WLCSD Board of Education Meeting - November 2, 2023

001to another I needed to make sure we got a couple Logistics out of the way from one to the next I'd like to call the meeting to order at 7:04 and ask us to please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge algi to the flag of the United States of America and to the for it stands Nation God indivisible withy andice for all we're going to start out with golden apple Awards Dr Beria thank you very much Madam president good evening everyone uh Bobby kid are you in the room wow okay I don't think this has ever happened to us before it has but just before you it's never happened to me before yes right it's not all about me as you would say it is about you sometimes sometimes but not right now

002tonight it's about Bobby uh who is our first golden apple recipient he is a groundskeeper at Wall Lake Central High School Bobby was nominated by David Rogers director of bands at Wall Lake Central because he does a fantastic job consistently taking care of the school's grounds in particular he is a vital part of the school's ability to have a successful marching band due to his reliability and the great care in his work that marching band's uh competing for the state championship this weekend yes go ban David shared Bobby always does a great job for us Bobby quietly goes about doing his job in an excellent manner without seeking attention he could be counted on to do a great job in a timely manner these qualities serve our community well and provide a great example for

003others Bobby is clearly selfmotivated he goes above and beyond to do a great job since he took over maintenance of the grounds at Wall Lake Central the level of consistency and quality he has provided has been outstanding Kyle medor principal at Wall Lake Central supported Bobby's nomination sharing as our groundskeeper Bobby takes great care to ensure that all of our outdoor facilities are ready for our student athletes marching band members and Community to enjoy despite sometimes being given near impossible jobs like keeping our sidewalks ice free during a Michigan winter striping numerous athletic fields by himself or fixing equipment that was manufactured during the Eisenhower Administration Bobby never complains and he always finds a way to exceed expectations and get the job done right Bobby thank you for all you do every day for the

004students and families at wal Lake Central it's our honor to recognize him this evening and Mr Menor would you mind coming up and getting his stuff would would you be able to get it over to him thank you thank you we appreciate it y thank you all right tonight's second old goalen Apple recipient is here Joe Bell come on up Joe you get to stand right on the wal Lake right there the most comfortable place in the room whichever way you want Joe was nominated by his colleague Dr Nick Hamlin assistant principal at Wall Lake Central because Joe Joe is in it for the students and this admirable and genuine quality is evident each and every day at Wald Lake Central Joe is a learner and that and he is self-actualized he is happy to

005learn new things in order to help others and that is usually his priority however he also shows interest in learning new things for no other reason than to become more knowledgeable and to grow even though Joe has a lot of experience in the field of Education he's always growing he attends conferences shows enthusiasm when presented with new ideas Joe has done a lot of diversity equity and inclusion work at Wall Lake Central and has done a great job of bringing the student body together the various student leadership groups like to work with him because he has a positive attitude is willing to try new things and always put students first Joe also mentors newer administrators at wal Lake Central he's always willing to listen suggest and advise which helps co-workers feel confident and Empower Kyle

006medier principal wal Lake Central celebrated Joe's nomination sharing Mr Bell knows that the role of assistant principal is one of extreme responsibility and importance but he carries out his role with a sense of humor extreme modesty and a wise perspective that all administrators aspire to Mr Bell's roles are extremely broad ranging from working with our special services department to ensuring that our school is a welcoming place for all members of our diverse student body to helping individual students each and every day and much more Joe was also recently a nominee for State assistant principal of the Year by the Michigan Association of Secondary School principles congratulations Joe and lastly Joe thank you for all you each and every day for our students and families at Wall Lake Central it's our honor to recognize you this

007evening if you want to say a few words you may sure yeah yeah to the to the podium thank you you making them run over there yeah because the live stream's got to pick this up all I want to say was thanks to everybody here for all your support and helping me help make my job easier to do every day today and uh gratitude to Nick Hamlin he couldn't be here tonight who nominated me but he's doing some stuff with his family tonight but it just means the most when you're recognized by a peer it just really does mean the most so like all of you I just do it because I love kids and I love being part of the school so thanks [Applause] everybody all right next we have the Strategic facility planning

008committee update Mr chff thank you Dr Beria uh as you know a districtwide committee of stakeholders representing all schools in many departments uh have been meeting to review data from the facility utilization study completed by plant Moran real Realo last spring in an effort to assess the uh study's findings and and and develop considerations to utilize our facilities in a more efficient and cost effective manner uh Paul Wills from uh plant Moran real Point who has been uh facilitating this process for us is here tonight to provide an update uh of the on the status of the committee's work Paul thank you Mr chafi Dr ber good evening board uh tonight is an update so again we were here earlier as more of the process we're actually here to talk about the last two Community

009forums we also received some frequently asked questions and also we'll talk about next steps relative to the utilization study uh update itself so again really the presentation overview is really taking a look at the four key aspects that we shared with the committee and the committee comprise roughly uh 55 to 60 individuals uh we'll talk a little bit about that uh there's the October 10th survey uh with the questions and the responses there's the frequently asked questions that are actually on the district's website as well as the October 24th and then we'll talk through kind of next steps with the commune as well as board activities through the end of the year so again um what is the impetus of this 20123 utilization really came out of the 2018 so again looking at enrollment so

010to give a perspective when the the district first started looking at this in 2012 2013 wal Lake had 15,590 students uh last year your uh audited count was 12,373 so it's a decrease of over 3200 students in that 10-year period we do know that out of the 2012 there was several schools and Facilities that were looked at in terms of being resourced uh as well as downsized the district realized some of those savings but again when you look at a 3200 student decrease obviously something has to be done going forward so out of that uh as we mentioned there's a a committee faciliation committee is comprised of community members administrators teachers uh parents and staff um really to come with options so again you as the deciding entity of the district are really looking at

011these considerations and overlapping of it what does it mean for your longterm goals and objectives educationally financially operationally so why is some of the declining enrollment uh you saw this in February during our pupil enrollment uh again in Oakland County if you go back to 1990 there's over 177,000 live births that's really the height of Oakland County we're down to about 13,000 um you saw the impact of coid drop below about 12,750 um us semcog um us uh Census Bureau we're all kind of looking at this is the new reality for Oakland County and the state of Michigan going forward so again how does the district react to this from a utilization and facility standpoint this is just the birth Trends again looking at 0 to 5 year olds 6 to 11 year olds 12

012to 17 year olds and obviously 18 to 24 as they go outside the bound um so again still that downward incline and again that's really just a direct relation of that large population born in the 200 4 2005 which is your current senior year and then the zero to FES that we are looking at here in the next five years here in Wall Lake this is more of a breakdown by grade so the orange triangles in the upper left or up top on the top is your Elementary and again you used to be at roughly 5,800 you're at 5198 I'm kind of in a 5-year projection so again rough roughly um 800 students less so to give you an idea an elementary school holds about four or 500 students at that time point in the

013middle you have um the high school which again is starting to flatten out because again people do want to move into wall Lake that's a secondary move in that's where not seeing such a steep decline like you'd see at other communities they're more fully built out uh with a lot of development land and a lot of movement going forward and lastly on the bottom you have the Middle School population uh again back to 2020 or 2016 about 3,250 50 and you're about 2400 so about a th000 less at that level so that bubble is kind of working its way through the system as we go through it so this is a comparison really of kind of the grades by building so you see the 22 23 enrollment uh we know you just had your October

014count so we'll update this as we go through the the process here through December um this is really looking at what are the academic and programs so um Mr Li did a great job in terms of explaining what programs are in which of the facilities um what are some of those opportunities for classrooms so you can see for instance at Guest um there's zero rooms um unused and you look at some of the others where there's you know five or six uh with Specialties in that so not just general Ed but we're looking at special education we're looking at prek and early childhood so this is really a full lens uh relative to that um academic and and programming going forward we do the same thing uh at the middle schools again taking a look

015at the enrollment from 2006 2007 to where we're at today um also the number of current open classrooms also some of the special education and other considerations for those programs and those utilization of rooms and then lastly we did that at the high school level um kind of looking at the 2006 to 2007 and then the 23 24 project enrollment so um you can see pretty much middle school and the high school you have that significant decline um really in the last 10 years from that perspective so Switching gears uh looked at the current enrollment by buildings so again just looking look at a full lens so right now you have 12 elementary schools uh four middle schools and three high schools so you kind of see the average building per enrollment uh we also

016looked at some of your peer groups we looked at the top 15 districts of how you size up in terms of number of students per facility um so again this is a concept this was not nothing that was suggested yet but if you were to go let's say to 11 elementaries three middle schools two high schools you'd be more in alignment with kind of some of your peer groups where 450 to 500 is at the elementary level um 800 about a th000 students at the middle school level and then obviously 18500 to 2,000 would be at the at the high school level going forward again this is a concept so there's no names attached it was simply a numbers analysis relative to the facilities and programming again looking at the operational costs so again at

