001we're going to go ahead and start the meeting okay we're gonna go ahead and start our meeting if we could please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance thank you we're going to move on to the recognition portion of our meeting and I'm sure that's why the majority of you are here so welcome um I my it's on I don't know what to tell you I can yay all right um so welcome we appreciate seeing you here this evening we have a lot of recognition items on our agenda and after we finish the recognition we'll take a little bit of a break if you want to stay you can feel free if at that point in time you want to head off to whatever else you have going on this evening we will not be offended
002but there are a few things here for recognition um the golden apple Awards and art recognition and I'm going to turn the agenda over to Dr bernia thank you very much Madam president members of the board and welcome to everyone in the room tonight we are going to begin our recognition with our golden apple recipients so Lori Barnett are you here and Lori why don't you come on up and stand in front of the big WL right next to Mrs kahanski here [Applause] tonight's first golden apple recipient is Lori Barnett recently retired adult transitions program paraprofessional at Walled Lake Western High School Lori was nominated by Robin bourbonchuck fellow ATP paraprofessional because Lori goes above and beyond to help all in the transition program be it a student para educator or teacher Lori is always
003willing to help with a kind and loving heart in Lori's nomination letter Robin shared Lori has been in our district over 25 years and sincerely always has a smile on her face and kind words to say she keeps all of her students accountable helps them strive for Independence and advocate for themselves she's one of a kind Lori always makes it a point to greet all with a warm welcome and smile her main concern at all times is the well-being of all students who attend the transitions program she meticulously watches over the safety and Welfare of all students she encourages them to become independent citizens of our community Lori never needs to be guided in the right direction she is always focused and will do anything for anyone without ever being asked she always tries to
004do her best and keeps up on all necessary training she is an excellent team player and will assist everyone in any way she can Lori is an asset to any classroom always striving for what is best for all her co-workers Kristen White assistant principal at Walled Lake western celebrated Lori's nomination sharing the sharing the word generous describes Lori very well I refer to the unconditional and wholehearted manner in which she approaches every day and gives to the special student she supports each day I have witnessed Lori reach out to students with remarkable sensitive activity and a tough Spirit when she works with our adult students she conveys an attitude of understanding caring and acceptance Lori loves to Champion the needs of students prioritizing student safety and concern for the emotional and mental health of our
005entire waves Community Lori thank you for your dedication to the students staff and families of the Walled Lake Schools Community it is our honor to recognize you this evening thank you is totally up to you but if you want to say if your words you may or you do not have to don't take anyone [Applause] Brian rohoviak are you here all right here comes Brian Brian is our transportation director with Dean Transportation he was nominated by Judy watts and numerous members of the transportation department because he cultivates a collaborative and welcoming atmosphere at the bus garage and inspires everyone to work as a team Brian has a high degree of honesty and integrity and shows his commitment to the department and employees he consistently seeks to help everyone by answering phones driving routes and coordinating
006his employees Brian is a positive role model for others by how he handles conflict he is adept at communicating with District employees the community and his staff when issues arise Brian is skilled at correcting the situation and making everyone feel involved if everyone involved feel at ease Brian inspires his staff with consistent open and honest communication and all of his interactions he conducts himself with kindness and respect Brian is approachable to new ideas and solutions our very own bill Chatfield director of operations supporting Brian's nomination shared Ryan is a caring and committed leader who constantly displays understanding patience and professionalism while organizing an effective transportation department and maintaining open lines of communication with students parents and staff we are very fortunate to have Brian leading the dean Walled Lake Transportation program Brian thank you for
007all you do to keep our students safe during their Journeys to and from school it is our honor to recognize you this evening foreign [Applause] and we will now move into what has brought most of you here uh this wonderful crowd we have this evening our art Awards so I'm going to move over to the podium over here and we'll get started oh I'm sorry I'm going to introduce first this is Jennifer Todd thank you hello oh there I am good evening I'm Jennifer Todd I'm the Elementary art department chairperson and on behalf of the visual arts department I want to Welcome All of You and it's my honor and to welcome our distinguished artists of course parents and Guardians dear family members and friends to the opening reception for the winter Walled Lake Schools
008K-12 art exhibition let's give a round of applause to The Talented artists we are proud to celebrate today [Applause] spanning kindergarten through 12th grade this art show and recognition night is an extraordinary opportunity to feature talented students through the visual arts thank you to our Walled Lake School Board Administration the visual arts teachers and our families for supporting our district Visual Arts programs and these students we are grateful for the opportunity to be a part of educating the whole child every day tonight we recognize a select number of artists from Commerce Elementary with art teacher Mrs vanasek Hickory Woods Elementary with art teacher Mrs Zeiss Walnut Creek Middle School with art teacher Mrs Maddie's and Walled Lake Central High School with art teachers Mrs Koenig she's over there and Mrs Maltby the artist featured tonight
009through a variety of media demonstrate creativity Innovation and Visionary thinking to honor the artists this evening superintendent Dr bernia will feature each artist by school they attend artists when your school is announced all the featured students from your school will walk to the front to meet as a group to face the audience when Dr bernia announces your name to celebrate your accomplishment you the artist will walk up to your teacher to get your certificate next you'll probably return to your spot in the group as other students are featured after all the students from your school have been recognized Dr bernia our school board president Mrs Casa Grande and your art teacher will stand behind all of you for a group of photo opportunity parents and Guardians feel free to come up at that time in
010the center of side aisles if you'd like to take a group photo at that time and I always remind students to make sure you hold your certificate and smile after the photo opportunity students will return to their seats we ask everyone to remain seated until all four schools if you can have been honored before leaving as Mrs Casa Grande said the board will have a brief intermission after the awards for families to exit congratulations again artists we are so proud of you now Dr Bernier will call the first school to be featured congratulations [Applause] please have the students from Commerce Elementary and their teacher come forward [Applause] all right when I call your name please come to your teacher to get your certificate and stay up here okay all right congratulations to Preston Hummel [Applause]
011Rosie nemis Jackson Lesage [Applause] Zoe Tennyson [Applause] Arya DeYoung Hudson DeVries [Applause] Leah Banks [Applause] Kaden hoberman [Applause] Alina takachuk Weston Larson [Applause] Brock Jones [Applause] Gemma pancrets Madeleine dinerville Connor beard [Applause] Claire kadwicki Elias saucedo congratulations to the artists from Commerce Elementary we're going to take a quick picture [Applause] foreign [Applause] all right could we now have could we now have these students from Hickory Woods Elementary come forward with their teacher [Applause] foreign [Applause] Blanco Montes Grace Mitchell [Applause] Gianna bizbikis Gwyneth Evans [Applause] eminishio [Applause] ivy curlic Sophia Mays Juliet Zimmerman George deuce Natalia penicelli chavra [Applause] Evander Dameron [Applause] Rocco Livernois [Applause] Yuri Yamada congratulations [Applause] thank you [Applause] next we will feature students from Walnut Creek Middle School if they could come forward with their teacher I should make you read the
012names okay all right you ready congratulations to Erza abdelkheim [Applause] Evelyn boysvert [Applause] Arthur choma [Applause] Olivia Clevenger Camille Cody [Applause] Adriana Coppola [Applause] Aaron gefor [Applause] Avery genard [Applause] Chloe merigi [Applause] Kendall preskern [Applause] Emmanuel poderus [Applause] Kalyn risdon [Applause] Annabelle shonia [Applause] Peyton Stout [Applause] Daria yushin congratulations [Applause] our last school this evening congratulations to artists from Walled Lake Central if they would come forward with their teachers and their principal it always strikes me the last group's a little taller than the first group congratulations to Alex Anderson [Applause] Ava Bricco [Applause] Aunt Campbell Anya Filippo [Applause] Caroline Christensen shirelle Stewart Gonzalez [Applause] Dion Aziz [Applause] Jaden Bachrach [Applause] Lori Whitt [Applause] Margo Devery [Applause] Ren Cummings [Applause] Stephanie Carrasco [Applause] Shelby holifield [Applause] sarasa area [Applause] Sophia mosheri Yana bergamova congratulations [Applause] elimination
013[Applause] all right we will convene the regular meeting at 7 30. thank you Dr Bernie wants to talk to you not me foreign you put your backpack okay foreign thank you foreign okay thank you we're going to go ahead and reconvene here and finish our regular meeting our next item on the agenda is the lake Sierra youth Assistance or layout annual report Dr Bernier uh yeah at this time I'm going to turn it over to our Deputy superintendent Dr Lance thank you Dr Bernie Lake Sierra youth assistance is a prevention program within the Oakland County circuit court system youth assistance has been in Walled Lake since 1960. their mission statement is to strengthen Youth and families and prevent and reduce incidence of juvenile delinquency neglect and abuse through volunteer involvement at this point I'll turn
014over to Ms Nancy van lewen the Leia Vice chair for the presentation thank you Miss family [Applause] thank you Dr lons we are here to discuss youth assistance with you and give us brief explanation of what we're all about um as Dr lion said youth assistance was formed back in the 1960s it was formed by a group of Circuit Court judges who were concerned with the levels of issues coming before them that did not seem to Warrant Court time or records permanent records for these particular students and so this group of individuals got together and created youth assistance youth assistance is an umbrella organization in Oakland County all school districts have a youth assistance organization ours is called Lakes Area Youth assistance one of the founders of this whole organization was Gene schnells Gene was
015a judge he was a local judge he lived in Walled Lake his daughter graduated from the Walled Lake Schools and became a Walled Lake teacher so the foundation of this is almost semi-rooted right here in our district we are supported not only by the Circuit Court but we are particularly supported by our local municipalities so Wolverine Walled Lake Wolverine Lake Walled Lake Wixom Commerce and I think I covered them all support us financially we are also supported by the Circuit Court who provides us with a caseworker the third tier of this organization is the volunteers and we have a volunteer board Mrs Kaplan is the president Mrs Levin serves on that board at this point and we go about fundraising so we can support many of the activities that we are engaged in one of
016the activities that we that has is prominent in youth assistance around the county is Shop with a cop or Shop with a hero we are involved in one in Wixom at the Meyer and in the Commerce Meyer and they contribute funds for us to take these children and our our police officers our First Responders to take these children shopping around the holiday season we also have a program called mentors plus which provides an adult mentor to support and help and become friends I would say with some of the casework children we have a program called skill building where funds that we have raised are given to students to participate in everything from pay to play to cheerleading to soccer to guitar lessons we send children to fifth grade Camp through this program we also have
017an adopt a child program where particularly Huron Valley Hospital helps us support and provide the presence for children within the district many of whom are our casework children um and those things are distributed to these families around the holiday season we also have a program called family education where we through a variety of sources provide art Adventures a program that's designed for at-risk students that goes into our elementary schools primarily is supported by our principals who select children who come and participate in the art Therapy Program we also have yoga which is provided in several schools this is done during school time during their break time sometimes it's a lunch time or a recess or it's a a block time that the students have that program goes from the preschool we have a session at
