Saline Area Schools: Board of Education Meeting - 9.14.21

001push the talk it'll become green and that means you're on leave it on and you're always a fist away from the mic that's kind of how you remember it it right in front of your face but if you're over here or over here it just doesn't pick up and then as soon as you're done [Music] into the mic press the button hello everyone can hear me okay just doing a mic check all right thank you okay just a second we're getting the live stream ready like to call to order please the regular meeting of the Seline Area Schools board board of education for September 14th 2021 at 6:35 p.m. if we could please rise for our Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag United States of America and to the Republic for which

002it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you for being here maybe particularly to our new staff who you see in our in our audience today and Welcome to our new school year this is our first meeting of the new school year and so it's very nice to see everyone back again and wishing you a wonderful um a wonderful year and and health for everyone um this is our first opportunity for public comment a member of the public May address the board briefly for up to three minutes or request to be scheduled on the agenda of a future meeting please note note that students will be given priority to speak on any topic the first public portion public participation portion of the meeting will be limited to 1 half

003hour 30 minutes normally and limited to agenda items only a second public participation portion will be offered at the end of the agenda to allow for any other comment individuals addressing the board should take into the consideration should take into consideration the rules of common courtesy the public participation portion of the meeting cannot be used to make personal acts against board members District employees or students um the way that we do this is we go in person first so if we have any students who submitted a form they would come up now but I think we do not okay perfect and were there any bu there were no students who emailed in either correct okay perfect um moving into uh the the parents and community members who have uh requested to speak tonight I'll go

004in order Megan Gunnerson paren and Megan if you can please toggle on the um yep the green the green light yeah yep that's no problem oh yeah and um oh one thing sorry um so just to remind everyone since we have a lot of new staff here um the first public participation portion is agenda items so for the those watching at home tonight those are going to be our continue to learn plan um our welcome back to school with our new staff our junior class our Series 3 Bond um our board of education standards of governance and our action items on tonight's agenda sorry Megan thank you yep so you'll have three minutes to speak and secretary Eep will show the yellow card I think you know this but show the um the yellow card

005at 30 seconds out and then the red will terminate the three minutes um and we try to provide Equity to all with three minutes okay go ahead thank you thank you um thanks for letting me have an opportunity to speak I haven't gone off the agenda before so if I'm doing this incorrectly please stop and correct me um I had a couple questions directly related to two items that are on your agenda and didn't know if by asking them here there might be opportunity to have them answer during the reports because despite multiple emails across more months and more time than I'm willing to recount here I'm still not finding the answers that I'm searching for um particularly in um item number seven be the continue to learn plan for the 2021 school year um

006I was hoping um in going to meet the teacher the last two weeks and meeting with more than 12 teachers and an administrator because I have more than one child um to hear more about how we were going to address the loss learning plan specifically for my family in math in a foreign language and then additionally for when the kids go into quarantine I am not so naive as to think that this is not a possibility in this Academic Year and I would like to know what the plan is we've been working on these plans for 18 months in my career and in my personal life I always have a plan a but I also always have a plan B and I'm working on plan C and I haven't seen and in speaking with the

007teachers specifically um that there is a districtwide plan to make sure that these kids roll out and move forward um and more importantly that they are not left to languish independently learning all new material over the course of 10 days that is very concerning to me um especially at the upper levels it seems like a lot of the focus has been in the K through five which is understandable as emerging readers however we have a significant portion of our school that is their Stakes are way higher and this languishing at home for 10 days doing independent instruction is just not acceptable I appreciate the teachers are going to wave requirements and it's an elective maybe you know we can let some things slide but that's very individual teacher based there is no Benchmark then to

008hold people accountable to or how you're going to move them forward I have great concerns and this is not the first time that I've spoken to this particular topic I'm hoping for some greater updates and then my next questions come to the standards of practice that are part of your agenda later it looks like you're adopting the standards of practice which you know I use every day in my career but I do have concerns about the 10 points that are on here um the first one is you make all of your students a priority K through five was the previous Focus again I say 6 through 12 is equally as important and they have higher Stakes um our personal uh family 504 plans were not met last year and I want to make sure that

009our fragile Learners are going to be a priority with this board and I need to see some tangibles thank you for your time Megan thank you for your comments um yeah if you can in between that'd be great thank you so much okay next we have Alberta uh Borneo former parent and Resident Alberta did I pronounce your last name correctly okay thank you very much and just toggle that on and off at the mic when you're uh when you're done thank you as you said correctly my name is Alberta Borneo and I just Express they object to the school's actions in the public hearing process including the lack of transparency making information hard to get refusing to do a question answer session and ignoring state law with an over sexualized sex education program I object

010to emails and questions going unanswered board members using their position to further their own political agendas and parents being forced to Foya simple information you have lost the trust and respect of parents and taxpayers that pay for Seline schools signing paper is a token act we need to know what specific changes will be made to remedy this situation thank you thank you Alberta um just to remind folks and I didn't want to interrupt you because I don't think you've spoken at the Board of Education before so I wanted to afford respect um we we have the first 30 minutes for agenda items and um we'll both speak perhaps to the sex Advisory Board um but it's not on the agenda for tonight thank you yeah usually what we do for the first 30 minutes is

011we're agenda items only in the first portion for public um public comment but thank you Alberta for your comments um next we have raand Davis parent thank you um Susan you'll have to let me know when my three minutes are up um again I also object to the way that the school has handled this public hearing process recently and I think it is an exact example of why you guys think you have to sign another standard of governance form here um my questions are all of these standard of governance you took when you took an oath um and so at this point signing a piece of paper to say that you are going to be ethically responsible and you're going to be transparent and you're going to actually um be nonpartisan um at first I

012was like wow you're listening to us and then I realized it again feels like a slap in the face because these are things that you've already taken an oath to do and so again while you're discussing this I want to hear specifics on how things really were change parents are really upset about how they have been treated with the lack of answers lack of emails the no questions and answers for the sex Ed trying to find um uh having to buy the curriculum itself in order to find information about what's in it um personally I've sent multiple emails about how this uh does not meet state law how the scab is breaking state law and there's been no response um and and yeah the parents are upset and I have um the last three years

013since I am Jaz since you lost their trust I have been at the board trying to be reasonable trying to have a conservative voice um I disagree with a lot of the things that have been said but I've always been respectful and um and try to work together and I feel like I'm an enemy trying to find a spy trying to get information out of you guys and I'm not a newbie at this um and this is not fair and at this point I'm willing to say I think you guys are wrong and I want you guys to publicly tell the district not only how you're going to change from the standard of governance but give us the information you know stop the sex Edge fix it and and and be what we voted you

014guys into be because um this is just going to continue down and um like I said I'm I'm willing to to fight for this because I believe you guys are wrong not just a difference of opinions in this point Thank you very muchen thank you for your comments um the next public comment we have is lisis Barnett hereen Louis is it Lou or Louis Louise thank you I object to the school board in their failure to follow the standards they now promise to adhere going forward I object to them emails and questions going unanswered board members using positions that further their own political agendas and parents being forced to fo simple information we have lost trust and respect on of the parents sign a signing a paper act what what specific changes will be made

015in addition to that uh I did look at the agenda and I'm pleased to see that the board is taking steps to rectify some of my concerns I've seen that uh return to learn is going to be focused on students education and that is something that my wife and I feel that that should be a given um in terms of having to do a form to do something very basic that the board should add here is just it just blows my mind and I encourage every parent that's listening to this to take a larger active part in your child's education by coming to these boards so this doesn't get out of control thank you please thank you for your comments um Betty did we have a uh email so just for our our new uh

016attendees tonight uh we did have a feature or do have a feature on our website that you can email a comment if you're not uh able to participate in the meeting we did this when we were in in um other Heights of covid and we were in a hybrid meeting to afford um Equity to those who couldn't be with us in person um so B executive assistant to the superintendent Dr latch um reads those so go ahead buddy thank you and and you don't have to read the addresses or anything thank you I'm reading this on behalf of David Jenkins thank you for providing the community with updates via the SAS covid dashboard in order to provide more helpful and more transparent insights into covid Trends please consider implementing the following enhancements for the number

017of students in quarantine column please break that into two columns with one displaying the number of students quarantining outside of school and the other displaying the number of students that are quarantining inside of school with this information parents can make more informed decisions regarding covid Risk please make daily updates to the SAS covid dashboard to provide more timely covid statistics updates to the public dunde schools dashboard is available for reference and they may be able to provide guidance on how to implement an enhancement that provides closer to realtime updates thank you for considering these recommendations that will help parents to make more informed and more timely decisions that will help us to keep our children safe thank you Betty were there any other emails on uh specific agenda items for the first portion okay all

018right thank you very much um moving on please I'd like to entertain a motion to approve the agenda as printed items may be added or deleted from the meeting agenda and or the order of items may be changed at the the request of an individual board member or the superintendent the agendas must be approved before proceeding further anyone entertain the motion to approve the agenda yeah so we weren't in this room last meeting we were at the high school so we're getting back into the rhythm of of using the mic so um yeah I'll do it toggle on and enough okay Brad moves uh second support thank you Susan for support feels good to be back here though yeah all in favor please say I I I I opposed seeing none motion carries 70 um

019this district is student L and always appreciates our student voice and so uh now that we are back in the school year we always begin our board meetings with our student showcase but before we do that I'd like to pause for just a moment and reintroduce Julian Downey he is our new student representative to the Board of Education you might have seen um you might have seen Julian on stage with us at the at the last board meeting on August 10th but we'd like to pause and give him the opportunity to introduce himself to you and to say a few words before uh opening it up to our student showcase for this evening uh hello I'm Julian Downey I'm a senior at the high school I've lived in s pretty much my whole life so

020familiar with you know most of the schools and all that and I'm a member of the varsity hockey and golf team and this is my first year as a student representative so super excited to work with the board teachers uh staff and students most importantly throughout this school year so thank you very much for having me here and I'm looking forward to the year and then also with the student showcase uh we're going to dedicate time at the beginning of each meeting uh to student L programs and student based clubs ranging kindergarten through 12 representing events and organizations at each and every school and today we have Carson Caldwell the junior class president here to brief on the junior class hi everyone I'm Carson as Julian said and I'm the class president I'm also part

021of um oh the is that is that good okay okay yeah um I'm the um student class president of the junior class and I'm also part of NHS student council and students Against Racism and you can go to the next slide um right now we are doing several things for student council and the biggest and most important thing in student council right now is homecoming we're so excited to be back and doing social things again such as homecoming I know all of my friends are very excited to be with people even if that means wearing a mask or being outside it's just it's just nice to be around people and also as the junior class president um we're responsible for um for organizing prom so we're starting to work on that and I'm also the

022chair of the hospitality committee and last year we did a lot of teacher appreciation we individually packed like snack bags for each of the teachers and I think they really appreciated that and we love seeing the love from them and giving love to them so we want to do something similar to that again and I think that even though last year was like really hard this year they still deserve some appreciation as always and I also am um um I am trying to last year I talked about doing something like for mental health so a peer-to-peer program where we'd get students to be trained um by our counselors or by outside resources to be able to talk to students because sometimes it's a little intimidating to go to our counselors or not that they're intimidating

023but like just adults in general so I think it'd be really helpful for students to be there for other students and to open up to other students and this could be in several different formats such as via Zoom or like iners um just whatever people are comfortable with so i' really like to implement that this year since last year was really hard for everyone's mental health and I think mental health is just important in general and yeah I think also just everyone's excited to be back in the school I personally learn a lot better when I'm in school so I'm excited to be there and I think everyone else is okay you can go to the next one um I'm also part of the students Against Racism Club as I um already said right now

024last year we did um a lot of training for the younger kids which I think is very important we went into the classrooms of the elementary schools and we read books to them we didn't exactly like introduce the idea of racism but we more like showed representation to people of color and for it was there for um people students of color in the elementary schools that didn't don't get as much representation as they'd like in the classroom so that was really helpful and I really liked um speaking with all the students and it was a really nice exper experience for me and for other students and we're also working on a book drive right now so that would look like um books from uh authors that are people of color or just that have people

025of color in them just again more representation more more points of view and um I feel like in our children's book I children's books I grew up reading books about dogs and like white people so I feel like it's really as a person of color myself I would like to see a lot more uh books uh with representation in them in the elementary school so we're going to do that again this year and also try to do some education towards uh students in the high school so that can be like programs and things like that we're still trying to figure that out and then uh yeah and then also I have Jazelle here she's one of my good friends and in light of all of the um things that have H been happening at the

026school recently Jazelle has been working really hard to organize things like protest and um and just bring all the women together in our in our school cuz uh it's it's scary sometimes to be in a place where there are people who who have been um who have been accused of sexual assault and I think it's a really important matter and it's really important that girls voices be heard so I will turn it over to Jazelle to talk more about that um oh sorry hi I'm jelle Garduno for those of you who do not know me and I know that sexual assault is a very touchy subject as well as harassment or rap but I would also like to thank the some of the administration and some of the teachers who have helped me and have

027really showed me how to be stronger and show my own true qualities and who I really am but I would also like to talk about how students who are at Seline represent who we are the people who commit sexual assault or do harassment towards someone else it affects the whole entire School especially when the voices of those people are silenced and and they don't they can't can't feel as if they can go to anyone in the school they don't feel as if they can trust their counselors their teachers whereas for me I feel as if I can I can go and talk to them but for other people they can't they feel the retaliation that will they will face I started this on Friday and I've already had hundreds of conversations with people attacking me

028and getting angry with me but I've also had a lot of support from from people I've got 411 signatures from women and men who agree with me and believe and I do not want to attack the board whatsoever and say anything that you guys are doing wrong or anything at all but I do think there are ways that we can change and to help prevent this because by allowing people men and women not just men to do this it allows them to keep continuing to do it because here at Seline it is so normalized by men that they can do this because they never face punishment for it and if someone me who has been sexually assaulted and harassed multiple time and has asked for help and never got that back and have to see

029him every single day or be in classes with him and I know other students who have to be in the same class as their rapists it is extremely disgusting to me that this when we go to the school they say oh well we can't work around it our priorities should be your priorities as well people go to school to go for a safe place and many of our students do not feel that they have that at Seline they are scared to go there because of they don't trust anyone and they have to see those people every single day and when we go to the school nothing is done but I would also like to thank Mrs Denine who is the assistant principal for helping me and I really appreciate everything she is doing as well

030I would like to thank Mr raft who has been extremely supportive as well and I appreciate him as well but I was saying that organizing a protest of course safe masks be worn but I know there's a lot of other students I know don't know if you've seen it the teal shirts and stuff who are wanting to do it more violently who are wanting to attack the administration which is not what I want to do at all because lots of people have been supportive of it however I would like to do that to give the voices back to the victims who have who never got their voice and I do not want to attack any of the students name anyone because that is not my right and that is not the schools either and that's

031and I know the school has to follow by the law there's not anything they could do to change what happens or if a cha case is dropped but I do think there's more ways that we can help this because it's still going on and still happening and most of it I don't know if you've seen on the news or what's going on with the two people I will not name because it's not my place however I do think our school system can do better in this and I do believe that our students who do represent us should do better as well and the school should help with this that is all I just want to pause for a minute to recognize the the words from jizelle and um in person thank you very much for

032your um your time and for coming here to speak with us today um and again welcome to um I don't know if the board wants to make any comment but I do want to pause respectfully and in case any of the trustees or Julian would like to say anything yeah Jenny I just wanted to say hello to jelle and I'm proud you from your second grade teacher jelle I missed your last name could you thanks uh yes I just wanted to say thank you to both Carson and Jazelle for for creating safe spaces um for these types of conversations to to happen at the high school um as well as for taking the time to go into the younger grade grades and showcase uh diverse books that's really important to me and speaks speaks to

033me so I really appreciate that thank you for your courage so I want to applaud also just your your commitment to your school like what uh I heard about a lot of things that impressed me there um and and I think other things so the peer-to-peer program for mental health mental health is a really important thing for young people right now especially as an educator myself and so I applaud you and I I hope that you do get that up and running and get the assistance you need and all that I think it's I think it's a wonderful Endeavor as far as books and uh representing people of color and have you thought about funding sources have you reached out to our community I guess I'm giving you a little bit of a Pulpit here

034like uh have you thought about that or have you had people reach out to you for that I know you yeah and lastly I just want to hey hey Brad I'm sorry because uh kson hi I I want to make sure her voice was heard do you mind just saying a few words BR and just reiterating what she said or or Carson do you want to come up to the mic I I don't want to I think what Carson is saying is that they would gladly accept any Community Support as far as funding for books and for supporting that representation which I think is and I applaud so and then the last thing is you know I'll say that you know sexual assault certainly is an important matter and I applaud you for for having

035a voice and for bringing that to us tonight so thank you um thank you for sharing um about the junior class um and all the initiatives that um you were working on um sounds like a lot um but it sounds like it's going to be really fun and rewarding um and also um Jazelle um I just want to thank you for um sharing um your story um I I don't know what's going on uh social media on I mean which is yeah um I'll check it out later but um I just want to let you know that I believe you um I support you um if you need any um resources just being someone who's kind of volunteered and worked in the area of um women studies women resources um if you would like some

