001e e e good evening and welcome to the Garfield height City School District regular board meeting this evening is Tuesday February 18th 2025 I call the meeting to order Mr OKO can I get roll call please Miss Cox yes Mrs Daniels Miss Thomas here miss Morrison here miss King here and could you let the record reflect that Miss Daniels has an excused absence I'll let the minutes reflect that thank you could I get a motion to adopt the agenda of this evening's meeting so move can I get a second second that was moved by Miss Cox and second by I'm sorry moved by Miss Morrison and second by Miss Cox is there any discussion hearing none can I get roll call please miss Morrison yes Miss Cox yes Miss Thomas yes Miss King yes at
002this time I'd like for us to take take a moment of Silent reflection followed by the Pledge of Allegiance led by Miss Thomas un States stand and jusice can I get a motion to approve the minutes from the January 13th organizational and special meetings and the January 27th regular board meeting as presented they move second that was moved by Miss Cox and second by Miss Morrison is there any discussion hearing none can I get roll call please Miss Cox yes Miss Morrison yes Miss Thomas yes Miss King yes next is our board president's report the month of February is Black History Month and throughout the month staff and students have done a fantastic job in honoring the treasures and the talents of African-Americans both past and present one aspect of our district life that truly
003shines in the gar height City Schools is theem is its Embrace of diversity equity and inclusion and our team led by Mr herd Kiera rice and Yolanda ham Hamilton and others work hard to make this a priority One such event that everyone should attend is the cultural immersion event sponsored in part by the MU jumbo dance Collective where Aaron Weaver does an outstanding job of training our students to learn how to perform with confidence and showcase their individual capabilities this year Year's Event falls on Thursday February 20th at 700 p.m. at the high school Center for Performing Arts and we encourage each of you to attend thank you for your continued support the communities must do all it can do do to become informed of the impact of the renewal levy on the May 2025
004ballot that will not increase taxes but will help stabilize the district's finances one way you can learn more is by attending the state of the schools presentation on Wednesday March 5th 2025 at 6: p.m. at the Center for Performing Arts to watch live demonstrations of our students in action Dr Reynolds and Treasurer OKO will explain how funding will be jeopardized for these Student Activities and educational opportunities without the community support please mark your calendars for Wednesday March 5th 2025 at 6:00 p.m. the strategic planning process for the garford height City Schools continues to unfold as well as members of the community have been diligent about sharing their input with our facilitators from the educational service center of Northeast Ohio but on the look be on the lookout as the board continues to work towards a
005revised Mission Vision Values and goals on behalf of the Board of Education I'd like to commend Dr Reynolds and his recent efforts to exemplify the science technology engineering arts and math or steam accomplishments taking place at our buildings from interesting science projects to our Performing Arts T arts and talents to the emerging presence of the agriculture science curriculum and the amazing NASA award received by our middle school students garl height students are poised for steam success and we applaud you for beginning to reorient the district down this valuable path and journey this concludes my report are there any questions on the board president's report hearing none we'll go on to committee reports are there any committee reports M president Miss Cox just wanted to uh share information from the academic Excellence committee uh we will
006be meeting in the next few weeks a zoom meeting to discuss second quarter data and the strategic planning committee the next meeting will be March 29th at ESC that concludes my report thank you Miss Cox are there any questions for Miss Cox hearing none are there any additional committee [Music] reports I have a student Athletics and activities report um girls basketball they finished their regular season with a 12 and 10 record and secured third place in the lake Eerie League the highest conference finished for our girls program in over a decade St sta Mo capped off the regular season with a dominant performance scoring over 30 points and a victory at Coventry boys basketball concluded the regular season with an impressive 20 and2 record claiming the Lake Erie league title for the third consecutive year
007seniors Ari Jones Devon Jackson recently earned full athletic scholarships to Hilbert College and wber force University respectively wrestling uh the wrestling team celebrated a successful senior night with victories over John Marshall and Maple Heights at the lake Eerie League Championship meet multiple R wrestlers earned top finishes Faith Boozer fourth place Chris Ephraim and Jaden Anderson third place Joseph Balia and Brandon Herby second place and Kevin Eubanks DeAndre Adams and Maurice Jones who all claim first place in the respective weight classes this ends my report are there any other committee reports Madam president miss Thomas I have a policy committee report thank you the policy committee met on February 7th to discuss the following agenda items our facility name and policy organizational meeting agenda items and release is time for religious instruction policy we will have