017the elementary level you have about 700,000 square feet you spend roughly $6.1 million a year um at the middle schools you have just under 600,000 square feet about $3.8 million per year and at the high school level you have just under a million square feet and about 5.3 of operational costs when you look at utilization you look at facility op optimization those are some of the dollars and cents that you actually did realize out of the 20112 study and again what are those considerations that the committee is going to look at to help you frame some of those conversations going into the future again we talked about utilization um so again we looked at total Jed classrooms uh we looked at the number of students per classroom and the capacities so at the elementary level

018um you're at roughly 81% um based on some of the projections of of students per classroom at the middle schools that drops to 51% you see there in the bottom and then lastly at the high school level about 45% so there is opportunity for again looking at programming looking at utilization and and that was really impetus to some of the questions that we'll look at here um from the committee going forward so I think some of that previous information you saw but again it was just good to kind of remind the committee of this is something that the board saw um earlier in the year and again this was kind of the impetus of the why so the first part of this section two is really the questions um so there's four questions asked to

019the committee um after the first presentation is do you acknowledge that the district does have an issue with utilization enrollment and a significant decrease um roughly 97% said yes um there has been a significant decrease when you're looking at a drop of 3,200 students over 10 years I think everyone would agree that's something that needs to be addressed going forward uh second question is and effort to uh increase utilization at the high school which of the following should be recommended again explore options that was almost 80% support to look at options of putting programs let's say in support facilities into the high school we have great examples across Southeast Mission across the state of districts who have done that with Administration teams partnering with communities things of that nature um the next question with part

020of that question is reduce the number of high schools from three down to two and there's about 20% support for that decision going forward next question was at the middle school level um asking the same types of question again 67% um supported exploring options of expanding um programs into that space that may not currently be there and roughly 32 almost 33% said looking at a reduction of four to three middle schools going forward at the elementary level uh about 87 88% said let's explore options again those facilities are offly 81% um again just under over 12% indicated a r a reduction of those 12 middle school or 12 elementary schools for that going forward so out of that we actually had a round table discussion um which really came into some of the other analysis

021that we're going to talk about here tonight so for instance why didn't the facility studies takeen the lad facility obviously EAC we're here tonight um looking at prek so we know prek for four-year olds is something that's in the budgets for school districts to consider where could that potentially being knowing that that you have an Early Childhood Center as part of the last Bond um looking at different cords so could you have a 56 uh facilities a 78 facilities um still maintaining Elementary in high schools we looked at and discussed the adult transition program uh they looked at some of the enrollments uh relative to the middle schools uh and again understanding how do you balance that with open enrollment in schools of choice uh we also looked at some of the maintenance um you

022know costs looking at utilities going forward buildings that are at the near of end of life so most of your facilities were built in the 60s 70s 80s um again most facilities could be used for 50 to 70 years you know is that part of the conversation like some districts look at two or three elementaries that have 250 300 students maybe build a larger one but it's 21st century and you shut down two or three but you have one so that was something of the conversations that we took a look at redistricting um I know it's been a while since the district has done that but again looking at some of the patchwork of Elementary boundaries to Middle School ultimately to high school um taking a look at closing schools so again being cognizant of

023schools of choice and how that may affect private school versus public again redistricting and then also talking about northern and western so again the adult transitions program that was moved there in 2018 has grown almost 40% what does that long-term projection look like for that individual program so on the October 24th meeting um we kind of talked very specifically about the ESC so this facility is about 56,000 Square F feet so to give you an idea that's about a size of an elementary school um we also talked about twin Sun so it's about 11,000 12,000 square feet it's a smaller facility um and then we also talked about adult transitions which is roughly 177,000 square feet where is it currently at where those facilities so again some of the questions were you know where should

024some of these facilities be be considered um you can see High School obviously had the most uh support and looking at relatively of utilizing some of the under space for program let's say the administration facility so you look at a gross point they had a standalone uh academic or um administration building they sold that they moved into North um Birmingham schools has done that they moved into Groves High School so there's a lot of samples of where that's been done going forward um some of the twin Sun programs looking at the elementary levels um you know that that was some of the conversations of where where some of the elementaries may have lower utilization that could accommodate the six to eight classrooms on some of those support spaces and then of course the doll transition

025was you know it's been at Western since 2018 um the students are integrated into that program are there opportunities to grow it there should there be a secondary site so these are some of the questions and themes that came out of this question here going forward uh October 24th 2nd um was again some of the specific themes uh was close ESC so again relocating it into a high school potentially Middle School um again looking at ATP and maybe moving it here to the EST and allowing for future opportunity growth so you can see some of these smaller puzzle pieces potentially being considered Ed to help up increase the utilization at the middle school and high school uh again we talked about the secondary site for ATP maybe at another High School uh to allow that

026program going forward we mentioned the twin sun again looking at the Elementary programs is this something that should be a single site could it be multiple sites what are some of the program opportunities and challenges for that um one of the comments ESC to Geisler you can also include twin sun and ATP so that facility is about 120,000 Square fet um so if the district was to go down to three middle schools you still reutilize that existing facility middle school but be more for support services and Specialty programs um and then the last comment was um closing the middle school and moving ESC and ATP into that facility so again these are just some of the themes that came out of that question number one second part should the district uh look at revising the

027cohort uh so we spent a lot of time talking about the current K5 68 912 model um so almost uh 68% said the district should at least look at it and consider it and look at some of those options of what would that look like um so again do you have a K4 do you have a prek4 uh do you have a 56 school with a 78 feeder um there's even some discussions of do you have a 812 high school program um some districts are looking at that again is options um for consideration going forward so again how would that help utilization across the spectrum of the district talking about expanding electives at the Middle School uh again about 75% so right now you have a lot of Staff that's traveling between middle schools for

028some of the electives um so it's often challenging from an academic lens to have full program participation for those students so that's more of that academic review of utilization so again a lot of support for that going forward and then the other question for was uh Career Tech uh Career Tech Readiness and education so again almost uh 98% uh support of this in terms of bringing back some of those programs that may have been off site for years um I know you've got a partnership with the Oakland schools tech center um but a lot of school districts are starting to look at that and saying should we bring that back into our our fold um what you're going to see below is actually some of those specifics of those themes that District could potentially consider

029so for instance Este steam or magnet uh gifted and talented at the middle school levels alternative education is another one uh we have several districts that have brought that back into the high schools it's kind of it's an own separate uh area of the school it's got its own bell times again but helping utilize some of that space daycare um some districts are looking at um daycare providers like actually being certified daycare lensey for either employees um and also have electives for students potentially to take that uh there's talk of early middle college uh there's also talk of having potentially two I'll call it core 9 through 12 high schools but maybe having a smaller Magnet High School I see that with some large districts of your nature where you've got um you know three

030or four or five high schools and how do you create you know some of those opportunities for a smaller field for a high school we did talk about the prek there's also opportunities for a K8 steam Academy um so I know some of your neighboring districts have done that with some of their facilities we talked about life skills mental health classes for students and staff um and then some of the questions were more geared towards you know let's not add more electives um but I think it's the opposite of looking at those really focus of saying should we have Specialties at each of the schools and create themes um we spent a lot of time talking about the CT The Vocational and some of the college and life Readiness programs um some examples I know

031Grand Rapids has a zoo school um they've got a nature Camp School some nature based so again how does that play into some of those going forward and then lastly is just partnering with private Community organizations so uh Easter Seals um senior centers uh YMCAs and others I think those are some great U examples of what other districts have done last question is if you had to choose a facility to close which one would be be uh just over 5% chose in elementary school about 37% at Middle School uh 0% is at high school so it's pretty strong um and again we see that a lot you know those are the legacies of the district um going forward so and then lastly what you'll see on question six was just the others so that was

032looking at the ESC the twin Suns ATP and any other facilities going forward so again um this were some of the comments that came out of uh question six again if a school building had to be closed that middle school should not be sold it should be repurposed um again we talked about some of the square footages of those programs um some people got even more specific of looking at how do you increase W Lake western or Central um potentially a prek at elementary but not at the High School Middle School uh and then again realigning Elementary to three three High Middle School three high schools is really clean up that cohort going forward so a lot of considerations lot to think about um so I think it was very helpful just to hear from

033the committee and kind of get a sense of again what are some of those non-negotiables I think you saw the Clos three High School question was a 0% response for support so that's good to know um going forward so what are some of those next steps um so again we talked about these opportunities and constraints um some of these are budget constraints so again um relocating facilities it will take some sort of capital convert let's say classrooms into some sort of uh ATP or others if it's getting relocated um long-term planning so again your academics really should drive a lot of this utilization going forward a lot of information still needed again what was the fall count how does that look in the next 5 years one of those Capital considerations that as a board

