001Call to order the meeting of the Board of Education scheduled for Tuesday October 21st 2025 held at 7 p.m. at Wyandotte City Hall 3200 Biddle Avenue. Roll call please. Member Bevin Parshall. Here. Member Cain. Here. Member Kinney. Here. Member LoCicero. Here. Member Martinez. Here. Member Weber. Here. President Serkovich. Here. We have a quorum. Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Recitation of the vision and mission statements. Trustee Kinney will read the vision statement and Secretary LoCicero will read the mission statement. Our vision statement, a diverse, equitable, and inclusive community that develops resilient, innovative, and engaged individuals. Mission statement, collaborating and inspiring to
002educate, engage, and empower all. Thank you. The reading of the minutes. The proposed summary of the October 7th 2025 work session is included in your packet. Secretary LoCicero reviewed the summary and found it to be in order and acceptable as presented. May I have a motion please? I move approval of the proposed summary from the October 7th 2025 work session be approved as presented or amended. Support. Any discussion? Seeing none, please attach the roll. Roll attached. Motion carried. Thank you. All right, special orders and reports. Dr. Anderson. Yeah, I want to start. I'm going to invite Mr. Pat Sutka up to the podium who is going to get started on some blue and gold awards and then I'll be taking it after he is done. If you want to give a little introduction as to
003why we're here tonight. Great. Yes, thank you Superintendent. I'm the current president of the Wyandotte Scholarship Public School Scholarship Foundation. We annually give out awards to people from the city and the school district who have reflected high honor and done wonderful things, community service. The scholarship board raises money as we all know for our students and I'm happy to be here tonight to give out what we call the Gerald P. Cole Lifetime Award. This award is something that represents serving your community, serving schools and Gerald Cole once sat up here as a school board member. He was on the Municipal Service Commission. He did a whole lot so in his memory we have taken and selected Jim Wagner this year to receive the award. So Jim, if you'd like to come on up. I would
004just like to welcome Mr. Wagner. He has served on the scholarship committee for 25 years. He was past president. He stepped up when Ken Purgosky had passed away and he has served ever since up until last year. He's one of our mayors. He sat in the in the mayor chair between 1979 and 1987 and his legacy of serving the downriver community not only Wyandotte is very vast. I've got a listing of things it would take me a half hour to read everything that he's been been part of and contributed to. He started the Business Expo which was eventually taken over by the Southern Wayne County Chamber of Commerce. He was on the Charter Revision Commission for our city charter. He then went over to the city of Trenton where he was an administrator there serving
005with the with the mayor of Trenton. He was on the on the Wayne County Drain Board, the Wayne County Community College trustee and he and he still works at his spry age of 39. And he still works and he's still involved in the community you know I see him at the DCC working away bringing people together and doing positive things and he's always contributed to to the people of our of our district our community. So without saying too much more James in a recognition and appreciation of your outstanding leadership for many years of dedication to the Wyandotte Public Schools Scholarship Foundation and the students of the Wyandotte Public Schools in the memory of Gerald P. Cole we give you the lifetime achievement award. Thank you Patrick. I want to thank Patrick and the Scholarship Foundation
006but I do want to recognize some people that I wouldn't been as happy to be there especially Jerry my good friend okay but I want to recognize who's in the audience Mary DeSana and the community foundation the Krueger family and the Podolsky family for without them the foundation wouldn't be what it was today and we appreciate the foundation Mary DeSana thank you so much and those people are the ones responsible. Patrick, Suzanne, Ron Thomas and the superintendent are all officers and without them the foundation wouldn't succeed. Teresa's been on there a number of times okay so we appreciate that but also I want to thank the past superintendents Dr. Pat Cole, Carla Hardin, Katherine Cost, particularly I want to thank Leo Stevenson for his investment advice that made us get over the two million dollar
007mark and could Patrick and Suzanne continue in that endeavor but last but not least my wife Pamela. She let me do this for 25 years so thank you thank you to her and thank you to all of you and I appreciate this and it's an honor to have it in his name so thank you Patrick. I have the distinct pleasure of honoring some of our employees and volunteers for wind up public schools so tonight we are proud to recognize several outstanding individuals and teams whose dedication expertise and unwavering commitment make wind up public schools a truly exceptional place for our students and staff. Our first award is a district support award and it's going to our operations department and our honoree is Mr. Bernie Bowers. So our first recognition is for an individual who really
008is the backbone of our district's infrastructure. For over 39 years Bernie Bowers has served the wind up public schools leading staff of 52 members who sustain our 11 buildings and grounds. Bernie works tirelessly to maintain our beautiful historic buildings which often means he needs to be available 24-7 whether it's for a boiler that acts up in the middle of the night or sidewalks that need to be cleared before the students arrive. The immense pride he and his staff take in our work is evident in every polished floor and manicured lawn. Bernie's commitment to our district is apparent in everything that he does. So once again let's give a heartfelt thank you to Bernie and Bernie in recognition appreciation over many years of dedicated service to wind up public schools district support support the district support
009award the blue and gold award. Next we have our director of food services here I know he's fighting some traffic to get here so I'm glad he was able to make here safely with the storm. Mark Rodriguez is coming up and on behalf of the entire food service team there's also a district support award. Next we honor a team that nourishes our students and prepares them for success every single day. Since 2021 our food service team of 35 employees led by Mark has provided free breakfast and lunch to every student in the district with assistance of federal funding. This incredible effort requires a massive coordinated team to create menus, prepare thousands of meals, deliver them to each building and serve our students with a smile. We are immensely grateful for their hard work and dedication
010so please join me in recognizing the food service team. If you would be so kind as to share this with your team and let them know how much we appreciate them. Thank you. I have the honor to award a one of these awards to somebody I've come to know through interactions on Facebook through hellos out where I see his very cool blue challenger outside at the tennis courts but I'd like to bring up John Garvey. If you don't know those tennis courts are named after John and his dedication to our students and our athletes. So we are incredibly lucky to have staff who continue to support our students long after they retire. Our next honoree John Garvey is a perfect example of his lifelong dedication. After teaching at Roosevelt High for 30 years and before
011years before retiring in 2005 John has remained a constant presence. He continues to support students in many different ways whether it's coaching the tennis court on the tennis courts or helping them with fundraisers or other endeavors. We're so thankful for his continued passion and support for our students. Congratulations John. This is a excellence for staff and student support so I love seeing you out there every day and hope to see for many years to come. Me too. All right thank you. Do you have a few words? Thank you all very much I mean it's all unexpected and such an honor. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Next I would like to invite up Maria Sutka and if you didn't catch the similarity last name she is the wonderful wife of Pat Sutka but she's also