008a follow-up policy meeting to continue discussing these policies and get feedback from our attorney regarding these policies as well as policies regarding new state initiatives um following our next meeting we will have recommendations for the board thank you Miss Thomas are there any questions for Miss Thomas in regards to our polic policy report right hearing none are there any additional committee reports we'll move on to presentations I'll turn the floor over to Dr Reynolds thank you madam president tonight we will be hearing from uh the William Foster team they've been doing some outstanding work here in the building and led by Miss Jade Woodson and she'll be presenting an update for the board tonight good evening everybody hear okay my name is Jade Woodson right now I am serving as William Foster Elementary School's principal
009and uh this is our update for you so looking at our 2324 uh school report card um you will see that we did receive a 2.5 star rating and number Le literacy uh rating of one star when looking at the data and comparing it though we have to identify our gains there have been some so when we're looking at our early literacy Aid web data for kindergarten first grade you're going to see some shifts already just in kindergarten um in comparison to our fall and winter data in comparison this year you'll see that our students in had a 5% increase of being on track during the winter um this year in comparison to last year so our kiddos are growing first grade they are maintaining the trend so we are not seeing any major downward
010trends for early numeracy again this is our G web data you're going to see that we didn't have any fall data there for 2023 2024 school year uh but we did have some winter data there and once again you'll see in comparison to last year we're having increases um during our a web testing for the winter season we had a 12% increase of our students being on track um in comparison to last year this is with MTH ear uny first grade again we're maintaining the trend no major downward Trend however we know that there's work to do and so how are we going about addressing this we're having our teacher based team meetings we're having our on campus bottle classrooms where we're bringing teach teachers in bringing classrooms in so our coaches are able to
011show our structures the proper uh proper way to deliver the content that you're seeing in our um students classroom we're having our weekly instructional rounds our teachers are tily working on science reading training that has been issued by the um state of Ohio we also have something that we'd like to um offer to our teachers is a coaching paas so they have the opportunity to just tune up some areas be their new old to have some areas in their struction be more effective and then some other things too I want to point out just having those tough conversations not keeping the blinders closed we are dealing with children from all over from all different ages all different backgrounds and we have to have that knowledge of their backgrounds and know that hey everybody's coming with
012different information when they enter these doors and so therefore we have to be honest about our progress and reflective in how we're going about teaching them on a daily basis we also have an open door policy teachers here our will Foster know that they can see me they can see our coaches if you are in need of help that door is open all you got to do is ask now our attendance uh we have partnered with the Browns um as we've done in the past so we are implementing our stay in the game pledge we have our Awards going out for students that are coming to school um not missing 3 days or more than one day we have our monthly absence in V team meeting so we can make sure that we are monitoring
013those students that are not coming to school and finding out the reasons why and how to better support our families we're also giving them reasons to be in school so part of the things that we're doing is we're having spirit days and weeks so kids are excited and pumped to come to William Foster and dress up and show their here even in that picture you can see that day we had come as the individual that you like to be when you grow up so we have some nurses we have some doctors FBI agents firefighters all types in comparison to last year in regards to Chic aism last year we U ended up at 44.9% our goal is to get that down by 10% and you can already see currently we're already at 13.7% for half
014in the year so we're hoping to keep this low something that we're really really excited to share at this campus is we revamped PBIS so that is positive behavior intervention in support we're we are striving to go through the process year um we're not taking notes from this time and so because we've revamped it we have to look at the bases going back to it we updated our Behavior Matrix so it's more uh it's kidfriendly language the kids actually understand what they are doing and how it connects we revamped their behavior CH so now we're also bringing in that Universal schoolwide opportunity not only for the kids to earn what you're going to see coming up here which is PA points to go towards fabulous events but to also communicate with our families as well