034you consider to help support some of these initiatives in the next zero to five years going forward so some of the next steps that we talked about again is really getting an idea of the Pre-K for four-year-olds um to give you a perspective if you have let's say 850 to 900 kindergarteners you'd expect that your pre population is somewhere in the four to 500 range so where do you have a facility large enough to accommodate that um population should It Go in full effect again the current cohort alignment i' love to hear the district's and the board's opinion on that because sometimes that helps Drive some of the decision- making going forward consolidation expansion of current future programs we've talked about I think the target enrollment and utilization uh I know in the previous 2011

035they kind of had an idea of ranges for each of the types of facilities um some districts actually incorporate that as kind of a year-to-year review um going forward and then lastly you know the enrollment utilization I think the district's done a great job in the last 10 years really taking a look at that going forward so upcoming meetings uh there is a community Forum on November 13th um that's really to share with the community very similar presentation tonight of kind of the preliminary findings and and really be able to answer the some of the questions from the community that maybe not are able to participate at the community level at the utilization committee uh we have one on uh Tuesday November 28th which I believe it may be November 30th but we'll confirm that

036with Dr Beria and Mr chaffel and we'll be back here on DEC December 7th with a more delineated list of considerations so we don't want to give the board here's 50 things to do U but maybe here's the top five or six or eight or whatever that is very similar to the 2012 13 they're actionable um that the district Fields could take on in the next 12 months the next 24 months in the next 60 months going forward so with that I'm going to turn over back to uh Dr Beria uh Mr Chael and the board for any questions and thoughts are there any questions or comments actually I have one thing and I'm not sure if it's an internal or it's to our presenter so one thing that stuck out to me when um

037you mentioned back towards the beginning of the presentation you were talking about how other districts use their buildings and the numbers right so one of the things that always uh clicks into my mind is are we thinking about and are we looking at what does wal lake look like compared to those others that we're comparing to especially with special education so I know we talked talked about ATP but I'm talking about those other rooms where ASD may have you know smaller numbers in those rooms Etc I know and I appreciate and would never micromanage that uh you all know how we're using our buildings but make sure the committee understands that when we're looking at those numbers that we may not be Apples to Apples to another District because we have a high percentage of

038special education which means that we might have fewer kids in some of those classrooms and therefore we might not be look as efficient when you play the numbers game does that make sense Dr Beria um so I don't know that we've gotten into that level of detail yet but I just want to mention that that kind of stuck out to me whenever we do that comparison I just go oh what about great so actually put back up in the slides so looking at let's say at the elementary level most districts have three to six elementary school facilities they have um sxi CI Etc um you start looking at the middle school levels and you know 5 to eight classrooms would be about appropriate so most middle schools are 25 to 30 classrooms and again of

039those above and beyond um and then lastly at the high school level um you know 10 to 12 would be somewhere in that range so I think from a peer group you're there um I think the really telling point is especially when you look at the middle school high school love when you go back to the 20067 enrollments and you're kind of looking at the 22 23 you understand like there is that opportunity again if it's a keep the special like we think dedicating that space is very very appropriate it's how do you take some of that declining and repurpose it let's say for an ATP or you know maybe ESC kind of gets split up you have special services here and you have got Communications here I we've seen a lot of different solutions

040but I appreciate that President C to keep that lens in line um especially for the special EDS so yeah and I think it's important to point out like can you go back to the high school SL Paul yep so when Mr Wills does this analysis the 15 open rooms at Central that accounts that's 15 that doesn't a room that's being used for special education programming is not part of that 15 okay okay so that's that's 50 classrooms right and so that's when when we when we look at this and we kind of work through the configuration and work through the considerations like that is the you know so if if you take ATP out of Western then your current room's open that number is going to go up obviously so that's something that we're going

041to have to reconcile and going to have to work through with the committee and and we're at the stage of the game now where we have enough feedback from them to really start to get down to some very specific some very granual information that we're going to talk to them about and um and then the community Forum will be really helpful on the 13th too yeah the last thing I will say in regard to special education is last time I think lesson learned to be applied just to be extremely transparent is that we maybe didn't have all of the tra the uh stakeholders in the special education who were aware that we might have some movement and while sometimes those on on paper look like small numbers of people um our special education students many

042of them U change is extremely difficult for them so I want to make sure that we are being extremely careful about are we going to move any of those programs do we have to and what is that going to do their feeder patterns if we um end up redistricting um and I'm not saying anything that I know we at the table here don't understand um but and yes every single student would be impacted but sometimes as an example um you know some of our ASD students have a hard time when there's construction and they have to go a different route to School imagine having to go to a different school um so um yeah yes Mrs Lin um I just wanted to say thank you to the um people that are serving on the the

043facilities committee I know it's you know a lot of meetings in a short amount of time and I can tell based on the uh you know short answer responses that people are being very thoughtful about you know the suggestions that they're making they're not just clicking yes or no on a survey they're actually giving us good feedback so I really appreciate um the time and all the people that are participating in that committee it's it's good good to to see that engagement okay all right I think we're all set thank you so much much appreciate it uh next we have the new course proposal presentation Dr Beria I'm want to turn it over to Mrs kohanski yes thank you Dr Beria um I'll read names and give my uh colleagues here a few minutes to

044make their way up um Mr Scott Terry science teacher at Wald Lake Northern uh Mr Scott Lindsay the science department chair at Wald Lake Northern and Mrs Jennifer lacrosse our science curriculum coach are here and they'll be presenting a new course offering called Ornithology at Wald Lake Northern for the board's consideration um the presentation is today but the board will be um I'll get to that in just a minute this new course has been through a pilot year year and a half now and the curriculum is aligned with State and National standards program materials uh have been made available for the board's review and the new course offering for the program of studies has been endorsed by the administration and this presentation and a motion for approval of this course adoption will be presented at

045the December 7th 2023 board meeting so with that I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to Mr Terry and Mrs lacrosse and Mr Lindsay and uh let them share with you um this this new course proposal well thanks for having us um so Ornithology for those of you that might not know is the study of birds and as was read while the course is based based on Next Generation science standards it hits on a lot of cross country Concepts it has science and engineering practices uh what's really as somebody's taught I think last time I counted 13 different science classes in my time here at wal Lake what's really neat about it is uh when we teach biology or when we teach chemistry when we teach physics they really feel like they're taught

046in isolation um and then when we learn about something like Ornithology uh we can apply these things like Evolution reproduction um even physics of flight and we can kind of apply all these things that are learned in all these other classes to a specific example that we continue throughout the year so it's really kind of a neat uh way for the students to kind of learn about a lot of things they've learned in other classes and then how they apply to the real world um now that doesn't mean that you can't do that same thing if you were studying fish or frogs or any other living thing out there uh so why birds well the answer is I love them and I I took a class in eth grade when I was in school and

047ever since that time I've kind of always thought about creating a class about birds since I've been a teacher and the other thing is what I what kind of really spurred me to do this a few years ago and get this ball rolling was um there was a survey done by the US fish and wildlife service about hobbies in the United States and bird watching at least people who identified as bird watchers on some degree whether you went on vacations for birds or whether you just watched them in your backyard uh was by far overwhelmingly the most uh common Hobby in in the entire country and so it's really whether you participate in it or not it's a really common thing for people to do so uh that's kind of that first slide I'm not

048going to read through everything you're all capable of reading so the first year either I'm a better salesperson than I realized uh the very first year when I told the students about it we had 106 kids sign up um and you know if you start a new course like a new even a different type of chemistry or physics there's often some sort of packaged curriculum you can you can start with with Ornithology um I've done some research and as far as I can tell there's no year-long Ornithology course anywhere in the country uh at any High School level there's a few high schools that do a semester course so most of it is me trying to adopt uh college level curriculum appropriate for high schoolers so this uh second year we actually went up to

049four four sections we have almost 130 students signed up so as you can see we do a lot of Project based stuff we spend a a lot of time outside we participate in ebird's um sorry eird is has run through the Cornell laboratory of ornithology and they do a lot of Citizen science-based work where uh they use data that everybody collects anybody in this room could collect and so we participate in that we participate in feeder watch which started yesterday November 1st and in the spring we'll participate in Nest watch where we monitor Bird's nesting around wall Northern and so all of that data gets collected uh through the laboratory of ornithology and so it's really kind of another really neat way for uh students to see how things that they can do uh legitimately

050participate in can be used by scientists uh to study Big World phenomenon in fact today in class we were reading an article about how scientists use eird data to to monitor changes in migration and for climate change which is a big thing and so these kids are contributing to that sort of stuff so it's all based on as it's up there uh the handbook of bird biology which again is is published by the cornal lab of orthology um I do think it's worth really pointing out that um the last fall I mean once this got approved it then it kind of became real I thought oh crap how are we going to do this um and so I started reaching out and I created a donor choose and the community uh former students of mine

