001it didn't count before now it counts i'd like to welcome everyone to the july 13 2021 uh meeting of the saline board of education a regular meeting i'd like to um have a stand for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you since uh president jennifer steben isn't here this evening i have my duty as vice president as my only job is to step in in her absence so that's what i'm doing so have a little cut me a little slack and i'll cut you all a little slack it'll be great there's the public comment section a member of the public may address the board briefly
002for up to three minutes or request to be scheduled on the agenda of a future meeting please note that students will be given priority to speak on any topic the first public participation portion of the meeting will be limited to one half hour normally and limited to agenda items 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 consideration the rules of common courtesy the public participation of the meeting cannot be used to make personal attacks against a board member district employee or student so first we have any students in the room who need to speak or would like to speak and seeing none any other public stakeholders and we haven't received any documents saying they'd like to
003speak yet no support me for the first one we have two for the second half thank you as arranged earlier but yes as arranged earlier we have an extended public comment from megan gunderson selenary school's parent you have 15 minutes to do it as you will there's no way i'm going to talk to you is she look yes i'm not going to talk for 15 minutes so we're all good um first of all i want to say thank you um and good evening i appreciate the time that was granted to me this evening to speak um i couldn't print today because i'm technologically challenged which has been an ongoing issue all of the school year in my household so today is no different i read from my phone instead the last time this board was
004in session i stood before you and asked specifically about the return to learn plan and the topic of lost learning for our students and that it be put on the agenda because i thought it was important i look at the agenda again today and i see that it's not there i did ask again in an email in between the last board meeting and this one too so my disappointment is real during this global pandemic and beyond the saline area school board agendas repeatedly and in a serial fashion addressed loss of learning and the return to learn plan and the fluidity of it as numbers spiked and we got nervous and then we sent the kids home and went back and forth the hybrid into virtual and then eventually made it back to school but it
005was an ongoing agenda item and it's very disappointing that under the new administration that it has not continued to be so i don't understand why it's not here it is the practical education and welfare of the student population not foremost in the minds of this board i would assume that it is but i don't understand why there are no regular updates the plan for returning our students through the classroom and how the district plans to tackle this learning gap affects 100 of our student population and it deserves the ongoing discussion update and planning that you i'm assuming are doing behind the scenes to be communicated to us as a whole i don't believe for an instant that these topics are not being discussed between you as well as all the employees of the district but
006what's shameful is the lack of sharing of information with parents and by the way i'm a parent i'm not a stakeholder i'm actually offended a little bit by that terminology i think that as a parent my concern for the student supersedes that of a stakeholder so i i don't mean to discredit that term but it is it's just not applicable um i share with you that across this community the school system that the board as a whole has lost the trust of the community and educating the youth of this district we've got problems as evidence from before the pandemic and through these meetings and i know that your laundry list is long i look at it as a triage standpoint and getting our kids 100 back into school in a normal situation is for my
007triaging the most important thing data sharing discussions and open communication with your parents is the only way to rebuild this lost trust the longer you remain closed mouthed aloof and detached it's more difficult for the road for us to walk together i actively research and request data so that i can appropriately plan for my children mr at the last meeting you talk specifically about you meeting with family members parents and children about a new policy that's rolling out and how it affects them on a daily basis i feel like i'm the perfect person to ask how the last year worked in my house but you're not asking and when i tell you i feel like my comments fall on deaf ears the district rides on a reputation related to education and so does your housing
008market and i for one am mostly disappointed in the product these last couple years i believe that the majority of parents were willing to write out the 19 and 20 school year in fear of the unknown in hopes for a quick return to normal yet our numbers from 2020 to 2021 academic year showed a number of parents shared their choices with you they either opted for private education they exercised the school of choice option which is um across the state of michigan which i'm still kind of learning about homeschooling became an option or they participated in the district's offer virtual platform there are also a number of students that you can't account for and this is a nationwide problem where did these kids go are they safe are they well they get educated what happened
009to all of these little bodies like we have a moral responsibility to track them down and figure out what's going on it is disheartening to me that the law firm that the district retains made tonight's agenda but my kids didn't who signs your checks for the district fund distribution made the agenda but not catching up we've asked a lot of each other this last year in healthcare which i do every day in your classroom teaching as teachers because i know a number of you actually are in the classroom and we've asked an astronomical amount of you this year but we've asked way too much of our kids they're screaming out in pain and in need sorry the uncertainty and the adversity and the conflict these kids have gone through the last year is just not
010acceptable if we can't address maslow's hierarchy of need meaning giving them safety and security and some of them feeding them how can we expect them to learn and to grow and i want mine to flourish our children survived last year i don't want them to survive this year i want them to grow and to walk in the sun we talk about a number of topics day in and day out in this building and outside of it equity inclusion all of those things that are really important but you know what else is important my kids being in school and actively engaged i appreciate that they're gonna go five days next year but i'd like to know what that five days looks like this year these kids weren't in school for the most part and they were
011virtual learning and hybrid learning they weren't hybrid learning they were hybrid cheating and we know that across the board college applications i have one going to michigan state these four kids when you looked at where they enter college next year where are the ivy leagues that used to be part of that they weren't there this year kids didn't even get granted interviews at schools like georgetown and some of them at northwestern none of the ivys picked up our kids and it's because we weren't in school and other states were it's just sad for them that they didn't get the same opportunity that when we moved into this district eight years ago and started in your public school system four years ago that we thought that our children would have available to them whether they could
012cut it academically or not we still wanted them to have that opportunity for them i'm curious as a board if you're now because you're not releasing information to us if you're banking on apathy and coveted fatigue to my knowledge there hasn't been a single town meeting or a town hall to discuss specifically return to learn or this 18-month learning gap and i get that 18-month from the nwa scores we were out of school 16 months but the gap is 18 months or better so that's concerning to me why not why aren't we having town halls to discuss this or why didn't we now we're in the race of the last six weeks it seems like it's totally beyond the scope of ability at this moment these kids deserve better than you're providing and i have