012one of our our social workers and she's really our lead social worker for the district. Does so much to help our kids and so this is another district support award. Our next honoree has been a cornerstone of student wellness for nearly three decades. Maria Sutka has worked for Wyandotte Public Schools for the past 29 years as a social worker at the high school. In this vital role she supports our students emotional, social and academic well-being. Maria provides essential services, acts as a liaison between the school, home, community and addresses critical issues like attendance, social challenges and crisis response. Maria is a wonderful employee who is always seeking new ways to reach out and connect with our students. So I hope you'll please join me in honoring Maria Sutka with the district support award. I just
013want to say thank you to everyone for all your support over the years and to my lovely mother and father and my husband here. So I have lots of family so thank you very much. Next bring up Justin Ellsworth who is going to accept the award on behalf of the entire technology team. This is another district support award. When the pandemic struck in the spring of 2020 our district was prepared thanks to the foresight and rapid action of our technology team. They had the foresight to quickly order Chromebooks for every student. Because we were ahead of the curve we were able to seamlessly switch to virtual learning. Today led by director Justin Ellsworth this team of eight continues to forecast our needs ensuring we have improvements and additions necessary to keep our technology current. We
014are grateful that they are always there behind the scenes making complex operations look effortless. Thank you and I want to bring up Justin to present the award and say thank you for everything that you do for our district. On behalf of the department thanks for your support in prioritizing technology and making sure that we stay with the curve if not ahead of the curve. Thank you. All right next I'd like to bring up Benny Wong. This honoree is a proud Roosevelt High School alumnus who's passion for music program has spanned decades. When asking a former marching band director about Benny Wong he was eager to share just how special Benny is. After graduating from RHS Benny began helping at Interlochen as a cabin counselor and soon became an instructor. He helped with the wind up
015marching band throughout the 90s and was given the title of assistant band director in the mid 1990s providing stability through many changes in leadership. For the past 25 years whenever Benny has been offered payment for his work he has refused it. He is without a doubt the world's most amazing volunteer and assistant band director. So please join me in celebrating Mr. Benny Wong. On behalf of all the former music students and all the future music students thank you very much I accept this I accept this as true honor for allowing me to be a part of their lives. So thank you I really appreciate it and I hope to do this for another 30 years. All right next I'd like to invite up our mayor. Mayor Rob Desana. Desana? Is Miss Benson or Miss Loya
016here today? Okay so Mayor Desana along with the Wyandotte Community Alliance volunteers Corky Benson and Margie Loya generously donated profits from a local housing project to support education in the skilled trades. Their contributions established three scholarships reserved for students entering construction related trades such as electrical, welding, HVAC, carpentry and similar programs helping to foster the next generation of builders and tradespeople. Wyandotte Community Alliance is a nonprofit to initiate residential building improvements in the city of Wyandotte to serve as a deterrent to deterioration of residential housing and as example of quality housing. So Mayor Desana on behalf of Wyandotte Public Schools and the Scholarship Foundation would like to present you with this award. Thank you. Well thank you it's truly a team effort it was Margie Loya and Corky Benson but there was Mark Kovaleski who
017came up with the idea to see if the money that was left from the last sale of a house that they worked on to see if it could be donated for a particular purpose for the Scholarship Foundation and I called Wally Merritt who was on the Scholarship Foundation at the time to check that out and it was. So it was a good sized contribution and it also went to the Recreation Department got some the initial seed money of a hundred thousand dollars went back to the city but the other was recreation. Oh my god I'm telling my age. But it's a truly team effort and that goes along with everybody else that wanted the award here and all you folks everybody working together to make Wyandotte what it is the schools what they are so
018I'm honored I appreciate it and best of luck. So I'd like to close by just saying how appreciative we are of the Wyandotte Public Schools Scholarship Foundation. I've had a few stops along my educational career and nowhere else have I seen a group of community individuals as dedicated to making sure that kids have opportunities than the Scholarship Foundation. So each year we expand and I'm honored to be a part of that I watch everybody really keep student-centered and and in their focus and so more and more kids have opportunities than ever before and I hope that this goes on for many many years to come. So thank you for allowing us to present these awards tonight. We I know some of them were actually before COVID was that right Suzanne? So they they've been they
019were they were they were interrupted by a global pandemic but we're glad to finally get those in the hands of those who deserve them so thank you. We're now going to continue with the rest of our meeting but folks if you are you're welcome to stay and listen to us approve some hires and and handle policy but if you are not staying with us safe travels home in the weather please be careful and thank you so much for coming we enjoyed seeing everyone tonight. And congratulations to all the recipients. I often tell the kids the ice cream store is open so I think that applies to adults too even if it is rainy and cold. Next up I would like to invite the principal of Madison Center April Ritz up to the podium to do
020some appreciation awards. April if you want to wait a moment. Thank you for having us. It seems fitting we're here tonight on award night and I'm really happy to be here with my guests Tom and Patty Mulraney and Matt and Lori Smith. They have been organizing a fundraiser the Megan Rose memorial ride for 13 consecutive years in honor of Tom and Patty's daughter Megan Rose and they have donated all proceeds of that ride that has been taking place at Sneaky's Bar and Grill in Woodhaven. They've donated over a hundred thousand dollars to the Madison Center which we have used to build our universally accessible playground. If it weren't for these donations we would not have our playground that we have today. So I'm really excited to be able to be here to be able to
021present some appreciation awards to them so that they know how thankful we are to what they have been able to give to our students and our families. So I would like to present an award to Tom and Patty Mulraney with gratitude for your kindness and support to the students of the Madison Center and to Matt and Lori Smith with gratitude for your kindness and support to the students of the Madison Center. And then we also have one for Sneaky's Bar and Grill to put up in the restaurant as well. So we thank you so much for allowing us to be here and honor these wonderful humans for all that they have done for the Madison Center. Thank you. Thank you. Would one of you mind giving us like when is the ride and and we
022can give a little little plug for it? You're on TV this is your big moment. As a fellow rider myself I'd love to It's typically the third Saturday in July. Usually this year was on the 26th. Next year will be the 25th the year after that you know. So for 13 years we've been honoring Megan who attended Madison. Madison was a wonderful setting for Megan. It helped her become the best that she could be and it helped us be the best that we could be with her. I just that's it. It's typically it's a it's like a it's a dice roll run mostly motorcycles but we've had people load vans and do it and my brother drives his Corvette and so where there's a whole variety you know two or four wheels is everybody's welcome