051parents of students uh they raised $1,200 and we bought uh 1400 or I'm sorry 14 pairs of binoculars that way uh Kawa which is a japanese-based company if you know anything about hunting or or anything CWA is a really premium company uh they donated 20 pairs of binoculars and then Vortex uh is another very uh popular Optics company they donated uh 10 pairs so far and both of them donated sping Scopes so we've gotten a lot of support for a brand new course which is great because no money out of your pocket yet well very very little money so uh again I touched on a lot of these things already so in the fall when the weather's nice we have spend spent a lot of time outside um again they're learning how to identify birds

052they're learning how to report the data and then in the winter time we're doing more of the kind of book based curriculum stuff about the things I mentioned earlier so um they're all up there uh we do uh a fair amount of like sketching and journaling because that's a really good way to to make detailed observations um and keep track of of of your sighting so the kids actually do quite a bit of sketches throughout the year um and last year we built a whole bunch we got a a foundation for excellence Grant and we built a whole bunch of bird houses um and so again monitoring and maintaining bird houses around Wall Lake Northern so I've got some quotes up there we don't need to read through all of them um I'm not naive

053enough to think that all the kids are loving Birds but it is amazing to me how many kids are like this is I get it this is kind of cool um I had a girl just the other day I put that quote in there she just came up to me and she Saidi just find myself noticing more stuff which is a win to me I think so at the very end we've got some pictures here um kids outside kids doing stuff um I didn't mention last year we grew um almost 800 native plants from seeds and then I I graded AP exams and so there was a time period in there but we planted some of them and we donated a lot to staff at Northern but this year we uh plan on on growing

054a whole bunch more native plants and and spreading our Native Garden at Northern um so yeah that's kind of everything we prepared but I know there's questions so I can tell you are super passionate about birds and I think that's awesome I think that the anybody who's ever been a second grader at Commerce Elementary would find this class to be awesome because they do a bird unit um it's like a whole thing it's it's really fun I've had a bunch of kids come up and say hey I did that as my bird my focus bird in elementary right black chick I've never heard so much about a black cap chick before in my life when my kids were in second grade right there you go um so it's awesome what I wonder is if students

055at Central or Western uh were interested in taking a class um is there a carbon copy of you how will those kids have this opportunity if there were enough interest from students from Central or from Western and a teacher qualified to teach that then that would be a course that could be run at either of those schools and how do high school students find out about the option to be interested so that you could get a count right so students have a program they have a program of studies and they that's how they pick the courses they want to take I mean they have required courses for graduation but as they get older Juniors and seniors there are electives in there so in the science section of that program of studies there's multiple science electives

056so they would choose that if the interest was high enough then that could possibly be run at the other two schools and what makes a teacher qualified to teach this besides loving Birds right this is just a secondary science endorsement thank you yes Mr Peterson couple questions um first uh one question was two parts when this is more operational then I have one comment I think I'll start with a comment I want to commend you for going out and finding that uh and securing some seed money and uh some donations um that's very commendable it took a lot of effort a lot of effort I'm sure so number two the two questions I have that's really a two-parter I'm really kind of more interested in the operational side so how long has it taken for

057you to get to this point sitting in front of us tonight in the process of of of actual kind of starting the ball rolling I think two years before I ever taught it so I guess this would be almost three and a half years three and a half years yeah and the other part of that is in any part of that process were you ever turned down by an adman anywhere in the process did the process turn you down no actually once I mean so the former Miss lacrosse was John Greg and um I kind of kicked the idea around with him a few times and he every time he was said hey I'll get you the paperwork and you you get the ball rolling um and then so not Western's going to be beautiful

058I was at Western for a long time and I used to I used to actually like in passing time go stand at the end of the hall and look outside because we didn't have Windows and so um so I'm not kidding I know that sounds kind of funny but when I went to Northern and and I spent a few years looking out the windows at this beautiful property it really kind of motivated me to be like I want these kids to be seeing these birds and so um as soon as I said John I want to do it he was all for it that's great commend you and I think you are on a good trajection thanks Mrs Fernandez I think you wanted to speak yeah I had a couple of questions that just go

059along with adding a new elective into the uh into the curriculum and so is there something that goes away um you know something maybe older or less relevant or less multi disciplinary that goes away when we add a new elective like this no so anytime um we add an elective to our curriculum it does compete with other electives in the building right whether it's other science electives or other non-science electives so um in a in a way he started up saying he's a good salesman um it we do a curriculum Fair every year at the high school and that's a chance for all the elective courses basically to sell their courses and you know in some cases if you're a good salesman and and you can present that curriculum you're going to get a lot

060of interest in your course right so there is that risk of other other electives maybe suffering a little bit from it but we haven't noticed a big difference here Northern you get them Outdoors right that's got to be a selling point and our hope in adding this was that not to steal from other electives but we give kids more opportunity to take more science rather than just the three years that are required yeah well I think my other follow-up questions were a little bit along that lines you um you did a great job of presenting how this can be multidisciplinary and bring in all of those different sciences and kind of make sense of putting them together um but so is there some prerequisite I mean will kids even get that if they've only ever

061taken one track of science or the prerequisite for this course you have to have biology chemistry or physics so Juniors and seniors okay would be able to take this course so that's two of the three or just any one of the three so biology required and chemistry or physics yes okay that makes sense and then I thought you mentioned you were grading AP papers so does this does this feed into or support kids that are on a path to take an AP science exam um oh gosh sorry uh in my for me in my experience it's the opposite so a lot of my Ornithology students I had last year in AP it tends to be the a the API teach tends to be Juniors and so far the the Ornithology has been seniors um it's

062more of remember when we learned this and now we're seeing in action yeah thank you Mr Seer first of all thank you for bringing this forward I think it's very Innovative U when you're looking at College label college level curriculum that we are adapting for high schools I think it's phenomenal you know and the Crossovers into all the other uh things that we would be looking at regarding climate change regarding migration uh patterns and everything else that goes with it I think it's a wonderful wonderful opportunity and I want to thank you thank you all right thank you very much we appreciate your time today thanks okay it's time for us to move on to public commentary I do have some cards here if anybody else wants to speak you need to get your card

063up here now to miss soille all right um tonight as you address the board you'll come up to the podium and you will have up to three minutes to speak if you do get close to that three minutes Mrs Loven will be our timekeeper today she will let you know and uh we will um ask you to finish up if you are still speaking at at the three minute Mark um also wanted to ask that we continue to have respectful conversation and if there is uh somebody who does need to have a a followup by either the administration or the board uh we will try to do that in a timely manner just depends how many we have but we do try to do that within a few business days all right um our first

064person is Sandy d wow my card was on the bottom and I get to speak first this is good it's a good start what possible topic could I choose that would unite everyone here tonight students teachers Schoolboard members administrators safety in our district I'm hopeful that we can finally lay aside the agendas that have little to do with and in fact May war against the goal of gradu uating capable healthy and educated young people who want to build up our state and country rather than tear it down it's sad to think that a room full of responsibly uh not responsibly reasonably intelligent adults cannot debate policy decisions without the need for law enforcement to be on site it's even more distressing to realize that our own example of the inability to find common ground in

065curriculum and to communicate respectfully without resorting to deliberately making our differences the main topic of discussion when we meet is our problem diversity has been a stated goal is this working yeah in academic corporate and government circles for quite a while now I'm guessing that we have championed a cause that neither is our true goal or our honest purpose if diversity was the objective people wouldn't be trying so hard to eliminate diversity of thought so what do you say we come around together around what should be a unifying message safety Oakland k9's security option at the last meeting seemed to have a viable option to improve safety of students um could the uh agenda at the next meeting please include feedback about Oakland k9's offer that they I believe made last year too to um

066improve the safety so um please collap everyone who wants safety Ron lipet good evening I'm Ron lipet from Commerce Township my wife Denise and I are 20year residents of the community we have three daughters who have thrived in wal Lake Schools including our youngest who is currently a sophomore at wal Lake Northern I come to you this even evening concerned more than ever for our District's children who do not fit into traditionary traditional binary categories last month I listened to a number of speakers at this very Podium questioned the district's policies regarding gender affirmation Title 9 and even bathroom policies including one suggestion that suggest that schools are complicit in sexualization of children and the notion that a faith-based curriculum would be the appropriate corrective action it may surprise no one in this room that

067lgbtq youth are more than four times uh as likely to attempt suicide than their peers according to the Trevor Project and more than 1.8 million lgbtq youth seriously consider suicide each year with at least one actual attempt every 45 seconds in addition 36% of lgbtq Youth report that they have been physically threatened or harmed in school and those who did attempted suicide at nearly triple the rate of those who didn't last year last month I applauded a comment made here that reinforced the notion that having at least one accepting adult in the home reduces the risk of suicide by as much as 40% but in the absence of this acceptance Wall Lake Schools knowingly or not plays an integral role in the Health and Welfare of those who are most vulnerable especially those who are

