001Mhm. >> Mhm. >> Hello, it's an ant. It's just an ant, I promise. The black ant? Good evening and welcome to the Monday, April 13th, 2026 Garfield Heights City Schools Board of Education special board meeting. I would like to call this meeting to order. May we please have roll call? Yes. Mr. Dudley. Mrs. Irvin-Dozier. Yes. Ms. Morrison. Here. Ms. Cox. Here. Ms. Thomas. Here. Thank you. Next item on the agenda is the adoption of the agenda. May I have a motion? So moved. Thank you. Is there a second? Second. Thank you. That was moved by Ms. Cox and seconded by Mrs. Irvin-Dozier. Is there any discussion? Seeing none, may we have roll call? Ms. Cox. Yes. Mrs. Irvin-Dozier. Yes. Ms. Morrison. >> Yes. >> Ms. Thomas. Yes. Thank you. Of course. Next item on our
002agenda is our tentative agenda review. I'll give everyone a moment to look through and you can ask any questions. Dr. Brunold. Yes, ma'am. Can you talk to us a little bit about the Kinderbourn program at William Foster. Yes, Kinderbourn program is a program that happens over the summer time to introduce our our youngest and our smallest students um into the the culture of our our school district. It's really the introduction to to school for our young ones. Thank you. Have we started enrollment for that yet? Yes, we actually had uh uh an event event a couple of weeks ago and this year we ended up having more participants or more parents to sign up than we've ever had before. Uh this year we had we were usually in our 20s and this time we had
003about 47 parents to sign up. This uh this was a great event and great turnout which allows us to to really understand the impact that we're having in the school district where parents are are trusting us to to go ahead and sign their students up early uh in order to go ahead and get the learning started. Thank you. And do you know, I may not know, uh approximately how many kindergarteners we have? I know I don't up 40-ish. About 40. >> Total in district. No, that's that's pre-K. I'm sorry. Our kindergarten is 552. 152? Okay. Wow, that's a lot more than 40. 152, yes. But for about 40 in the pre-K program. >> Pre-K program, yes. >> And about 40 registered for Kinderbourn already. Except yes, ma'am. And about 150 enrolled. >> Yes. And we
004are uh we are anticipating more uh in the next few weeks. We've We've been a little more aggressive at ensuring that enrollment begins early um to ensure that parents have their questions answered. You know, it's the first real year for a lot of our students to to be enrolled in school so we want to be able to answer all the questions that our parents have about how our school day runs and how we're going to be serving the job. Thank you. Yes. I have a question about the events manager position. Someone give us some information on what what is that role? I'm sorry, you said the events manager? Yes. Okay, so that position is with our facilities department. That person will come in and will open up the facilities. They will um make sure that
005the facilities are maintained. They will also do set up and break down as well. So, I see that we have a few I'm assuming probably for like different uh buildings, different events. Do each of them who do they report to? So, they report to um right now is currently um Gary Moore. Okay. But then they will be reporting to Mr. Wayland as well. Okay. Mhm. It's actually both It's both of us now just to start that transition so. >> Okay, so each of them will get their individual job duties from It's a rotation. It's sort of schedule and then they're able to select the different events that they would like to work. Got it. And then I also see that we're having a human resources update. Um that is always super exciting. Um is there
006anything board members that you all would like to see in her presentation specifically or is there a question that you may have that she can possibly present on and kind of have a Uh Madam President Yes. will there be a discussion on the vacancies? Sure. Yeah. >> Mr. I have a question. Mhm. Um Well, like a few months back we we discussed um the success or lack of success of the different um people that come in and do provide services to our scholars. And I know that we discussed some type of update. I think from Mr. Hurt on are the students attending? Are they not? How successful are the services that they're providing? I think it was after school, I think. >> Okay. I was about to say, are you talking about like um after
007school like enrichment programs or like programs that are on the agenda for like speech therapy and things like that? >> Not speech therapy, more of the after school different programs. I mean, I would have to go back to a few agendas, but um I know we talked about that months ago, but I'm I'm curious to know, do we have updates on who's attending? I know that there are different um contracts we have with people that come in, but we sign off on the contract, but we don't get an It would be nice to get an update on We can get you that on Monday. Before you on the next board meeting, as a matter of fact. You can find out who's We cut a lot of the after school pieces that we were doing because