013to say that this week i was really angry i haven't been angry till this week to receive an email regarding my plans with the july 30th deadline but you're not discussing data with me so how can you ask me to give you my choice when i can't formulate a plan because i don't have any data and information and the last thing i'm going to say to you is there are words have meaning recommendations are not requirements my son asked me if i was an activist this week and i told him no i was an advocate for him in his education and we looked up those words for definition i want to know that if you're getting a choice regarding recommendations regarding return to learn that you're passing that choice on to me as a parent
014i deserve the same accommodation of a recommendation that you have the gray area to walk as well you have many different parents in this district and i totally understand that but parents have choices and i feel as though at times that you view my child as a dollar amount for federal and state funding that's a moral to me and i'm not on board with that with that viewpoint my kids are my most precious possession and i need your support not the strife that's currently going on and i'm not gonna i'm not gonna be okay with it until you at least release your plan and having this topic on your august board of education meeting is it was unfair and i feel like it was kind of a smarmy or a shady thing to do thank
015you very much ms gunderson appreciate that um we're going to move on to the revision slash approval of the agenda items can be added or deleted from the agenda and any or the order can be changed at the request of an individual board member or the superintendent and if we if i hear hearing no changes then we'll we need to have a recommended motion to approve the agenda as printed revised i move to approve the agenda as written and i'll second it thank you all in favor say aye aye opposed same sign abstentions none of those right thank you sounds like is this passed unanimously all right uh we have one scheduled report this evening uh from assistant superintendent ellis regarding hiring proceed process overview please and thank you thank you for allowing me to
016present here this evening on this what i'm going to do is go over in a really broad way our process from really start to finish with regard to the hiring and retention process um and and i'm going to do it in a way that addresses all of the hiring we do i think at times we have a laser-like focus on some of the high-profile positions i know that the scrutiny when the board of education hired superintendent lotch far exceeded that of of perhaps a bus driver and so i'm going to note those differences in this process but i'm going to begin by sharing with you some information that i've shared with you previously this is our certified staff six-year retention rate um i think that that and i've shared this with the board in previous
017years i think there was a time where somebody went to work in a school district and and you could widely assume that they were going to be there for the next 25 to 30 years and in those days i don't know are with us anymore um and it's not specific to celine and it's not specific to anything we do or don't do i think it has a lot to do with the climate and k-12 education today and it has a lot to do with the kinds of of students that are coming out of college but as you look at our six-year certified staff retention rate we're at about 74.33 percent obviously last year was a challenging year for us and i am really happy to tell you that all of our certified staff chose to
018return next year at least thus far have we're not through the summer yet but but all have have chosen to return i also like to share with you uh these personnel transactions and these are the different things that happen out of the human resources office and so we have internal change of assignments or transfers 39 of those were executed this year leaves of absence we had five of those and i can tell you that in the first nine years i was in the district we approved zero leaves of absence and we've approved five in the last year we approved another one here just the other day i think the climate is just such that it's a good move for us to do that and i know that the employees who have asked for that have
019really appreciated that and we've been able to fill those those vacancies new hires 71 transfer or 71 transactions and separations 93 transactions and i i just want you to note that when i say a transaction there's a lot more to hiring an employee or separating an employee than just issuing them a letter there are about 15 different processes that go into each of those and so i know from time to time when i first got into human resources people would say what do you do and it was hard for me to articulate it at times uh this is a big part of what we do and it really does kind of consume what we what we're all about um in terms of our process we have uh these six different elements that we really focus
020on and the first one's recruitment the second one is a job description we talk about the job posting we look at the interview process selection and then the last part and i'll highlight this a little bit at the end is this ongoing support and mentoring and training component our job isn't to fill positions our job is to create successful employees for the district and that process doesn't stop as soon as we make that higher in terms of recruitment i want to emphasize the importance of this this is an ongoing process we don't begin the recruitment for positions when we have a vacancy one of the things that i'm really proud of in this district is that we take the time and i say we meaning superintendent lodge assistant superintendent owesly director of communications britain now
021when people express interest in saline area schools to us we make the time to meet with them regardless of whether we have a vacancy or not and a lot of times some of the people that we meet during those processes or during those really informal meetings end up not having an interest in us which is fine but often they do and so we have some interest and some information on people well ahead of the process starting the other thing that i really want to point out is that recruitment is a collective responsibility all of us have a role to play and i say us meaning not just the board of education in my department but candidly you know all the parents that are here as well the things that we say about our district have
022a tremendous impact on the desirability of our district for people to come here and and i think it's important that everybody knows that as far as specific strategies they really vary wildly by this by the positions obviously i highlighted the superintendent position we actually had a search firm help us out in that process that's the only position in the district that that occurs with when we look at administrative and certified staff those are college and university channels fairly traditional again a lot of interaction one of the things that this district has had a long-standing tradition of is being actively engaged in professional development and when you're at a lot of these conferences you meet people that have the potential to work for you at a later date in terms of classified staff and i'll be
023honest with you this is our biggest challenge at this particular point the people who are working in food service and driving buses and buildings and grounds those folks are integral to us being able to operate as a school district and to operationalize which was a word we used a lot this year our ability to be in school and so we've really kind of changed i think in the last four or five years here we do probably more recruiting on indeed and on social media than we do via our own job sites we have a job posting for all these but those those social media sites have really become integral and we've started to and if anybody picked up food today you would have had a postcard in in the food packet that we gave you
024that had information on a job fair that we're going to have coming up a week from tomorrow right here in this room for those classified positions and one of the key parts to to the recruitment process is that we we do really encourage referrals um and and so those of you that may know a candidate in a particular area if you know of somebody that's interested by all means please send them our way and when you do let one of us know so that we can be on the lookout for them in terms of job description we we really make a strong effort to maintain uh accurate job descriptions and and it's something that needs to be updated on a pretty regular basis but the job descriptions have any essential duties and responsibilities any supervisor