036resources I can email um just as far as um local and National um sexual assault and domestic violence organizations that's thank you very much and and please know um that we you are our why um this board loves kids and um sometimes it's tough to have conversations and heartbreaking to hear things but um we are open and we are safe and and thank you very much for coming and um Julian welcome to this year um I'd like to move on now to our first scheduled report um welcome back to school 20 2021 2022 new staff introductions kind of kind of gonna continue Julian's our new staff member so we wanted to do this and then and then transition to our continue to learn but we're going to we're going to pause and and let assistant

037superintendent Ellis take it over for a few minutes hi thank you very much for the time this evening tonight you're going to meet just over 50 of the 67 people that we've hired since July 1 um these individuals are jumping into Seline area schools at a very very difficult time with the things that we've gone through relative to co and some of the other topics that are being discussed and so it is my sincere hope that we will all welcome them and embrace them in the same way that they have welcomed and embraced us so we're going to ask them to come up one at a time and introduce themselves and and I know it's going to be a lot we don't expect you to remember names and faces but the beauty of us taping

038this is that they'll have a a record of it so come on up and introduce yourselves that's good and we are live streaming this so they can go back and watch it and uh Kurt did you tell them that we they have to say one embarrassing fact I'm kidding I'm absolutely kidding absolutely kidding welcome everyone and um no we're not going to do it too um but uh if if we can allow them the space to introduce themselves and then we'll hold Applause till the end and give them a really big welcome that would be fantastic go ahead uh my name is Tyler Reed I am a sixth grade teacher at Seline middle school and I'm Math and Science there on the summit team fired up to be at at Seline so thanks for having

039me my name is John Williams I'm I'm a technology analyst for uh Pleasant Ridge and Heritage uh Harvest I always get those mixed up I have uh six kids in the um in the district uh four with special needs and uh the other two crazy hi I'm Lindy tanin and I'm the speech language pathologist at Heritage thank you hey guys I'm Taylor wit I am at Woodland Meadows I'm a parent educator and also a parent of a sleen student hi I'm Megan Young um and I'm a life skills teacher in the young adult program hi I'm Samantha Marat and I'm a life skills teacher at the middle school hi I'm Katie McGee and I'm now the full-time District bcda thank you hi I'm Juliana Rosetto and I'm a parah at Pleasant Ridge hi I'm Angie

040zakowski and I'm an El tutor at Woodland Meadows thank you hello my name is Karina rotando and I am the new high school counselor at Selen High School hello I'm Shan newv I'm on the grounds crew for Selen schools hi I'm Cara Burgess I am the secretary at Witham Meadows hi I'm Kelly Banky I'm the music teacher at Woodland Meadows hi I'm Amanda aposto I'm a par educator at the middle school hi I'm Foster wusk and I'm the new math and physics teacher at the high school hi I'm Stacy Garen and I am the third grade teach teacher at Pleasant Ridge Elementary hi I'm Heather Schwarz and I'm a first grade teacher at Harvest hi my name is meline treber I'm teaching first grade at Harvest good evening my name is Britney benedetto and I'm

041teaching second grade at Pleasant Ridge good evening my name is Michelle Lauren and I teach fourth grade at Heritage good evening my name is Alison Marlos and I teach life skills over at Heritage my name is Sophia OK Conor and I teach special edit the high school hi my name is Marissa wilw worth and I also teach special edit the high school oh and Sophia right before her proud teacher yes and I won't say um I guess I should say that I have them in kindergarten first grade so that makes me really old hi I'm Cameron Cochran and I am the assistant principal for at Heritage hello my name is Linda Mala and I'm a special education teacher at the high school hi my name is ashleen Sime and I'm a young five teacher at

042puant Ridge hello I'm Cara Wetzel and I'm a fifth grade teacher at Heritage hi my name is kayy Haron I'm also teaching fifth grade at Heritage hello my name is Nicholas cells and I'm working at the young adult program at Liberty school as a parah hi I'm Grace M and I'm teaching fourth grade at Heritage this I'm Kathleen full Edmonds I teach art at the high school and the middle school hello my name is Danielle Harrison and I'm a par educator at Pleasant Rich hello my name is Hal Warner I'm a par educar at Pleasant Rich hello I'm Darren van wer I'm a culinary technician at the high school hi I'm Katie Hughes and I'm a second grade teacher at Harvest hello I'm Lori Cutler and I am one of the literacy tutors at Heritage

043hi I'm Daniela Fay I'm also a literacy tutor at Heritage good evening I am Sarah merer and I am also a literacy tutor at Heritage hi I'm Amanda lady I'm also a literacy tutor at Woodland Meadows and Heritage hi I'm Jacob rle and I'm on grounds for S schools hi I'm Charlie Jones and I'm a technician at the S swwc hi I'm Emily cook and I am an administrative assistant at the swwc let's give them a round of [Applause] applause and I think Kurt said 67 in total 50 tonight so we'd like to extend a warm welcome to the others that aren't aren't here with us this evening we wish all of you the very very best we hope to see you back in the boardroom whenever you would like either presenting or participating in

044the audience you're always welcome I think Kurt probably wants to get a picture do you want to say anything it's a big picture no you want to say anything about I would just like to welcome our new staff as you can see uh we had a lot of turnover throughout the summer it's largely based on um some of the pandemic situations and trying to bring on new staff to support the district and the direction and it's just great to see so many new faces but as you can see assistant superintendent Ellis has been very busy in um organizing the hiring process but we're feeling really lucky with this group and the um significant work that's been put in by our HR team and our administrators and bringing on a quality group so looking forward to

045working with all of you and getting to know many of you as well all right wonderful moving on um we we promise to keep continue to learn plan up at the front of our agendas moving forward of course throughout the school year and tonight we're going to dig into literacy as you heard a lot of literacy tutors have been have been hired and we're excited to see the presentation from Dr latch and crew will'll let him introduce his his team okay thank thank you very much uh excited to be able to have this opportunity tonight to go over our latest continue to learn update with me is going to be a team of Cara Davis Shannon Washington where's my other group here yeah Yep they're they're going to be coming on up to join oh

046and Caroline Stout who's going to be joining us soon however we may end up doing her part as she said she was going to be a little bit late so we're going to go ahead and get started and it's uh set up in a series of discussions about where we are with Co and procedures I know that some people have been asking about that as it relates to quarantine and things like that and then we were going to get into literacy our teaching and learning team and then also our culturally responsive instructional plan so we'll go ahead and get started here if we look up at the screens we've been talking about the importance of five days a week of in-person instruction and we've been basing our entire start of the school year around that

047what we're seeing at the buildings as I'm walking Halls over these last couple weeks is that we are starting to return to a sense of normaly where students are getting into routines and rhythms and same with our teaching staff and support staff which has been great uh our primary goals are that we are going to support our outstanding instructional program and then we're going to work with our co-curricular classes extracurricular activities and our first grade athletic programs again in keeping that focus on what's our best opportunity to keep students in school five days a week from what I've observed thus far students are really happy to be back in school we heard that from some of our student Representatives tonight and in every building I've been in uh throughout the district we're seeing that across

048the board so that's very exciting terms of current Guidance just going to give you an update where we are um we've talked about the Delta variant being more contagious we certainly have at the beginning of the school year outlined a plan as it relates to masking primarily in the substantial and high transmission phases and then most recently the washingon county health department has come in and issued a MH mask mandate in schools and that we are going to be looking at changes is related to that mask mandate from washingon County simply by our Indoor Sports in other words the changes that are going to impact this latest mask mandate are that masking being required for indoor sports and Spectators all the other procedures and processes were already in place uh surrounded by our continue to

049learn plan one question that people have asked is when would the washingon County Health Department potentially resend the order and that would be if we were to have 14 straight days of dropping back into the moderate transmission phase and then we would be able to enact our contined to learn plan at that point in terms of where we're at right now this was updated as of September 11th but but um in the high transmission phase we do like to see you know show a graph so that people can see the trend patterns that we are experiencing as we go through through um continue to go through this covid uh pandemic we get this from the across the county using this covid tracker and we consistently use it so that we're looking at the same data

050in terms of the vaccination process um it is actually uh through the Michigan Health and Human Services uh it's it is District's responsibility to promote and support the vaccination process however I want to be real clear about what that means from our lens that means that we will be supporting the vaccination process if we have vaccination clinics or opportunities that kids can participate in or community members we would advertise just like we did towards the end of last year when we had some of those opportunities but we are certainly not asking or wanting our teaching staff or support staff to be asking students in the classroom are you vaccinated or promoting the vaccinated vaccination process process that's certainly not their role here's where we're at in terms of the vaccination process is data I got

051um Co act now is the site I use to look at those latest numbers what it does show is that wasar county is quite a bit ahead of the state average that speaks well to our opportunity to keep students in school five days a week and we are seeing some of the trend patterns with our data over these first two weeks that does support a smaller number of covid cases and close contacts happening in our grades that are at the upper levels in terms of our prevention strategies these have not changed in that at the beginning of the school year we did uh talk about uh those in green promoting vaccination mask usage our ventilation uh systems have been checked over and over by Rex clear and the building buildings and ground staff handwashing general

052cleaning parents have been excellent about keeping students home when they're sick and getting tested and then also the contact tracing in combination with quarantine that District nurse hervy and the nursing team have been doing such a great job with not only last year but into this year already the area that we struggle with is is the physical distancing and we've always said that that was going to be an area that we are going to need to work on in that we have a lot more students in the building and the ability to keep students three to six feet apart is not realistic in this environment so the actual updated dashboard uh when you look at this and this is on our on our website and our if you go to our main website there's a

053a box that pops up that Anna britnell organizes each week that says co9 you click on it and it moves into the dashboard what you're seeing is if you go right to the bottom you're going to see that the vast majority of our cases in terms of close contacts and students in quarantine are happening at our lower elementary schools and I'm going to talk a little bit about why that is the case so you look at the you know Pleasant Ridge Elementary with 45 students in quarantine and 27 students at Woodland medals in quarantine exactly what does that mean because students in quarantine this year often means that they are coming to School masking but also doing covid testing which is different than we had happening last year so here's an update on that as

054it relates to those cases at Woodland Meadows in Pleasant Ridge the vast majority are happening uh for whatever reason in the young fives and kindergarten classrooms which requires a whole classro quarantining approach per the washing County Health Department guidance that that's based on the notion that students at that level have a very difficult time of potentially staying apart from each other um kids young kids want to be close and therefore the whole classroom gets quarantined when a student does test positive but what that does mean is that the vast majority of those close contacts are able to remain in school as long as they don't have symptoms and then our nursing staff is helping to test them in a non-invasive way uh several you know multiple times per week to verify that um they aren't

055testing positive and therefore most of those students on that quarantining list are able to stay in school which is part of our objectives and our goals now some of the students are needing to do the traditional 10-day quarantine that happens if families do not want the students tested and that's perfectly fine it also happens when uh they're close contacts in the lunchroom because in the lunchroom that is considered a more risky activity obviously masks are off and therefore some of those students are needing to do the traditional 10-day quarantine but again if our goal is to keep students in person as much as possible we are succeeding with that already even though we have a number of covid cases which is reflective of the community transmission so we should expect as a district that as

056Community transmission is in these substantial and high transmission zones we are going to continue to have covid cases it will be reflective of the community and we will work to manage those so it minimizes the disruption of students being out of school I'm now going to call up Cara Davis who's our uh teaching and learning team lead and she's going to talk to us about our Direction this year as it relates to the academic program thank you Steve so last year we pushed pause on many of our initiatives in order to focus on tackling the many challenges of the pandemic creating space for our teachers to meet the demands of the virtual and hybrid educational environment of the time this year with our students and staff back in the buildings fully we're returning our attention

057to moving forward with our building goals the building goals are outlined on the left and those are specific to the needs of the individual buildings and they also share um key components of rigor relevancy and responsiveness so outlined on the right some of the pieces that we are thinking about reinvigorating our focus on our SAS Compass our graduate profile and the student attributes included in that personalizing our educational experiences focusing on our students as individuals in a culturally responsive manner centering components critical to social emotional support and Wellness and amplify amplifying authenticity and connection to real world experiences all of these are critical in creating the environment in which our students can best flourish when we think about personalizing educational experiences and centering components of social emotional learning we are intentionally maximizing existing program and

058making deliberate shifts to attend to the transitional needs that students may have have returning to full iners schooling some examples include but are not limited to our emphasizing of celebrating accomplishments and gains so thinking about um students where they are at and focusing on what they have gained versus focusing on deficit language or mindsets that might create shame or increase anxiety in our students in addition continuing our excellent student-based programs such as web link crew and Elementary Community meetings adjusting assessment approach in order to be responsive to the needs of our students we eliminated the NWA at the K3 level focusing on um FMP benchmarking and Caroline stat will go further into our literacy work um in the um next group of slides focusing on balance assessments for our students and at the high school

059middle school standards based learning thinking about as grade levels in departments reflecting on the previous year's accomplishments looking at Curriculum maps in order to better set up our students for Success so recognizing that more bridges may be need may be needed to be made this year um as we transition students from what they learned last year to the courses or grade levels they in this year and then creating spaces that are both at the classroom level and building wide flexible responsive and inclusive so thinking about how our classrooms are set up to be representative of the identities inside the classrooms creating spaces like quiet rooms um safe spaces for our students to feel a part of the broader community in addition when we're thinking about supporting our students this year some of the considerations that

060we made prior to the school year starting we partner with thriving mind Behavioral Health um and as a part of that we collectively learned about what trauma disorders look like and how that impacts our students and their brains we learned strategies to be proactive as teachers and as support staff as well as key tips for intervention in our buildings our counselors and social workers are working diligently to address the many social emotional needs Amplified during this pandemic some examples are included in the next couple of sections I'll highlight a few for you at the elementary level crisis intervention so supporting students and staff and distress is needed monitoring drop off and transitions for signs of that distress parent contact meeting taking uh and talking with parents with current concerns and following up with those who

061shared concerns last year collecting and reviewing Behavior data Swift um behavior is communication and often indicates that a child is struggling at the middle school level hosting Trails anxiety groups for our seventh and eighth graders and lunch bunches for those in need and individual and group meetings for our students um request as well as centering seal lessons so social emotional learning lessons um and sixth grade classrooms to create that soft start for this year and then there's of course Sid the Wellness cat at the middle school at the high school level connecting with our ninth graders who struggle in a traditional year entering and making sense of high school being extra visible in the hallways before school and talking to students at lunch particularly those sitting alone in the classroom providing increased supports to students

062identified with anxiety or who are more introverted these are all strategies that our counseling and um social workers shared staff and social workers shared um with us as some of the strategies that they are implementing at the various levels and again I just shared a few of the many that they are um putting into practice in their school spaces we are also really attending to our teaching staff and our staff in terms of their own social emotional needs with thriving Minds so referring back to our partnership with them we did Identify some moves that can be made for self-care and as an organization we're working to be really intentional about creating a culture of care and support some things that we've done deliberately to support our staff to be respons mive to their needs are

063paying attention to the um items that they highlighted in their exit survey from 2021 um including reducing meetings moving some meetings to zoom providing PD around topics that they indicated as priorities for this year based on their observations of students in their classrooms increasing check-ins and team and culture building amongst the staff adding in some fund factors um themed welcome back gifts shared swag and sweet treats and of course an abundance of gratitude we also have a small but very valued cohort of young five through sixth grade virtual students this year in order to be responsive to families who preferred an entirely virtual experience uh we contracted with Lincoln Learning a group out of Pennsylvania to provide students with uh the content curricular experiences there's some highlights of the components of Lincoln Learning on the

064slide there I've been working really closely with these families throughout the transition and like transition uh there has been some bumps in the road um however we have definitely continued to get better and evolve and um make this experience the best it can be for our students um so they are all paired with a San Mentor um inside of the district the teachers at Lincoln Learning are Michigan teachers they have live office hours with which they can support their students um and the courses that they elected are math science social studies and English language arts as well as one elective that that was the students choice and we actually just had a great meeting last night with the lincol learning um group themselves to get some extra support and I've seen many of these families

065either via Zoom or have had conversations on the phone or saw them on the meetings last night so um it's been a a growing option with that I'm gonna turn it over to Caroline thank you for having us um I am going to present a little kind of snap um shot of our end of year reading data K3 uh we are in the proced collecting this assessment data right now we don't expect that some of the target target areas that we identified last year that have helped us plan for this year are going to change drastically but we'll certainly update you as those um come out as well so real quick I know you've seen a lot of colorful graphs from me before but the way to interpret it is I'm going to show you

066some bar graphs um where basically it represents the percent of students who scored at or above Benchmark on aadience reading specifically K3 um and Benchmark just means that it's the minimal level um of performance that indicates a strong likelihood that the students will meet end of year um grade level expectations in Reading um and there'll be some that have um represented composite score which is a measure of overall risk and there are some that represent kind of some of the sub um indicators in terms of literacy so just a quick review when we're talking in K3 literacy um not all students develop on a Continuum that's you know perfectly linear however there is a progression of skills um the pandemic has really impacted um some of those younger students in a way that uh we

