001yes and welcome to the garfield heights city school district regular board meeting tonight is monday june 13 2022. i call tonight's meeting to order mr seleuca can we have ron paul please yes mr judy here ms morrison here ms thomas here ms king uh let the record reflect jesus keys from tonight's meeting thank you mrs daniels president the next order on our agenda this evening is can i have a motion to enter into a jungle second mr saluta that was moved by mr jubie and second by miss miss thomas and that was a motion to enter into executive session for the purposes of discussions of negotiation and compensation of personnel is there any discussion relative to the motion on the table this evening would there be a no discussion mr saluka can i have roll
002call please yes mr chubby yes ms thomas yes mrs carson yes mrs daniels yes let the record reflect that we're entering we're entering into executive session at 604 pm for the purposes of discussing negotiations and compensation of personnel right now that we left out of executive session as of 6 32 pm please this waiting for flags hmm thank you at this time we are going to have a moment of silence and reflection before we pledge allegiance to the flag and this evening we're going to have board member morrison um lead us in the pledge of allegiance after our moment of silence [Music] and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice that was moved by mr jubie and second by mrs thomas is there any discussion if
003there's no discussion mr slicker can we have wrong call please yes mr jimmy yes miss thomas this miss morrison yes this is daniels yes at this time can i have a motion to adopt the minutes and is there a second second and is there any discussion mr seleuca the motion to adopt the minutes from may 6 9 18 19 24 and 27 also special board meeting and and may 16 2022 regular board meeting as presented was moved by mr jubie and it was second by ms morrison can i help please mr dube yes ms morrison yes ms thomas mr daniels yes at this time i will give my board president's report on behalf of the board of education i would like to formally congratulate the seniors of the class of 2022. during a wonderful ceremony
004that took place on thursday may 27th at the cleveland public auditorium the success and accomplishments of our graduating class was on full display as i interacted with our graduates that evening i was reminded of how much promise garfield heights students have and the future contributions they will undoubtedly make in the next generation congratulations to the class of 2022 the remainder of the garfield heights city schools finished school on tuesday june 7th and i want to thank every everyone in our bulldog school family for doing the things necessary to make the 2021 2022 school year safe and successful i particularly want to express our gratitude to the educational staff and the teachers of the garfield heights city schools for extra effort they made during school year to mentor and educate our students they invested countless hours
005preparing for their work in the classroom and many times their commitment to our children extended to helping shape our students away from the classroom as well many are here tonight and we welcome our teachers and we mightily thank them for their service good job to our teachers once again on a safe and successful school year thank you guys at a special board of education meeting held on february i mean excuse me held on friday may 28th the board unanimously approved the hiring of dr richard reynolds as the next superintendent of the garfield heights city schools we are excited to have dr reynolds in the district and we will spend more time in the future getting to know him then he officially begins august 1st but he has already began investing time getting to know the
006operations of the district congratulations dr reynolds finally on behalf of the board of education we would like to thank mr chris hanke our outgoing superintendent for his service to the garfield high city schools mr hankey has spent approximately 20 years in the garfield heights city schools servicing as a class serving as a classroom teacher assistant principal principal director of special education assistant superintendent and for the last three years the superintendent and the time that we have known one another mr henke has always endeavored to put the students first he has played significant roles in helping with strategic planning efforts and in promoting diversity equity and inclusion in our district thank you mr hankey for your efforts and for your time in garfield heights we wish you well in your future endeavors and that concludes my
007report this evening at this time we will have our committee reports is there any committee reports this evening report miss thomas um good evening everyone today i just have a legislative committee report during today's legislative meeting we discussed the possibilities of our district possibly having a bond issue on the november or may ballot we heard from dave reilly jim crooks and richard manolo about various implications on divine issues this bond will cover a new middle school academic building and an academic sports complex for the community this bond issue would not increase the current millage as there are violent issues and levels that are falling off the professional team made recommendations that show more success or may balance issue the legislative direction will make a recommendation to the board very soon as july 11th will be
008the first deadline for a november ballot issue that concludes my report thank you miss thomas is there any questions relative to mr thomas committee report if there's no questions relative to her report are there any more reports this evening madam president i have a wellness update miss morris um i just want to let parents know that if your child is considered considering playing a high school or middle school sport during the 2022-23 school year that they will need an active sports physical sports physicals are good for one calendar year from the date and right now on friday june 17th from two to six the university hospital ahuja medical center is giving away free sports physicals so there is a link it's on facebook and it's um but if you a parent would need that they
009could contact me or the athletic department for that so they could get their child signed up for that thank you thank you miss morrison is there any other community course this evening matt miss thomas um there's more than just an ad i believe there's an eventbrite link as well so they may be able to search it won't even thank you mr hunky do you know if that link to the um free physicals is available on our website also and if not can we make sure that that our families have access to it in the event that they do not connect to facebook or social media certainly you can um thank you mr hankey we just want to make sure we broaden our access but i also do believe the district has emailed that out to
010the families too so i actually received the email about that so are there any other committee reports this evening if there's no more committee reports at this time we are going to move to the portion of our agenda which is the presentations mr heineke thank you president daniels tonight um to kind of uh i guess wrap up the year uh one of our most important offices the people services office dr gordon dupree uh is is the head of of that office and uh i've invited him here to present uh he's here okay i'm trying to pull in front of me come on up um he know has power issue has printed off some things for the board of education pretty many board members of the table audience uh i'm going to summarize these slides that