025responsibility if if that is applicable minimum and or preferred qualifications and then the terms and conditions of employment when i talk about updating these if you were to have looked at our job postings two three years ago and compare them to the language that we have today we have a lot more language today in terms of of talking about our desire to have a more diverse workforce to have a workforce that has a diverse background and diverse experiences we have given competitive preference in the job postings to folks that have certain trainings that we feel are important to what we're trying to do as a school district and so those job descriptions are updated on a very very regular basis throughout the district once we know we have a vacancy we post our positions on
026the job posting website um the service that we utilize actually sends messages out to our staff so not only does our staff know about it those that are subscribing to that there's a button on there that any individual can sign up to get job alerts for so if i'm a prospective teacher for example and i'm really interested in selling i can sign up to get job alerts and it will actually send me a message as soon as we post a position and then as our certified positions are also posted on places like handshake school spring and via college and university channels handshake is i'd say relatively new certainly in the last three to five years it was interesting because i think it's where i first had experience with it was from the colleges and universities
027on the west side of the state that we're doing some virtual work but it's become more and more prevalent here on the in the southeast corner of the state as well i mentioned the other social media websites and then the last piece and this is particularly effective with our hourly positions positive word of mouth is absolutely golden to us again i cannot emphasize that enough employees walking around saying that this is a great place to work is far far more effective than anything that we could ever post on social media or anything that that we could put in a job posting our interview processes very similar to the recruitment processes are somewhat position specific we do focus on identifying the essential skills and abilities required of the position and the questions that we utilize during
028that process are focused on a combination of experiential and behavioral topics you know we can ask people what they think about topics and and that does come out from time to time but more often we try to ask questions to say how do you handle this how have you done this please give us an example of that we want to know how they've taken what their philosophy as a potential employee is and how they've actually executed that in their work experience and for those that are younger right out of college may have student teaching experience that we certainly allow them to to articulate what those experiences have been as well all of our processes start at the at the building or department level and then eventually percolate up toward central office where we we interview
029all of our candidates regardless of position and so the folks that are getting hired by the district have had an opportunity to interview with one or in many cases most of us all the time in terms of selection the finalists that are identified at the building or department level are then forwarded to central administration as i said we go ahead and we make selections at that point as you have articulated as a board of education you hire one employee every every how often hopefully not for a long time about 10 years i heard was what we're looking for out of this but um you hire one employee um and then and then dr lotch is the person that makes the final decisions on all of the other employment decisions that we have and that's how
030we've handled that i truly believe and i think that that our instructional design team supports this as well that the ongoing support mentoring and training that we provide to our employees is the most essential part of this process it is really really rare that we find a candidate that is just an absolute home run and meets every bullet point that we had listed in our job posting or in our our desired list of qualities more often than not you have people that may have the qualities that you're looking for but without the experience and so that ability to provide mentorship and training to people is really really important as i said the goal is to end with a really productive employee it doesn't stop for us when that employee is hired we have mentoring programs
031that exist for all classifications of employees and it starts with a new employee orientation day we have a new teacher cohort every year and then we do these these group meetings with people that have been going on for a long time the the low i mean my first year here uh dr lotch and i we our new teacher cohort that year was two people uh i can tell you there was a school psychologist and a strings teacher an orchestra teacher um and in our highest number we've had as many as 35 in that new teacher cohort and and i think our folks have really given us great feedback on how to make that more meaningful to them and so that's that's really our process in a nutshell from kind of start to finish and i
032would certainly be happy to answer any questions that you might have yes i know you're prepared for this um so um i believe i brought this up last year with the the dei plan that was released from 2020 to 2023 one of the objectives is recruitment hiring development and retention um and so um i know there's like specific uh outcomes and goals with that um so i'm just curious what kind of things have you worked on or that that you will be working on in hr sure um beginning with kind of that recruitment and the job posting component it's actually kind of interesting because she's on the board of education now but one of the first people that i reached out to when that process began after getting that feedback from the dei committee was
033candace jones and in her role as a professional we asked her to take a look at the language that was on our website as well as the language that was in our job postings and she provided a lot of very meaningful suggestions and i can tell you from specific experience that candidates have expressed that that language was the reason they did apply um and so that's been important i think if you look at some of the hires that we've had in the last year or so particularly the administrative level you can see that the fruits of some of that labor have begun to to really take root i think the part that i'm most encouraged of or the most excited about long term and and this goes beyond dei but into just the more general
034part of it there's in in and i don't want to sound like negative nelly here but there's an educator shortage that's here i i don't wanna say it's coming it's here it just hasn't affected us yet but there is an educator shortage that exists in this country today and and what i'm most excited about and it will help us with the dei work but it will also help us in all other facets of the district is this kind of grow your own concept we talk to our best and brightest students all the time and it was mentioned earlier about going to ivy league schools and being engineers and being doctors none of our teachers are walking around talking to our students about being teachers and and we need to do a better job of that
035that is the lively that's the lifeblood that will be the thing that will help my grandchildren have the same kind of experience that my students did or my children did making sure that we have great educators standing in front of them thank you yes just to echo um what uh secretary estep was saying um you mentioned uh some of the ways that you're reaching out to to individuals and advertising that we have positions open um i'm curious i guess my one of my first questions i have a couple but is are there any any specific bipac or um lbgtqia plus uh organizations that you are reaching out to there are not at this point i'm certainly open to doing that and and would be you know if anybody has suggestions uh that's again how we
036got a lot of this information came from candace um but i'm not right now i think one of the things that really um changed the whole concept of recruiting has been coveted i mean no different than it changed our school year last year there were no in-person job fairs last year there was no ability to go out and talk to people and whatnot but but if you have any suggestions on that i would certainly be happy to do that i think one one thing just off the top of my head would be potentially reaching out to um some of the historically uh black universities would be i mean if you're advertising with universities that would be a great great place to start at least we talked about that extensively during that process with the dei