067are doing a lot of planning to address because they have some gaps in their foundational skills so um when we think of the progression we start with a lot of soundwork a lot of things that are oral phonic awareness is just a fancy word to say um the ability to manipulate uh sounds and words to hear and manipulate sounds um phonics is when you start mapping that onto letters so letter sound Association being able to blend those into words to decode uh when students are able to use that to read texts they focus then on accuracy and making sure that they're making real words and and reading the words as they are then we focus on building their autenticity so they can do it faster more fluently without too much cognative effort put forth um

068to just read what's on the page so that they can focus on reading with expression and the ultimate goal which is reading with comprehension so um we also posted this report actually more extensive report to our website in June that included some um endel data and everything disaggregated by reporting category but assuming you had better things to do with your evenings um here are some of the highlights so I'll go through kindergarten through third grade um in kindergarten again this is that composite so when we look as I've said before we're very fortunate in this District we tend to have students who come with uh amazing um skills already amazing pre-literacy Concepts um so um if you recall like the mtss um triangle representation we want to make sure that at any point in time

069at least 80% of our students don't need any additional support to be successful right so basically we have the gift of kindergarteners coming to us almost already there you see those graphs are in the high 70s and by the end of the year typically we're able to get them really high um what's interesting about kindergarten first grade is we've noticed in the past several years that we do tend to see a little slide between the end ofe kindergarten and first um grade fall um we have a lot of theories on why that is um but we like that our numbers are usually really high except for last year and I've spent a lot of time pondering what it would have meant had the scor stayed the same and we not actually had that much that

070much instructional time with them so it's bittersweet to see this but we certainly are serious about addressing it and making sure that it does not have a long-term negative impact on our students um so when we look specifically at some of the skills that we want to address in our incoming first graders um we want to make sure that they continue to um have that phonic awareness um as part of their uh tier one instruction and tier two and tier three intervention for those who need a little extra boost um because um again the ended the year decently but we do expect a summer slide um and the main focus is going to be really fluency with those early phonic skills so basic consonant um short vowels being able to quickly associate the sounds with

071those letters which is going to help them then um be fluent readers um so our first grade composite last year we can see already in the fall um so and in case so the last graph you could see or sorry the beginning of year last kind of reddish color you can see already that the pandemic had impacted these students um last fall right we know that they missed some of that really key kindergarten instruction and um ended the year still needing some um some extra support so the areas here to focus on in in entering second graders are going to be specifically those letter sound correspondences moving into more phonics patterns and the ability to um very automatically blend those into words when they're reading unknown words um in second grade last year again so

072you can see already if you recall from the kindergarten in first grade graph by the end of the year we had 60 some perent of students at Benchmark we hope to have 80 right here already it's a little higher 70 and you'll see in third grade it's a little higher as well which really kind of shows the disproportionate impact the pandemic has had on our on our early readers so here the focus is going to be more on accuracy and then reading fluently not speed reading um like I'm speed talking right now but rather just reading automatically enough that they can focus on expression and comprehension and can be motivated to keep reading we don't like to do things that take us too long um in third grade kind of similar picture we also know

073that those third graders just much like the second graders they were readers already when the pandemic hit but they just had fewer opportuni to really practice it unless they happen to love reading um because there was less time um in school and um we really homework was if anyone else you know had this experience in my household homework was just you know let's be together as a family we didn't do a whole lot of extra at home um so the the U Focus here is going to be still on maintaining um that accuracy while building fluency and just that reading stamina and making sure that as these uh incoming fourth graders are now um reading to learn they are able to do so effectively and efficiently and be motivated to continue so here are some

074of the things that we have done to address um this uh covid impact we have hired additional uh literacy interventionists which we are very excited about we have nine new interventionists this fall which has been it's been great to train them and get to know them including three that are dedicated to Heritage alone and that's new this year um we're very excited that the district has has um allowed us to make that happen um math intervention as we turn to Pleasant Ridge I realize we're talking literacy but that's still something exciting um this teaching and learning team that uh we are going to describe in more detail in a minute um has members specifically focused on literacy coaching and intensifying instruction um and we also have uh a new process that we've been working on

075for the last year um for intensifying instruction what I mean there is really just making sure that when we are making decisions about students who need the next level of support regardless of what the area that we are using an evidence-based process that is cyclical that's using data to um learn from what has worked and not worked and continue to build over the years and communicate between grades so that we can be as effective as possible and as supportive as possible with our students and then the last thing I wanted to highlight is we did expand our um summer school offering at Pleasant Ridge we about doubled the program and point at the Super Summer Scholars Program so we had 60 67 students in that one this year um offered meals and transportation and uh

076really tried to get as many students there as possible and that was really a nice opportunity as well so um now Shannon Washington our uh consultant for culturally Le responsive instruction is going to tell us about the great plan she has and some of the goals for this year good evening and I probably should have introduced myself with the new people although I'm not new to any of you um but I am going to be um our consultant for culturally responsive instruction this year and I'm going to share with you kind of a summary of the one-year plan that I've um created um so first um this plan has three objectives it is designed for um one school year and those objectives are to collaboratively Define culturally responsive instruction for area schools um I'll talk

077a little bit about more about that process later um the plan is establishes a timeline for continued transition toward culturally responsive instruction for all teachers and it also serves as a transitional plan toward a long-term instructional position which would specialize in culturally responsive instruction implementation in the classroom and uh the quote on the side of the screen um is one that I'm kind of using as inspiration for this process it's that that cultural responsiveness is such an essential aspect of the learning process it is absolutely unavoidable and indispensable because at the end of the day the children are you okay okay okay at the end of the day the children have to be able to see themselves in the lessons they are learning and see the relevance of what they've learned after the dismissal bell

078rings at 3:00 or 2:55 or whenever that is um so this plan has three phases phase one I'm calling unearthing and affirming and the first part of that is to Define culturally responsive instruction um I'm providing a framework um from the literature from research and from practice experience that offers these terms um which I Define here a little clearer on this slide and these terms are ideas around what culturally responsive instruction is um the idea that it is validating it's normative ethical empowering humanistic uh inclusive transformative and emancipatory however phase two is to look into Seline school's visioning documents and find out where culturally responsive instruction already either is encouraged mandated uh or modeled and I've already started this phase and I've gone through um the Strategic plan the school Improvement plans I'm still working

079on the compass and School Board policiy and with my you know highlighter or red pin or uh whatever I have been able to identify places in all of those visioning documents where Seline absolutely supports culturally responsive instruction even if it was by another name or no name at all and so I can fully connect Schoolboard policy uh the compass and um the Strategic plan to culturally responsive instruction phase two I'm calling Discovery and collaboration and the IDE idea here is twofold I want to both work with parents and teachers along the path of both educating and understanding what culture responsive instruction is um and the idea is the goal here is to meet the needs of all students so um part one of phase two is a professional development series tour culturally responsive instruction for

080all students and um there are three parts fall winter spring the goal here is to support teachers in operationalizing culture responsive instruction and it begins with Seline creating a definition of what culturally responsive instruction is for Seline it needs to be unique to Seline students and teachers and not necessarily just a copy paste from the literature um congruent to that or concurrent to that I want to also provide a place for parents in the community to come and learn about what culturally responsive instruction is and so I'll be also um hosting and facilitating a three-part series for parent to attend the first part is what is it and what it isn't um it really is informational the second part is to address needs and fears and the third part will be how to connect culturally

081responsive instruction in the community and I have like Grand visions of like Librarians and police officers and all that kind of thing but that's just all in my head right now um and so the Final Phase is uh to look at the systemic and structural growth investment uh when it comes to cult responsive instruction and again like I said this is already baked in to school board policy the compass the the Strategic plan and so really using those things to push for hiring and retention of teachers who are uh Versed and experienced or interested in culturally responsive instruction um hearing from teachers about their instructional material needs and also looking at Future professional development the goal here is to um create a situation where Seline teachers can develop each other where there's not a need

082for always bringing in an outsider but really looking at how Seline has developed culturally responsive instruction so I can say from uh from my experience and from my studies that Selen is leading in this area and being a predominately white uh educational organization or institution and leading in building in culture responsive instruction into its instructional plan so I'm excited to uh be a part of that collaboration and now I want to bring Cara to talk more about the overall teaching and learning team Shon thanks Caroline so Shannon and Caroline are two members of our overall teaching and learning team and in addition our teaching and learning team as seen here on this slide includes a wide range of practitioners who support our staff our students and families across many different areas so in previous years

083the roles that you see here many of them existed prior to our team um coming together in a a cohesive group however we were worked more independently um in a more siloed way having to pull the pieces of the puzzle together often times um across different meetings or different buildings without a shared sense of mission for the work that we were doing so by coming together as a cohesive team our hope is to build our respective systems of support into a unified approach and to best serve the needs of our SEL uh teachers students and families so some of the roles represent presented here there's instructional design myself Jennifer Nelson Kelly Whitman student services Molly Garcia Monica Ellis Caroline and Shannon you met today Katie O'Keefe is our district English learner coordinator Sherry sunin who's

084been an mtss coordinator and still is an MTS coordinator at Pleasant Ridge is one of the district leaz for intensifying instruction Meg Phillips works with our science programming as our pltw program coordinator and our science support Robin Schmidt is our instructor and Technology lead and then we also have Steve and Teresa stagger as our secondary um admin representative and Michelle ctz as our elementary building admin representative to help guide our work provide us feedback and um be thought Partners in the work that we're doing districtwide we recently drafted our mission I'll read it aloud for the sake of the whole group empathy respect equity and joy will drive the teaching and learning team as we work together to support SAS students staff and Families fulfilling the SAS Mission the goal of our work is to

085promote culturally responsive instruction curricular alignment and Fidelity the responsible and effective use of resources and positive engaging student experiences for all we'll offer a continue of support for students and staff engage in collaborative problem solving and create proactive systems of Cycles for sustained and cycles for sustained Improvement and because I know that sometimes missions can feel a little bit wordy what that really boils down to I wanted to share some of the key things that we do so popping these out from the descriptions that um will'll Post online for our team members some of the roles that our team provides includes de designing um professional development cycles for our staff supporting our new teachers specifically through training days days and coaching Cycles providing literacy support directly for our K8 teachers Gathering I'm just going to

086skip through a little bit I'm gathering El resources supporting El tutors throughout the district coaching staff through online platform Integrations and um allocating resources for programs and also developing family and Community Partnership so those are just some examples of um the roles that we have there are many many more with the group of um that we have on the team but I wanted to give you a taste of what you might see if you talk to one of the members of the team the kind of work that they're doing behind the scenes and so to finalize our presentation um we've been talking about this slide in that all our plans are subject to change as we've been needing to change based on different guidance throughout the pandemic and that's why really been proud of the

087uh students our staff the community because they are able to adjust to the changing circumstances and uh for the most part gathering together to work on this in that we know that we're having to change as we learn new things about the pandemic and and future developments one thing I would like to say about this teaching and learning team as you can see this is a very very strong group they truly know what they're doing we are trying to move forward in a way that is culturally responsive but maintain the importance of academic rigor and the success that our senary school students uh uh have and will continue to find and that's why talking about um what Caroline was bringing up earlier about you know we have a plan to address some of the uh

088learning that has lagged uh especially at our early grade levels because we talk all the time about the importance of literacy I'll say it again I say it at just about every meeting where I have an opportunity to that when there's a 90% correlation that where a student winds up at the end of their third grade experience is where their reading level will be when they graduate from high school we need to pay a lot of attention to that and that's why that in intensified instruction this year especially as Caroline pointed out that movement to bringing in more literacy tutor support at Heritage to really intensify the fourth grade experience is really important and so um we look forward to that opportunity and we're very confident in the approach with that said does the board

089have any questions they'd like to address to myself or any of our teaching and learning team members I just uh want to clarify can we um split some of it so like the first presentation um related to um okay and then talk about um the team sure that's a good idea so uh more or less the pandemic concerns first as it relates to operationalizing quarantining right so do anybody have any questions about that related to me Susan did you want to go first sure um so question about um the physic distance um piece um I know since last year I've been talking about that um so with the lunch rooms because that was a concern about students um having to quarantine um being in that situation with the mask off and very close to other

090students um are there any um sorry loud um are there any um mitigation things that we can look into or are trying to do I I I know that um Heritage is opening up I I believe um the outdoor uh piece again but I'm just curious about that right some of our issues relate to Staffing as well which um you know we're going to talk a little bit more about as we in some of my admin comments later we we struggle with some of our important positions on being able to staff and therefore our cafeteras in terms of food service staff being able to make sure they're in different areas different um whether it's outside inside different spaces we are working on that we've had success in spreading out the high school um space Middle

091School in a couple different spaces working on potentially bringing back some outd there seating at Heritage assuming we can get the Staffing and parent uh support we've had a lot of parents say that they are willing to help us in the pandemic and that we really do want to look for that supported Heritage to help Monitor and supervise if we are able to bring back some outdoor seating as Heritage is one of the um more crowded cafeterias as it relates to the lower elementary levels we are moving to a more assigned table area so that we can consistently understand who the close contacts are which in and of itself is a mitigation strategy if students are sitting in the same spot um you are potentially um clo your close contacts will be um reduced and

092so we we'll continue to work on that as we move forward yeah thank you right so have we started to think about a plan though for as weather changes right and things get colder and we can't go outside anymore we still want to try to maintain as much distance as we can right and then we Contin we again we we will do the best we can we're going to be limited on the outside seating and that we are going to be closer together and so some of that is routines and procedures as how students are lining up in the lunch line um spacing to the best of our ability but there's no question about it that we are going to experience some close contacts in in the cafeteria spaces it's just a reality of doing

093school in the pandemic when you can't ultimately put your students in four or five spaces uh at a time and I think that um all of the superintendents that I talk to are facing similar situations in their cafeteras and spacing and that will continue to do the best we can to space students keep organized as to where they're sitting and try to minimize quarantining to the to the best of our ability moving forward uh I'm just wondering if there's been any consideration to um expanding the number of lunch times that maybe would would minim like reduce the number of students that are in um in the cafeteria the the same time I know that that's also logistical and Staffing nightmare I'm sure but I wonder is as we look for volunteers and as we look

094for more support if that would be a consideration so maybe instead of four kids at a table or on a bench there would be two or something like that I mean we we continue to try to look at creative ways to do that I think we we get into some staffing situations here definitely logistical issues with the schedule and so we have talked about that we'll continue to talk about it um largely this is based on uh putting together all our plans working with our building administrators to put in place the best possible plan we can based on our staffing model and um keeping students organized as to where they are spacing them out as they are moving about the cafeteria and potentially having them exit the cafeteria as soon as um they're done eating

095and whether that means heading out to recess even when it's cold or you know back to a IND your recess situation um we do know that um that's a mitigation strategy in in itself being in the cafeteria less time so yeah we'll continue to work on that yeah I don't want anyone for a minute to think that I was criticizing just I know that that you're being very Innovative and the administrators and the lunch teams are also um just wondering um just wondering right okay thanks any other questions from me okay yes oh there we go uh just had a question about the quarantining so you mentioned quarantining in school and I just could you describe what that looks like is it you know in the classroom or are they in a separate room and

096then how they're getting their lessons if they are in a separate space that kind of thing yep that's a good question canace I should um Define that further they're in their same classroom it's it's simply that um the requirements are that students that are not showing symptoms that were close contacts would mask and that they would be tested antigen testing um on a regular basis with our nursing staff and we have a plan of how we are going to do that we've brought in some additional nursing staff and I think one of the things that I didn't point out in the slideshow we did mention at points on how we're starting to spend some of the Esser funding that we're receiving which is some of those Co relief funds um additional literacy staff additional staff

097and supports for antigen testing and so forth and so we are coordinating to be able to keep up with any that testing that's required in order to keep the kids in school and in the same classroom so that was a good question I just had a follow up to that one if it's okay just to build off of of Candace's question because I had the same question and I just want to be be clear so in school quarantining the children are in the same classroom they're not separated they're in the same classroom correct correct I mean they're not correct segregated correct okay thank you Brad did did did I interrupt you considered quarantined by definition so we have a how what n like out of that number you had there I think it was 45

098how many of those are considered like at home and how many of them are considered like in the classroom I would have to look up that information I don't have that breakdown but that was is a significant amount I guess that's what I just um there's a lot more that are in school school then out but I don't have the exact breakdown because you are right some of those students are in the 10-day quarantine at home because if deemed as close contacts in in the lunchroom that those students would be out of school for those 10 days so that's true I just don't have the exact breakdown of that I I also wanted to ask a question about quarantining um it was my understanding from the last report um and from subsequent um reports since

099then uh the weekly reports that you sent send to the community that the quarantining guidelines and rules were not created by you but were created by the washing County Health Department is that the case and would that change at all um like the mask mandate you said with 14 days in the moderate that would change the mask um um the way we oper operationalize masks so is that the same for quarantining does that ever change or is that consistent no that changes in fact we started the year with testing students one time a week if they were quarantining then it moved to three times a week and now it's moving to um seven days straight so it is changing that's what we talk about the guidance and that was coming down for the Michigan Health

