the data that i'm seeing yes thank

093you for all that i would be remiss to say i was saying i'm thinking just amplifying the admin weeklies that go out with the resources and then for families and some of the flip videos that have been done through our social work and counseling staff members in terms of teaching students our parents how to respond to social stories that are coming up behaviors that they might be seeing at home and how to be responsive to that what um to be expecting and so i love the ideas that you shared and i'm i'm thinking about the stream line of information because there's such information overload it's like how do we get the best information into the hands of our our families so that they can use it to the best extent possible yeah so thank you

094for all of that yeah absolutely small group settings partners buddy system all that is great um excellent anyone else comments or questions we have a book vending machine and not nice and snow but yes book bikes waiting for spring just because i know um caroline this is something i would love to like put our brains together on some time but i'm also wondering a little bit but just thinking about that second grade group that showed that growth over the summer um one thing i've been wondering a little bit about and uh i know that your brain has so much knowledge so this is why i'm asking we don't have to discuss it here today but i'm also wondering a little bit about kids who didn't have the same access to materials or to in-person instruction

095for the last couple of years and so now they're getting instruction when their development is more mature and so um anecdotally i'm seeing kids who are catching on to things much quicker and making making leaps because they're hearing things that maybe they would have heard at the end of kindergarten but now they're hearing it in second grade or they're experiencing experiencing it and in second grade in a way that we just couldn't um we couldn't do in a virtual setting as as for the especially for our youngest learners so i just i wonder a little bit too there's been talk you know about kindergarten appropriateness and different countries who start kindergarten at later ages and um all of that so i wonder if that's something that might come out of some of the data and

096research that's coming out of kids who are experiencing school maybe a year after what they would have experienced before all right and just susan so i guess um thank you for your update and presentation um i think this will this is kind of a turn i don't know if steve wants to come up here um but i just wanted to make a comment about the earlier comment on public comment from an email that we got with the continue to learn update so i just want to clarify that it is a scheduled report and the board does not it's a district update board does not have decision specifically so like last time doesn't make a decision or take action on that and so i would recommend that any of those concerns and comments be referred to

097superintendent watch and not a response by the board and then i know steve you you gave some some feedback and how you sought the feedback and came to the decision prior to your presentation so i don't know if you wanted to repeat that part or you mean the previous board meeting and the decision to mask or not mask i believe that's what president stephen was referring to um well i think what president seven is referring to is that anytime we're making an educated decision on how we should proceed with whatever we're doing in the district it does take a lot of planning and research and we were also in that case receiving feedback from you know the community through a survey we were also talking to a parents and families that were communicating via email

098phone calls we were talking to our administrative team our staff and therefore we needed to put together a plan coming into the board meeting versus hearing public comment and then quickly switching to change the plan that that probably wouldn't have made sense at the time so yes we did have the plan organized ahead of time felt that it was really important because we were following consistently following the washington county health department guidance throughout and will continue to do that and and we're not prepared to deviate from that course moving forward and we also felt that we had a lot of data research and feedback already that we were able to make that educated decision thank you um yeah and i think you know it's been like that i think from the beginning um with the

099superintendent making those decisions and so the process is going to look different from a board taking action and hearing the board the public comment and stuff um it's already been researched like you said and um so just wanted to point that out thank you if i can clarify too i was speaking to agenda setting which is something that the superintendent and i do together and and i think i was commenting on the fact that if there are large topics whether the board is taking action or it's an operationalized um procedural thing i think the feedback was could you spread the the discussion across a couple of different agendas if possible to allow for public comment okay all right thank you very much um moving on to our second scheduled report um d-e-i-a-c uh quarterly report

100the team could approach the podium welcome everybody um it might still be on so if you see a green light whenever you all are ready to go there we go good evening my name is laura washington and i'm the principal of celine middle school and have been the co-op co-chair along with shannon washington of the diversity equity and inclusion advisory board since august of 2021 we are here this evening to give you an update on the deiac's organizational framework areas of progress and offer some future recommendations so without further ado i would like to introduce heather finch lauren hornberger and melisa melissa zaksik thank you for your time this evening thanks laura good evening i'm lauren hornberger i'm a community member a member of the deiac and also a parent here in celine i really

101want to start by thanking each of you for the commitment to this work and the commitment diversity and equity in in our district you know in particular secretary jones trustee estep and uh trustee miller as well too um they are our liaisons for the group and they have um you know been you know super helpful with the work and in their participation too um with the diiac work i think each of us understands that in terms of what we want to achieve in our saline district there are many things that we need to do as a community we need commitment we need intentionality and we need courageous leadership that's something that's really important and we also wanted to recognize again the support that we have from from each of you and from this board but

102we also wanted to recognize that there's still significant amount of work that needs to happen i think we powerfully heard that already through our spar leadership team i think we heard that through the work that we need to do to ensure equity post covid but again we also wanted to show appreciation as we kick off the conversation too so what i'd like to do is start by sharing a bit around strategically what we're doing with the deiac so i'm going to share a little bit about the policy the framework we're thinking about and then turn it over to melissa and heather to talk more about what some of our achievements have been and also what some of our recommendations will be in in the future so as you know the board formulated our policy in

103in april 2021 and this was really important for for the district we needed to make sure that we had something in place that foundationally showed the commitment um and and the work that needed to happen within within the district our members have evolved so we brought in some terrific new members some staff parents and most importantly some terrific students to to the work i think what's really important too is we really through this work and through the things that we have to focus on we do want to really elevate the voices of the students as well i think that that is something that we have an opportunity as a as a committee our view of how we propose how we actually operate this work has evolved as well too so i'll actually turn to that

104for the next slide one thing to share is that this is really an aspiration this is what we believe an operating model could be for a full dei work within within the district um one thing to note that um [Music] again we think that there's important and an opportunity to really talk about clarity of um you know what the work is who's responsible for it what our purpose is and how we really connect the entire organization so as you can see the deiac serves as an advisory report for policy recommendations implementing board policy providing feedback and doing benchmarking for the district and how we bring this framework to life is something that we're really starting to work on think about and and to get some feedback from um you know from the the administration and

105from the board the action plan and the work that we're doing really hasn't changed the focus areas haven't changed since we started this work several years ago as you can see these are our five areas of focus and they certainly continue i think what you'll hear from the group when we start to talk about recommendations and where we think the priorities need to be are really in two areas and that's specific to our dei structure systems policies and practices and it's also in our recruitment hiring development and retention within within the district these are really the items that support our work so again i don't think there's any surprises here in terms of you know how we really evaluate the work and how we make decisions and how we track and measure progress so the

106things that that certainly are important to know is that we're guiding guided by our strategic framework we we have a three-year dei plan which again has been evolved over the past several years we have a ejac which is a transformation tool that is recognized as an important work to use within districts in terms of an overall dei model and one thing that i would call out specifically here which is new is that we just completed the district perception survey and so that is we just got the results from that last um really last month for as the meeting so we do think that this will really input and provide input into the work as well so we don't yet have you know information to share with the board but that is something that you can

107look forward to from us in terms of how we incorporate that into into our plan so now i'm going to turn it over to heather who's going to share a bit more about our areas in progress hi there my name is heather finch i am a committee member as well as a parent of four in saline schools so we wanted to talk about some of the things that have been happening in saline schools as far as areas of progress some of the things that we've been involved in as advisors have been really trying to evaluate some of the policies and things that have come up here through a lens of equity uh things that we've weighed in on have been like the transgender policy the sex ed for the life skills children and adults and