037committee and again we'll do that um one of the dynamics and i know you're in education so you know this people don't tend to relocate great distances to teach because it's just not financially lucrative enough to do so so the bulk of our teachers come from southeast michigan i think that that when when people look at the recruitment efforts of a k-12 institution and compare them to maybe what what might occur in a fortune 500 company we don't i literally i can tell you my recruitment budget is zero um and so the concept of doing that we're certainly open to doing that um but i think when we talked about it the the discussion was more trying to find folks with diverse experiences as well yeah absolutely i think too we have a number of
038um employers in the area that have um you know families that they're that um are from diverse backgrounds and experiences and so we may be even partnering with like toyota for example they're they're right in our in our backyard um another question that i had um that i often get um is around uh graduate versus undergraduate and that um there seems to have been like an unwritten rule that we will only hire undergrads or um there have been some windows of time that potentially graduates have been you know people with master's or higher so can you speak to that just a little bit very candidly i will tell you that there have been years it's not been an unwritten rule it's been overtly stated that we do not have the budget to hire anybody that
039it would be north of ba3 for example without going into this long tangent upon school finance and kind of how school budgets are structured the whole concept of salary schedules with steps it's designed that when somebody resigns at the top they get replaced with somebody that's at the lower end if everybody's at the top the need for a scale is no longer there and from a budget standpoint you really can't sustain that but we have done that i'll be very very candid with you and we've been over in the years that we've done that what i tell people now is that we make market driven decisions and and the market dictates the decisions that we make and so there are some positions where the folks that are applying are sparse and it's very difficult for
040us to find quality candidates in those situations we do have to pay up and i can tell you that the highest we've paid since i've been here we we hired somebody at the second on the second master scale at step seven um and we we have done that um some of the specialists the psychologists and social workers you have to have a master's so we don't have any wiggle room with that um on the opposite end of the spectrum right now and this is all subject to change and this goes back to the market-driven decision component right now when we hire generally the k-6 elementary folks we'll have 300 applicants and we know we can find quality people without we do not compromise our quality and i want to make sure people understand that but
041we do make market driven decisions with regard to those kinds of fires that's a good question so then the last thing that i'll say is just to echo what you said about word of mouth and the professional development pieces those two pieces that you spoke to um the the i i think having been somebody who worked here for a number of years uh that the culture of professional development that exists in this district and i think in large part to the work that dr lach has done but also that the union has negotiated for that stipend that helps to provide access to funds for professional development if someone had to say what sets apart your experiences as an educator that is one thing that i will say that is unprecedented in other areas and really
042um i think is the source of the um excellent education that our that our students receive that ongoing culture and appreciation for professional development and an un and an ever-changing educational society and and what i and and i guess just to wrap that up is every time we had um teachers visit us or every time we visited um some place for a professional development people would ask us if we were hiring so um so well done to the to this to the district and to um to the uh ambassadors i guess sure for those that may not know exactly what trustee miller's talking about in our teacher contract we have what's referred to as teacher improvement money and so each of our certified staff members has seven hundred dollars per year of the contract to
043spend on professional development and that's really unusual in the in the k-12 environment um and and even in our most difficult budget times we have never wavered on our on our support for having professional development for our staff it's a key component we get we get asked all the time what's the secret sauce in slain and i don't know if there's one specific answer but that's one of the ingredients i'll say as a trustee that's one thing that i uh i wouldn't compromise on [Laughter] yeah i would agree with that like we have engaged staff members and and i would agree that also i've been at professional development you know things as a teacher and i've talked to individuals from celine who've said how that provided them the opportunity to do some things they otherwise
044just couldn't have done and of course they make us jealous too right but um so i have a couple questions one is a soapbox moment for you uh how do we look for 2122. and i guess the soapbox moment is is there anything specific that we should be like hey we're targeting this or that so from a certified standpoint we have some interviews this friday and we do have some holes at the k-6 level as far as general ed classroom teachers we have good candidates more than we have holes and so i'm confident we'll be able to to identify some candidates that can fill those holes as of today on july 13th my single biggest concern is on the operational side we have as of today 10 food service vacancies probably 10 para educator vacancies
045probably five bus driver vacancies um probably five custodial vacancies and so those things are really important to us being able to deliver none of the stuff in the classroom happens without those things and uh it's it's really really important that we get those filled so we do have a job fair scheduled for next wednesday um that job fair will be structured a little differently than what our normal process looks like people will have the ability to come in and have one-on-one meetings with the directors or supervisors of those departments and uh and and if you know all the stars align and the the directors are happy we'll be able to extend job offers that day to some of those people um we did it early enough in the summer that if it doesn't work we'll
046do another one in august so that's where my concern lies right now is on that operational side yes correct thank you kurt uh continuing with the idea of how much we spend on professional development which is great we really do invest in our our educators um and then looking at what you showed our certified six-year retention rate of about 74 how does that compare with the peers because every good teacher that we've invested a lot in that we lose that's money it's not just the loss of that teacher but it's lost of a lot of money we've invested in them no questions how does that compare to it's a little higher than our peer districts and and i think would be higher yet were it not for our location um if you look at our
047marketing materials if you look at our job postings website you know we do talk about where we're located this is a very desirable spot being as close to two major universities as we are is a real draw um by the same token i can tell you of that that number of folks that have left i can tell you at least five of them are spouses of people who went to med school and when they finished their the spouse moved on and they moved with and so we didn't lose those people because the job or the district weren't desirable we lost them because the spouse had moved on and so our location is a little bit of a double-edged sword from that standpoint the other part that happens uh in trustee miller would be an example
048of this when folks go through that professional development other opportunities open up for them and i think that that's just kind of part it's happened at the administrative level too um you know uh high school principals now superintendent our middle school principal's now superintendent our high school principal two before that as a superintendent so um that's that's we're kind of like the miami of ohio of of uh of the uh k-12 setting sorry that's an athletic reference i apologize the cradle of coaches that's that's not a bad place to be i i could yeah um i do have one quick question were you finished trustee valet um as you know about 250 students a year go through my program and and end up looking for jobs as first year teachers so back to mentorship and