011you see in front of you obviously because we don't have any uh when i walked in somebody said well if you want to use that arm it's cool you'll have pop but i wanted to go over this briefly to let you know in the pupil services department what the purpose of the department is the kind of people who work in that practice we have for example uh health services guidance counseling services we have a social worker for the school district there's one social worker we have e-l-l english language learner teachers who have uh the responsibility for making certain that after five years all of our kids are able to speak english well enough to pass our exams one of the slides i gave you which i think you'll find interesting look on the first page
012at the bottom right i put the top 10 [Music] languages in the world as they are spoken by x number of people number one is mandarin chinese 1.12 billion and as you go down the list you'll see english as third and at the bottom is punjabi now we've had all of those native language children in our district at one time or another and whether you speak english or not the law says even if you only speak english you have to teach english to kids who speak japanese russian ukrainian uh chinese whatever so that's what our uh staff does in the elo department safety and security is another uh part of the pupil services department and you probably have heard over the years that every year we have evacuations on all of our abilities for the
013last two years our evacuations have been all on foot we didn't use any buses because we said in the event of an emergency if buses are not available we want kids to just start walking and in addition this year we did simultaneous building evacuations so maple leaf and uh middle school would leave their buildings at the same time in case there was a problem on that footprint and it would just walk off to the areas of safety that we designated in the past and i think it went very well we have see before the pandemic this is interesting what we used to do before the pandemic was elmored and william foster would walk to trinity where all the kids would meet in the gym we would take attendance and they would go back to their
014buildings and that was on foot and it worked very well trinity was a great of us in terms of letting our kids come in their buildings and that's amazing we had uh this year again we had drug dogs right here at the high school and uh we had two dogs from garfield heights and three dogs from shaker heights and those dogs are very interesting the uh officers told us that when they train them many times in austria or europe they don't train them in english so if you ever hear the commands that they give they're in german or austria and you'll hear them uh with their base voices when they bark and we noticed even when they came to an air-conditioned building they huff a lot because they're hot so they they lay on the
015floor to cool off so we always found that to be helpful even at the middle school in the past we are having drug dogs in terms of our health services i'll tell you one part of one of your slides uh two of our buildings well all of our buildings have healthy all two of our buildings have medical assistance we have two registered nurses for the whole district one secondary one elementary two medical assistants because they can give insulin shots any invasive procedure in our school district can not be done by someone who's not trained so the medical assistants work with kids for insulin shots uh they get shots in the stomach sometimes for medication that kind of thing now here's something that was fun for for our parents in this room every year we have
016pre-kindergarten registration and we have uh the health department comes the police department uh teachers come and we have stations set up against that wall over there where parents sign up to make an appointment to register their kids for school and this is about about an hour and a half uh exercise in the past we've had parents and kids take a bus right in front of the door here because for some of the kids it's the first time being on a bus so that registration night is always a huge success for our families and kids and you see the tricks and i'm skipping back to pictures um last let's see august i called gina wilson and i said we need to have some help for our hispanic families because i think they're under recognized and she
017agreed with me so what we did this school year is we had uh many people from the hispanic community agencies come and meet with us and we met uh two times at william foster first night a few people came up sean came chris came that night the second night was even better we had more people come we had agencies from you must have had i'll say a dozen agencies and they all lined up in the room they had people doing blood pressure checks because we're looking at health for hispanic families many of whom told us we didn't know this existed because in our country where we came from it was like right down the street and here nobody told us so we have a meeting thursday gina we have another meeting this thursday to plan
018for another hispanic family night in the fall oh now we had uh i'm talking about agencies now this is one of the things that i wanted really to focus on we had two meetings on zoom this past school year and we invited all of our agency partners to join us they all couldn't but we invited them anyway uh i told chris when i came here in 2011 we had like 11 agencies in the district we now have 53. one of my conversations with gina was we need to bring in more agencies and we also need to bring in agencies who are comfortable working with people of color so not only did we do that but we brought in agencies that are now in every building in our school district and we've had times when it'll
019be uh gino my secretary maria and me we vet everybody who comes into our district whether the agency's been here forever or not so one time we could take a funny start one time we were having a meeting with an agency called hackerheart that's judy johnson and uh dwayne royce and we always meet with them over and over in their building so dwyane and julie came in they must have 15 people with them all males and i said that's what we need in our district so that people won't feel that there's a stigma for getting mental health service health services and it's been phenomenal in the 93 hearings we've had this year where parents had to be present we have agencies in every single meeting only one you know one time only one parent denied
020services and it's been phenomenal and what we started doing this year was since there are so many agencies here in garfield places i wanted them to be funneled through one person so we know how many people are in william foster were in high school or maybe so i ask that gina be the focal point for sending all referrals to her and then gina will then say okay i think uh counter heart will take this one uh we can overcome take that one and i think gina's worked pretty well by doing it that way when we look at the help that agencies provide uh to our families covered uh colder did more harm than we think to our kids when it came back to school so many of our kids were just not ready to come
