Special Meeting: Governance and Policy Committee of the Whole

001good evening everybody today is may the 4th 2021 time is a little bit after 5 30. um on behalf of the board of education welcome we are so blessed and very happy that you've taken the time from your evening to spend some time with us as we try to understand and take moves to make our district the district that it needs to be for our children so again on behalf of the board of education thank you for joining us we have a pretty full schedule today uh it begins with what we call a special meeting that should be relatively brief and then we have two committee meetings today governance which is chaired by commissioner malloy and then we also have a policy committee meeting which is chaired by commissioner powell so we'll get right to

002the business of um of the board's work and that most important work aspect of that work begins by listening to people who have something to say to us we have uh as i understand it seven speakers is that right madam clerk that is correct president white we have seven speakers with us tonight and all right if you're uh able i'm going to go ahead and begin with your first speaker in who is uh mary adams a parent of the district and she will be speaking regarding the budget alignment with the strategic plan welcome mary you have three minutes whenever you're ready hi everyone thanks very much um let me just get my okay so um i really just wanted to speak to dr meyer small and the board in a supportive way i really you

003know i know when i get going i've got points that i'm making but i really authentically want you to know that i'm in support of your efforts to meet the demands of the students that have been articulated specifically around hiring more black and brown educators culturally responsive curriculum and pedagogy anti-racism development and restorative practices i really believe that you intend to do this work i also know that there have been people before you who have fully intended and been committed to the work and been qualified in this district just resists and deflects so i just really want to urge you in this budget process even without the significant forthcoming federal money to really lay down a framework with specificity as much as you can i know there's stuff to be determined as much as you

004can with specificity build a framework um and then regarding you know so i just want to say that money flowing through has to still be you still have to continue your course with your strategies for being responsible with the money um if there are certain things that need to be scaled back because of enrollment i support that but i do not want an austerity mindset with respect to the supports for students when we have these resources coming if they're not used very carefully and intentionally they will get spent central office has all kinds of strategic frameworks within central office strategic uses for software and technology that we've seen millions and millions and millions over the years just flow through so please have a careful plan in place to use the money for student centering activities

005regarding the strategic task force process i've just been reached out to this has not been transparent there's concerns about lack of parent involvement and i just would really really urge you to please make sure that there's a critical mass of members on those task forces all of them with expertise and commitment to culturally responsive education and inclusive discipline we have a deep bench here you know it's been contentious there's people there's feelings and things but you need to pull please i urge you to please pull from the expertise that exists do you have victorious minds academy innovators in these task force do you have teacher center lesson plan experts classroom educators with that expertise are they on these committees do you have principals like sharon jackson who turned around to school with her linguistic expertise

006her deep engagement with bilingual families um you know her ability to really to do portfolio assessments on top of standardized assessments there's so much there that can inform we also need youth we need youth history ambassadors rock responders bilingual parents freedom school parents all of these historical efforts that have been sprouted and never grown they exist and they all need to be brought in now so please please do that one final thing be sure that you have rubrics and criteria for culturally responsive practices in all of these task forces these are credible and readily available nyu steinhardt um east ur partnership the teachers work on gloria lads and billings work those foundations must be brought in thank you thank you very much um i'm going to bring in our next speaker who is tatiana welsh

007another parent who's speaking about the stimulus funding for schools tatiana hello welcome whenever you're ready you have three minutes three minutes okay all right so my name is tatiana welch and i am a mother of two who are in the district and i just wanted to comment you know on where the money was going i know you guys have to include the people the public and things like that and you know i kind of need a consensus with my community and they're saying they would like money spent on fresh healthy and nutritious hot meals for our children teachers administrators and support staff that represent our student body that which is 53.1 black and brown 32.7 hispanic and latino 96 white and 2.9 asian we also would like the hiring of support staff such as trauma

008counselors social workers social emotional support workers caseworkers and parent liaisons like one pers per grade for each school we also would like the implementation of extracurricular activities such as sports ban music enrichment programs conflict resolution programs and leadership programs as well as summer programs to make up for the loss of learning this year and last year due to covey and um just the inclusion of us and make sure that we're there every step of the way as parents as you know guardians and as educators as well and as a community in general and i'm speaking on me as a parent as well as other people who held this consensus in this poll and agree that these are the things that we would like to see as well as the teams with attitudes that spoke out

009the other day seeing what they want the money to go to as well as more teachers and lessen the teacher to student ratio and promote more healthier learning environment and student-based learning that helps as well we also like like some type of board created to help with the board create transparency accountability and inclusion of all stakeholders and we mean like with student boards a student-run board that the students can be implemented in a democracy to help these things get pushed along so their voices can be heard not just parents not just you know activists and things like that but the students themselves we want them to be included in this there's got to be a way we could do student jobs within the school district within the school board to help fund our economy as

010well so those are really the main thing especially fresh hot food um i believe i said that first i just wanted to make sure i said that so that's where a lot of um my constituents and my community members um are looking for and teachers and advocates on my end are looking for for the funding to at least go towards that and you know i do understand that most of it's supposed to be going 80 percent is basically going directly towards making sure learning is enforced correctly and things like that so i just want to make sure we're all included as well in every step of the way and throughout the 90 day process that on the board has to get this funding and this plan out done approved and implemented and then as well

011as the follow-up because we have until 2024 to spend all of this money so that's about as much as i would like to say and i appreciate having me and giving me the time platform to say anything mom thank you tatiana we appreciate you speaking with the board tonight thank you have a good night our next speaker is supposed to be edward donnelly i do not see him in the waiting room i'm i'm uh i'm out of the right there you are i'm live hi hi edward um you are have three minutes whenever you're ready welcome oh thank you do you already know my information or do i need to no you're good to go oh okay well thanks for inviting me uh this week uh after being found in the spam folder last week

012i it's very kind of everyone i normally don't speak request to speak i've already emailed each of the board members my remarks so i'll briefly highlight some of those points and add a couple current events today i'm speaking as a volunteer supporting refugee families uh as a member of rochester international academy ria's advisory board and chairperson of friends of ria incorporated and you know from my email i sit on those boards i work with rochester refugee resettlement services i'm a homeowner for 10 years and live in the city now for two years i enthusiastically support the programs at ria i've been directly observing participating i asked the school board to review the powerpoint slides that we shared a couple weeks ago all the strengths that ria brings to our newcomer students and their families and

013the population that i see in the apartments i visit and and it'll only grow with our nation's renewed interest in accepting refugee families again president biden's executive order immediately welcoming 62 500 refugees and with even more coming this fall it's the moment is right so first when i looked read the district strategic plan i see that ria has the experience addressing at least eight of those 11 planned priorities ria's unique success story in rcsd and over and over again students who are attending school they're not dropping out they're not being suspended ria teachers and staff are using restorative practices that are essential especially for children dealing with trauma achieving an ela in math and they're graduating and i've gone to three graduations now volunteering it's amazing and they're going on to college or they're going

014to want to work hard in careers our school district this is a success i i hope we're not going to throw out successful schools because of budgets and i think budget situations have improved as a result of our state legislatures funding again which is which is a great great news so our we would benefit by not reducing not reducing staff and programming at ria secondly ria has a proven record of specialized programming to appropriately receive newcomer ells and provide them with trauma-free safe environment where they can grow and achieve academically socially emotionally it reminds me of my last 10 years were as a gifted talented teacher i admit misunderstood population possibly until i started to learn more and understand more and just a parallel world can you imagine uh for a moment that ria wasn't

015here no specially trained staff that has the understanding and experience to help newcomer ell students many who have experienced refugee camp life wartime trauma don't speak english it's a multilingual program don't share the same alphabet even uh in very diverse cultural backgrounds yes i'm sorry your time is up for tonight but it does sound like you have wow okay please please go ahead and send it to our email if you can i know you've been in contact with our board office as well thank you the timing is right for for keeping a program that works in rochester city schools thank you mr donnelly have a good night thank you you too our next speaker is tiara grayson a community member speaking regarding the budget tara is joining us in the room now it looks like

016her audio is taking a little while to connect okay i am going to let our next speaker who is laura smith go ahead in the meantime so that we can and then we'll circle back around with uh tiara welcome laura welcome you have three minutes whenever you're ready all right thank you so much okay so um good evening my name is laura smith um while i have spoken with some of you before as a volunteer with action for education equity uh i want to start this evening by stating that the views i share tonight on my own um as a parent trying to register my four-year-old for pre-k for this coming september so um one of the key things i was looking for for my daughter in her first school experience was that she would

017have a black um pre-k teacher so um i looked and i couldn't find one um some schools had pictures of staff most didn't so i asked at uh central office the staff there were superbly helpful um but had to be honest that potentially maybe there was only roughly two and they couldn't guarantee where they might be teaching um so i i looked to see if for the schools that i was really most interested in if they had black teachers in later grades so that at least there would be the potential of her having a black teacher at some point um and i couldn't find any clear information on that either but my first choice i'm pretty sure there are none um so potentially my daughter could graduate elementary school without ever having a black teacher

018realistically unless urgent action is taken that that will be the reality for far too many students in the district that has been the reality and continues to be the reality year after year and it's gone on too long um our students themselves have clearly told us that this this needs to change now i really dislike this format because i'm not trying to lecture at you or berate you in fact most of you uh here support changes i know that and most of you weren't even around in these roles when previous attempts have been tried so i just want to throw out all those things about he said she said how did we get here but we're here and i just want it to be a a really intense priority to fix it um so i

019really just want to ask that when we are looking at our budgets and the money that's coming that we budget appropriately so that we can do really extensive benchmarking of what is working in other districts in relation to increasing uh the number of black teachers and retaining quality black teachers and and then i want us to be able to do a deep dive into the lessons length from the previous attempts that have been made um to try to diversify and and from that information like uh us to come up with quality short and long term strategies to bring um black teachers for our students so please could we make this a significant budgeting priority thank you thank you laura we appreciate your comments tonight i'm going to try again with um tiara from before tara

020are you hearing me so in the room and audio is connected but not hearing anything tara okay it looks like we will move on to our next speaker we had amy schramm a staff member signed up to speak about the budget um but she is not in the waiting room so we will go with um miss claire labrosa claire are you with us oh i'm here there you go okay welcome you have three minutes whenever you're ready can i ask if amy schramm already spoke she has she's not in the waiting room she hasn't okay thank you i appreciate it um so my name is claire labrosa and i am going to read aloud that the rochester organization of rank and file educators budget response and this was created by a group of rcsd educators

021over the past decade and a half rochester city schools have been intentionally deprived of funding this upcoming year after struggling through a global pandemic our district has a unique opportunity to start to undo the state's denial of the foundation aid owed to the rcsd for 14 years and the city of rochester's stagnant rcsd funding for 15 years our csd is the highest percentage in monroe county for economically disadvantaged students 90 percent students with disabilities 21.4 percent english language learners 15 and transportation costs per student 2 225 as well as increasing charter school tuition costs 95.8 million dollars the rcsd has been caught in a cycle of under funding resulting in massive layoffs of staff and downsizing of schools specialized programs extracurricular activities and other opportunities and resources for students superintendent meyer small and state monitor

022shelly jallow have approached the 2021-2022 budget from a deficit standpoint they are quoting low enrollment disregarding how the pandemic has played a large factor in our pre-k and k enrollment this past year as well as the loss of programs and opportunities that may lead families to seek alternative education options for their students they are quoting a student to teach a ratio of 10 to 1 while ignoring the mandated services many teachers provide that prohibit them from teaching full classes and that specialized programs are required to have smaller class sizes educational research tells us that students perform better with smaller class sizes rather than classes filled to the maximum allowed capacity they are questioning sustainability not taking into account the fact that we need to invest in the district in order to see improvement in growth