049training do you do anything special here in that induction year for brand new fresh and you know who they are fresh teachers no experience before could you just talk a little bit about anything special that happens with them there's it's multifaceted it starts with the new employee orientation and that starts that day begins and it's really evolved over the last 10 years but it starts with all new employees not just certified staff but all new employees coming together to basically learn a little bit about the district and about the community these are community schools and the community is an important part of what we do so we we help them understand that a little bit we then in the afternoon do separate certified staff from our classified staff and the certified staff right then begins
050meeting with our instructional design team and they start talking about pedagogy and how they can become better teachers how they can be more effective in our environment um you know we we tell people right up front when we're interviewing this is the kind of community you're going to get emails from parents at 10 o'clock at night and the parent expects that you're going to answer them at 10 o'clock at night and that we embrace that it is who we are um and and uh this is the kind of community that we want to want to be successful in um but that new employee orientation then kind of separates on the end of that day that whole cohort of new certified staff continues to work with the instructional designers multiple times throughout the year they each
051get an individual mentor who may or may not be in the grade level or department we really are pretty selective about the people that we allow to be mentors to our new teachers and that's one on one and that's where it really differentiates between what your needs are versus maybe what trustee millers are she's a veteran teacher that's new to the district her needs might be very very different than somebody that's a first year teacher right out of college and then we kind of circle back at the end of the year dr lotch myself he may have a different group he's got a different role now but we would circle back at the end of the year and bring them back together as a group and get additional feedback and those who need a mentor
052for a second year are provided that as well the other thing that we do when i go back to that second slide where we talk about transitions if people are involuntarily transferred which happens very very rarely here but if people are involuntarily transferred we provide them a mentor when they're in that new grade level or new curricular area as well i appreciate that i also feel quite strongly for those teachers who started this year no question and what a joy i'm sure they're really looking forward to seeing those faces seeing their students in three dimensions right right well thank you very much anything any other questions oh go ahead um so with this document pulled up it's perfect because i had a question about the 2020 2021 data if that's something that you'll be sharing
053with us soon or in terms of the the uh retention and whatnot yeah yeah this information absolutely what i've typically done is done another report in the fall that's a little bit more summative in nature and uh we did a whole hr annual report a couple years ago that we presented and i intend to do that again this year it was a little more difficult last year but yeah um and then um i don't know if steve was gonna mention this but um probably i don't know um so i just wanted to to um i guess point out that um in the agenda just i mean this is just for i guess our constituents to understand um with our board packet we receive and um file human resource reports that um kurt um and his
054team uh presents to us um about monthly or every every board meeting okay cool um and so um that's good information um as far as uh who's retired or left us um and then new hires as well um so yeah that's helpful information for the board and i don't think we typically ask ask detailed questions during meetings but just knowing that we approve that through that process bad i do want to say that when scott and i first came in scott as superintendent and myself as assistant superintendent of instruction we didn't have a human resource structure we didn't have an assistant superintendent of human resources and we really needed one scott and i kind of muddled through it for the first couple years and we did the best we we could with it but didn't
055do as good a job as we certainly could have and bringing kurt in we now have processes and procedures developed a structure around it and it continues to get better each year because of the way in which we are trying to improve and look at new aspects of hiring and always improving the process and that's a credit to kurt and his team so just want to thank you for that thank you very much we'll move on to the um action items uh there are a few recommended motions uh the first to uh i'd like to uh encourage a motion to appoint throne a law firm pc of lansing michigan and collins and blah pc as legal counsel for the school district for the 2021-2022 school year in addition the district is authorized to utilize other
056law firms pending areas of expertise do i have so moved dennis and uh trustee miller all in favor oh any discussion first of all from yes please so we've um we've had two law firms that we've used for quite some time and they do serve different purposes we often use troon for special education legal issues with um discussion around there and then collins and blaha sometimes with negotiations and policy and so they do serve different purposes and that's been really advantageous for the district to be able to retain both council please question so um i don't think we have in the past but here as well um i guess uh information and probably because it's legal probably less information available to the public about um like do we have a contract with them how does
057that work when we appoint yeah i would uh refer more to kurt on how we set this up so you can talk a little bit about that all right thank you we just talked about whether we're going to be back at the table or not for this um we generally don't execute contracts we do have agreements in place but there's no fees associated with we get paid we we build by the hour um for the services that we require or that we receive or we request i'm sorry and to steve's point we're pretty selective in terms of which firm we use for what work um and have really good relationships with them but um they're more i would refer to them as as agreements than contracts are there any other questions well then in favor
058of this motion say aye opposed say no and abstentions no hearing none uh unanimous approval the next is a recommended motion to name the following banks or depositories for the various funds of selenary schools in fiscal year 21 22. bank of america comerica bank michigan liquid asset fund and the old national bank they miss bank of van over bank of ann arbor i'll make it i will make that motion bg brad kirby trustee derby second word and dennis blanty second any discussions anything from assistant superintendent obviously no pretty pro forma at this point so all in favor aye opposed hearing none we'll call that accepted the next one is a recommended motion i'm looking for a motion to move to authorize stephen lodge superintendent as the primary signer on all checks written by the district
059with miranda ously assistant superintendent of finance as alternate on all accounts listed and those are the following bank of ann arbor 2021 bond checking count comerica katherine steiner-burr scholarship michigan liquid asset fund the 2021 bond investment account old national bank the general fund payroll community education recreation cares food service student activity student activity the edge flex benefits maestro 2016 bns debt service 2018 bns debt service 2021 bns number three debt service uh 2018 refunding debt service sinking fund paul handy scholarship tim corrally memorial fund horticultural award jeremy tarlia scholarship fund randy hoffman fund rachel townsend fund and the dora may mayor memorial scholarship do we have anyone to make that motion i'll make that motion support and secretary e-step was it all in favor oh any discussion yes just speak on this from the standpoint
060of when you look at the number of line items here and within each of these like the general fund you're looking at hundreds of line items supporting that you can see that this is very complicated in terms of you know moving finances around and miranda and her team have really come in and done a terrific job over these last several years in really bringing more processes procedures i mentioned it about curt and the hr team miranda's team doing the same thing where we're really developing better processes on dealing with hundreds of different accounts on a daily basis and so it is it's very complicated she her team have done a great job thank you is there any further discussion questions great well then all in favor please say aye aye opposed no then all in