108the continue to learn plan that we all discuss these things together and try and come to a consensus so that we can share that with you guys on how we feel we can best provide guidance and then as well we are working on going through that that survey there's a lot of data that we still want to kind of cross-reference and make sure that we're really looking at the whole picture and then some areas of progress that we're seeing in the district one thing that we're really excited about is seeing increased gender neutral bathrooms and changing spaces at both the high school and the middle school and making those in places that children can get to instead of just having like one location in the high school which we all know it's really hard for

109kids to get across that building in their periods between classes so making sure those are available on every floor really helps provide that equity to the students who need that and staff if they need that as well as making sure that we're keeping lines of communication open with the city on their dei efforts and inviting communication input from the building level equity teams every building here in saline right now has an equity team so we've been inviting them in to share stuff with us on how things are going and what they feel that they need to see input on we're also evaluating the process for restorative justice and handbook guidelines and then we're also making sure that the district is also providing community listening sessions we did the bridge disability so those are lots of

110great opportunities for more progress and being able to actually hear what issues are happening so that we can act on those one of the things that is [Music] one of the things that we're working on here is curriculum in the um in the school so as you can see we've got um [Music] aligned with the three-year dei plan sling schools his teaching learning team added a culturally responsive instruction consultant so the shannon as you know and she's worked really hard to make connections between our existing vision and the mission to culturally responsive teaching and supporting teachers she's been working really hard on making sure they all have what they need and then work to educate and inform parents caregivers and the community on culturally responsive instruction which she's been doing through those great learning sessions

111with the community looking forward we're looking at ways that we can improve how we handle holidays and celebrations there's been especially this year we saw um in some of the elementaries especially there were a lot of inconsistencies between say one grade level but in different buildings like third grade or even sometimes even within the same building in the same grade level different teachers do different things or different grades in the same building do different things and that can be really hard on families when one kid gets to do you know dress up for halloween but the other kid doesn't um so we wanted to make sure that that was more consistent and then we also wanted to find ways to be more inclusive without making anyone feel alienated so i think in the past we've

112had some um we've kind of tried to move away from a lot of the the more mainstream holidays but in that way we've caused some alienation i think with some families that felt like their holidays weren't able to be celebrated either so this way what we've talked about is finding ways to celebrate more holidays instead of less holidays so that you know would include things like christmas and halloween and that sort of stuff um so the other thing we've been talking a lot about is input to the hate speech and harassment policies we looked at how hard it can be for parents to find this information because sometimes we say it's a policy but really it's a handbook thing and how easy is it for parents to navigate the website to find those things so

113we talked about that being really a area of equity that we need to focus on and making sure that we're commun we're integrating these into discussions more often we talked a lot about ways where especially at those transition points into the next building when like we have those great uh transition nights that we've been doing this month um that there's a opportunity for more dei uh integration into those where we talk about what's important to our schools and then we also looked at we're looking at the acceptable use policy which goes around technology and we're kind of looking at how that intersects with hate speech and harassment policies because there's a lot of overlap within that so it's kind of we want to clarify what falls under what and we also want to make sure

114that those policies have really um clear accessible language especially we have a tendency to use a lot of like educational jargon um or abbreviations and stuff like that we want to make sure that everything is really easy for families to understand what exactly it says and then as we've brought up we're still reviewing that survey data and we're hoping to have some great recommendations for you from that that's mine hi everybody i'm melissa zaksak i'm the parent of two students here in the district um and i do want to echo what lauren and heather both said and just applaud the district for the progress that we've made over the last few years i do think we've come a long way i am part of a subcommittee of the deiac that specifically is focusing on a

115really really big bucket and that's our structure systems policies and practices and that's that's been a daunting task for for our committee to be perfectly honest there's a lot that falls underneath that and so that's a space that we really want to start to dig into more and think about how can we strategically approach looking at our systems our policies and practices and another big bucket that we've been you know really had our eye on on thinking about how can we add some capacity and taking a harder look at is around our recruitment hiring development and retention those two areas in particular the systems policies and practices and the recruitment hiring development and retention have the potential to have huge impact on our district there's a lot that falls underneath that and there's a lot

116of areas underneath there that we think just we want to take a close look at and see where can we start to measurably move the needle for us as a district so in thinking about that echoing what you heard from spar earlier this evening we are also exploring how a dei dedicated leadership position in our district would be beneficial for us how would that enable us to take a more comprehensive and strategic approach to the district's dei work how can we you know how might having a dedicated dei leader ensure that all of this work that's happening you saw that slide that lauren showed earlier with the equity teams and um and our committee and all of the different layers and levels how can we move that work forward in a more coordinated and sustained

117way and we really think that having a dedicated dei leadership position would help the district to do that importantly that would really help position our district as a leader to be honest there are a number of districts in the state that have done it but none in our county as spar pointed out and it would really demonstrate to our community our commitment to diversity equity and inclusion so some of this scoping work that we're doing around the position is informed by a few things one just the scope and scale of the opportunities and challenges that we have as in a district to improve we've been doing some qualitative interviews with other district dei leaders in the state of michigan so actually just sending out some emails and calls and saying hey would you you know

118be willing to share your experience with us how has it gone for you what does it look like what have you needed in order to ensure your success what challenges should we be thinking about as we consider um you know encouraging the district to move forward with something like this and one of the most invaluable pieces that we've had is we've had a student working with ms sparks at the high school katie schmidt on a student independent research project that's wrapping up this term but she is a member of the deiac so that work will continue with us she's actually been inventorying inventory doing an inventory all of all of the district student affinity groups just putting it all on paper what are the different affinity groups that we have across the district what resources

119do they have what are their needs what are they trying to what is kind of what are the goals and objectives of their group that's been really really helpful to see on paper she's also been doing some interviews with other or excuse me some email outreach to other district dei leaders in the state so sending them questions from a student's perspective asking them some of those things that i talked about around what does this rule look like for you why do you why do you have that position what has been critical to your success things like that it's been great to have that student voice involved in this work i think to lauren's point um one of the greatest components i think of our dei ac is having those student voices on there so um

120i think that's it for us but we're going to open up for for questions so thanks for your time thank you everybody who presented and everyone who's on the committee who isn't here tonight of course because that's a lot of hard work um i'm going to actually ask a first question if you can throw lauren's slide up what that had the um the schematic of all of the different groups oh yep that is like personifies what i was going to ask about because during the spa presentation something that really really stuck with me was was the quote all of the groups that are trying to do this good work are not very coordinated and that really stuck with me um and then i looked at this and i thought well i know there's a lot

121of groups there's there's citigroups there's school groups or student groups and thank you very much for including those um so my first question is what are your thoughts about how we all work together and don't kind of cross over each other and work towards similar ends and good work maybe what i'll share is some learnings that of things that are are going well um and this would be if you look at if you think about well first of all that the board of education is setting policy around this i mean i think that's really important i think having you know the trustees as part of this in terms of liaison that's really important um i think from where i said i mean what we can speak to is is certainly around the deiac but even

122the work and the coordination between the administrative team so having cara now on that has been fantastic so we now have a mechanism where she's taking those five pillars of work and then working with steve and the administration around the questions that we have like hey here's things to consider here's what we're learning learning through the benchmarking so we now have this mechanism of i think communication and coordination between what's actually happening in the district i think another good point in terms of a starting point at least for us is that we did one of the the points that i did want to make is the equity team and then these student affinity groups or the student groups we have are so incredibly important and how we might be able to resource them in the

123right way as well too so that's certainly something that's on our mind we did a we for the first time we actually came together with our equity teams i guess it was the end of last year and ask for feedback so how can and similar to that how can we work together what what do you need what are how might we actually you know support you in the right way and that's actually where where the holiday celebration came out so there's a lot of interest in getting some consistency within in the district um so that's ways that i think we can that we've started to do that um i think it's just being really deliberate around these roles you know i think as an advisory team i think we you know over the past you