021back to school they forgot how to behave of course some of them skipped a grade because we were out talking so long so they had to deal with divorce trauma death moving uh social emotional all kinds of things that families suffer from when you have any kind of upheaval and we had enough agencies to help these families even though the sum of times to address some of these issues i listed the all 53 agencies on pages 7 and eight and the last thing i want to mention before i sit down yes the last thing i want to interview sit down i'm so glad to announce to you and the community that starting next tuesday right here back here down the hall we're having the boys and girls club here every day from eight to four
022starting next tuesday running through august 12th every day and what i want to do with them wants to do with them is in the fall i want to do an after-school program for our kids to go to so that they don't have to use the library for a rec center and we will be working on that board members i will stop there and i will entertain any questions that you might have or comments with the um first um thank you dr dupree um for this um report um regarding the work that people services do for our district that expands just beyond getting students registered into our district so thank you for sharing all these quality things that you guys provide to ensure that our students are ready to learn each and every day um one
023of my questions um is you guys did a presentation early in the year and you discussed how you were making these plans to roll out additional services to our students and things of that work have we been able to see an impact on the reduction of referrals and behaviors as it relates to our students now that we're beginning to wrap them tight or we'll be able to see that in the future because this is kind of a new this is kind of new but we have seen some success tina i know you are sitting down would you say we've been successful with some of these behaviors with our agencies working with our kids yeah i think that um the additional services that we have been putting in the school in the schools and being sure
024that we provide them with wrap-around services so not only providing students with support and in-school counseling but impact in regards to at least setting that foundation and building relationships with our students and family so they're able to trust them to really touch them not only inside of school but at home as well so i think um from the families that i've started to work with personally i think we can tap in as well to the building principles to see what they've seen in their building as well to see if we have some type of reduction in referrals and so and for the students receiving counseling or any type of mental health services in regards to them in particular if we see any type of reduction i think we would have to have ability to get
025more data information from building um for the students receiving services but i would think as a wrap-around service approach for the students and families in the community who definitely have seen the change for those that are actually reaching out and interested in receiving services as well thank you and i i would like to commend the work that you guys do um within the community because there has been a number of crises that people in my community have dealt with and even when it's not during the school year your team really reaches down and come and meet the families where they're at and make sure that the whole family is taken care of and just as a member of the farfield heights community i appreciate the school coming out of the building and doing some of
026that work to support our families that's within the community so that's very appreciative to just even have the school as that resource outside of school hours that you care about our students even when they're not in the building so i do as a member of the city and community appreciate that that is available to the members of our city so thank you guys for that is there any other questions for dr dupree regarding his presentation if there's no other questions again thank you dr dupree and gina um for your update regarding the people services department and look forward to it again next year at this time the next item on our agenda is our superintendent's report mr heinke uh thank you president daniels members of the board uh the 2021 22 school year officially concluded
027on tuesday june 7th the last day of school i would like to thank the staff students and families for making this year despite the turbulence with which it began due to cove and successful and safe during the time we were in school i would also like to congratulate the class of 2022 who graduated from the garfield heights city schools on thursday may 27th there is perhaps no greater event during the school year than our annual commencement ceremony and i would like to thank mrs hager and her staff for being so dedicated to making this event special for our graduates through summertime the months of june july and august are live in the garfield city schools with the boys and girls club of northeast ohio beginning their programming on tuesday june 21st thank you to their
028organization for their collaboration and compassion for the children of our community and special thanks to dr dupree for keeping this uh in the forefront as we we brought them back into the uh district uh this is my final report as superintendent of the garfield heights city schools i welcome dr richard richard reynolds for this job sit right over there and already he and i have engaged on a number of occasions to get him prepared enough to speak i want to thank everyone in the bulldog family for their support over the years in the year 2000 i began my public education career as a student teacher at camp mckinley high school and shortly thereafter moved to garfield heights uh high school as a history teacher and then moved up the ranks as the saying goes all
029the way to the superintendency of the district that has been my home for the last 20 years many of you on this dearly i look back on the many accomplishments that have been made during the time that i have been in the district with great pride thank you to the parents thank you to the students thank you to the staff i will miss my time in the garfield high city schools and cherish for many memories that have been made over the years uh thank you very much president daniels and members of the board that concludes my report thank you mr hickey is there any questions or comments relative to mr heinke's report this evening thank you mr ankle for greatly appreciate it thank you mr jimmy if there's no other comments our next item on
030our agenda this evening is remarks from the public regarding the agenda items all meetings of the board and board appointed committees are open to the public in order for the board to fulfill this obligation to complete the planned agenda in an effective and efficient fashion a maximum of 30 minutes of public participation may be permitted at each meeting each person addressing the board should give his or her name and address if several people wish to speak each person is allotted three minutes until the total time of 30 minutes is used during that period no person may speak twice until all who desire to speak have had the opportunity to do so persons desiring more time should follow the procedure of the board to be placed on the regular agenda the period of public participation may