018our preschool building all the way through the middle school we also have a program that is going to be sponsored this year by Leia which will which is called it's a panel discussion Dr Lyons has been instrumental in helping us put this together um this panel discussion is titled real life choices dangerous consequences and the idea of this is to introduce children students families to the consequences of some of the choices that they are making and Mrs basini will probably discuss some of those choices with you in a minute or two but this panel discussion will be held at Smart Middle School at 6 6 30 pm on April 26th which is a Wednesday and there is often someone from the prosecutor's office there we usually have a law enforcement person coming to that Dr
019lons will talk about the consequences of in school activities in the suspensions and expulsions and those kinds of things that we don't like to talk about but that are necessary to talk about and um we also then have contributed to the therapy dog program which we feel is something that's beneficial to all of our schools and hopefully we're we're migrating towards that so every school does have a therapy dog in order to provide these resources um we have our major fundraising event which is called The Taste of the lights and you can jot down September 19th Tuesday Edgewood Country Club five to eight and this will be our 22nd annual Taste of the Lakes we did have to take a bit of a Hiatus during the pandemic but we have silent auction we have a
020raffle we have restaurants that come and bring samples from their restaurants I believe last year we had about 19 restaurants it might be in our report but um so it's a it's a wonderful activity It's a Wonderful event we are supported by Edgewood country club by giving us the facility so we truly appreciate that and their contribution to this effort so youth assistance then is to the whole point of it is to help children who are at risk for whatever reason to get help before they end up in the Circuit Court and to that end the circuit court has established youth assistance there is a director in the county at the county level of Youth assistance and through them we are given we are awarded caseworkers who then deal with the referrals from our schools
021on how can we help these children how can we help these students before they end up in front of the court so that's a little bit of a foundation of what youth assistance is this is pasini will talk to you a little bit about what the casework information is and I think all of you on the board received the our annual report and one of the things that's at towards the back of the report is a kind of a graph about some of our case work work so I will turn it over to miss sini to continue well thank you guys for having me um for those of you who have not met yet I am Stacy passini I am the full-time professional caseworker here in Lakes area I am obviously employed through the Oakland
022County Circuit Court Family Division and I am now in my 23rd year I am providing all the casework services to our families which are free of charge at one time we did go through a small processing fee but now since that time that's gone so it's a free service to every child that resides in the Walled Lake School District boundary you can live right so if there's a school of choice we would be choicing them to the district they reside in so that they can best be serviced in those areas for for purposes for ease um what I'm providing currently right now can range anything from short-term counseling I'm assessing them for mentors substance abuse assessments um grief and loss any type of behavior modification which is we're seeing a lot of right now and
023a lot of substance abuse things like that where I can get a kind of a more accurate depiction and help guide that family to whatever they would need um to give some context in 2022 we saw 218 families and we closed out 260. but this year alone already in 2023 I've already opened 71 cases closed out 54. so at the rate we're currently moving 20 23 is going to move to a really popular year um I say that in the fact that Walled Lake should be really proud because it is a service that we have partnered with successfully for 60 years and it's an opportunity for families and children to get a service that some of them may never be afforded be it Insurance finances different reasons why they would not be able to have
024that one-on-one service I always will make the decision um if they don't have if they don't have insurance to make sure we get them to therapy that is free of charge I've also helped Dr lons with expulsions and suspensions meaning those children that are getting obviously challenging behaviors I can make a better assessment and start to make sure in their time off away from the district they are making sure that they are trying to rectify those behaviors so we don't reoffend those behaviors upon re-entry it's statistical speaking right children are at risk or high risk we take them away from different environments trying to reintegrate them can cause some potential back flash by them staying with me we help kind of keep the process going for them um so I just really want to say
025thank you for your continued support I think it's invaluable for the families and children in Walled Lake and if you have any questions I'm super happy to answer them I just want to thank you too we really appreciate everything you do and helping our students who are at risk and helping our families thank you thank you and we will see you all at the taste of the Lakes yes we will I'm sorry I do have one question um I I just thought about it um the um event at smart is that open to the public as well or is it just to okay that is okay and that was at 6 30 on April 26th yes because not only are we trying to do an intervention we want a prevention right even for families who
026aren't having those issues helping those parents identify early on those stressors to eventually avoid their children having an issue so yeah absolutely thank you you're welcome all right next we're going to go on to public commentary I do have several cards here if there's anybody else who does want to speak please bring your card forward now to miss sovel but I'm going to go ahead and and start the public commentary before I do I just want to let you know that Miss Levin thank you is going to a time for us so you do have up to three minutes to speak if you get close to that time Miss Levin will let you know and give you a maybe about a a 30-second warning that you're close to that three minutes if you are close
027to that three minutes or she tells you right your three minutes we would just ask that you respectfully finish your thought you don't need to stop abruptly of what you're saying but just finish your thought in an expedient manner we would appreciate that so we can get through the rest of the people who do want to speak today for those of you who have spoken before you know that we ask that there be respectful commentary and that this is not a conversation with us but we're here to listen to you so if there is is a need for somebody to get back with you we will make sure that somebody just does that in a timely manner all right with that I am going to go ahead and ask Jackie Gerwin and is it marriage
028Amal to come forward thanks hello everyone thank you for having me I'm Mara Jamal I work at the DFCU Commerce I manage there so if you haven't been there please come in and open an account with us and on behalf of DFCU Financial I'm very pleased to make this donation to the foundation DFCU Financial remains committed to the students of Walled Lake Consolidated Schools as they work to develop the skills necessary to understand our economy and create their own personal financial success for the future our long-standing partnership with the foundation for excellence in the Walled Lake School Districts gives DFCU Financial the opportunity to invest in our future Business Leaders we are committed to engaging and providing resources to students so they may clearly understand the importance of managing Financial Resources these valuable lessons will
029enable students to plan for and reap any successes in life personally and within their chosen years and careers Through The Years DFCU Financial has been instrumental in working with the Walled Lake Consolidated School District to provide needed funds to help purchase items such as iPad minis 3D printers Hands-On exploration equipment for high school chemistry plus the establishment of an elementary school's third grade trade book Library furthering professional development supporting a Middle School's participation and an international project and additional Innovative and or creative educational opportunities thank you for having me and this check here is on behalf of DFCU Financial thank you so much Mara we appreciate this more than you can know and we are currently in the process of giving away over sixty thousand dollars to put back into our classrooms for things like
030classroom libraries and science equipment and music equipment and and many great things to make our district better so we certainly appreciate your unending support of our district and of our students and our teachers thank you for being our partner and next we have Sandra buyer and thank you for the pronunciation I appreciate that you can not hear okay we will move on um Becky uh barems go ahead thank you members of school board and parents in the Walled Lake School District my name is Becky Behrens and I am a retired Emergency Physician having worked for DmC at Huron Valley Hospital for a number of years I am a taxpaying citizen in the Walled Lake School District I'm going to speak on the issue of Rogue sex education in schools in the efforts of the Great
031Schools initiative which we termed GSI to combat it in my opinion in no way does this initiative remove the rights or the existence of lgbtq students in schools nor does it prevent schools from teaching about a wide range of sex education topics rather in my mind it seeks to bring schools into compliance with state and federal law the state law is a 1976 law which established clear guidelines requiring that sex education be restricted to specific courses and class sections with an approved curriculum which is to be taught by an instructor qualified to teach sex education sex education or discussion thereof is not to be included in any required class such as math or social studies or science Etc the federal law is the family educational rights and Privacy Act the safety and privacy of all
032students whether straight or lgbtq needs to be protected when teachers have Flags or symbols or discussions in their classrooms with obvious messaging regarding preferred Lifestyles sexually it is a form of Education or indoctrination and parents have a right to be concerned heterosexual or homosexual discussions materials symbols should be confined to regular sex ed courses corporations spend millions of dollars for add time during the Super Bowl to influence the pocketbooks of adults they wouldn't spend the money if they didn't think that 60 seconds of exposure to adults wouldn't pay off you cannot tell me that day after day exposure to sexual Lifestyles whether straight or gay is not a form of Education it most certainly is and parents have a right to say no to this for their children as a practicing medical physician I have
033treated many adults and teens for STDs in my 35 years practice hypersexualization of children does not lead to happy secure individuals stable marriages and family life or the well-being economically or morally of communities in our nation this is not a don't say gay discriminatory campaign aimed just at lgbtq individuals I would simply call it don't say yes to hypersexualization of Youth and children thank you and next we have Marlene is it real for rofi Rolf thank you my name is Marlene Merle I'm a taxpayer in the wild Lake School District I appreciate all the hard work our dedicated teachers give it to our students and community and to the efforts of our school board and administrators to seek for excellence in the well-being of our children I want to share my thoughts about the Great
034Schools initiative or GSI in my opinion it is about time that we had such a parent-driven effort to call a halt to the overexposure of sexual topics and ideologies in schools I don't believe that these issues should be discussed portrayed in signage symbols Flags or explained in any classes other than the one designated for sex education the Michigan's board of education is instructing school districts that out forms are already available to parents from the schools and applies to the regular sex Edge classes sex ed classes they oppose and deny the notion of Rogue sex education going on in schools this is hiding behind a pretense of Conformity to law when you know parents know and I know that that isn't so this is not about denying the rights of lgbtq individuals or citizens this is
035about protecting vulnerable children if an adult teacher who identifies as part of the lgbtq community attempts to soft sell by exposure or discussion his or her lifestyle to Children this is unacceptable parents absolutely have the right to opt out their children from this if an adult teacher portrays heterosexual promiscuity and teen sexual encounters as normal and natural parents have a right to opt out their children from that as well the point is keep sex out of required classes I read an article in Psychology today by Dr Fred Kaiser who stated the following with the super sexuality of children quote sexuality becomes much more of a player than it should it is as if children's normal curiosity towards sexuality gets ratcheted up a number of notches as if on steroids frankly I am alarmed over the
036number of five six seven and eight-year-old children that molest other children I have never received so many phone calls from school staff about this problem as I have the past 10 to 15 30 years he said this in 2011 and he was the former director of New York City Department of Education this is not to say we have a rampant problem with children molesting other children here but let's not go down that path with constant exposure to sexual issues the Great Schools initiative opt-out form is a step in the right Direction and next we have Tim sawmiller good evening Tim Sandler Commerce Township also a tax paying resident of the community at last month's board meeting I was most gratified to see the results from the i-Ready survey as you will recall worldly schools as