124know six months or so have really focused on what really is our role in terms of advisory what does that mean how do we have these lines of communication with the with the district um i think one of the things again that we should really be tackling is just this continuing to elevate the student voice and how might how might that look thank you i'll hold my other question but i wanted to give give you a little bit of a shout out because on heather one of heather's slides she talked about the um the positive work that's been done that that you all have seen and i was at the setup for the polar plunge this morning at um at hornet stadium and i was kind of standing up on the porch and watching the

125porch on the other side and watching them get ready and the guy was there with the water and he's filling it up and i'm like worried about these students who are freezing um and i saw our athletics team down there trying to get everything ready and one of them and i think it was ashley i've only met her once when she came to the the board meeting um to introduce herself but i think it was her um she said i need a student to run up to the office right now and get the sign for our gender neutral restroom here on the field and i was just like in the background and she's organizing everything and i thought that that was um i thought that was well done so just wanted to to plug that

126um and if that was somebody else and ashley i'm really sorry but somebody somebody did that and it was it was it was wonderful and it was proactive it wasn't like somebody that had a checklist it was okay we're we're moving parts here and that needs to be done so um who would like to ask some questions or have any comments yeah jenny so one question that i've been getting um frequently from people in the community is um if someone could explain a little bit about we this year we added um our dei consultant so shannon has been a part an integral part of the work that's been happening in the district so how would um a proposed position a dedicated administrator of dei um be different than a consultant position if you could elaborate

127on that a little bit that would be helpful yeah i can i can take a stab at that um so kind of the the thinking behind having a dedicated dei leader is that that position the scope would be broader than instruction and curriculum it would cover things like hiring recruitment retention it would cover things like you know policies and practices so starting to actually do coordinate all of these efforts so this is amazing what's on the screen is tremendous it is a challenge right though i mean sometimes the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing and and covet has made that really really difficult and so how can we make sure that the works that we are all doing the folks that are contributing in this space that we're doing that in

128a way that is collective and collaborative and not duplicative and that it's working towards measurable um outputs and just and outcomes and so how do we start to collect data on the work that's being done how do we how do we answer the question around how many hate speech incidents have there been in our district this year that's a tough that's a question that i'm not sure how to collect maybe that data exists but it's hard to get um what is our target in this space what is our you know our indicator in that space so really trying to coordinate across the district all of those pieces so going beyond instruction curriculum and tying it all together is that home yeah that's really helpful i also just wanted to mention that i really appreciate the

129mention of the peer districts that we often compare ourselves to in a lot of other areas too so knowing those three specific districts in oakland county that are have a similar makeup to our own district in terms of achievement and um all all the things that that we look at so um i guess i'm i'm really interested in um hearing more about how we align with them and the work that we're doing like are we are we on the path that if they're leaders in this in this um goal are we on the path do they have do they for example do they have a deiac do they have similar um survey mechanisms are we doing the work um that we know people who've gone ahead of us and i know i know at least

130a couple of those districts work with um consultants out of california and at the state level county level so just curious about where we are just not not just that they are peer districts but are they actually peer districts that's a good question that i just frankly can't answer but i think it's a question that needs to be answered and so i think in part of scoping out you know what could this position or what should this position look like i think that's something that we'd have to that needs to be dug into um and you know i'm going to just speak really frankly part of the the impetus behind you know thinking about this proposal is is bandwidth and capacity that's a really big question that you asked right and the folks on this

131committee we're volunteers we have so much time we have full-time jobs we have families like the rest of you and so our efforts are are are sincere and they're genuine as are all of us in this room but it is limited and so we don't have the bandwidth and the capacity to dig into those hard questions and to tie it all together in a way that i think is cohesive and that that we need to do as a district to position ourselves as a leader piggy back off of something so um we will work a lot with shayla griffith out of the isd and what shayla will say is we are spearheading a lot of this work um that she works with a lot of districts you know some that are our peer districts as

132well and she says no one is doing it like celine and we try to get ahead of it right we we are proactive in a lot of the work that we do have we've been reactive absolutely as well but we always try and learn from our experiences and if we talk to shayla in that group from justice leaders they will say we we are one of the best that she's worked with i think i think if i'm remembering correctly one of those districts has been in at least publicly in a similar situation to us um that's been reported in the news so it would just be interesting to see i would like to know i guess um what how things have shifted with that um with that position and if they've seen a positive impact

133because i do think that they've had a similar experience and had to be reactive like we did yeah so i'm just going to just build on that point just a little bit um so we one of the districts that we spoke to um did raise that point and they said you know what we are all including our district you know another incident away from being on the front page of cnn or whatever it might be it's happened to us before it probably could may well happen again and the differentiator is as a district having um you know their in their particular district they can't speak to our experience and and certainly we've done a lot of work but in their particular district they have a bit more confidence in knowing that they are prepared to

134respond to those types of incidents in a very cohesive way in a very thoughtful and deliberate way not to say that celine isn't but they you know they they're very you know this particular district was you know they said to us that we can we're confident in our ability to respond to it doesn't mean it's not going to happen it can happen anywhere to any district it's just the reality of the world in which we live but but they felt more prepared to respond um i just want to thank everyone on the committee i don't have any questions i've been very much a part of and seeing the evolution of this since i've been a part of the committee but want to underscore double tap melissa's point about the these are volunteers that are dedicating

135so much of their time and and effort to this work and just do not have the capacity to do all that could be done you know as we think about the vision for this work and what an optimal district would be that really does embed dei and all that we do at every level and consistently in an aligned way so i just want to thank you all for the time that you've put into this because there's there's a clear path outlined for if we were to have a position for example somebody stepping into that role would have a clear outline a three-year plan you know a really really great ideas to carry forward that this team doesn't necessarily have the bandwidth who has the heart has the you know the willingness and and all of

136that but doesn't necessarily have the day-to-day bandwidth to manage the implementation so i just want to thank you all for your your work everyone that's here and and all those on the committee that couldn't be here yes um i wanna second and third what everybody said um yeah i appreciate um you know being on the dei advisory committee as a board rep um and seeing um all of the great work that's happening and hearing about what's happening in the district and as far as the volunteers you know just looking at this framework you know who's getting paid from this right because you have your student board and all of the student groups which is even volunteering and giving your time and there's such a commitment to this work but i mean i think all the

137members can say that it's emotionally draining and yeah but it's fulfilling work right um and so i would like to you know spar mentioned it earlier and um the dei advisory team um mentioned that we should have someone in a dei leadership position and i totally support that and would love to see that in the district shannon washington has did amazing work in her role and has developed a lot you know being part of the dei advisory committee and the work that she's did with um the community and um the you know the the curriculum piece but shannon can't do all of this right especially part-time um and um and so i think having that um consul like her as a con for consulting has been really beneficial and a good start um so hopefully

138some someday soon hand off this this important work and get everybody on the same um the same team the same um you know vision and um moving that forward for years to come you know people are energetic and you know want to do this work um but they want to make sure that it happens and then in a structured way right so thanks again appreciate it um yeah i'd like to just um first of all amplify what everybody else has um been saying to in terms of thanking all the great um people who are volunteering their time both at the community level at the student level and i know that a lot of staff and faculty members are are volunteering a lot of their time and energy on top of on top of uh you

139know a really hard job that they're having to do in the middle of a of a difficult um uh a difficult time to be to be doing um all their regular educational duties and doing volunteer work on top of that to to work on all these building equity teams um and that's that's a lot of a lot of difficult and often uh thankless uh work that people are putting in for something that's that's really vital for the district and that does speak to the need for um a more formal uh full-time permanent role to kind of shepherd all of these these people and all these different roles in a more in a more formal way i did want to ask uh one question and bring up one topic i don't know if anybody is is