031be extended by a vote of the majority of the board present and voting agendas are available to all those who attend board meetings the section on the agenda for the board participation shall be indicated noted at the bottom of each agenda shall be a short paragraph outlining the board's policy on public participation at board meetings this evening we do not have anybody signed up for public participation as it relates to agenda items so at this time i'm asking the board for a motion to approve foreign uh items 11 to 11.4 thank you is there a second on the motion to move moving items 11.1 through 11.4 is there any discussion mr saluko do you have anything you like to highlight relative to the items 11.4 to 11.4 um just before 11.2 through 11.4 these are
032budgetary compliance items that we need to the board needs to pass to being compliance at fiscal year-end bicycles thank you mr saluko any other discussion regarding the items on the floor if there's no other discussion mr seleuca that was moved by mr jubie and second by miss thomas can we have roll call please yes mr dube yes miss thomas yes ms morrison yes mrs daniels yes at this time can i have a motion to approve board resolution agenda item 12.1 as presented second is there any discussion if there's no discussion mr saluka that was moved by mr judy and second by miss morrison can i borrow call please yes morrison yes miss thomas yes mrs daniels yes can i have a motion to approve personality president move away writers 13-19 is there a second on
033the motion to move and wave items 13-19 is there any discussion if there's no discussion mr saluka that was moved and waived by mr jubie and second by miss thomas can we have roll call please mr jubie yes miss thomas yes ms morrison yes mrs daniels yes um discussion there are no recommendations of the superintendent to the board for policy so should that be until 18. yes you're absolutely correct most times we could amend that city 18 mr jeremy okay so we're amending it we're amending the motion to move away items 13 through 18. yes [Music] thank you you have a motion to approve contract agenda items 19.1 through 19.6 as presented it would be 20.1 so that's that's my dad on the uh the summary it should be 20.1 through 20.6 president daniels my
034bad summary okay can i have a motion second any discussion mr saluka the motion to approve contract agenda agenda items 20.1 through 20.6 as presented he's moved by mr julie and secondly yes ms morrison yes miss thomas yes mrs dennis yes at this time we have remarks from the public regarding miscellaneous school items in our policy as it relates to public participation at board meetings all meetings of the board and board appointed committees are open to the public in order for the board to fulfill this obligation to complete the planned agenda an effective and efficient fashion a maximum of 30 minutes of public participation may be permitted at each meeting each person addressing the board should give his or her name and address if several people wish to speak each person is allotted three minutes
035until the total time of 30 minutes is used during that period no person may speak twice until all who desire to speak have had the opportunity to do so persons desiring more time should follow the procedure of the board to be placed on the regular agenda the period of public participation may be extended by a vote of the majority of the board present and voting agendas are available and all those are available to all those who attend board meetings the section of the agenda for public participation shall be indicated noted at the bottom of each agenda shall be a short paragraph outlining the board's policy on public participation at board meetings we do have members that people who have um signed up to participate and our first person is julie dempsey and allow the record
036to show mrs here and if you can just state your address to confirm it um all right my name is julie dempsey i'm a teacher at the middle school and the chair of the garfield heights teachers association organizing committee i've been teaching for a total of 12 years and three years in the district i would like to take a couple minutes of your time to discuss what the teachers association is striving to accomplish for our students and to improve our schools i feel strongly that these three areas of focus will have a huge impact on student achievement school climate and overall progress in the district my first major point of focus is safety it's a no-brainer that schools should be a safe place for everyone who enters them unfortunately this year there have been numerous
037safety issues that i've witnessed and heard about within the district students have come up to me upset because they don't feel safe and concerned because they are very aware of the lack of consistency when it comes to student consequences this isn't a normal thing that happens in all school districts i've been in several other districts with successful policies that allow students staff and administration to use consistent and predictable steps when results which result in preventing a lot of the issues i've seen here building policy or lack of policy is a major contributor to the frustration that students and staff are experiencing when we face these difficult situations the second major point is success for our students if anyone wants to see students succeed and grow in school it is first their parents but the second
038most concerned person is often the teachers who have them in class this means that teachers need professional development that is well planned forward thinking and meaningful to their content areas built right into our school calendar this year we only had five professional development days with those within those full work days very little structured pd was actually planned we often didn't even receive a schedule of what we were doing until the day of or day before while those days of pd often felt like a waste of time i was then required by administration to complete 40 hours an entire work week of additional professional development on my own time at a pay rate much lower than my own this took time away from my family and small child and made it even more frustrating that our
039actual school pdp was so poorly planned the last major point we are trying to achieve is more stability for our students students deserve to have teachers who want to stick around from year to year because in school teachers are the ones who have the biggest impact on students each and every day having a stable teaching staff increases academic growth builds a strong culture and climate and allows students to have a larger support system within the school building however when teachers feel undervalued unappreciated and unheard they often leave seeking something better the teachers association estimates that we already have up to 25 teachers resigning this year this is a 20 increase from our already high average of 20 teachers leaving every year over the past seven years excluding coped and sadly there is still a month