037a whole measured above State and National averages more significantly Walled Lake measured Walled Lake walled Lake's measuring was above their averages from the year before the pandemic after all the Doom and Gloom predicted as a result of the pandemic and zoom classes and masking in class Walled Lake teachers obviously performed magnificently and the kids proved their resiliency I just wanted to give a big shout out to our wonderful Wall Lake teachers into our hard-working students thank you [Applause] and Lisa West [Applause] hello first I want to say thank you for videoing the board meetings now my phone is personally very happy that it's not getting a workout tonight um also I am under the understanding that the meetings are only archived through the end of the school year and I just wanted to encourage you
038to Archive them through a full um 12 months I would like to give a shout out to Mrs halliberger at Northern she just took about three quarters of Northern span to Hawaii giving them an experience of a lifetime um they are hosting msboa this weekend at Northern and the students are really hoping that the snow is not so bad that activities are canceled um because they really want to perform and show off their hard work um a couple other things I I do want to address though on the agenda are the school lockdown kits after looking into those I was just wondering if those are the best use of our school safety Grant I'm not sure how a five gallon bucket or a portable bathroom make up our school safer um I do believe that
039many students parents would be willing to donate a lot of these materials to make a portable bathroom and put the funds into something that'd be more effective at keeping our schools safe and then the Chromebooks this has been a real battle in my household we are very strict in our screen time so I really wish that this was optional that rather than mandatory I'm able to from my own phone for my kids phones for any device I use I can control how much screen time they have with the school Chromebooks I don't have that opportunity and so it's a little it's a bit stressful having these um especially at the middle school level so as an edu I'm going to give you some information from an educational standpoint first children's brains are not fully developed
040and that don't all have the maturity to focus on school work at school in front of the screen many students are caught gaming watching videos instead of doing their schoolwork one at school I'm sure we've all gotten onto our phones at one point and gotten lost in whatever we are doing lost track of time and so you know these students are also doing the same thing and they lose time how much they're spending on these sites thinking they're going to go out for a minute next thing you know 10 minutes is gone um there's issues with assessments not working correctly my son had to retake an assessment because he realized he answered three different questions incorrectly it went to go back 30 seconds and was unable to do so um also there's many studies about
041the brain and using handwriting increased neuron activity is used in multiple areas of the brain so there's longer a retention of info better problem solving skills and increased vocabulary it also builds brain growth um there's alpha bun studies for grades all students grades one through twelve where there's been increase in test scores ability to recall and apply info make connections between different concepts synthesize information and all in all there's more sensory feedback when writing leading to increased learning so I'd like you consider going back to I'm not saying Chromebooks aren't good but we need to maybe go back a little bit so we can increase our test scores thank you Tatiana is it satana so Tana good evening everyone um I would try to play a little bit of a song that my kids have
042been exposed in the school bus and um let me just try to find it let's see my kids watch so it's not my phone all right just a second I think that's it [Laughter] all right just want to show you guys that those songs are very catchy even for us adults but if you pay attention on the lyrics they are so inappropriated for their kids and that's a concern for me so I have a six years old and an eight years old riding the buzz every day and they come up every day every day with a different song that I don't expose them to so this is only specific it's called that's how it starts the song I got condo in my hat and baby girl what's happening you and I are you and your
043ads invited so go on and let in get to clapping go pop it for a player pop pop it for me turn around and drop it for a player drop it strawberry champagne on ice look for you that's what I like that's what I like sex by the fire at night so there are other songs as well another song that they keep listening in the school bus is Unholy and a little bit of this song I Believe y'all everyone know about this song it's very popular now it's a little bit of The Lyricist it says mommy don't know that is getting hot at The Body Shop doing something Unholy he sat back while she's dropping it she'd be popping it yeah she put it down slowly I do not want my kids to be exposed
044to this kind of songs either in school or the school bus last year during the collar run my kids were exposed to these kind of songs as well the environment was it was a very environment I'm not kidding it was really good well put together however I do not believe this school is a place for that I think we can do better we can raise the bar for where they are and what they're learning is cool so I completely support the agenda of the Great Schools initiative as well in having this opted out form for the parents to decide how they will sex educate their case 30 seconds and where and how they're going to do it so I have so many problems in in our society today that are related with sex and kids
045should be thinking about different things they should be exploring Nature and Science in different ways and I come from Brazil so I know exactly what I'm talking about because I grew up in this environment and I'm happy that I had Parents guiding me through this and having being an example how to have a healthy relationship so I support the Green Schools initiative and I think the parents should decide how we should be teaching our kids about sex thank you thank you Heather Martinez or Martinez sorry I apologize good evening thank you to our Educators our board members our administrators and everyone that works hard tirelessly to support our students I'm a proud graduate of Walled Lake western I am a concerned parent of three students at Northern currently I have two Juniors and one Senior
046Life was a lot of fun I originally came up here to speak about the direction of our board I'm very concerned that we now have people seated here who previously were raising money to school to sue our fine School District I wonder often what happened to the money and funds that you were raising to sue our school district is it what you used in order to campaign to be a member of this school board now what happened to that money sitting here though as an educator and a school administrator myself I want to reach out to you on the school board and hope that you embrace the diversity and equity and inclusion that stands for our society and for our students the importance of diversity Equity inclusion speaks volumes in terms of the reality of
047our world today we have students who feel as though they are not supported in our schools we have students who need places to go and feel safe because they don't feel safe anyplace else the suicide rate of our teenagers these days and the result of them feeling not included be it because of their sexual orientation or their ethnicity or other reasons is atrocious in our society right now so I implore the district to ensure that we will continue to embrace all students no matter what they are who they are what color they are what they stand for but all all students in the Walled Lake Community School District thank you [Applause] next is George is it turzanowski my close okay good evening I have just real simple I'm a grandfather and I have two children
048in one in 10th Grade and one in the EI program at Loon Lake and I just have uh not being involved for years because my daughter's graduated let's see 97 and 2000. I just have a couple questions uh my daughter granddaughter who's in central she's had six English teachers in the last since November I'm kind of questioning what transpired in that another issue that I have is about all these half days these half days I mean it's just a single parent out there that's got to be murder on them I mean it seems like we're always getting notified there's a half day so we're picking up the grandkids or taking care of them another question I have is is there going to be any class continuation for our kids this young lady right here I
049can't remember her name Catherine I think it was the last time she was here I think she mentioned some of those like 16 of the E.I children are having problems especially since covet is kova's been murder on him ice my grandson it's ridiculous he's coming around but it's it's tough It's a tough battle we gotta hold on I think that if there was some kind of continuation of class as a summer school or whatever might be beneficial to to the kids last question just because I'm nosy what about that old high school property that we have what what's that still doing there are we doing anything with the outside of it being a parking lot or I you know I was like kind of like an update on what's what's transpiring with that thanks I
050got my emails on there so if you want to drop me a little note Pleasant or unpleasant I'll accept it we'll make sure we'll make sure we follow up with you sir thank you and last we have Paula small good evening I'm Paula small from Walled Lake Central and I'm here to bring you good news so uh first of all before I get too deep in it those young men in the back row there are my students who are here on an AP Government project uh their assignment is to observe local government in action and they chose to come to the school board tonight and they were behaving so I'm happy um they'll also be contacting you later because they have another project uh to promote an issue and a lot of them choose to
051do school related issues they don't know that but I guess I just told them um so let me tell you about other things going on at Wild Lake Central um model un just competed in Kalamazoo um it was a rebuilding year for us but Western won some awards our Giving Tree Club collected toiletries and we'll be making a hundred sanitary kits excuse me to donate to the clean Love Project a non-profit that distributes sanitary kids to homeless women are Chaldean Association hosted a career day on March 7th and they brought in five Professionals in various fields to discuss their professions and what it took to get there and giving tree and Caso have continued to volunteer at Pleasant Lake and at Meadowbrook whenever they're needed we've had a very good marching band year they just
052returned from Disney World where they had a performed in a parade and had two clinics with Disney professionals a dance Clinic and uh with the color guard and a recording clinic for the musicians and 130 participants from both uh both of the Walled Lake Schools that what is it is it Western and Central yeah um there have been 24 band events that got division one ratings at District solos and ensembles who are now qualified for State solo ensembles which be coming in March our Drumline and color guard are both undefeated this season thus far and there's about 60 students involved in that our biology teacher and student leadership teacher coordinated uh arrive alive tour to come and they had driving simulators they give students a real life experience on the dangers of distracted and imperative
053um the Spanish club uh had a professional salsa dancer in four students have won a Scholastic art Awards we have two finalists Abby piskover and Kaylee Gustafson at deca I'm not going to be able to read all this but thank you very much they're good things happening at Central thank you we're now going to move on to administrative commentary Dr bernia start down here and wrap around Mrs Les ceruso Dr brunia Board of Education just wanted everyone know that we did start negotiations with our with our teachers union today and uh it was a very successful and productive day and we look forward to many days ahead very much Mr chef thank you Dr bernia I just wanted to um well let everybody know that as a result of the board recently approving some Bond
054bid recommendations we have begun work in the phase four Bond schools being Geisler Pleasant Lake Hickory woods and Meadowbrook and we have a lot of contractors now in those buildings after school hours at night and on the weekends making a lot of great progress that we need to get ahead ahead of the curve for the summer construction season so we're just really appreciative of the support and the patience of the staffs the staff at those schools because it is it can be trying at times but we really appreciate them in their support of those efforts and looking forward to turning over some beautiful schools in August uh yes thanks Dr bernia I'm excited to share and I know I've shared with the board about our multi-tiered systems of support uh process that we've been developing
055over the last few years and putting in place it's been in place at the elementary last year and this year and this year rolling out to our secondary schools middle school and high school and that just helps us identify students that are at risk students that that need more support and then helping to design action plans for that supporting classroom teachers so that we can get kids back on track and and moving in in the right ways so one of the things that I'm really proud of is the Michigan Department of Education actually asked us Walled Lake Schools myself our department Dr Stout as well to present so tomorrow we're presenting at the Statewide conference it's a virtual presentation but we're one of five districts across the state that we're asked to present our mtss