008of budget concerns. Um but the ones that we do have there should be data provided for you for that. So, I can provide an update for Can anybody I have a point to speak. Yes. Under 13.1 um for the $5,000 stipend for OTAs for William Foster, can somebody clarify to me what that is? Which one is it? Um it's under 13.1. Right above 13.2. OTAs for William Foster. Yes. Um we had an administrator who was out of the building for a while. And we needed someone to assist in providing assistance with evaluations. Okay. Thank you. And that is a note on here. Will it be an actual item? Yes, we'll make the adjustment so it is an item. Thank you. Any other questions? >> I'm going to put it in here. Okay, so I'm going
009to advise you I don't know that there's a attachment of the lease renewal lease contract renewal. LEAP is a organization that we work with for some of our students who have some behavioral issues outside of what we can serve them. We work with LEAP for a number of years in in the past and They've done some good work for us. I've also worked with them in other school districts as well. LEAP is a typical service for for school districts if if students show some behavior issues and and have been diagnosed so a lot of them have obsessions and compulsions. All right, item number 2.3 on our agenda is our mandated fraud training. So I will hand it over to Mr. Opoku. Yes, so actually three of you are already covered. Miss Thomas, Miss Carson, Miss
010Morrison are covered. So Mrs. Irvin-Dozier and Mr. Dudley would have to take this training. I can put it up on the screen and we can all watch it. 8 minutes, but Mr. Dudley's going to have to do it separately within that. Or I can send you the link and you can do it on your own. Send it to you. Would you like to do that instead? Okay. And then when you get your certificate send it to me so we can provide it for the auditors. And Phil, can you let me know when they are complete? Yes, yes. I'll send I'll send you an email when I send them out and then when I get them back. They have to be done at a certain within a certain time frame, so we'll let you know, but
011I will also double check just to make sure all everybody's covered, but we did it last year if you remember and I think it's only for newly elected members, but I will check. Thank you. Yes, of course. And next we have a presentation from our operations department receiving updates on our roof and paving projects. Thank you. Um The operations members have different ideas of their own. Sorry about that. All right. Um the operations and capital plan team consisted of Dr. Reynolds, myself, Gary Moore, Tim Hegedus, our maintenance supervisor, and of course Phil O'Keefe, our treasurer. Um We're looking at two really big, important pieces here. We're looking at roofing and in roofing we've been partnering up with a company called Damshur. Um Damshur is not the only company we looked at through Ohio Schools Council.
012We have pre-bid companies that we can look at in order to get an analysis of what is going on with our roofing and we looked at more than one company just to make sure that we were getting consistent information on the state of our roofs currently so that way we know we are making the best possible decisions with our budget. It also gives us a chance to look at multiple quotes for the work so that way we're getting the best possible price for the work that needs to be done. Um the middle school has some immediate concerns which I'm going to show you in a minute but uh that's a bit of the history as far as how we got here right now. Paving project. Um it's been quite some time since we've taken a
013look at paving in our district. We've partnered with a company called Pavement Maintenance Specialties to take a look at the high school which has some very serious needs. I'm going to show you some pictures on what that looks like but also there's some needs at Elmwood and William Foster we're going to be addressing this year. This is part of a process in just getting our parking lots up to the point where they're safe to drive. Um also um for for our parents, for our students and also for our own vehicles. And I'll talk a little bit about that when I get to the paving portion. In taking a look at the roofing, this is a overview of our middle school and uh we're going to be talking about four specific areas which really basically covers
014all of our middle school. Um this is the instructional area straight on through to the cafeteria area down here. Cafeteria area is the worst um but we are going to be taking a look at the whole roof. Just kind of a quick little overview. It's a shot of uh kind of what our roof looks like from an overview without any of the coverings on there. When you take a look, there's a lot of there's a lot of areas of needs and concerns. Um this is part of the metal trim that goes along especially in areas where we need to make sure that the roofing is down and then we're um preventing leaks in seams and things like that. As you can see the state of that right away from looking at it. You can see
015a lot of the cracking and damage on the surface here as well, which is also present present over on this side of the roof. We have it in various places. You'll see a lot of structures on there and a lot of equipment that's on there. Those are areas that obviously over time can lead to leakage because of the fact that it's not a clean smooth roof surface over there. You actually see some of the growth over here just from over time. It's age. It's getting it's an old roof. Yes. How much of the equipment that is still on the roof is not in use? It's a mixture of that piece. So I mean we've got old HVAC equipment and things like that that are up there. That was actually as we were meeting part of
