001through august so it's it's kind of one of those things where we have this unique setting that sets us up we must pass a budget by june 30th but yet our revenues aren't even known and aren't even passed by the state yet so it's kind of this twofold process and i utilize the terminology of we use a placeholder kind of we wouldn't want to execute any major decisions yet into knowing what that's kind of coming in as intermediate sources is largely our isd local act 18 funds so that's collected on your tax bill goes to the county they run certain programs and also divvy it up between all the different schools local is our taxes and federal and a lot of grant funded things so ida special ed and a lot of the titles one
002two and three um for the next slide um so one of the things i like to just remind people and dispel kind of rumors kind of thing our local tax dollars do not change our general fund revenues and so if you look to this next example so the the state basically sets what we're going to get in our general fund for revenues on a per pupil basis so this example is our last year this current year ending eight thousand one hundred thirty three dollars per pupil times uh ft gives us approximately 42 million just as an example so then what happens next is they uh report our taxable um all seven other tax agencies kind of report that to the state and then in that case they assume that we will be getting that 18
003mills calculated from that so if you go to the next piece it kind of shows you the state decides that they don't have to pay that money that they just are going to chip in that much so whether or not we collect that taxes it makes no difference it just is a sliding scale of what the state will chip in so i'm going to hit next so it kind of shows you that the bar still is where the bar is set for the state how much we collect on our taxable value doesn't affect that so it's very different from some of our other funds that are specifically generated by our local tax dollars so go ahead keep going so we kind of break down usually only so one years of final actuals but this is
004a really unique budgeting year because in the green you'll see this is the year we just ended right or ending right now and this year there's obviously lots of different skewed um theories because of covid and if you really roll back to 1920 we still had a three month kind of covet end of the year as well so i really it was a very interesting look and needing to really roll back a whole additional year to sometimes get some good data on what ways we're trending and what things are actuals and then at some points when i got to those numbers they also didn't make sense anymore because we've pivoted from then our staff has changed and things like that so it was a really unique time it was a lot more time spent on
005rolling back and forward kind of to kind of play out how kovid might have affected that particular thing in the budget as i looked through there so and like i said in the showed that example of the local sources and state sources you'll see even in the two yellow years as the state sources go down our state our local sources sorry went up our state sources went down and that's a lot of going to show that the state has to chip in less if we collect more in taxpayer dollars so if we see increases locally then they just pay in less but that's kind of that sliding scale go ahead to the next slide actually one more thing to mention on the revenue side of things sorry you know is that in our next 21
00622 school year in with student count we were held kind of like harmless i would say and this year they they did not use our current year numbers as highly as they normally do they did a super blend and so we really were back dated on we did lose students but we didn't see the funding dip necessarily from those loss of students as we would in a normal year and so that ruling forward though in all three of the legislation's um budgets they have it rolling back to a 90 10 formula so we will then see some of those that lost the students go ahead to revenue thank you and with that being said is also we you know we tracked very heavily our normal trends for student count and then we also surveyed students
007that left our district during covet and things like that to try to get the best estimates that we could but we're just not seeing the same trends as we did before and we don't know at what point um do those same trends maybe come back do they is this a new normal it's it's kind of a little bit more of a varied year for us in terms of looking ahead to our student count okay go ahead and next slide um with this this is one way that we pull apart expenditures and so it's by a kind of function code and so really it shows the district is pretty pretty lean in our other operations and we funnel a lot of our dollars to the classroom so in our general fund um we've gotten that luxury
008to do so because we do have some of those other funds taking advantage of a sinking fund our bond funds to kind of do some other work throughout the district we try to push them much back to the instructional programs as we can let's go to the next slide this is the same data just broken down in a different way so this is kind of by an object code in our accounting the salary in benefits if you look at that combined blue and yellow chunks is 88 percent of our general fund budget is really made up by salaries and benefits and so you see it kind of gives a different look at how where those dollars are going in our general fund and exactly the same theory we don't pay any salaries out of our
009sinking voter bonds they're not allowable in those categories let's go on the next slide so in general we see lots of different things along here and i would say in the same way that the revenues we took and took our kind of a a worst case and a conservative approach on our revenues we also did the same in reverse on the expenditure side it was really hard in some of these things we're going back to pre-pandemic things and some things we walked away from in that when we first last year were sitting and not really sure how the budget was going to play out there was a lot of talk of cutting things on the state side and that we were going to have to deal with things so we pivoted very quickly to to
010re-evaluate our different contracts or different purchase services that we had with different people and some of them that we walked away from we're deciding going to do something different in the future and some of those things subbing cost is another prime example when really digging out into those we ended the year just a couple weeks ago really digging into some of those um costs that were still in the budget we were able to to realize that those are not going to be spent and same thing of finishing out the year with all of the buildings and going through that of what those encumbrances out there are they did they really get spent or did they not we didn't kind of see that same typical pattern that we were would in the normal time frame getting
011things done by spring break and getting them in some of the people kind of walked away from projects they might have otherwise done in a normal year so the other thing is kind of staffing levels kind of getting back to a pre pandemic staffing first some of the um throughout the categories go ahead next slide so this is just another big look of backing up and looking at the the history of celine and really schools in general the blue line if you look at the left access shows us the foundation per student so that's a big bulk of where our general fund budget comes from and so you'll see even though on the right side that we have a different scale you'll still see that the the trends in the way that the lines are
012heading so the right scale is the percentage of retirement rate so as you saw before most of our dollars goes to salary that's retirement rate is a direct percentage of our salary and therefore when we saw that large increase and which is on 1011 at the same time we saw the biggest decrease in our student or student per pupil allocation you know that was a really hard time for schools and so i kind of bring back to that as if we look at ahead to them in a couple future slides that'll be that time when you see our fund balance hitting you know the the deep plunge kind of in relation to today things are going well right now with coven but it also we we're kind of trying to be cognizant of that we
013don't know what the future brings and and so far things do look pretty good but we want to also be poison ready if that's not the same you know going forward in terms of the state the revenue generating conference went really well and they've got extra money but we know that they quickly can swing in different ways that we've kind of seen that in our history so one of the things on this side that you really notice is that we pulled up the one-time covered revenue and so we really wanted to show to be looking at our ongoing expenditures and being really cognizant of though we've gotten some extra money in the current that those are not operatingly continuing and so some of the changes that we're making we really want to be cognizant of
014where that we are rolling forward and what those changes play into account so again like i said before when we roll to 21 22 we're really largely having a very conservative budget at this point now in general the revenues are the conservative side are lower than what we would hope in general the state has not passed the budget but we took one of the conservative approaches that are on paper the governor has come out and done a lot of pr about wanting to raise the foundation allowance significantly more than what i have in here but nothing has hidden any kind of direct proposal that that we can really um count on yet and so then on the same side on the flip side we really are at that point where we're doing a lot of
015summer work and preparing for the fall and taking a conservative pro-turner expenditures if we are possibly going to be funding a position or going back to full staffing and um there's a lot of things still unknown as that as well so i took it in both sides shows kind of a worst case scenario on a roll forward when at this point in time it's largely a placeholder budget really that we are poison ready i'd much rather see see this than thinking things are rosy and things go to the to the worst so it kind of puts us in a place where we are continuing to have conversations if both of our worst case scenario on the revenue side and the expenditure side would be ready to act and we're we're always having talks and me
016making sure that we're ready to pivot when needed so a lot of a lot of information on that budget comes through in the summer we'll know a lot more about student account we'll know a lot more on the state side and as that comes out that november budget if we amend in november is a much better budget of what we're actually seeing happening in the current so not just to to look forward the following year the same thing kind of took some of those trends that that that were there and just kind of rolled them forward as well so largely placeholder budgets to kind of see at a worse case very conservative side so that we're ready and planning and talking consistently about what would we do if those are really realized but do i