023with the federal stimulus money that's being given to the rcsd this year as well as the newly guaranteed foundation aid from the state our csd leadership is in a position to invest these funds in providing enhanced resources and opportunities for our students we need to provide our students and families with schools that offer them the desired support enrichment and opportunity they deserve the superintendent and district need to be transparent about where the stimulus and foundation aid funds are going and how these funds are going to make positive change in the district clarity must be provided as to how funding will be equitable equitably divided among all schools in the district so that all students are receiving the same level of opportunities and resources we want increased staffing hire more bente support return hot lunches hire

024more counselors social workers and members of the rock restorative team invest in recruiting and retaining racially ethnically culturally and linguistically diverse staff hire more art music library and physical education teachers higher intervention teachers extended day and extended year opportunities for enrichment provide and or invest in summer opportunities that include arts enrichment athletics internships community building and supplementary academic enrichment begin development implementation to provide year-round arts education in our elementary schools claire my apologies your time is up thank you thank you have a good night i am going to try again with um tiara one more time and then we will go to our next speaker um miss amy schramm who was able to join us um tiara can you hear us now tiara no it does it looks like we are having quite a bit

025of technical difficulty with her so i'm going to go ahead and let um amy schramm in the room amy can you hear us amy nope not getting through to her tiara are you there yes i'm here okay so we're gonna take uh tiara and then see if amy is in the room and then i have one last speaker who was not sure if he would be able to make it but has been able to make it so we'll let him go as well um whenever you're ready tara you have three minutes okay can you give me like 10 seconds because i'm about to go inside i'm outside right now okay okay i'm ready okay can you turn your video on yes thank you okay so um what i demand is fresh healthy nutritious hot school

026meals transparency accountability and inclusion to all stakeholders including the community and parents on any decisions including money being spent on programs implemented or removed from our schools teachers administrators and support staff that represents the student body proportionately hiring is a hiring of support staff such as trauma counselors social workers social emotional support workers case workers parent liaisons and one for each grade in each school more teachers to lessen the load on the teachers to student ratio to promote healthier learning environments and student-based learning and more extract or extracurricular activities such as sports band music enrichment programs conflict resolution programs and leadership programs but in addition to that also alternatives to you know the methods of discipline that feeds the school-to-prison pipeline and constantly suspending students is just it's putting these kids who parents already they're

027in broken households you know non-nuclear homes where they don't have adequate supervis or supervisory because their parents are working numerous of jobs to make sure that there's food on that table and these kids when they're taken out of schools from learning in regards to suspension and expel they're they're stuck you know to be left on the streets to get into the same crime and and the stuff that's out here that furthers you know feed the criminal justice system and so i just ask that the money also gets or spent on alternatives to disciplinary actions tiara is that the rest of your comments or did you have anything more you um your mic went off thank you thank you so much for uh speaking with the board tonight we appreciate your comments thank you all right

028have a good night you too thanks all right i'm gonna try again with amy schramm amy can you hear us yes i can hear you wonderful whenever you're ready there you go wonderful bye okay that's okay whenever you're ready you have three minutes okay oh looks like we lost you again amy oh okay i'm here can you hear me yes okay can you see me yes we can sorry about having issues tonight so yeah i'm really grateful to be here tonight and then um i just want to thank you for your openness to hearing everyone's um suggestions and i know some of some of us have gathered together not just as educators in the district but organizers in the community to come up with these demands so to speak as to like what the districts

029um could and should do with the money in the coming months when it does come um and the you know the biggest thing is support staff we need ben's hay we need wrap we need um all of the kitchen staff we need good food we need all of these things that our children desperately deserve they just deserve it um looking around at our like surrounding districts we can see how um the student student success is based on the structure of like the school building and all the things that are put into place and now that we are going to be fully funded and more there is absolutely no reason why we cannot hire more staff um so i really would like you to um you know we're hoping that you can stop looking at it

030coming from a deficit standpoint and more from like a positive like we can do this standpoint like re-envisioning the district reimagining it what can we do together to make um our students lives at school and at home a community effort to um to better our students lives and so i think my biggest um you know the biggest thing that i wanted to say tonight was to you know step away from that the negative like deficit the austerity mindset to re-envisioning what can we do and as an art teacher um working in the district as long as i have i've seen the money you know being cut more and more um every year and having even in my own building having less and less resources and parents finding out that students are only getting a half

031an hour a week for half of a year they're dumbfounded they're astounded they can't believe that the district isn't even giving their students art for a full year and that's been something that's extremely um it it hurts our children on so many levels because we know that the arts enrich our lives we all know that and we all know the studies and so just the mere fact that visual arts is only given for half an hour a week a half of a year i feel like i know that we can do better in this and that we can fully fund schools for a full year and this area and so i'm putting that out there on the table also and um yeah i just i thank you for your time and i really hope you

032consider thank you thank you amy we appreciate your comments tonight thank you very much uh president white we had um we have a uh john boutet he um contacted the board to speak tonight but he wasn't sure he was going to be able to make it but it does seem like he is able to um mr boutet are you there with us yes i am okay mr patek will be speaking about local business go ahead uh sir you have three minutes okay one of the things that we've been um talking with the school district for about 10 years now and it's really been brought up many times before that is the need to have uh more local involvement in our schools uh the one and a half mile limit that currently drives many parents to

033send their child at a school that's a mile and a half away from home is really hurting the cohesivenesses and of the neighborhoods around our schools parents are not always able to get to the school when they they have an event to attend and this is something that's just been dragging on way too long it's a perfect way to destroy a district is keep the parents separated from the schools and we we need to change the way things are being done we had the southwest common council education committee had a meeting with the mayor back i think it was january 14th and um talking with her and katarina leona nino there it looked like there was a chance of using um child safety zones as a way to approach changing the way we handle local

034busing trying to use the equity issue as a way to force the hand of the state i guess uh i hope that you will be here you know she's she was going to be talking with the superintendent this week i believe i just want to make sure that everybody is paying attention to the fact we may have a way to break through on this finally um and if that doesn't work we we need to change the way things are going you know we keep talking about um the the fact that we have systemic racism in the and that's been destroying the city and this particular issue the one and a half mile bussing is working in that fashion it's keeping parents and schools apart and we shouldn't be doing that so please look into making

035changes this year uh it's long overdue thank you thank you very much mr boutique we're glad we're able to have you in the room tonight white that is the end of our speaker's portion for the evening thank you madam clerk um i did note that uh the superintendent uh meyer small asked if she could have a brief moment to recognize some staff members so we want to take the time to do that now leslie thank you president white and good evening to you and all of our commissioners as well as dr nelms and our staff so on may 1st we celebrated national principals day may 3rd through 7th this week is national or its teacher and staff appreciation week and on thursday may 6th it's national nurse appreciation day so i just wanted to share

036on behalf of the board of education myself and dr nelms we just wanted to say how much we do appreciate all that our staff do the things that they do that we know and more importantly the things that we'll never know and so please know that you're appreciated um and we thank you uh especially this week but all year round we are very appreciative of your efforts thank you thank you uh leslie for recognizing our staff we try to do it as frequently as we can um but every once in a while these national holidays come up and to tell you truth i don't know who makes them up but you know love your brother and sister day and the national civ the other day i saw one national siblings fan i never heard that

037before but we should always be thankful for our staff and uh that's something that we should be doing 365 days a year but the board thanks you for recognizing that a very valuable invaluable part of our operation which our staff which is our staff next item on the agenda is special meeting discussion items commissioner powell there's a number of first readings of uh policies that we have to by our bylaws have to go through today commissioner paul uh yeah is rahima on i am commissioner powell okay um i'm just because i can't simultaneously look at board docs on the screen if you could make sure we're on track here uh i'm aware um that the grants uh policy has has cleared the policy committee and is ready for uh to be presented as a discussion

038item um this is a brand new policy that's uh essentially driven by uh the fiscal monitors report that is the entire policy um it did undergo a little bit of a review and recommendation around the uh the nature of the report but you'll recall that last last meeting we had a presentation from the grants department on what they anticipated the reporting to look like are there any questions or comments on the um reporting of grant awards policy if there are no questions we'll move along we have our hand commissioner yeah i was just waiting for folks to pipe up let's see the first hand is uh i don't know if they came up in order or not uh first commissioner clark yes and then yourself commissioner lebron thank you i i just i had one

039question regarding the policy and that was the uh the addition where where it indicated it shall be presented to the finance committee and my question is since we're looking at uh reducing the number of meetings and you know moving away and i'm assuming moving away from meetings of the whole why is it only the finance committee and not the full board um well i'll take a stab at that but then i'll turn it over to commissioner lebron the um generally uh reports would go out to all board members on a quarterly basis um but as a matter of it being a topic of discussion we have to focus on one place and even if we return to less frequent meetings and suppose we return to a three-person committee anyone can attend any committee whether they're

040a voting member or not so in the case of of receiving a report from the administration that that shouldn't be a hindrance it would just call upon non-committee board members to be proactive to um if they want to participate in active discussion about about the report uh commissioner lebron you want to add anything to that yeah i think i would add i mean there's a couple of proposals that we're going to be discussing tonight and one of those would potentially be moving finance to every other month and then also attaching it to the board business meeting um so commissioner clark that was my proposal but also i do think this type of report could easily even if it goes through finance they'll be presented to the full board as a whole on record um through

041the board business meeting um so i'm okay with the language on that and i don't know if that answers your question and then i can ask my question on the with on the policy yes it does because i just wanted to make sure that the full board got a chance to read you also thank you yes thank you and then commissioner paul my question is just um clarity on the last bullet point that says staff oversight help support the management of district revenue and expenses in the report are we asking that they list the staff that are involved in the grants is that what that sentence means i believe so okay i would just like to see that just worded with just a little bit more clarity because it's a little bit confusing as to

042what that means but that's what i'm assuming that it means that we're asking in this report for the quarterly grants that we have the purpose the amount the duration the scope of work the outcomes the alignment of district priorities and then the staff that's involved in those grants or overseeing the grants if you would like to propose to to craft uh a substitute um bullet that um we can make changes to the policy without restarting the clock so if you you can get uh language together we can put it in our next um policy committee meeting okay we'll do thank you commissioner powell just briefly um said i just want to try i drafted this as as you know i i took this directly out of the um independent monitor report these bullets were word

043for what's in there and and obviously um you know no no problem working on on clarity um yeah i can just check back with with dr jallo even and just try and recommend if what the intent of that was was to indicate the staff who are responsible for that particular grant or if there's something else and we could just we could clarify that point um i'm happy to work on the language on that yes please either way it's gonna any changes will have to funnel through you as the liaison to the policy committee so whatever we can do to add clarities good with me okay i'll take care of that okay um rahima what what's the next policy on on the doctor our next policy i'm going to bring up is um been renamed it

044is the policy management policy which is i'm sorry i did have a question my hand was raised but then maybe i did something to take it down so may i ask my question mr powell yes please do so you know our concern has been that when we receive these awards um once the grant has expired um they tend to go into our general those positions tend to go into our operating budget and my concern is um that we don't have um that grant any longer or the grants any longer but then we include them in our operating budget should there be uh some language in the policy that limits um the ability of the district to um incorporate that that money uh or those resources that were initially uh funded by a grant but now

045it's funded by uh have been funded by um our operating budget um can you speak to that a little bit um yeah i i appreciate where your your concern is coming from uh if you if rohima could you put that policy back up again the the key to this one is that this is grants this is a reporting this folks focuses only on the reporting reporting of grant so um our oversight of you know what happens after the grant expires i think falls into our our budget process and all i could all i can recommend is that board members who are concerned about that ask very pointed questions about um um you know programs that are grant funded what you know what's happening them to them when the grant expires during the budget process okay

046because you're right that very often year after year we'll try to fund keep keep programs going even if funding disappears and sometimes it's worthwhile and it's worthy of continuing to pay for out of general um a funds but the key is the administration needs to show us that it is worthy of being kept thank you uh beatrice your hand went up again yes it did thank you um i actually do agree with uh vice president elliot here on like the soft money into hard lines with without ever having clarity and although um yes we can have pointed questions we would do these reports look at the duration and know that there's an ending coming but i personally would like to see um the ending you know what the end date would be in the duration