100and Human Services to the health department so then we're trying to respond to that information so it is another good example of how we're trying to adjust as a school district with with changing guidance but that guidance is from other sources it's not something that the district created oh that's that is correct okay thank you I have a very quick question regarding Heritage School uh are we still using the uh extra tent at the back of the school for dining yeah I think that's a question that trusty e was asking that we we weren't initially asking we we weren't initially at the beginning of the year having some staffing considerations on how we would supervise and make sure that we had that we are looking know at um parent volunteers led by the district about

101led by the Heritage PTO to look at into can we get enough support to staff um with volunteers along with the administrative team to run an outdoor uh tent more or less right when you said outdoor I thought that was just like open air but yeah is the tent still up it is not but we are looking at bringing back the tent assuming we could staff it appropriately I wanted to um build off something Jenny asked this time um so a lot of questions we get a lot of questions about quarantining obviously and both of you used the term guidance and I just wanted to be careful and understanding when the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services or washing County put structure on quarantining it's not is it guidance or is it a requirement

102on how to handle it yeah we we have always followed the the guidance that the masking is a mandate and we follow the guidance from the the Washington County health department and so um in terms of using the term mandate guidance I know there is some confusion around that and we as a district need to sift through that as well um so with the masking it's a mandate the guidance is that we are testing a certain amount and we have always worked collaboratively because for example every time that District nurse hervy has to do an antigen test with her team she has to record that report it to the washingon county health department they look at the structure around it determine if there's close contacts they look at um is there any spread so ultimately

103if we were to somehow defy those recommendations we and that guidance we would have a very hard time of working collaboratively with the health department to determine um how our district is operating in the safest way possible and so um guidance mandates we're doing our best to sift through all of that and adjust to changing guidance and then respond to mandates as well great and then one other quarantine question not to Bel labor this but it's it's it's it's I mean we saw it last year it's disruptive and and we're thinking about the kids of course and and the staff handling that so we have our in school and we have our out of school so the question is about the out of school children uh in any grade and I realized we saw some

104numbers there for Woodland Meadows and pleasant Ridge but this could be answered in any grade how are how are the staff handling assignments and handling um activities for the students or um uh you know assignments and and things like that because we don't have zoom this year and we're doing things differently can you just speak a little bit about the um uh the learning components and an out of school quarantine and how they're handling that for different grades sure and I I'm going to break it down by Elementary and and secondary and our teaching and learning team has been excellent at providing to support our instructional designers reach out to teachers especially if they are impacted um significantly you know we look at some of those lower elementary grades that have a combination of kids

105in quarantine at home or some that are quarantining in school and they are providing supports to meet with the teachers to say okay what are the best ways that we have to make sure that students that are home are still still getting a level of instruction and that they can keep up with that work so that when they do return to school they are still able to be you know hitting the ground running and not feeling that they are 10 days behind for example at the secondary level we do have most of our staff that would have their Google Classroom set up where they could be providing assignments and then helping students whether that's on their planning period or if students are connecting via email and providing those supports but we do have to be

106careful that you know for our uh career teched classes that looks a little differently when those classes are largely Hands-On and that those teachers need to figure out creative ways to help those kids keep up with the classroom curriculum that you know Google Classroom might not work the same way so you know there certainly is a level of autonomy if you're our teaching staff but with the teaching and learning team support we feel confident that we can still provide those supports with for our our students that are at home um even though we're not zooming them in on a regular basis great thank you any other questions or comments around operations it's a good idea to segment it there's a lot of content okay so then we move to teaching and learning team questions that

107would be directed to Cara if you have any or if you'd rather just up for that's that's great I would I want to thank I really would like to thank the transition team I mean right from the beginning a year a year and a half ago we heard terms uh like learning loss and that sort of thing and I'm really glad that we as well as many other people pivoted away from that to focus on the genuine like what are the actual needs of the students I do have a couple specific questions so if you want to but and I was so impressed you uh you you knocked a bunch of them right out of the park I mean uh I won't belabor that that long list of uh things you focused on for the

108elementary and for the secondary but now the question I get is uh how you have many and varied actions that you guys your team is taking how are you going to evaluate the impact of those is there some are there some benchmarks are there uh do you gather together weekly to say to just to to codify like uh you don't have the Carolyn Stouts aadience graphs right uh but you do have other methods I'm just curious as to what how you're examining the impact yeah actually I really appreciate asking that question because um back in August when our team came together for the first time with some new members as well we did do some just visioning work together and talked about what would our one-year plan three-year plan fiveyear plan look like and what

109would we need questions would we need to ask and one of them was how will we evaluate the success of our team um we also knew that we needed to get our mission in place pretty quickly so that we could roll out our newly formed formed team as a part of the instructional curriculum Department to our staff so they knew what supports were available so we focused on that and we are meeting every other week as a team as a whole group and one of our next questions is how will we evaluate the success of our team so we will be working towards that and in a future meeting bring that back up and we hopefully have I'd love to hear the answer when you have it absolutely that would be great um were you

110talking about Lincoln Learning or was it I was yep or so you had talked at one point one question that got me a little confused there's a talk about uh the networking and uh and you talk about combining classes from Dexter M you may have said Manchester maybe you said Chelsea I don't remember but does that mean the the network does that mean in a smaller class you might actually combine students from three no okay so you're referencing the previous Board of Education presentation I gave when I mentioned that it's in here yeah oh sorry is it actually written down S no I say that sh um so yes so milin Chelsea Dexter and Seline all utilize Lincoln Learning as their thirdparty vendor for their virtual experiences this year um and that has allowed me

111to work with the leaders inside of those districts um to help create support materials for the families that are um involved has helped me to understand some of the components of state law that we needed to attend to so we've been working in Partnership behind the scenes um in those different districts our students themselves do not interact across the platform the platform itself is asynchronous um we did create at the request of the virtual families who are participating a community list that they could opt into um to share the other commun uh the other families who were also part of Lincoln Learning so they could could connect to create social connections if they so chose um not every family opted in but it's a fairly robust list we have 22 families with 25 students represented

112as our virtual family so it's like I said it's a small small um but cherish group as a part of our sing school syst thank you um I don't want to Dominic but I do appreciate that and I appreciate also the nine interventionists oh my gosh that's that's huge for this district and greatly appreciated I had a question for Shannon but they can wait till then I'll then all my questions will be done I just wanted to say uh yeah I'm looking forward to to attending any of the three Community conversations you got coming up and you when you said I reviewed all the policies with my red pen I went uh oh I glanced over at trusty secretary eastep and you said we we seem to be doing okay uh but Shannon I and

113I'm going to say it's too through U I think it' be great if you could come to a future policy meeting so we can actually flip open the book and you can share some of your gleanings with is like you know what you saw positive that Selene is doing and how we were on the right track already and that would be very helpful to the policy committee I think and to the the whole district oh absolutely and the the three uh trustees who to attend the de meetings I'll be doing a little a little more um sharing what I found like in Schoolboard policy and stuff like that but please invite me and I will be happy to share what I've found and it's an ongoing review and reflection um through the doc well that's

114what I plan to do because I have to keep going back to what's already here um because it's already here um so I suspect you're reading them online what you don't know is that printed out it's a rather large pile I'll take it I'll take it I'll take it yeah thank you very much thanks Michael I I just wanted to pause real quickly I didn't want to move on from Cara unless there were other questions because I had one comment for Cara yeah okay Johnny go ahead so um I have the benefit of of being in education so a lot of what you what you were speaking of tonight um I can comprehend and I can I can visualize what that looks like and appreciate uh that work um but we've been hearing from a

115lot of parents and even from some students um who are wondering about how um how we can move forward the the data that Caroline showed today definitely highlighted some areas of focus for um our younger grades we know that I know personally in my own household that there are some um even in high school and so I wondered if you could give us for I know that maybe maybe you have to come back to do this but just a brief um picture so that parents and students can visualize what this looks like um parent facing or student facing what does coaching how does coaching impact student achievement how does intervention at Heritage impact Student Success so if you could just maybe like if a student is identified or if a cohort is identified what happens

116Caroline do you want to speak to the interventionist first okay I was ready to pop up on that one um I thought it might be you but I also want some high school Insight too because I noticed this team is heavy lower L and so I just want to make sure that we are answering the questions because I know it's happening but I want it to be transparent and out there so thank you thank you and you're right we we sometimes speak too fast and don't give enough details what does it actually look like so um it looks a little bit different at the K3 than at Heritage um but so let me ask you this do you want the whole thing or do you want just like the student experience I that's why I

117was saying like it might be another meeting that you come back to but I think it's really important because like I said a lot of this was edu speak and a lot of it I can visualize because of my my background and my um understanding but I know that that's not the case and these are Big concerns that we've been hearing about for many months now so if you could just give us like a little snippet I'll try tell me if it was enough right um okay so we start off um luckily we are not starting off blind we start off with this cohort um looking at um where they are now right so we anticipate where they might be based on the end of last year but things happen over the summer so we

118start off by just collecting data getting to know our students as as individuals and um then we all have a meeting um where we look at that and um we talk about both the kind of big picture Trends um kind of the I'll call them like tier one goals right like what what I shared are not necessarily concerns that are um individual student concerns right they're like big picture if we have more than 20 students who are struggling with something we all need to do something about that right um so we look at those and then we also get all the way down to like the individual student level to say all right so here are kind of our our bigger um things that we're all going to work on uh We've also had some

119opportunities for teachers to talk to the previous grade level about you know where they left off and what things students still needed when they left them um and then we get down to what is actually going to happen to support the students who are significantly behind um more so even than the graph may show um and then we plan that support so again I wish gosh I should just always have a triangle with me like always um so some things are going to happen at the base with all students right so we're going to adjust um some of our instruction to say you know in second grade we might be used to students coming and being able to just rattle off all of those basic letter sounds and even some of our our control vowels

120and some of our you know Blends and diagraphs and things like that that's teacher speak but just basically like a good a good level of like base phonic knowledge right this year that's not the case so there's something we need to do with the whole group we need to go back and we need to make sure that those are solid before we can build on them um there's a couple different ways to do that there's the tier one instruction right adjusting like the mini lesson um the teachers are also going to be meeting with groups um within that reader Workshop so they might be um doing some strategy groups around that um and then we have that time during which we also offer intervention that we call best fit if you're Pleasant Rich woodland or

121wi at at Harvest or team time at Heritage that's a half hour of time where we do some extra differentiation um kind of more so than a teacher could really realistically do on their own um and we are dedicated this year to mixing all of our students um safely still distance as much as we can um but to really allow us to further address some of those gaps so what that means is during that best fit win team time that half hour um say we have four sections of a grade um those four teachers are going to be teaching some of their students but maybe some students from another class as well because we are focusing on um what students kind of lowest area of literacy need is and it's allowing us to form some

122groups that are going to be above grade level and focus on things that maybe are from the next grade or two grade levels up in terms of content it's going to allow us this year especially to go back and do some additional kind of catchup for lack of better word instruction um with bigger groups um and it's going to allow us to also work with some of those students who need tier two and tier three intervention without the stigma of being pulled out of class and um potentially missing some valuable instruction although we work hard not for that not to happen um so that is if the students come back and they talk about best fitter winner team time that's what that is um I have like lots of examples of the types of things

123that happens but they range everything from you know students sometimes write um for like their um School announcements um in a Heritage um and the Webster has done some really cool things with um some social issues book study um and that really allows us to have that time also to accelerate the learning of those who are struggling the most we also collaborate with our special ed staff and our El tutors to really um schedule things as tightly as possible so that students aren't missing instruction when they're getting that additional support um so we have this meeting we decide all this stuff then um parents uh get a contact from the teacher generally and if nothing else they get a letter and they get um some information on what the focus is going to be during

124that intervention time um what they might be able to do to help some students um who are significantly behind would also get what's called that iip that individual individual reading intervention plan that's part of the third grade reading Law um which is kind of just one more piece that allows us to partner with students with families around Student Success um and then we run those same groups for about six to eight weeks so we have a good amount of time to really get some good things done um and then we reevaluate and we regroup we say how did we do on the big goals how did we do on the individual student goals you know learn from that data learn from their success and and the areas where maybe they didn't gain as much as

125we wanted and then we regroup again and we do that four times and we do that over and over again basically until we get it right um and when I talk about intensifying instruction um that's similar to the process we would use um like in our it te meeting or that's more of like a student study team if a teacher brings a concern about an individual student to like the the broader um problem solving group um where we just keep um trying something new analyzing the variables looking at whether it worked and then using that data to figure out how we can tweak it in a smart way because time is really important and we can't waste it on things that aren't going to work but we have to give our instruction enough time to

126be effective okay did that answer some of it that was really helpful I think um if we get any further feedback I'm sure I can point them in your direction sounds good thanks thanks so that was for our our K5 and then Cara you're going to speak a little bit to our thanks so I think I'm gonna go with the give an example of um so I'm G to click back through oh sorry Anna somehow I messed that up can you go slide going there not there perfect so one of the things that has um continuously risen to the top for me is how much excellent programming and excellent excellent teaching we had in place prior to the pandemic that we can leverage to support our students so I gave the example of some of

127our student programming like web and Link well that also exists for our academic programs we don't have direct coaching at the secondary level per se uh we do Provide onetoone support for staff as they identify different goals and we provide coaching for new teachers our support cycles for our new teachers but when you dig into the goals when we think about what's happening with our building goals at the high school and middle school level there's a focus on assessment and within those assessments a piece of that is identifying student needs and those formative preassessments and knowing that we might have to build some bridges from pre previous year so we've been emphasizing that with the teachers and then they're inherently built inside of the work that they had previously been doing pre pandemic that we're

128returning to so I'll use the middle school as an example um and Heritage so they're focusing on standards based learning and teaching and as a part of that if you um are in a classroom that is standard space the teachers have clear learning targets that would be at grade level they would give an assessment a pre-assessment to determine that it's formative it's not a penalty against a student to determine where the students are within those classes and then the differentiation would happen as a response to the formative assessment results students would be grouped and then teachers would provide small group instruction in order to meet those students needs um based upon where they are in relationship to their Mastery of the the learning targets that have been identified for that particular unit in addition the

129part of that assessment process including at the high school includes reteaching and reassessment if the students haven't mastered that content um and that's something that uh both the Heritage and the middle school have been working on for quite a while and the high school is beginning to work on as a part of the balanced Assessment program um and so those are things that are in play that we will be continuing to maximize in order to meet the students of students needs coming into this year knowing that there may be students who need additional supports so just a quick followup um I want to make sure that we're representing um the questions that we've been getting so how is this being explicitly um uh communicated to staff so that it can then be properly communicated to

130parents so when we're hearing staff say that there isn't really any change from from before how can we address that so that that is more adequately because I know from my own students and from also from being in the district sure that individualization and planning for for students is the center of of what our teachers are doing um and so maybe it doesn't feel like it's any different because they've already been individualizing instruction but I feel like in a year where we're still in in this pandemic it's even more critical that we're very that we have that at the Forefront of our thinking so how can we be explicit in that message sure so one of the things that we are structured around in our organization is our teacher leader cohort so we have teacher

131leaders in each of the grade levels and a departments young fives through our young adult program and we meet with those teachers regularly we met with them prior to the start of the school year to talk to them about some of the common language to talk about the importance of asset-based language celebrating the accomplishments avoiding deficit mindsets um while also reminding them of some of the tools we put into place in the previous year we're actually meeting with them tomorrow morning at 7:45 a.m. and then tomorrow afternoon in order to come back to some of the um components that will best help guide their individual departments and that could be something that we talk about to highlight in terms of the messaging and reassuring parents that the work that's happening to support our students is

132there and even emphasizing some of the pieces that we had in place that are responsive and maybe even more Progressive than um other school districts who are bringing students back in this environment thank you very very much I appreciate that thanks for bearing with me with the long question it's hard when we have an expert up here as well right um car I just had had one thing and and thank you Michael because benchmarking was was what I was having on my mind too so would love to come back to that at another time um I really appreciated that you discussed anxiety and you included the staff um I I think that's incredibly important so um so thank you for addressing that with both students and staff and thank you in advance for coming back

133and And discussing with us how we're going to Benchmark and and and hold our ourselves accountable to those um those student achievement markers any other questions for Kira okay yeah all right so you we hired nine additional literacy interventionists what does that bring our total to that's actually a Caroline question sorry I thought I fall over three confessions I I misspoke three times one um the irip that I mentioned I forgot to say that that's lower elementary only um I guess I didn't misspeak I just didn't fully say what I wanted to say um two um you did say it was part of third grade reading Law sorry um two not all teachers are doing team time this year at Heritage so we're still not up to full implementation we're working towards that we're expanding

134every year um so not so not all Heritage um kids would come home and talk about team time um but the other one is so when I said we we have nine new um it's nine new it's not necessar nine additional gotcha so um again not that you know I you don't need to know all the details of all the movement that happened basically we hire some really really amazing people who happen to have teaching degrees and those really amazing people get hired elsewhere go figure um so we have and last year we actually operated with not a complete team because again go figure in the fall not a lot of people wanted to start this job in the middle of the pandemic on Zoom um so last year we were down a couple of