068marginalized Research indicates that lgbtq youth who found schools as gender affirming reported not just lower attempts at suicide but significantly higher levels of self-esteem all this is to say I applaud our school district with every policy and action it takes to reinforce its support of lgbtq community they serve it's difficult to measure the life-changing impact that you are having on people's lives most especially the amazing work our teachers take on each day teaching our youth in this everchanging political en environment and the often thankless work that the school board uh tackles in their pursuit of its ideal every child every day so school has become a refuge for many in our community a place outside of their own home where access to teachers peers and clubs and the logistics of a caring School environment are

069desperately needed to support them lastly I understand there are people in this room who will never accept the notion of School playing a part in gender affirmation and I get it please know we hear you I would simply remind you that the children includes those with legitimate risks to their well-being because of their gender identity wal Lake Schools finds itself with a critical role to play in their health our community supports you in that effort thank you Teresa renold Teresa yes thank you good evening elected officials and School District leaders special shout out once again to Mr rouso for following up with me from last week in a very timely manner um as I continue to research and try to uh understand the facts with regard to our bathroom policy which is currently like many

070many many districts an integrated bathroom policy um including godm made gender and the evolving man-made gender identity I come with some new information tonight and I think it's actually good information based on some additional facts that are happening in our country and in our Michigan we don't have to worry about breaking any ground and doing anything new because some groups are already doing that um I want to highlight a couple of two national and one uh Michigan incident that's occurring and then land on the Michigan one with a request earlier in October a uh Pennsylvania district revers school district reversed their school board policy and um mandated that they go back to a policy requiring students to um use the bathrooms associated with their biological sex now they are requiring that there are single bathrooms

071available as well um later last month in October in St J Charles County out of Missouri they are submitting to voted on in November a new policy that would require students to identifi that would they would use bathrooms and locker rooms that match the sex on their birth certificates hasn't been voted on yet so two national there's probably many more but these are two that I wanted to bring tonight that have already started to um move and identify um what's happening in with school board School Board districts identifying the bathroom issue where I want to land tonight is with this Michigan lawsuit out of um Vicksburg Community Schools there's a parent group that's suing the district for their policy and it's a policy that's similar to ours and the the issue that I think that's

072interesting is that they're getting sued for not communicating to the parent Community what the policy was and is so a number of incidences created and outrage with the parent Community such that there were just a great amount of um concern that they weren't warned that their kids could be assaulted so my ask is that this District would at least publicly communicate with the district perhaps in a news letter or in a formal other letter that based on what you feel the legal requir ments are and again I do understand we're not the only ones but the parent Community needs to understand what their children are required to follow thank you Becky barons good evening members of the board and Dr Beria and cabinet members my name is Dr Becky Barons and as we all know

073there is a big debate about the low reading scores Across America and how best to fix the problem it's referred to as the reading Awards well let me share with you why I have a personal interest in this issue some years ago one of my nieces who was in Middle School in the Birmingham School District came to me asking for help with her schoolwork I knew that she had some reading problems but I didn't know the extent of it I asked her to read some of her homework material out loud to me she was not a fluent reader she came to a word she didn't know and she just couldn't even pronounce the word I said just break the word down she didn't know what I meant I said can you identify the syllables in

074the word she could not then she informed me that it wasn't that big of a deal because her teacher told her to skip a word if she didn't know what it was and also she was told that if she got the general idea of what the sentence or paragraph was about then it was okay I was surprised and a bit disturbed about this I discovered that she was in IEP and was receiving help help in reading at school so I started attending her IEP meetings with her teacher and reading specialist I don't think they liked having me present at those meetings I asked questions they kept telling me my and my niece how great she was doing and not to worry as there would always be helped for her even in college I said but

075she can't read well I was ignored a few years later she was still struggling and one day when we were reading a passage of literature together she got up and walked out of the room she went to her bedroom and started crying she told me I am so upset I just can't read well I try I want to be successful in life but I'm scared she is an only child raised by a single parent my brother who was so overwhelmed with work and significant health problems of his own he had no time to spend with her I hired all kinds of tutors and Specialists from that point on I spent many hours with her trying to help her her she did not get the help she needed in college as was promised she has improved

076fortunately but reading will always struggle it is my understanding that we use Lucy ckins units of study in our early grades for reading instruction in our school district the teachers College of Columbia University in New York City has according to my understanding dissolved their relationship with her which is where she started with her teaching and writing project why because they felt her balanced literacy approach to reading which has predominated in the US for decades is seriously flawed and amounted to educational male practice I'm almost finished I would ask that our teachers and Specialists reconsider whether cockin materials is the best that we should be using I don't know I appreciate that Mrs kazansky has introduced phonics instructions since she assumed her position in our school district and scores have improved and I hope this information

077will be shared in detail with parents and community members thank you thanks Robert goofy Robert goofy okay um as you know I've been coming to these meetings for quite some time ever since uh the coid years and when we started learning about some of the things that were going on in schools not just here but um across the country and you know I've been voicing my opinions on a variety of issues related to education and the general Ware welfare of our society Civil Society um I've introduced and recommended several books to the board and hopes you would read them and understand the Viewpoint of parents especially conservatives um the events uh and why I want to talk tonight is the events in Israel and Gaza Strip over the past few weeks uh highlight my fears

078for what's going on in America and why it's important for us to fight against the lies embedded in in critical race Theory and why we must remove all forms of Dei that advocate for preferential treatment based upon skin color religion or any other demographic identity politics is dangerous for everyone including our children is it any Wonder we have protests breaking out on college campuses all over the country in favor of Hamas uh anti-Semitism has been festering in our government and institutions for a long time just waiting for the opportunity to show itself in full bloom why is it that college students and recent grads represent the vast majority of the Hamas fan club because they have been taught to hate all their lives much of it in school now we have an anti-white racism growing

079across the country with our leaders claiming white supremacy is the top threat to America today I say hogwash where is it I can name dozens of major threats being ignored while while CRT and de are being pushed through every segment of society including the military teaching our children to hate America because it uh because it is supposedly built on slavery and white supremacy and that they are either part of an oppressed or part of a the part of the oppressors only Stokes The Cauldron for further angst and division eventually ending with Armageddon one of the books I've recently read is this one called cynical theories it actually says critical and scratched out to say cynical theories it explains in depth how critical theory came out of postmodernism it also does an excellent job of Thoroughly

080debunking postmodernism hence all critical theories CRT and all these are based upon a false Foundation unfortunately M much of our Academia has embraced this false Theory and used it to conjure up and Implement all kinds of destructive ideas 30 seconds just my opinion but that may be why the American education system has continued to sink ever since the Inception of the Department of Education once again I implore you the Wall Lake School Board to abandon anything that resembles critical theory whether it be CRT transgender Theory fat Theory or any of the Myriad others yes do help those who need help as best you can but not do not teach your kids to hate one another because of their immutable physical characteristics thank you halil wolf good evening everyone I'd like to begin by stating the

081following anonymous quote is not aimed at any person or group it's merely a statement I ascribe to and support also so it may be food for thought for those listening the quote goes as follows teachers who don't want parents to know what they are teaching students shouldn't be teaching students further it was once again stated that we should leave it to the professionals at our last board meeting up until recently I feel that is what we have done that being the case many find the outcome of this unsatisfactory thus the discussion of doing a better job of vetting current and proposed curricula by some of the board members last time is is good news to me that I find most refreshing and I say once again good thank you Michael wise Michael Weiss 25-year Commerce

082resident at the board meeting of October 5th there was a rambling negative mishmash commentary regarding the edity online courses which were up for Renewal there was concerned about what might be in the teachers guide and teachers May mistakenly teach things that board members do not agree with there was negative discussion about teaching of Dei diversity equity and inclusion these online courses Support over 600 students in multiple ways not approving this course software would have created Total Chaos and hardship for many students a negative vote was prompted by the possibility of there being lgbtq related content this rambling speak came across the stumbling unorganized unprepared anti-lgbtq and an embarrassment to the entire board especially to the new board members that try to add intellectual commentary to the board meetings fortunately the software was approved barely concern

083was voiced about Wall Lake Schools focusing on certain children with certain beliefs and feelings and not other children with other beliefs and not giving them the same respect there was concern that if anything is said or presented that focuses on certain issues or beliefs possibly relating to lgbtq equal time should be given to Jesus Christ and the Ten Commandments it was said we have a long history of Prayer in the schools and that the Ten Commandments being on our walls maybe in the private parochial schools some attended but not in the public schools I attended in the 50s 60s and 70s it was inferred it should be okay to bring religion into the public schools because our constitution refers to it that is wrong religion is not mentioned in the US Constitution the US Constitution

084never explicitly mentions God or the Divine during the board meeting it was stated that every life comes from the Creator and every life has value that we are Most Blessed when we lived in the light of how we are designed by the Creator how we were designed to live or at least how some think we should live there was a commitment there was a comment about the decline in societal morality insinuating that is because of the teachings and the Wall Lake Schools teaching morality is an important part of the school but it does not start in the schools it starts with our parents at a later point in the commentary Miss Casa Grande the board president stopped the discussion and asked ask what does all this have to do with online curriculum approval I think