023and then at the end of the at the end of it is the gathering at Sneaky's where we have all the raffle baskets and prizes and you know fifty fifty highest lowest rolls and all those types of things but it's I have a lot of friends that say if they only go to one ride all summer they do the Megan Rose ride because they it's just it's I'm partial but it's a ton of fun about how many how many people do how many bikes do you have in the last year what we have a hundred and it was raining we had a hundred and I think a hundred forty seven last yeah over the year before was over 150 so I mean it's a it's a nice and it's not one of those snake rides
024which can be problems and not quite as safe so everybody's on their own just to go stop to stop roll the dice and it's it's a nice day of riding unless of course it rains on yeah but even if you don't want to ride you can go to sneak yeah after like five o'clock and you can participate in the raffles it's a good time I think you can do it all day long because it starts at Sneaky's and it ends at Sneaky's okay it's a good time we actually get the raffle bet raffle prizes up there we start setting them up Thursday night and on Thursdays you have the trivia and on Fridays they have the music bingo and those people really like to get in on the raffles we've have we have some pretty
025generous donors that that you know I hit a lot of the Wyandotte businesses so Wyandotte supports us heavily so that's what it's about thank you very much thank you so much yeah please make sure that you get the information to us because I my mind is I have several people that would probably support thank you yeah if you send the flyer we can send it out through district communications and make sure it goes out to parents and you send it to the superintendent's office or April yep yep April get it to us absolutely okay oh you can send it oh that would be for sure okay thank you awesome thank you thank you be safe going home please yes how cool that is very cool incredible all right up next is our strategic planning update
026dr. Anderson I if you don't mind since we don't have a slideshow I do it from here or I can go up to the podium whatever you prefer do it from here so due to a technical difficulty we don't have the slideshow there it is we do have a slide show over the podium Joel works his magic he's been back there typing away thanks Joel so if you're an avid follower of our board meetings you'll have seen that over the last couple years we've done updates periodically throughout the year and they we've built off the same slideshows we changed the format up a little bit this year just because the good news is is that we've we've achieved a large portion of our strategic plan and so if you recall the strategic plan was a
027community-wide effort we spent an entire Saturday at Roosevelt High School hearing from community members it's where we got our new vision mission statement our new vision statement and we came we heard from community members who gave us our direction and gave us a number of priorities that you wanted us to focus on so I wanted to give you guys an update so we really broke this this presentation down into three parts what we've what we've already accomplished the work that's ongoing and what's ahead for the future so see if we can get to the next slide there we go so these are the things that really were spread out over a number of different slides but we do want to highlight them because they are important work that that the team has done and when
028I say the team it's our teachers our maintenance staff our paraprofessionals our secretaries our teachers our administrators our sensor off our board office team we've all been working on these things so academics under we have really five goal areas where we had academics communications learning environment and culture operations and personnel leadership and then as we were building on our strategic plan we added facilities too because we realized that Bernie and his team have been doing work ongoing and so while that did wasn't a specific piece that came up on that Saturday it has been a big part of a lot of a lot of board meetings including tonight we're going to be talking about further improvements to make sure we have the best experience possible for our students so under the area of academics MTSS
029is multi-tier systems of support and basically that is understanding that not everybody learns at the same pace or in the same way and so MTSS academic guidance means that we've got tier one instruction we've got things happening in our classrooms that is good for all students and and our hope is is that that that impacts as many students as possible in a positive way that's not always the case and so we need a second tier of interventions that will help for students to be successful academically speaking and then so there's actually three tiers so there so as you move through you do your tier one for everyone your tier two might be for some students who need a little extra help and your tier three might be for someone need a little extra help beyond
030that and so we've really worked on our guidance we've worked on implementing those processes throughout our our district and each and every classroom and so that we make sure that we've got safety net after safety net that students don't fall behind again if you've watched our board meetings you've seen us bring forward to the board and thank you for your support in adopting new curriculum in a number of different areas and so Jessica Shipman our director of curriculum and instruction and her team work with the principals and the teachers we have teachers piloting programs we we do all the homework we pick the best research-based programs we can and then we make sure our teachers are trained up in those things another area that we've worked on is our educational development plans and so our
031goal as a school system is to help students go on to fulfilling and rewarding careers and lives and unlike the days when I was in school and I had no real plan for what I wanted to do when I grew up our students today start that process in a very formal way in seventh grade and they start building an educational development plan and so they revisit that many times from seventh grade until they graduate and they explore interests and they they check out things that they're interested in and they start to think about that really that that really big looming question of what do I want to do when I grow up and so our goal will eventually will be to have experiences from pre-k all the way up to our oldest students who who
032leave our system so but this is a big step for us so the EDP process that was the one that happened ahead of schedule and so this year our seventh eighth graders are also getting into the system and when I say system it's a we have a program that helps us to store that so they can log in it to it from time to time and update it communications this is a big big area that passion area for me I believe that communications solve a lot of issues and so we have scoured our organization from top to bottom and look for ways to be more transparent and to open up communications so that every member of the wine dot public schools community not just staff but parents and guardians and students themselves are feeling informed
033and so one of these we did for our student or for our staff was we built an online directory we used to have paper directories that when people would move the paper was was static and it did not so now in our Google system for our staff we can go up and pull up anybody's name and you can see where they're what their phone number is and where they're working and as they change positions within the district that to changes for our parents Justin has done a phenomenal job with his team rebuilding the website and so we have an online directory there where parents can reach out to to their child's teachers or to their child's past teachers to a staff member through that system to you as board members they can send you emails
034so those are those are big things that we worked on we have the the communities facing website that's the wind up public schools website again I like it just said Justin's done a great job with his team overhauling that and cleaning that up and really making sure that that's a place that's easy to navigate for our parents whether they're on a laptop or on a mobile device but aside from that we have something now that we call the intranet and so it's a separate site and that one is exclusive to our staff and gone are the days where you had to make a phone call to somebody to get the particular piece of paperwork to change your chat your tax withholdings on your paychecks or to change the amount of money you want to put