016the conversation was revolving around old equipment that is up there as well. And what to do with that is part of part of the roofing process. I don't have an exact number but I mean it's it was part it was part of our discussion. As you take a look at the different zones, they each have a different cost and we're looking at actually doing the whole entire middle school roof. When you break down each of these zones, what we're going to be looking at is a 20-year option. So we're looking for a 20-year roof. With replacement of all the edge metal. So I showed you that edge metal damage that's on there. That's to keep the roof down. We're also looking to put on zone D a safety ladder. Currently they're using a chair to
017get up there. So there's some serious safety concerns as far as that's concerned. So we want to make sure to take care of that as part of this process as well. The total for that process is going to be when you take a look at all four zones is 407,978.39. This bid is considerably lower than the other company we were looking at. So we were trying to make sure to make this the most cost effective project for you. But you can take a look at the age of our roof. We've done windows at the facility. Our goal right now is to prevent leaks in the future. Um I'm going to show you the high school just to give you kind of an overview. We did look at the two flagship buildings. And when you take
018a look at the high school, if you look at the pictures of the high school, you would think that this is our worst building. But, this is just a surface covering that's peeling up. The rest of the membrane underneath is actually really secure. We've got a good couple years before we really need to consider it. So, next year we're going to be looking really heavy at building a plan for our high school next. Both companies verified cuz they did um core sample testing and they did infrared testing to make sure that these roof that the this roof was solid. We aren't looking at any leakage right now from this. So, they said we can hold this one off. Um the reason why I'm referencing it, the first thing we did as a team is went
019up there ourselves and took a tour of the roofs. So, it's an example of why do you call in roofing companies? Why do you call in experts? When you see the visuals, you're thinking one thing. When we have actual experts out there, they're pointing us in the other direction. Um just to make sure that we took care of the middle school roof first so that we don't have any issues at that building. So, that's the reason why we're making the decision that we are and why we're asking for your help and support as far as in moving forward with that particular piece. Paving. And I saw a lot of you nodding as I was mentioning paving concerns. Um these are the two elementary buildings right now. And um what we're looking to do with this
020paving project is some of the apparent visual pieces over there to get those properly dug out, filled in, and to um put proper paving in those places. We're patching in these areas for right now. Um the cost of right now taking uh redoing our entire um parking lots right now would take away from our ability to be able to take care of the roof. So, what we're doing right now is not ignoring our parking lots. We're trying to buy ourselves some time to be able to handle a bigger project down the road with paving when our budget allows us to do so. The rest of these pictures are all going to be of the high school and the reason why we're doing more work at the high school. Um some of the areas to be
021particularly noticing is when when you take a look at some of these drains and I'll I have some better pictures of them. The drains are some real concerns over there because some of them are raised and I'll show you that in this picture you can see it right here a little bit more. Um what ends up happening with that it's it's a danger to students for tripping. It's a danger to vehicles for our parents and families as they come in and student vehicles obviously as well at the high school, but also for our plows. Um what's happening is our plows are going through and they're hitting that equipment. So it's actually putting some additional wear and tear on our vehicles on that end. Um obviously you see holes and other um you know, areas that
022are going to be of damage to tires and things like that along the way. Um So that guy kind of zoomed in on this one quickly so you can see it. Again, see much more of the potential for damage there um as we look in the main traffic areas and it's our heavy traffic areas. Question. Yes. Can you go back? Sure, be happy to. One more. Sure. So this it's like in the center. So like is it because the drain is right there and that happens or like how does that happen like if cars are going that way and that way in the center? It hasn't been worked that was done previously there and I don't have a good answer for you right now not knowing the history of that. I'll inquire and I'll be
023happy to share with you exactly how that got there. Mr. Opoku, do you know anything about how that wound up that way? I don't. I know that they haven't like fully part of the problem is you wouldn't have that if they fully grind like ground it down and replaced all of it. This is probably from years of patching in certain areas. My guess would be at some point in time too they did some drainage work. >> Yeah. Yeah. Okay. You know, and then then just patched it in. So I mean just cuz if you take a look at where the drain is and you take a look at it all the way out there. I don't I don't want to commit to that because I don't know that for sure, but I guarantee if I