140prepared to speak to this or or not but i'm bringing up the topic of hiring recruitment and retention um i know that that's been uh i think we all know that that's been an issue um hiring and and especially retaining um faculty and staff of um from minority groups um within the district um and that's obviously got to be something that is on everybody's mind going forward as a priority in order to to kind of address all of these issues because with that representation um uh we'll we'll naturally come will help to find solutions for some of these issues so i was wondering if anybody could speak to what we're currently doing in terms of those hiring recruitment and retention practices and and what's what the road map might look like in the future for

141improving that i'll try i know mr ellis actually has given several presentations in the past about hiring and recruiting um within the district and as you know we are going to be in hiring season very soon so i know we have changed the format of the way we've asked our questions how we've introduced it i know we're taking a look at places on where we send our notices to i think that's a really important element and then in terms of retention you know having cohorts of teachers that get together for staff that get together and making certain that they are well supported within our buildings and within the district is going to be really important to all of us and in retaining our staff but i do think like i said in the past mr

142ellis has done a nice job and the reality of some of this is just the state of education and where it is right now unfortunately the numbers that we are getting in terms of applications not just here in saline but nationwide we need people to go in to education and love this job as much as we have and that's going to be super important on thursday actually i attended the u of m um intern um interviews and that was really fantastic because there are some really fantastic recruits that are out there so i was actively like come to celine come apply and it's absolutely fantastic i think for us i know for me as a building leader to get out there and and to tell people why our district is so fantastic is going to

143be really really important for us and if i could add i i do feel that we are making progress in certain areas within the district our administrative team is more diverse our support staff is more diverse teaching is an area that that we certainly need to work on more 80 of the teachers in in the job pool it's even less now are white and therefore you know we are going to have to be working on continued strategies to become more diverse in that area which we are we are working towards um just because of my own experience i'll just mention that in in in a neighboring district they uh leverage their ea their uh teacher association um to have an affinity group for minority teacher retention um and i have just become more acquainted with

144that group i was invited to speak there last week for literacy um and it was it was a it was a great experience but i was invited in only for my portion and then um then left because they really protect that space for affinity but i think that it's interesting you know we're talking about bandwidth and capacity with with who we have currently involved in this but perhaps if the teaching team is the team that we're really focusing on teacher retention minority teacher retention and recruitment perhaps leveraging that group the way others have would be would be helpful just an idea in terms of our potentially our own students from is that no it's a minority teacher retention group so it's it's a group run by the by the education association um an affinity group

145to support teachers and their development um in a space that is is safe for them um okay yeah yeah i can say that that's actually something that um shannon is leading up right now working with our staff to to talk through a fair amount of that the other idea that we have discussed is the possibility of our own students in terms of of saying that you know as they graduate from celine consideration to come back and and and teach here um and what what that would take to to make sure that they could you know get involved in education potentially be a teacher and then come back to selene and teach is a strategy too as well great yeah susan um i just wanna i guess um make sure that and i don't think the

146dei ac does this but um checking off boxes let's uh you know i hope it doesn't become that like oh yep we've done this um it's it's continuous right it's those best practices um it's you know i mean it's just constant and um so so i i don't think um we should necessarily you know frame things um or discontinue looking at areas just because we've done something once you know i think you know reviewing that and continuing to make sure that it is happening um those um or if there's you know new ideas or guidance of how to do things to make sure they're we're always listening um and communicating that and um respecting that as well i guess what i would say is like i'm hearing just having an intentional focus right about the

147work we want to do and what how we want to support our students how we want to support our staff as far as diversity right and equity and being inclusive of others and what have you i i hear that like just being intentional about it and being continuously mindful right in our structures in our team building and the things that we do so i i i haven't a chance i wanted to applaud thank you like i i hear you about this is this is free work it's a it's you know intentional work that is being done on behalf of our students right like at the end of the day like that's really where where we place our our emphasis and so like that's what i hear his intent intent just being constantly mindful all right

148seeing no other questions or comments thank you very much obviously you're welcome to stay or if you have other things that you need to do i know you've dedicated a lot of time already thank you i wanted to just check with our team up here if we needed a 10-minute recess because we're about two hours in okay um i'd like to please entertain a motion for a 10-minute recess so moved it's home miller all right jenny thank you second second susan thank you um we are adjourned until 8 45. oh two families were walking to the park and i stopped and i was like waving to them and they were like jumping up down so i rolled down the window and they were like we just talked about that and they're like dancing and singing

149and i was like oh my gosh i'm gonna just take this moment into my heart forever right right i mean i know yeah yeah exactly you know like when i get back is pack at most things so if you're like hey we know this new thing called pickleball come and play he'll like win the first time and i'm going to be like uh what i got no no no no and the girls have to work harder than drew like i always say drew's a good guy for a pickup game for him to like really accelerate in an area he has to you know work at it but yeah so he just missed state by three spots for a dive and he just found out right before i left that one of the kids who qualified

150just got got uh yes got expelled by a school for being drunk at the movie theater detroit so he was like so it was two spots yeah and the other thing that's really funny too is there was a girl diving with them from howell because she plays a different sport so title ix she can be on the boys team so she was diving against them and at first he was like and i was like beat her all right one minute till the break is over work harder and by the way you dive you dive against girls all summer long so what's the difference and i was like do you want to be on the girls dive team in the fall you can he's like um to drown us out is that what the i know

151i haven't had a credit card oh that's right that's right that's right all right welcome back 8 45 that is exactly 10 minutes um moving on to our action items for this evening item a please i'd like to recommend a motion to approve school of choice for the 20 20 22 23 school year as recommended by superintendent lodge so moved mcveigh thank you michael second well i guess it's not happening this year i think it's important to happen second gerby okay thank you fran um all those in favor please say aye aye vote for the motion then discussion yes yes yes okay thank you um dr lodge it's 8 30. i'm tired right okay so we are discussing what we discussed last time a strategy around school of choice and i'll kind of refresh our

152conversation which was um the number of students the minimum openings that we have and you should all have this in your packet is more or less 10 at every grade level with the exception of at sixth grade and ninth grade sixth grade and ninth grade tend to be transitional times where more people are coming into the district anyway for a variety of reasons so that we would ramp up the number of offerings or openings at those levels and with with this idea well it's not really an idea and we're going to talk about trustee hayward has put together some data that shows us that we there is some enrollment loss a lot of it is now taking shape at the middle and high school level uh largely because there has been this 10-year trend in

153celine and all the districts across washtenaw county with the exception of ann arbor showing some growth but all the other districts are declining in enrollment and therefore to recapture some of that at the sixth ninth and you know middle and high school level seems to make more sense at this time as we put together the school of choice guidelines but i so i do want to go to look at the enrollment data uh trustee hayward put together some talking points i just want to read some some of those because he's a statistician and this is data that you can pull off from the census bureau also from the site my school data it's a it's a good comparison site for different school districts across michigan and census bureau data substantiates that there's been a decline

154in the school age five to seven seventeen-year-old population both statewide and with in washington county over the last decade but the statewide data trend is a loss of 9.6 percent of school-age population over a 10-year trend from 2010 to 2019-20 whereas cilian area schools is 2.5 loss so this is showing that yep across the state we're losing school-age population the washtenaw county average is a loss of 5.2 percent again ciliary schools is minus 2.5 percent um dexter's doing a little better than that at minus 0.2 percent and then ann arbor has gained some in enrollment over that period it's the only district that has however if you also look at what's happened in the last two years this is over the course of the pandemic all districts have lost enrollment including ann arbor so and