017think that the the state will come out with something a little bit better than what they have in paper i do i do think that we're trending that direction and this also is not counting future covered money that they've already been lots of talks about has not rolled to us yet so in my eyes in general some of that money is going to roll to us but there will also be expenditures on the other side of the those revenues so in general they're just not included here at this point because there's not set dollars to them and set expenditures to those as well so just kind of looking to amend those as we know more let's go ahead on the next slide and this is kind of the site i was talking about this also
018gives us a background history of where we've been as celine so it's really going all the way dating back to 93 and so if you recall that large steep increase in our our retirement rate and then also paired with a lowering of our pupil foundation was right in that dip time when you see it in 2011 and 12 where schools really came on the hard times in general across the state as the state of michigan really moved backwards on our funding so with that it's largely we we see this big um push in this year and really we we realized a lot of savings throughout covet and this time we there's a lot of things that kind of were put on pause and you know we'll see a shift and and wear those things fruition
019um as well as kind of a lot of the foundational grants a lot of things that are rolling out you know we it was a lot for teachers to get get on board with the things that we're doing in transitioning too i see a lot of things going back to kind of um some things changing and some keeping but also rolling back to some of the normal patterns we see as the school year progresses and we have five days a week we're having subs on fridays we're having transporting kids on fridays so i mean if you think about that as a holistic that was a large portion of our school year so go ahead next slide and with this this is just kind of the um all of our other funds wrapped up in a
020hole and to where their fund balances not all of them make sense necessarily of like what their fund balance is at june 30th we still pass these kind of budgets but it's time the timing is kind of um doesn't necessarily make as much um sense in general the bond you'll see you know we end with a much higher fund balance for this because we just sold our to the 2021 series three budgets and then you'll also see like the old sinking fund drops off because that fund is now closed for the year as well as you'll notice the student activity accounts gatsby 84 was passed before but they with covid they they pushed it back a year you know those funds used to sit out in fiduciary funds otters have talked about this for several
021years and moving those funds into a special revenue fund was just a rule change that had happened and so we'll start being budgeting those and that's largely kind of a placeholder exactly as well as we kind of transition how we account for those in our office all right i think that is it any questions great thank you miranda and just um a quick question all of these uh documents and things like that in the budgets are also available on our website for transparency so if anybody wants to look them up that is not attending tonight um any questions or comments from the board michael yep so i want to make sure my i'm just right just the right distance away i just want to say thank you very much for the work that you and
022the team did on this and i did my own little drilling down to the bedrock and we talked a bit about it and i said well let's look at something that's really noticeable and it was and i was was on page 38 motor fuels oil and grease for the buses well when the buses aren't running obviously so how do you budget based on that so we're looking at a hundred thousand and it rolled back to 53 000 at one point and then up to 85 and so i understand the difficulty in where you had to where to choose the numbers from plus we have new buses coming in which are probably more fuel efficient and it's my head started to explode at that point and i realized i'm it's better to leave it in your
023capable hand so thank you so much for all the work that you did on this and i know it's a difficult it's moving targets all around aren't they so placeholder budget is the best way to put it so thank you very much yeah i just wanted to make a comment as you said placeholder budget is a good description for this but you said our projected 22 and 23 budgets are sort of worst case scenario budgets and i want to point out given how we end this year with a at more with an adequate fund balance that we are able to sustain this fund balance for at least a couple years under a worst case scenario it shows you how important it is to have a fund balance here that can sustain you over this we
024saw back in the chart you saw the numbers with the last serious economic downturn 2011-12 when it finally hit the k-12 budgets the funding from per student funding from the state dropped six percent in in a two-year period of time that's a pretty significant worst case scenario well by the fact that now we've been able to bolster our fund balance this year we could sustain a worst case scenario but yes these are worst case scenarios what we have yes fund balance definitely gives us the luxury of time if we need to pivot and that's also why the placeholder budget gives us an opportunity to still be talking about those worst case scenarios and what would we do there so that we're prepped and ready to go and make action and swift action if we need
025to but yes fund balance does definitely give us that luxury of being able to have time to react yeah and that's a great point to make you know within time you can take care of most budget problems but the key is time right and yes having an adequate fund balance gives you that time to adjust under worst case scenario thank you miranda i know that you've offered for us before to come in and kind of deep dive and that's on my list of things for the summer now that now that we have a little bit of space to breathe um one of the things that i'm just looking at in looking at this worst case scenario and the way that school finance and and um and funding comes from the state it really puts us
026in a precarious situation because we're making plans and hiring and purchasing and all of these things during the time when we have that uncertainty from the state so it does it is very helpful for us to look back at those previous budgets so thank you for including those and so that we can see especially as a new board member um is this typical is this what we've seen in the past um i am curious though as some of that the covid money that you mentioned um it seems that perhaps some of that money will be earmarked for specific things uh related to covid so are you it can't just be thrown into the general fund is what i'm what i'm getting at so do you have any guidance on that right yes or two and
027that's kind of why i chose not to put them in the budget they actually have not been given to us yet i mean we've obviously had allocations and so i thought about putting them in there but in that case that i didn't want that to show in that way that we will have to make plans and there's a lot of educational meetings happening this summer that where i'm tracking and what we're doing to try to to alleviate some maybe perceived losses that have happened um over the this time and so it in you know having steve steve in the in the driver's seat is a really good person that has we've had experience working together as well as he really knows our educational kind of landscape and so it really bodes well to this great
028line of communication going so that we're we're putting that into consideration and so yes and to answer your question though that the there will be extra expenditures in this upcoming year we don't know what they are yet and what ways that they all completely play out so it puts it hard to put a specific dollar amount and where that will fall and so to me it was a lot a lot easier to not include both sides so it's kind of even when they both come back on to the general fund we'll see them come on together so it kind of doesn't skew it one way or the other yeah no problem yeah i'll add first off miranda's done just a terrific job getting this organized in a normal year budgeting is really really hard to
029project now you're going back and looking at pre-pandemic levels in addition you're trying to look at what we what we just did over this course of this last year and yeah we had a finance committee recently before we ended the school year but then miranda has to go back and dig in for the last few weeks of spending and closing the book so to speak and then make these level predictions this is really complicated and she's done a really nice job with that so what i always try to do is put it in terms that i'm seeing all these scenarios so what i wrote down is you know we're in a good financial position at this current moment but as dennis pointed out you can see that if the structure changes as we move into
0302021 and 22 20 22 and 23 if we were to lose students if we have no increase in per pupil expenditure if we don't get all the special ed reimbursement that we may get in normal years if we add staff if we go back to pre-pandemic spending that's how all those scenarios develop that the sort of conservative budget for the next two years is put in place so and any one of those scenarios could tip it either way and that's why it's good the way that that budget's been presented so great job any other comments or questions for miranda thank you oh i'm sorry yeah susan um so this is the first time we're seeing this correct since saturday yes this was in the packet but yes it's the first time that it's come to
031the board yes just wanted to clarify anyone else all right thank you very much appreciate it um i'd like to entertain a motion please to adjourn the budget hearing of june 22nd um i believe it's in the next two two meetings one night we're going we're going strong i'd like to entertain a motion please to adjourn the budget hearing of june 22nd at 6 28 p.m so moved thank you jen seconded by brad thank you very much all those in favor say aye aye opposed nay seeing non-motion carries 7-0 we are adjourned for two minutes did you see the spider so [Music] however tonight's board of education meeting is not considered a student or staff summer program therefore masks are not required but feel free to continue to wear one if that would make you
032feel more comfortable we are expecting more guidance from local agencies regarding schools in the next week and we will continue to evaluate we are parents too we understand the frustrations the advocacy and the love of our kids in this challenging year and thank you for your support i'd like to now move to public comment 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 that students will be given priority to speak on any topic the first public participation portion of the meeting will be limited to one half hour 30 minutes normally and it will be limited to agenda items a second public participation portion will be offered at