135interventionists or tutors um and so this year we're back up to a full team so we have nine new people um we have added a tutor at Pleasant Ridge so an addition of a a staff member from two years ago last year we were one down so again if you follow my math here so basically here at Pleasant Ridge right now we have five interventionists um they are um because that is a school receiving Title One funds they are working on reading and math which is why they have more and their um mtss coordinator Sher sunin has also joined the teaching learning team as you saw so she's going to be um having some extra support there to compensate for some of her role being different now so five at Pleasant Ridge um at Woodland

136we had three last year we have three this year the Woodland team but one is new um the Woodland team has been phenomenal because they've also Al been going across the pond and supporting Heritage some in the morning um Heritage has three new from last year we had hired one in the beginning of last year but um but again left for a different job six weeks in and then at Harvest we have a new coordinator and then we have one new interventionist as well but total of three interventionists there so again not an addition of a person it's just that last year we operated without a coordinator there does that make sense so three tutors one interventionist at Harvest three tutors I'm sorry three tutors one coordinator at Harvest three tutors one coordinator at Woodland

137who also works at um Heritage three tutors at Heritage the coordination is between me and Aon grunis the coordinator at with medals five tutors at Pleasant Ridge so if I'm doing the MTH right I think that's 14 okay and and thank you for that all right my NE I think it's gonna be you again though all right so go uh humor me as a as a high school more High School expert so can I thought can we we' looked at the Acadian graphs yeah so I'm wondering you have Focus goals so we saw and we identified our students and then we like flip to the next one please so what what drives these Focus areas was it based on the data that we received from that cohort is it more norms for that particular grade

138level good question how long do I have no like I just wanted to know like um the simple answer to just yeah so um well I could talk about it a lot so so basically what I did here and this is a much summarized version of the one that's that's linked on one of the first slides that I said like you can see that if you have you know a bunch of time on your hands and your board um so really what I did here is I just pulled out a couple of the subtests that are um most concerning and most foundational okay so these are all um indicators meaning if you think about this as like you know you're bringing your child to to the pediatrician and they're getting like the basic vitals right

139like are they growing is their weight right is their temperature right this is what this is and then we dive more into it if that makes sense no it's um so yeah this is basically saying red flag um some of these very foundational skills are concerning and because these are things that if we don't address them now we know they have implications all the way up we want to kind of highlight that does that make sense no that's fair that's what I want if you have an hour sometime I can give you more I'm good right now all right and my third one is for you and it's you talked about students undergoing professional development on culturally responsive instruction I think it's fantastic I'm wondering where that's built into the students day I'm wondering like

140what class how we're going to build it in that kind of thing do we have a plan for that stud like for you talked about I thought you under your plan for P I thought you had said for students that there would be professional develop development um par parents Oh I thought you said for students okay but that would be that would be good that could be like phase four I interpreted that way phase four so it's for parents okay yes for parents yes and Community which could include students who were interested more um in learning about what they're learning about um but yes parents sorry I misinterpreted that no worries Susan did you have anything else Brad are you done okay um I had a question about the math intervention but I I think

141she answered yeah um at that it's just at Pleasant Ridge I think last time you gave this presentation I had asked about that to you yeah and and we've dabbled in it at Woodland Meadows as well um but to be honest like you know the the funding is there Pleasant Ridge and we're also required to do it which is kind of a nice bonus um we we will look to expand to the other buildings um right now we're focusing on literacy but what's nice is we are collecting that math data now at all the schools that started last year for the first time um and so we are going to have a really good Baseline and so we're hoping to use that to to sort of look at expanding that to the other elementaries okay

142um and maybe you or somebody else um uh so I've been hearing about uh you know Elementary and high school so I got to get in my U Middle School uh there and um just interested in some some of those supports especially our sixth graders um coming in from you know Heritage and um you know missing a year and a half right in person possibly and now um in this whole new U environment yeah so so we have um we have had some supports at the middle school in the past and actually um lower Washington lindsy G are very interested in U moving that forward we're meeting next week to kind of start um talking more about that um everything from their problem solving process around it team and when students pop up that way

143how to uh best support them to also looking at can we bring an mtss framework fully to the middle school at some point however you know going back to what Steve said um about we just we know that the compounding effects of early gaps um are best addressed young and so right now we have focused most of our resources at trying to prevent that um and that has meant for a while kind of pulling back from some Middle School supports and focusing more on building up what we're doing at Heritage um to try to get to full implementation there so that we have even fewer students going in the Middle School be sixth grade is um you know operates more like an Elementary schedule beyond that it's also a lot of scheduling considerations but it's

144definitely something that um I know Lindsay and Laura are interested and we're going to be working on yeah we don't want to forget that middle population right moved I do want to add to that as well because we Ed some of our Esser funding um for our units of study for reading and writing are built by um Teachers College and the reading and writing project the Lucy ckins units of size botom referencing and we had used their virtual units last year and they actually have ramp up units coming into for this year to support students to to build some of those bridges so we did make the purchases of those units in order to best support teachers in providing curriculum that would help build those bridges between the years of being virtual hybrid and on

145that covid roller coaster and quarantine roller coaster to this year when we're more fully in person awesome um yeah and I just want to thank you all for for your work um that you're doing and um it's so much I you know I would love to see like throughout the year um more I guess details on certain areas because you all have a lot going on and um and then I'm super excited about what you're doing Shannon um I know um you're very respected here um in um the community and um from um you know the admin and supports that you've had in the past or have given in the past and are continuing to do and I'm excited to to work with you as as Michael said um with the policy team and um

146with Dei and uh sounds like a good plan I'm excited thanks sorry Steve this might be a question for you I'm not sure but can someone speak to the um the decision to move away from NWA for K3 I'll get a shot and then I'll phone a friend how's that um so the decision to move away from NWA um was um a conversation over the last several years actually for the last several years we have really um we've been trying really hard to use that data to drive instruction um we have worked with a lot of NWA Consultants um and we have really struggled to do that because basically what we have found in full honesty is that NWA was really good at telling us who was doing really well and who was not doing

147really well which we already knew we have F pel we have Everyday Math assessments we have acadians we have a bunch of different ways to assess students and already tell us that when it came to actually using that to Drive instruction whether it's in small groups or individualized instruction or or whole group um it was um almost too little and too much information at once meaning that it wasn't assessing some things that we really needed it to assess directly right like a computer cannot assess how well student can segment the word black or white or blue or green or red right um and at the same time it was given us these really long reports with all these bands and a lot of detail information so and every time we got to the point where

148we had a consultant and they were supposed to help us um they would ask for a couple thousand more to give us the report that would help us um so I know a lot of other districts have used it I know a lot of districts have used it for compliance as well and basically we came to the point where we said we have all the assessment we need to be compliant we have the assessment that we really use to drive instruction and yes it's nice to have one more just to kind of check but it's not worth $155,000 is that okay yeah no I from my vantage point again being an educator and having used that tool for a number of years when I would look at individual students and the interventions or the the

149pieces that were um what NWA was telling me the student needed it was basically the kitchen sink it wasn't targeted and explicit like some of the other assessments so I can see that thank you for explaining that um and also um explaining how the other assessments can meet those needs and and not just for compliance but for um explicitly um and um providing targeted instruction go I think we're okay over here any other comments on this side no no Candace yes just one more comment on the culturally responsive piece um thank you Shannon for putting together such a great strategic plan um I appreciate the phased approach and just I have some other comments but I'll I'll save those for another time but specifically on the parent and community outreach piece I think that is

150so important and I'm I was really glad to see that in there because there seems to be a misperception about you know what is what is culturally responsive and what does that really mean and what is my child going to be learning so can you speak to how we will be uh engaging families in those discussions will there be multiple opportunities you know that kind of thing just the the Outreach plan for that yes so um actually I'll be meeting with um Steve and Cara and Anna next week to kind of put that into uh wet cement if you will but um the vision is to offer a three-part series hopefully parents attend all three um so that they can get a full picture of this um the first session is actually a defining of

151what it is and what it isn't in a very general way keeping in mind that at the same time I'm going to be encouraging teachers to Define what it is for Seline seline's population seline's demographics call for a unique definition in of itself um so that would be a very general what it is what it isn't um the second one will be more of a um a question and answer if you will where parents will have the opportunity parents and community members will have the opportunity to um to ask uh specific questions based on what they learned or what they read or what their experiences were in the the first session and address that and I'm calling it needs and fears because um we all have both right um all of us when it comes

152to our children we have needs and we have fears and so um I am really inviting those questions concerns and those statements of needs into the space to um I want to hold space for them and I want to make sure that parents understand that the district is interested in those um in those voices those concerns those needs and fears um and then as a part of that I want to put fears to rest um and that's where kind of I will be um uh taking those and looking at going back to what it is what it isn't and why it is for all children um the third piece in the spring so I said I had like visions of grandeur but I would really like to look at how culturally responsive um instruction um

153is in the community or how it should be in the community because a big piece of culturally responsive instruction is connecting what what kids are doing in the classroom to their community so when a kid goes from their school library to the public library they should still see themselves in um in the books and um everywhere they go they should see themselves and so I would like to invite people from the community and to talk about where kids um fit into Community Learning and how that can be now so again that's more Visionary if I can't like pull that off um I want to talk about the role Community plays in educating uh kids and So within the larger Community kids have a community they belong to and connecting to that Community connecting the classroom

154to that Community is the key uh for many kids to learning and I can I mean I can give um a really like just basic example um when I was in high school my math teacher referred everything to Disney World like he thought Mickey Mouse is really cool Mickey Mouse ties every example was about Disney World rides well most of the kids in my class had never been to Disney World right but they had been to Cedar Point so perhaps being a little reflective about maybe we replace Disney World with Cedar Point then this can be more relevant more responsive to the kids in the classroom so that is um that's kind of the goal there um I I know from experience that there have been concerns about communication transparency but I also know that

155um over the last three years parents have reached out to me uh before I was you know an official capacity through my um social media direct message to ask me questions to talk to me about um these things these issues and the number one question I got from parents over the last three years is where can I go to learn about this um and so I got my chance to like provide a place where parents can go and learn about it and so I I believe that I'm meeting that need if I'm one person in my small Network in this community where I would get 10 to 15 parents calling texting or dming me asking where can I go to learn about how to support this uh in my home there's probably 100 more out

156there I'm just you know like one little person um so um and to kind of backtrack to what Brad asked this diagram may have been what was a little misleading at the top where it says meeting the needs of all students I'm looking at the teachers and the parents as being a Partners in that by getting this Education First and it it obviously filters to the students but it's not not directly instruction from me to the students it's really going to be through teachers and parents I hope that clarifies it a little bit so any other questions um just wanted to mention on the big Vision piece CRI in the community um there is the city of Seline Dei task force that I know is doing some educational efforts and things like that so definitely

157would recommend connecting with it's on the list on the list thank you yes I have plans to reach out to Public Safety to Community Ed or like the the Seline Library use as an example um and city government as well um to it's it's a plan I'm going to be ambitious to have uh them give input on that connection between learning and the community and how that can be responsive to kids we'll see right thank you um I just had one final question because I know we need to get moving and I I know we have guests waiting to to have the next presentation um Caroline I was curious if we could have a copy of the deck afterwards um and then obviously covid and the disruption of learning is not anything that is unique

158to Seline it's not anything that is unique to the United States um but I I'm curious how um if we can get some some data in again it doesn't have to be tonight how does this all stack up if we look at our our our country where are we at I mean when we think about um reading we think about the the incoming first graders or or whatnot it would be it would be really helpful to kind of put it in the broader lines um thank you for the deep conversation this is this is I know it was a it was a while this is important this is incredibly important um so just wanted to thank all of you very much and for your colleagues who aren't here as well thank you thank you um

159moving on to our next scheduled report series three Bond uh Seline Middle School Renovations um Dr latch if you would like to introduce your guest yes I'm GNA actually introduce Rex Clary who's been uh you know doing a great job for a number of years managing projects and working with Architects and building construction management team and and really has been a key in helping us move forward with with our buildings and our projects so Rex is going to introduce the uh king Scott and Clark team and that's because we've chosen good team members to work with um good evening and thank you to the board of education for allowing us to present tonight uh tonight we start our third and final phase of the safe form and dry bond that was passed by the community

160of Seline in the fall of 2015 within six years um thank you to the community for trusting the Seline leader the leadership of selary schools to use these funds uh from phase one and two to to create safe and secure buildings positive learning environments we have purchased 20 new school buses classroom Furniture improved Energy Efficiency and other District improvements that make S area schools a place where great learning is happening every day tonight we will continue to address the needs that we along with king Scott identified in 2015 to improve our s uh Middle School Energy Efficiency and comfort in the classroom along with updating our middle school gymnasium uh king Scott and Associates who worked with the district during phase one will be working with us again during phase three our construction manager for

161this project will be Clark construction and tonight I have the team from king Scott and Associates I have Rob Atkins president and civil engineer um Sarah hael senior design architect Dana mclen interior designer from Clark Construction I have Rebecca Timberlake uh senior project manager and from strategic Energy Solutions we have Kevin bot mechanical engineer and project manager good evening and thank you for having us tonight to report on this project um so Rex did the introduction which was my part tonight so thank you Rex appreciate that um so real quick we're going to go through um the project we're going to highlight the mechanical improvements and then the gym renovation uh once we get through that we'll go over budget and timeline quick like and then we'll open it up to questions when we're done

162all right okay Kevin you're up good evening I'm going to get us started with a quick discussion on the boiler replacement scope for the middle school project um the existing boilers in the Middle School are um original to the building as you can see in the photograph they take up a pretty significant footprint um the two existing boilers are anywhere between 70 to 80% efficient when it comes to energy consumption um as part of this similar project we're also going to replace the water heaters and those existing water heaters today are Approximately 80% uh energy efficient so the the new equipment the new boilers the new water heaters will drastically improve uh the Energy Efficiency uh along with occupant occupant comfort and maintainability of of the system for the middle school as it relates to

163heating um the two or the two existing boilers that take up that large footprint you saw in the first photograph uh those will be replaced with four smaller U photo boilers the photograph on the left represents the new boilers that will replace those two existing um school buses in that room the uh the four new boilers are are a combined thermal efficiency of 96.2% on the new water heaters the the photograph on the right hand side the Energy Efficiency of the water heaters are are 99% as part of this project uh and and a lot of boiler replacement projects is the controls the building management system that goes into controlling monitoring the system will be better Adept for energy usage and be able to see what it's doing and how it's doing and be able

164to change the uh return water temperatures and and improve system efficiency in real time as the system is functioning and operating um along with this voil replacement we're also going to connect these existing electrical meters to the upgraded control system as it relates to energy consumption on the electrical side so the the pumps the motors the drives that are uh circulating the water that the hot water that is being produced by these boilers um another project it's it's a small add-on to the boiler replacement is the um return water for the group toilet rooms adjacent to the main office as well as the sink in the main office that water from what I understood took a long time to get warm if it got warm and so what we did we we addressed that return

165water system so that way you won't have to wait for five six seven eight nine 10 minutes to get warm water through those lavatories and that uh that summarizes the boiler scope now for the fun part the sexy gym stuff that's that's next yeah they're pretty cool from an engineer's perspective thank you hi good to be here thank you for having us um so this should look familiar these are photos of your existing middle school gymnasium some of the things that we took a look at we talked to staff we talked to some of the administration um considerations are that the existing wood floor as you probably all are aware the center section of that gym does have a wood floor it's in great shape um the striping and all of that is fairly fairly

166new or at least in good enough condition to just leave that portion of the floor alone the remainder of the floor is an old tarton floor I think it's had a couple of coats on it it will be removed and in its place a new um athletic flooring this slide indicates it's a plastic flooring that's a brand name we'll be doing some competitive bids with a couple different types of Floor Court markings on the side courts on this new athletic flooring will be all similar types of quarts that are there now and um we're just going to change colors and and make them function a little bit better we are going to also add a track straightway so evidently um you know there's during some indoor practices for track meets you're going to be able

167to do we can get about a 70 yard straightaway Lane um that you can't do the way the track is configured uh currently we're going to get new bleachers there's a whole series of new athletic equipment a lot of that stuff in there the basketball back stops and all of that is original um water coolers and especially bottle fillers which in the age of Co is a much better thing and some new scoreboards so this slide just shows you the layout of the gym we're looking at this uh North is just about up um you enter the gym on the right side of the slide and and come in on the end zone currently you know that the bleachers stack in the middle of the gym so the track goes behind them those existing bleachers

168will come out we're going to do a new set of bleachers I'm going to forgot to take this off make it a little easier the new bleachers on the south end of the gym uh will be larger than the current stack we had to take a look at ceiling height and all that and make sure that we're not getting too close to the ceiling and those sorts of things but there'll be about just under a thousand seats in that um new stack and there is potential on the north side of that gym if you ever want to add some additional bleachers it's possible to to be able to do that and moving those bleachers makes it a lot easier for supervision so those those current bleachers now kind of become a barricade and um hiding

169places and things the other things that you'll see on the slide the two yellow boxes at the North End of the slide are represent batting cages there is one in there currently it's um on the south end of the gym but it would conflict with the new bleachers and so we're going to do two smaller ones and actually staff indicated having two um a little bit shorter ones are probably a better thing um more and smaller is better to get more kids in using them as opposed to one longer one um scoreboards are in currently kind of an odd spot on those angled walls and so those are going to get relocated to the the far ends of the gym um it actually works pretty nice uh and better as we push those bleachers back