035into your health savings account so that has really become a place where our staff can go to to find different forms for every department so if they're wanting to apply to go to a conference there's a process there for if they got married and they want to change their last name there's a process for that they always there's a one-stop shop and so that's been a really good place for us and it also allows us to stay current so old versions of forms are not being submitted so my kudos to our staff who have really taken that change to heart and and visit that often so like I said the public website our goal there is to keep that as relevant and up-to-date as possible that also means a conscious decision that we're sometimes we
036have to say no and sometimes there'll be things that people want to put on the website but it's an event that's going to expire in a month and that means that somebody needs to put it up and it means that somebody needs to remember to take it down and that's how things happen where we have outdated information on our website so Justin has a very strong vision with that about what we're putting in there and making sure that what we everything we have there is clean and orderly and parents can get to what they need in an expeditious manner. Parent Square is a huge one for all the people out in the community every Friday at three o'clock hopefully your phone is pinging and your email is receiving a new message in its inbox it's
037the weekly message from me I'll tell you that learning Parent Square was relatively easy there's a lot of features I like about it but beyond that our schools are doing Parent Square weekly messages our principals are sending messages out on a weekly basis in addition to my own teachers are doing that and so that has been a great tool for us any parent can just reply to any of those messages they they've gotten and if they received it on their phone and their emails and multiple ways we too receive it that way so there's been times where I've had parents reach out to me on Parent Square and I love it because I learn about it right away I have my text message feature turned on so I can I can respond as quickly as
038possible I know the teachers appreciate that and it's been helpful for us that we have kind of an ongoing it looks kind of like a chat thread so we can see our ongoing conversation so there's been some parents that I talked to last year and maybe they had something new to reach out to me about this year and I can see our our last correspondence so a lot of ways that's cleaner than email so we're loving that program learning environment and culture so MTSS I talked about multi-tiered systems of support you have the academic side of it and they have the behavioral side of it and really is the same concept that we have expectations and processes and plans in place for every student in the classroom and from the majority of our students that's
039enough that works for others they may need some more some more support and in and still yet there are there may be a group of students who may maybe need more direct in intervention to help them make the behavioral choices that help them to become successful academically so we've been working hard on developing those processes and building school teams to make sure that those best practices really should be evident in every single classroom across our district so we're working to share our ideas share what works and give students the the best chance to understand what it means to be a successful wind-up public school student and how to how to thrive in our system so that's been a big piece of our work the Dean of Students when I started to a little over two
040years ago one of the things I had heard early on was that our elementaries were in need of support our younger students some of them are coming in with bigger challenges than the days back when I started 27 years ago as an elementary teacher it's a different world and our elementary principals and our elementary teachers needed somebody boots on the ground to help and so thank you to the board because you approved us to have the opportunity to identify EA members who are who had a certain skill set to serve as our Dean's and so as of today we have a Dean at each of our elementary schools they work in tandem with our principals and their sole focus is to make sure that students stay in class and that the teachers can do the
041wonderful things that they know how to do so they've been very very welcome of addition to our to our district CPI training that's a crisis prevention intervention response it's actually NVCI training now so it's nonviolent crisis intervention years ago that used to be something reserved for the student for the teachers who worked with our most our students who struggled the most and so some people think it's all about putting physical holds on students it is not the case it is de-escalation strategies it is understanding brain function it is understanding how to de-escalate and when to help a student learn from the choices that they have just made and so it's such valuable valuable learning that I learned as an administrator for years we decided that every day every teacher in our district could benefit from
042that so one of our goals and one of the things we've accomplished is that everybody in our district is NVCI CPI trained and again just kind of the same thing with the MTSS behavioral guidance that all of our staff are trained on the supports it's they don't know our teach every one of our teachers does the best that they can and they only know what they know and so we want to be able to share our ideas and share the best practices so that everybody has the best chance of successfully teaching their classrooms operations again the MTSS this is the bigger umbrella of both the academic and the behavior so that guidance published we've worked hard in our multilingual department which has expanded quite a bit in the short time that I've been here and
043so we now have multilingual support at each of our levels and we have certified multilingual teachers at high school middle school and elementary school and so now we're working on or we've they finished up the procedures for because they can't be everywhere at once our teachers in the classrooms become experts and everything so so they went to college they may have learned how to teach a particular level or a particular content area but now they're also experts in teaching students with multilingual backgrounds and they are experts in dealing with different behaviors and they are experts at so much so that really is as an old guy in the room I look back and I just think it is so much harder to teach now than when I taught and I'm not sure how well I
044would do at it so it's probably good they got me out of the classroom when they did personnel and leadership as we've talked about finding talented employees and retaining them is ongoing work and so the we in the short time again the last two years we have ratified all of our bargaining units with new contracts we will be going into that work again here soon we have under our some of our Galileo leaders we have I would say probably one of the most innovative and cutting-edge new teacher orientation programs in the state of Michigan and so staff understanding what it was like to be a teacher to be a new teacher and we have the new teacher Academy so we meet periodically throughout the year to we just had a meeting today so our new
045teachers were released from their classes today to get some more learning about the district and while nobody likes to be pulled away from the classroom those couple days a year the six days a year that we do that really does make a difference in their longevity and them not feeling like they're burned out or overwhelmed professional development so our strategic plan talked about a number different initiatives and so when Jessica works with us to develop our professional development days it all ties back to that the things that we we have our staff participate in are tied back to our strategic plan either their curriculum update and their training on how to teach a new math program or our most recent one was dr. Anthony Muhammad who came to us from learning tree and solution tree
046and talked to our almost almost everyone you know we had two sessions but it's about being a professional learning community and what it means to really take our organization to that next level of collaboration so we've done a number of things about learning about our diverse learners and how do we reach every student and so that's another that's another big initiative for us and then I could probably go on for days with the number of things in the facility realm that Bernie and his team have finished over the last two years anytime something comes up yeah sometimes I'm even just curious about something it's done and Bernie finds a way to make that happen and so for the entire community I just again I've had the number of stops along the way I don't know