056model because I believe that it's a great model and and they would like for us to share that with others who are learning and developing similar models across the state so I'm excited about that that will that'll be tomorrow thank you very much Dr Lance nothing at this time sir uh three quick things for me first I want to thank Matt Weber and his team as some folks have mentioned we are live streaming right now so if you are watching us at home welcome uh to the the first time that we've been able to do that um my family and some of my co-workers joke sometimes that I have a bit of a type A personality and I go a little fast on things but without Mr Weber we would not have been able to
057have such a quick turnaround on such a successful implementation and so I really appreciate his hard work balancing that between two really exceptional musicals that he's a key player on so I certainly want to congratulate him uh just yesterday I received a letter from the masb and the letter reads that the Michigan Association of school boards is pleased to acknowledge the accomplishments of some of our board members they are very appreciative of our board members who are giving up valuable time to improve their effectiveness and they have invited um Mrs Levin Mrs Kaplan and our very own board president Mrs Casa Grande to receive Awards this spring so congratulations to the three of you on that recognition and last I wanted to take a second and thank my cabinet as you probably have seen on
058the news we are working in an environment right now where the state legislature is moving very very quickly and if you're paying attention to the news and you're paying attention to the developments of what the house is voting on and the Senate is voting on there is a mass amount of legislation that's being considered and passed and sent to the governor and they touch the divisions of all of everybody on my team and I want to say that they are on top of it and and working so hard to stay up to speed and how it's going to impact us how it's going to impact our organization how it's going to impact our kids so I'm truly grateful they they work so hard and and I'm very I value them very very much so I
059wanted to thank them and that is it for me for this evening thank you now we have board commentary I will start to the left Mrs Kaplan anything tonight yes thank you um I just first I want to say congratulations to all of our art winners your art pieces are amazing secondly Matilda was at Northern fantastic performance we head into the woods at Western another fantastic performance April 20th I believe it begins is Tarzan at Central and I encourage everyone to come and see Tarzan because our students are exceptionally talented and they do a fantastic job I want to congratulate northern's marching band for their performances in Hawaii centrals at wildly or at Walt Disney World all of our athletes that are moving on to their states that we just have a phenomenal community and
060I just wanted to recognize every single one of them and our Merit winners that were just announced fantastic fantastic job to everybody in the district so thank you very much anything Mrs Levin yes thank you Mrs cassgrande I wrote everything down just because I'll never remember things um I just want to kind of give a recap of kind of where we've been for the last month um February was busy we had a board meeting and a couple different workshops um I was a little disappointed in one of our workshops uh you know the the point of one of them was to I thought to have um you know some more discussions and um it was more training but as a result of the second Workshop we are now going to be having more discussions more
061board meetings to talk about things that I think we touch on uh behind the scenes with different emails a comment might get mentioned here and there but we don't really get to have a two-way dialogue so I'm looking forward to those meetings uh starting here at the end of the month so the third Thursday meeting um so in addition to all the board meetings I have also been attending the Leia meetings with Mrs Kaplan which has been very enlightening we are very lucky to have uh really an amazing board working with Leia and an amazing caseworker who who does a high volume of work very efficiently and we're really lucky to have that program um I have also started volunteering with the hospitality house and and why that's relevant here to the district is the
062program that I'm working with is blessings in a backpack so every week I go I pack backpacks and I deliver them to Walled Lake Elementary where they are then distributed to students in that school we're working they are working on getting more schools involved in that so that's been a great program while I was at Wall Lake Elementary I also got to hang out with Wally which was great unfortunately my own dog passed away so Wally gave me some therapy so that was great um and finally uh this past Friday I had the privilege of being a guest reader at Oakley Park Elementary for Mrs Knight's kindergarten class and their fifth grade buddies in Mr Bernstein's class for March is reading month I've got several more appearances scheduled throughout the the uh the month so
063I'm looking forward to doing that it's always great to be back in a classroom and it's wonderful hanging out with the teachers and the students Mrs Froning really has created a great community at Oakley Park so thank you thank you Mr Peterson anything tonight I do um sorry about that so I have a couple of comments on a couple of different types of subject I since we had decided in December actually that we were going to live stream uh I wanted to cease upon this opportunity to first of all in my first comment pitch on behalf of all of our organizations that support the district in many many ways so I want to bring attention some are here and present and obviously the board agenda came after my original thoughts on this so obviously the
064foundation of Excellence does a great job on behalf of the district Mrs mcgurwin is here in our in our attendance um the Lakes Area Youth assistance which obviously we heard from a little bit earlier um our parent advisory committee or otherwise known as Pac which I am very much attached to in all of our schools PTA and ptsas these are all by and large volunteer organizations we talk I talk about the the whole value of volunteerism and it's difficult you know we got people like Miss Kerwin in that that just spend a an inordinate amount of time um promoting these organizations supporting them doing the things that have to be done day in and day out they also need a lot of extra help all of them do and help doesn't have to come in
065the form of 24 7 365 days a year I'm sure they would be welcoming of a person here there on an event or to do something secondary at home they also would welcome I'm sure contributions donations of all kinds because all of these organizations are all giving back directly to the school district as a whole so now that we're live streaming to the world I like that message to go out please support these organizations please understand what they do and please utilize these organizations for their values my second is in uh it seems like it's Central night tonight but I want to recognize the outstanding achievement of the Centro co-ed bowling team and coach diseppi and I hopefully I got his last name pronounced correctly yeah um they had an outstanding season but I want
066to focus more on Conor Martin who happens to be one of my morning writers Connor freshman at Central had uh participated last weekend in the state finals he didn't reach the top spot but I know Connor fairly well now having had him for many many months he's a very dedicated young man he's got great talent and I know quite honestly and quite frankly that sometime between now and graduation here at Central he is going to reach that top spot so I want to congratulate them all for their excellent showing and secondarily Mr Connor Martin what a great young man thank you sure yeah please first of all um thank you and super warm welcome guys in the local government class in the back thank you Miss small for introducing them to some of our processes
067we hope we don't scare you away or bore you to death so good luck I had a couple of items first of all this week I finished up the last of all of the level one online courses offered by the masb which included the basics and law and finance and labor contracts and legislature so hopefully I'm more prepared as a board member serving you all in the community Mrs Levin already spoke to the extra activities that we had it was a very busy month for all of us on the board and and I do Echo the the disappointment that we didn't get to more of the facilitated discussion I had said specifically on my last board commentary how excited I was about the prospect of figuring out how we're going to get to um operate
068and agree on operating together so I continue to look forward to that and to Us ending up together more often in order to try to work out some of those items and make some progress um we had because we had so many meetings we have a number of of pieces of minutes and those get approved and through our consent agenda I'm happy I just want folks to know that I'm trying to figure out exactly how to give feedback and whether there's a Corrections process and I admittedly don't really know how that all works so as a matter of semantics today I'm likely to vote no on the consent agenda but it really is a technicality and and there's um and I don't even know if I'm supposed to say that but I'm good um and
069then finally I do want to thank Dr bernia and the cabinet and all of my fellow board members for embracing virtual participation in our meetings so in addition to live streaming which I fully expect will be a great success we have embraced virtual meeting participation on an as needed basis after Dr bernia thank thank you cleared paved the way with our legal with our legal groups to make sure that that was okay and that we were able to do that and uh it went off um you know relatively relatively well we had a few little hiccups um and making sure that folks understood that that was okay and that we were able to do that and had agreed that we would operate that way but thank you and for that reason I'm just super confident
070that our board live streaming will be just as fabulously wonderful Mr Siegler anything tonight I'll Echo a few things first of all uh Mr Weber I know you're listening I know you're in the other room thank you for everything that you have done to get us to this point tonight thank you for your time and dedication to all of the efforts to go into all the plays and all the events that take place in this District my granddaughter looked at Mr Weber when we saw him at into the woods and she said wasn't he working at the other school and I said no he works at all the schools and she looked at me with this puzzlement so I have to explain that to her but thank you again for doing everything that you're doing
071uh I have to throw in my plug for the foundation for excellence uh I know Mrs Gerwin has tickets for the foundation raffle we have until March the 20th to sell them uh please if you want to contribute or possibly win a nice raffle to help subsidize a child or a grandchild or a friend or relative in their educational Endeavors going forward it's a great opportunity uh miss van lewen you'll see me there at Leia don't worry about it my you know my wife already knows I'm going so uh to our Performing Arts students to our athletic teams it's been really an amazing second half of the school year because they are we seem to be excelling in all areas when you see your high school marching band or drum lines or whatever perform as
072a former marching band parent I can tell you that many a Saturday and Sunday and night was spent on driving a truck or unloading equipment and as Mr Titus and I will remember we used to always sit there at events and just have a cup of coffee because that was our down time so it's great to see that happening uh to my colleagues who are receiving awards that will be at the June ocsba meeting because I already know who's going to be presenting them uh so I'll look forward to that honor of and privilege of giving you those Awards and uh it's just been you know we're off we're off to a good start uh I would say we are having more meetings we've had in years but that is part of the process of
073all of us learning to communicate and learning where we can and cannot go as board members and getting a better understanding of how we as a board can work to serve the community so I look forward to it anything Mrs Ms Tice yes thank you um so going last a lot of people already said everything that I was going to say too but um no thank you to Mr Weber and Dr bernia and everybody who's worked um so hard to get these meetings live streamed because I know there's been a lot of people that have been um waiting to see that happen so that's exciting to be able to start that tonight um you know as was already mentioned February has been a very busy month for the board starting out with our regular scheduled
074meeting at the beginning of the month and then followed up with two special training workshops that we all were able to participate in and you know through those meetings it's um it's been encouraging to see us all really being able to really work well together I think anyways and also just um I think the respect that we all are able to show one another even if we may um you know disagree on certain things we still have that just common respect for one another but as we participated in the meetings it was kind of evident that you know especially the last one didn't quite deliver on everything that we thought that maybe it was going to and we also just I think saw some areas of um that we could be improving on as a
075board and so I I'm really hopeful going forward that um that hopefully we'll be able to maybe utilize that third Thursday of the month that we have to either I don't meet as like a committee of the whole or just or um or in separate committees just so that we're able to get some more things done and more discussion taking place as there's a lot of topics and different things that come across in the bulletins and different things and we have lots of questions for Dr bernia which he is always so so good at sending prompt responses back to us but a lot of times you know those responses they trigger more questions and um so I think sometimes it's really good to be able to sit down and just be able to have that