040left in the teacher hiring season this is clear data that our staff turnover rates are a major issue and i ask administrators and the board to begin listening to their teachers to learn why this is happening the teachers association has collected data from many of our recently resigned teachers and we realized that we were hearing the same sentiments over and over we thought it would be important for you as the leaders of this district to hear what we have been hearing that's why we've invited several amazing and well-respected teachers who have decided to leave our district to tell their stories they have nothing to gain by speaking here however they chose to be here tonight because they care about the district and want to see it turn into a place that is thriving thank you
041[Applause] hey salero if you can just confirm your address course uh two three nine one nine edgier thank you thank you and it's good to see you man it's good to see you guys too thank you for allowing me to come and speak today so um for those of you who do not know me my name is dave chalero i am a very proud graduate of garfield heights high school and also a former employee of garvey like city schools during my six years working with the district i served in several various roles started out as just the detention guy and moved my way on to a classroom aid and eventually a language arts teacher teaching eighth grade at the middle school i've coached several sports from varsity football track and cross country and also coach
042middle school girls basketball so i've had the benefit of seeing our students grow from sixth grade all the way to seeing them graduate um working with them as athletes i am deeply appreciative of the years i did spend at garfield and the unique opportunity i had to watch students grow we are a district with many wonderful families teachers administrators and opportunities and for that i am grateful to have the time i spent here we're also a district with many challenges which is why i'm here speaking today i love garfield heights i love the people here i love the people i worked with and i began my career at garfield with the intention of staying there my entire career but despite the many fond memories i have been working with the district by the end of
043my sixth year i was already burned out and in what felt like a desperate need of a change i found there were three distinct reasons for my departure from dark and light city schools firstly was a lack of consistency consistency in what we were expected to teach consistency in what school discipline looked like consistency in what was expected of teachers consistency in our expectations for students over my six years it felt like every couple weeks there were either new programs expectations or a lack thereof this inconsistency was anxiety inducing to say the least i consider myself an extremely hard worker i pride myself on that but my hard work often felt like a waste because what i was working on would be changed within a couple weeks it was hard to gain a rhythm it
044was hard to feel like what i was doing had a purpose secondly was a lack of behavioral and educational expectations i am a strong firm believer that our students are so much smarter than we will ever give them credit for and can behave as well or better than we command as a standard every year i taught in the district it felt like the standard continually became lower the building i was in felt like absolute chaos most days of the year and it was visible in the conversations i had with other teachers students and parents in the district finally the pay was simply lower than many of the surrounding districts i moved on to work in a nearby district where my earning potential at the end of my career was nearly twenty thousand dollars higher per
045year year over year at the end of my career that would be life-changing money i don't say these things to condemn the district like i said i really do love it here and i love the people here i know that many of you truly do care however i also know that the only way any school district is going to thrive is if all the good teachers stay the only way to ensure that is if we make it a place where people want to stay we certainly face obstacles in garfield but we're not alone in the obstacles that we face there are neighboring districts with extremely similar economic demographic and geographical circumstances that find a way to incentivize teachers staying i hope that this is simply a helpful look into a perspective of someone who left
046i thank you guys i appreciate you and i really did appreciate my time in the district so thank you for allowing me to speak the next person on our agenda for common is bad hastings if she can approach and share her address with us for the record hi my name is beverly hay sings i live at 8908 cranberry ridge in broadview heights i'm a former teacher at garfield heights i was born and raised in garfield heights and i lived right across the street from william foster the year it was built so you know i'm old first of all i would like to take a moment and um offer prayers to the bateman family their um house is the one that was uh exploded this weekend and uh we had all their girls in the district
047and um that was really upsetting to me um i wanted to talk about things that went on in this district and as you can tell my family graduated from garfield i had two sons that graduated from garfield i have a two sons that have businesses in the city and garfield blue and gold runs through my veins and runs through my children's name and garfield means a lot to me even though i moved 10 years ago i'm really concerned about the district and the state of the teachers i was honored um when i was uh asked to speak here tonight because i know what great teachers garfield has and had and they are running out the door faster than i think everybody realizes here and it's because nobody respects these people and they don't respect the
048job that they're doing and i i don't understand that i mean when i heard that 16 teachers today are leaving the middle school when i started here i didn't become a teacher until i was 40 years old and you had couldn't buy a job to get into the middle school now you're going to be begging teachers to come into the middle school because nobody wants to work there i mean it's it's sad that you can't keep teachers here i mean this this used to be a great district and what's happened here you have no consistency i mean i i'm begging you as board members to go into the building on your own without a principle without somebody from the board office and walk through and look what's going on in those classrooms you have kids
049that are running that building not administrators running the building they don't back those teachers you have to have consistency when i started here administrators backed the teachers there was a consequence for a certain behavior he just said everything i have written down everything and it's i worked with him he was down the hall and he knows exactly what was going on in the building and you know you have to feel sorry for a new teacher when you say okay if you call a teacher a name this is the consequence well it might be a consequence for that kid but it's not going to be a consequence for another kid there has to be the same rules for every kid and yes there are different circumstances for different children but you still have to back your