047and then if the administration would have a plan or make recommendations to move it into the general funds because in the past that has been done without evidence of success that we should put that out there we've had these conversations so i don't want to reiterate them and not with this administration but to avoid um doing that repeatedly over and over and over because the board makeup will continue to change over the course of the next couple of years and um i do think it would be wise of us to have uh under duration that if a grant is coming to an end that the administration presents a um a clear indication on whether they're going to move it through through the general funds and ask the board support or do that same report if

048they're just going to let it go but either way even through this policy i would also recommend that we discuss the transition plans when grants end um because that's something that we have not had great oversight over and it is impactful there are some grants that were extremely successful that we just when the money ran out we didn't do anything for it and then the way that that lands or had landed in the school district but also into this community is that hey we had a great program the money right now and they didn't care about keeping it moving because they didn't have the funds to do so and we may genuinely not have the dollars to do so either i think there's two sides to this so if there was a way to expand

049under duration to show like when the grant's gonna end what the administration's plan or vision is or recommendation to move it into a hard line budget um i would like to see that during the and it could be at that year-end finance uh report to commission apollo i think i'm open to that time frame but so yeah yeah so i'm i'm and this we may need to talk about this offline but i do think that there probably need to be a policy around this and that may be um commissioner powell something to discuss in another uh meeting but that brings up the fact that you know uh the district has been known in the past you know to to incorporate these um um programs into the operating budget um and we just need to know

050about that you know so i think that um approval needs to come from the board with regard to that or some conversation and it needs to be in my view in some kind of policy format so that it is um documented that the board needs to uh understand uh what the uh district may be recommended in terms of retaining a program with that would be using operating dollars operating budget dollars thank you well i hear you um and i'll revise my previous response by saying rather than waiting until budget season we when these when these reports begin to um hit our finance committee agenda if you know those that would be the time to ask questions about and what happens when this ends um so um i don't know that it has to be explicit

051in the policy what we do need to do is be faithful to asking the questions and i would just recommend that we see this policy through to to a vote next at the business meeting and um give it time to find out how well it works and whether the report is sufficient to trigger those questions uh or whether we need to um be more specific in our policy respectfully i do think we probably need to be more specific because people change uh you know board members change uh district staff change so you know i i don't need to talk about any further commissioner but uh we could talk about it uh at another time offline thank you you know let's let's hear what dr jello has to say about that when she speaks with our

052general counsel and and see if there's a recommendation for further change sure i don't see any other hands i guess so i guess we're ready to move on to the next policy uh the next policy is our um has it's been renamed the policy management policy because when we combine three separate policies together the title became very unwieldy but you've seen this in a number of configurations the most visible part of this change is going to be that instead of referring to the stages as um information discussion and action steps we're going to be referring them to them as first second and third readings which is a language that's almost universally used and understood in all other government organizations and everything else about this notwithstanding that there are many many changes that appear in the

053track changes form are simply the product of combining three different policies and a regulation into a single document any questions on this one now i don't see any hands going up so that one will be ready to vote on in our business meeting rahima what's next that's it for um but we we have quite a large packet for us the next go around we're starting to see a product come through our subcommittee work so that concludes this portion of the uh the meeting thank you thank you commissioner powell i would just note um that it appears that we're behind schedule it is now 6 24. the agenda says we should be almost completing governance at this time however what the schedule doesn't tell us is that we had six speakers the agenda says about three

054two or two minutes um it looks like two three three minutes for speakers so we don't ever know exactly how many speakers are gonna be so i just don't want folks to worry that we've been unnecessarily talking too long asking too many questions the fact we're off track is a reflection of the number of speakers we had so uh let's keep moving on though with uh the understanding that we need to stand on track and the reason why i mention this is many people don't know this we had a retreat uh this past weekend and we've had many discussions even before the retreat about making sure we keep our our time commitments so uh having said that the next item in the agenda is resolutions for consideration there are two that are up for today

055let's uh begin with um 792. uh this is a resolution to amend certain aspects of the seg appendix a you all may recall that the superintendent discussed uh the specifics of this with us in executive session as related to a particular person um if we can go back into executive session at the end of this meeting if there are specific questions about that relate to a particular person um but um wanted to know if they're well i tell you what let me go ahead and get in motion to advance for discussion resolution 792. i move it thank you commissioner clark i heard commissioner adams second that any questions or comments regarding resolution 792. i'm looking at my list give you guys a chance to press those buttons and i'm scrolling i'm on my phone by

056the way so i'm having to scroll up and down and i don't see any hands being raised oops commissioner malloy thank you i'm sorry i'm having trouble i'm a little ill this evening um so i'm having trouble i just need a summary of the um what's being discussed so we might need to go into executive session for that dr uh myers-small could you um remind us what this particular sex uh resolution is about is about scg appendix a which would add a particular position um you'd describe that for us uh would you describe it for us again please what the position is yes this would be an seg member who would oversee innovation sorry did i get cut off yes i'm sorry this would be a seg position that would oversee receivership and um innovation

057as you know we have 12 schools in receivership and continue to be very concerned about that thank you that was the best i was wondering you mute it looks like i got muted sorry about that i'm looking through my list that wasn't me no no no i realize that let's see i'm going through the list and i don't see any hands beating ray so there are no further questions or comments regarding resolution 792 why don't we go ahead and take a vote all those in favor of resolution 792 which is a resolution to amend our sdg rules and regulations particularly appendix a indicate by saying yes or i and making sure your computer screen is on i i i only heard two eyes mine and commissioner clarks can we roll call only because i i'm

058only catching people are stepping on each other that that is fine um just remind my colleagues that it goes much more efficiently and quite effectively if you just make sure your camera's on and just say aye but we'll go ahead and take a roll call vote uh let me pull up my screen to make sure i include all my colleagues uh let's begin with vice president elliot hi commissioner powell hi commissioner clark hi commissioner malloy hi commissioner lebron uh myself isn't i did i miss anybody i'm sorry i'm going through this list i got coming from malloy yeah i think i got it commissioner adams i'm sorry commissioner adams i didn't see your name on the list commissioner adams hi yeah so it appears that the eyes have it uh madam superintendent your request to

059amend scg appendix a has been approved thank you very much all right next on the agenda a resolution for consideration is resolution 790 commissioner powell um you had a powerpoint regarding opeb open resolution um want to drive it yes i'll drive it i do have a question if you want to first of all yeah i was going to say that i'm sorry first of all i need a motion to lift the resolution 790 from the table i'll move it thank you commissioner clark for a second thank you commissioner malloy uh all right the resolution 790 having been lifted from the table commissioner uh powell the floor is yours well thank you um so far we've had a lot of discussion about whether uh whether this topic um should be discussed and after a whole long

060series of meetings with the comptroller i think it's unanimous that the topic is worthy of discussion um and um to initiate that discussion i put forward a resolution that would um essentially be a starting point now i'll tell you now that uh in conversations with the cfo and uh superintendent as recently as three o'clock today um the we negotiated to a place that's different from what my resolution states so at the end of this uh presentation i'd like to put forward a motion to substitute um the resolution that we tabled last meeting for uh a resolution that includes the language that the administration agreed to so um next slide please um the bottom line up front is that um changes in the past have been um made to the um to the uh committed fund

061balances without board approval and committed funds very specifically unlike all other funds require board level approval through resolution and so we need to um make a decision to as to what the appropriate committed fund balance level is and i'm recommending that we partially restore it this fiscal year and strive to fully restore it in subsequent years next slide and why now well it was partly driven by the um kafir last year was my first year as a member of the audit committee and first year as chair of the audit committee and um considerable energy went into discussion about what the appropriate fund balance levels were and so i did some research uh and to find out uh how it changed over time next slide um we we had the comptroller's audit focused on the um

062fund balance levels next slide and the fiscal monitors these are this is language lifted right out of those reports next slide and during the kafir comparisons were made between our fund balance levels and buffalo and syracuse you'll see you'll actually see that they both have restricted funds that buffalo in particular that far exceeds our own next slide so with all of that behind us i submitted these questions to the board question log next slide the most important takeaway from this slide is the answer to questions two and three specifically saying that the administration needed additional guidance from the board of education so this is an attempt to provide that guidance next slide um i'm going to show you some slides of the committed funds and and show them graphically trust me this will go a

063lot faster than you might think um show you some slides about how the auditors have recognized our old pub have in past cafes uh the resolutions that have been used over time and finally my recommended next steps next slide this is more for your reference i'm not going to talk to every point in this slide but just to show this is the timeline um next slide and these are the fund balance levels you can see that they were pretty constant the top slide is all general fund balances together um and um the black line in the middle is the total committed funds that's a total of oppab workers compensation and insurance and it was pretty steady right up until the um financial crisis of 2017-2018 the middle graph is a breakout of those funds that

064i just described workers comp op and insurance claims along with the health insurance rate stabilization fund and the and the bottom slide shows the percentage of fund balance our fund balance is a percentage of our operating expenses and you can see there that they held pretty steadily and certainly within the policy ranges right up until the financial crisis next slide so this is what the fund balances looked like in the past over the past six years as you can see the fund balance for oppab was 2 million 889 and change right up until the fund balance right up until the uh fiscal crisis and uh dropped first to four million and then to zero um and only partially restored next slide this is the language of the kafir that basically says we have been a

065pay-as-you-go but the but the auditors specifically call out that um that we had this additional fund and and they called it out as essentially as a good thing next slide now this resolution from may 2012 is the is the resolution that created these uh committed funds i've highlighted the opeb in red just so that you can see next slide um the um osc guidance came out in 2010 that essentially suggests that that in new york state it might not be a good idea to have committed funds but very specifically says if the government governing body has not delegated the authority to assigned amounts then assigned is appropriate up until our last policy update we did in fact assign the authority to um the superintendent to create uh assigned fund balances so for as long as

066the superintendent had had delegated authority the use of committed funds was almost essential to create a board level authority next slide okay this resolution shows how workers comp level the funding level changed the language specifically uncommitted um 775 000 for um from the fund but if we went back to the table you'll see that the workers comp fund dropped a lot more than 775 000 and i could not find any resolution after this one to support those actions it's almost like the administration interpreted this resolution as authority to change balances uh on its own without board of thought without board authority and that simply runs contrary to the the very purpose of committed funds but it does provide guidance on what the threshold of workers comp should be and that's something that perhaps should go

067into a phone balance policy next slide this is the resolution from 2008 that um while it does while it does not specifically set the level of funding uh it refers back to the budget which is in my opinion kind of a sloppy way of doing things but um to more to the point this resolution promulgated by the administration provides the guidelines for what an appropriate funding level should be in this case an amount not to exceed two year two subsequent fiscal years worth of actual claims expenses now the funding back in was it wasn't an arbitrary amount it was it reflected the actual expenses for one year of funding so uh my initial resolution that i brought some time ago and was tabled till tonight was to restore the funding level to one year's worth

068of it i'm sorry to the original funding level understanding that that doesn't even bring it up to a single year's worth of expenses costs have risen a single year of expenses would be more would wouldn't be 21 million it would be 28 million so my resolutions sought to make a small step towards a floor level of funding and i'll talk to that a little bit later next slide another slide that the language changed in 2008 around oppab but the practice did not we're still self-funded and the language that's required in audits external audits has changed but the fact remains that we are a pay-as-you-go system next slide this is the resolution i brought back in february around health insurance noticed that this provided guideline guidelines for the superintendent and the joint health insurance committee that

069language came directly from the uh the um from the um mou uh i'm sorry the memorandum of agreement um but in truth it belongs it's language that belongs in a policy not in a resolution next slide um i think i've spoken to all these points this this slide is more uh just to summarize what i've already said next slide so i'm recommending that we add funds to opeb effective june 30th my initial uh recommendation as i said was for us to bring it up to previous levels and then work towards the floor of one year's expenses uh by by the end of next year um since then superintendent and cfo and i have spoken and we believe that um adding seven million instead of 10 million in change would still be an adequate step in