061favor uh next there's a recommended motion on the floor to authorize stephen lodge superintendent and miranda owsley assistant superintendent of finance as signatories on transfers of investment monies uh trustee gerby and trustee valente thank you anything to say dr latch just who signs off on everything who signs off on all this stuff yeah right well hearing no further discussion uh all in favor say aye aye aye opposed nay and then all in favor then thank you finally a recommended motion a move to participate in the state of michigan school loan revolving fund as submitted by assistant superintendent owsley dennis valenti support supported by jenny miller assistant superintendent owsley what can you tell us about this item so this is largely a once a year we have to continue to put it in here just by
062our own legal um requirements and basically it's part of our debt payment and part parts to how our structure for our bonds are structured across multiple debt pieces so we have our debt funds but then we also utilize this part of the state of michigan lots of schools participate in is just how our debt funds are established and so this is our first year of repayment in general when we borrow from that school loan i kind of think of it as a line of credit on our debt when our monies that we take in from our tax um taxable value does not meet the payment schedules of all our different debts together then we borrow from that and then once we are at a point when our levy brings up enough money to cover our
063debt then we start paying that back off first and so it's just part of that schedule as as time progresses so it's once a year saying we continue to participate as we have to any questions for assistant superintendent osley well hearing that then i think we'll put this to a vote all in favor say aye aye aye opposed nay and appears to have passed um next we have administration or board updates and i will ask uh the is there is your usual system do the board do you go first or shall we let our board members go first let's let the board members go first if anyone has anything to add or say trustee kirby all right i have one quick item uh this year there's the details are still being finalized but uh this
064year i'm hearing about stuff the bus coming in in august and uh i myself am gonna put a a box outside i think one of my my topics or my my uh object is dry erasers and eraser dry erase markers and erasers but uh stuff the bus is going to be coming i think it's og it's in august and they're going to be rolling out with social media and those types of things but i just kind of wanted to put it on the forefront of people's minds that uh a month from now we're going to be doing that we're going to be getting roaring and ready to go with school and all that kind of thing and so stuff the bus be on the lookout thank you very much anything from you uh trustee valenti
065uh the only thing i had is um i listened in on a masb website uh on the budget which uh i think the the biggest takeaway for me is um how long will these uh be sustainable as we see some significant increases in our pupil funding and some additional funding but are they sustainable that's that's the biggest thing i worry about is and i keep looking at that and hopefully yes i mean that's all we you know some of it we can plan on hopefully we are able to hold on to that per pupil funding but it's a pretty significant increase can we sustain it there are other federal dollars that we're we're not going to be able to sustain it we're not going to get that year after year so but things are looking
066good i was listening into that views from capitol hill as well and that's uh it was exciting um we'll be getting a full reporting right from the finance committee soon on on the whatever windfall we may get in this district especially anything to add yes um so i don't think there's been too many committee meetings that we've had over the past couple of weeks i know there's a couple of scheduled um i just wanted to give a reminder about the policy committee meeting which is july 27th here at 5 p.m and there's a request has been put in to have an opportunity to talk about the transgender student policy in more detail hopefully having you know most of that policy drafted we can you know give you context before reviewing and educating on that before
067our first reading so that request has been put in so we'll see thank you trustee miller so just as we encouraged um the teachers in celine to take a break this summer i've also been kind of taking a little bit of a break um uh i guess professionally typically in the summer i'm i'm working and doing professional development the whole summer but this week i am participating in the institute for equity um let me see the institute for racial equity and literacy it's a virtual institute and one of the um one of the organizers is um author sonia cherry paul so i've been learning a lot and um and have some resources that i can share um with our dei team so that's been really exciting and then betty just signed me up for a
068cba class so i'm going to be working on getting through my 100 levels for those of you who don't know cba are courses that are set up through the michigan association for school boards um and each course has a specific um area and the the course that i'm taking next is policy this will be my fifth one since elected in in january so um the nice thing is that um you know some of the there are there have been some good things that have come out of covid so the nice thing that has come out of covid with some of these cba 100s is that they are now done in modules um you have the option to take them virtually or or in person and so i'll be completing my second online module so i
069can complete that at my own pace so um they now they started with just one finance and i did that one and now moving into policy and um i told betty i'll be coming back for more but i'm going to take off one at a time instead of signing up for a bulk i don't want to take off more than i can chew so um so those are a few things that i'm doing that i think will help support my role as a trustee fantastic i'll just wrap up before i give it over to superintendent lotch i was zack back there i spent yesterday afternoon with the liberty club floyd that's right i was flying flying my drone and then we had a guest uh uh superintendent lodge uh popped in as well and i
070love the liberty club and the young adult program we have here and it was nice to see you in your classroom environment zac great anyway so and that they're always looking for guest speakers too so anyone who's interested in has something to share uh jackie macey is a teacher reach out to her all right uh superintendent lodge oh thank you so i do have a number of updates tonight uh we're going to start with uh critical race theory i've been getting a lot of questions about that from community members and we're seeing it in in the news and the media and i did want to address it that critical race theory isn't some sort of separate curriculum that we teach in the slang area schools we're not teaching critical race theory in saline what we
071are doing is focusing on diversity equity and inclusion and culturally responsive teaching so that all our students feel part of our schools and our curriculum reading books from different perspectives and different diverse authors points of view and listening to our students and families so that they know that their voices are heard i also do want to provide a return to fall update that we are working on our plan to spell out exactly what it will look like when we return to school this fall beginning on august 30th what do we know right now we're planning on five days a week of in-person instruction for the vast majority of our students we are gathering survey information for the 400 plus elementary age students ages under those under 12 who ended the year in remote instruction in
072all virtual to find out who is interested in starting the year with a virtual option until a vaccine is available what are we doing next we're meeting with county superintendents on two different occasions in july to discuss protocols and safety procedures related to starting school in the fall meeting with the washington county health department near the end of july to review quarantining data from this past year and to get guidance on the beginning of this upcoming school year having ongoing discussions with district nurse karen hervey to determine the best possible options for beginning the school year current optimism is centered around our successful spring school operations in spite of moving through the pandemic with high covet transmission in washington county further we currently have a very low covid transmission rate in washtenaw county current concerns