033the end of the agenda to allow for any other comment individuals addressing the board should take into the consideration the rules of common courtesy the public participation portion of the meeting cannot be used to make personal attacks against a board member district employee or student and we have our streaming video and just to remind everyone our agenda items for tonight our budget our new to you presentation sas music department equity engagement sessions board policy committee chartwells contract general appropriations act [Music] borrowing of funds in the amount of 2 million and the anticipation of state school aid and public policy comment i will first move to students if there are any students who submitted a form no thank you if there are any other stakeholders in the community for first public comment thank you okay moving
034on to revisions or approval of agenda items may be added or deleted from the meeting agenda and or the order of items may be changed at the request of an individual board member or the superintendent the agendas must be approved before proceeding further um i'd like to entertain a motion please to approve the agenda as printed so moved mcveigh thank you support thank you michael and candace all those in favor say aye hi all those opposed nay seeing none motion carries 7-0 moving on to our first scheduled report uh we have a special presentation by new to you our again new to you again resale shop lisa wrenchler molly garcia and monica ellis if you could approach the podium and lisa if you can just um oh and jackie hello thank you um and if
035you can just toggle the volume on the mic you'll be all set there we go hi my name is lisa renschler and yes we are related to the wrench the farm ranchers we started new to you back in 2018 and the sole purpose of it is first and foremost to give individuals with disabilities a job and at this point we have 12 individuals who are identified with a disability who are employed and receiving a paycheck four of those had never received a paycheck before and one of the employees who had never received a paycheck before was 26 years old so we are thriving in this economy we of course like everybody else we're scared during the shutdown but we're doing great we've been able to hire more individuals so that's lots of fun the main
036reason that we're here is of course to donate money to the school again and so connor could you introduce yourself my name is connor my name is connor wrensler i graduated from saline high school in as liberty club to liberty club and special education we present this check let's get in the middle connor connor come in the middle and hold one side of each chest there we go thank you so much okay i would also like to recognize some of my team members that are here today volunteers employees if you could all stand up and if you don't stand up i'll call you by name so thank you thank you lisa and team we really appreciate the partnership um if anybody wanted to say anything i just wanted to give everyone an opportunity that's good
037thank you so much we really appreciate it our next scheduled report is the saline area schools music department year in review matthew breyer let's try that again thank you so much for your time this evening i hope in the next few minutes to accomplish two important tasks one highlight the musical accomplishments of our hornet musicians there's so much to be proud of this year and i want to highlight the ways in which the selena schools administration team really helped make that possible i'm so grateful for the administration team we have while so many schools were limiting music making across the country our administrative team were open to embracing the science of aerosols and solving problems with a lot of pragmatic solutions during the school year they provided alternate spaces allowing the bands and choirs to
038safely rehearse in one space and then move to a second space allowing time for the air to ventilate in between they provided thousands of masks and bell covers designed to limit aerosol spread to our bands at the middle school and the high school they provided owl meeting cameras providing students with a more dynamic rehearsal experience on zoom with better sound quality and a view of the ensemble i had one student tell me it's like i'm in the room after months of the regular zoom and that was a big moment for that virtual student and lastly oh continued instrument repairs and replacements including your recent bond purchases which allow us to safely provide instruments and students in class and limit contact and lastly funding the very important saline video crew led by ben goodman and rebecca
039grieb our cultural arts specialist in our hornet light and sound crew which have made a variety of socially distanced performances possible for their musicians and their families and the next one so we're going to start with the marching band here [Music] so here's an accomplishment in the fall the saline high school marching band made up of musicians from the band orchestras and choirs fielded 180 student marching band with 10 staff members intense protocols and procedures in place no rehearsal no indoor rehearsals all season 75 hours of rehearsal and performance and zero coven 19 transmissions as a department we continue to to look for new ways to put emphasis on creating an inclusive community through music selection and diverse representation our curriculum we're always looking for ways to expand and find new masterworks to play from
040a variety of composers i want to just take a second and say thank you to our k-3 music department that worked all year to teach in a variety of formats setting the tone and they really set the foundation for our awesome musicians that you hear at the high school at the middle school our students recorded a series of holiday duets with the directors and family members and prior to that they started the year thankfully the administrative budget with a collaborative pro collaborative let me read my notes here a virtual collaboration with living composers where they were able to successfully go through the creative process and create new music and explore that creative process with professionals the heritage music staff was able to create a whole new selection process for our students to explore music making
041and pick band orchestra choir for the fall which was a exciting thing for many of our students i know our fifth graders really missed it and we're looking forward to a fresh start with our fifth and sixth graders in the fall and then the chamber orchestra and choirs the high school continued our masterworks tradition of performing important works for strings and choir recording vivaldi's magnificat while completely virtual in december using some new technologies and then just this spring the high school jazz band performed the michigan state band orchestra association jazz band festival for the first time they did that virtually earning a first division rating and an outstanding soloist honor for junior saxophonist christian manahar thanks to new technology students were able to turn their bedrooms basements and offices into recording studios and were able
042to create video performances here are a few examples [Music] and the next one if you don't mind so these are just little snippets here it is yeah it's just clicking ahead so that's the high school orchestras and the next one will be the middle school 8th grade band and then lastly we'll end with the middle choirs [Music] as exciting as that was it was really nice to return to the stage in the spring and return to some normalcy if we wouldn't mind going to the next one we had a lot of success this year at virtual solon ensemble festivals we had over 200 students participate with most of them earning top ratings and we had 12 students between the sorry 17 students between the middle school and high school earning a statewide recognition for their
043solo performances at the sun ensemble we were able to with the celine video crew and rebecca grieb organized live streaming performances this is the first time many of our students were able to return to the stage we had virtual students that would join us we also had students that would join us virtually through zoom using those owl cameras on stage and we were able to provide those performances and here's just a little tiny snippet of the high school bands [Applause] for many of our musicians and their families this was a really cathartic experience the power of live music and returning to the stage after more than a year uh i know for me i got choked up a few times this spring going through those and so did many of our students the middle school
044ensembles also provided they had jam sessions they were able to do these live stream concerts during our asynchronous time on the fridays and again for many of our students is the first time they were even in the building i was there for a few of those where students would walk in and go wow it's so good to be back and it really sets the tone for them returning in the fall as well and lastly our last little music snippet here was from graduation i know many of you were there but i just wanted to highlight just a little bit of our high school chamber choir and the senior strings i thought this was arranged by one of our senior students and i thought it was a beautiful performance [Music] so so there was so much
045to be proud of this year and it wouldn't have happened without your support without the support of our administrators so thank you so much for that looking ahead we have a variety of things happening the saline summer bands and orchestras through reckon ed have started back up again just this week we have the celine fiddler's philharmonic performance featuring orchestra students and band students at hornet stadium on saturday at 7 30 p.m marching band begins at the end of july and we have a simultaneous fifth and sixth grade start for band orchestra in choir next year at heritage and the middle school really excited about that and we're looking forward to a full return of performances next year thank you so much for your time thank you so much we're so proud of the music programs
046in saline area schools and in this challenging year it has brought so much joy and so much healing as well so thank you very much yeah fred yeah i just want to take a second and acknowledge just that right the amount of coordination that must have been necessary to take all these students in their homes and have them perform in a in a piece and i want to acknowledge as a parent how fantastic it was to to still have those opportunities for our kids and and quite frankly to have my son have to be accountable and keep learning and keep keep going and and and we even found like they found technologies to like keep him accountable for when he missed on notes and i just i i really acknowledge and uh and am grateful