070that direction and since the budget did not rely on the capital fund that was set up as an assigned fund the idea would be to unassign that fund and then repurpose it to um to the opeb fund but the next recommendation is that the language and all those resolutions i just showed you that contain guidelines for appropriate funding levels need to be rolled into a policy and when we were talking about the fund balance policy before this didn't come up and i don't think a proper review of the um the state of those committed funds had been done and the fact that the language had been confined to resolutions this whole time there's no language in anywhere else that supports what the appropriate fund funding levels should be so i've drafted a um a new

071version of a fund balance policy that carries the language from these three resolutions into policy it does not mean that that's what we have to do we need to talk through each of those points but we can do it in the context of a policy review the whole of the financial policy packets are going to be moving through the finance the administration and the finance committee uh in the next couple of months so this is a timely discovery and a timely opportunity to introduce those into policy using the systems that rehema helped to develop to have them circulate through the administration and make sure we get total body and then once those once the policy is updated we can work on clear practices for reviewing the data the data comes to us in the um

072annual the financial reports that are delivered to us end of november first part of december every year they include actuarial data that can help us make the decisions about what the appropriate funding levels should be what the actual dollar value should be and we could and we should be in the practice of passing a resolution setting the new fund balance levels in december of each year so that the administration can then use those that resolution as a an assumption for building their budgets each and every year next slide that's it that's my presentation so what what little do you want to take questions from people sure so why don't you monitor the participant list and see if there are any questions yep so far i don't see anything so far um oh uh commissioner clark

073yes let me unmute first well number one i'm glad to hear that there's been a meeting and you've come to a resolution because i agree 100 that there should be a policy and there should also be annual resolutions as as it relates to other post-employment benefits but what i also believe is we need to make sure that whatever policy that we put in place is not fixed in stone that it's not something that the majority of the board cannot you know it needs to give the majority of the board the right to vote it down to make changes based on um conditions because we know conditions change year after year after year and the original policy is roughly 12 years old we we we do need to have that discussion on what needs to be

074in the policy but um but i agree 100 we need policy and we need annual resolutions to uh determine the amount of set-aside thank you to that point i'll say to the group what i said on in our phone conversation imagine in a couple of years time the federal government passes a single-payer or medicaid medicare for all health care system suddenly oppab would be absolutely unnecessary a health a health insurance stabilization rate stabilization fund would be absolutely necessary unnecessary if the burden of these costs or ship were shifted to a a single-payer uh system um so yes there i i can imagine scenarios where uh appropriate levels of funding would change and that that's just the first example that came to my mind other questions so oh bishop powell yes cynthia i'm still um actually

075in i'm listening moana so what i need to understand and and i'd like to have superintendent and the cfo to chime in here um to [Music] where we are with this and is this something that you're asking for that we vote on tonight are we voting to our next business meeting um what what are you requesting at this point commissioner powell and then i need to hear um as i said from the superintendent and also from the cfo about i guess for lack of a better term the middle of the road on this and you know where where we need to be with it um so if i can just stop talking and just because i need more and quite frankly let me just say this if i were to vote on this tonight i

076would be voted on it in listening to what other people have to say about it because this is not an area that i'm still um clear about and um it wouldn't it would not be a vote where i have where i'm competent on so that's where you know i need to have the superintendent and the cfo to be able to um weigh in on this um to see to give me a better idea of the way in which i need to vote madam superintendent or or or there you are unmuted i'll start and then i'll i'll have um not cali i'm sorry carlene um we commissioner powell not and i commissioner powell carlene and i did have a good conversation um because we weren't on the same page when we started um i think for

077me um vice president elliot i just was concerned about the expediency with which we needed to move i just wanted to slow down um a little bit and i know uh carlene um agrees with me the friendly amendment was um landing on uh the seven million dollar figure but i again um i i just was a little concerned about the speed right in the in the rush so where are we with that are we is this something that we're voting on for this month or we know cynthia to your point uh the first thing i would like to do is make the substitution and get the the new language uh on the table and then if you like we can table it for our next board meeting we have essentially um cal could you put

078the language of the walk-on resolution up for folks um so that you can see um and and scroll down to the first resolved statement because this is where the this is where the change resides um so why don't i do it as a motion mr president i move that resolution 790 uh be su that this the language before us be substituted for resolution 790. all right you've made that motion is there a second to that motion i'll second it thank you commissioner uh clark uh i do see commissioner powell that commissioner adams has raised his hand so that can begin the discussion uh-huh okay uh commissioner adams um well he's there you are go ahead discussion is what i was hoping for um but you're talking about a walk-on it seemed like we're rushing through

079this and i really didn't even understand it really good the first time and now with the adjustment i still um commissioner adams i anticipate he's not prepared to vote tonight i did anticipate that but i just want to i want to make sure that if we table it that we are tabling the version that the superintendent the cfo and i are are all agreeable to so um i am amenable to a motion table but i'd like for us first to get this version into the pipeline all right okay so what what what this the first resolved statement says is that effective june 30th um in other words we have until the end of june to to take formal action but effective june 30th the assigned capital fund of seven million dollars would be unassigned and

080repurposed to add seven million dollars to the opal committed that is the change and that's what's been moved in second so commissioner powell i'm looking at um you know we're talking about june 30th 2020 right and that's the amount that was spent in 2020. do we have in projection of the amount that would have been spent june 2021 we'll know that for certain ones to be the kafir for uh 2021 which is generally around november so what this and you're right to focus on those numbers because ultimately we should be funding uh oppab something i mean with the when when and if this resolution passes our opeb funding level will be 17 million we'll still have 11 million dollar gap to close uh if n if there are no changes in our actual expenditures so

081we can reasonably expect it to be even higher than 28 million by the end of the year but we won't really have unaudited numbers until we see the kafir in november and that's really the time when we should be making these decisions for all of our fund balances is is when the kafir is fresh and new in our hands okay so we can expect to see another change come november december of 2021 commissioner powell i see commissioner malloy has had her hand raised yes thank you um and forgive me in advance for my simplicity here i'm not feeling well um so i just need clarity on on two things um so you're just asking for a substitution to the amount added to the opec fund that's right okay we're still putting this language right here

082in the first whereas and you've spoken to the administration and they are agreeable to to that change i'll ask the superintendent to weigh in again i don't want to speak for the administration um either madam superintendent or uh miss pierce you want to give assurances or or not as the case may be i apologize i had to step away for just a quick second so commissioner malloy if you'd ask again i'm sorry i was just uh well the first question that i asked was uh just for clarity about what was being um proposed here so it was the first which was answered already but in case you missed it i asked if this substitution um was to change the amount added to the oped fund my second question which was i guess more for you

083was um is the administration agreeable to that change so again i i it's a it's a friendly amendment that i i can certainly uh agree to i just was concerned about the the rush of the june 30th i wanted a little bit more time that's all so um commissioner powell um what about the june 30th date well that um we don't have to vote on it tonight if if delaying the vote gives people a higher level of comfort however the action really does have to happen when we um you know at the point where we're closing the books um for this fiscal year and if we don't move funds this year then we're going to have to try to make up the whole of the gap in november december when we consider this in in

084the context of the uh cafe so is there an issue with that what we have the uh of the funding that that uh um additional funding where we can do it at that time or am i not asking the right question well that's a valid question okay but but i would say we also have the funds now look at that resolution again the uh last year in response to the um the financial management report from our monitor seven million dollars was set aside in an assigned fund to pay for an upgrade to peoplesoft well when the budget was put together for 2122 the administration had chosen to pay for the whole of the peoplesoft upgrade with 2122 revenues that means that this unassigned fund is is no longer needed for the purpose it was created

085and is therefore available without changing anything else about our you know our budget uh or without without tapping into um any of our unassigned fund balances or anything this is this is funding that's poised and ready and available and not going to be used for any other purpose so cynthia i can see that you're still not ill at ease as is the superintendent so what i would ask is that we that we have a vote on the substitution because that is the motion on the floor and then if you're if you feel the need to move to table then at least we'll be tabling the right thing commissioner powell a point of order wouldn't it be you you or my colleagues or the parliamentary parliamentarian can correct me wrong wouldn't it be just simpler to

086withdraw 790 give this new one a new number and then table it because i i i i'm concerned that people in their uh the lack of better phrase confusion about this or lack of understanding about it are being asked to vote on something that they don't understand all i think that needs to be done is withdraw 790 put give a new number to this revised uh resolution and then move the table this way people would you know what i'm saying people wouldn't be forced to vote on amending a resolution that they some have indicated including commissioner adams uh vice president are not at a comfort level just yet so you put your new one before them now withdraw the old one put the new one before them now and then table it to give them

087the time to look at the new one well i don't think that that is going to that would help me mine is a learning issue and even if they put another policy another resolution i would still have the same issue so i don't have a problem with us amending this one and approving this one and then tabling uh the resolution itself not voting on it so that you know that a new resolution is not going to help me i just have to continue to listen to what's being said so that i can determine uh how i'm going to vote on it but that's based on my knowledge uh set and and not on necessarily a new resolution but but here's my point um and and i i i understand if that doesn't cover your concern

088here's my point we have a resolution anybody can write a resolution superintendent board member and put it before the body you are being asked right at this particular point and i know it's just an ass to approve the change in a resolution that hasn't even been approved by the board it's just a resolution so the cleanest way to do this is to withdraw 790 and just give this new one a new number and then table it we don't need to amend something that the body hasn't even approved that's what i'm saying commissioner powell does that make any sense to you or to our parliamentarian president or let me just offer i that's even that made like if you if if she's gonna withdraw which is her right right now because it hasn't been voted on

089it doesn't really make sense to put it in and then and then table it she should just withdraw it and reintroduce it in another meeting that's how i mean honestly if that if that's how that's going to work that's good you know so you're saying there's no need to even table so she withdraws the 790 and then uh distributes everybody has it now the current one and then that comes up at another meeting whenever she brings it up is that what you're saying don't even correct yeah yeah yeah that'd be fine the way you could mr president the way you've laid it out would be two or three steps instead of that that's that actually adds steps to the process so so what about steve's suggesting the parliamentarian suggestion that we just you just withdraw

090it which is what i suggest and then at another time i was suggesting you put it before the body now and then table but what steve is suggesting is just you know everybody's got it now and then in another meeting we vote on the fact that this would be a substitution has the same effect what you just said um it just changes this one paragraph so i would i would just assume that we just move forward we'll vote on that but i'm asking that i'm asking you not to ask me to withdraw it okay that's fine but i i guess steve what i would ask is and and you just correct me from wrong i don't know how we substitute something that the board hasn't even been approved it's simply i would think that she

091could just do that herself right i'm i'm changing my resolution that's the way it's always done you i mean you don't do a substitution for something that's passed right you want to do a substitution for something that's pending she's asking to make a friendly amendment to something that's already been tabled that's kind of changing the procedural piece of this so if she's not willing to withdraw it then you probably do need to vote to let her amend what's before the body and then somebody can move to table it again okay all right that's that's why [Music] um willa i'm looking i see commissioner malloy has raised her hand that too i just wanted to say i um would prefer that we go ahead and vote for the substitution just to simplify the process okay any

092other i'm looking at the participant list i don't see any other questions or comments commissioner powell so um there is a a motion before the body to substitute the language as described by commissioner powell from uh the substitute the current language she's drafted from 790 and place it in place of the language that's in 790 now um are there any other questions or comments before we go to vote on that uh resolution that motion i'm looking i don't see any all right so all those in favor of substituting the language as described by commissioner powell for the language that's already in 790. uh please indicate by making sure your video is on and saying i i i please colleagues make sure you articulate your voice folk my vote is nope okay just just the eyes