155again celine has been losing enrollment at a lesser pace than most of the districts outside of ann arbor and to some degree dexter so i just wanted to put that in comparison that there is this loss occurring and has been occurring for some time so when we start talking about school of choice we start talking about well our losses are occurring now because it's been building more at the secondary level so as we continue to right-size the district as it relates to staffing and for example if we have over the course of the last several years been losing enrollment at the high school level it may warrant that we would have less staff at the high school less teachers but we would do that by attrition meaning as people retire or exit the district there

156isn't going to be the need to be laying off staff we're simply going to adjust the staffing model accordingly and that will make more fiscal sense it will make you know a better operation moving forward to make the adjustments we need to just to keep the structure of the district uh right sized and school of choice strategy is shifting slightly too so that's what we're asking for as it comes to approval for school of choice moving forward great really nice graph david thank you susan so um as far as like and i don't know i don't remember if you addressed this last time um but how this may impact um teachers staff capacity and um class size that kind of thing do you just figure that out after school of choice and the numbers yeah

157that that's a good question so what we end up doing is we we actually look at um the numbers often before we're actually going through the sort of this final process of how many students we can actually take i'll just i'll give you an example like let's say we have a minimum opening of 10 at the second grade level but we may say well if we were to take 15 students for example and place five of them at the different elementary schools pleasant ridge woodland meadows and harvest that actually would still keep class sizes low or within our range and then you know that then that would be you know additional revenue for the school district so we may we may say that 15 makes more sense than just taking the minimum of 10. so

158we will make all those decisions and that's a meeting that assistant superintendent ellis ellis will run with our administrative team to sort of sort out where it makes the most sense to be adding and how we balance that and then often we don't place students until later in the summer so we make sure we're accounting for residents who are moving in so that there's not going to be some overload in a specific grade level at a specific building and that that's a little it's nuanced it's sort of a it's not an exact science but that's what we work to do each spring and summer thank you i'm just looking at the at the packet and seeing the numbers it it signifies that those are minimum numbers so i think that this may just be something

159that has worked out in the wash but you mentioned that most of our is occurring or i guess not lost but most of our numbers have declined for a variety of reasons at the secondary level so would it make sense for us to increase our minimum number of openings at this secondary level i know you mentioned that at sixth grade and ninth grade we often see an influx but on the minimum openings would it make sense to increase 9th 10th 11th and 12th in anticipation of those class sizes being smaller ahead of time um i mean we could we could do that but by just saying the minimum means we always can take more and it seems like the the strategy here is to signify that by taking more at sixth and ninth it it

160is sometimes deemed as more encouraging for families to apply when they see that there are more slots but i think this strategy seems would make more sense at this point in time because those are transitional grades and traditionally that's where a lot of people are looking to move their kids which kind of makes sense you know you start middle school sixth grade or you start high school in ninth grade so um trying to really focus more at those levels with the idea that we you're right we may want to take 16 11th graders if if we felt that that was the right thing to do based on class size and enrollment that kind of thing and is that rationale the reason why there's only one minimum for 12th grade that we just don't get as

161many seniors asking to transfer well yes and no we also don't feel like it's the right thing to do to say that students are just gonna move in to have a saline like not really have gone through the program and just moved for 12th grade that doesn't seem like that would be the right thing to do for a variety of reasons there to just have that diploma um get that sort of the last year like that but but then again we would have to see how many apply and we might have to see what the reasons are too sometimes you know families have reasons upon which they're doing that and we we often work with that too okay i just i was thinking about programming and my desire to to maintain the programming that we're

162so proud of at our secondary levels and wondering if if that could could be but i i do appreciate that it's a minimum so that could be flexible any other comments or questions okay seeing none now we can vote apologies um all those in favor please say aye aye opposed hearing none motion carry 7-0 uh moving on to action item b i'd like to please entertain a motion to approve the purchase and installation of the informa cast notification system at saline high school the amount of 309 from in a comp technical services group llc as recommended by director of technology jay grossman i'll make the motion kirby thank you brad second miller thank you jenny um discussion yeah i'd like to actually call up jay because he's he stayed for our meeting and he can

163talk a little bit about the direction of the district as it relates to technology um making sure systems work together and security and he's been working hard on that so i will try and keep this brief because we've all been here pretty late so i appreciate that basically two years ago we began piloting the informacast emergency notification system at pleasant ridge now that we've finished that system worked out all the bugs gotten the pieces gotten our blueprint together we've after talking with our capital projects committee we decided we would like to pivot that now and begin the next project which would be taking on the high school so this system in addition to providing notifications it would give us audio and visual notification in the event of an emergency such as active shooter tornado inclement

164weather it'll also help us replace our aging pa and bell system in that building so it'll kind of be a multiple birds with one stone and really provide that safety and security when there is an actual event in the building to uh to provide direction and safety for our students and staff to get them in a location do you guys have any questions i provided the brochure happy to answer anything you have about the system tell me just a little bit about the panic button that i saw throughout the brochures what does it signal i mean it doesn't evacuate the school sure so the panic button shown there is an example we do have a panic button in all of our buildings that is um at the desk so if there is a an active

165event they would press that button that button itself would trigger the system to not only work with our fire doors to lock the doors but it would then also trigger strobes sirens notifications scrolling messages throughout the building so that's in a secure spot or uh within each of an adult it's not out in an area okay that button itself is the system can also be activated by um an app on a cell phone that would be given to a trusted adult or from phones that is password protected thank you it's funny vice president mcveigh would bring that up because uh we we've actually talked about this system uh through the finance committee it's a significant financial budget item and so uh we we we kind of vetted it with with mr grossman we appreciated him

166answering questions just like like that one and what have you and uh there's some stuff from a financing standpoint that i want to point out from this that really that gives me a lot of um good feeling about it for example there are grants that are available we can apply for every single one of our buildings to receive a fifty thousand dollar grant seven buildings we could be eligible for up to three hundred fifty dollars in realization towards this program and so that's something that i think is good i think we all know the importance of emergency and safety and i hate to say that we're live in a world where we're hyper alert but we are you know like teachers go through intense alice trainings and those kinds of things so there's that uh

167you know some of this money is supported by bond you know series three money and some of this is and there's also like a process we go through that we were talking about with regards to the remc involving like technology and wiring and it's competitively bid and so like i really do feel confident and like from a finance standpoint you know giving this quote-unquote the finance committee's like stamp of approval on it so i just wanted to speak to that and i want to thank you for your time and spending time with us at the finance committee today it's my pleasure thank you for that validation there's a treasurer gerby we're not the only ones too yeah i will speak that out too we're not the only ones chelsea you said is is doing it

168now and a number of the district we want to get in front because a number of districts i think are going to try to be competitive for this particular uh software device whatever you want to call it inform a cast this is something we've been bringing up in the the director's meetings throughout the county as well there are other districts in the county even like uh mentioned chelsea as among uh and some others are looking at the same system as well and if i could just add one more thing when we say the word bandwidth here at the table please be careful he gets very edgy so what are we doing talk about technology it's not my turn yet thank you um so did you look at other um i don't know if this is

169like the number one system or are there other ones out there and how did you decide on this good question uh so there are other systems out there i haven't found one that is this comprehensive that not only offers alerts which i found other systems that do but this also not only does text alerts but also works with signage it incorporates with the rise vision program that we're bringing for digital signage in the buildings this came as a result like i said two years ago we started a pilot program where we had seen other districts where this was brought up to and we've taken a couple visits to other districts that already had this in place some of it was before i started in the district i was part of the visit with some of

170the directors to go visit lenway isd who had this in place and as we saw how they integrated it it solidified that we wanted to try it at pleasant ridge with the success we've had there over the past couple months especially showing this to our admin meetings last month we wanted to try and continue the silence throughout the rest of the district thank you i'm going to ask for jennifer for an assist here utah spoke to something through the foundation that also had a link to this particular program correct this system yeah and karen steve could could add on anything but obviously the foundation for saline area schools looks for a lot of grant opportunities at both the building and the staff level and it's been discussed um what they could do to support televisions