047for just the commitment of our music department there were people in the fall who you know it gave them so much normalcy just to go listen to practice and and i and i heard about those things and it was it was you said it was you know an outstanding extraordinary opportunity well i think the the you know i think the performance of our educators our students was extraordinary and i applaud you and i thank you for matthew um years ago 15 years ago or so i was involved with a group that was doing a jazz collaboration with a floutist in britain and some musicians student musicians in arizona and we had this really crazy weird lag of course and that added to the jazz and so forth and the accidents and the wonderful accents i
048i hope you still continue to use some of these new technologies uh and and bring you know professional musicians into the classroom as well do you have plans for that sort of thing or uh yes we are there are several um yeah we're going to tell you not to sit down but yes we do have several things in the works for the fall um one of the things we were able to do this year that i was in my notes that i failed to mention was continue our collaboration with the sling music boosters though the fundraising opportunities were limited they were very organized this year and got us moving for next year and they do fund some of those extracurricular opportunities to bring in outside clinicians that's great yep professional musicians outside clinicians yeah so
049like one of those things one of those opportunities that i'm working on for the spring next year is a collaboration with the accidentals which is a folk rock band out of traverse city they're signed to sony the major music label and they're two are all over the world so excellent thank you yeah i was just going to i was just going to mention really quickly that while brad was talking about the being able to listen to his son my experience might have been a little different because every morning while i was teaching students on the first floor my daughter was giving a percussion concert on the second floor so i will miss those moments and i'm so glad that her sticks are back at school um thank you for your presentation and graduation that was
050beautiful um and i saw you out there playing the violins i as a parent you you stole all of my um so just the virtual engagement um i guess as a stay-at-home virtual mom during that time um i you know i got to see some of the um music that that you um brought um i have a fifth grader so um he missed the instrument component and i know he's really looking forward um in the fall to um you know playing his uh instrument that he's chosen um but um i i applaud you for um talking about finding diverse representation and i did see that and you know the little bit of videos that i saw and heard and i think that that gives a lot even more love for for music and different types
051of music and interest and representation so i appreciate that thank you you bet um one of the one of the things we were able to do this year um we're not alone in this publishers and the music industry as a whole are working hard to to bring more voices out too the high school orchestra was able to do a piece by florence price this year that was this is beautiful sentimental piece i couldn't find the right snippet to put it in the slideshow but we she was the one of the very first women and first women of color to be performed by major orchestras including the chicago symphony orchestra in the early 20th century so her music is just now kind of being rediscovered and for student ensembles which was really exciting i did have
052something susan kind of uh took stole some of mine as well but i have a fourth grader going into or fourth going into fifth grade and he's really excited so even just the process of exposing them even though they weren't able to try the instruments um he's very excited about his trumpet and is already listening to trumpet you know players and and different artists so um yeah i really appreciated that and also appreciated the diversity of music my sixth grader going into seventh grade played the saxophone this year and was able to hear some of that diversity of what they were being exposed to so really appreciate that thank you so much um moving on to our third scheduled report equity engagement sessions um dr lotch and kara davis thank you very much i'd like
053to first start off by just thanking kara she's one of our instructional designers in order to pull off equity engagement sessions we did four zoom sessions that's challenging and you're trying to create breakout rooms get people organized and cara really knows a lot about doing that and has done that well throughout the year so i really appreciated her support in this uh so we start off with uh saline bridge to civility engagement sessions and you know this this started uh a while back almost pushing on a year and a half where we've had some real visible racial incidents in the district and really i've been very proud of the way the sewing community and the school district has owned that and said what do we need to do as a school district and as a
054community to be better to be more supportive of all our students and our staff and our community to make sure that everybody is feeling welcomed and supported here and seeing lots of different snippets of evidence to show that we are moving in in a good direction in that regard so um with that said we we formed this bridge disability engagement session concept based on the fact that we did seven listening sessions after we had those racial incidents occur where we were just listening to the community and then as we re-engaged coming out of cove at least towards the end of this school year we said well how are we going to engage the community so we went from listening to engagement and that's why we changed the name to say these are engagement sessions and
055that means something a little different so we went back to diana wong she was the facilitator from sensei change located out of ypsilanti where she came in and helped us facilitate along with a number of our local facilitators these uh next set of engagement sessions having facilitated uh the seven listening sessions previously and so diane and her team did a great job along with many of our facilitators that we had working for us in this capacity so we'll go to the next one anna and um so so what is the celine bridge disability well the idea was to take a number of community representatives and we put together a small ad hoc group of saying well how can we promote a fair exchange of ideas in other words we wanted to create a way norms
056protocols upon which we could talk about any issues as it relates to equity in the school district and the community and so we work to put together these nine norms and that's the next slide anna and you look at these nine norms and they're they're based on a model that we saw out of a school district in connecticut that were doing something similar where they were trying to bring the community together to talk about a variety of issues and so we we developed nine of them and they were find common ground debate the issue respect the person listen intentionally observe and reflect assume good intentions allow for emotion speak one's truth and engage directly and accept lack of closure and so the way these were broken up is we had four equity engagement sessions and
057we covered a few of these norms at each session and we more or less did a little educating on how to use the norms and then we would uh put people in breakout rooms so they could talk about um whatever it is that was on their mind related to equity and it worked out really well because we would practice those norms while we were going through the engagement sessions and it was a good way to kind of re-engage the community humanize this work and in the process find common ground so go to the next slide and then kara's going to take over here great thank you i'm going to go ahead and amplify some of the pieces that steve just amp or highlighted for you some of the key components that moved our idea into
058action is the partnership that steve mentioned with the sensei change team under the leadership of diana wong she and the team helped guide us through the process and set us up for success in that partnership we participated in some facilitator training because it was really important to be intentional and strategic about the facilitators who came to the table to be a part of this experience we invited volunteers from the staff and the community to be facilitators and they worked with the sensei change team in order to grow themselves as agents of change in order to learn strategies for creating a safe space to support authentic dialogue and also establishing skill sets around deep listening and management of time focus and attention once the facilitators were trained we extended the invitation to the community including staff
059members students and community stakeholders we ultimately did that through the various district platforms emails news and notes and the social media platforms that we have we hosted four sessions as steve mentioned with 11 facilitators participating in the work and those were facilitators who had moved forward opted to move forward from the training that we had 80 unique participants across the four sessions with 40 of those participating more than one time so we had repeat participants across the different sessions can you go ahead and change the slide another important piece that last bullet there was the meeting cadence and steve mentioned this a little bit but it was really important for us to follow a similar cadence to each of the meetings in order to grow that safe space so that participants knew what to expect
060and for us to continue to grow our skills across each session and so we anchored ourselves in these guidelines being present listening actively sharing openly and committing to learn additionally we spiraled the norms the nine norms throughout each of the sessions specifically coming back to continuously finding common ground active listening and practicing empathy each opportunity had moments for our participants to share in small groups both initially starting i know many of you participate in these sessions as well starting with getting to know each other some activity steve's going to dive into sharing those stories in just a minute and then coming back to the full session for some shared growth and learning at the guidance of sensei change and then going back into breakout sessions to dive a little bit deeper into the work and
061into the conversation each session closed with a reflection amplifying the norm that steve mentioned about accepting lack of closure because we understand that this work is incredibly recursive and the journey continues on an ongoing basis next slide susanna and so karen mentioned diversity and one of the key components was allowing people to tell their diversity story and that this was important because diane had introduced this concept that diversity means something different for everyone and that this is a diversity wheel where you're looking at different ways upon people defining diversity whether it's religion religious beliefs education race sexual orientation there were a variety of options so to speak where everybody was able to tell their own diversity story and i thought that was great and people did that within breakout rooms to try to build a