015and we also updated our PBIS staff handbook so now we are all working from the same page and because we went back to those Basics we were able to now bring all these awesome things to our campus we have ppis week but we're setting the tone setting expectations up for the kids teaching them how and the why of what we do here at uh little Foster we have our Bulldog shop they have their Bulldog Brigade which is our quarterly meeting um where we all come together and celebrate our successes academic Behavior All of Us Top Dog of the month we have our monthly PBIS events because we we understand that working with kinds and first graders they need something a little bit more immediate than just uh those semester events we also introduce conscious discipline
016and that ties right to our PBIS system because our teachers are understanding that there are different ways to go about issuing discipline rather than giving a discipl removing the child the class how can we make any consequen that's issue more meaningful and getting the kids to learn from that go back in that class we learn we're still using our satel pulse in the morning so we have our secl lessons that our teachers are holding every single morning with the kids they have the morning zones checking and then we also have our tier one and two PBIS meetings as well as our Behavior Uh Community GS as well so these are just some images from our uh past quartin buld for gate had to do some fun stuff we introduced minute to minute and the kids
017love it and we in uh we integrated the staff into it um into it as well the kids had the opportunity to earn 20 bulog BS and the staff chance to with a $5 gift card just about Guess Who Going here's just some images from our cor event so far we've had a winter dance party with some balloons the kids Lov it our hot cocoa and cookies with their different um holiday themed videos and then just recently we had our ice cream band here so we had our bulog bird so stop by but it's not just about the kids it's about the staff too we don't have staff showing up and showing out we're not going to have kids that are learning being productive so there's lots of things that we're also doing to just
018boost the morale of our staff Miss Cado our literacy specialist is always doing a tribute a Tuesday we have our monthly Team Hot looks something that we're about to start introducing that we're excided to announce with the UR Rock staff acknowledgement just giving the staff that opportunity to just know that they are doing well and it's paying off we're doing something called check this out shortly here where we're going into classrooms now we are taking pieces of things that people are doing doing is sharing it with the rest because one thing is for sure teachers are doing great things we got to get it out there we're having our words of encouragement fortune cookies just to pick me up our celebrating life word of the month just to get teachers a break sometimes they got
019to learn how to balance work in life and getting them to celebrate the life that they have we appreciate those things we have our Sunshine committee and also again that open door policy they that that they have is shoulders there the cry on get to when they need it and also be productive here's just a list of as much as I could but just a lot of our Community Partnerships we have the Cleveland U sorry Koba public county library coming in monthly reading to our students kids book bank is always donating books as well as the Cleveland kids in needs with the shoes clth for kids we're partnered up with the mobile clinic and we had our mobile dentist stop by as well partnered with the Browns K's on a seasonly basis is always donating
020meals to our kids and then we have this buddy relationship here with First Federal lorwood where they're integrating um their junior bigy system into our ppis system so that way we are still connecting these World um these making our students worldwide Community Learners tying what they're doing to real like experiences I'm just showcasing some of that we've done we had a literacy night in October we had the net Show come out for their mindset mission to teach kids how to face and overcome challenges adversity in their daily lives we also have some book tastings where kids had the chance to experience some of the things that they were reading in their stories our new playground you heard about the kids love it and there some pictures of our spirit days but this is just the
021uh tip the we're not in there yet so we're halfway through the year we have our MOA dance celebration coming up this Thursday uh we have our William Foster takes over the United States if he can join us in April we still have our CPL read allows our kindergarten first grade ccer music concerts are coming up we have many many many field trips to the zoo and the canalway center and then we have our will Foster Unity project coming up at the end of this month to celebrate us being and there's much much in thank you Miss Woodson are there any questions for Miss Woodson I'd like to just say that you got you're doing a wonderful job here you and the staff um love to see the increase that we've seen in some of