047if everybody realizes how special that is I have been in districts where we have sat in a layer of disrepair for a certain amount of time to get through all the red tape to get something finished or to find the funding and that's not the case here so really done great work with that moving to the next slide it's some of the ongoing stuff and I'll pick up the pace a little bit so we're still working on the MTSS framework because we built it now it's getting it into the hands of every teacher making sure they're comfortable with it the first part of curriculum is learning the curriculum and learning how to teach that particular subject that particular way the second part is expanding it to make sure that it really is fine-tuned for every
048student so using those whole child strategies the CTE partnerships is an ongoing work we are still working with neighboring districts to look for ways to expand our CTE opportunities and then our pre-K through 6th grade career exploration opportunities we are in process with that so we just the other day at our admin meeting started talking about ways that we can really have a systemic approach to career paths so for our preschoolers that might be different adults coming in you know like remember the fireman visit well that's that's that's important that's a you know there's a future fireman maybe in that classroom and that might be that that change in other elementary grades that may be going around to the Wyandotte hospital so we're one of things we're exploring is Wyandotte hospital operates it's not just
049doctors it's thousands of people doing different things to keep patients healthy and safe and so that's another example of there are nurses there are x-ray techs there are billing specialists there are so many different things that could be future opportunities for our students and so unless we expose them to those we we don't know if they'll ever find those on their own so we want to be very intentional about that communications we have finished our administrative regulations that go along with the board policies and so that work is done we are just waiting for the vendor to get it up and it'll it'll be posted on our intranet but for most of your policies there's administrative regulation or an operational side to that policy about how we carry it out ongoing is parent square our
050goal is to have every teacher using parent square here in the next year to two years so we we continue to monitor how many people are using it we we continue to encourage people one of the big steps for us was sports this year something that's come to our attention was that coaches by no fault of theirs we're using a number of different tools to keep teams organized so they were using discord they were using remind they were using group me our problem with that is that first of all those are all different tools that parents have to try and maneuver or they have to allow their child to try to maneuver and secondly we don't have the oversight that really we need to to make sure that everyone is safe students and staff and
051so this year we made the conscious decision to move everything to the parent square platform so kudos to our coaches and our activity leaders who have made that jump we now send out our messages to parents where they still come to your text message if you have that on so it's just as good as the other pieces but now we know exactly what is being said and while we don't monitor that we have that available in case we ever do need it and so it also again it's consistency it's one-stop shop for our parents and our students if you ever see though the if you're ever on the website and you ever see the Roosevelt student newspaper they did a fantastic article just this last time on the moved parents square and so the teenagers
052themselves will tell you from the mouths of babes they will tell you how much they like it how much they say it's a it's a good step so consistent online platform uses again that's the that's the what I just spoke about and a consistent communications for the for the staff and the community and so my my three o'clock message I really work to make sure that it happens at three o'clock every Friday our buildings do the same they they may do them at different times I know I get one on Sunday afternoons from Wilson I get some on Monday mornings it's it's it's a coming at different times but they're consistent and so again we want that predictability for our families learning environment and culture one of our big push this year is our PBIS
053teams are working on the expect respect campaign I have spoken publicly about this I I watch social media much to my chagrin sometimes and I I hear our schools and I hear other districts being accused of doing nothing to stop bullying and I have a lot of thoughts on that and I'm not going to get into those those today but I know that we all want it to go away we want everybody to treat each other with kindness the expect respect it was a tool to help us do that and it's helped students to identify what bullying is to be given tools to know what to do when bullying occurs they are given tools to know what to do if they see it happening to somebody else they're also given tools on what and how
054to respond if by some reason maybe they're maybe not for malice intent but that they they're the ones that are being unkind or are disrespectful to somebody else and how do you handle that without that spiral spiraling your day so there's a lot of good learning there each of our PBIS teams at each of our buildings is working on that to tweak it so that you know the language the wording may be different but the consistent message is the same that ML handbook is coming on we have the ML written procedures so now we're building that into a handbook for easier access for our staff as much as I've prided myself for getting all those contracts done this spring we are going back at it with two more that come to that are coming to
055term in June end of June of this year and so for our admin assistants and for our paraprofessionals we will be engaging in further negotiations here in the coming months one of the really the big thing and I know this really probably burns Bernie a little bit that it wasn't that had to be on this slide and not on the previous slide is the boiler and so Joe Brighton needed some boilers and again for the community out there it's not as easy as with a two-wheeler rolling one in through a door this required us to take the roof off of Joe Brighton school and with a crane lift the boilers out and put the ones in and so are we close we're close right are we done so okay so it should really be on
056the other slide it is it is all but complete so I know that that was a big project and so that's and to do that without interrupting the important work that happens every day with our students so the new objectives the things we're going to work on we've got to keep all these plates spinning so everything that we've done we cannot ignore we cannot drop we have to keep going and we are going to do that but on top of that we're continuing to focus on our core instruction we need to look at those test scores we need to look at our results we need to look at every strategy we can to make sure that we're achieving the most growth possible some new things for communications the the Bears in the wild thank you
057Mrs. Bearden for helping me name that I I love personal stories and so anybody out there who's watching this please find one of my notes or find my social media post and tell us about what you've done since you've left wind up public schools and so my goal is to have hundreds if not thousands of different experiences and ways that wind up public schools shape their lives especially in this day and age with with so much negativity out there just in general about any particular topic I think we got to be conscious and intentional about celebrating the good stuff so I add a couple of those to every every one of my Friday notes and something I'll get to in a moment is podcasts so I am also dipping my toe in the world of
058podcasts and so this Friday will be the the first version of that coming out it's another way to reach parents my hope is that in this busy day and age if you can pop that on for five ten minutes when you're driving you'll be able to learn a little bit more about our district and what makes us so great so my goal will be to eventually be able to pull in some of those alumni and talk more in depth with them about about their journey so again I talked about the parent square for clubs and athletics that's been a new change this year so our fall sports have adopted it but we still have winter and spring to do and then some new legislation we just put out a note last week about gun safety