050teachers when i started here the first four five years we stood together as a unit we didn't stand that way when i left i put 20 years in this district i had my own son suspended because at my house my kids had consequences i raised two boys on my own and if they did something they had a consequence and they had a consequence at school just like when we went to school that didn't happen in the end i i don't understand what the problem is if these teachers are not compensated why is the board getting a three percent raise but the teachers don't get a raise they work harder than the people over the morgue they work just as much as they were so it's time that you show them that they matter i used
051to be in there every day at 6 30. you can ask mr hankey he knew i was here at 6 30. i was the first one there every day and the last one to leave i spent hundreds of dollars of my own money to make games there's parents here that can tell you that okay i've been to more weddings more baby showers and more funerals of kids in this district that i care to admit and there's teachers here that were there with me and i'm sorry to see what's happening in this district and i came here tonight because i care what's happening here ashley we were there together and we talked and i was like we got to do something i texted you when i was there telling you help us help us we got
052to stop what's going on and that's why i'm here today because you see they're going to be going out the door we got to stop them you know it's no skin on my nose okay but it is off to yours and if your children are in this district we have to stop it before they're out the door i don't have any kids in the district but i do have blue and gold in my veins joe duby was two years ahead of me in school it means something to him too i know it's garfield we're all bulldogs till our last breath that's just how you are when we grew up here it's only for safe step to the podium and share your address don majors i'm dawn majors my address is 43 north parkway in east
053lake ohio thank you and welcome tonight thank you i'm not speaking for myself i was asked to read a statement from another ghga member um the following statement was written by roquisha rogers who served as a first-year school psychologist at william foster elementary school as a first year school psychologist in the district i would like to briefly share with the board why after serving one academic year in the district i have made the decision to seek employment elsewhere ultimately my decision primarily stemmed from lack of support in the district when i interviewed for my position i was told that i would be supported that garfield heights is like a family we're very resilient as a district and we really want what's best for children unfortunately i have come to discover that this is not always
054the case a well-respected school psychologist within the community dr charles barrett wrote an amazing book titled it's always about the children sadly with the current state of garfa pike city schools it's not about the children some of the decisions being made within the district do not prioritize our students as well as the educators who work with them we can make it about the children when we prioritize and value those who work closely with our students so that they can ensure our kids are receiving an adequate educational experience as educators we need to feel supported and our voices and concerns should not only be heard and considered but valued and transferred into actionable terms my hope for garfield is that moving forward you all would consider how you support your staff whether they are first-year employees
055or have been with the district for over 20 years thank you for your time thank you and if you can just approach and confirm your address please uh my address is 2315 thank you for coming this evening i also will be speaking on behalf of another ght member i will be reading a statement from joe petit um joe petit stated i worked at garfield heights from 2012 to 2020 and left mid-year at the beginning of january 2020. here are some reasons i left for starters the behavior of the administration was antagonistic with teachers almost as a default teachers were constantly asked to give themselves um but never given direction or support teachers were targeted for petty tyrannical decisions if the administration didn't feel supported by them enough or if the teacher complained about anything one
056teacher never taught the same grade level for longer than two years simply because she made her opinion known another teacher who taught eighth grade for eighth grade math for 15 years was suddenly switched to 7th grade after taking maternity leave they never gave teachers any time in their position to truly succeed by constantly moving them from class to class and topic to topic al saluka the treasure would mock teachers who complained about the heat in the building saying that he didn't turn the ac on in his office despite not having a body of 25 to 30 kids in his office and the windows bolted down i kept the thermometer in my room and routinely read 100 plus degrees in august i would take a spray bottle of water and have kids raise their hand if
057they wanted or needed me to cool them down another reason for leaving was the teacher's pain my first three years as a classroom teacher at garfield i lived below the poverty line i bought 25 pound bags of flour and made a loaf every local bread my family ate for three years because we could not afford bread garfield heights is lowest paid district for teachers in cuyahoga county while having the second highest superintendent pay a teacher can literally move to any district in the county and be guaranteed to make more money additionally the teacher took on the extra work of having a student teacher in the district the district would pocket the money designated for the teacher by the university with argument why would we give the money for doing less work contrary to this belief
058anyone who has ever had a student teacher can tell you it actually is more work at the beginning of the year the treasure and superintendent would get up on stage and talk about how the district had no money for raises but then give themselves raises come november the board would also negotiate big raises for the oc union because the wife of a board member was on that unit meanwhile garfield would not honor my first year of service as a 100-day tutor followed by a long-term substitute position on the remainder of the year despite having legally served the number of days of service required to be placed for the next step ultimately my reason for leaving garfield was all about respect i never felt respected by the district whether it was being ashamed by the superintendent
059for not showing up on a saturday at a canvas for a new football field having that feeling confirmed with the president of the school board so that teachers are only paid to breathe from july to august or when an ohio department of education member finds that out you work for garfield and tells you you're in the district that keeps its teachers after leaving garfield i have never been happier professionally i work with an incredibly supportive group of administrators and go out of their way to let you know how value you feel if they feel welcome encourage and critique and will use those to improve themselves and the builder thank you thank you the next person on our agenda is evie siddila so yeah sodella thank you so much and i will i apologize if you