170to the South wall that you'll be able to see the scoreboards a little bit better and then you're all probably familiar with the um existing Press Box there will be a small scoreboard as well on the face of that existing Press Box we're um getting put we're going to put in a new pole vault box and cover and then um add a couple new basketball back stops in addition to repl in 10 existing basketball back stops that are I believe original to the building from the 60s uh and then the last part are divider curtains there are two existing divider curtains in there and those will get replaced so bleachers look a little bit like this we did a little bit of modeling in there so we could visualize some things they'll be 17 rows

171we're going to maximize the length which is just about the length of that wood floor area and as I said before just under a thousand seats and then flooring U and Dana's going to chat a little bit with you about um colors and things but this diagram gives you a representation of the types of Court markings we did spend a lot of time with staff going over colors of Court lines and and trying to get things that um things you want to stand out to stand out and things that you don't use as much to recede into the the floor a little bit so it's a little easier to to work with but this gives you an idea also of how things go the track stays generally in the same spot the straightaway is at

172the North End of the gym and that's that I'll be real quick um so just wanted to highlight the color scheme of the um jimy model of course the school pride we're going to do blue and gold um and you can kind of see that in some of the 3D images and then um also as part of this remodel we would repaint the walls um looking at doing gray on the bottom just to brighten up that um gym a little bit it's navy blue currently the um gray will brighten it up a little bit and then still maintaining the navy blue accents on the nend walls and then um behind the bleachers and then last just a overall image just kind of showing how everything works together and that's it thank you thank you good

173evening so Clark put together oh this is OD a little small Clark put together a detailed estimate based on King Scot's design development drawing so this will stay in for our budget and oh um so the budget for this project all inclusive of in and um cm in architectural services is 3,152 371 and the timeline for this project so um in order to kind of beat some of the other uh projects that are going to be bidding we want to get ahead of it to make sure we're securing good contractor pricing competitive pricing we're going to be bidding this out in the end of October beginning of November so November and December we'll be bidding an awarding um phases we'll be back to board of education to get the contracts awarded in December and then

174January through April will serve as our um material procurement we'll do submittals and make sure we're well coordinated to kick off this project to start construction sometime in the end of May after um the boilers are turned off and shut down for the heating season and we will have the boilers back up and running in September for the next heating season and the gym will be um completed over the summer months while there's no students in the building um that's all we have I believe open it up for questions so we have you know team members from both king Scott and Clark so we'll open it up to questions first I'll say this is a long time coming for this building a very very long time coming um and appreciate all the work and and

175just thank you again for your patience uh with regards to waiting um oh No Agenda appreciate that um yeah BR go ahead I just have one thing so for a while there we were seeing lumber prices and things go Skyrocket right tell me things have leveled off a little bit to where this project won't get away from us financially so uh as far as 2x4s in that yes you I think if you go to the hardware store now you'll you'll notice two by price of 2x4 um however it uh it's a very volatile Market we are seeing um in still seeing increases in pricing on various things um for instance all summer we've been dealing with steel as as it relates to getting roof choice and that sort of thing um but insulation there's a

176number um we've had Hardware getting doors so um that's one of the reasons from a strategic standpoint we're looking to get this uh bid as soon as possible this year for next year's work because we want to be in front of all the work that's going to be coming out and there is a lot of work that's going to really hit the market next year just like we're experiencing this year um we hear things may start settling down but you know Clark monitors this every day and um it's still very volatile that's a great question other questions yes I just had a timeline question so um May to September I know school starts right around you know end of August beginning of September is the goal to have it done early September or are we

177thinking well the gym will be done in time when school starts got it yes um as far as the boiler work and that the there may be some final work done that first month of school but basically the boiler system will be ready to go once the heating system or heating season starts great yeah good question so you referred to the 1960s basketball back stop now you may call that old we call it an antique and a treasured cherished item of seline's History I wonder what you plan to do with that junket yeah I don't I don't necessarily want it to show you I don't want to drive in my driveway and find it there one night but I'm just kind of curious what like um I I I attended a couple of basketball refurbs

178at the University of Arizona and we took the old floorboards I know we're not doing the middle floorboards I I understand that but they they used the floorboards and sold them and repurposed them and make key chains and whatnot out of them and I'm just uh you just just saying just talk to the community they may have some ideas for you we always entertain those type of things uh we do run into that on occasion so um I'm sure for the right price we'd be happy to give you those back stops and now as sexy as basketball courts are I have a boy Oiler question um yes it took us 20 years to go from 100% efficiency to 80% efficiency so what I don't know if you had a glass of Seline water but um

179is there some guarantee or some system in place to make sure that the water's maybe treated perhaps before it gets into the system so that we're not replacing these boilers before the year 2041 yep I I'll still be on the board then so sure absolutely so the the the boilers the just they didn't start out at 100% efficiency they were always 80% um that's the old technology that's that was as good as it got right so when those boilers were installed that was what you could expect was 80% and as they deteriorate in age um they they become less efficient so that's where you get into that 70% arguably it could be that it could be less new technology today is up there at the 96 9 96 97 and it's it's a function of

180the boiler typee and how I I could get into a long story but I I I assure you you don't want that well no I've seen i' I've replaced boilers where you can hear the calcium cooking away at the bottom now that's not what we're dealing with though in these efficiency issues where it's completely different technology it's just different technology but but water water quality is still a a a component and so as part of our specifications that's you know the the new equipment goes in the water that's here that gets tested um there's there's uh a a parameter that the water quality the pH level the AL you know the alkalinity all of that gets played into as it pertains to water treatment and there there'll be a specification for that and the contractors

181who get awarded the project will have to adhere to the specifications as it relates thanks for that three minute education on boilers I appreciate that I'm going take my mask so you can see my face well win win and and with glycol comes Inhibitors also and those Inhibitors help prevent scale and any buildup of any solids in the in the water so it's it's a it's a a win-win on chemical treatment but that is part of the picture want scale right well thank you I appreciate that you're welcome anybody else oh y well I just want to point out that the the Clark king Scott team um is uh the best I mean they they've been working with us for quite some time and in a very collaborative fashion very smart uh creative and then

182the way in which they're working with Rex and our team with Kurt Miranda Anna Cara and like uh the process has been excellent meeting on a regular basis to more or less hold each other accountable that we're hitting timelines being very communicative about what's happening and therefore myself as a superintendent feeling very confident in in the timeline and and and being very uh transparent about what's going to happen I mean Rob talks a little bit about there is this fluctuation in pricing and that that's already being discussed and so we're having those conversations and just it really is is an excellent example of collaboration amongst three groups in this case so we really do thank everyone for your efforts yeah thank you it's certainly a team effort for sure okay thank you thank you for

183your time appreciate it thank you um I want to be cognizant of time at 9:03 I can see Brad um so I'd like to please entertain a motion to recess at 9:03 p.m for U reconvening um in about 10 minutes um at 9:13 support so I will move to recess for support all right Brad thank you and Jenny support thank you we are in recess until roughly 9:13 sleeping e okay thank you welcome back uh it is 9:15 so just a couple minutes late but we'd like to move on to um one of two discussion items for this evening masb delegate assembly um I think this should be pretty short and easy but um wanted to talk to the team so we have our our annual um conference for masb coming up in in November

184and one of our requirements as part of that organization is to have a delegate there in person voting at 6 pm on the 11th of November so I needed to talk with this team to see who that person would be and who that alternate would be in case that person could not attend at 6m on the 11th of November um I know some of us plan on going I know some of us have conflicts um so I just wanted to throw that out and to see who would be there Thursday I know Susan if you wanted to comment on your availability because you have other responsibilities there on Thursday want to say something about that so um the delegate assembly is actually part of what um I do being on um or whatever is going

185to be presented and voted on um is part of the masb committee of resolutions and bylaws that I'm part of um and um I contacted um the leader who who uh Sherl who um had emailed about the delegates and she said that um Del the people who are on the committee are um delegates and go through this process um so I will already be there as a Committee Member so I'm willing to be a delegate but I guess if there's somebody with a burning desire to to vote I I'll be fine with that because I did have an opportunity to you know to be part of that um my first time I went to uh SB um I went um to the assembly um and you actually get 10 points for just attending so FYI

186if you're around yeah okay so but yeah I'm happy to be um uh the delegate or alternate okay if somebody else is is any other I I I can speak for Dennis and I I should have announce this at the beginning Dennis is ill so um we're missing him tonight and we'll we'll hopefully welcome him back at the next at the next board meeting I don't think he is planning to attend on Thursday anyone else planning to attend on Thursday Michael says no so so it sounds like Susan is willing um I'm planning on going Friday morning so I'm happy I'm happy to be an alternate if that's okay with the the team if not I'm happy to also go Jo Friday morning so I think that concludes our discussion and then we can have

187that as an action item in the next section um moving on to our next discussion item is the Selen Area Schools Board of Education it should say standards of practice um so just to give and I I heard we had some public comment on this and I wanted to just give a little bit of history on this um so the board has been engaging in professional development now for the past um I want to say a month or so so we had one session that was facilitated by Mr Dave kilps um Dave is who we worked with from M and he assisted us with the superintendent search as part of uh the fee that we paid for that we got several services that were uh I don't want to say free but they were included

188um some was uh coaching for our new superintendent and one was the offer to facilitate What in in historical context has kind of been called a retreat right a retreat for the board where we engage in professional development um we did have some audience participation so that was great um we do plan hopefully at the next meeting to share a couple of slides from that um at least a few slides from that professional development evening um on superintendent and board relationships and roles and responsibilities and best practices um and so we can speak to that there but he had something um that he said a lot of other school boards do and he suggested that we think about this and it's called a standards of practice document um selary schools currently has our board policy

189which is on our website we also currently have our board operating procedures which are also on our website not every board has board operating procedures they all have policies um so he said we were already in a really good space with what we were doing with the actions um that we're living through our policies and our procedures but he proposed that we think about this and it really resonated with me particularly because um I always think of the new year as starting September 1st I always think of January 1 is halfway you know through the school year and I really think about this is the beginning of our year um because all of us work in education and and and we have kids and it just seemed like a really good thing to kind of

190um discuss starting off the school year and um and and just to you know reaffirm our commitment reaffirm our our practices and our procedures and so I just thought of it in a very positive lens something that we could um convey to our community convey to each other and and continue to hold each other um to those standards so again nothing new no no changes um just uh kind of a more vocal declaration to kind of join our our current policies and our procedures and our commitment to the community um I don't have to read them because I know it was in the packet um but again nothing that we're not already doing is is is as trustees and something that we can include um possibly our friend Julian in we listed the trustees here

191there was no intent to sign anything it's not a resolution it doesn't need to be signed by the secretary or president president as some past resolutions have been it's just kind of a um kind of a co-authored commitment and I I would one thing I would think about is maybe we think about how Julian can be added to this as well so that was just the background on this and I just welcome any discussion on the facets of this or the document overall yeah c yeah as I was looking at some other board um standards of practice just to get a sense of like what else is out there are we missing anything um I did find that the Michigan Association of school boards has a board standards of government governance document um that has

192some suggestions for things like this and one of the things that stood out in that was the idea of lifelong learning the wording you know can be whatever we we decide but that we're all committed to lifelong learning and I know we all are we talk about it and we're we're doing our ongoing training and making sure that we're willing to learn and grow as we serve in this role so I think that's something I'd like to see in something like this great Candace that's a um that's a really good ad and and actually a edit to policy that secretary Eep and I made on uh conferences and life long learning um last year so thank you for your comment yeah Johnny uh just in in hearing some feedback and then also thinking about these

193um I know that um when Dave presented them to us he presented them um and kind of gave some um information or maybe um definitions of kind of what what things mean and I know often in our policies um Susan that we have to have definitions right and glossies for things and so I think that um a document like this can mean or sorry words in this document can mean different things to different people so if we are going to adopt um standards of practice like for example Candace brought up lifelong learning like what does that look like from a trusty P from in action yes what does that look like when we put it into like when it's when we are acting on it not in action yeah exactly um I appre oh go

194ahead Brad no no no you were you were there well I appreciate Candace that you mentioned that these were suggest there were other suggestions from MB and I appreciate you Jennifer suggesting that there are certain words and terms that need definition sorry and I was too far away from the mic but um for example I work with the uh International Society for technology and education IST and in the various subcommittees we work on Norms Norms of collaboration and Norms of committee work standards of practice there each of those groups generate their their own standards based upon how that particular group that committee works the board does their own standards and discusses them sometimes add nauseum until we reached the point where we drilled down and and boiled it down the statements down to something that

195everybody saide this is us this is what we do we got no issues it's absolutely consensus and I guess my concern with this is that I don't know the Providence of these uh documents I know they came from Dave KPS and where they came from before I I'm unclear about that I'm also a little concerned that Dennis isn't here and I shared this concern with Jennifer there's no no surprise at this table but there are other questions that I had had which interestingly to me I heard from some of the letters we received I won't go into specifics uh except in a couple cases like how do we deal with nonpartisan positions the fact that when some political parties even without asking us uh uh support support is uh whether we even belong to that

196political party or not I find that a Curious Thing uh it came up a couple times with Dave KP that we should avoid we should be nonpartisan told absolutely get it uh so I guess the question I have is how does that Bubble Up and arise in in our daily board work if if we are partisan at all and um so I guess my concern about this list is that it's not ours yet we don't own this and I appreciate you putting it on the table uh president Eep I was sorry president uh St but I I I I don't think it's ready for Prime Time personally I think there are a lot of issues there are questions I have about is this our job really and I I I appreciate the lifelong learning one

197that's great uh uh many of them raise the question what if we do not reach the highest of ethical standards or what if we are not fiscally responsible or how does this look or how should this manifest itself I mean you that's too many details I know for General statements but then it starts to begs the question do why are we why why are we even putting these on the table the second to last one for example critically analyze a superintendent that's our job uh I I I came to the table ready to do that job and I didn't need a standard of practice to tell me that but maybe there's some aspect of that practice that we as a board need to say crit critically analyze to the highest standard or to based on

198the community or based on on evidence our superintendent there's there's to me it's I'm left hanging it it feels empty it feel a lot of these feel empty at this point that's why I I would like to recommend that perhaps we discuss these at a at a retreat at some point I understand it's nice to start off the year with something like this uh but I I I'll say it one last time I I just not ready for prime time I just don't feel like I own these enough that I would put my name on them I don't have enough questions answered yet okay thank you Michael um and and I just wanted to acknowledge yes um obviously this is a conversation that should include Dennis um so uh definitely want to acknowledge that bran

199all right so yeah I want to reiterate that I agree he should be included as a part of this and I want to say that like I'm a little bit of a mishmash of all three like of you and I appreciate that you know I I do like the idea of definitions right of of you know what you know nonpartisan I mean I wish it's chall right I know we all have our own like personal things right and that kind of thing but at the same time when we're here and we we represent our students and we represent all of our students and I really believe that we we read feedback and we take it seriously and I know that that's so important to me and so I ask questions about things about people that

200voice concerns who think the same name as me and think differently from me and those are important to me those are important feedback moments for me those are important things I I cherish that and so I kind of think I agree with Michael that this would be something for us as a team to talk more about before we adopt it and and I do like the idea of personalizing it making it a little more a little more you know Seline Board of Education and that kind of thing and and so anyway but I appreciate but I also want to recognize the premise of this the idea IDE that we are trying to think about our students all the time expectations all the time you know positive and disagreements and and anyway I'm gonna stop talking

201but the reality is I I I I like it as a whole I just think we need I think we need to nail it down a little more yes excuse me um all of that um I know I I um expressed um concerns about um where this lies um and I think some it was a brought brought up um where it lies with our board operating procedures our policies I know we have um an Ethics policy which some of this comes in or the board superintendent relations um bop so um just um making sure that when we're thinking about if it's a a retreat um or uh something that we you know spend the time to like dive into it and commit to it as a board um that we not try to do like

202everything and and just just try to like focus on like are we going to keep this board operating procedures and I know we wanted to update it this year and um that didn't really um come to fation because we weren't getting any um feedback or anything so um yeah I just want to make sure that you know not repeating everything um and that it be like a genuine conversation here um I like that you brought up the MB um the was it yeah you read it the the board um guiding like principles um and in that and actually WD has one as well um and I know some schools use that um but it's like guiding questions right and so I really um it yeah isn't it's kind of like these overall um overarching like

203points and goals right but then it's asking you to think about are you doing that work right are you whenever you um you're at the board table and um you know and he's giving a presentation and you know asking are you thinking about like the students or are you um you know just just giving you good questions and and um Reflections to help guide guide you um so yeah I'd like to dive into maybe some other things and um see what we can come up with I was just gonna say so what I'm hearing is you guys would like another special meeting we are asking for that right yeah um but just just really briefly before we go back to Jenny to um build off of what Susan said I remember doing training at the