062level of trust and there was some great dialogue that occurred there and we talked about what one of the norms was speak one's truth and then in this case we were referring to whatever your own truth is that that you were the one that was needing to define what that is as it relates to diversity and the stories that people wanted to share so it was really powerful and even though you know karen and i were not necessarily in the breakout rooms the feedback we were receiving from people was really powerful and and we felt good that it was allowing a place for a safe dialogue around this even when opinions differed and people didn't agree with some of the topics that were being discussed it's that critical nature of protecting the safe space because
063these were personal stories the participants really wanted to be vulnerable and we're working towards sharing some of their ideas and engaging in honest authentic dialogue with each other we aren't sharing the specifics of the participants experiences this evening however we did get together with the facilitators after the four sessions were over and had a wonderful debrief about um what their thoughts and feelings were what our next steps could be what we could do better the next time around and they gave us permission to share some of their thinking and so we wanted to share some of those with you today and i'm just going to clarify for the sake of our audience at home can they see the slide deck at home to read these quotes okay fantastic and i brought my glasses in case
064i had to read the quotes myself so if you could take just a minute to read through the feedback i picked out four to share with you out of the 11 facilitators who responded to our survey take a moment to read through their sentiments because we felt like these were the similar sentiments to what trended and the feedback across the four sessions does anyone need more time thank you final slide anna so i'm thinking about the success of our first series of course we're thinking about next steps and how we can scale up this opportunity to continue to involve staff students and community members in civil conversation moving forward so thinking about scaling up opening up additional community sessions in the future so looking ahead to fall of 2122 engaging our leadership team members staff
065and students in a specified series in which they could grow their practice with the norms and civil discourse because it does take a lot of practice to engage in civil dialogue especially in today's day and age and then even possibly expanding to other interested districts we have asked the facilitators who did the four series with us our four session series with us if they would be interested in continuing this work and the vast majority of them said that they would be interested in moving forward to continue to facilitate these sessions either locally or even outside of our district as well we're also thinking about tools to support the work so thinking about a toolkit or packet that would lead the work lead others in the work that we experienced ourselves and then creating a visual
066tool of some sort for participants to use in spaces that they might be able to take with them so perhaps the nine norms as a reminder when we're engaging in our day-to-day conversations with others that these are nine norms that can be used not just in the school setting but also in the community setting in social media and so on and so forth thank you very much great thanks kyra thanks steve any questions or comments yeah brave so there's a couple things number one i appreciate being invited to participate i appreciated that i did see that it was a safe place for people to have authentic and real conversations i met people from diverse backgrounds who did share their stories and who did who i did learn from their experiences so first of all i
067appreciate that i could tell you that i am on the sex advisory board and that is a place where there is a lot of diversity of thought and i appreciated the fact that we utilized the nine norms as a mechanism for being able to engage in those difficult conversations with one another and so it was a living breathing active thing for us and and so i think that allowed us to be able to do deeper work to understand each other at a deeper level and uh to be able to have authentic and real conversations and so i guess i would say um i'd encourage any other group of course to utilize them and do we have like a plan to have that become an adopted part of our district committees and our district initiatives because
068it was really powerful for us in that setting as a sex advisory board i believed well one of our thoughts was so we did this you know we hosted these first sessions in the spring of a very challenging year and we thought that this would be a great opportunity for us to have a pilot opportunity to see how these norms and the process of engaging in the civil dialogue went um with a smaller group of people and so we ended up with about the perfect number each time and we know that the sex reproductive health committee is also a smaller group and so it's nice to hear the successes you're feeling there as well so i see lots of hope for the future and scaling this up in such a way would you add to
069that i would just say that we've also talked about how does this play out potentially if you're a high school teacher and you're wanting to engage your kids and have a better way to have discussion about whatever topic that you know that that may be a place there too and so we talk about rolling it out more with our admin team and then specifically trying to you know spread the word on how this can be used as a powerful tool great um i had the opportunity to attend three of the four sessions and just you know also echo the the sentiments of my colleagues here that it was powerful it was a great safe space to be able to share as a woman of color to be a part of the conversation i felt comfortable
070you know revealing you know my truths and my experiences and i i also have used the norms in other settings so for the city of saline dei task force we've we've used those in our community conversations as well so agree with trustee gerby that this is the norms are great and they they really do work and i know the dei advisory committee is also using those norms so i appreciate the you know all that it took to develop those and build on other norms to really create that that process that was great so i know you were talking about next steps a little and one of the things we've been talking about on the dei ac or actually what the deiac has been talking about while the board members are observing is the need for
071education and learning opportunities in our community around some of these tough topics and one of the things that i experienced in some of the sessions that i attended was the need for opportunities for learning so i wondered in moving forward if this particular group or maybe in collaboration with the deiac or other groups would be entertaining i i envisioned something like an article that we could read and then have a discussion using some of these norms and protocols or a special speaker that's then followed up with a conversation that allows for us to um to seek to understand one another a little more and maybe even to come to some sort of common ground yes actually you're touching on some things that the sensei was specifically diana was speaking to steve and i about because
072she was coaching us behind the scenes while the breakout rooms were happening where the participants were engaging in the dialogues and she often referenced the need for consistency across the series so in this case we had asked participants to come and whoever came to each session came and so we invited everybody and then we did not especially given the timing of this particular series and the year that it was require everybody to come each time and she talked about you know the positive nature of deepening the work by having repeat participants across time in order to grow and practice because they are norms that has they have to be practiced across time so as we're starting to hear where they're being used in the community it's actually making me think about how wonderful as we're
073practicing this in real time and need to continue to practice um and that idea of doing around a common topic an article i feel like is really powerful so if i brought a pen up i would be writing that down right now so thank you steve grab that for me yeah i forgot i had a question i was so excited about sharing my experience but um in terms of engaging a wider audience i think it's great that 80 we had 80 participants over time and that 40 of them came back but as i was looking at who was attending it was the typical you know engaged community that we have and so i'd love to see broader participation so have you thought already as you're thinking about the future sessions how we might engage more
074of the community in the conversation so i definitely think that having this conversation here today and having it publicized is going to help gain momentum around the sessions themselves i think timing will be really important as well i do think that spring of a pandemic year was a complicated matter so in terms of getting more people on board we did actually see one of the challenges was a number of people signed up but did not attend so once like thinking about why that's the case whether it's timing whether it was the zoom scenario whether it was tech difficulty spring sports whatever that might be so thinking about also the timing of those meetings and then the adding on the layering of advertising with now we have some feedback and some personal anecdotes from the facilitators
075to share more widely with the community we're doing this presentation here and now we can take back to the staff and the students as well some positive pieces the power of engaging in this dialogue we actually spoke to the students we had four students participate in total we would have loved to have more right and so we spoke to one of our students the student groups at the high school the diversity council and we asked what are we missing what are we not doing to get you in all of these spaces where we are inviting an encouraging student voice and we need to change our social media approach so we're investigating a little bit more with instagram stories snapchat and they you know they use twitter but instagram and snapchat were the places to get
076them there so if we really want to engage our students because in actually the four students who participated were middle school students which was really interesting we're going to need to reach out in more authentic ways to that particular audience so i think in combination we'll have more participants next year if we do all of those things great thank you you're welcome great any other comments or questions for karen steve all right thank you very much thank you both moving on to our action items on the agenda please i'd like to entertain a motion to approve the adoption of the revised policy 5340 student accidents as submitted by the board policy committee so moved thank you brian support thank you jenny uh discussion susan did you want to take that one um so this is