060can share your address that you can 6371 eastondale road make your heights thank you you're welcome i'm going to stand a little bit closer to the light just watching that's fine i was asked to speak by some of the teachers and um i'm a former teacher in narcotics and i taught here um for 32 years for a total career total of 38 years some of those years were absolutely wonderful and i couldn't wait to come to school and you didn't want to be absent because of all the things that were going on in the camaraderie and the kids and the whole thing so it was a great place to work many of my former colleagues and students keep in touch with me through facebook instagram or snapchat years ago i could never ever imagine quitting
061teaching just the thought of it would bring tears what would i do without all my kids i was involved with student activities tiered committees served in various phta positions including the negotiations team for several years then then there came a time when the middle school had a revolving door made specifically for principals within seven years there were five different principles some of those were very good some of those are very inexperienced it's the inexperienced administrators were set up for failure teaching at the middle school eventually became a challenge the climate of the building gradually changed the camaraderie became fractured sometimes i felt as if there was a huge bullseye on my back an administration labeled me as a troublemaker because i dared to question the sensibility of certain changes coming to work was becoming a
062chore and i would literally have to give myself pep talks to get out of a car in the morning and go into the building luckily the kids are the ones that kept me going i loved teaching but it was becoming harder and harder at first i thought maybe it was because i was getting older but the more i talked to people around me and even the younger teachers i began to understand that it was not just me but that feeling was prevalent among the younger teachers as well worse um sorry it was no longer just a middle school problem unrest was brewing in all the buildings the atmosphere was no longer positive my more students fights broke out more disrespect from students student apathy towards learning because students knew they would be passed on whether
063they passed classes or not discipline was inconsistent school models were just words that had no meaning teacher morale became non-existent the prevailing attitude was in us versus them and the prevailing advice was watch your back and as i drove away on my very last day of school i wasn't sad instead i was relieved that it was over and i've been retired for three years now and honestly i wouldn't come back for all the money in the world with the way things ended there are many factors involved in helping children be successful in school among these factors are family environment a child's desire to learn and school environment administrators constantly remind teachers that we cannot control a child's home or family environment nor can we force a child to participate in his or her own learning
064our job as educators is to provide a safe stable and stimulate stimulating environments in which a student can be successful as educators we know that children cannot learn when their environment is in a state of chaos chaos threatens a student's safety chaos threatens the stability of a student's daily learning routine chaos threatens a student ability to reach success students feel unsafe at school when there is a lack of common rules lack of clear expectations and a wishy-washy discipline code as a result students have a harder time paying attention which leads to lower grades and they experience more symptoms of depression and they are absent at a much higher rate but in addition to that students who are going to a school that is in chaos are also likely to engage in risky behaviors such as
065fighting bullying vandalism and the danger of dropping out of school before graduating a lack of school rules clear school expectations for students and a lack of discipline planned for students makes educators also feel unsafe these feelings of being unsafe cause an increased use of sick days and mental health days extreme fatigue and higher symptoms of depression in them as well these issues then lead to a higher rate of teacher turnover which threatens the stability of a school and the school district stability is crucial to student learning high turnover impedes student performance it places large numbers of inexperienced less effective teachers in classrooms and that is not a slam against anyone that is just starting out it's just simply that you have not learned the craft that you um want to perfect um sorry they also
066made new guys leaving new teachers on their own with little or no help in learning the intricacies of their craft high turnover rates has caused a shortage of teachers this means that the teachers who stay often pick up the slack which then leads to a faster rate of burnout for those teachers as a result neither teachers nor students are able to perform at optimum level this then threatens the academic success of students and the success of teachers as professionals success is the ultimate goal for both students and educators a student must have the necessary tools available in all areas of development academically socially and emotionally teachers must have the necessary resources to assist students in reaching success teaching materials clear expectations for students their discipline plan and the unfailing support of the administration it cannot
067cannot be an environment of board education and administration versus teachers this attitude is ruining the success of students of teachers and of the garfield heights city school district a board and administration cannot claim success when teachers are constantly being asked to do more for less the number of teachers leaving the district for other districts or completely leaving the profession because of their experience in garfield is a disgrace there are no acceptable excuses the time to make teachers continue to do more with less and less end today there are no acceptable excuses teachers deserve to work in a safe and stable and successful district teachers cannot be expected to pay increased health care that is providing significantly less coverage and sacrifice their raises teacher raises should be at the same rate as administrative raises it is
068time for the board and administration and administration to unequivocally support those who are at the very core of the district's success thank you if you can approach and share your address for the record please thank you i appreciate julie and dave and bev and don on behalf of keisha um ben on behalf of joe and evie i took notes i actually had three pages to read but you guys have done a really fabulous job covering it all and i don't want to take longer than necessary we have a problem our teachers are being broken by our district and our teachers are leaving our students deserve to see and develop relationships with teachers that are here year after year and have a clear picture of what their job is and what their goal is and what