204WD and seeing those um table t about when you're making when you're voting and you're making decisions those guiding questions and I like that so let's let's pull that into another conversation let's pull the nasb into another conversation um one thing I took a look at when reflecting on This was um the um you know what does a positive board look like what does you know in rereading some of the the content at masb and to Candace's point this is why we're doing this it is Lifeline learning that's why we invited Mr KPS back to join us and have conversations and um for those of you who those of you who don't know he is a former superintendent and he's he's very familiar with all of these um all of these standards of practice and

205um and gives good advice so that's the place it's coming from and a place of positive intent yeah Johnny just uh when when Michael was talking and then when Brad mentioned it too uh about making these our own and about making these s specific um I'd also propose that maybe we look at the Strategic framework and the compass and how those values and those ideals um and those commitments are um represented in these standards of practice those are guiding guiding our district every day so I think that it' be important for our board to be guided by those things too I know we are but if we're going to have a document like this I think that would be important okay any other comments all right perfect um I'd like to move on to action

206items um I'd like to please entertain a motion to appoint secretary Eep as the voting delegate and president stean as the alternate representing the Seline Board of Education at the 2021 masb delegate assembly being held Thursday November 11th 2021 so move I was like did I just say something wrong at 6m uh moved by Michael thank you second second I'll second it jid all right Candace uh all in favor say I I I opposed hearing none motion carries 70 um thank you Susan for doing that appreciate that and just let me know if it doesn't work out that you can't be there you could score 10 points if you're there I like points um I'd like to please entertain a motion to approve the minutes from from the August 10th 2021 Clos session for the

207purpose of sasaa contract review is facilit facilitated by assistant superintendent Ellis very quick point of order should we be recommending a motion to table the board of education standards of governance or just it was just a discussion item just well it's here it's recommended motion I've got it right here um maybe is in an old agenda an old agenda yeah thank you yeah no problem um so so sorry Michael um so this is for the minutes from the August 10th 2021 closed session for the purpose of sasaa contract review as facilitated by assistant superintendent Ellis I'll make the motion Brad thank you support support thank you Jenny um so because these are closed session minutes um secretary Eep will now pass out the minutes um they are labeled 1 through seven for trustees and uh

208we'll take a moment to review the minutes then we'll come back to vote on the minutes uh if approved those will go sealed into um Betty Yan's file of closed minutes thank you for one for one year all right so we'll just take couple minutes to read this and just so the audience knows this is standard operating procedures for the open meetings act with closed meeting minutes e just let me know when you guys are ready done okay we have a motion by Brad a second by Jenny um we'll go to vote uh all in favor of approving these minutes say I I I opposed hearing none motion carries 70 if you can please do me the favor of passing these back to Susan um she'll count one through seven and then uh and Destroy

209yeah you can just give it to her after it's okay so just acknowledge you have all seven back and um we'll give Betty the envelope after for um today's board meeting you have to acknowledge that we have all seven back I'm sorry oh okay okay I acknowledge okay thank you that I have seven and then an extra that Betty's going to keep that's correct and a filled file okay perfect um moving on to our next action item I'd like to please entertain a motion to approve the purchase of a 2021 Ford F Ford 450 4x4 dump truck in the amount of $ [Music] 51,59714 for mhm absolutely hard job thank you and I know how difficult I've been hearing to get used vehicles right now Rex would you we're still hiring drivers I'll just plug

210that wow Rex would you also um make sure that those two gentlemen know about the retirement recognition at the end of the school year I would love to recognize them at that thanks Rex you said the salt you don't have to stand up you said the salt had taken its toll now that salt only touches the vehicles at the back and and the spinner part or whatever do do does this plan uh include replacement uh add-ons or whatever is required for getting the salt distributed evenly on the roads and um does this truck gets get repurposed at all after the the snow has disappeared awesome great thank you I don't get to talk about trucks very often so thank I I have one quick thing yeah yeah go ahead B so what process do we

211undergo to bid out these types of things right like you said it's about availability but also do we have multiple dealerships who respond to us all right thank you um so we have the motion by Michael the second by Susan I'd like to move to vote please all those in favor please say I I I I opposed hearing none motion car 70 moving on to Administration updates Dr R okay I do have a number of comments tonight and I would like to start with a sex education Advisory Board update our cab sary School's teachers and the sex education Advisory Board the CF have been looking for and have now found a curriculum designed to meet the needs of this population of special education students roughly 120 life skills special education students ranging from grade seven

212to the young adult program in age 26 curriculum developed by Dr Kim Clark and RN Christine Ridley one of whom is a parent of a now grown child with autism the other whose daughter as a special education teacher of many decades both knew from personal experience that schools and families desperately needed an accessible sexed curriculum for special populations so they sought to adapt their positive prevention plus B3 curriculum to fit the distinct educational needs of developmentally and intellectually impaired students due to the unique and indivi individualized nature of life skills programming for this population again approximately 120 of our students teachers would work with families in developing the curricular content necessary to meet the needs of each individual unlike a general education curriculum where the unit might be presented in its entirety to all students

213this population would have content hand selected by the teacher based on their needs these materials are designed to meet the needs of significantly impaired students at the secondary level which is defined as seventh grade through 12th grade and also Beyond High School through 26 years old teachers in collaboration with parents and caregivers would curate the appropriate materials to meet the needs of the students at the appropriate age and grade level for the individual so our timeline on August 5th the cab held hearing number one to present the proposed curriculum to the public on August 20th the cab had a second hearing to present the proposed curriculum again and answer questions that arose from hearing number one at these hearings we had a great deal of public comment both in support of the curriculum and with

214reservations or concerns about the curriculum the cab also gathered many many comments opinions from residents and School of Choice families via an electronic feedback form the seab recently met on September 8th to review feedback from the two hearings discuss comments made from the community and determine next steps they plan to meet again in early October I'm very pleased at how active the cab has been in involving the community and the process as many of the Board of Ed trustees have seen we have had excellent particip at both of the hearings and a lot of feedback in the electronic feedback form there's also been some conversations within the Comm Community about the legality and appropriateness of this curriculum so I reached out to the Michigan Department of Education and Lori backover hivs STD educational consultant in

215the school health and safety unit she reiterated some important points about sex education for students with special needs which this curriculum does include number one instruction must be differentiated based on student needs and developmental stage and ability two children and youth who have developmental Andor cognitive delays and challenges benefit from instruction that is simple clear visual concrete and repetitive three sex education is typically taught using euphemisms and vague explanations that doesn't work for any students but is particularly ineffective for students with special needs students with special needs this is number four are most likely to be victimized and abused they often lack the language and understanding to report these incidents number five to equip students with special needs with words understanding and skills to stay safe and healthy sex education must include images that are

216more concrete and explicit than many adults are used to this P3 curriculum meets the legal standards of the law and reaching out to positive prevention plus Representatives they have now removed visuals of any slides related to abortion which will be not taught in this curriculum we recognize that not every member of the CF supports all facets of this curriculum but that is why this process is so important it allows for Community input feedback disagreement and discussion ahead of any proposed changes to the curriculum being sent to the board Board of Education next I'd like to comment on the 911 tribute that I attended I had a chance to I had a chance to attend this tribute at City Hall along with trustee Jones and secretary yonke on Saturday morning at the city hall it was

217a wonderful tribute to all those people who lost their lives and helped to support our freedom there were several outstanding speeches delivered that day including those by mayor Marl police chief heart and firefighter Sears a theme that resonated with me was Unity after 9/11 first happened the country bonded together to rebuild and support a greater America we need to continue with the theme of unity today as we address a number of challenges in our country also like to talk about Staffing shortages despite the almost 70 new employees you met tonight Staffing continues to be a critical issue for the district as of today we still need to hire a minimum of 11 par Educators where vacancies exist at all levels a minimum of three bus drivers a minimum of five Food Service employees a minimum

218of four custodians so you can see that when Mr Ellis is talking about the need to bring in additional staff this is nearing a a real serious mode not only for our district but if you're watching the news media this is happening in all districts across Michigan and and most of the country uh we would like to however really thank our elementary school parents for helping with walking students to school with limited crossing guards and expanded walking zones we appreciate the way in which the community in this instant is certainly helping out with our staffing shortages and that's sort of the new Norm noral that we're in right now to help with Community Support as we're trying to deal with these Staffing shortages finally I would like to just thank everybody for a great start

219to the school year yes we have some challenges but it's been so great to see all the students teachers staff and community members in our buildings to start the school year I'm already starting to feel the routines that were disrupted due to the turbulent combination of remote hybrid and in-person learning from last year are starting to be reest established I very much appreciate the entire Seline community and the effort that everyone is putting forth to make all of this happen for our students thank you thank you very much for your comments um Julian we'd like to offer you the the first opportunity for your um Board of Ed rep comments if you'd like to go ahead yeah so um in general this is all going to be pretty positive so hopefully you all look forward

220to some positivity here uh in the middle school and high school clubs and organizations have been meeting and uh that has gone back to 7:15 morning meetings and stuff which is obviously when you're virtual or hybrid uh it's hard to meet with an entire Club so it's it's nice to see uh everyone getting back together and doing what you know students love to do uh fall athletic programs have also been practicing and playing games uh that so far there have been no cancellation or post ponents due to co um and in the high school from what I've seen and then from what would I've heard from younger students as well um there is a sense of normaly having you know 30 to 35 kids in a classroom uh it's nice to see without a teacher

221you know having to constantly look back on their computer to teach to Virtual or virtual kids which would before behalf the class so it's nice to be in the class with everybody and masking in the school in High School since it's the only school I'm in at the moment um I'd say in general the rules are being well followed in the classroom I'd say nearly 100% of students keep it above their nose and mouth which is nice to see and in the hallways and during lunch um there are some times where you come across students with their mask down below their mouth or nose but in general that's you know during small group projects where you know you know students leave the classroom to work and collaborate um so that's typically in smaller groups you

222know not during passing periods or anything so that is a little less concerning um and then for special education all students with IEPs are back in the buildings um and they held a summer program ran by the special education department um that was said to be very beneficial to students and transition back to school and then at elementary schools as well um there are third grade buddy systems pairing each young fiber kindergarten student with a third grade buddy and within the first week of school uh they helps you know younger students get familiar with the schools and the rules of you know recess launch just you know how to be a good student in class as well and there are also third grade safety buddies um which is a program where third graders help again

223the young five and kindergarten students find their bus LS or after care which is I thought was a pretty cool system to see um students helping student students uh so everything's going well so far and I think everyone's super excited to be back in school thanks Julian and um welcome again anyone else like to give any updates are quiet tonight well not not during literacy though J that that is that is true the only thing I mean there's a ton ton going on obviously the only thing that I would add is I was able to attend uh five of our open houses one one as a mom um and it brought such incredible Joy talking with families and talking with staff and talking with kids and just welcoming each other back um everyone was very

224very excited um and it was very well done so I'd like to to thank those building principls and and staffs for really going out of their way this year to make sure that the kids felt love um because I certainly felt it that night and appreciate that um doing just a double check okay Michael did you have something I I guess I could pile on ever so slightly to to what Dr lot said about 911 um I had the opportunity on Saturday on September 11th to be outside the Pentagon uh and what's remarkable to me about that I was an Uninvited Guest that's for sure I I couldn't get too close because this fell named Joe Jo Biden was going to be showing up there so uh anyway I um it was remarkable is that

225how how much of the building is as back as if it had never been damaged and if anyone visited downtown New York they see the same thing but the the thing is just like with this pandemic as we slowly put it behind us we'll build from it we build stronger we we will remember the difficulties and we're still in the midst of the difficulties but I think we're we're using this as opportunity ities to be creative and to make positive changes as we move forward so I mean that this work and watching the ceremony at at the Pentagon and building up to where we are now is all just sort of resonated with one really cool uh Happy feely bubble for me so uh thank you for reminding us about that with your your remarks

226uh Dr L I will say one thing in like 10 seconds um the beginning of a school year for educ haers is like drinking out of a firehouse right it's just tons of information tons of things happening and yet our kids are Julian they're they're they're having a great experience they're happy to be there they're so excited to be in school so I just want to take a second and acknowledge that right our Educators you're keep coming with us you know and and we appreciate you I was just gonna give a shout out to the parents too because I know how crazy crazy it must feel or no I know how it feels but um you know just um I mean going from yeah it's just it's been different I think go moving towards normal

227right and and doing all the activities and um oh my goodness the orientations and open houses and it was like you know C I guess I you know I have three little ones but um you know I just see seeing those parents out and um you know uh I think yeah just shout out to them all right um moving on to our consent agenda items the following are offered as part of the consent agenda the motion noted will allow for the authorization of all listed items without discussion unless a member of the board requests that any one or all be considered individually I'd like to please entertain a motion and move to authorize the following items as part of the consent agenda a approval of the Board of Education regular meeting minutes of August 10th

2282021 B approval of the Board of Education finance committee minute finance committee meeting minutes of August 10th 2021 C approval of the Board of Education Retreat session minutes of August 24th 2021 D approval of the Board of Education policy committee meeting minutes August 26 2021 e approval of the Board of Education masb professional devel vment session minutes of September 7th 2021 F approval of payment of the general fund accounts payable of September 14th 2021 in the amount of 9, 48,6 4863 T approval of payment of the bond series 3 accounts payable of September 14th 2021 in the amount of 9,415 H receive and file curriculum finance and Human Resources report and item I approval of overnight and or outof State field trips as submitted by superintendent Lodge field trips number one 268 for um the

2292022 school year the FFA State leadership conference FFA National Conference FFA a Michigan State Convention and FFA a leadership camp for officers um I entertain a motion I would like to uh move to approve um the cons the all the items on the consent agenda all right thank you for the motion Jenny uh support support Candace thank you um moving to vote all those in favor say I I I opposed hearing none motion carries 70 um items scheduled on our next agenda for the 28th of September Dr latch yep we have the continue to learn plan and transgender policy all right thank you um this is our second opportunity for public comment I am going to pause because I realized after we went past that I did not read our response to previous public comment

230so I'd like to pause and do that I realized it when we were having presentations and I wanted to continue with that continue to learn conversation so I will read that and then we will move into our second opportunity for public comment um you can use this opportunity now to uh uh turn in any other forms and we'll move right to that as soon as we're done with this um response to previous public comment thank you for your continued feedback as the board values your personal stories and perspectives on various topics that are important to our SAS Community we are all a passionate group when it comes to our kids and rightly so please know that everyone has heard regardless of topic perspective presented or how the board ends up voting or moving forward we

231do try to listen listen to each person and we do try to respond to each email with respect the board and staff are here because we love the students as well so please try to be gu to each other and to us we see what is happening in our district and other districts with threats of violence aggressive behavior towards superintendents teachers staff and trustees it is real we thank you in advance for being professional collaborative and caring we are thrilled to have the students back in school 5 days a week week and hear how much you value that as well it is likely to be another challenging year for a bit so thank you for your continued flexibility as we continue to support their education and their social and emotional well-being we are also receiving

232feedback res regarding the sexed Advisory Board the cab is a different entity than the Board of Education the board of education has not had a proposal presented to us at this date there has been no curriculum Vote or change and the curriculum being discussed via hearings is only for the life skill students that are in grades 7 through 12 another key topic continue to learn um we drill down into literacy as a focus tonight and at each board meeting we will highlight things that staff are doing to combat the situation that our world has been placed in due to covid-19 and the disrupted learning student achievement is a key focus of this board and administration alongside of safety in this unprecedented time we want all kids to get back to learning and growing um uh

233a as normal um though things still do not feel quite normal yet but the SAS staff is working very hard to support all students thank you again for your time your thoughts and your support during this critical time let us please work together to keep kids in the buildings keep them learning and keep them happy um uh second opportunity for public comment a member of the public May address the board briefly for up to three minutes and we'll use the same protocols with secretary EAB yellow 30 seconds r at 3 minutes for up to 3 minutes or request to be scheduled on the agenda of a future meeting um we take students in person first and seeing none um I will move to um other members of our community and stakeholders that are present tonight

234I'm going in order that these were received by um Betty yonke and first up we have a parent Roy grow I have this deep sense of disappointment I read the standards of practice talking about trust respect um communicating openly honestly transparently ethical standards and watching the school district over the last few years I'm feeling a sense of there's anything but I've seen so much underhanded stuff I've seen so much stuff that that doesn't follow this a simple example would be when Seline Middle School allowed boys to use the girls locker room they did that without notifying parents or anything that's obviously contentious not something you just do in secret that is endemic of our school district I I don't know what's going on or why people think that's okay clearly there's agendas or values involved

235that people know aren't going to be popular or going to receive a lot of resistance and so the answer is well let's just do it in secret or let's just do it anyway if you want to reduce threats of violence be open and honest about stuff invite people to talk and not shut them down I have a daughter who graduated from the high school a couple years ago she expressed discussed during a video and received credible death threats instantly from students in this School those were felonies those students could have gone to prison I see a lot of this and a lot of it comes from a group I won't use names or or or labels but if we don't invite people to talk and actually listen and not shut them down and tell them