076like one-on-one or just the discussion all together so that we can um you know just start seeing some were things taking place more decisions being made and just more things being able to be tackled within the month and then on another note many of you already know it was kind of mentioned earlier March's reading month so we as board members we were all invited to be guest readers at our at some of our elementary schools here in the district unfortunately due to my my work schedule it's hard for me to get away from my own classroom to be able to go into another classroom and read I was trying to see like if there was any way to make that happen and there just wasn't but um but I know some of you have gone
077and so thank you to my fellow board members up here that have been able to take the time to to participate in that um reading is just such an important skill to develop in our children and I think just anything that we can do to encourage a love for reading is just so so important and so I just also want to thank our teachers who work so hard um at developing that and working with our kids in the area of reading thank you and I've made a note that you won't be last before me next time so you can hold me to that if I go to the left next time first I have a few things so I was very proud and happy to receive notification and congratulations to our business office that is
078led by Mrs lass the association of school business officials International he has given While Lake Consolidated School District this certificate of excellence and financial reporting and that is something that is an annual comprehensive financial report for the fiscal year and this was for the fiscal year ending June 30th 2022. so congratulations to you and your team we really appreciate all the work that you do in our business office next I do want to touch on a couple of people here talked about the workshops so towards the end of the month somewhere around the 19th-ish I sent out a note and asked for feedback on what we would like those Workshop topics to be I heard back from most of you not all of you and that's okay because during our as we mentioned our conversations
079and and our board bulletin responses Etc I know there's been some items that have come up so I tried to hit on some of those common threads in in because of time I'm not going to go through what I sent out but I just want to say if there is anybody else who wants to comment on those I'm going to be compiling all of that within the next week or so and getting with Dr bernia and start adding on as we're meeting for those workshops kind of those non-action item but just discussion items to decide you know do we need to have a session on something do we need to go you know in a closed session on something depending what it is or do we need to maybe move something to to then become
080an action item on a regular meeting so again I sent out I think about seven items I received a few other items from other people I'm going to be pulling that together so you still have time if there's other things that you want to tell Dr Bernie and I that you want to talk about and this will be living so if you think of something as we're we're sitting down and talking together that's fine we'll keep meeting we'll keep talking but that is something that that's in process I also did attend the PTSA council meeting and one of the things that Mr Peterson talked about was the fact that we could use you know volunteers and additional people one of the things in particular I think our Council does really well is helps our ptas
081and ptsas to understand what they need to be doing throughout the year and what's coming up is awards for all those people who are helping and volunteering their time so the council is helping the individual ptas and ptas to understand the type of awards that are available and to get moving on on those so that we we have the awards ceremony in May that we can make sure that we verbally thank people and and that's a wonderful celebration in May the other piece they talked about is nominations so when Mr Peterson talked about volunteering your time now is the time where all of our our PT and PTSA boards are working to announce that they're going to have nominations for officers so if anybody is interested in an officer a chairperson position then that is
082another thing that that is that is happening so thank you to our Council it's very strong in our district and I always I get energized when I go to a council meeting uh final thing Mr Siegler mentioned um a little bit about the tuition Expedition raffle that's going to happen at the reflection ceremony so District Reflections is coming up on March 20th I think many of us will be there so that is a celebration of the Arts so while we had art Awards here today there are a lot more categories that our students participate in at a district level and then like Local District and then at a state level even depending on on how the judging of that goes so it used to be just four categories but now it is so many categories
083and I couldn't even name all the categories now but in particular I think there's there's dance there's always been literature there's been music it's it's just amazing so so I just wanted to shout out to that because there are kids who Excel well in sports and other activities there are kids who excel in the Arts and that's something we're really proud of here in Walled Lake so that is the end of my commentary and did you have anything that you might like to announce this is a once in a lifetime opportunity for you what about you can do it say 30. all the people over here know the folks back there the guys from Central yep [Laughter] I'm not supposed to announce that you're supposed to announce that would you would you like to talk
084about it I was deferring go right ahead go thank you thank you um we've been working on Dr Bernie on this for a while yes I uh everywhere I have gone this week people have asked if I was aware of the forecast um I was at Geisler today with Mr Chatfield and it was dismissal and a middle schooler walked up to me and said uh hey John are we having a snow day tomorrow and I said and I said absolutely not and um but but you can all know that uh at tomorrow morning at 7 A.M it is anticipated it'll be about three inches of snow on the ground with snow falling at about a half inch to three quarters of an inch an hour and that snow should go until about one o'clock which
085would make it very difficult for us to clear our parking lots and get people in and out so we are gonna have a snow day tomorrow we will make a decision on evening events because we have a host of them evening events in those Saturday events we'll make a decision we'll pull our team together and make that decision by about noon um to the folks who were respectful to me on Twitter and asked politely you got what you want uh and and I appreciate the uh the the respectful tenor that our Twitter conversation has started to take and so it's been it's been a lot more polite and a lot more um something that we can be proud of as a district and so I'm grateful for that too so enjoy your day tomorrow okay
086and we will now move on to the consent agenda on the consent agenda tonight we have the approval of minutes from February 2nd 2023 regular meeting February 8 2023 special meeting workshop and February 16 2023 special meeting Workshop we have Personnel recommendations some new hires we also have disbursements in the amount of 17 million 683 198 dollars we have the head director's report may I have a motion Mr Siegler all those in favor aye opposed nay motion carries six one next we have high school advanced placement biology textbook Dr Bernier I'm going to turn it over to Mrs kohanski yeah thank you Dr bernia the current High School advanced placement biology curriculum resources are no longer meeting the College Board standards for audit requirements due to the copyright date based on the results on the
087examination of available products it's the committee's recommendation to adapt the following advanced placement biology curriculum which includes a textbook and online support biology for the AP course Bedford Freeman and worth 2022 the cost will not exceed forty thousand dollars and includes student editions all teacher support materials online access technology and shipping the process has been endorsed by Administration and a motion for approval of this textbook purchase will be presented at the April 13 2023 regular board meeting and I do want to let you know that Mrs Sobel does have a copy of that textbook for your review if you would choose to do that and that will be available until that April 13th meeting okay are there any questions okay next we have several purchases I'll let you start that Dr Bernier sure we're going
088to start with uh HP Chromebooks and Google console licenses and I'm going to turn that over to Mrs kahanski thank you Dr bernia the HP Chromebooks and Google console licenses spring m-step testing grades three through eight quantity about 500 in a comp tsg is the provider for 143 430 which will be paid for out of uh Federal grant which is considered the part of the general fund have a motion Mrs lemon I would like to have a discussion we have to have a motion first before discussion okay I'm gonna do the motion no you don't want to do the motion okay Mrs Kaplan I move that the Board of Education approved the purchase of HP Chromebooks and Google console licenses for spring m-step testing grades three through eight quantity of 500 from intercom tsg for
089143 430 to be paid from Federal grant funds out of the general fund support discussion Mrs Levin all right thank you I'll figure this out eventually that's okay um so I had some concerns about the Chromebook purchase um and I've asked these questions already to the administration so no surprises here but I wanted to talk about it a little so these Chromebooks are being quoted at 257 dollars per Chromebook and a quick Google search tells me I can get one on Amazon for 250 and it's only a difference of eight dollars per Chromebook but when you multiply that times 500 that's four thousand dollars and it made me question well how many four thousand dollars is are there in our expenses that we um you know Overlook and it was explained that we have to
090um or you know that we get pricing from the Consortium that maybe is the state Consortium and we assume that by buying in bulk or having access to vendors um you know Statewide that we should be getting better pricing I also realize that we can't buy 500 Chromebooks from Amazon you can't buy them one at a time but I have to believe if Amazon can get them for eight dollars less that the Consortium should be able to negotiate better pricing and so I want to make sure that we are being fiscally responsible with the cost of everything being higher if we have the opportunity to pay some pay a lower price for something I want to know that we've done everything that we can to acquire whatever it is we're buying at that lower price
091um and you know we want to put a lot of trust in processes but I don't know who questions those processes I don't know who vets the Consortium I don't know where it comes from but I want to make sure that we are being responsible with the millions of dollars that are going in and out of this school district so I have some concerns about that I understand that these Chromebooks are being requested for testing I also understand that hundreds of Chromebooks were recently distributed throughout the district for reasons that I believe some people in our Administration don't even understand why it happened it was something that started before you know Dr bernia arrived so you know it may be we should have forecasted prior to right now needing these in a month so that
092maybe there was some more time rather than an assumption that something would be approved you know thinking through what do we need when do we we need it maybe we should be holding back and distributing Chromebooks so we have them for testing I don't know what the backup plan is but I don't want to waste money when there's ways to have perhaps a lower cost involved thank you Dr Bernie is there anything that you wanted to do to respond to them yeah I'm going to actually turn over to Mrs lesson Mrs kahanski who are going to talk a little bit about Consortium pricing and some other I think important details thank you Dr bernia in terms of of Consortium pricing there's a variety of reasons that we turn to consortiums one is the that you
093mentioned is is the volume certainly at 500 compared to Statewide volume of school districts it's much more likely that the Consortium could obtain better pricing than we could obtain the pre the um this Consortium in particular is Ramsey it is the state Consortium that's used specifically for school districts throughout the state and so they comply with the bidding requirements that are in the revised school code uh and uh in addition it's it's not just in terms of this particular purchase it's not just a Chromebook but the software that we're required to be put on these Chromebooks which has an additional cost to it and can only be installed by educational reseller resellers so we can't just go to to Best Buy or Amazon or or any of those they have to be purchased through uh
094through an educational reseller which is able to be accomplished through this it's called Google Council and it's a we have a variety of reasons that we require that to be put on here but in terms of consortiums in general one is they save us such a huge amount of time and we used to years and years ago we had a person who that's all they did was was purchasing they were in charge of purchasing for the district and that position was eliminated years ago and uh at that time could do all of these these bibs you know on their own but we've learned over over time that when we do the bidding compared to Consortium pricing that it's just they they can't compare because even though we are a large district one of the largest