073center around bringing back a lot of students in the fall include increasing the density of students in our buildings not being able to provide a lot of social distancing and not having many of our programs occurring outside like they are in the summer further we know that our under 12 population of students have not had the opportunity to be vaccinated yet for those who want to be vaccinated and are medically able to be vaccinated we are also watching the delta variant at the august 10th board of education meeting we will have a more detailed plan as to how we will start the next school year in relation to covid protocols learning plan and so forth i also wanted to announce about our curriculum and instruction department redesign at the last board of education meeting i
074announced that we were redesigning the curriculum and instruction department in order to expand the instructional team to best develop and implement systems of support to help teachers and students successfully fulfill the district's vision the staffing redesign piece is now complete and i'd like to announce what it looks like the ses ses teaching and learning team consists of myself as superintendent and instructional leader kara davis the teaching and learning team lead shannon washington our cultural culturally responsive consultant kelly woodman an instructional designer and heritage media center specialist jen nelson an instructional designer and literacy coach molly garcia our director of student services monica ellis our assistant director of student services katie o'keefe our el teacher and el coordinator caroline stout our mts district coordinator cherie soon and our district liaison for intensifying instruction rob schmidt our
075technology liaison for curriculum and instruction meg phillips with project lead the way support and it's my strong belief that the reorganization of the curriculum and instruction department will provide us with a better opportunity to build on the momentum that we have been gaining and further accelerate culturally responsive instruction it's also important to note that the teaching and learning team includes many different positions instructional design intervention special education el services and so on and this is because we want to better serve the whole child we don't look at our systems of support in silos we are one complex teaching and learning team that works together to best support our students and i want to end tonight with a positive note on some great accomplishments of our students in skills usa we had a great showing from
076our southwest washington our consortium students we represented michigan well with six of our competitors finishing the top eight in the nation in their respective competitions carter harris is our first national champion in technical drafting ben wilde had our strongest finish in architectural drafting placing seventh in the nation the team of jack nowicki parker thomas and thomas walsh completed an automotive automated manufacturing technology and finished seventh as well caleb rogers of lincoln finished eighth in welding overall and instructors steve vasiloff and paul mccullough did a tremendous job in guiding all these outstanding students throughout the course of this school year thank you well thank you very much we've reached the consent agenda the following items are offered as part of the consent agenda the motion noted will allow for the authorization of all of these listed
077items without discussion unless a member of the board requests that any or all be considered individually so the motion on the floor oh we have some more good is to um authorize the following items as part of the consent agenda a the approval of the board of education regular meeting minutes of june 22nd 2021 the approval of the board of education budget hearing minutes of june 2021 see the approval of payment of the general fund accounts payable of july 13th in the amount of three million two hundred three thousand four hundred eighty six dollars and twenty three cents d the approval of payment of the bond series three account payable as or of july 13th in the amount of eighty one thousand nine hundred and eighteen dollars and seven cents and finally to receive and
078file the human resources report do i have some trustee valenti are you moving i was doing it with your eyes with your mind i guess i'll support secretary esteban without discussion so all in favor say aye aye opposed then it is passed thank you uh finally items on the next agenda will be the continue to learn plan for the 2021-22 school year and uh finally we have a public comment uh members of the public may address the school board briefly for up to three minutes uh or as a request to be scheduled on the agenda of a future meeting and i have a few oh they're all stacked up here i can call you up or you can uh scramble to the front now that wouldn't work very well it uh sarah daniels to come
079forward please thanks um secretary estef will will time your three minutes and hold up the red card or the yellow card when you have 30 seconds left on the red card when she'd like you we can't cut your mic and we won't do that but you know i'm here today as a resident of centennial park to address the walk zones established in august 2020 as the district responded to covet 19 and that are slated to continue next year many of the concerns i'm going to raise are not unique to my neighborhood but i can only speak from my experience in that of my neighbors in an unscientific poll of residents of centennial park and farms there are at least 52 school-aged kids affected by the walk zones this was only with 25 families responding to
080a survey sent out on facebook we know there are far more school-aged children in the neighborhood more than half of the families are very concerned about the safety of their children and about their ability to get their children to and from school in a timely manner each day if our neighborhood is considered a walk zone the establishment of the walk zones creates significant safety issues quotes from my neighbors include quote weather conditions in michigan make walking very difficult for k through third graders i cannot expect my five and nine year old to walk 20 minutes in below freezing temperatures unattended without crossing guards through a neighborhood that has parents cutting through it to get their kids to school on time it is ridiculous to expect a 6th grader to walk in the dark at 7
08115 in the morning in the winter to the high school to pick up their bus with so many high schoolers zipping through our neighborhood this goes against all of the safety training we have tried to teach our children in the words of my own son who could not be here tonight for the middle schoolers we have to get to and from the high school to get on and off our bus on cold dark winter mornings i either have to cross two large roads or i have to walk across a cold windy field not only that there are other dangers such as coyotes teenage drivers and the fact that there are no adults to help us if our personal safety is at risk end quote the second issue is the distance and burden placed on the
082kids a mile and a half is a far distance and kids are expected to carry a lot of stuff with them to school making their burden even heavier quote the amount of time it takes an adult to walk a mile and a half is not at all the amount of time it takes a pre-k or kindergarten student to walk a mile and a half a mile a mile and a half is a long way walk prior to starting the school day both for kids and for parents pushing strollers with younger siblings in the rain or on unshoveled winter sidewalks i would not ask my kids to walk a mile to and from school each day in michigan weather with a heavy book bag a laptop and an instrument it's extremely stressful and lonely for fourth
083and fifth graders to have to walk up to harvest and catch a bus if they walk too slowly they'd be stranded and then what we were given the clear impression by the transportation office that this was a temporary hardship due to the pandemic that the bus service would return in some fashion in the future recent responses by the superintendent and the director of transportation make it clear that this decision was made unilaterally without input from constituents under the guise of the pandemic and now is planned to continue for future years as my neighbor stated quote we understood the reasoning during the pandemic for the lack of busing to our neighborhood at that time but now feel that a permanent switch to find your own way to school which is what we're being told is not
084at all what any of us signed up for this decision affects far too many families who have been decided without any communication to and input from these families beforehand the lack of communication from the district and the lack of input sought from the families who'd be most affected by this change is disappointing to say the least we are asking for your help with addressing this issue and restoring bus service to allow our kids to access schools safely and on time each day instead of just solving the myriad issues created by these walk zones that do not need to be developed in the first place thank you thank you very much hello i'm another resident of the centennial farms and park neighborhood and i'm a parent that has been in the saline area schools for about