236shut up you're you're from the wrong tribe that's what we're seeing is a bunch of tribalism if you're not from the right tribe you're wrong and whatever you say doesn't matter so shut up and and get behind us this is really disturbing there's a lot of parents that are Disturbed beyond words I would really really really encourage the district the board the staff to abandon this idea that they know better and they're just going to do what they're going to do anyway a lot of this the word I like to use is it just comes across to me like theater going through the motions let people talk to pacify them there's a principle called um crowd sourcing something like that take a jar of jelly beans put who knows how many in there the more

237people you ask how many jelly beans are in that jar the more accurate the answer becomes you average all those answers you start to get to zero and on the exact number of jelly beans why aren't we doing that why where does this attitude come from that somebody knows better and we don't really want to hear from people they say they want to hear from people it doesn't appear to me to be that way again it just seems Theater what's it going to take to be inclusive of the voices that we don't like to hear all means all well apparently it doesn't and not in practice right thank you for your comments um next we have Jennifer scarpati uh Seline pent okay okay thank you very much um next we have uh Dave Rosenfield Seline

238resident former parent on oh there we go all right um I'll be very brief um I just want to reassure the board that you haven't lost the trust of all the parents not yet at least um but uh um I think it's safe to say that the majority of parents uh are uh are still with you um and we actually greatly appreciate all the measures that you have already taken and the measures that you uh continue to take to make Seline area schools a more inclusive environment uh where all of our kids all students can feel safe and supported so that they can learn I just want to thank you for for Having the courage enage to do what's necessary to protect to protect our kids thank you do thank you for your comments uh

239Rin Davis parent and Rin I have two forms for you it says um on behalf of another parent are you gonna originally I was going to read Jennifer's words for her and then she she told me to just should email them and I'll just do my own piece in that's still okay okay great sounds good thank you go ahead okay um right I am would like to talk about the legality of both the scab and the sex and the curriculum at this point um I actually do completely object to what lch has said um I am glad that you worked out to reached out to PPE and got the abortion slide removed however you did not address that there are five pieces of Michigan Law that is required to be in the curriculum that was

240not shown to parents um within it and those five specific things things are discuss the benefits of ceasing sex if pupil is currently obtaining them advise pupils of the laws pertaining to the responsibility as parents to children born in and out of wedlock ensure that pupils are not taught in a way that condones the violation of laws of the state pertaining to sexuality including but not limited to those relating to sodomy indecent exposure gross indecency and criminal sexual contuct for first second third and fourth degrees no Michigan law is currently taught in this curriculum um provide information for pupils about how young parents can learn more about the adoption services and about the provisions of the safe delivery law um that was currently on the abortion slide I have not looked but if you took

241out the abortion slide you also took out the adoption services um and there what was in there was literally just the list that you can adopt it did not actually talk about real options um and the information that having sex or sexual contact with what an individual under the age of 16 is a crime here in Michigan so even if the removal of the adoption it still does not meet state law and I would like you guys to come back with proof that this will actually meet state law I am not convinced yet second of all I filed a formal complaint against the school on Friday that the seab in itself is illegal um we did not have student members on our board and today lotch sent out information trying to correct that um we

242also do not have goals and objectives to reduce the teen STI and pregnancy rates of San schools and then you find a curriculum to meet your goals and at this point our goals are we will show respect and everyone will see themselves and I would like to know how those two goals actually reduce teen pregnancies and teen STI and objectives that is state law required and so at this point I asked the school to yes we need to remedy the membership I think anything this current seab has done should be null and void because we had an illegal seab board uh fulfilling it um I think the co-chairs should be removed because obviously it was their job to have a legal scab board and they haven't done it yet and I think this and the

243board legal by law it's the board who creates and runs the seab it is not the school district it is your board your committee your decision you could tell them we are done you need to find another curriculum and that is what needs to be doneen thank you for your comments um next is uh parent shie um Barnett is it Sherry or Sherie Sherry Sherry okay Sheri Barnett thank you hi my name is Sherry Barnett I am a mother of a high school student I'm here at Selen area schools and I just wanted to say I completely concur with the first gentleman with the level of disappointment in in the school board um this is stemming from first and foremost um um as someone who put their trusts and sent a letter to the school

244board and that um letter later found its way to my employer and uh the compliance hotline for using my work address to send that letter to you um that was quite disappointing to say the least so as far as an ethical standards across the board that might be a great idea I also wanted to say that in the personal corresp respondence with Dr latch and in in in statements made in previous board meetings you have said that under no circumstances are you are you implementing concepts of critical race Theory or anything that is encompassed of critical race Theory but that we sat here for an hour and listened to the teaching and learning talk about talk about cultural responsiveness instruction um and that board the teaching and learning board this new instructional design board is

245comprised of individuals who have public profiles indicating that they are cultural responsiveness pedagogy Consultants aimed at and they self-proclaim a social studies teacher transitioning into social justice Advocates that person in this meeting today was invited to personally look at our our policies our procedures a social justice a person with aspirations as a social justice Advocate to look at our policy and procedures and that is no different than if you would ask a military person an army representative and if you don't see the difference in that we're farther apart than I thought thank you Sherry thank you for your comments sorry I'm saying we don't allow personal attacks on um District employees board members um and students y okay thank you Susan if I can we we'll talk up late sorry um uh Betty did you

246have uh I wanted to check in the audience to make sure there weren't any other comments before we move on okay thank you um Betty is going to read some other U emails that were received this afternoon um what I will say is I we are allowing these to be read because we do value feedback and we do listen and we do hear this and uh I I don't want to be the one that's going to censor a parent um right to speak um that said some of the content I will say I felt was um attacking this board in in certain ways and talking about our integrity and talking about other things and our moral compass um so I'm going to have Betty read these um but I have referred um this proed to

247the policy committee for review on how we handle um items that come into us over email I will say some of the emails that we've been receiving have been very borderline as well um but we are going to allow these to be read tonight and um let it let it be shown that we will listen to all pieces of feedback and and I hope that I hope that in the future we're able to have a little bit um different tone and and level of respect for each other um and thank you for all of your comments this evening as well um Betty you want to go ahead thank you Jennifer I'm reading this on behalf of Daniel Gillespie I object to school's action in the public hearing process you have already lost the trust and

248respect of many parents in the district this signing of standards of practice paper theatrics is an embarrassment the obvious admittance of guilt and quite honestly too little too late the fact that the board feels they need to put these standards on paper and didn't feel they were already inherently and ethically implied standards of practice as a part of the duties of being on the school board is sad many of these standards have not been followed by many board members especially this last year will there be consequences for future and past actions which did which did not follow these stand standards of practice will there be public admittance of wrongdoing from publicly expressing one's political views and political partisanship ignoring parent concerns and requests for information defying state law or will recall elections be the only

249answer this flimsy theatrical meaningless piece of paper with signatures does not guarantee the taxpayers transparency or a voice it only condescendingly shows how Above the Law the board Administration think they are it's a Band-Aid over a large gap infected wound oh thanks buddy I just wanted to make sure that you don't read addresses for these these folks I will not yeah thank thank you I'm reading this comment on beh on behalf of Thomas Frederick dear members of the school board I apologize that I cannot be with you in person I object to your actions regarding the cab public hearing process including a lack of transparency making information hard to get refusing to do a question and answer session and ignoring state law regarding the formation of the cab in legitimate review and Adoption of a

250sexed program are the names of the members of the cab public they should be how will the community at large know if they are being represented are the demographics of the cab aligned with state law it should be as elected officials in charge of the well-being of our most precious asset our children you ought to be ashamed of the way you have carried yourselves in this and in other recent matters I object to emails and questions going unanswered while trustees and school officials bully their way past parental rights I object to board members using their position to further their own political agendas and approve a curricul um intended to indoctrinate our children to a specific ideology I object to the constant secrecy forcing parents to Foy a basic information I object to a group of

251Trustees so void of a moral compass that they have to sign a paper stating that they will act with the basic Integrity expect of any duly elected responsible human being you have lost the trust and respect of many of the parents in the school district signing a piece of paper is not enough what specific things will you do what specific changes will you make to become transparent to be free of political ideologies to respect parental rights and all things from curriculum adoption to covid-19 precautions and listen to and carry out the will of Those whom you serve I charge you today to step up and become true advocates for our children and families and to win back our respect and our trust or to step down and let others with more fortitude and integrity take

252your place reading this on behalf of Carrie Grove I object to the school's actions in the public hearing process including the lack of transparency making information hard to get refusing to do a question and answer session ignoring state law with a sexed program and cab uh members being made public currently we do not know who sits on the sex education Advisory Board since the board is supposed to represent our community who sits on this board should be public knowledge Steve lch will not reveal the names this is is unacceptable and must be made public to follow the law there should also be a student representative on the board and there has been no confirmation if there is one this is not transparent or legal I object to emails and questions going unanswered board members using

253their position to further their own political agendas parents being forced to Foya for simple information you have lost the trust and respect to parents school board members signing a piece of paper committing to a standard of practice is a token act what specific change will be made what consequences are in place for violations I'm reading this on behalf of Aaron Crum I object to SAS actions in the public hearing process before this school year started I watched one of the board meetings online to determine whether or not I wanted my children to attend here the board completely disregarded the parents' questions and concerns you made up my mind since then have I I have observed the actions taken by SAS on different subjects the over sexualized sexed program is not the only disappointing turn but

254is the most disturbing it is not the school's job to teach oral and anal sex masturbation or abortion especially to special needs students I object to parent emails and questions going unanswered and board members using their position for political agendas over the mental and physical well-being of the students you have lost the trust of parents your actions so far this year prove you unfit for the positions you hold that you will be remembered number I read this on behalf of Kathy dobrowski I object to the school's action in the public hearing process including the lack of transparency making information hard to get refusing to do a question and answer session and ignoring state law with a sexed pro program and cab members being made public I object to emails and questions going unanswered board members

255using their position to further their own political agendas parents being forced to fo you simple information you have lost the trust and respect a parents signing a paper as a token act what specific changes will you make I'm reading this on behalf of Cynthia Frederick I object to the school's action in the ca public hearing process including the lack of transparency making information hard to get refusing to do a question and answer session and ignoring state law with a sexed program and cab members being made public I object to emails and questions going unanswered board members use their position to further their own political agendas parents being forced to Foy basic information you have lost the trust and respect of parents signing a paper as a token act what specific changes will be made I

256read this on behalf of Michelle tier while I am grateful for the work that you do to better the lives of students in many areas the adoption of the PPP sexed curriculum is a clear failing in that effort it feels like the members of the cab are trying to push this through quickly and are not listening to any feedback that does not agree with the opinions of the cab there is no student representative on the board which is a failing to follow the established policy the sexed curriculum fails to teach five out of 10 lessons that are required by Michigan State education laws in addition the curriculum teaches that teaches things that shouldn't be taught according to Michigan state law for example teaching abortion as an answer to Accidental pregnancy why is this considered acceptable

257we need a curriculum which matches the needs of our community and also follows the law and while there are some good parts in the seed program there are too many which flaunt adherence to State education standards and ignore some of the real needs of our community it is partly for the the for these reasons that my husband and I have withdrawn our students from Seline schools we no longer trust Seline schools with the moral education of our children they've lost that privilege of trust I'm reading this on on behalf of Denise Bob and Denise Humphrey we Bob and Denise Humphrey are among those parents who object strongly to the sexed curriculum which is currently being pushed forward the stick figure porn is unconscionable if the purpose of the program among others is to reduce teenage

258pregnancy we reveal a double standard in allowing the stick figures as part of the curriculum students are having sex and getting pregnant they will not benefit from explicit Graphics more importantly porn is an addiction shall we tribute to an addiction that causes loss of jobs and breakups of marriage across the us we are hearing of secrecy forcing of individual agendas lack of public disclosure and lack of attention to thoughts and ideas which diverge from those of certain board members we have had a strong school system through the years but these actions will serve only to weaken the system and damage our children currently we have no children in selary schools but we have seen four birth children and five foster children move through through the system it has been a safe place for them and

259we would like to see that continue for future children I'm reading this on behalf of Ben Goodman I am the parent of two students in Seline area schools I'm speaking to you tonight in support of the positive prevention plus curriculum for our students in the life skills and adult programs in selary schools this curriculum is for use only is for use only for students with developmental disabilities in these two programs not students accessing the general education curriculum or receiving services like speech o OT or a consult as a parent of two children receiving special education support both my wife and I have inquired about a program designed to meet the unique needs of children like our son in order to teach him about his body how it works and how to protect himself from sexual

260predators this curriculum offers everything students with developmental disabilities needs it provides visual aids and supports in the form of drawing drawings and videos the worksheets use kid-friendly definitions that are distraction free it allows parents the option to op out of sections without any form of punishment while respecting their religious and personal beliefs many people are using a partisan attack to try to take this curriculum away from my child as well as so many other children in this District I refuse to use partisan radio and newspapers to make a scene because I'm miserable instead I will talk to you our trusted Board of Education this is not a liberal curriculum it is a curriculum designed to educate our most atrisk Learners about their bodies how the reproductive system works about the different forms of penetration and

261the dangers of sexual predators and sex trafficking it respects all Races genders gender identity and sexual identity this is not stick figure porn it is a visual curriculum that is evidence-based and peer reviewed it's a serious curriculum intended to educate and protect children and young adults adults with our signif with significant developmental disabilities please support our cab and our most at risk Learners and vote to support this amazing curriculum I'm reading this on behalf of Daisy Sherman I am the mom of twin seventh grade boys one of my boys is autistic for me this is not about conservative versus liberal religious versus secular Democratic versus Republican this is about the safety of our children when you are putting your belief system politics or feelings ahead of the safety of my child we are going to

262have words my son cannot comprehend the general education curriculum he's often crippled by his autism he doesn't always understand what is safe or okay because he doesn't have the understanding that someone shouldn't touch him in places or that he shouldn't touch another person that is a safety issue I need him to learn about sex and everything that goes along with it he doesn't understand when when something is implied he doesn't pick up social cues things for him need to be Point Blank black and white he needs visuals to learn and he needs to learn the proper terminology so I do not care if the words masturbation anal sex oral sex vagina penis or anything else is used in this curriculum I do not care if there are pictures of stick figures and positions that other

263people find offensive this is real world and I need him to have as much education on the subject as possible I've never heard of an instance where it was detrimental for a person to have knowledge even knowledge they may never use my child not only needs this curriculum taught to him he deserves to have the education one that he can comprehend and understand the proposed curriculum is evidence-based and has been studied for three years by the cab it's time to approve it and start protecting our most vulnerable members of the district if a parent who is opposed to this curriculum feels that children who cannot understand the words words used doesn't need to be taught because the pictures are too graphic that's an albeat mentality and extremely offensive to this parent of a special needs

264child I heard this implied by a parent on a radio program this morning and it had made me Beyond angry how dare you deny my child this valuable education because you are offended I am reading this statement on behalf of aifa Corgan I'm very concerned with the new sexual health curricul being proposed for our amazing and sweet special needs children it is my understanding that this curriculum is not taught anywhere in the state of Michigan it comes from California where the rules for teaching sex sexual education are very different from my own State the definitions used in this curriculum are deeply offensive to diverse people of Faith sex is defined using offensive pornographic images and gender is defined on a sliding scale with children being encaged to pick a gender based on their feelings rather

265than understanding themselves is a biological reality as a Muslim I would be forced to opt my CH children out of the curriculum because its teachings contradict my faith and sincerely held religious beliefs any practicing Muslim parent of a special needs child would feel the same they'd be deeply offended and ostracized by the use of this curriculum I leave you with one troubling question what happens to the survey survey parents used to give feedback to the district on this curriculum where were the results many many of our friends in the district of all Faith backgrounds Express grave concern why is this curriculum being rammed through why are our voices not being heard please consider using this culturally insensitive and deeply offens please reconsider using this culturally insensitive and deeply offensive curriculum thanks Betty is that all

266of them okay thank you very much much um we do have a closed session tonight um there is the potential for board business after this closed session I'd like to please entertain a motion to enter closed session of the board of education at 10:31 p.m with the intent to re-enter open session at 11 p.m for the purpose of collective bargaining 8C of the open meetings act under Section 8 C A simple majority vote is sufficient to enter into a session um who would like to make a motion I'll make a mo motion I'll second it Jenny thank you Brad support um we are now entered into closed session we'll need this room um vacated within a couple minutes thank you test okay all right excellent um a motion was uh made by trustee Miller and

267seconded by vice president McVey to reopen re-enter Open session of the regular Board of Education meeting at 11:20 PM um and we are amending the uh agenda to include now an action item um may I please entertain a motion to uh recommend a motion to approve the letter of agreement between Seline area schools and the Seline Education Association sea and education educational support Personnel ESP signed and dated August 31st 2021 which agrees to Temporary covid amendments to to the existing collective bargaining agement agreements between the Board of Education and S area schools support oh I'll make and I'll support it you make the motion I'll support it okay motion e second Miller all those in favor please say I I I I all those opposed hearing none motion carries s z 6 Z I've been

268seeing seven all night 6 Z and I'll need to am out for the minutes what SE okay uh adjournment I'd please like to entertain a motion to adjourn the Board of Education of September 14 2021 at 11:23 p.m. so move Candace thank you support support Brad thank you um if we can move to vote all those in favor say I I I opposed hearing none motion carries 60 uh we are adjourned