024talk to our maintenance staff, they're going to be able to fill in the blanks pretty quickly. I will send you all an email as far as if that is in fact what it is. >> And it kind of looks similar to where the new stadium is situated. It has like a new parking lot over there, new pavement and everything, but it also has that drain that's fully situated. This just kind of looks like it was again patched up. You can see the seams there and I would think Mhm. We have not fully redone our parking lots in many many years though, so that's that's part of the reason why um you're seeing things like this. So, we're looking at the high school obviously to take care of catch basin collars and things like that, excavating
025it, especially when ones that you see that are raised, so that way they are properly put in place, so they will be smooth up to the surface. Um so, they're going to remediate all of that work. And then they're going to go through the entire parking lot, do asphalt surface patching, clean the area, do the patching. That for the high This is just for the high school right now is 21,000 to do the high school. And then we're also going to be doing some work at William Foster and Elmwood Elementary based on the fixtures that you've seen over there to make sure that we're taking care of those buildings as well. The total of that project is going to be $26,000, 26 350. Uh so, do you have any questions for me other than the
026good ones you already asked? The 26 350 is just for William Foster and No, the 26 350 is for all of it. The high school, Elmwood, and William Foster put together. I just wanted to give all of you a total of what the whole project looks together like. The high school is 21,500, which is a majority of it. Most of the work is going to be at the high school. The other two buildings it's uh for William Foster and 1600 for Elmwood for the work that needs to be done at those buildings. They have different needs at both from the pictures that you saw over there. So, that's where the 2,600 very good question. What does the time look like for paving? This would be a summer project. So, one of the reasons why we're
027putting this before you now is so we could get approval to go ahead and move forward based on the board's desire and then we would be getting this on the schedule to be done over the summer. It's really hard to do that during the school year. So, pavement maintenance specialties I've worked with them in my previous school district and they're very good at making sure that they get this done based on the needs of the school district. So, Mr. Hedrick would be very happy if we could get this on the schedule as soon as possible so that way based on activities that we've got going on in our buildings that we can navigate around that. They'll do a lot of their work if possible on the weekends as well. Which we can avoid you know
028major events that are going on in the school district potentially especially during the week. I have another question. We're speaking about the concrete at the high school. I know we have a new field. Well, I guess this is a layer question. Sure. Does the band still practice on that secondary parking lot at the high school? But cuz I feel like they've been having band camp at maybe William Foster and so maybe they're out there. But did we take a look at that parking lot in front of the old transportation building? They looked at the entire parking lot over at the high school when we were taking a look at this as far as the patch proposal. Okay. So, the pictures the pictures that I have are a sampling. It's not meant to be comprehensive of
029every area that they're going to look at the high school. This time to best answer that for last year the band used the new stadium. Okay. For band camp. Okay. Mr. Weidlich Mhm. Um do we have an estimate of like the time frame of the patching? Like how long it will last? They they can't because it's patching as opposed to redoing the entire parking lot. They can't give you like the same kind of guarantee as far as that piece goes. Obviously they the purpose of them going through and digging out what they will actually any loose material they dig out and make sure that that is removed to try and make a strong patch so that way it lasts as long as possible. This is anytime you do this kind of work what you're doing
030is you're buying time and so that way that you can do a proper redo of the entire parking lot which is what we're doing. We know that we're doing that wear and tear is driven by basically how much use that particular area gets compared to other areas. So there's going to be some areas that get a lot more life out of them because they're just parking spots and things like that whereas high traffic areas like where we saw with the drainage area. Those are going to get worn out a lot much faster because we have tons of vehicles going on there every single day. Some of them are very heavy. So it really is dependent on that. I know that's not a great solid answer as far as timeline but that we have so many