085two years i have a child in middle school and heritage i first want to say thank you so much for all you have done during this very challenging year and all the work you have done to bring our children and have them come in person as as much as possible and i do understand all the hiring difficulties that you're facing especially with the bus drivers and all the vacancies that are difficult to fill but i do also have concern that this emergency measures the emergency bus routes that were created during the pandemic are now being made permanent without any community input we are certainly centennial farms and park is uh within um the walk distance to saline high school but certainly my middle schooler and heritage student is not within the walk zone for those
086schools so currently they're going to have to walk to either harvest our heritage to catch a bus to then go to their respective schools and doing something simple like moving the bus stop half a mile to the very edge of our neighborhood would make it so much easier for all the parents in that neighborhood so that we could as a community as neighbors make sure our children get onto the bus and get to where they need to go also we have a recurring problem where we have teenage drivers coming to saline high school we often have people going way too fast throughout the neighborhood and just knowing that our children are having to walk a mile you know outside the neighborhood into the heart of where all these high schoolers are driving is very disconcerting
087for us as parents so i just came here to speak because i really hope the school board will invite specific suggestions from parents before making all these bus routes permanent thank you thank you very much erica johnson carter i'm just going to echo what kami and sarah had talked about obviously safety for these walk zones are our top priority but i do want to bring up a couple other things um first thanks for for hearing us about this because obviously the safety and well-being of our students is is top priority i'd first like to touch on the lack of communication from the district the walk zone was presented as a coveted precaution which we all embraced but as we dug into it it appeared that it was a long-term plan to cut busing for many
088students there was no discussion or input from families affected by these walk zones as a district that prides itself in communication and collaboration it seems that the results from stopping buses in some arbitrary neighborhoods was quite myopic to provide clarity i want to define a little bit about these walk zones we embraced it during the end pandemic it was a different year for everyone we live about a mile from harvest so my first grader we would either walk or transport him to harvest twice a day what we didn't understand was that my fourth grader had to get to heritage four miles away but that meant either transporting her to harvest or heritage it may seem simple but fourth grade and first grade start at the exact same time so our other option was to drop
089them off at their individual schools so i can't be in the same place at once nor can i be at my job when i need to be working starting at 8 am several of their neighbors have echoed similar thoughts about the strain and working parents and i just wanted to share a few of these quotes families have coordinated simultaneous pickup and drop ops for multiple schools for multiple children which impossible for one parent to do or have to rely on neighbors to ensure kids are picked up and dropped off on time which has been a logistical nightmare most parents are returning to their offices in the next few months which will make this untenable my middle schooler is old enough and mature enough to be home alone but due to the lack of busing i
090had to leave work 75 minutes early each day to get my elementary school kids from harvest as a physician i would have been able to see three more patients every school day if we had had bus service as we did in previous years impact on already strained families is significant busing eases the burden of families who have had children in different buildings this year we have four kids in four different buildings and two working parents another neighbor wrote car seat requirements make it difficult for parents to coordinate a replacement solution not to mention the equity issues that families who predominantly speak non-english language at home would have been trying to coordinate with their neighbors a final concern i'd like to bring up is to see if the district has adequate space and personnel to handle
091the influx of before and after care that this busing situation could create prior to covid aftercare had a wait list at harvest what is the plan to allow these families to have alternative if there are no busing options we will need to find these alternatives with aftercare or something else in the past we've been able to hire a high school student to pick up the kids from the bus stop and watch them after school until we get home but no busing would require parents to find suitable drivers to transport their children or rely on aftercare i know you all know the saline area schools 4cs are communication collaboration creativity and critical thinking i'm here asking the board and the administration to utilize these skills that we teach our students all the time we need alternative
092solutions for kids to get to school via buses on time safely while supporting the families in this community and not adding extra burdens i challenged the transportation department to reimagine these bus routes in 2019 we had four buses that went through our neighborhood with five bus stops we are not asking for those stops one bus stop as cami said half mile closer so that we could ensure the safety of these kids thank you so much for your time thank you very much uh tim carter i think you get the point i don't need to kill kill this but what i do want to reiterate is some of the comments that were mentioned tonight around weather and the impact that you're moving forward with and one of the things is right now we can do activities
093outside for students under 12 that cannot be vaccinated now and one of the comments that was made was evaluating how they do that in school well recognizing that as walking zones does impact the safety of the children due to winter we obviously have policies around cold temperatures and when school will be canceled outdoor activities being canceled due to weather those impacts play a role in getting the students and all elementary schools to gain access for the under 12 year old students that cannot be vaccinated we realize that their requirements are to have transportation within one and a half miles if you look at several of the zones around all of the elementary schools some of the neighborhoods are arbitrarily drawn and it is not within that one and a half mile zone so based on
094that is we are led to believe that it's based on safety of students crossing such as michigan avenue things like that but yet when we talk about driving students driving to high school we all know about the safety profiles with students driving to high school that's one of the things we're asking you to evaluate for the safety of our children and your students so our final request is this is could it be added we're doing an evaluation of who is coming out of virtual and wanting to attend what we found ironic around this is that the cancellation and a communication back to us was that the bus routes were already cancelled due to needs for the future and it was poorly ran you heard the example of five buses running through the neighborhood it's not
095that efficient we recognize that however what we're asking for is to establish what is the demand for buses before we decide to cancel the bus routes we haven't gotten that information but yet a decision was already made and communicated to us so for our students we're asking you to gain that information add it to the agenda for august provide an update and look at the safety of our students thank you thank you very much and i don't believe there are other comments this evening so i want to thank everyone the public who did speak this evening the the next meeting of the board of education will be held august 10th 2021 6 30 in this room and i'd like to uh i encourage any motion to adjourn tonight's meeting at 8 45 7 45 i'll
096do it i'll support trustee gerby and um and uh trustee miller i wonder if we need a discussion on this probably not all in favor say aye aye aye no okay i'm so moved so uh thank you very much for everyone who came tonight i appreciate that thank you so much oh thank you sir