069they need to be teaching their students the main points that i've heard over and over again is the lack of teacher voice and a place at the table the safety of our students and staff and the consistency in student behavior our pay that's been stagnant since 2007 compared to other similar districts we have gotten seven and a half percent in that time similar districts have gotten more than the lack of support whether it's in the building or in the central office the lack of value that our teachers feel the lack of respect that they feel over 50 teachers have accepted or are considering accepting new jobs in other districts with better pay and better working conditions many more are still looking their reasons for leaving are simple poor pay lack of respect and support and
070the lack of support regarding behavior our jobs like cargo tights are hard but they don't have to be that hard one of the reasons it's become so hard is that teachers here no longer have a voice we have a problem but i believe there's a solution it starts with communication and collaboration teachers don't have all of the answers but neither does the administration throughout my career when we work together we came up with viable solutions that succeeded because all of the stakeholder stakeholders were at the table we will never succeed if teachers don't have a voice talking at someone is not a discussion telling someone what you plan to change or do is not collaboration communicating and sharing ideas without a fear of repercussion is communication and collaboration teachers must be part of this process
071for our students to succeed the administration doesn't have all the answers we don't either if we truly work together share ideas and reasons create a safe environment and pay a fair wage we can become a district in which people will feel valued and want to be a part of again a district where people will spend their careers by choice i believe it's possible but i can't do it alone our students families teachers and community deserve to have us working together for the betterment of garfield high city schools i know i can play my part in making it happen and i know you can too thank you thank you okay we're pushing the 30-minute mark okay yes like there's no objection okay if there's no objections is it okay for us to get the last person
072in their three minutes our policy i'm okay with us extending to 31 minutes our next person is andrew burr andrew burke 168 march would have cleveland thank you welcome i'm uh i was asked to read this it's the writings of a former student um i did not write this i'm just sharing to show support to the gargoyle light city schools teachers please note information posted was given to me information may not be accurate but something does have to change for the teachers on june 13 2022 at 6 pm the gargoyle lights board education will be holding a board meeting garfield heights teachers have been one of the lowest paid teachers in the county for some years now the city of garfield heights has high taxes and majority of the money goes to the schools money
073doesn't go to the teachers it goes to the treasurer and made up administration positions in the district i asked what are the made-up administration positions there is a office for teaching and learning this office has a director two supervisors date and accountability coordinator federal programs coordinator curriculum consultant and a secretary to the office of teaching and learning coordinator interesting we have a whole office of learning coordinators yet our children in the city are still testing slash scoring loan alan's luca treasurer makes between 140 000 and 170 000 a year the principles in every building and the made up administration positions make over a hundred thousand a year the teachers do not get any of that money every time the teacher contracts are up for negotiation teachers only get one percent the teachers definitely did not
074get any of the covenant money the district received from the government i was at the garfield heights city schools treasurer makes more money than the solon city schools treasurer sullen has been number one or number two two school districts in the state of ohio it is not fair how the teachers at garfield heights have been treated the school district is definitely going to be a revolving door as soon as the old generation teachers retire we need help shining some spotlight on the shadiness going on in the district the teachers are the ones who work hard with the kids in the city the teachers and the mothers fathers friends support team that some of the kids only have please share and hope people will come out to support the garfield head city schools teachers who taught
075you and made you the person you are today i love the teachers here in garfield heights city schools thank you [Applause] yes that ends our portion of public participation and the reason why we have our school board meetings before the public is because we do welcome public participation so we thank you guys for coming out this evening and sharing your concerns and your sentiments that you have relative to the district the board of education i can speak on behalf of all of us we welcome you to continue to come we want to hear your voice at all times you are a stakeholder i find you to be a valuable stakeholder but if we if if you don't come and speak to us before the public meetings we don't hear you so we thank you today
076for coming out and giving us the opportunity to hear your voice we welcome you to continue to come out so that we can hear your voice because unless you guys come and say speak to us then we can not collaborate and hear the concerns that you have in this to have with the district so again thank you guys for coming out this evening we thank you for courageously coming up and speaking before the board of education and we welcome you and we look forward to your participation more and more throughout the future i'm expecting we will need to move our board meetings to the high school in the future because we maybe this was the first step for us building this relationship between the board and the stakeholders in our community is there any other
077comments yes madam president i just want to thank you teachers for coming out like once every three years during negotiation why don't you come out every month [Music] well this is this is the public the public portion public comment of our meeting has expired and we are not able to take public comments anymore unless there's a motion on the table for the board to extend time we have already extended the time and we allow people to speak freely during that time and we're going to move forward with the meeting with the motion to adjourn tonight's meeting can i add one thing please is there a second the i do apologize but at this time the the portion of public comment has extended unless i get a motion to extend that then we can move forward
078with your comment i ask the board of education is there emotion we have a motion to adjourn the meeting thank you mr seleuca the motion to adjourn the meeting was moved by mr jubie it was second by ms thomas can i have roll call please [Applause] that's why they're afraid to talk and i'll talk because i don't have the target anymore i'm retired that's why i'm here to defend them they can't do anything to me anymore