171and monitors that could be used in this as well yes the system we're looking at that the foundation has helped bring in at the middle school looking to bring that to high school specifically choosing that system because it does integrate successfully with the informa cast and we have that in the trial at pleasant ridge so we were able to watch that work when the lockdown was initiated takes over the televisions and also broadcast on those in addition to the clocks the strobes and the speakers throughout the building departments working together yeah that's good i i really want to just recognize in looking through this that there are pieces of this that exist in places but not anything that is this well developed and working systems across systems um i appreciate that uh because of the

172the most recent bond to the safe warm and dry that our buildings are equipped with the necessary um physical features that are needed to to make a system like this worthwhile so you mentioned the fire doors and the fact that with a hit of one button our hallways are secured with those fire doors and um just knowing that that a system like this is going to create an additional layer of safety while having those pieces all work together um as i was looking through the brochure was just really impressive it really ties them all together thank you okay seeing no other comments um we will move to vote all those in favor please say aye aye opposed hearing none motion carries seven zero thank you jay thank you thank you for coming to finance too

173i know you've been here a long time today um moving on to action item c please i'd like to please entertain emotion to adopt the proposed 2021-2022 general fund budget amendment as submitted by assistant superintendent owsley so move jones thank you candace second miller thank you jenny miranda would you like to say a few words so i just wanted to take a quick moment in general this was the part that was in the packet and just point out a couple different things that we're looking at on major things that we looked at all the way back in june before the state passed their budget and things like that where there's a lot more knowns in this year and just trying to get a really good update even though we will be coming right back in

174shortly in june it will be um very quickly to do final amendments and go on to the next year but some of the key points in um in looking at this march amendment one is a student count that we are back now to then 9010 you know reversed or last year we kind of got into the super blind so we're back to that 90 percent of the fall count and 10 of the spring count and we had predicted in june that we'd be around 5 000 and we really came in at 4 900 for that blend um so that was a lower than we expected but in the same in the reverse the foundation increase we set at 163 dollars per student and it came in at 404 bringing us up to 8 700 per

175student so it kind of offset we were low on students but we were also lower on our on what we would get so another large piece that was very different in this year is something called the uaal it's a state part that they give us in revenue and we turn around and expend it on the other side in every one of our salary accounts so one of the things is that inflates our total budget because it's on both sides our revenue side and also our expenditure side and that was a million dollar increase from last year so our revenues on the state sources went up a million and then throughout every single one of those departments it went up exactly equal so it didn't change your bottom line at all but it also changed our

176number significantly and that was a big change in um this year that we saw there are there is one-time funding so you'll notice the state or federal sources did jump up but at the same time on the fed the expenditure side there's our also expenditures that are one-time expenditures that will also come off in the future so we did a covert rigor salary stipends that that was something that's a one-time thing that will not be reoccurring as well so then a lot of updates a lot of different staffing moves this year has been a lot of different things as much as we heard all the education things changing the same thing that money follows all of those changes throughout and staffing has been a difficult thing and subbing has been also a difficult thing and

177not lots of those different parts look very different so on top of the updating staffing models we also in january just settled agreements which also changed our health benefits and those costs that go in there so that had to be updated and then as well as we saw a very large increase in our utilities so gas electric water a lot of those all those extra things that we still insurance is another big one that the market is really changing on those and we're still kind of monitoring that is seeing if that is a continued trend or one-time spike and kind of how that would affect our future planning as well so in general the revenues are short there are less than expenditures and that 300 315 000 and that's at this time where i feel

178i feel confident that it will probably be even less by the time the year end kind of comes i left all a lot of material budgets and things um still high because we're at that point where we're trying to plan out the rest of the year and things will still get used and spent so with i think that there's some space to move and get closer to actually a break-even point for the year as well as there's always more funding coming through and covet kind of things that we continue to talk about and kind of keep up with those complexities because it seems to change by the day so this is where we are now i'd be happy to take any questions as well any questions or comments for miranda all right thank you very

179much thank you uh moving to vote please uh all those in favor please say aye aye opposed hearing non-motion carry 7-0 action item d please i'd like to entertain a motion to support the resolution in support of the individuals with disabilities education act full funding act as presented by superintendent lodge so moved jenny thank you yeah support mcday michael thank you uh discussion yeah so it's in it's in your packet a resolution this is being brought forward by mainly naomi norman and the wisd asking districts and superintendents to go forward to their board to more or less show support for this is down towards the bottom of the of the um document but it talks about strengthening the federal investment in special education by authorizing a 10-year plan to fully fund the federal share of

180idea and um largely that's the individuals with disability education act and it would provide districts with resources needed to ensure that all children and youth with disabilities receive a free and appropriate public education unlocking the full potential of the law the idea full funding act it's a critical first step and the most significant thing that congress can do to honor their commitment to support not only students with disabilities but all students in k-12 schools so that's more or less what this is doing and it's asking each board of education in the county to support it i i support it and would hope that you would too so um question about um where would it be sent to the is back to the isd i know we've did resolutions where you've sent it to like the

181governor or things like that yeah this one uh basically actually it's going back to sherry van adder at the at the isd that she asked after we had you know uh hopefully pass the resolution that it would go back to her at the wisd who works in concert with naomi in our legislative coffee the last time there was discussion about this uh the the action going on in the at the federal level and apparently we are shuffling closer and closer each year to full funding to yeah so oh what yeah oh just i thought you're pointing at something so i'm yeah i think every little bit we can put forward will will help so i'm in support of this all right seeing no other questions or comments um we'll move to vote all those in

182favor please say aye aye opposed hearing none motion carry 7-0 um moving on to our discussion items uh treasurer gerby finance committee update sure i could be pretty brief because uh we already hit on some of it so the we today we the finance committee about today we vetted the infra former caste system with mr grossman's assistance and uh i appreciate that we talked about the budget amendment that we we just approved and you know we are continuously having conversations as we talked about with regards to structure and future planning for students and what have you and and so that's that you know going into the masb like winter conference the prediction is the prediction is you know a seven to eight percent increase which is similar to what we saw this year however i'm

183also going to say that is not realized right as miss i know his uh assistant superintendent ously pointed out like uh this stuff is all kind of obviously it kind of it it it moves around a lot and then there are a lot of different funds and a lot of different you know where whether it's esser money and all those kinds of things so we just want to be continuously mindful of structure we want to be continuously mindful of of how we're doing things and it sounded like earlier as superintendent lodge spoke to where we are doing that we are being intentional about it so that's the update thanks brian any other questions or comments from the group all right some folks stole your thunder tonight brad i'm kidding um all right excellent um as

184we noted earlier item b was removed from the agenda so we'll move to administration updates dr lodge okay i have three short ones tonight um i do want to thank everybody the students and the staff uh the community for doing a nice job with the masking no masking that we're seeing in the buildings and you know in this room that that's that's going to be part of of what we're doing moving forward and i think it has been good to watch people doing what they're most comfortable in this environment again we talk about following the washington county health department if something changes we will we will look to follow that guidance too but we want to we want to just reiterate that we we thank the community students and staff for doing a really good

185job working together with the concept of masking and not masking i also want to thank trish fair and the entire special education department on the polar plunge today it was an incredible event they sought to raise twenty thousand dollars for special olympics and raised twenty four thousand so it was really really a great effort i also do want to point out that you know we continue to be sad and by watching what's happening to the people of ukraine i know that all the superintendents and discussion are in full support of the ukraine people and they're providing our thoughts and our prayers and hopefully resources to continue to help them throughout the ongoing struggle and war that they're experiencing right now thank you very much julian would you like to go next um so [Music] to