059laws and so the legislation has asked us to be the the conduit to get that word out about safe gun storage and gun locks so we've worked with the city of wind up police who are going to help us distribute the locks that we got so that hopefully everybody's a little bit safer expect respect like I said we're working it's it's it's ongoing and it's it's also still you know it's still ahead so as each building team develops their programs that's that's going to work for this year operations I told my team when I told the directors I said it a few times last year I said we're turning over rocks and we're not exactly sure what we're going to find you know being new having a new team we find out that there's something
060happened and okay we don't have a process for that we need to build one and so that has worked we have done a lot of building and now it's about making sure that it's really efficient and so I'm really proud of my cabinet team the directors who work together now so one of the things we're working on is new hiring process between our technology department our human resources department and our finance department and so that's to make sure that our new employee but you know we had all the paperwork in we get them all the badge access everything that they need for the technology the sign-ons that type of stuff and that we have all the appropriate forms to make sure that they get their paychecks on time so that's just one example of the
061things that we're working on really cohesive as a team again we've broken up some of the student services department and so while we had one individual that was in charge of all those things we have farmed out some of those things so George Purdue our director of media services is also in charge of 504 plans and so he is working to really make some strong systems around that to to make sure that family when families explore the options for a 504 plan that we have a clear path for that that's one example but those are happening across the board with every one of the directors anybody ever wonders what they do they are they're usually juggling six or seven things at once and trying to to build ways to make things more efficient we talked
062about a little bit like this with the last work session and enrollment vision and I think that'll be ongoing work that we will continue to talk about over the next few months and that is a strategic approach to filling our classes and offering the right number of sections for the right number of students moving possibly from an open school of choice to a limited school of choice that'll be a vote that you will take later in the year but we will continue that work to make sure we've got a long five-year or beyond plan to make sure that we were doing it in the efficient most efficient way possible we told you the new contracts for parapros instructional aides and admin assistants that will happen this year next year the other four bargaining groups will
063we've had two and three year contracts and so we'll be we'll be working on this for a bit and then facilities looking ahead the sinking fund dollars they really have been a godsend so thank you to our community for approving those we are able to get so much done with that work and to really keep things in in the best order possible so work has begun on a student drop-and-drive at Monroe on the south side correct south side of the south side of the campus and so that would be a space where parents will be able to safely pull up drop their student off and get them into the school each and every morning and pick them up in a in the same manner so our baseball and softball renovations I know that's an agenda
064item for tonight we have done a lot of work thank you again for approving us to sign the lease with the city that allows us to work with in a partnership with them to make sure our baseball and softball facilities are the best they can be for our athletes the Jefferson playground blacktop if you ever driven around Jefferson I'm a jeep guy and I have fears about my some of my my off-road tires falling in some of those potholes in the alleyways and stuff that's not particularly our property but some of the adjacent area is in need of some some update and so Bernie's team is on that same thing around the dumpster area and then one of the more recent pieces that Bernie is working with George Purdue and Justin Ellsworth on is our
065learning our media center at the at RHS it's a wonderfully beautiful space it has terrible echoes if you have more than one classroom in there at one time the way the sound travels in there it makes it very difficult for both groups to focus and so we have some strategies and ways to fix that so in a nutshell that is kind of the past the present and the future of our strategic planning if you have any questions or members questions or comments for dr. Anderson talked about this at our work session we went over it with the cabinet that's interesting I just want you to thank the team when you go back to the cabinet and thank them for the work that they do I don't think that when any of us sat in that
066library in November of 2023 that we would have envisioned how much work could get done just by the the kind of the bare-bones outline that we gave of these are the things that we're hoping to see and so I think the board for being supportive of that and working to set the outline and set the vision and then your you and your team for running with it and I really think an important part of that work is that you report back to the community twice a year to let them know that we are being good stewards of not only the vision that they helped us build but the dollars that they provide us so thank you thank you all right that concludes special orders and reports we're going to move to the hearing of the
067public wind up public schools board of education welcomes public discourse now is the portion of the meeting where the public may address the board those who wish to speak should approach the podium state their name and address the board comments will be limited to three minutes per person members of the board district employees will not answer questions during public commentary is there anyone wishing to address the board at this time seeing none we will move on to the committee of the whole discussion agenda item number one is revisions to policy four thousand point zero two which is employee considerations on October 7th at a board work session the board made revisions to the four thousand point two zero policy which is employment considerations as a result of this review we recommend the following changes and
068they are in your board packet members I mean we talked about them but we can we're gonna have discussion held at this time and I'm actually gonna ask this is Kane to kind of just kind of maybe briefly state because it was your committee subcommittee that brought this forward sure so when Cindy and I had our meeting with the four hundred or four thousand policies we came across one where the terms related or relative we had questions about and so I emailed Brad Banasic and asked for a little bit of guidance from him and what he sent back was that we should replace the term family member the term family member means a person's spouse or spouse's sibling or child a person's sibling or sibling spouse or child a person's child or child spouse or
069a person's parent or parent spouse and includes these relationships as created by adoption or marriage and what Brad said is that we are in compliance with everything else if we use this verbiage okay questions and does that speak to the concern that you brought forward in the committee mm-hmm okay and just for the clarity for the community when this can talks about Brad Banasic that's the lawyer for the Michigan Association of school boards which is an organization we belong to and so there's legal services that are available to us as board members when we're crafting policy we want to make sure that we're doing it in a way that meets all the legal structures that surround it because we don't ever want to create a policy that's in conflict with state law but this is