093at this particular point and then we'll get to the no votes so um madam clerk what have you recorded as the eyes i recorded uh i recorded up commissioner clark commissioner malloy um and commissioner uh powell um i haven't heard yet from i said i yeah okay thank you okay all right so uh in the nays i'm a nope thank you it seems madam clerk the eyes have it commissioner powell the language has been substituted uh is there going to be a motion to table i leave it to those who would desire so yeah let me uh make a motion to uh table uh resolution um 790 until we need to put a date on it correct is it for month next business meeting yes which is when um that is may 27th okay okay

094so there's a motion to table to may 22nd and it's been seconded by commissioner lebron motion table goes directly to a vote all those in favor of tabling the motion for the purpose of giving colleagues an opportunity to further examine the amendments proposed that have just been made the substitution has just been made indicated by saying hi hi any opposition seems the eyes haven't um uh if you all don't have and i'm pretty sure you do because i know commissioner clark the commissioner paul is that diligent if you don't have copies of the uh oh he froze julie resolution make sure you litigate or discuss all these issues at our meetings you earn every right to contact commissioner powell the superintendent have those discussions maybe you need he's van if you can hear us you're

095fr uh we can't hear you and you're frozen president white president white vice president elliot yeah so what's the next item on the agenda cal yeah that's uh um i do see uh uh commissioner clark has a question yes i do thank you uh vice president elliot my question is the fact that we have really really wrestled with this uh this resolution and i think we really need to to come to a conclusion should we really be looking at the policy and changing the policy so that it we get the flexibility we need because and commissioner powell can correct me but even if we made this move and we approve this we will still be below the hundred percent i mean i i i i can't figure out what we are what we're going to

096accomplish by doing it this way if our policies say has got to be at least one year no more than two years so it seems like we need to really take a look at that policy and see what adjustments the changes we can make to the policy so that uh we can move ahead as a cohesive unit because i would really love to see administration and board on the same page on this yeah i i totally agree with you commissioner clark but here's the thing the policy right now is silent to any such guidelines right now the the guidance is scattered across resolutions going back you know to 2011. so um the the work of the policy committee we need to bring this particular policy back um contemplate what guidelines have been already issued through

097resolution when it's in the subcommittee stage that is to say where the administration has their hands on it and is and is making recommendations um that would be the appropriate time for them to to um provide their expertise on what they think are appropriate levels and that those would be what gets codified into the next version of our policy uh rather than the guidance that currently exists in this in the various resolutions that exist let me let me interrupt and i apologize that my video got cut off but i i did want to say we've tabled this um what i was trying to say before i got cut off was that please take the time to have these very important discussions uh offline so that as i did hear commissioner clark say so that we

098can move on this issue one way or the other you have the period of time in which between which the now and the time that the thing will the resolution will be lifted from the table to have those discussions talk to commissioner powell talk to amongst yourselves talk to the superintendent so that when we have our meeting where it's lifted from the table we can have some conversation as commissioner clark and i know commissioner powell wants so that we can move on this once and for all so thank you commissioner powell for your diligence and your perseverance we'll get this resolved and addressed one way or the other uh and our and the intention is for that to be at our next meeting okay we we do have to move on colleagues uh we still

099have a very full agenda the next uh matter that we have to consider is the governance matters and that is going to be chaired by our commissioner malloy the gavel is yours thank you president white um again i just want to reiterate i'm really not feeling very well this evening so i'm going to try to make this as quick as possible so good evening to everybody dr mars small dr jallow my executive cabinet members fellow board members and those of you from the community who are listening in this evening um just to quickly summarize uh board governance deals directly with how we conduct ourselves and monitor our actions as board members and uh the governance committee oversees training and professional development to enhance our ability to perform our roles as commissioners additionally governance facilitates the

100orientation of our new members with our board staff and as a board we are additionally charged with supervising and evaluating board staff finally we are committed to organizing board retreats for ongoing professional development related to our interpersonal relationships and we will continue to take input and recommendations from our state monitor dr shelijala to develop adequate governance policy to help us better meet these district goals so first and foremost we're going to hold off on the approval of the minutes from our april 6th governance cow meeting until next tuesday's meeting on may 11th so as to give our board staff a bit more time to review and update these um so first on our agenda tonight is the board meeting reduction plan um as you know we we don't meet often enough i would love to

101see us meet even more frequently and um i'm pausing here for all of you to start laughing but i guess uh humor doesn't translate well via zoom so that did not go over as planned you can imagine what i'm like in the classroom with my corny jokes that was supposed to make you all laugh in all seriousness i'd like to help lead a board discussion on a proposal to reduce how often we um our current format and thanks for pulling that up kalia our current format has this meeting as a committee of the whole and for those of you watching this evening we often refer to our meeting structure by using the cal acronym which stands for committees or committee of the whole and so we're not talking about actual cow's heria bovines it just

102means that we all publicly meet as a group for our individual meetings uh we switched to this structure about one and a half years ago and i believe that was prior to my joining the board our current setup has this meeting four times a month on tuesday evenings and a business meeting every fourth thursday most of our meetings are anywhere from three to four hours in length tonight might be one of those meetings they often run longer if you consider the time that we spend in executive session afterwards or simply due to the presentations and ensuing discussions and they can be robust for sure under the state monitors academic plan there has been a call to reduce the number of meetings that we have so why are we considering this now after just having switched

103back uh one and a half years ago so we as a board are really trying to better align ourselves with board goals as well as align with the state monitors plan under the state monitors plan it was recommended that we make better use of board docs as a board just to be more efficient as well as to reduce the amount of executive sessions that we recess into if you know information can be provided in a more efficient manner additionally by considering a reduction of overall meetings we will be addressing overall commissioner awareness of committee action items and decisions so our board staff board officers and administration have helped to develop various proposals to address and i know some of you were asked about this how to best address two of the biggest concerns the first

104is of course how long our meetings are the duration of our meetings and then secondly the most efficient or best use of the time that we have when we're meeting together as a governing body so we have four proposals for the board to sort of mull over this evening and we certainly aren't bound to any of these um it's to help us get the discussion going the hope is that we can you know publicly discuss and then maybe perhaps come up with a media model that will better meet our collective needs so the first proposal let me jump right in um the first is the proposal to return to the committee of three structure um which of course precedes my tenure here um under this proposal our meeting structure or frequency would not change but

105would allow for a committee to be made up of a chairperson if it's if i'm understanding correctly and two additional commissioners um additional commissioners can attend and participate in discussion but they wouldn't be voting within the committee to bring forward resolutions to our uh business meetings um and kelly am i understanding that correctly or enter okay just making sure and of course they would be voting on those resolutions at the monthly business meeting um just they wouldn't be the ones bringing it forward um bringing the resolution forward and of course under this um under this proposal we would still live stream the meetings via facebook um and youtube the second proposal is to actually restructure the committees of the whole meaning that we would continue to meet as a whole group but reducing our meetings

106to three weeks per month instead of you know of the four weeks and then reinstating the quarterly meeting structure for most of our committees so governance hr cigr audit they would revert back to a quarterly meeting structure and then policy esa and finance would meet on a monthly basis still so um as as with the prio prior um proposal meetings would then continue to be streamed via facebook and youtube um and the next slide actually shows what this quarterly meeting schedule might look like so if you take a look up there you can see how the meetings might be mapped out for the year and so that's i'll let you i think all of you have access to this um powerpoint as well on board docs um the third proposal is actually a hybrid proposal

107of the first and second proposals so this would entail us meeting with the chairperson um or the committee chairperson and two additional commissioners meeting three times per month and then four meetings meeting quarterly and then three committees meeting monthly with non-committee members not being required to attend now kelly i do have a question on the other ones are we requiring non-committee members to attend or is that something that's kind of a given for all of the proposals so the first proposal which would have commissioners um go back to the committee of three non-committee members would not be required to attend those ones but of course if it was the second proposal where it was just a reduction it would where the committees would be meeting quarterly um persons would be required to attend because it

108would still be the committees of the whole but um clarification all right and so then the the final proposal actually entails a restructure of our finance committee meetings moving finance items from tuesdays to our monthly business meeting on a thursday night with monthly finance reports not to exceed 30 minutes and with the option of then adding longer finance items to the occasional special meetings agendas that we have um so finance would therefore meet on a bi-monthly basis as a committee of the whole um on tuesdays um but then have that um monthly update at our business meeting so um just to summarize um what are our next steps well i'm hoping that we can discuss these on some of these proposals or just get some of your thoughts and um we're not looking to make

109a decision this evening but we want to make a final decision by may 27th and then hopefully we can implement um the new proposal whatever we choose to do as a board by july 1st 2021 which is the start of the fiscal year 2122 um so what i'm going to do is just look at my participant screen here um do we have any oh i see some hands raised already um i see a commissioner adams go ahead so so for me um if we went to a three-person committee structure again um there would be there wouldn't be a need to be something in place that we got anything that the committee came up with in due time before the meeting um so that we can because there's a trust factor there's a trust factor and

110we're not just going to be um you bring it to the committee as a whole and then we um go make a vote on it um we're gonna vet it and everything else and so to keep us from having a waste of doing a lot of double um time on stuff um there should definitely be something in the policy that we any proposal we get in plenty time um to address it before we actually have a meeting thank you commissioner adams um next hand i see commissioner lebron yeah i was just so i'm open to the discussions around the restructuring and obviously i i submitted the proposal for the finance restructuring because i do think that we can work around that piece and that finance should be discussed anyway more really at the board business

111meeting because that's what we're really here to do is policy and finance first and foremost um but just i just thought about this like if we go back to the committee structure which is like one chair and two committee members we were expected to serve across three committees we're not reducing meetings really for ourselves i just want to put that out there um now we have the option of attending additional meetings so we may reduce our meetings maybe by one or two but i don't know if it actually really reduces that if it's three serving on three different committees i just wanna i don't know if anybody's done the calculations on that thank you commissioner lebron have we have we done any calculations on that or i i can't answer off the top of my

112head but i think oh oh go ahead commission vice president elliot i think what that does is allow people who may want to attend to attend um and and no not that that's not my point my point is is that when you have only three people excuse me maybe four as opposed to the seven you don't have all of the discussion around it which tends to lead to why we tend to have these long meetings so when you're reducing the number of people who are serving on the committee you're going to save time that way so we may be attending you know all these other meetings but for that particular day or that meeting you're not going to have everybody went in on the conversation and not saying that's not important but what i am

113saying is is that we're talking about reducing time and that's a way in which we can reduce a significant amount of time in my opinion thank you and i to answer the question to um commissioner malloy the in in addition to the time saved um for the discussion um additionally the option the hybrid version of the option also does reduce meetings to to to have people go i ideally if you go with the hybrid version you get the best of both worlds because you do reduce um by having things go quarterly for all the other meetings and then also having the um the the committee of three um the other point sorry um the other point is um is is the fact that right now because it's a committee of the whole which is essentially

114a board meeting administration and other staff um resource these meetings um in full because of the fact that um questions can come from all angles if it's a committee of three a small committee it would really only be the the subject matter um staff members who would be attending so for example a finance committee meeting of three would only really entail the cfo the budget staff um and maybe the grand staff depending on the topic agenda items and then esa would only have the academic staff um so we would also cut down on on those kinds of things additionally because we're not meeting as a whole we wouldn't have to have the special meeting portion of the agenda where we have resolutions we considered in the night you know in the meeting we have other

115large board meeting agenda items that are added um so that's another um time time saver as well as well thank you kellya thank you um i see more hands uh commissioner lebron go ahead yeah so i so i want to acknowledge vice president elliot like i get what you're saying because i remember the old structure because that's where when i first came in that was the structure we had but then going back to um commissioner adams point is that there is a lack of trust and so what used to happen before when that trust was not really there as new commissioners came on anyway we would end up having the same repetitive conversation so you had the conversation in the committee and then that conversation extended over into the board business meeting and then that