095in Oakland County we still don't have the purchasing volume or needs that these consortiums have and uh and so that's really why we turn to them in general but in terms of the the Chromebooks the reason that we feel comfortable with the prices is not only the Chromebook itself and as you mentioned we couldn't turn to Amazon and of course they wouldn't even bid uh Amazon Best Buy any of the large retailers of course wouldn't bid on on a public entities uh RFP they wouldn't even be aware of it but uh in addition to that it's it's the software that's has to be put on there that has its own additional cost which is included in the cost that you had mentioned yeah and I can just tack on two to what Mrs Les had
096shared that in addition using an educational reseller also offers us the opportunity to go right to that reseller when there are issues or if they ship us something that's not working right away um or that has any kind of a defect we're not dealing with repackaging things and shipping back to Amazon and not sure who the Amazon seller is and where that's going and we have long-standing relationships with many of those educational resellers so it's as simple as calling up our our the rep for one of the companies and and that person saying I've got to fix or I'll ship you three more don't worry about it or we'll come and deliver those so there is a there is a service provide portion of that provision that's really helpful to us so that we're not
097you know trying to repackage things and run to FedEx to ship them back to somewhere through through that kind of a way like we all do at home right you order things and I got a 16 year old who likes to order things on Amazon and then finds out she doesn't want them or doesn't like the way they look we have to ship them back not to make light of it but you know you know what it's like to ship things back for for resellers like that and those educational resellers also offer us the ability to buy in large bulk which as you had even stated Mrs Levin it's hard to do it's hard to buy 500 things from Amazon you know oftentimes they can't fulfill those orders and so there's that with regard to
098why are we purchasing Chromebooks to help support testing so the Chromebook distribution piece right now a couple of things about State Testing so when we rolled out with District provided Chromebooks and and encouraging families to take advantage of that opportunity the reason that we do that is because our district provided Chromebooks are the only devices that students can take a state test on you can't take a state test on your iPad you can't take it on your phone you can't bring one of your own devices from home and then take that state test we were really hoping that a lot more families might be able to take advantage of that distribution throughout the window which started in November and is finishing up now Central but as that dust kind of settled we took a look
099of course we wouldn't know it well ahead of time but we took a look and said you know based on the trends and the number of students that are taking advantage of it we feel there might be the need for us to supplement with these devices they'll be put to Great use in the future the you know we will have them on carts we can distribute them but for the purpose of ensuring that no student be at a disadvantage when it comes to participating in State Testing time that's really the impetus behind ordering them at this point in the year I would have loved to know in November that we needed some extra devices but we really didn't know until we rolled through that rollout and as I said the other piece of of only
100being able to take a state assessment on a district issued device is because it connects to our Network and then we can when students use a district issued device or opt-in for those those District devices our I.T staff has a much easier time pushing out those required software applications and links so that it's much easier for students when they're sitting in their classrooms and they've got their own device that link for estate testing is pushed right to them and they can only test when they're on our Network so they can't take the test at home they can't take it off site they have to be here linked to our Network on a district device so I hope that helps clarify a little and if there are other questions I'm happy to I'm happy to dig
101more thank you I believe that Mrs Fernandez has a comment yeah thank you you've just made me think of another question as you're explaining the educational reseller in the consortiums I would be interested to know if we can influence the requirements so great clarity about the fact that it's software in addition to the hardware cost but we've heard not only tonight but in other nights about some requests on the ability to limit internet access or controls or parental ability to track you know or inform on usage or you know you were just stating how they could push out how RIT can push out software apps and links easier so it feels like we ought to be able to more easily also incorporate some controls or some requirements specific to educational users and children is that
102absolutely and we actually have firewalls we have we have things that are blocked on those District devices even that for students that take them home and work in the evenings um so I mean I I can get that information about what types of systems and things are blocked on those District devices it's I can guarantee you that it's much safer on a district device you're 15 or 16 year old at home than it is on their own phone if it doesn't have if it doesn't have safety features built in or parental controls built into it or even on on home desktops that might not have safety features and controls built in so I can get you more information on that but yes our it department has an ability to then very simply remotely say gosh
103we've discovered you know that there's this work around for kids that are finding their way onto something and we can do that and it disables it among across all district devices so it's not trying to hand pick and find one by one and and who's on that so there really are a lot of advantages to it too and I can get you more details please thank you you bet any other comments Mr Peterson go ahead it's okay go ahead No I gave you the floor I have just one very simple question sure so these Chromebooks are dedicated for testing correct they are for current yeah current use will be dedicated for testing yes so do they have a legacy as far as going for how many years out do we think that they will be
104applicable in the present form they're in as purchased yeah I I can talk to my I.T staff about that I would hate to make a comment about putting a year or putting a date on things um but yes I mean there there is everything has a shelf life right our flat screen TVs up there have shelf lives so um I know there is I can get that information for you too Mr Peterson thank you yes you're welcome Mrs Kaplan I just want to be clear with the Consortium we do have people that monitor or work with the Consortium to make sure that there are completely you know making sure that the pricing is the best that we're getting um together and that you know there's no Rogue Consortium um buying going on so uh just
105to further add to that when you go into any of the consortiums uh because I had a question earlier about the timeline and how long the prices are good for it depends on the type of of purchase for software and licenses it's it's like a four-month period of time so they're constantly updating those I know some things that are more equipment based are are longer periods of time but but for these types of devices and software it's it's a very short period of time so they are being updated on a very regular basis they're also commercial grade by the way these devices are commercial grade versus what you'd buy like the retail it makes them uh more durable when you're you're sending them home with students and so that is one difference as well Mrs
106lemon just one follow-up question Mrs kohanski um did you say we're buying these just in case we need them like we aren't sure if we need them no we anticipate that we will need them um I just did a spring testing planning meeting with all levels with elementary middle school and high school and met with their counselors the counselors and the principals who do the majority of the planning for testing scenarios so what does the testing schedule look like you know we have to test students in grades three through eleven over about a six week period of time so there's a lot of testing taking place and so managing and structuring that schedule requires them to have the availability of getting their hands on devices so what I had them do was to take a
107look at how many students obtained District devices through the distribution that we've done the last few months and then given those the the most optimal testing scenario or the minimal testing scenario how many what range of devices do you believe that you would need and so we do believe that we'll be using all 500 of them across grades 3 through 11 across all of of our buildings to varying degrees when you think about 500 across all of those buildings it's not a ton right every building is probably going to get an extra cart that they have so that they can they can Implement a more streamlined testing process over those six weeks and then as Mr Peterson talked about is it just for testing well currently yes but we will be utilizing those District Chromebooks
108and using those carts of course in an ongoing fashion for things we have some programs within our buildings that could really utilize some extra things right in the classroom in addition to the student devices because we know not every family took advantage of that so and and I can attest just personally with kids having used Chromebooks and having four kids who graduated from Wild Lake Schools recently um that sometimes the kid will forget their device and they have to have a device or sometimes there are devices in to be repaired and they need to use a device that they didn't think they had to so there's a lot of different reasons to have a few extra odds on hand to make sure that when we mandatorily have to use them for something like testing that
109that we have those available any other questions yes Miss dice so I just have one too I um back when we were talking about um just the Chromebooks before one of my questions too was on like the apps that kids can put on there and just some of the different um just like the safety things to keep them from getting into things that they shouldn't be on and and you know some concerns also were mentioned tonight and so if these Chromebooks are potentially going to be going home with the kids and then they're going to be off our Network what's being done to keep you know keep them from being able to access sites that aren't very good for them as well as you know as was mentioned just the security controls that maybe shut
110it down at a certain time if they don't want them sneaking into you know into it after they're supposed to be in bed or whatever yeah absolutely so our students aren't able to download anything onto those on their own like download apps or download you know programs and things like that so that feature is locked students aren't able to do that but what can they get to going through Google Chrome there are a number of things that are blocked that our it department has set up and um one of the things that I can tell you is that our it department has complete control over those devices so for instance during covid when we were giving out Chromebooks because you know we're giving them to anybody and everybody who needed one so that they could
111connect with their teachers in a remote fashion when we were bringing those Chromebooks back and requesting that families bring those back to us um there were literally hundreds that got lost and I'm using air quotes meaning people left left they they were under couch cushions they were stuck in closets and under kids beds and things like that and with repeated attempts to have families and request those those devices back to us we didn't even care if they were broken we told families we don't care if they're broken we just we would like the device back um and we got to a point where our I.T Department's actually able to just remote in and shut that whole thing down so that it's not even a functional device which is what we had to do in a
112number of cases so we do have ultimate control over them but as Miss Fernandez asked about details on how and what is blocked I can certainly work with the I.T department and I can get you a list of that but but just like I said it's it's our district devices actually proved to be a lot safer than many people's home desk caps unless you've got a lot of parental controls and software that you personally have put on there for for your own purposes so so is there like any monitoring that goes on of maybe different websites that are accessed because I know like um just in some different schools that I've been in like I mean kids are smart too and they I mean they can get around you know the the security controls on
113there yeah they're one of them we're we're we are uh alerted when students are are going places that they might not that we might not want them to be um you know we had we had an incident I can recall last year with a student at one of our high schools that was actually uh going to a website about about hacking into networks and things like that and it's like oh well hold on and so our I.T Department was alerted we were able to shut that down and actually go and and speak to that student and get that physical device right so so yeah there there is a monitoring um component to all of that um I know I'm not the the tech expert to speak specifically to what that is but I can get
114all of you that information so that you can have it sorry just one more thing what about when maybe the the parent standards of what they don't allow in their home um is maybe a little bit more than what the district is allowing so maybe they don't want access to certain things on the device that kids do have access to yeah I I don't I haven't run across that right now so we you know we have around you know I don't know let me think about this probably 6 000 students that use our devices on a daily basis and many of those are those devices that kids are taking home with them I can recall an instance of a parent that did reach out at one point and say I just wanted you to know