077what we discussed at the previous meeting previous board meeting and i don't think there were many questions i don't know if there's questions tonight thank you okay seeing no other comments or questions we'll move to vote all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed nay seeing none motion carries 7-0 uh it was brad and then seconded by jenny um i'd like to next entertain a motion please to approve the food service management contract renewal with chartwells for the 2021-2022 school year as submitted by assistant superintendent owsley so moved thank you dennis support second thank you candace uh discussion steve do you want to take that one sort of just moving forward that we do continue with walls for next year and feel like that is our best option moving forward with food service
078okay any comments or questions for miranda or steve you're on that's okay okay seeing none we'll move to vote all those in favor say aye aye opposed nay seeing none motion carries 7-0 i'd like to entertain a motion please to adopt the um adopt the amended general appropriations act for 2020 2021 as submitted by assistant superintendent owsley so moved jenny thank you support dennis thank you um you want to take that one too steve i think i'll have miranda touch on this one in terms of the process this is largely what we presented in the first meeting in um just form load action easy enough any other questions or comments from the board perfect we'll move to vote um all those in favor say aye aye opposed nay seeing none motion carries 7-0 i'd like
079to entertain a motion please to adopt the general appropriations act for 2022 as submitted by assistant superintendent ously so michael thank you support dennis thank you miranda any other comments about this one okay you had the hard part earlier uh any any other comments or questions from the board all right moving to vote all those in favor say aye aye opposed nay seeing none motion carries 7-0 i'd like to please entertain a motion to approve the borrowing of borrowing of funds and the amount not to exceed two million dollars in anticipation of the state school aide and authorized assistant superintendent ously to approve and sign such documents to execute the borrowing borrowing in conjunction with legal counsel review so moved candace thank you okay michael second thank you uh discussion miranda do you want to
080make your statements this is a regular ongoing thing we do once a year it's the borrowing through the state and the michigan finance authority um kind of heads us up some very legislator very regulated borrowing process that we go through and we obviously use our law firm through law and with this you'll notice that this is quite a bit less than other ones cash flow has been a little unique as well through cobit time with some of the federal funds and so we anticipate still needing to borrow in following years even though we're able to reduce this year and as well as we're seeing significantly low rates in interest rates so this is a very very affordable borrowing to keep our cash flows throughout the year thank you any other comments or questions for miranda
081i do has the rate been determined yet they given an illustrative rate but it really is priced um through through the whole state at one time through throne law firm all right seeing no other questions or comments i'm moving to vote all those in favor say aye aye oppose nay seeing none motion carries 7-0 moving on to our discussion items we have a policy update from secretary e-step policy committee chair oh great my mike's already on okay so first we welcomed our newest committee member trustee candace jones i'm excited to work with her and she brings lots of expertise expertise to the committee so i'm excited about what what ideas that you have and and yeah your help with that i appreciate it so the policy committee met last tuesday we just discussed constituent feedback
082proposed timelines and next steps for the transgender student policy last week we received some really great news the u.s department of education's office for civil rights held public hearings on title ix of the education amendment of 1972. i actually was able to get in and make a public comment via zoom not zoom but i don't know it was it was um online um and uh i i made public comment and asked for the ocr to take immediate action on changes to have explicit language and guidelines to protect students based on gender identity and sexual orientation i like to think that i had direct impact on [Applause] on that because last wednesday the department of education announced that title ix includes protections for students who are lesbian gay bisexual and transgender from harassment and discrimination so
083that that was super exciting to get that that was one of the things that we were hoping to receive in june and really just backs up the fact that we're working on this transgender student policy and need these guidelines out there and probably hopefully helpful for the district to have have that policy out there and so super excited let's see we had public comments that took place at policy committees meetings over time we've had members of the community who have actually been critics of policies and procedures that are inclusive of lgbtq students in fact one of the specific requests that had come out was that we receive that the board wait for the title ix guidelines to come out before passing a transgender student policy so that that was a request and um that's that's
084here and so um i just want to point that out and this occurred we're moving forward with drafting a policy superintendent lodge met with various groups across the district to facilitate discussions and collect feedback for future implementation of policies and procedures for when a policy is in place additionally trainings happened in partnership with staff from michigan department of education the committee has now has feedback that includes input from student groups so the middle school is gsa and the high school uproar the board's dei advisory committee and the administrators and equity teams although we did receive feedback from the saline transgender task force which includes families of children who are transgender trustee candace jones and i will be meeting with them to gather more specific feedback this is in line with the multiple groups who asked
085for us to center the voices of students who are transgender and their families they know best they experience this now the committee is moving forward to work on a single draft we continue we continue to consider all feedback and feedback that we are receiving have received with public comment before and after our policy committee discussion items and also here you're always welcome to to come in and and comment about it if it's on the agenda you can comment on the front end and if not you can comment on the back end we can also receive email um so just to make sure that um if you all haven't heard it already at every meeting this is coming through the pipelines and we welcome feedback and we'll consider all of that um let's see so um
086we also are have considered two policy drafts um one that was presented to the committee in march that's based on plymouth canton's policy and they passed it in december 2020 which is also based on some model policies through glsen and also ann arbor public schools has a policy that's been in place i think since 2017 maybe and also plymouth canton worked with collins and blaha on that also a policy draft was requested that throne created in april so they both seem very different so with taking that feedback and the two policies and seeking out more broader feedback from the saline transgender task force we're going to move forward with bringing that draft together uh this is not letting me scroll okay sorry give me a second all right maybe that was sorry i'm like trent
087i had it all um so our next meeting um like i said candace and i will be meeting um with the parents of transgender children um and june or sorry july 27th i'm doing this top of my head 5 p.m is the next policy committee meeting which will take place here at liberty and so moving forward the committee is going to work through this policy and we will determine how we move forward and keep you all posted in the process thanks thanks susan any comments or questions for our policy committee or any comments or questions from policy committee members i just wanted to pile on ever so gently um uh trustee jones had mentioned that there might be some unforeseen delays coming out of washington regarding that language and it was like almost the next
088day they came out with it so that was great relief we could move forward and after doing a crosswalk between the throne copy and the collins and blah copy it was very interesting it was you could see very clearly where the key elements were and you know some were a little just not disorganized but differently organized and one had one issue and one had another it's going to make life a lot easier for us to have those two policies going forward it'll help us to tweeze out what are the essential elements so i'm looking forward to working on that with my colleagues on the board i'm wondering um and maybe not at this meeting but in in future meetings it's one thing for us to have this policy and i think that that's really important
089and i i stand behind the decision to move a policy like this forward and we'll fully support that but i know that just having a policy in place is not going to provide protections for our students and and faculty and so i just wonder um in the notes um it mentioned and steve has mentioned to me before that kim phillips is it nopes nope canope okay um has has done some professional development and so i wondered if you might speak a little bit more about the timeline um for or i guess maybe just a little bit more about the the potential professional development or facility updates or things that need to happen for these ideas to be brought to fruition for those protections to be felt by our students and staff so it doesn't have
090to be necessarily tonight but i wondered if that could be something that we find out more about yeah i can touch on that so right uh kim phillips knope did a great job coming in to talk to well through zoom but we were talking to our administrative staff about um why a transgender policy would be necessary in saline and the kinds of protections we would need to put in place and make sure that we are supporting students in that way and answering administrator questions because there's different needs depending upon what level we're at whether it's elementary middle school or high school and so there's discussion around that and then it is building principles and assistive principles going back looking in the buildings to determining are we in a position that if we move forward with