022our academics and the decrease in terms of um absenteeism than any questions for Miss Woodson Madam president miss [Music] Thomas nice job here I do have a few questions um if you could take us back to the um chronic to the accent uh slide or the attended by brother that 13.7% does that mean we are currently down 13.7% from the 44 this means we only have 13.7% of our students hardly absent thank you just I had to clarify I totally understand that is amazing do I know you guys have a lot of different initiatives and different things that you guys have been doing to excite the students about coming to class or coming to school but I mean what else can you share about that cuz that is a drastic change um what I'd like
023to say on that is that um as a building we are coming together to BL the is as adults we of buying that we are not our best s so we Cann be the best for our KS so I believe that the adults are buying into it what we're doing we getting the momentum going on and feeling supported they're feeling good and so that's transing translating down to the kids as well that are W to leave here I love that thank you um and then can you talk to us a little bit about your building support staff um what does that look like here in the building oh man support staff are awesome right now um so as you may know we are down I'm a principal and a Dean but our counselor our intervention
024manager U we have Mr Kowalski and this tra are stepping in and everybody's carrying their weight and and it's and it's paying off and I believe that the teacher because they're seeing all of us work so hard for them and to be there to support them they're starting to now pick up their weight as well to be the best teacher that they can I thank you are there any other questions for Miss Woodson one more thing yes the United States event that you guys are having in April can we be sure to make sure we share that with all elementary buildings and with our community cuz I would like to count yes ma'am y we're going to share it out um that was our first mistake with the first one I'm like wait we can
025I started to see everybody else think like you share this with everybody get them skin and the parents love it so yeah you going stop by and show us for mov it might be in contest I don't know some of our parents ESC I'm just trying not to fall all right thank you Miss Woodson thank you guys all right we'll move on to our superintendent report thank you madam president first off great job Miss wlson uh we've been throwing a few curve balls this year uh in this building and she and her team has done an excellent job as well as the teachers and just making sure our kids are having exactly what they need so thank you so much for all your efforts but again thank you madam president the garford high city schools
026will be hosting an important state of the schools presentation on Wednesday March 5th 2005 it's 6:00 at the Center for Performing Arts at the high school now during this presentation each of the buildings in our school district will be showcasing a student group to demonstrate our powerful educational impact taking place in grades K through 12 and how funding for these opportunities could be jeopardized without passing our renewal Levy in this in May so please mark on your calendars for Wednesday March 5th at 6:00 p.m. to plan to attend this important event and also next month treasur oo and I will beginning uh begin our coffee talks that will be an informal conversations that we're going to be having with the community and uh also with us with District leaders as well now four are planned
027at the moment and each will be at 9:00 uh to 10:00 at Dunkin Donis in March and McDonald's in April the March dates are Wednesday March 12 and Wednesday March 26 at Doan d uh Dunkin Donuts and also it's going to be at 9:00 to 10:00 um and I look forward to seeing everyone there and this month we'll also Spotlight our PA professionals and our building Aid teams now on behalf of the entire staff of the garfi high city schools I want to extend a heartfelt thank you for their incredible work that they do every single day now their dedication their patience and their commitment to supporting our students and teachers do not go unnoticed uh you you play an essential role in creating a positive and inclusive environment for our students and for all
028of our schools and would not be the same without you your contributions have a lasting impact whether you work one-on-one with students assisting classrooms or extra support whenever it is needed your kindness your hard work and flexibility help shap the students and their success and we are truly grateful for that we appreciate all that you do and celebrate uh the difference you make in our district so thank you for your unwavering dedication and your care to bring that you bring every single day also congratulations to the wonderfully talented students at Garfield Heights Middle School uh gifted Organization for earning a National Achievement in the recent news as it has won NASA's techrise high altitude balloon challenge G Height Middle School was elected was selected as one of 60 School groups throughout the entire United States