186start off with the masking in the high school there are plenty of students who have decided to wear masks and plenty of students who've decided not to so far in all of my classes it has not been a problem and you know in the hallways and such i haven't seen too many i haven't seen any conflicts but again i always run into having trouble speaking in general general terms because my experience is my experience and you know people don't report issues to me so again i'm generally speaking but you know i have friends who wear masks i have friends who don't and again it's in school despite what conflicts may seem in the community it's it's generally a peaceful place so uh everybody's again we're all happy to be in school regardless whatever we can

187do to stay in school and be in school is great because um and generally people don't want to be online i'd i'd hope so that's that and then going on to my main part of the update winter sports are coming to an end and we're transitioning to spring sports so a couple records at a couple season records girls basketball finished 17 and six um and unfortunately they were eliminated from playoffs um the hockey team finished 16 8-1 and i believe we are sec red champions which is the first time in a while so that feels good and then wrestling we had brett thornell we saw him before he had a hundred career wins and then at states he finished sixth i'm not too familiar with the wrestling so i don't know how it really works

188with weight classes but he is uh he's an all-state wrestler so congrats to brett thornell and then i mean the whole school is looking forward to the transition to spring sports thank you buggy now now that we all know the nickname right after after we saw the post from the hockey team we'll have to get an explanation for that one day um trustee any any trustee comments tonight yeah jenny um so i wanted to add on i'm not sure um julian you might want to might want to ask about this but i thought i saw in social media that there was another state champion that one of our female wrestlers won do you have her name susan oh okay emmy yes i think so but uh i'd i'd love for us to maybe include her

189and comment um next time too so yeah i just picked it up from the saline post great okay but otherwise yeah i didn't hear about that that's okay i just happened to see it on social media and i thought that was really cool yeah um i think a sophomore maybe emmy hicks there you go congratulations to emmy hicks and then there was there was another one that got second right we could maybe we can report on it next time too i just wanted to recognize like there were a few yeah so um now i'm curious to know yeah so so maybe we can get that information okay well congratulations to our wrestlers um i think that's pretty impressive to have such a well-developed program um i wanted to also mention that our divers and swimmers

190are headed to state this this uh this weekend and um wish them all the luck in their um state meet this week is or this month sorry is march's reading month and i know that a number of schools are celebrating in a variety of ways and i know that many of the trustees participated trustees and administrators i know dr latch did too in the heritage one school one book project and so they are reading the book front desk which is one of my favorite books kelly yang is the author so i'm excited to hear students experiencing that story it is a somewhat semi-autobiographical story and a really great one if you haven't read it yet i also wanted to mention that i was delighted to hear about the polar plunge as dr lotch was sharing

191and that it came on the heels of inclusion week and just the intentionality that a lot of staff put staff and student groups put forward around inclusivity especially highlighting areas of where inclusion is important in our schools um i wanted to mention just for clarity because i realized that i didn't mention this but i mentioned earlier that i didn't like to use the term close the gap and some people might be wondering like why don't you like to use that and i think for me especially in in the area of literacy and in education we we assess students and we take them where they are and we help them to achieve their greatest potential and when we talk in terms of deficit um or um when we're not talking about strength based or asset based

192it changes the mindset like me personally as an educator it changes my mindset so when i'm thinking about an individual student and where they might be and not putting on necessarily a negative connotation i feel like that's important and i know that it's important to our teaching and learning team too i wanted to explain that a little bit and finally um i guess two things so not finally yet i've been hearing from a lot of people about the bond renewal i just want to say that i know finance has been talking about it i know that there have been some some sessions where different different groups have been meeting with um anna and david raft and dr lotch and so you know we're continuing those those plans are continuing to develop and we appreciate the

193community and their involvement and we're continuing to being open to hearing about your thoughts on that and i think that in in thinking about potential bond renewal projects in my mind at least it's really not about an either or it's about a both and so how can we again like the whole child how can we um how can we maximize potential for the whole child and in our in this case the whole district each child um and finally because we were talking about some of the transitions um i spent well my family spent part of the day today at the pediatrician's office so just a note that there are other repercussions from coming out of a pandemic and exposure to things so continue to as i am with my kids reminding them to wash their

194hands and be mindful of those things they're typical viruses that are going around but from what we heard at the pediatrician's office today they are um they're having an increase right now because of change in season and and all of those different variables so while our covet threat level is lower and we're really glad to be moving in the right direction in terms of that keeping all of those things that we've learned throughout the last two years to keep students healthy and being mindful of that which is the reason i'm wearing my mask tonight just out of precaution so onward so i want to back uh piggyback on something there that jenny because trusty miller brought up and uh about yeah those conversations are really important as far as bond renewal what have you this

195is an evolving process it is something that we are talking about finance committee and what have you we just we don't have anything concrete right so we're allowing that work to happen but it is happening it's a it's a whole process and i like what you said about it's an and and or that's our goal right and uh and then we're going to talk to our community about what what the community will you know support and what have you um i have two two more shout outs i want to do so the first one is cheerleading so our cheerleading squad made it to troy athens for regionals last weekend and that was a huge deal for them so i wanted to give them a shout out to that and uh i'm especially giving a shout

196out because i helped carry a kayak around celine a couple of last week for they were having spirit week and so i must have looked a little silly driving a kayak around my truck in the middle of february but that's okay it was worth it for for those students and then the last thing is i read a great article too about a mason freeman right and uh this is a student 19 year old student with a cognitive impairment and last thursday got into a basketball game and and scored a goal you know and when i think about like students and the incredible things that our you know people do for our students i want to give a shout out to that coaching staff i want to give a shout out to that student and the

197family and for being engaged as a team trainer and wanting to be a part of that like oh that that warms my heart like as a teacher as a as just a human being so anyway so that i want to give a shout out to that nice thanks any other trustee comments yes okay a few things first of all thank you to everybody on this table who is at holly havilland's threat assessment protocol overview and the washington county sheriff's office was also there that was that was very interesting i've got notes and notes and notes and well we won't go into it right now but i want to thank you all brad sorry treasurer gerby and i spent saturday morning together virtually at one of the cba courses and i know we have others on

198the board were at some of those courses uh i took and now you're gonna it's gonna make me sound horrible i took three more after that including the anatomy of an audit which is on the agenda and generational diversity among other things um and i just wanted to remind this board and i'm looking at the new folks if we can get every one of us to have covered all the nine 100 level courses by july first then we will be known as an honor board honor certified board um no pressure no pressure but um and of course they're all they're all available online now uh i would like to report we got some emails this afternoon that there has been progress on the reduced speed area outside heritage woodland meadows um and they're going to

199be moving very quickly now that the weather's warmed up the engineers just finished the other day reviewing the signage in the area i also want to thank jay grossman robin schmidt they gave me a tour of the touch screens that are around the schools quite remarkable those things in fact to the point that some teachers are asking that they remove the digital projectors in the ceiling because these things have just replaced what the digital projectors can do and in a lot of different ways in fact i'm asking my my folks at eastern michigan university could i pretty please have one um yeah well we'll see um secondly and almost lastly uh on this march 10th which is what thursday we're having a social emotional learning event uh which you've heard about valencia cade and sarah

200giddings from wisd they'll be doing this presentation apparently they knocked it out of the park a few weeks ago and are delighted to run it for us for board members trustees across washtenaw and finally i did hear from guillermo lopez the region 7 masb board of directors winner hey i was six districts away out of 73 from from given i gave him a run for his money let's put it that way and he's well respected and much beloved uh but if it comes up again and i'm still here i'll give it i'll give it another shot thank you very much for your support any other trustees comments um okay i have a few first of all i wanted to thank the board and steve for attending the board retreat and i wanted to really also