091a policy we're able to support whether it's bathroom locations or the using pronouns and all of that we want to make sure that our staff has that background too and so we would move forward with determining what additional professional development we would need to make sure that those protections are in place and i do want to point out that actually this is something we need to change in policy with the title ix coordinators that we have too in the district and so because transgender students and lgbtq students are protected now um and and have been really and and we have been very proactive in in the sense of supporting student students and families over over the years but please do know that it is still discrimination and go through that process if you need to
092[Music] and you know hopefully hopefully we we do follow what we we've already kind of established but you are still protected regardless of what we have in place or not any other questions or comments for the policy committee okay seeing none we'll move forward to response to public comment um on the board's behalf i wanted to thank everyone for public comment and for the emails that we get we do read everything um and and really appreciate all perspectives i i really enjoyed the presentation by kara and and by steve discussing those norms and discussing these bridges to civility and um we welcome all perspectives so thank you very much um with regards to daily operations i just thought i'd mention the let's talk i think that's a good a good way to get towards our
093chain of command if you have a building question or a um grounds question etc a really good resource um moving on to administration updates dr lodge okay i actually have quite a few tonight because we're end of the year and and there's a number of things happening to close out the year and then as we think about next year as well but first we'll start with some good news as it relates to some of our students and staff and so we'll start with celine alumni stephen bastian 2012 sah shs alum stephen bastian has qualified for the olympics by finishing second in the decathlon at the olympic trials [Applause] and that's really impressive not sure how many uh alums we've had participate in the olympics but i'm sure it's not very many it's a select group
094i also wanted a shout out to anna brittenell our communications director and that she had a piece in mspra weekly newsletter that stands for michigan school public relations association where over the course of may anna did a senior spotlight on social media and and created a senior spotlight for every graduate complete with a picture and a quote and then post it on social media if you think about this we have over 400 400 and what tran 413 412 412 we were talking about that the other day yeah it's you confirm 412 412 412 different senior spotlights you can imagine the kind of time that takes to organize and really a great way to showcase individually and really dif you know talk about differentiating for our kids really allowing that so so that was just great
095a great way to honor our seniors um summer programs are up and running and in particular i visited pleasant ridge last week and in the sss program the super summer scholars that's our literacy and math program to help students that needed additional support coming out of the pandemic school year combined with a community ed element so they had some play and some activities and stores and and it was great to see we had over 10 teachers that are really personalizing instruction in small groups and very well organized by caroline stout who's our mtss district coordinator she worked really hard to get that off the ground and so very pleased with how that's progressing so far also we have another neat steam program that we're going to be able to offer it's called emu invent and
096it's through dr sheri vivek she came and spoke at one of our steam presentations and in conjunction with meg phillips meg phillips does a little bit of part-time work for us coordinating steam and project lead the way programs and together they put this together it's a it's a an invention process it takes all the elements of steam and we have two different camps running coming up in july one's a grades three through five and another is a grade six through nine it's going to be taught by our own teachers and emu mentors so kind of a partnership and and the cool thing about this is miranda and i have worked with our summer program money through asser covet relief funds to not only provide the statements and payment for the teachers but also pay the
097fees for up to 34 silly area school students so we're now advertising for that we're kicking it out on social media we're getting the word out kids are signing up for it so we're really excited about that opportunity i also wanted to provide a staffing update we've decided to reorganize the curriculum and instruction department based on a more thorough review and needs assessment of we actually need at this time to be successful in order to expand the instructional team to best develop and implement systems of support to help teachers and students successfully fulfill the district vision we've determined that we won't move forward in bringing in the director of culturally responsive instruction as a separate position instead with my instructional background i'm still going to head up the department and greater responsibilities will be assigned
098to our instructional designers so moving forward the plan is one i'll still oversee the department cara davis who you heard from tonight will take on an expanded role as teaching and learning team lead continuing work as an instructional instructional designer while also incorporating components of curriculum instructional responsibilities kelly whitman will return to an instructional designer role and the heritage media center specialist as previously announced jen nelson will be working as both an instructional designer and literacy coach will be creating a culturally responsive position whose primary role will be to assist teachers in developing culturally responsive lesson plans the group of people who help facilitate curriculum and instruction needs in the district will be joined as the teaching and learning team and will work cohesively to align district goals and objectives while supporting teachers and students
099in the work it's my belief that the reorganization of the instructional department will provide us with a better opportunity to build on the momentum we have been gaining and further accelerate culturally responsive instruction and the timing of it will be addressed in the next few weeks i also want to have a return to learn update as we think about next year what are we planning for next fall we've been getting a lot of questions about this we're planning to return to five days a week of in-person instruction for the vast majority of our students we're going to re-survey our elementary families students who ended the year in virtual learning those that had students that were less than 12 years old to determine their needs for next year there have been questions from those families those
100students who have not had a chance to be vaccinated about online options to start the school year that is something we are exploring to be clear anna coordinated a survey to seek responses from the all virtual families and students that ended the year and we had 400 402 survey responses from the all remote students in our elementary grades from a previous survey that was sent out 232 responded that their students are coming back to school in person in the fall for the upcoming 21 22 school year 19 responded with no 104 responded with maybe therefore we're going to re-survey those same participants as the first survey was anonymous and we're going to ask for names of any family in elementary grades that wants us to pursue an online option to start the school year again
101these students are in grades young five through sixth grade those that have not had a chance to be vaccinated and ended the school year in an all remote option and to further clarify we are not looking at a virtual option for next school year that could somehow have a negative impact on the vast majority of students who are going to be selecting the five day a week in person option we've also had a lot of questions lately about requiring masks our students to staff are they going to be required to wear a mask next school year we don't know yet i know it's not a popular response as we have had several community members reach out to us to find out what we are planning to do for next fall and would like an answer
102right now unfortunately it's just too early to make a call on this throughout this entire year we have worked with the washington county health department to determine masking procedures they are not in a position to provide us with clear guidance for next fall in fact their latest guidance for summer programming is that we continue to have students and adults mask in schools while working with students with the local wchd order in place however they're currently having discussions on whether that's going to be lifted or not we are also asking the washington county health department to provide us with the number of cobin 19 case outbreaks and the number of close contacts throughout all washington county public schools so we can determine the impact or lack of impact that quarantining has had okay that's a lot
103that's a lot it's good information though it's okay thank you very much um moving on to board updates would anyone like to yeah jenny i just wanted to add um since steve had mentioned um steven bastian i wanted to mention that we have a number of athletes headed to track nationals this week in oregon at the brand new hayward field and if you've been watching the track and field olympic trials you've been getting a little glimpse of the field that they'll be running on and to see an alumni qualify for the olympics as they're getting ready to go and take the same field is just inspiring so steven or anyone who knows steven who is listening thank you for the the um role modeling that you are providing for our young athletes and good luck
104to those track athletes athletes who will be leaving very soon to embark on their own journey at hayward any other updates all right i have a very quick one oh yeah okay yep um as as susan mentioned um we welcomed candice and she participated in two of our committees the dei advisory committee as well as the policy committee and i'll be updating the website tomorrow um and then i just wanted to thank all of our families for their flexibility in the constant evolution this this year and and this summer as we moved forward towards hopefully a really really positive and normal fall if we remember what that looks like thank you susan yes so i would like to first address the recent hate and bigotry that have happened in the community explicitly you know social
105media that xenophobia occurred and also destroying a rainbow flag specifically the flag means a lot to me personally i think i can't speak for the whole lgbtq community here but i know i've heard from many others that it means a lot driving in on ann arbor saline road on your way into celine and seeing that flag just you know flowing in the wind and it's like yes like i i'm here i'm gonna be proud um and so i think you know um that hurt um me personally and i think other members i thank the community members that um recognized what happened um and validated you know that like they were believed that they were you know hurt and that this was an act of um hate and um appreciate the community members that did step