085most of the board was wondering the same thing by the looks on their faces this discussion then continued one can disgu disagree with a person's lifestyle but that one can still be loving maybe through a deep belief in Jesus Christ a person can try to speak the truth to the students in the wle schools but maybe a particular definition of the truth is really disguised as hate Megan Yang what is it young I'm so sorry well too bubbly well thanks for correcting me I appreciate it my name is Megan Young and I have two daughters in the district one in middle school and one in elementary school I'm here about the food Serv Serv in the elementary schools um sorry so since the last meeting um I did try to reach out I contacted the

086lunch lady I asked if I could just see some pictures of the food since we're not allowed in the schools and you know if I wanted the curriculum I would call the teacher and they would provide it she told me no I had to call Human Resources so I called the principal I asked if I could get some pictures she told me no I had to call Julie so I called Julie I asked for some pictures um she so I did leave everybody a packet and if you wanted to open it I was going to try to show you the difference of batch cooking and cooking it from an oven and then keeping it in a warmer so you could see the difference but I could only get one picture so I guess it's going

087to be like which one doesn't belong but um so so when she did provide the one picture um I asked if I could get a couple more and then she said no and then she came back and said that then she did send a tubby sub and I said no I would like some more food based kitchen options not the one that's there's nine other schools that didn't get that that day but so my main concern is today is I'm going to give some numbers um 30% of the district is in the poverty level so I did see that it was 450 kids per elementary school so that would be about 135 kids per School times 12 12 schools that's about 1,620 kids every day that depend on you guys for lunch and breakfast um

088I'm going to give you a lot of numbers and then it's just going to all kind of go together in the end so I'm going to start about like since you're not selling snacks um the loss of the snacks so we've been in school 47 days round about I gave you a low end of selling $62 a day at a school um so if you times that that would be $2,914 but if you times that by 12 schools you are now negative in the red negative $34,988 that you could have made by selling snacks um and I I guess that this has been going on longer than these numbers um so I know when I was looking at the pictures I was thinking of the ways that you could save some money um I did

089see that everything was like a cup like a fruit cup or an applesauce and those are really expensive you know those are almost like the same price as fresh fruit and that would accommodate the same amount of kids but now I'm going to go into the Staffing so most of the lunch ladies are moms and we both all of us do have about oh 40 seconds okay two jobs um so I did I did look up and if I did apply for a job I would um you only have two options and so it's 3.75 hours a day or 5.5 hours a day so roughly if I were to break it down um the lunch leades are making between 700 a month and 1,155 at the top end and there's no breaks there's a gap

090between lunch and your break time okay um okay sorry so okay so to end it I guess since I didn't get to all of it I was just trying to say that if you took that money from the snacks that you could make because if you sold your snacks um every day you would make I don't know $1 14,880 a month if I took out the profit or what you paid for you would make $99,000 a month so if you did that you could pay for nine lunch ladies at your five or 3.75 hours or you could pay for five lunch ladies at 5.5 hours so it would I'm just trying to think if you have a solution to the problem of you know if you could balance it out so thank you that is

091all Tim seller good evening Tim sawmiller Commerce Township I am a cisgender male using pronouns he him and his I think most people believe that providing free lunches to disadvantaged kids is a good thing right and I think most people believe tutoring and some extra learning to support kids that are struggling or have special needs is also a good thing right well these are examples of equity why is that word such a scare word to some people these people like to emphasize equality over Equity like last month the man criticized the idea of free lunches for all students well that's an example of equality is this hypocrisy or just a lack of understanding of these terms and how does feeding hungry kids and tutoring struggling kids and making kids feel comfortable with who they are

092equate to Marxism these folks don't even know what Marxism is it's an economic theory by the way what has that to do with schools and helping kids Escapes Me one speaker even equated equality with socialism socialism is government ownership of business and industry neither of those terms is about feeding kids and teaching kids and accepting kids for who they are as for the unintended consequences of free lunches I'll take the intended consequences any day which is feeding hungry kids so they can learn and Excel in school imagine a faith so empty that you bringing prayer into the public schools is following Jesus but bringing in free lunches is not faith faith is something held near and dear by many people but faith is also different for many people Dei is not a religion by the

093way the board member who wants to inject faith in Jesus into public school decisions needs to be reminded that injecting faith in Jesus into that process is inappropriate otherwise we need to be including the prophet Muhammad and the philosopher Buddha and the talmud and several other religious prophets and philosophers keep religion out of the public schools you can't just pick one so we exclude all of them that's the law and that's what's in the Constitution and by the way the Constitution of the United States does not mention a Creator finally I got cussed out royally at the October 5th board meeting by a seemingly marops cussed out a woman using the same offensive language presumably he's not a Christian because I know of no Christian who would speak to people in that manner I hope

094he can heal from whatever ails him thank you Christine Titus good evening um I'm going to talk about something way different um first of all happy first anniversary Dr bernia on being our superintendent thank you so much for your your service um I'd like to talk about thankfulness we're in the month of Thanksgiving and just wanted to let you know some of the things I'm thankful for besides my family and friends I'm thankful that I get to do work work in a profession that I'm passionate about I've heard it said that if you're passionate about what you do it's not really work and that's how I feel about teaching I'm thankful for our board and administration and the support I and my colleagues receive for what we love doing on a daily basis speaking of

095colleagues I'm thankful for my work family and the opportunity to teach beside them and finally I'm thankful for the students I've taught that I teach now and that I'll teach in the future because I learn as much from them as I hope they learn from me so that's what I'm thankful for during this month of November and my final thought is go band good luck at States on Saturday sorry paal I did not have my uh mic on she was suffering the same good evening I'm Paula small from Wald Lake Central and I'm here to give you good news from Wald Lake Central so you've all heard our band is kind of good um and we're going to the state championships I by the way it's a unified band now just not just ours I'll

096give my props to Western um so they're performing on Saturday at 123 31 pm. at Ford Field currently seated second in the state other good news Maddie pavic is the state champ High School equestrian ewd state champ Paige holler one of my students I'm sure I caused this um no no no qualified as a a freshman for state cross country championship in our first year we hope to see much more this one I do actually have something to do with my little tiny model un Club went from two members to 20 members and we're getting ready for our first competition um giving tree and Casa donated over 200 boxes of cereal to the homeless and also the giving tree and Casa donated 2,40 pairs of socks to the homeless for Pb PBJ Outreach same two

097clubs volunteered at PBJ Outreach making and distributing food the homeless um The Giving Tree students have also been volunteering at Pleasant Lake and at Meadowbrook several times this year eight students have achieved the Seal of biliteracy so far this year with many more to take the test soon in keeping with our commitment to promote a culture of inclusiveness our uni ified sports program has grown to include unified soccer which recently finished its first season Central's Deca Club is up and running and we will be competing at our districts in December this year we have 24 students enrolled in our work based learning program with as many as 30 in the second semester students are working hard in their jobs they are really representing W wal Lake Schools amazingly in the community we currently have have

098at Central signed up for over 700 AP tests to be taken in May uh we made the AP honoral at the bronze level um this distinction recognizes schools whose AP programs are delivering results for students while broadening access it reflects a commitment to increasing college going culture promoting opportunities for students to earn college credit and maximizing college readiness and the last one no place for hate is planning an activity called the humans of Wald Lake Central thank you Sandra brow GES Sandra Gres hi I'm Sandy bres I'm a teacher at w Lake Central I have more good news to share it's tough act to follow she got all the good stuff right there's more um AP research students are beginning to plan their method for their own research projects our AP Government students have tried

099to make a balanced budget while keeping public approval high on a game from I Civics student leadership and student council is kicking up their annual canned food drive this Saturday student leadership visited Hospitality house yesterday on November 1st and learned learned a fun fact our can food drive is by far their largest donated supporter each year last year Central donated over $13,000 in monetary donations and food donations to hospitality house no other donating group reached the four-digit numbers and we have reached that and we have reached five digits our anatomy classes this week studied uh started practicing using scalpel and probes while carving pumpkins our forensics class dusted fingerprints in the hallways and discovered a lot of them The Giving Tree is donating candy to US troops overseas our mental health matters student Club is

100up and running and has met three times so far this school year sponsored by Mrs jarro four W Lake Central students along with Miss jarro and Mr Johnson attended the virtual student mental health Summit on September 28th to learn more about programs that are happening in high high schools across the state of Michigan and any takeaway ideas that they can then Implement at w Lake Central W Lake Center is now offering four different levels of physics classes we offer regular and honors physics students um learning about Newton's Laws by investigating fores through a bowling ball activity bowling balls and rubber mallets in the hallway it's quite fun um this is the first year Central has offered AP Physics 1 which is an algebra based AP Physics course there are 35 students enrolled in AP Physics