201thank the culinary students and staff at the high school who put on a wonderful little spread for us had a little team building dessert activity before we went on and did other team building activities on decision making and had a small design thinking activity on board of education focus we we enjoyed their food very much and got to use some torches for our little lemon meringue tarts which was very very fun looking forward to continued discussions on some of the focal points that came out of the that activity which include in no particular order because they're all important diversity of thought our students the community the board of education and superintendent relationship efficient meetings and being a team so good good focal points there um also attended the masb winter institute i think it was

202last week and they all run together um online i really enjoyed one of the sessions on school safety where a mother from sandy hook was the presenter which was which was hard to hear but very important here and spent all day sunday at the advanced board of education president workshop talking about engaging your community being a spokesperson um election year things to watch out for in a behavioral styles analysis that we all completed um also attended the foundation for saline area schools monthly meeting um pleased to say three more grants were approved one at woodland meadows and two at our high school um they are getting ready for their huge spring event and imagine it will be april 28th at i think six p.m please look for information coming soon there will there will be

203a movie a live auction a silent auction and food from knights that evening thank you to our foundation also for the goodwill campaign that is occurring in all of our buildings right now they are leveraging the partnerships that we have with wonderful local businesses and buying services and goods from those businesses and then giving those back to staff so there's raffling off of max gift cards there's a flower bouquet i saw at the front office here there's been a lot of imagined popcorn there's been scones all sorts of things so thank you for that and also wanted to compliment julian on a shout out that he got from one of the trustees this morning she mentioned that she was watching the she's an alum of selenary schools and she mentioned that she was watching the

204video and she was very impressed with with your representation of the student body and your participation in the conversation about masks so good work good work there brad already mentioned finance selene robotics i did want to say something about that we received a bulletin there will be 40 teams and 1400 students at saline high school soon they would love for you to attend it is march 26th and 27th so look for information that i'm sure will be in news and notes and things like that um very soon thank you yeah i would like to go okay um so i wanted to say the name of the two girls um the wrestlers um so emmy hicks and then t eisenman tia eisen um and for women's history month and um so this was the first official

205mhsaa girls state championship so super exciting and so yes they were took second and then um emmy won um and they have wrestling holds a special place in my heart because in elementary school um i was like one of like one uh wrestlers um in elementary school so um they did kind of like a clinic and um you know a couple weekend competitions so i think there was like one girl another girl who wrestled um and i was scared of her um and then a lot of times the boys would forfeit um because they were scared of me oh and then oh nope that's it thank you okay moving forward to our consent agenda please i want pictures uh for our consent agenda the following are offered as part of the consent agenda the motion

206noted will allow for the authorization of all listed items without discussion unless a member of the board requests that any one or all be considered individually uh item a approval of the board of education regular meeting minutes of february 22 2022 b approval of the board policy committee meeting minutes of february 22 2022 c approval of the board of education retreat meeting minutes of february 28 see approval of payment of the general fund accounts payable of march 8th 2022 in the amount of 4 million 579 000 39.78 d approval of payment of the bond series three accounts payable of march 8th 2022 in the amount of 13 608 dollars and 40 cents e receive and file curriculum finance and human resources reports f the approval of overnight and or out of state field trips is

207submitted by superintendent lodge field trip 2021 number 87 skills usa competition grand rapids michigan from april 8th to april 10th 2022 ng approval of early graduation requests as submitted by superintendent lodge i'd like to please entertain a motion to authorize the consent agenda motion gerby brad thank you second miller oh go ahead joe all right candace thank you all those in favor please say aye aye opposed hearing none motion carries seven zero enclosing items scheduled for our next agenda south and west washington consortium update with dr ryan rowe ask him to bring some of those lemon tarts or the crab cakes or a tomato soup we're looking forward to that betty is approaching so that means we have one other public comment a member of the public may address the board briefly for up to

208three minutes or a request to be scheduled on the agenda of a future meeting i have two seeing no student forms i have two community members who would like to speak the first receive was dave rosenfeld resident and former sas parent hi my name is dave and my pronouns are he him his so back in november of 2018 i sat in this very room to attend one of the early community conversations on diversity that was hosted by former superintendent scott graden and that was possibly the first time i had ever really engaged with saline area schools beyond just volunteering in my kids classrooms or helping my partner viva who's here tonight uh with some of the many things that she was doing to support the students and staff at woodland meadows but a community conversation

209with the superintendent was something new and different for me and i definitely never attended a board of education meeting before but now three and a half years later i have participated in more listening sessions and community conversations than i can remember and as you know as you all know i've attended my fair share of board meetings as well so this sort of thing is no longer new to me but the reason the main reason i bring up that first community conversation back in 2018 is because at that meeting which was convened in response to a racist incident that had occurred at one of the schools one of the participants suggested that what the district really needed was a full-time paid position dedicated solely to dei and the consensus in the room was overwhelmingly if not

210unanimously in favor of the idea i remember asking the admin who were present if that was something the district would likely get behind and while i don't remember the exact response i think it was something like yes in principle but we'd have to look at finances etc and it may not be entirely necessary if we make sure we have staff in each building that are versed in dei and so on well here we are three and a half years and lord knows excuse me how many racist incidents and listening sessions later and while progress has been made in certain areas we still don't have a full-time paid dei posses position i strongly concur with the dei ac and with celine parents against racism that creating such a position is one thing our district can do

211and in my opinion that desperately needs to do to help address and ultimately to solve this pervasive ongoing and unacceptable problem thank you dave um kevin come here sulak parent and parent of a student and 2019 alumni very specific whenever you're ready kevin very true thank you um thank you for listening and all all your work on this there's been a lot of consideration with uh with these issues of uh racism discrimination harassment abuse it's becoming all too common and i dislike saying that but i emphatically support the district i'm sorry saline area schools hiring a full-time diversity equity and inclusion staff member i've been an active parent in the schools and as you stated i still have a student in the school district and a 2019 alum and she hears what's what's going on

212she wants to make a difference but it doesn't seem like much has changed from what herself and other student friends you know are hearing at school or or when or when they come back i'm sure that translates to our reputation more than just insulin so i truly believe that this position would benefit not only our our students of of color and and marginalized communities but all of our students remember this nobody's getting a smaller piece of the pie the pie is getting the pie is getting bigger and it's and it's more equitable as as said earlier we need someone that will coordinate and will be the holder of all the information and the events and organize how this is going to be addressed we need somebody that's accountable for following through with consistencies of policies

213making it you know suggestions for adjustments and we need to keep all of our students safe as sparr and the dei lc eloquently stated earlier we've seen some fruits of our efforts but in order to implement and realize major improvements in all of our students safety and ability to learn a dedicated dei staff member is necessary as as a city of saline council member i've seen significant improvements from the creation of the city's dei committee and the implementation of several initiatives so i'm very confident that hiring a full-time di person will help all selene students and yield benefits to the community celine sees itself as a leader in the county and in the state primarily in athletics academics music many of our excellent clubs an organization i'll wrap it up now the time now is

214the time to elevate our students safety and ability to learn we can't wait for another racist or or abuse of our students thank you and if you can toggle that off uh the the mic we're gonna be gone um now i'd like to please um oh i'm sorry the next meeting the next regular board of education meeting will be held on march 22 2022 at 6 30 p.m um i'd like to please entertain a motion to adjourn the board of education meeting for march 8 2022 at 9 42 pm mcvay thank you [Music] second second miller thank you all those in favor [Music] all those opposed hearing none motion carries 7-0 we are adjourned 7 9 42. you