029with proposals that was selected uh out of 720 proposals this means that our Middle School gifted students will be able to continue their experimental proposal and see that being brought to light with the guidance from NASA engineers and mentors that will help um build this project that's an awesome thing right there that NASA is actually working with our students and I just had to say that because I'm a super nerd and I would have been going crazy if I heard the word NASA uh coming to to help us with a project so these uh they are constructing an experiment where it's going to help to measure the intensity of Storms and and it's going to be fitted on a a weather balloon and it's entitled storm Seeker the pressure temperature and humidity project and it
030will be updated on our future Engineers website aligned with NASA and it Works towards uh uh completion and our students are very very excited so congratulations to the Garfield Heights U Middle School gifted students for their outstanding accomplishment finally uh to see I hope to see everyone at the high school on this Thursday at the majuba dance collectives concert and celebration for Black History Month on Thursday February 20th from 7:00 to 8:30 p.m. where we will celebrate uh the birth place of jazz Congo square and watch our students Perform This Is It free event and we hope to see everyone there and that concludes uh the report thank you Dr Reynolds thank you are there any questions for Dr Reynolds and his report Madame President Miss Cox Dr Reynolds can you share that date the
031last one on the 20th and the place and time please yes yes I sure can again it's the majuba dance Collective it is something it is a huge production that has been outstanding the the years that I've been there and and probably years have passed as well but it is an outstanding event it's on February 20th at 7:00 begins at 7:00 and ends at 8:30 and it's going to be uh at the high school at the um uh uh where is it it is at the Performing Art Center um again all a lot of our students we have several students almost nearly 200 students will be participating staff members will be participating as well they are working in the buildings right now uh to make sure that it is as exciting and as um uh
032professional as has always been it's it's an outstanding event we hope to see everyone there thank you any other questions for Dr [Music] Reynolds all right if not we'll move on to remarks from the public regarding agenda items and we don't have any remarks so we will move on to reports and recommendations of the treasurer could I get a motion to approve move and wave the reading of 8.1 can I do the do I have to do the resolutions by themselves yes ma'am okay so can I get a motion to uh move and may move and wave the reading of 8.1 is there a second second that was moved by m Morrison and second by Miss Thomas are there any [Music] questions anything you want to highlight Mr oo yeah um thank you uh Madame
033President um so this is the July through January the fiscal year we're about uh halfway through with this report um a few key things to note um in the report this month the um real property tax collections are lower this year compared to last year again January we only got 80% of our full collection advance from the county they're really holding back property taxes this year for some reason they're giving us the the reasoning that since they did the big update for the county they're behind schedule on sending out collection notices and processing all that money coming through so we just got our second advance in in February a little bit later than we hoped for again that one was even lower percentage wise at 60% so it'll make up for what um for the
034month-to-month variation uh from fiscal 25 to 24 at this time you'll see that when it all comes to our final settlement in March but again it's frustrating for us because the E and flow you know we sometimes look at postponing bill payments um because we have to make payroll and our payrolls are about 1.1 million every two weeks and when you run out of cash like that when the advances are low it's tough to really operate sometimes um when we get close in those six-month periods we're paying our bonds off um the other Revenue item to note again just reiterating the data issue that we're currently dealing with as a school district um our our state payments are extremely low compared to what they should be and we are confident that we will continue to
035work to get that cleaned up because we have to like we don't have a choice to fix that um again it's outlined that total revenues are are very much lower than they should be um in the report and happy to take any questions about that if needed but the diagnostic of that will not change until the enrollment numbers change um which our administrative team is working on um expenditures um unfortunately we are getting hammered by um special education costs nothing we can control um we have open enrolled students coming in from other districts with already written IEPs Cleveland is the biggest offender honestly of this they provide services like uh curb to curb transportation out of District education that costs sometimes upwards of $1 $120,000 a pupil and we're already holistically underfunded in special education