101one this is our first year running it um and they are currently investigating friction AP Physics C students which is our calculus based AP Physics course conducted a lab to investigate the relationship between air drag and velocity in my chemistry students when we had our beautiful weather last week we were drawing Atomic models with sidewalk chalk all over the sidewalks all around the school thank you very much going to move on to administrative commentary Dr Beria uh tonight we're going to open with Dr LW nothing tonight thank you sir Mr Durkin nothing this evening Dr ber Mrs gansky uh just a real quick update I've been really excited over the last month or so I've been working with uh the high school team over at wal Lake western as they're getting ready for all that

102new uh uh building Edition and the new academic Wing uh we are looking and examining uh lots of really new creative flexible furniture that will go into those spaces so so that's work that's been really exciting I've been spending a lot of time over at Western for meetings with different departments and groups uh and I had a chance to walk through and I don't want to steal any of Mr chatfield's Thunder here but I had a chance to walk through the new academic Wing at Western and see the construction and the progress they're already painting and they're already you know windows are in they're running duct work it looks like you know we're ready to we're ready to get some heat going in there so that those contractors can maybe find that this uh this

103cold snap isn't affecting them as much so it was really exciting to see and the progress is just really remarkable so thank you m nothing today Dr Beria Mr Chatfield uh thank you Dr Beria um just to um piggyback on with Mrs kohansi mentioned uh the um the enclosure at Western is nearly uh complete all of the windows are on and and of course the envelope is uh nearing completion with details to be finished which is allowing um as you just heard uh interior finishes to begin uh temporary heat has been started up and and pumping through the facility so uh we're in great shape to continue some pretty aggressive construction throughout the uh course of of the winter so again looking forward to having uh our opening um next fall uh in addition the

104high school team buildings are underway at all three high schools uh these are the facilities that are going to be located out near the uh Stadium athletic fields uh all of the utilities have been installed and we're waiting for final approvals for those uh and that will be followed by foundations and block walls and you'll see some structures taking shape there soon and finally I hope uh Dr Bernie I don't steal any of your thunder but um I just wanted toh say how how um enjoyable it was yesterday for a cabinet to have have lunch at Dublin Elementary um we uh we were uh we were served the whole grain pancake bites with turkey sausage sweet potato um sweet potatoes and a fresh banana um and I have to tell you it was a really

105good meal and and just just for clarification those meals um which are prepared the day before uh with frozen products that remain Frozen uh while while they are delivered to the elementary schools are cooked on site so the first time those meals are cooked is at the elementary school uh where they they are delivered to so just I think there's some misconceptions about that and I just wanted to make that clarification but U looking forward to the next time thank you Mr Russo thank you Dr BR I don't think I'll steal any of your thunder um uh as part of the consent agenda tonight for the Board of Education it's my pleasure to announce the the appointment of Miss tikia Watkins to the position of supervisor of special services Miss Watkins has most recently served

106in wal Lake Consolidated Schools as coordinator of special services since August of 2022 prior to joining Wald Lake Miss Watkins held a host of teaching and Leadership roles within special education in ramulus Community Schools Miss Watkins has a Bachelor of Science and special education from Western Michigan University and a master of arts and education of leadership from Wayne State University she currently holds a school administrative certificate as well as full approvals for both director and supervisor for special education and pending approval Miss Watkins will begin her post as supervisor of special services on Monday November 6th in addition I'm thrilled to announce with board approval the recommendation for Miss Julie ommer to the position of assistant superintendant for business services as a reminder Miss Omar is a certified public accountant who holds a masters of

107Business Administration from Michigan State University and has been the Chief Financial Officer to aaso public schools for the last 22 years Mrs om has served on the board of Michigan School of Business officials msbo and has worked diligently to maintain the Financial Health of aaso public schools while supporting the growth of colleagues and professionals across the state of Michigan pending approval Miss om will officially begin her post in wal Lake on December 4th 2023 thank you thank you Mr Russo I want to start my commentary with a rousing I said it earlier but I want to say it once again go band They compete on Saturday I also want to highlight uh the walck Norther and students who are performing our town this weekend so best of luck to them uh I am really thrilled

108about our two new additions that were recommending on the consent agenda uh but I'm going to take a different Tex um as it stands right now there there is a very large gap in the marketplace for people who want to be special education administrators and there's also a wide Gap in the what we call the assistant superintendent for business chief fincial officer model when we began our search there were 37 vacancies for this position across the state there were six vacancies in metro Detroit all in very respected districts and so for us to have attracted and and brought in two extraordinary candidates like we have uh is a credit to not not only our HR team and their ability to to post and recruit and run a good hiring process but it's also a credit

109to the reputation that we carry and so I I think that it speaks volumes that these extraordinary candidates would consider Wald Lake uh in a time when quite literally these two individuals with their skill set could really work anywhere in metro Detroit in in K12 education so I compliment the HR team I compliment the district for maintaining our reputation uh and I welcome them to the team I'm so excited about them and then last but certainly not least last month I mentioned a group of young ladies from W Lake western who were everything we would want our students to be I want to highlight two different groups as an elementary parent I know how much it means to me when someone tells me my children were polite and so just uh just two days ago

110on Halloween we hosted the students from Wald Lake Elementary they came across the street to show us their costumes and to go trick-or-treating through our building uh they could not have been better they they said thank you they said trick-or treat they smiled they interacted with us and and I think made the day of the employees that work in this building and so they are everything we hope are kids are and then uh just a couple weeks ago it's I had the opportunity to catch Wall Lake Northern play against Rochester High School in football W Lake northern's had a little bit of a bumpy season um to say the least but to watch to watch a group of young men who have not had a successful season and to watch the way that they competed

111to watch the way they you know when someone got hurt they would help them up uh just to watch the way they conducted themselves was everything we hoped for from our students and so I wanted to highlight those two groups and compliment them uh for representing us and our school district so well thank you let me go on to board commentary anything Mrs Kaplan well everyone stole my thunder with regards to band I was going to promote the band competition Saturday at fordfield our W Lake band which is a a composition of w Lake western and W Lake Central will be performing on Ford Field and they're second right now in standings and we're going against Rockford who's number one so keep fingers crossed and go band and let's beat Rockford um I was also

112going to talk about our town which is this weekend at wal Lake Northern I encourage you all to come and see a performance of our students um the following weekend the following weekend the 16th 17th is um Wizard of Oz over at Western again I encourage you all to come out and see what our students do they're amazing whether it's band whether it's the sports programs our students are amazing and please get involved and come see what everyone is doing thank you Mrs Lin anything tonight yes thank you Mr Cas Grande um I asked Stephanie if I could steal this thunder so um Leia Lakes Area Youth assistant has a couple different uh programs that they do throughout the holiday season um one is the adoptive family uh program applications for that are due tomorrow

113um so if you are a family or know of a family who could use some support with gifts and things like that this year um please look to Leia to um to try to help with that um they're also doing the shop with a cop program applications uh for that are due um on the 17th of November so um some great programs uh right here at home that can help families in need uh this holiday season um some other shouts out uh the W Lake Northern cross country and volleyball girls volleyball teams have been doing um outstanding at the conference and District levels so great job there um and then um over the last couple days uh bring the mood down for a second um I spent a lot of time reading uh the security

114report that came out of Oxford 562 very depressing pages of information um and I I shared it with our our board and and with Dr Beria and hope um that you know everybody will look through it and kind of make some highlights like I did and and be able to have discussions maybe they're in closed session discussions but about some security uh things that were brought to light in Oxford because at the end of the day nothing is more important than the safety of of our kids and I think a lot was learned from that report and um you encourage you to read it um and and take away from it whatever you want to but um it's a good place to to start with questions and to you know hold us accountable for for

115things that we're doing but also um you know hug your kids and uh hold them a little tighter too thank you Mr Peterson anything tonight yep one quick one uh last Thursday night I uh attended Dr Bernie Community Forum at West Acres and uh a pretty good turnout and a great range of questions that kept him busy for a good hour plus I've done several of these and it's always encouraging to see the people come out I I would uh kind of uh push on all of you that when those opportunities are out there is a great chance to uh voice concerns or look at issues that maybe you do not see or sometimes are hidden so not just here in a board commentary or in one of our meetings but that's a great Forum

116opportunity um please take advantage of them I'm a great supporter of that and uh that uh that Outreach to the community so thank you anything tonight miss Ty oh yeah I mean I would just Echo the same shout out to the band and um just all our um athletes who have been working really hard whether their season turned out the way they had hoped or not um and then I know last year um this just a busy time of year right with the plays and the concerts and um last year I got to go to one of the collage concerts for the first time that was amazing um so coming up again in December um if you haven't been to one I encourage you to go it was really phenomenal um but yeah the place

117coming up um bald like always does a great job so um yeah looking forward to to how they do with all that Mr seagler anything tonight yeah I'd just like to thank our high school administrators Dr Beria cabinet uh with these turbulent times that we are addressing right now throughout our society and overseas um they have been very proactive they have been on top of any situation they have communicated very openly with with the students and the students in kind have you know have I think received this as a wonderful message and a wonderful uh opportunity you know we have other other districts in Al count County that are having issues but I think uh hopefully we have everything under control here and the communication lines stay as open as they are and uh also