031variables that there isn't really a good answer for that. They tend to warranty a parking lot when you redo it. for a longer time than Thank you. Madam President. With this being our I guess my first question is are we proposing the roof and the pavement this summer? Yes. And my next question would be to Mr. Oco. And how does this affect our budget? This is unplanned and So actually it was planned. So we did um That would be my next question. >> Oh, yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. All right. So, yes. Um, so, it is a large cost. I know that we've been working over the past couple of years to put together a list of things that ought to, you know, not the SR money and the COVID money that's gone. We put a
032lot of money in our middle school. That bond issue failed. We know we have to keep it up and running. We did years of planning, you know, Dr. Reynolds, myself. We did a lot of work seeing what the all the buildings need cuz we have eight facilities, well, nine now with the the the ball field. And, um, what we did is we knew that we didn't have all the money in the world coming out of SR, and we looked at the middle school, and it's a bigger building. And, realistically, if there was any talk down the line of consolidation, that middle school's just too big of a building as it was the high school previously. So, when we did this, we kind of we budgeted two capital improvement projects in the in the last 5-year
033forecast submission for a total of around $700,000. That was put in our line. It's line six, so capital improvement. So, we have planned for two, and we were very happy that this middle school project came in where it did with Dam Shroder. Now, I will tell you, Trumco came in significantly higher, and would have We wouldn't have been able to have done the full middle school, but, um, yes, we we know that this is like make or break it time for some of these building improvements given the cash position we're looking at in the coming years. So, we you know, made the decision to bring it to you guys as a recommendation. I'll just ask you a second question. No, I think you answered it. You It sounds like it was planned pre me. Um
034Well, actually, we didn't have these. Yeah, I mean, this this is years prior before you took uh took your seat, but we did, uh, coming out of that SR money, Dr. Reynolds and I Yeah, what what we saw was that there was really kind of planned that something like your home, something fall apart, but nothing will fall apart at the same time. What we were trying to avoid is those things just falling down on on us all at once. So, we needed a purchasing plan, we needed to to make sure that we had a plan to repair and maintenance plan. And developing those plans will save us from having everything hit all at once. Cuz at the pace we were going, it seemed like that was going to happen. So, we were able to come
035up with something to sustain. To alleviate obviously we we'd like to fix everything all at once and then start the maintenance plans to maintain what we need to maintain, but this will be the way that doesn't harm us in a way that, you know, we were struggling financially, but this is something that works for us. So, it sounds like we we prepared for this. >> We tried our best. Tried our best. I I I will say that this board has been very uh supportive in those capital plans. And I know that it's very difficult to see a $400,000 expenditure when our cash position looks like it looks moving forward, but we also have to realize that we can't afford the roof at the middle school falling in or, you know, because that's just not We'll
036look at Ashtabula City Schools for that example, and it's an absolute catastrophe. So, um yes, it was planned, and I think the problem is is it's good that we can take care of this plan and this item, but we have so many more down the pipeline that it's going to be difficult, and we'll have to have that conversation about deferred maintenance plan. Okay. The way we do it, but thank you for the question. Any other questions? No, that's helpful. Well, Not for me. On that discussion, Phil, can you talk a little bit to the history of these projects, the roof, and in regards to how we chose to prioritize this middle school roof? Yeah, so I'll tell you um your high school is the OFCC C project is it is coming up on that 25
037year from when it was built, which is it'll be the youngest building. Maple Leaf is the oldest at 101 years old. And then William Foster has an expansion to it, but it was it's it's up there about 30-40 years old. And then Elmwood Elementary is still original, but it had OFCC work done back in the mid-2000s. The middle school is original, as we all know. It is quite old, and a lot of the the structures are still original to it. So, for example, the roof has not been replaced. It is far past its warranty. Um I I don't even think we could tell you how many years it's past the warranty, but it's at that point of needing replaced. The boilers um that we fix constantly have are original to the building. So, the plan
038was before all of us took office or or was appointed was that um they were going to replace the the millage from the high school bond that was coming off this tax year, and ask for a renewal bond millage with some help from the ARPA SR money to build or renovate the middle school. What ended up happening is that bond campaign failed, and there was an investment of monies into the athletic wing of the middle school. So, if you remember seeing that photo there, you can see I don't know, Mr. Wood, if you can go to it real fast. It's really nice. It's beautiful. And uh the if you go back a couple to the top Yeah, right there. So, you see the roof next to A there, it's it's it's darn near brand new.