116extended those meetings because i know for myself i was not comfortable voting on certain things because it went through certain committees um so i and i i get that we're trying to find a balance but the reduction really is more for administration than for the board because again we all have to commit to three committees in order to have enough board members across all the different topics um but kylia i hear you on the on the hybrid and you know i know for myself i just want to put this out here whatever you all decide as a board for the the rest of the committees i still want to propose that finance is reduced to um every other month is for more in-depth conversations that are related to finance but that the finance conversation is

117moved over um end time to the board business meeting because i do think that regardless of the other topics that that is a way that that could be managed that way thank you commissioner lebron um vice president elliot is that a new hand it is um i just wanted to say that i'm more in favor of the three uh member um committee and i was um enlisted to commissioner lebron i was all somewhat taken aback you know um with regard to not having the finance committee meetings monthly but you're saying that we'll have that discussion more in the business meeting and is that what i'm hearing yeah because i was thinking that you know with the finance committee that's crucial i mean you know that's that's the one of the most crucial committees that we

118have and so um and if there was an additional meeting that i would um probably attend at this point um aside from if i'm not on that committee uh that would be a committee that i'll be interested in um attending so um i just wanted to say that my thought is to have the the three member um committee as opposed to having us meeting weekly with everybody um attended thank you vice president elliot um commissioner powell yeah i i would love for us to get to the place where we can be returned to three member committees but um what uh commissioner adams had to say and commissioner lebron as well really speaks to the fact that we're not ready for that um and um so for that reason um i'm more supporting or more leaning

119towards the second option which is the full committee's the whole but to reduce as many of those committees as possible to quarterly and i'm wondering if there's a way that we can respond to the administrative resourcing issue along the way i think it's wonderful that the superintendent attends every one of our committee meetings in the and i don't know if it's because our format requires it of her now but in the days when it was only three person committees we never saw the superintendent um we never saw deputy superintendents we only saw the members of the administration that were directly impacted by the agenda items so i think it's terrific that there's more engagement in every piece of work that the board is doing but i understand that that's exhausting for the administration especially if

120they are with us you know they've been to work at 7 30 8 o'clock in the morning maybe earlier if you're mike schmidt and you're still here at 11 o'clock at night because it's a board meeting night and you're expected to be back at central office at 7 30 the next morning that's that is a huge burden for the administration and i wonder if there is something that can be done um to react to that so that the administration doesn't have to bear such a heavy burden for for our inability to trust each other i i certainly appreciate that uh thank you commissioner powell um i see another hand commissioner lebron yeah no i actually want to agree with commissioner powell i think if even if we did the hybrid or we went with option

121one that even if it's a hybrid model that we just identify okay we're gonna be talking policy this month governance next and these are the staff members assigned to those topics so that it's not everybody um i would certainly support that and i just wanted just to clarify for vice president elliot and then hopefully um for the full board if you have any questions on this that the vision is that if finance is discussed in the board business meeting regardless of which avenue and path you all decide on may 27th to take for the restructuring of these meetings um we will all be together at the board business meeting and the administration and the superintendent um and then every other month we would meet as the committee whether that is committee of the whole or

122three board members but open to all the other board members to come in and ask questions to cover um finance conversations more in depth they would also be live streamed um and i think that's part of all of the proposals that regardless of how we as a board lands we are still very transparent um around these meetings and the topics that are being discussed by board members because in the past our committee meetings weren't live streamed uh through facebook or youtube um and so that is something that i know for myself is very important that we still do and i know you all feel that way because it made it onto this proposal and all of all three options are there but i just wanted to clarify that commissioner vice president elliot because you know

123i absolutely know that finance is one of the most critical pieces then you know how i am about it as well and i still think that we can streamline the finance committee again to every other month have more in-depth conversations about things that we may need to and align it with like the reports that we have coming in and being presented but there are months where we're just going over where we're at financially by the end of that month and those things can be done through the ford business meeting and everyone will be there anyway so it'll be a good opportunity for all of us to ask questions and just focus on that and other topics could be added to the regular board business meeting as we did yep thank you thank you thank you

124mr malloy i can't raise my hand because i'm a co-host um go ahead thank you very much um yeah i i would agree with the comments made by commissioner powell and commissioner lebron and i assume others probably find some agreement in every a little bit of what they said option number two is at this particular point makes sense to me a plus additional tweaking as suggested by commissioner lebron of finance incorporating into full meetings and then again as as it is clearly the superintendent's discretion um to the extent that our schedule is deemed to be you know somewhat burdensome on them uh it's obviously within her discretion to maybe limit or decide maybe she or her colleagues don't have to be at a particular meeting i do look back like commissioner powell and i reflect

125that there it was very unusual to have superintendent attend any of the committee meetings that's not to say that that was a good practice i do like the fact that our superintendent finds these meetings so important that she takes the time to attend uh but there may be a way in her own experience as a superintendent president and past where she thinks there's another way to to handle that but having said that i i do want leslie i do want you to know i i think it shows the priority that you place in the conversations that the board has so but if there's any way you can lessen the burden on yourself and and staff as we make changes i personally i would encourage you to do that thank you commissioner malloy thank you president

126white oh i see uh commissioner clark has his hand raised go ahead yes i just had a couple of observations that as a new mem relatively new member i think before because i i also agree with the hybrid model but i think we really need to look at what brought us to this point where all of our committee meetings are committed meetings of the whole because if we don't address that and i think uh commissioner adams is right on when he says it's a trust issue we need to address what brought us to this point and how we're going to um how we're going to change we need to look at what we're doing now and how can we change so that the meetings are are efficient meetings because if we rehash every meeting in

127the board meeting then we've accomplished nothing uh commissioner malloy thank you commissioner uh commission uh president yeah thanks again i apologize i can't formally raise my hand um to commissioner clark's point for folks who don't know um we have been meeting with uh in retreat format over the last probably year and a half not with the same uh person we currently are using a gentleman by the name of dr malik muhammad who is trying to help us figure out how do we increase the level of trust that the lack of trust is not unusual in in situations such as this but it's not tolerable and he asked a question during our retreat uh which is sort of a hypothetically said what will happen if you don't if you continue to accept the way it is

128and we would continue to have to meet in this perhaps less efficient format again commissioner clark asks well how did this happen and as commissioner adams has answered it's happened because we don't trust each other but i want the community to know that we are not accepting of the fact that we have to meet in this format because there's a lack of trust we understand that it's our responsibilities public officials to deal with that underlying issue so that we can meet in a way that is efficient and effective and best serves as citizens as community and that serves our own personal hang-ups so we are working on that and uh as james cleveland used to say please be patient with us god is not through with us yet thank you commission boy thank you for

129pointing that out president white thank you um so i guess just to summarize well i just wanted to give my own personal take on it i am really amenable to perhaps the second um proposal along with um what commissioner lebron has proposed for finance so if we could merge those two um that's kind of what my thinking is at the moment um but is there any other discussion on this or any other questions any good all right i did want to ask perhaps our um parliamentarian like what steps we would need to take to make this a reality if we were to make changes do we need to change our bylaws yeah this this really all does stem from the bylaws um the the law itself on the open meetings law uh simply states that

130you know you have to allow people to come and watch when deliberations are occurring or board business occurring it doesn't provide any guidelines really around speakers but your bylaws are very explicit to that which is why you currently in the committee the whole structure have to go into a special board meeting which i think also adds some some additional time to these meetings we i think it would be best to change the bylaws to allow for a committee structure that does not have to open in a full special board meeting um you know right now what you get with a full special board meeting is speakers really on any topic you you could limit those to either speakers specifically as to the committee topics or no speakers at all and reserve those for the board

131business meeting only those would be options you would have and to not allow other agenda items on in a general specialized agenda and should the administration be in a position where they they desperately need to get something done before the the new um before the next board business meeting they could ask for a special meeting as was done in the past and you know just get people together or then you call a special meeting at the beginning of the committee but not having a freestanding item um i think from my observations over the years that is what's adding time to these to the current committee structure i mean we we often get 40 minutes in and we're still not to the committees yet so that could be a way and that could all just be

132built into the bylaws that's that's really at the discretion um so you know it's kind of a combination of a governance and policy you know amending amending the bylaws is amending a policy that's a policy committee meeting um but it also happens to do really the subject matter is yours um conveniently i'm the liaison to both of those committees so you know i could kind of be the bridge between you and and really offer up some suggestions but what we need to get is a sense from the the will of of really you know almost a straw poll as to what we would present as far as that um and offer something up for for a vote and i think we would probably fast-track that and not necessarily wait um commissioner powell you're being chair

133of policy i'd have to ask for your um you know your thoughts on that but we could almost you know push that out of order a little bit and move it to the next policy committee should meet somewhere around the beginning of june um we could put it there and and run it through like that would be my my thought if we want to get this thing done before the end of the school year that that is still feasible um but that's probably the best way to do it um take that take a sense from the group here take a cut at something put it in front of everybody and then potentially get it in queue to get a vote um that's just my my thoughts on it uh june 1st that's the governance and

134policy meeting so it could be an agenda on perhaps either whatever yeah see thank you mr carling um commissioner paul i see your hand go ahead yeah i like that suggestion a lot um the first thing is to actually craft language and get it in front of folk um and we don't need we don't need to use the first second and third readings we can waive that because those are designed to get input primarily from the public and since the bylaws govern us and us alone we can we can probably agree to waive the policy adoption uh requirements uh once we once we're all comfortable with the language that's proposed thank you commissioner powell thank you commissioner um so our next steps on this would be then to get the language of this or is

135do we need to conduct more of a straw poll well i mean i yeah we i have to be guided by what you know we think the majority wants i i just casually here listening to everybody i'm hearing keep the committees but go more with the option two model for the moment um but then try and lean them down which would be where i would try and take out the special meeting agenda and speakers on any topic um you know the so maybe if you can get a sense from the group as to whether or not people want to allow speakers at all or if we want to limit them to only those committee um items which either is fine um or just continue let people speak about whatever they want and then and then

136we'll just work on taking um modifying kind of a new a new bullet point in the bylaws for committee meetings only and then you know just whatever it is we want we'll try and capture as best we can the language change all right would anyone like to to speak on that and voice their preference not seeing any hands oh go ahead commissioner powell sorry just to kick things off um i mean i'm all in favor of getting public input but um i think just so that we can get more work done i i'd like to confine pub public input to our business meetings to public hearings that are specifically designed for that purpose and community forums that again are designed specifically to reach out to the public thank you commissioner powell i'm i'm in agreement

137with that actually um is there anyone else who'd like to voice a preference speakers regarding speakers etc not seeing anybody okay i'll just go around and ask um commissioner clark do you have some thoughts on that well i also agree that it's important to have the public comment on issues i would tweak it a little though and i would say that if we're having um an audit meeting or a finance committee meeting and the public wanted to speak specifically to that issue that we should allow it thank you commissioner clark um vice president elliot do you have a preference for um speakers etc yeah i think it should be um um well it depends if we're going to do if we're doing the three committee um um three commissioner committees then it should be apropos

138to the committee is is my thought particularly since there's only gonna be you know three maybe you know some of the other commissioners are going to be um invite and i think that it should be a time limit uh maybe 30 minutes or something to that effect uh 15 minutes something um i'm not sure what the time limit should be on speakers but um you know if if we're doing esa meeting then that may not be the place to discuss anything that may be related to you know let's say community in a governmental relations for example so and then it may but um yeah it needs to be more uh subject focused uh if we're gonna have speakers there and it needs to be limited because these are work sessions so that's my thought thank

139you for for those thoughts um vice president um i'm just going to kind of go around here commissioner adams so um the fact that i think you said that we would be um live streaming these things that is a big plus to the community right there just being able to live they never had that option um i've been to a lot of them committee meetings and they wouldn't even give us you know a copy of the resolution or or anything we could we got no copies of nothing when i was sitting up in there it was really so i i would go with uh no speakers um they could listen and watch and be prepared to go to the main meeting the cow meeting the meeting of the hole and and bring it on but