118you know we we have a great team in this district and you have to look at other districts throughout Oak County and the state to really appreciate what we have here because they're not as fortunate as we are so thank you anything Mrs Fernandez yeah thank you m Cas Grande I just wanted to let folks know that um Mrs Cas Grande appointed a board policy committee uh two meetings ago and um myself Mr Peterson miss Kaplan have been diligently getting together regularly and you'll hear a first reading of uh some of our policies and we meet again next week so more to come I think we've started to get a good Groove together and we look forward to doing our best to keep moving through what is a mountain of policy thank you I appreciate

119that and I appreciate all the work I know how much work that is wasn't going to say anything tonight but when uh we had a couple of comments from cabinet up here about Western I just thought I'd share a little something my husband and I were taking a bike ride we were going to plant some trees over at uh gunam matella park with an organization and we were biking behind a couple of former students from W Lake western we were close enough to them we heard them as they went by oh my gosh what is that is that a new you know Western and so I told that's a new wing and my husband couldn't believe I started a conversation on a bike but I did and uh they wanted to know when it was

120going to open so I told them you know when it was opening you know next fall and they were just really impressed so um we had some form students from Western taking a bike ride by and they were really impressed with how it looked and I thought I'd mention that to you with that being said we'll move on to the consent agenda we have the approval of minutes proposed from October 5th a regular meeting and from October 19th a special meeting and close session we also have Personnel recommendations some of what has been uh brought forward here um by Mr Russo administrative appointments new hires resignations retirements and a leave of absence we also have have uh Financial reports we have dispersements initially in uh our first amount is 22,8 37,1 our that's for August

121and then for September we had dispersements of 22,43 232 we also um have purchases under 50,000 we have Consortium fees uh one Consortium fees districtwide Oakland schools network maintenance and support annual renewal that is for $36,988 and5 4 cense that's coming from the general fund we also have um a head start director's report Mrs Kaplan I move that the Board of Education approve the consent agenda as presented all those in favor I opposed motion carries 70 next we have the proclamation of National Education week Dr beram thank you madam president the proclamation for National Education week reads whereas public education is is the backbone of our democracy providing young people with the tools they need to maintain our nation's precious values of Freedom Civility and equality and whereas by equipping Young Americans with both practical

122skills and broader intellectual abilities schools give them hope for and access to a productive future and whereas public education employees be they Educators substitute Educators administrators custodians bus drivers secretarial par Educators Food Service professionals skilled trade workers or technical employees work tirelessly to serve our children children and communities with care and professionalism and whereas public schools are the foundations of neighborhoods and communities bringing together adults and children Educators and volunteers Business Leaders and elected officials in a common purpose therefore be it resolved that the members of The Wall Lake Schools Board of Education and administration Proclaim November 13 through 17 2023 is the observance of National Education week thank you and our next uh agenda item is purchases over 50 ,000 Dr ber we're going to go to Mr Chatfield thank you Dr Beria wal

123Lake Schools was fortunate to receive a grant from the Michigan Department of Education to complete critical incident mapping of all of our district facilities Administration recommends awarding the service to a Virtual Technology simplified VTS in the amount of $51,000 BTS out of Brighton has demonstrated they have the technology and experience to complete this mapping in accordance with uh the very strict State guidelines critical incident mapping is a best practice for the safety of schools which is recommended by mde that will create comprehensive but easy to follow floor plans to assist First Responders in responding to emergencies at our facilities uh this project will be funded through the 97d Safety and Security Grant awarded by the state of Michigan Miss dice um I move that the Board of Education approved the recommendation to hire Virtual Technology

124simplified to complete critical incident mapping Services of all district facilities the amount of $51,000 and an accordance with the mde section 97d Grant requirements as presented any discussion Mr Peterson just one question is this a one-time mapping uh requirement or is this annually or reoccurring yeah it's intended to be a a one-time um mapping uh it's the funding is a one-time funding source uh through the Grant from the state of Michigan uh obviously if we make changes any um any appreciable changes to our facilities we will have to go through a process of updating these uh for our First Responders in the future any other comments I I I applaud um you for looking at this um my day job is in this area and I know how how important it is when you have

125an incident and understanding what the floor plan is and getting um building those relationships with First Responders all right all those in favor I opposed motion carries 7 Z next item Dr ber right back to Mr chadfield thank you Dr Beria uh administ rtion uh recommends the purchase of new digital cafeteria menu boards uh from Toshiba through the uh Mac Consortium in the amount of $ 78,79 356 these menu boards will be strategically placed uh and installed at the middle and high schools to enable students to see what's on the menu before they get to the point of service um the key there is it it will help to speed up the line uh by giving the students Advanced information about what they might want to purchase and which increases the amount of time that

126students have to eat their meals and um um it's it's something that we've wanted to do for a long time but we now have an opportunity due to some reserves in the Food Service fund which is where this uh purchase will be funded from Mr seagler I move to the Board of Education approve the purchase of cafeteria menu boards from IA through the Mac purchasing cooperative for $787 3356 from the Food Service fund any discussion Mrs fernandz I have a question more point of curiosity are these funds that are available to um for the purchase of these menu boards can they be used for other purposes including Staffing or are they restricted in some way they're restricted for eligible Food Services funds they could be used for Staffing potentially uh but they're also certainly eligible

127for uh these uh Capital project purchases any other questions Mrs Lan so that's an interesting um point I guess if there's been discussion at least in in public comment about um you know a lack of Staffing um in cafeterias I wonder if there's not a better use for the money to to give bonuses to lunch peras or um or or more Staffing could also help lines move faster I just I don't know if this is the best use of the funds I hadn't thought of that um but thank you for that question any other comments okay all those in favor I opposed motion passes I apologize could you tell me who the nams were I know was the ns are Mrs Lan and Mrs Fernandez thank you you're welcome authorization of easement for sanitary sewer

128Hickory Woods Elementary City of Novi Dr ber we're g to go back to Mr chadfield thank you Dr ber while reviewing utility services for a new residential development near Hickory Woods Elementary uh it was it was found that a sanitary sewer easement uh was never created for a city of Novi sanitary sewer that has been in place on District property for many years uh as is customary to enable municipalities to maintain and service utilities that reside on District property the City of Novi is requesting a approval of a sanitary sewer easement uh Administration has reviewed uh these documents actually we had our legal councel prepare these documents and we do recommend approval to to uh correct this decade decade long oversight Mr seagler I move that the Board of Education approve the sanitary sewer easement

129with the City of Novi and authorize the superintendent to execute the easement documents any discussion all right all those in favor I opposed motion carries 70 authorization of easement for water sewer Hickory Woods Elementary neighbor Dr B once more we're going to go to Mr chadfield all right last one I promise the uh owner of the property south of Hickory Woods Elementary aad kashat is building a home that requires an easement from wal Lake Consolidated Schools to run their water and sewer lines across District property to connect into the City of Novi service Mains for water and sewer uh Mr shat has agreed to reimburse the district for the uh legal and document uh documentation preparation costs uh Administration has reviewed the documents with our legal councel and we recommend approval Mrs Len I move

130that the Board of Education approve the water and sewer M easement with a Yad kashat subject to reimbursement of legal and Document Preparation fees and authorize the superintendent to execute the easement documents any discussion all those in favor I oppose osed motion carries 70 board policy review Dr ber uh yes thank you so in your packet tonight is uh policies for the first reading so tonight is the first reading and then we will come back to you at our regular meeting on December 7th to recommend the board approve these policy Updates this gives board members uh sufficient time to review them ask any questions they might have propose any edits Etc uh I want to complement our policy subcommittee they they've met several times um and and those meetings have I think each and every

131one of them has gone over time um and so I I do appreciate their hard work uh and I I unless unless a member of the committee has anything further that's that's it for this update anything anybody want to talk about today okay thank you I just uh appreciate the work as well and ask that if there are any questions bring them to Dr ber he'll get them back to all of us and then we will have it on our agenda in December thank you um our um next to last before we adjourn is the Oakland County Schoolboard association dinner meeting um and so I have S Casa Grande Fernandez Kaplan Le Leven seagler anybody else going okay I move the Board of Education approve the attendance of Mrs CAG Grande Mrs Fernandez Mrs Kaplan

132Mrs Levan Mr seagler at the Oakland County School School Board Association dinner meeting on Wednesday December 6th 2023 and authorized payment of the registration fee any discussion just for the uh Public's uh understanding this is a joint meeting of the county and the superintendents and so I appreciate that we have so many people who are going um they we do that joint meeting usually about once a year and um I look forward to that um so all those in favor opposed motion carries 70 and we are adjourned at 8:51 a new recent record have a good evening