070he's had this actually takes the language right out of like the school code correct okay took it right from the school perfect and just for clarity for the public that means that when we're looking at hiring a new employee that if you are related to that person in any particular any of those ways specified would you would recuse yourself of a vote during that that point so I think that's that was the that that was an all-encompassing statement there to make sure we were not we're not involved we're not no there's no nepotism right and that that is not only the hiring of the employee but when we vote on those contracts for if you there's you have a relative that works for the district that meets one of these guidelines then you would recuse
071yourself board members during that vote so you would not vote on a contract that would benefit a member of your family as defined by this policy so sometimes then you might see board members just abstaining and they'll stay there you always then state the reason why you abstain and you just say I have a relative that's affected by this all right any other questions about this particular one or discussion I think it's good to be clear and then we all know what we're voting on always all right we're gonna move to the action agenda then so the first one is concerning the policy that we just talked about and since we are all in agreement we're recommending a first and final reading which is revision to the policy four thousand point zero to employee considerations
072may have a motion please I recommend a first and final reading for the revised four thousand point oh two to be held at tonight's meeting this change will take effect upon the adoption support any discussion okay roll call please member Bevin partial yes member Kane yes member Kinney yes member low Cicero yes member Martinez yes member Weber yes president Serkovich yes motion carries all right dr. Anderson all right so we have a couple hires one is a behavioral specialist specialist hire we need to hire a behavioral specialist at the Lincoln Center after following appropriate personal protocol and completing team interviews the director of human resources and I recommend a probationary professional contract be awarded to Jenna Nance at the Lincoln Center may have a motion please I move approval of a probationary professional contract be
073awarded to Jenna Nance effective for the 2025 2026 school year support any discussion all the details for these hires are in your packets board members discussion or questions for dr. Anderson let's take a vote please member Kane yes member Kenny yes member low Cicero yes member Martinez member Weber yes member Bevin partial yes president Serkovich yes motion carries next we have a teacher hire we need to hire a special education teacher at Madison Center after following appropriate personal protocol and completing team interviews the director of human resources and I recommend a probationary teaching contract be awarded to Travis reef at Madison Center may have a motion please I move approval of a probationary teacher contract be awarded to Travis reef thank you effective for the 2025 2026 school year support any discussion roll call please
074member Kenny yes member low Cicero yes member Martinez yes member Weber yes member Bevin partial yes member Kane yes president Serkovich yes motion carries next up we have public address and safety alert proposal the director of technology Justin Ellsworth and I recommend replacing and upgrading the public address systems classroom audio and safety alert systems at all schools and an estimated total cost of one million two hundred and eighty nine thousand two hundred and sixty five dollars and twenty five cents the funding source of the center program is act 18 for the for the center programs is act 18 287 thousand three hundred and forty nine dollars of that and for the general education schools is the Wayne County enhancement millage one million one sorry one million one hundred nine hundred and sixteen wow put me
075back in school for the remainder so really call it miss Lepinski and have a run through value with their doctor those euros mess me up tonight those zeros are always tough okay to know my please please I move approval replacing and upgrading the public address systems classroom audio and safety alert systems at all schools at an estimated cost of one million two hundred eighty nine thousand two hundred sixty five dollars the funding source of the center programs is act 18 287 thousand three hundred forty nine dollars and for the general education schools is the Wayne County enhancement millage one million one hundred thousand one million one thousand thousand nine hundred sixteen dollars and twenty five cents so far that number was really public is elegant but it is odd when you look at it you
076don't really see it like that I don't look at those big numbers all the time anymore certainly not my paycheck all right discussion I'm okay with okay I was just going to say again thank you to the voters for passing the Wayne County enhancement millage allowing us to have the opportunity to make these updates and thank you to Jim Dr. Anderson and Justin for improving the technology at our schools not just keeping the status quo but making our schools safer and more accessible to our students absolutely and you'll notice that we always give the breakdown act 18 is special education funding and general education comes from the enhancement millage so because we have center programs that funding can come from their funding that's allocated to them and that frees up a little bit more funding
077for our general education buildings to be funded from the enhancement millage any other comments or questions we have Justin here tonight if anybody has any other questions we pretty good we have been talking about this do you want to talk about it at all to the public Justin all right that would be great we can see what they can see what we're spending all of our money on we don't have a visual for this but essentially what this will do is update our 12 to 15 18 year old systems in our buildings for general public address calling throughout the building the classrooms the hallways the gyms the media centers etc so the office can make those calls it controls the bell system it has the functionality of customizing the bell so if there's a half
078day or if there's like a you know a pep rally at the high school and they want to modify like the class schedule they can do that very easily the way we do it right now is sort of archaic because of the age of the system in our classrooms the audio will be in improved greatly the audio will be integrated with the teachers computer and their display whether it's a projector interactive flat panel and essentially the teacher could be playing a video and the audio would go throughout the ceiling most likely the ceiling or from the corners of the rooms so there's adequate audio for all students simultaneously the teacher can amplify his or her voice using just a small lavalier microphone so the teachers voice can just be a little bit higher in volume
079level than the video and then even above that if there is an announcement or an unfortunate emergency or even a drill that audio will go through the same speakers but it'll be even a little bit louder so we won't have these conflicts of volume we constantly hear that you know students and teachers can't hear the bells or they can't hear the announcement or they can't hear the video playing in the classroom or they can't hear the teacher talking so this will really help to improve our audio in all of our learning spaces the third main thing to this is the alert system that's associated with this this whole this whole project so the in the case of an emergency or in a drill the teachers will have a small touchscreen in their classroom typically behind
080their desk where they can say a lockdown for example they'd be able to report to the front office that their room is secure and safe and then that way the administrator or the SROs or whoever it is or emergency response don't have to time with you know the vast majority of classrooms when there is an issue in one particular space so they have that ability day-to-day if a teacher has an emergency or needs some support they can also discreetly hit that that touchscreen or on their lavalier microphone they'll have the option to discreetly hit a button it'll alert the office someone can come down there's not some big you know event where all the kids are getting amplified because you know something's going on so that's just an example of the alerting functionality that will