140we're defeating our own purpose if we just start having um the speakers there um we really are and i'm i'm the one who supports community voice more than anybody that's my that's my life that's where i am but um no i don't i don't support that in in those um committee meet not in the three three person committee meeting we're gonna be live streaming and they can just watch and be prepared to get on the speaker's list at the committee of the whole that's what i got for you thank you commissioner uh commissioner lebron did you want to add to that yeah commission adams i appreciate you i just want to always upload that but um i just want to say i i actually do agree that we should if we're going to go back

141to committees that there are no speakers in committees but in that same notion that there's no administration resolutions and business trying to be done at a committee meeting um and when we we went to this structure initially the goal was not to have these special meetings it's just that the way that the language is we technically carl said a meeting is a meeting if it's more than four people in republic that's just what it is so we had we had the opportunity to conduct business but um in that same regard though i would just say that if it's just going to be a committee focus then it's only a committee focus and yes that we have other avenues to provide input and that may mean that we have to look at hot topics and potentially

142have public hearings and add additional public hearings as hot topics come up but i also just want to stress that that would also mean that administration in my opinion should not bring forth resolutions that we're voting or discussing beyond the board business meeting thank you commissioner um see i'm probably missing someone uh van okay president white yeah um i just gotta make sure i understand where we're going i didn't think in listening to sort of the end and the comments of board members i thought we weren't dumping the committee process we weren't reinstating the three-person committee process that we were going to go with this sort of a hybrid but reduce the time of the meetings now correct me if i'm wrong because i heard a lot of people say well yeah i don't i

143don't we don't need speakers in the three-person committee process i just want to point to clarification was that the consensus of the prior conversation i thought the consensus was keep the committee of the whole the way it is now try to figure out the trust issues and then maybe eventually get back to three-person committees but i hear people when they're talking about uh speakers they're talking about we're going back to three-person committees and i didn't think we were doing that just yet thank you for pointing that out i was wondering the same thing president right you need to so so vacation yeah so if we if we if what i heard was correct which is we're going to stick with what we're doing until we figure out the other issues through dr malik muhammad and

144so forth i i would support the continued uh opportunity for people to speak because remember now we went to this format of committees on the whole cow because we wanted to make sure everybody was hearing what everybody was hearing at the same time and if that's where the decisions are being made because if this is really working efficiently we shouldn't be repeating the conversations so we will have these committees as a whole maybe reduced more efficient these topics will come up we're deliberating on them because all of us are there the question should be asked why wouldn't the community be heard at that point in time as well because when the when when it comes out of committee and is referred to the full board the the cake has been baked supposedly we wouldn't be

145repeating the conversation at the full committee so if you're asking people to wait until the full committee or the full board meeting that's not going to be much of a legitimate opportunity for input because we would have pretty much deliberated over the issue at the cow so so you wouldn't want to have a process that says we're going to deliberate fully make a referral maybe positive a positive referral on a piece of of a resolution then you know two three weeks later it goes before the full board and if we're really being efficient we wouldn't repeat that whole conversation again and then the board then the person speaks and it's really too late or if it's not too late and the citizen has something significant to say then we gotta rehash the whole conversation again

146that wouldn't be efficient so thank you president white uh commissioner paul a question to get clarification on what president white just said uh van would if we limited the conversation to specifically to the agenda would you be more comfortable with that oh absolutely yeah yeah yeah so if it's a subject on esa person wants i'm sorry commissioner is it okay for me to respond yeah thank you uh so if someone comes to a committee meeting and and they're talking about a specific curriculum initiative a resolution that we're considering spending money on and they want to speak to that absolutely but yeah somebody couldn't just come in and speak to you know whatever they want you know uh bus transportation issues at a esa me or or um you know the color of the football team's

147jersey at an esa meeting so yeah it would have to be in my opinion yeah it would have to be topically driven that would only give you the opportunity to speak you couldn't just come and just go off on the district or in support of something of the district thank you president white um i see a commissioner adams oh so so i just need to say that um when we started talking about efficiency we need to be honest here we are we've been the most repeating group of people that i've ever heard talking we go over the same stuff over and over and over 1743 times um so we we have to be honest with that and so that's just i don't know for me that that's not that doesn't square it up that's uh

148did i interrupt him are you all okay um commissioner lebron yeah i just wanted to clarify that my comments were also i may have said three because that was the what commissioner adams had i came after him but what steve actually said our legal counsel was that we can amend the bylaws um so that we don't have speakers at committees whether we're committee of the whole or we're not we can actually amend the bylaws and president white was just mentioning that yeah we should keep the comments limited to the topic but i would like to do that then through the bylaws as well so i would support that if it's done through the bylaws because right now it's open for them to for people from the community to come and talk about all kinds of

149topics and they do that are not related to what we're discussing that night and that i also i in my opinion create some confusion when they're coming to have conversations about topics we're not even covering that night and then you know i have heard people give feedback like oh you didn't even discuss this part of you know what i could what my concern was and it was like it wasn't on the agenda to have the discussion that night and we can't just um stay away you know steer from the agenda because we were brought you know and then i just have to add like the conversation about deliberations happening decisions i would question you know this whole entire process anyway because i do think there are lots of decisions that are made sometimes by board

150members having private conversations and counting votes so like let's be honest about that too sometimes these conversations don't happen the way that they should happen both transparently and organically and very in the public uh forum and they're happening behind the scenes so i just want to share all that but again i just would support that the changes are made through amendments to the bylaws that if we have speakers that they're then related to the topics that are being covered or the committees that are being covered that day thank you commissioner lebron are there any other final comments on this before we move on commissioner malloy let me just add i agree with what commissioner lebron just said in terms of an amendment being made to specifically say that these are the areas that could be

151covered because i think that makes it neat and clean but i also wanted to remark that by way of example the the conversation we had about the opeb today um that was good government you know commissioner malloy has commissioner powell has been speaking to people about it speaking to the superintendent speaking to board colleagues but that no decision was made as obviously people could see tonight she had extensive conversation but still it had to be put off because people needed more time to deliberate and and we had an extensive conversation in open air in the in the public so i think i think people should understand that you know government isn't just what you see on tv people understand that there are conversations that have to take place offline but then you you come before

152the full public you have those conversations and if you can't reach a decision you put it off again which is what we've done here so i think today is a good example of how it's a hybrid you talk to your calories because that's that's what you're paid and that's what you're sworn enough to do to work with people online and offline you come back and you have some more conversation i think this was our early discussions uh i think we're a good example of that thank you president white so justin just to quickly summarize maybe next tests um i'm wondering uh acting counsel if acting counsel perhaps draft something for us so that we can look through it and um i don't know how soon that you could potentially have that for us steve we're

153talking about bringing it to the next policy committee which would be i think you said june 1st which is very doable um it might be helpful if just just to get a sense right now no no commitment to if you i mean obviously the policy has to be voted upon officially and if it's a modification of bylaws it's going to need to be by you know five um but kelly you raised your hand is it something i should consider before i keep going yes i only had one one small point which is the reason why we put it for the may 27th consideration is because of the um the schedule of and the and the school calendar i do have a few a little bit of concern whatever decision is made we'll need to make

154sure that we ratify it in the in the in the in the calendar and i know that uh we are under a time push i do have a question for um superintendent meyer small or anyone from the administration regarding what's our deadline for making sure we have those dates in um to make sure those are printed or available for for parents and families who are looking for dates yeah good call callia thank you um superintendent meyer small did you want to comment on that i'm actually going to ask medisol if she could come on because it would be through communications as far you're saying as far as publishing the calendar yes yes and i'm making that available i don't know when we have to have that by okay i don't know ready seoul are you

155there there she is good evening commissioners uh thank you superintendent meyer small i will have to get with my team we are now getting the quotes for next year's calendar and so i can give you a better sense of a date kalia but not right now okay um well i mean i could turn this thing around you know in a couple days that's that's it's not a matter of the of the product and we could you know consider it even further out of order at whatever if if that's what drives the decision i i'm certainly um flexible for for everybody it would be helpful if i knew it what i was drafting not without again without committing to an endorsement that you're going to support a bylaw change if we had a sense maybe just

156some hands or a straw poll or or something are we going to go down to three or are we gonna keep committee the whole like just we can we can start process of elimination and um just to interrupt sorry about that um i see that uh commissioner powell's hand is up and just prior to doing what you're asking for if i wanted to know if commissioner powell had something else to add well it was somewhat related to the calendar question and i can close it bring it back around to what steve was talking about um we do have a policy cut subcommittee that meet every two weeks that would be an opportunity for us to um kind of um look over that first draft that uh that steve might come up with um and i

157would just suggest the fewest possible changes in um is the best way to get to five that is to say um if if there are if there are five hands that say yes we need to stay committed to the hall well there we have it if there are five hands that say um speakers but only on committee topics that's the the narrowest change that i can frame into words and see if we get movement on that and and that will give steve the guidance he needs thank you commissioner powell and also whenever you meet for that planning meeting for policy um please invite me um work together thank you thanks so um steve if did you want to ask everyone or should we just go around and there were two items that that we're looking

158for here i guess i would say there's there's maybe three um because we need to know what the what what people think is you you offered a couple of opportunities in in the um scheduling i think particularly it was option two maybe that talked about when they would get or maybe option three whichever one i'm sorry that talked about what when the committees would meet whether you know who who gets quarterly who gets so because that really does need to be put into the bylaws because right now they list them all out as equal meetings um so my first round of questions for everybody is is everybody comfortable let me just ask is is it up and down do you want to stay as a committee of the whole and and if i can get

159hands or or or something um you know that that would be okay so i got three i got four uh i can't see commissioner lebron i can't see president white i can't i can't raise my hand but um i just want to see everybody else just physically raising their hand okay commissioner that's an intentional no so i'm sorry sophia just had a little accident behind me oh okay yeah so give me one quick second make sure she's okay okay uh vice president elliott are you you are uh no on the sticking with the whole you'd rather go to three is that am i reading right okay all right uh well we have we have five um even without commissioner lebron so for the moment um we'll move in that direction um commissioner lebron the question

160was going down to three or staying with with you know the whole committee and we have fives for so far that say stay with the whole i was curious where you were on that honestly i think i could go either way um as long as like there's some clear like boundaries and directions for either side i think for me um my book is obviously the finance piece going doing that hybrid portion for finance so we can also get a vote on a straw poll on that because i know that commissioner powell listed a few different things but i don't know if i heard her mention that no that's fine yeah i'm trying i'm trying my best to keep but i'll i'll add that in with the next question or the next one so um allowing

161speakers and i will put the caveat but limiting them just to the committee agenda items or no no speakers at all so let me let me start with who who wants to allow speakers but on a limited basis if i could see i see commissioner powell commissioner clark uh president white commissioner molloy commissioner lebron all right so two knows from commissioner adams and vice president elliot but we have five on that point okay that is helpful um and then if we go to a modified structure um kelly could you put up the what we had just for a minute and i have to come back to the screen to see everybody okay so this this proposal two would be uh no two is great that's what i was looking for just that modified because if

162we're going to go to communities in the whole we really need to think about in order to make any progress we need to do something like this i think so um all right let me get let me get back to the main screen so i can see people um my question is is this if do people want to go with option two but also a little twist on it and that financially meets every other month and then reports out to the main board to other the alternating months is that is that good i see commissioner malloy commissioner clark mr lebron uh all right president white uh commissioner powell how do you feel about that suggestion if if the cfo is okay with us with that i mean my concern is uh being able to see

163the reports before we talk about them and so long as there's a mechanism for asking our questions before before we're asked to approve the report i'm okay with that all right steve i just want to clarify you would all be asking questions at the board business meeting and you would get the you know the packet with the resolutions and all that beforehand um the way that we do now for the board business meeting so i just want to be clear that moving finance every other month to the board business meeting does not eliminate the entire opportunity it just focuses the conversation at the board business meeting before we actually were to vote on it so it just happened right then and there every other month okay all right so here here's here's what here's what