039It was done during the SR years. So, the prioritization was quite honestly, from what we look through every day, when it comes from the furniture in the classrooms to the roof on the building was that the middle school was not to be maintained because they were hoping for a new building to be built. And instead, um the prioritization was to be split across the other buildings in the district. And unfortunately, we haven't seen some of those improvements come to life, which is why we have now put together a comprehensive plan that will take care of us for the next 5, 10, 15 years, including our new stadium. So, that came online this past summer, and it's we're already building a mean like a maintenance plan for that with cost because in 10 years we're going
040to replace the turf, right? Those are things that we have to think about now. And I think the issue is that Dr. Ronalds and I came in there was a lot of money to be spent out of the SR funds, and some of it was already earmarked that we didn't really get to see through with the priorities that we had in mind as a team, and then we're here in front of you. So. There are quite a few things that we would have done a little bit differently. Yeah. We jumped on it. Especially looking at the fact that this building, the roofing on all buildings are struggling. We are struggling on each each one of our buildings. So, but now we're at a point where we are trying to stay steady the ship a little
041bit by making sure that these plans are in place. So, we're in a better place now. They also looked at all of our buildings. So, we didn't just direct them to look at specific buildings. They looked at all of our buildings, and part of that was our needing validation that our thinking was correct based on what we were visually seeing. Um so, that's why you call out independent companies. It's also why we look at multiple companies because of what Mr. Oko said. If we went with just one company, we may not be looking at this project as the entire middle school because we couldn't afford that. We're very confident in this company. Um and we're confident in both companies. Um the nice part is the validation that both of them said the exact same thing.
042This is what you need to look at. They took core samples. So, they're looking below what we can see. You know, in the case we can't do that. We're going to we're going to be looking at the surface based on what we see over there. They were looking below that, and that was what told us that these are the roofs that we want to be doing right now because it's going to give us the best long-term potential. And And to the point of surprises, it's to keep us from having surprises at those buildings. So, we're trying to avoid us coming to you from surprise expenditures. And all of these projects were done without any outside knowledge from our community or our taxpayers, which I think is very important. So, this project will be done with
043general fund money by by budgeting and managing our expenses appropriately to our school district. I think that's another important thing. board should cuz you'll get questions out about it when they see the new roof going. Yes. Yeah. Thank you. Any other questions? Thank you, Mr. Alcorn. Alcorn. And I know and Mr. Wayland. I was getting ready to say something else to Mr. Wayland. I was thinking about that. Um you've done amazing in this position. So, we appreciate the work that you've done thus far. I I appreciate you. Thank you. Thank you. And um item 3.1 on our agenda is to go into executive session, but before we do that, um we do have our new academic plans in the yellow folder. Um so, that is something that we will be voting on next week. If
044you guys want to take a look at those items. A lot of of work has been put into them um and it is exciting for our scholars. All right, item 3.1. Just Thomas, before we do that, um are we able to add the Dan Schroeder contract to the board agenda for this one here? For next Monday. We've got the presentation. We can add it and vote on it. Item 3.1 is a motion to move into executive session for the purpose of conferencing with the public bodies attorney concerning pending or imminent court action by division G3 of section 121.22 of the revised code. Court action is pending if a suit has been commenced. Court action is imminent if it is on the point of happening or impending. May I have a motion to enter into executive
045session at 6:41 p.m. So moved. Thank you. Is there a second? Second. Thank you. That was moved by Ms. Cox, seconded by Mrs. Urban-Dozier. Is there any discussion? Seeing none, we will go into executive session. Following Oh, yeah. Go ahead. Thank you. Sorry. Ms. Cox. >> Yes. Mrs. Urban-Dozier. Yes. Mr. Dudley. >> Yes. Ms. Morrison. >> Yes. Ms. Thomas. Yes. Thank you. Following executive session, there will be no action.