106up and um support um you know the residents and um helped you know volunteers helping to you know build it back up and put up another flag um so i think that that um means a lot um coming from the community and so i want to make sure that you know this is just a reminder that we have really far to go i think the actions of the adults in our community is plays into you know what our students are seeing happening and um and so um i just want to want to say that um i see you i hear you and i stand with you and happy pride month i think it's important to recognize that and yeah that's it [Music] yeah thank you candace thank you susan and that reminds me there's an
107event this is um not board sponsored but there is a pride in the park event that's being hosted by several community organizations and would just welcome families and board members and everyone participating in that that is going to be at theft park uh but from one to three on saturday so just showing our support for the lgbtqia plus community i also just wanted to acknowledge juneteenth although it's a few days late that this is now a federally recognized holiday i shared a resource and and i know some board members have shared it as well but it had 17 ways to celebrate juneteenth with kids and it was at we are teachers.com and there were a number of book recommendations as well as activities to do with children and uh and some videos as well that
108explain juneteenth so i just think that's a helpful resource for going forward that's it yeah susan uh i would like to add since i'm like oh um so asian american and specific or sorry pacific islander heritage month as well um so happy um that and yeah it's like wait there's there's another one any other board updates okay thank you moving on to our consent agenda the following are offered as part of the consent agenda the motion noted will allow for the authorization of all listed items without discussion unless a member of the board requests that any or all be considered individually i would like to entertain a motion please to authorize the following items as part of the consent agenda item a approval of the board of education regular minutes of june 8 2021 b
109approval of the board finance committee minutes of june 8 2021 see approval of the board policy committee minutes of june 15 2021 d approval of payment of the general fund accounts payable of june 22 2021 the amount of 787 thousand dollars 787 684 dollars and 88 cents e approval of payment of bond series three accounts payable of june 22nd 2021 in the amount of thirty six thousand five hundred and fifty dollars and sixty two cents and f receive and file finance and human resources reports do i have a motion sure i'll make it hey brad thank you second second susan thank you uh all in a favor say i opposed nay hearing none motion carries seven zero um in closing items scheduled on the next agenda yeah so at the next meeting we're gonna have
110a presentation from assistant superintendent ellis about hiring processes and procedures we were talking a little bit about the director of culturally responsive instruction pulling that off the table we're reorganizing around that department and we thought it was a good time to talk a little bit about our hiring processes and and how those work and it really does depend on objectives position and circumstances and so uh assistant superintendent alice is going to talk about that next week that will be the primary report and discussion in a couple weeks i'm sorry july 13th um super thank you and i just wanted to thank vice president mcveigh in advance for facilitating our next board meeting i have a required business trip out of the country so he will be leading the charge on june july 13th traditionally that's
111the shortest meeting of the year i did not plan it that way but but you guys are going to be incapable capable and knowledgeable hands i'm sure this is our second opportunity for public comment please a member of the public may address the board briefly for up to three minutes or a request to be scheduled on the agenda of a future meeting i will not re-read all of our policy around next i'm sure everybody knows i am not seeing any yellow forms meaning we don't have any student comment but we would like to welcome megan gunderson up for public comment please and megan i don't know if you've given public comment before but susan shows a yellow card at 30 seconds out and then a red card at three minutes up just as a visual
112understanding no problem go ahead whenever you're ready okay sorry um well first i want to thank you for the time i appreciate that my questions cannot be responded to at this time but i at least wanted to present them to the board just because they weren't answered in the time that i sat here so um i'm a little bit concerned about the return to learn plan for the fall i noticed that it didn't make the agenda that you just listed as a and i would hope that it would be a ongoing topic of discussion not an independent verb at the end i think by not having on the agenda parents can't or stakeholders as you've come to call us can't um talk before the meeting and then have some questions answered later in time so
113i think that that would be helpful if it was an ongoing agenda item and we had the opportunity to present questions before your meeting started and then maybe some questions would be answered that way we wouldn't have to resort to foyering which i feel like is a little bit adversarial in nature just by its um up the return to learn is a hot topic for a lot of people for a variety of reasons i guess from an individual standpoint i would feel better if i knew who we were going to follow if we were going to follow mdhhs or washtenaw county because they seem to be at odds at times and as a single working mom i have only eight weeks to plan what i'm doing for the fall most of you still have students
114in the school system i assume and also struggle with daycare personally as a nurse i cannot work from home so i got to get it together fast and so that means that if you as a board decide to send our children back to school five days a week which is great but have limitations on that regarding quarantining and masking um i need to make some decisions um to pivot off of what you said as a parent i know my children best and their reactions and their experiences in the last week 16 months have negative consequences in my household so i want to plan appropriately so i would ask you for at least the opportunity to give as much information as you can i appreciate that this is a very fluid situation but it's been fluid
115for 16 months we pivot all the time as a health care worker you pivot all the time in the classroom and as a board and i understand that but just giving a skeletal structure would really be helpful to a lot of families with the caveat that things may change things are always changing and i appreciate that but this not yet we're not ready we have to be ready like we you have been working on this for a year and a half going to two years i've been living this for two years as well i can't wait for it to be determined if that means i have to pull my kids out of school and send them to somewhere else i need to know that in advance and i can't do that in september that's not
116fair to them thank you thank you megan next opportunity for public comment is lisa slawson hello i wear this mask because it's such a great mask isn't it so all right first of all um i'm lisa slesson my i have two graduates of this school district and i'm thrilled about that i was on the board for almost a decade so i've been sitting where you've been sitting first of all i want to congratulate steve i've worked with steve for ever and known steve over two decades in various capacities starting with he was the assistant principal for my daughter and then on to the principal at heritage so secondly welcome to candace i watch i have to say that i watched the interviews and i they got to you and i stopped watching because i thought
117you were so amazing and i was ready to just tell everybody i'm sorry with all due respect to the rest of you you have to pick this woman so great job and welcome so first of all um i want to talk about pride month and i have heard nothing from the district or the board about recognizing pride month if you go to city hall there's a pride flag flying and i would challenge you all to put out either steve a statement or the board a statement abolishing pride month because not only are your community members watching but your educators your kids it means a lot that you acknowledge it also about pride month and also it can't be just susan that talks about it has to be all of you everybody in a leadership position
118so um i forgot to bring this but um i can get it to you there is an article in our detroit hour magazine this month a roundtable of lgbtq community leaders across the state and susan is one of them and it's a great article talking to her and other lgbtq leaders in the state and susan thank you we're very proud that you sit at that table so thank you i wanted just to touch base one a little bit about the transgender policies so in 2010 that kind of started the issue of lgbtq rights in saline um i don't i think dennis was maybe on the foundation or a parent at that time well we're always parents but um steve was sitting right next to me during 2010 and jenny i think you were probably teaching
119and i'm did you have my daughter because i can't remember but my daughter loves you so um so though you people i think are very well aware of what happened in 2010 and we tried uh the gsa the uh the uh student association at that time was called spectrum and so those kids came to the policy committee which i was on and um we worked with the kids to get six words gender identity gender expression i can't remember the other two into um policy and uh these kids were great and it was a horrible time i was threatened i was my kids were threatened and so i want you to understand look at your voting how people have been voting and understand that celine's much more progressive than it was in 2010 look at 2019
120and what happened and understand that maybe that's a smaller group than you think your detractors are much more smaller and understand that they have the remedy of a lawsuit if they need to so protect your kids and lead from there so thank you very much i appreciate the time thanks susan for the car thank you lisa for your comments um betty any other public comment tonight okay thank you the next board of education meeting will be held on july 2021 at 6 30 p.m here in the liberty board room 13th tuesday um i'd like to recommend or i'd like to entertain a motion please to adjourn the board of education studies session meeting of june 22 2021 at 7 56 pm i'll make that motion thank you jenny support support by candace thank you all
121those in favor say i i i oppose nay hearing none motion carries 7-0 we are adjourned right