115my child can get to X and there was a workaround of some sort and then alerted us which we were then immediately able to go in in Black so we do value that partnership with our families and in those instances when things do come up if we're not aware um they alert us we know about them these are these are really to be used as as a digital textbook in a lot of ways and for digital research and for um collaborative work that students can do outside of um of the classroom I'm personally the mom of a 16 year old and she's had a Chromebook since middle school a district issued Chromebook since middle school in the district where we live and we have I mean it's been invaluable for her in terms of being
116able to connect with other students that work in groups with her complete projects work on the weekends talk to one another and it's been very valuable so um but yes we we do value that partnership with families and if there are things they noted that that maybe we didn't know we're happy to work with them on that any other comments before we take the vote all those in favor aye opposed motion carries 7-0 next we have another purchase Dr brilliant uh yes we're gonna go right back to Mrs kohanski Ben uh Trend Micro X detect and responses through in account tsg for the total amount of fifty six thousand one hundred and thirty two dollars which will come out of the general fund I have a motion Mr casc Grande this is Levin I move
117that the Board of Education approved the purchase of the Trend Micro X detection and responses licenses and Internet Security one-year subscription provided by intercom tsg for fifty six thousand one hundred thirty two dollars from the general fund support any discussion yes Mr computer just one simple question is this a new company that we're working with or have we worked with them before correct yeah thank you that's a great question we've worked with Trend Micro for a number of years and they offer sort of a menu of options in terms of what types of of detection and responses that we can we can provide and layer onto our Network for those of you that were here and remember the the ransomware attack the cyber security event we had in October of 2020 Trend worked really closely
118with us and that ransomware attack actually got around some of the um uh the the options that Trend was offering at the time we've upped this so this is a much more secure feature through Trend than we had previously had and we feel um and not just that we feel I can I I know that there are a number of very recent incidences where trend has actually caught some um outside activity trying to get onto our Network and kind of shut that down at the at the gate they're sort of like that gatekeeper um so it's really valuable and and yes we've worked with them for a number of years um and I will I will just say that I mean any company has to continue to keep on top of that there's always new
119things coming out right and and this is something that that I believe that we've been able to as a board and also some of our staff uh put on some of our personal devices to make sure that's part of this licensing agreement as well so that we can keep our our devices safe as well correct any other questions or comments before we vote okay all those in favor aye opposed motion carries seven zero and we have yet another purchase Dr Bernie uh yes this time we're going to go to Mr Chatfield thank you Dr bernia we have for your consideration a Furniture purchasing recommendation for supplemental purchases uh of furniture for Geisler Dublin Hickory Woods Keith Lou Lake Meadowbrook Oakley park Pleasant Lake and Wixom in the amount of 202 725.61 to be paid for
120out of the 2019 Bond Fund Mr Siegler I move that the Board of Education approved the purchase of the 2019 Bond program Furnishings package phase 4.2 TMP project numbers 19061a Geisler 19065a Dublin 19068a Hickory Woods 19069a Keith 190708 Loon Lake 19071a Meadowbrook 190728 Oakley park 190738 Pleasant Lake and 19075a Wixom for 202 725.61 from the 2019 Bond Fund Mr Peterson yes I have one question just uh to clarify there's a couple of schools here and from previous phase um can you give me some assurance that we have now this will put those schools in phase one two or three I don't think it's all the way that far back but um that this will be pretty much the end for those schools at this point for funding from the bond and that the remaining funding
121will go and allocation against obviously phase four and and uh and Western's completion uh sure I believe you're you're uh referring to the phase three additional Furniture purchases um at Keith Moon Lake and Oakley Park as well as perhaps Dublin and those are the result of after uh Furnishing those those classrooms and after staff using them for several months they identified some shortcomings in things from whether it's a a number of desks and chairs whether it's a number of uh rolling cabinets or shelving units that that purchase of which amounts to about 25 100 is just to fill in the gaps where teachers identified shortcomings in those classrooms it should be the end I never say never but that should be the end of purchases for those schools no I just wanted to get a
122point of clarity thank you any other questions or comments all those in favor aye opposed motion carry 7-0 and we have one last purchase Dr bernia yeah I'm going to turn it over to Dr lons thank you sir the district is recommending the purchase of school lockdown kits from the SOS survival projects company quantity 800 for a total cost of 30 500 and this will come from our school safety Grant fund yeah I have a motion this is Kaplan I move that the Board of Education approved the purchase of 800 school lockdown kits from SOS Survival Products for 30 500 from the school safety Grant fund support any discussion this is Fernandez so first I want to thank Dr lons for spending time with me on the phone today at the last minute just to
123dig into some of the details in the history of this request but even so I am not in favor of spending thirty thousand dollars on the lockdown kits as a district we've taken steps that include Alice training we've renewed and expanded our subscription to the threat assessment software recently in a board meeting we hear public commentary advocating security guards and sros as a consideration so I believe I understand that our district has some million dollars or more in the safety Grant funds that we will need to look at using in some way shape or form by the end of September 2024 and in a broad contact strategy I might support this but on the surface as kind of a first prior or a priority move for safer schools I I really think that putting 800
124um 800 lockdown kits in specific rooms requires some more contemplation I have three things in particular that caused me to feel um unable to support this first I'd like to know more about the expectations and engagement of teachers do they know what this is It's toilet paper not coloring books and what alternatives have they offered or would they like to discuss my second concern is that human waste just Hazmat material and that generally requires considerations around compliance and documentation and chain of custody and really my big my biggest uh my biggest concern is I'd like to see us have a larger holistic conversation as a board about safety we've started some conversations and questions in email threads and and I like to see some of those come together and formulate a more holistic plan and
125this if this becomes a part of that great but um those are those are the reasons that I'm not in favor of supporting this any other comments Mrs level thank you Mrs Casa Grande so um I too sent a number of questions uh to Dr Bernie and his team and I think the team for answering questions um my questions were surrounding um you know why are we choosing this item as the item that we are purchasing for schools you know it sounds like it's a safety thing a school lockdown kit but it's a bucket it's toilet paper it's kitty litter so that people can go to the bathroom in their classroom if they're locked down and I was told you know we were told that law enforcement supports this concept and and we certainly um
126you know defer to the experts in this but I believe that the the statement that law enforcement supports this concept is in a vacuum if every other priority is met every box is checked of course a classroom having a go bag a lockdown kit toilet paper that's important but when I find out all of us find out that there's over a million dollars sitting in a school safety Grant right which isn't going to come out of the general fund but it's still money when people are asking parents are asking for more safety um processes to take place why this is the thing that comes to us for a vote to spend it blows my mind I understand that if we were to commit to adding a security guard at every school using this year's school
127safety Grant in the future that would be an expense that would then have to come out of the general fund but if we have access to the money I say let's use that money for bigger ticket items and let the community decide hey we really liked having a security guard in our school we are willing to support spending continued money on those security guards in the future right now we have money sitting there that it could be used on things people are asking for and we also have families that would probably donate 800 rolls of toilet paper people probably still have a stockpile from the last couple years we have businesses that may donate a bucket or 500. we have to be smart again about how we are spending our money and what we are
128doing and you know in my mind things that we do here as a district and as a board have to check a couple boxes it either has to help the kids or it has to help their safety or it has to be on one of the very small list of things and I don't think that I see how this protects children or or makes them safer perhaps more comfortable but I believe that Comfort comes secondary to safety and so I don't think I can support this item Mr Siegler I just I respectfully disagree with my colleagues I think this has to do a lot more with human dignity in a traumatic situation you have buildings that do not have restrooms in the classroom you are in a lockdown situation you have children in some Elementary
129classrooms Middle School classrooms that won't that are already going to be traumatized by what is going on it God forbid there is a lockdown within the within the school uh they are let's face it when you're dealing with elementary school children after the trauma sets in what's the first thing they normally need to do is they need to try to relieve themselves after they've huddled uh it's not the ideal answer I agree with that but I think that at this point in time it is a temporary means of allowing some dignity in the classroom for the children God forbid God forbid a thousand times that this should happen and that yes we do have the money there but we also have until 2024 to designate and approve for the spending of that and you know
130I know that you know that there is research being done as to how we are going to put things into place I think the 35 30 500 would be well spent right now just to have God forbid we should need it having experienced lockout lockdown drills in artificial situations where as an adult and being locked up when we did the drill at the West Bloomfield Middle School I will tell you it is as an adult it is very tense it is very traumatic even though we knew that the person that was there with the paint gun was not carrying a real weapon you could have cut the tension in the room with a knife and I can only imagine what a child would have to go through doing this any other comments this is Casa
131Grande Mrs Kaplan my only question is why now why did the bucket discussion come up now because this is the first time we've heard about having the safety bucket in the classrooms thank you Mr Kaplan there are a number of items that we've been working on over last year based on meeting with local law enforcement based on the Alice training based on other companies that we've been working with so this is not the only item that we've worked on this is an item that is at the threshold that we need board approval to purchase so as we look to enhance all of our Safety and Security procedures this is one part of a greater plan so that's why it's coming to us now also before we would have had to take the money directly out
132of general fund now we have an opportunity to take it out of a grant that is designated for equipment like this any other comments or questions before we vote this is Fernandez um well I'd like to address the idea of traumatization and the kids and particularly since this has become such a high profile item we know that 95 percent of America's schools have begun conducting active shooter lockdown drills and things of this sort and it's something as Mr Siegler mentioned is can be traumatizing to teachers and to students so that is true I did some research on this topic and a 2018 Pew research survey did discover that you know despite the probability of such events and the likelihood of a student being killed in an active shooter situation is about one in 614 million
133still means we should take this very seriously but it's that that low 57 percent of American teenagers worry about shooting in their school and presumably some of our efforts at preparation are partially to blame for the high levels of traumatization and concern so you know we all want to be prepared I want to be prepared but I don't think for me it changes the level of support Mrs bobbin thank you Mrs castagrande um you know I go back to you know nobody wants to traumatize a child the lockdown is what's traumatizing the child not the inability to go to the bathroom if we think about the second grader who needs to go to the bathroom in the middle of a lockdown that then takes the teacher away from looking out the door keeping the rest