081be implemented from this project and then one more thing this project will include displays that will serve as clocks they're about 24 inches typically in size depends on the space we can get a little bit larger but the clocks will be about a 24 inch display so if you might imagine a computer monitor it can serve as the clock but also if there is a drill or an emergency not only will it come through the PA system but it'll also provide that visual like say a tornado drill that'll show a tornado and then that way you know students hear something but they can also see it and confirm that something's going on it just enhances the communication especially in the event of emergency that system will also allow the building administrative team to set up
082reminders final exams on Thursday hours one and two or whatever it might be so that's just another improvement that we'll see in our in our buildings over the next next year so thank you for support thank you all right any other questions after hearing that I think it's great that it's not only focused on instructional support but it's also safety I think there's hitting those two key areas that's obviously what we're here for and get something else or just waiting for the vote okay that's right okay we have to all right let's vote on this one let's take a roll call member Lucicero yes member Martinez yes member Weber yes member Bevin partial yes member Kane yes member Kinney yes president Circovitch yes motion carries okay the next thing is another one for tech the
083director of technology you'll recall last spring we had a very similar vote so the director of technology Justin Ellsworth and I recommend the replacement of 20 desktop computers for Roosevelt High School's architecture drafting computer lab in the current quoted amount of $29,000 funded by the state funded career technology education CTE fund any of the motion please I move approval of the purchase of 20 desktop computers for Roosevelt High School's architecture and drafting computer lab in the quoted current quoted amount of $29,000 funded by the state funded career technical education fund support any discussion as I mentioned said we this is just the other half of the computer lab any questions for Justin then you want to talk about with that all right let's take a vote please member Weber yes member Bevin partial yes member
084Kane yes member Kinney yes member Lucicero yes member Martinez yes president Circovitch yes motion carries all right mrs. Rankin will be very happy about that all right dr. Anderson number six yeah for this one director of operations Bernie Bowers and I recommend the five companies and quotes included in the board packet to renovate the girls softball field and an estimated price of $60,000 but not to exceed $80,000 work will be completed by November 14th 2025 which would allow the students to play their season this spring may have a motion please I move approval of the recommendation of the five companies and quotes included in the board packet to renovate the girls softball field at an estimated price of $60,000 but not to exceed $80,000 work will be completed by November 14 2025 support all right
085discussion we have mr. Bowers here answer questions or talk about this has been a hot topic in the community and so I guess my first question I'm sorry is the money is would be coming from the general fund I know sink you think you find okay Bernie's here if you want come on up answer any questions on the ball softball and baseball will be paid with dollars right now we are still getting a few bids on the softball girls softball but we're running out of time once we had rainy weather and can't get all the equipment out there it's gonna be a little tough so we do need to roll the field I'm looking to roll the field and we're waiting on the bases to come in so we could do the infield so there's
086a lot of work going on over there but a lot of work to get done so the projection is that the girls will be playing an improved field by spring yeah absolutely and then baseball will start they're gonna because of the scope of work that needs to happen for that field they would have lost their season so we talked to the coach and our athletic director and we agreed that we'll start that work once the baseball season is done the net was the same that they would be playing on it in spring of 27 regardless and so instead of losing off season in between it was smarter to start that one a little bit later so and we'll really we'll come back to you for more yeah it really helped us there is a city
087got the sprinkler system working on the boys field so when we break grounding June tear it up and once we side and we recede we have the sprinkler system up and running now and it's gonna really help us out to get that good shape any other comments or questions for Bernie this is a great partnership with the city and we're appreciative of the work that you're doing with them and I know it's been a lot of extra kind of meetings and work in a short timeline to get it done because the weather's been helpful now but we know snow's snow's gonna be flying before we're ready for it will be plowing yes for sure okay all right let's take a roll call please member Bevin partial yes member Kane yes member Kenny yes member low
088Cicero yes member Martinez yes member Weber yes president Serkovich yes motion carries all right go forth and play ball all right dr. Anderson retirements all right so we have some retired people that are planning to retire after Christmas break at the semester break and then one of our individuals who has let us know that they will be retiring at the end of the school year so Tammy Jackson the Madison Center after 14 years will be retiring on January 2nd Michelle Hayes teacher at Garfield last 26 years will be retiring at the end of semester and the 23rd of January Marybeth Scavone at the Lincoln Center 19 years retiring also on the end of the semester Laura Shonk Joe Brighton 24 years same the same day at the end of the semester Donna Murphy the Lincoln
089Center 24 years end of the semester Deanna Zollers the Madison Center 10 years will be retiring on New Year's Eve and then Dave Crampton teacher at Wilson will be retiring after 37 years at the end of this school year incredible all right may have a motion please I move acceptance of the following resignations for the purpose of retirement of Tammy Jackson Michelle Hayes Marybeth Scavone Laura Shonk Donna Murphy Deanna Zollers David Crampton after a combination of a hundred and fifty four years of service to wind up public schools and thank them for their many years of dedicated service to the children of Wyandotte and Wayne County and wish them well in their retirement years support any discussion congratulations yes very exciting for those individuals all right let's take a roll call member Kane yes member
090Kenny yes member low Cicero yes member Martinez yes member Weber yes member Bevin partial yes president circuit yes motion carries congratulations to those folks you will be missed but congratulations and best of luck in your retirement all right consent agenda because items on the consent agenda are routine and there is little need for discussion one motion can complete this part of the agenda if anyone is interested in copies of reports recommendations or information please contact the superintendent's office at seven five nine six zero zero two may have a motion please I move approval of bills and vouchers in the amount of six million six hundred twenty seven thousand two hundred seventy seven dollars and seventy one cents support all right a discussion roll call please member Kenny yes member low Cicero yes member Martinez yes
091member Weber yes member Bevin partial yes member Kane yes president circuit yes motion carries all right committee the whole discussion agenda the next meeting will be our work session on November 4th 2025 630 at the Board of Education announcements dr. Anderson just to one of the podcast I'm going to be putting that out my first one will be in the Friday note it'll be linked about it's on Spotify you still really have no idea what I'm doing so please forgive me on that yeah it does sound official but it's still just a guy behind the mic doesn't really swing in it so it'll get better as we go on the second thing is Sunday November 2nd is returning our clocks back I know we some of us I think you're pretty much every one of
092us doesn't care for that time but a reminder to our community that the mornings will be darker the mornings are darker now please use extra care traveling through our city we have a number of students who walk and ride bikes to school even as the weather gets colder and is their only way to school and they they they do that and so please be careful as we're out on the roads just a another reminder very good board members all right I will take a motion to adjourn make a motion to adjourn support thank you board