036as it is um we utilize a lot of ID of grants for that but unfortunately we're holistically underfunded in that as well so uh for example you'll see on the grant page we've already expended close to 60% of our ID of funds um which halfway through the year it's it's very high we run out of that very quickly with incumbrances um and then our legal fees are up um as we move into negotiations this year we will see that uptick for the year um that's really all I have for the report and we're balance to the penny and grants are being expended as we go I do want to make a note that the Federal Department of Education under the Trump Administration there's been a lot of talk about loss of federal funds um entitlement
037grants like Title One title 2 title 4 and idea B are all they're called block grants so they're used on data from the year before so we're in fiscal 25 it's based on data an allocation from the Omnibus uh reconciliation act that Congress passed last year so our funding is locked in and secured for this year now if they do dismantle the Department of Education we would have to look at the effect of that on our school district as we get about 25% of our revenue from federal funds but I can tell you um I can confirm with you that there will be no loss of federal funds via executive order action from this Administration this year if Congress asks to dismantle the Department of Education then we will have to look seriously at how
038that affects specifically our Title One programming which we do a fantastic job with here um we are renowned throughout the state with our Title One programming and our idea B which um we we have the IEP and uh 504 plan you know structure through so Mr Forte and Miss beaser have been working with me specifically on this as I oversee some of those funds but I just want to make that clear to the board to the community whoever watches that that is not something that we are dealing with this year it will be something we look at moving into the summertime when their budget flips over in October all right thank you Mr oo of course are there any questions for Mr oo all right hearing none that was moved by Miss Morrison and second
039by Miss Thomas could I get roll call Miss Morrison yes Miss Thomas yes Miss Cox Miss King yes could I get a motion to can I do the two together or they have to be separate I would prefer they do one one by one okay could I get a motion to um approve resolution 25 20 25-11 property tax valuation complaint resolution could I get a motion to [Music] approve is there a second that was moved by Miss Morrison and second by Miss Cox are there any questions hearing none could I get roll call Miss Morrison yes Miss Cox yes Miss Thomas yes Miss King yes could I get a motion to um approve property tax valuation complaint resolution [Music] so move second that was moved by Miss Cox and second by Miss Morrison is there
040any discussion quickly Mr oo Madam president yes so both these um resolutions that you're voting on tonight are commercially owned Residential Properties within Garfield Heights we have board policy that we do not file complaints against Residential owners of property in Garfield Heights but this is an outside company a foreign investor possibly that bought up property and are now went through the valuation process and are um filing a complaint to be to have their um assessed valuations lowered by over 50% so it's important that we contest that as a school board to make sure we don't lose any uh property tax through those again we do not contest residentially owned properties and Garfield Heights but if they're foreign invested companies that come in and buy these homes we will since that's considered an LLC and it's
041not a traditional uh class one property thank you Mr oo of course any questions all right that was moved by Miss Cox and second by Miss Morrison can I get roll call please Miss Cox yes Miss Morrison yes Miss Thomas yes Miss King yes could I get a motion to move and wave the reading of 9.1 through 14.1 that move is there a second second that was moved by Miss Thomas and second by Miss Morrison is there any [Music] discussion hearing none again that was moved by Miss Thomas and second by Miss Morrison could I get roll call Miss Thomas yes Miss Morrison yes Miss Cox yes Miss King yes could I get a motion to move and W the reading of 15.1 through 17.3 Madam president yes we don't have any official business under
04215 under 15.1 yeah okay did I get a mo a motion to move and wave the reading of 16.1 through 17.3 is there a second second that was moved by Miss Morrison and second by Miss Thomas is there any discussion with no discussion could I get roll call please Miss Morrison yes Miss Thomas yes Miss Cox yes Miss King yes remarks from the public regarding miscellaneous School items okay no remarks at this time we will enter into executive session at 6:43 there will 643 to consider Personnel matters in regards to a public employees evaluation and compensation and there will be no action after we come out of executive session can I get a motion in this can I get a motion to go into executive session at 6:43 second that was moved by Miss Thomas
043or I'm Sorry Miss Morrison and second by Miss Thomas could I get roll call please miss Morrison yes Miss Thomas yes Miss Cox yes Miss King yes we're now entering into executive session