134of the classroom safe in order to hold up the tarp that comes with the lockdown kit so that the child can sit on the bucket to then relieve him or herself because you can't ask another second grader to do that so while I agree that in a vacuum if every other priority box was being checked this would be a great thing to have I think there are other priorities that would need to take precedent and maybe it's just thirty thousand dollars but that could also be a third of a security guard and when push comes to shove I think that the physical security of the building is a more important priority and if there's other things on a list I would love to be part of the discussion to hear what else is on the
135list because on its face this is all we've been presented with if there's more of a discussion I want to hear the whole list I want to hear the whole discussion I understand it might need to be in a closed session because of the nature of the discussion but on its face this just doesn't seem like the best use of our our grant money any other discussion Ms Tice so I'm just wondering I guess if there is a way to see what all the options are for what this grant can be spent on specifically um that might be better spent as opposed to these kits I think we all can agree that you know we want the human dignity of every child to be preserved you know nobody wants any child to be traumatized I
136know none of us want to see um to see any of that but um you know kind of as was mentioned like there are some things that we also as a board have to figure out um what needs to be prioritized to um because if um you know if we're so concerned about just trying to preserve their human dignity while you know as Miss Levin just said you know you're holding up a tarpon you're taking away from being able to watch or do whatever you need to do and you know and then something tragic happens like you know I mean God forbid something like that happened but if a child's life is taken they they're not going to have you know what I mean like there's not going to be any dignity to preserve any
137other comments Mr Peterson there's uh first of all I think we have to realize that there's been a legacy here in the school system for a number of years go back to the bond prior to 2019. in certain additional precautions and that have been put into the schools to help mitigate certain issues I know personally I was at uh in attendance at Central when we lock down right after Oxford and ultimately the school went down for two days and I do and I and I was able to share with the kids with me and as I came back to uh take them home uh when they were released the the tensions that they have um this isn't a catch-all for every answer and every conclusion this is only a part of the par of the
138process is it a perfect one I I think not but then at the same time we're not spending a lot of money we're using funds that are there been provided for us for these type of situations there's a lot more that money still to be spent there's a lot more overview that's ongoing I know I will say that this last year they've done a more comprehensive job of looking at it yes we do always and should always be reviewing this on a on a regular basis and I know it's a high priority right now um with most of us on the board if not all of us there's no simple answers we all know that its frequency is high throughout Society but it it's just one one of those issues here in this particular one
139I don't you know personally don't want to get too hung up on it from the standpoint where it's at I think that we can all agree that there's an ongoing dialogue that's that's presenting itself and I will trust in Dr Bruni to get us there in the very short term so I'll just leave it at that and the last thing I will say before I call for the vote is that I think one of the lessons to be learned and applied is that this just happened at Michigan State University wouldn't those students have appreciated that there was something there for them in the room that they were locked down in for hours upon hours if they were not near a bathroom the other thing I will say is I will Echo all of the things
140that we have gone to our Community four for safety security and technology and while we can never do everything and prevent everything if somebody wants to get in that building we will continue to do our best to put safety at the Forefront in our community has passed every bond that that has included that and I will also mention and this is not to be com to come as combative but whether we have Hazmat in a in a bucket or Hazmat somewhere in the in the room I'd rather have it contained in a bucket um so with that I would ask if we could take a vote all those in favor I opposed motion carries 4-3 and now we will move on to resolution Section 105 limited schools of choice Dr bernia yes I apologize Dr
141bernia I'm sorry I had two days further three Nays Miss Tice Mrs Fernandez and Mrs Levin thank you apologize no problem thanks for clarifying uh last December we um we brought to the board uh some a motion for consideration to continue our schools of choice as we have in the past we capped it at five percent which has historically been what the district has operated on uh but in this case for going into what will be 23-24 we have had additional kindergarten applicants so the board is being asked to do tonight is consider raising the threshold to 10 percent for our elementary schools only to allow additional kindergarten applicants so this this will not be additional kids across their elementary schools the board is only taking action to consider accepting additional kindergarteners that would put
142us over that threshold and I do want to complement Dr Lyons for his leadership on this project and I will turn it over to him thank you Dr bernia for many years while they Consolidated Schools has been open to Section 105 schools of choice under the state school aid act under the section many a excuse me under the section of people may enroll from one Oakland County School District to another as mentioned at the November meeting the Board of Education approved the Wall Lake Consolidated Schools as a participant in Section 105 limited schools of choice for the 23-24 school year with a designation of school openings not to exceed five percent of the most recent October count for any individual School Administration recommends the board consider increasing the school openings for Section 105 limited schools
143of choice at the elementary schools district-wide not to exceed 10 percent of the most recent October count for the 23-24 school year specific to kindergarten we have a motion I move that the Board of Education approved increasing that elementary schools district-wide not to exceed 10 percent of the most recent October account for the 2023-2024 school year people any discussion Miss Levin uh two points or two things uh one point of clarification the what Dr lons uh just read or stated was that the school choice increase was specific to kindergarten but the motion is for elementary I don't know if that distinction matters but it's different I understand that and in Dr Bernier and Dr lunch you can tell us I'm wondering if that's because within the School of Choice language that you have to open
144it to Elementary but we know we're going to use it for kindergarten is that the distinction is that correct that would be a fair distinction yes ma'am thank you and then um my statement is I'm very glad to see that uh you know people are wanting to come to our district it's been something we've been talking about want to increase enrollment um what I'm hoping that somebody somewhere is doing is surveying the families that are wanting to come to our district from other districts to figure out what is it that we are doing here that they are attracted to so that we can capitalize on that increase whatever it is that people like or figure out what's missing in the other districts to try to whether it's Market to that or emphasize that I do
145hope that we're asking the questions of those families coming from Huron Valley or Waterford or wherever they're coming from to understand what is it they like I mean we know what we like about our district but what is it that they're attracted to so that we can capitalize on that and I know Dr Bernie has been asked that question at some of his coffees do you want to comment on that yes so right now what we're we're preparing Mr Durkin is working on this project we're preparing a survey for our current fifth graders and eighth graders to ask them where they're going to middle school and high school and why they're choosing that school and then as part of our registration for schools of choice we're going to ask those that we're going to ask
146that question so we can start to collect that data and analyze it and really to your point Mrs Levin which is a good one we I think there are some I think for some students who might be pursuing other High School options I think they might not realize all that we offer and I think we need to do a better job of sharing that and then I think that there are some things that maybe you know as as if there are things that we can identify that are bringing people in or keeping our kids in the district we we could I think kind of grow that so I think it'll be an important data point but yes I've been asked that at my uh Community conversations uh all three times any other comments before we
147vote all those in favor aye opposed motion carry 7-0 next we have the resolution Board review of Head Start program Dr Bernier we're going to go to Mrs kohanski for this one thank you Dr bernia in accordance with the federal Head Start performance standards the Walled Lake Consolidated School District Board of Education is the governing body of the district's Head Start program to comply with all federal contract regulations Walled Lake Schools Head Start is requesting the Board review the items listed below and is requesting the board's approval of the Personnel policy for the 2223 school year all items were approved by the Head Start policy committee those items for your review and approval are School Board request for review of the governing body conflict of interest the grievance procedure and then School Board request for
148approval I'm sorry the first one was for review these are for approval the Personnel policy thank you Mr I'm a board of education approved the 2022-2023 Head Start personal policy any discussion yes Mr Peterson um just help me out with one thing if here we are it's March I think if it is um and we're listening this for the 2020 to 2023 school year can you help me out there uh while I do not sit on the Head Start board Review Committee what I can tell you is that these come up at every time this year at this time of every year sorry so I do believe it's probably an annual renewal of these policies as they're created and that they're part of the Head Start program so I don't know how far back we
149could go Mrs Casa Grande well I can tell you having sat on and in bed part of that that program said as a board member again I don't I'm not an expert on it but I will tell you that yes there are things that come up periodically and this just happens to be the time of year where it's the annual update yes absolutely in any other questions or did that answer it okay I always want to take an opportunity to shout out to our our fabulous Head Start teachers and program because they do a fabulous job before we vote on this all those in favor I opposed motion carry 7-0 we now have the Lakes Area Youth assistance volunteer board members Dr bernia Dr lons thank you sir Lake Area Youth assistance Leia is a
150prevention program as we heard earlier within the Oakland County Circuit Court youth assistance has been in Walled Lake since 1960 their mission statement is to strengthen Youth and families and prevent and reduce incidents of juvenile delinquency neglect and abuse through voluntary involvement in keeping with their established bylaws Leia has requested board approval for their 2023 volunteer board members Mrs Kaplan I moved at the Board of Education approved the Lakes Area Youth assistance 2023 volunteer board members as presented any discussion all those in favor oh go ahead I just want to say thank you to my entire Leia board you guys do a fantastic job and the kids of Wild Lake you know definitely benefit from what benefit from what you do thank you absolutely all all those in favor aye opposed motion carries 7-0 next
151we have the Oakland County School Board Association or ocsba dinner meeting before I read the motion who I have in attendance is me Mrs Casa Grande Mrs Kaplan Mrs Levin Mr Siegler Mr Peterson is there anybody else who intends to go before I read the motion okay I move that the Board of Education approved the attendance of Mrs Casa Grande Mrs Kaplan Mrs Levin Mr Siegler and Mr Peterson at the Oakland County School Board Association dinner meeting on Wednesday March 15 2023 and authorized payment of the registration fee all those in favor oh sorry opposed motion carries 7-0 sorry I didn't give you a chance for discussion uh next we have the Michigan Association of school board masb Capital event and um before um I read the motion my understanding is that Mrs Levin wants
152to attend is there anybody else who wants to attend so should we approve you just in case okay anybody else okay we'll put okay we'll put you on there okay all right so let me just read uh the motion first and um give it give a little bit of a background first so Michigan Association of school boards is going to be holding a spring behind the scenes at the Capitol event on Wednesday April 19th 2023 this is something we all received information on it is an opportunity to come to Lansing here from legislators and budget experts they're going to provide a status and they're also going to allow networking from districts from one another so it's at the state level and with the legislature so I move that the Board of Education approved the attendance
153of Mrs Levin Mr Ziegler Mrs Kaplan at the masb behind the scenes at the Capitol event on Wednesday April 19 2023 and authorized payment of the registration fee thank you and discussion wise I would say Miss oval if you could find out how you know when do we have to turn in that registration because Mr Siegler and Mrs Kaplan are asking to be approved but they need to make sure for sure that it fits in their schedule any other further discussion all those in favor I opposed motion carry 7-0 and we are adjourned at 9 31. thank you