164i think i see from the straw poll we're going to go with um committees of the hole but on the modified schedule that's option two including finance going once every other month we're going to limit speakers to just committee agenda items we're going to i'll amend the bylaws to reflect that we're not going to have an opening in a special meeting format first and we will always have it for now everything's live stream because we're still in that format but even when we return to in-person meetings if we live stream the general business meeting people want to live stream the committee meetings i think i've captured the um which we had started to do and then cope would shut us down but i remember we did have a plan to start televising even the committee

165meetings when they were in the old structure so okay i i think i have it i will work on some language and to commissioner powell's suggestion i will try and uh we'll have it ready for um the next time we meet in the subcommittee um and then i will uh and then we'll figure out timing based on the calendar needs okay thank you everybody thank you mr carling all right um so just moving on to our next agenda item i just wanted to ask um perhaps kalia can help here um you know our next item is about our board polling tool uh and there's a whole presentation that i could go through um but with respect to time um is this something that that we absolutely need to discuss this evening or can this is

166this something that we can do by having people look over the poll results and then maybe proposing some changes to maybe uh the questions that we're asking one another um i i could go through each one with you and talk about it but i'm wondering just you have a full policy meeting ahead of us as well would anyone be opposed if we we do it that way anyone absolutely absolutely not no objection keeping energy including like 10 times right and being more accurate um yeah because this will take at least another 30 minutes probably to talk about and discuss so i would encourage everyone to look on board docs at the presentation just to see the results of the polling that we've been conducting since last november um and just look carefully through that and

167look at some of the questions um it's really clearly laid out in the presentation um and so if you could maybe perhaps uh email me or talia just get back to to us about maybe proposed changes to our poll um i think that we just have um different polling tools that we can that we can use um and just you know we have to think about what are we trying to get at by asking these questions and if you think that there are questions that should replace the ones that we have on our current tool please let me know and we will circle back up on this um later because i don't think that there's any there's not a pressing need right now to continue this conversation is anyone are we good commissioner malloy i

168just want to make sure that when i was cheering the meetings that i got all tens that's what i want to look for in the in the presentation that's all i'm looking for [Music] nice president all right so um i guess we will not table sorry about that commissioner malloy she wasn't joking um i guess moving on uh so we'll discuss this very soon um i think that our next i'm sorry let's see gotta get to my next item here um that's gonna take about this just saved us about 30 minutes of time so that's uh wonderful all right so just the next items or the final items i would say were just um quick updates so i wanted to give you uh the first update is just regarding the board monitor recommendation for the

169creation of comprehensive diversity anti-bias and anti-racism training as part of the onboarding of our new board members and current board members um so we're researching and compiling information from various programs and we're hoping to have a more comprehensive list of vetted programs by our next governance meeting so i will make sure to disseminate these a week or so prior to our next governance meeting so that we can discuss as a committee and then hopefully finalize or make a selection as a group by july so that we can prepare to add this um to our board training and our professional development so just a quick update on that and i will be getting back to you very shortly on that item um finally our well our next item relates to board retreats and just as president

170white reported earlier in the evening we've just completed our second board retreat with dr malik mohammed um and we're in the process of scheduling a third retreat with him which will most likely take place in june um just as we continue to work on our board interpersonal relations and trust issues so we're going to continue to work on making progress in this area using restorative principles and we will have of course more information to update you on shortly all right our final agenda item is just an update on upcoming bylaws and changes regarding a potential return to in-person meetings as well as the roles and responsibilities of our board officers so here to kind of take over at this point um is general acting general counsel steve carling um if you could just report on

171this for us please steve thank you sure just a couple of updates from last time everybody spoke there there was a um a general consensus about you know some desire to return to in person um we brought that back and kind of discussed it with some of the staff that are in charge of safety and and uh they were able to provide me with a lot of guidance and and i've you know verified this coming out of the governor's office um really the guidance is that while you know while they're encouraging schools to reopen for in-person learning they are very strongly encouraging adults to hold meetings remotely to the extent um that it doesn't interfere in in the business and to the extent the technology is available um the guidance for the states that if

172the staff or the board had to meet in person they have to maintain six feet distance and wear masks at all times um that is not relaxed at this point um and and to the extent that there is some allowance for people who are vaccinated when everyone's vaccinated in the same space their masks off um we would have to know that everybody in the room is um currently i can tell you that outside um the board is certainly not alone in meeting remotely um the the the staff point out to me that um almost all school-based staff meetings are occurring via zoom um central office meetings are occurring via zoom and so that's consistent with the regulations that we're getting um and that we do in fact the district's technology is very strong in in

173allowing um you know the full public access and opportunities to speak um so given that if the board did even if just the board came back and sat in one room and that was televised out we would have to allow people the opportunity to come in um in which case you know we would have some issues of safety and security potentially but more importantly the board members would all have to be masked while speaking and i'm not sure the practical um you know i don't know how how well that's going to be understood but um those are just some updates from from digging much deeper into the guidance um and it comes right out of the um the the governor's office as well as the cdc there's there's a mix of interesting articles and they're

174all relatively recent um so you know i'm happy to share what it was we have but i just want to give you all an update on that the governor's orders continued um through our next board meeting through may 27th so um we're you know we have a little bit of time to keep keep walking with this um but i think that it certainly bears consideration as the new guidance if it makes sense to go back until such time as you know the district is compelled to go back at this point it's allowable to continue in the current method thank you mr crowley um and then just uh regarding the other agenda item just the uh so cynthia's hand is up is that on this topic oh it just went down president elliot i'm sorry did

175you no no i just didn't want to um um it may be the next agenda item with regard to the role of the vice president is that on the was that not on the agenda that's what it was regarding i wasn't sure though uh steve was going to provide us more information on that okay so is that where we are now we're waiting for steve to provide more information if he's able to i i don't know anything about this oh so it's not i thought it was going to be on the agenda i thought i saw it on the agenda yeah i just need more clarification steve were you going to be presenting on that um i certainly can yep um so the the currently in the bylaws the role of vice president is you

176know is limited to um you know filling in when the president isn't available but it's it's rather general um under under the in in the education law the the duties and responsibilities of a president are more clearly defined and and required in fact that you have to have a president you do not have to have a president under education law but the district has chosen to have one um from her years of experience and in the vice president's chair vice president elliot has shared that she believes more that can be done by the vice president and so she and i had a conversation about this and some some thoughts that that kind of occurred to me and and i really am just throwing these out for for discussion points no you know no no endorsement

177or or uh direction but if you were to try and expand you know expand upon it you you might want to specifically allow the vice president to have signing authority in the in the um situation where the president isn't available um or to allow some um perhaps board staff um oversight or you know those could be areas where you could kind of build upon what's there right now um you know certainly it's clear that if the president is available for meetings the the vice president steps in and becomes the chair um but those would be the areas where you you could kind of expand on it if that's what you want to explore as a group but again it's you know consensus and and five votes because it's a by-law i'm thinking also steve that

178um um the vice president could also share some of the supervisor responsibilities of the board staff uh you know we've got the uh audit we've got uh um uh the the the regular board staff we have um but and we've outsourced the um the claims department but i'm thinking that it just seems to me that uh it may be um [Music] a lot for um uh one person to assume i think that i'm i'm not sure um if we have really provided the kind of uh oversight um to even our board staff um because you know it it is um i think it's a it's a lot i think we can look at you know how we can even structure um [Music] the um the staff differently reporting differently i i just so that the

179president's role is not burdened and so that it's just it's more than just the president who has um this um um responsibility um and i think that um there probably needs to be two people just to be able to reflect have some conversations you know um you know both the president and the vice president are in the board offices meeting i just think that the role of the president uh in other areas where the president is involved um that the vice president rogue can assume some of those responsibilities now have a cell that i have not worked all of that out but um it just seems to me that we need to have i think some checks and balances meaning that you know having an additional person in terms of oversight of the board staff

180and uh signature authority and you know i'm really just open to have and maybe we can't do it tonight but to just have some conversation about what other role should that um should the should the position uh be responsible for uh it would seem to me that the position of vice president could be used uh much more um more involved in some of the the day-to-day operations of the board so um i'm not all sure what that looks like because i'm not talking about specifically for me i'm talking about the position and so um i'll leave that at this uh for for right here for the time being and maybe have some discussion in the future thank you vice president elliot thank you for bringing that up all right um so i guess we'll revisit

181that at some point um once we have more information um so i guess that concludes our discussion items for governance this evening um so just want to say thank you to everyone our next governance meeting is going to be june 1st and so now i passed the gavel well do i pass it back to president white or write over to commissioner powell for policy dan we don't hear you you're muted thanks uh commissioner powell um whatever works for the body works best for me i i do want to say though that uh commissioner malloy thank you for soldiering through uh your committee meeting i know you weren't feeling well and we appreciate the time that you took to get us through that important agenda so um having said that uh obviously commissioner powell the uh

182the gavel is yours i would ask that uh you appreciate the fact that you are now a victim of uh of a behind the uh uh or behind our time is now 8 22. we were supposed to be done with your agenda i think by eight i think is what the agenda says but but i know you'll do your best to get us through thank you the cable is yours okay thanks well the best way i know to keep us on track is to turn things over to rahima who uh you know she takes very careful notes and keeps us on track during subcommittee so um rahima do you want to start us off with the first agenda item i gotta pull it up on board docs just good evening everyone um so our first

183agenda item is just a quick update on the policy sub com excuse me the policy manual update subcommittee so that committee continues to meet bi-weekly and we are currently reviewing the school's um policies and so we've kind of done a hybrid um between part one and part two and um all individuals have been uh in the midst of reviewing their policies and forwarding that out so that um committee continues on and on schedule so steve uh i think you're gonna talk about a couple of nisba updates and this but provided us a big packet of updates are you talking about the the ones that you sent me to review for whether to make any changes to our existing policies so there are actual two um packets i sent you that first one yes from the

184workshop and then there was a second for just in the regular quarterly installment right um uh of there i i found three that are potential um i'm planning to meet with the executive cabinet about them on tuesday so i'll be ready to bring forward next month a lot of it was really updating policies to include to ensure that they're inclusive of remote learning um we we were already ahead of the curve on that we there had been policy updates already um we had adopted formally some of the nisba policies on remote learning um including um they were concerned about people's code of conduct being reflective of the ability to discipline for um you know students acting up online but we we do have that covered in a couple of different places so a lot of

185it is not necessary at this point i certainly don't think it's it's urgent there are a couple areas where we could finesse what we have and maybe we'll take it either out a turn or just wait till it comes in turn because it's not you know critical but i'm gonna ask the administration for their thoughts on the three primary areas that i found um and we'll get back to it on uh jude one sounds good rohima tell us where we're at with all the special ed committee meet uh special ed policies so um yes i was just speaking about the policy update process we have reviewed um in the initial committee and through cabinet all of the special ed um policies the cpac group did submit some recommendations and questions related to part three which

186was forwarded to special education department for some feedback and written feedback and so we're in communication with them to provide that and then we will invite um representatives from that group to the policy committee meeting to discuss and then as i updated already all of the school part policies um continue and currently on track so uh special ed packet one and two are have been through cabinet and when and no no need to revisit in subcommittee um are all of those policies available on board docs um and have they and they've all been um provide provided by email or by board docs to uh the members of this committee so um my my funds yes please i'm sorry to interject for a moment yes all of what you've said is accurate we will be having

187a presentation shortly um to address all of those policies which have been which are posted on board docs and have also been shared with all of the commissioners um prior to my doing that steve is gonna quickly review the drug free policy okay good i just so i took things out of out of order okay in that case i'll turn it over to you to keep us on track steve that would be you for the drug of free policy i'm really talking far more than i like um during this particular evening but uh let me take us quickly quickly through we already talked about the fact that there's been modification to the labor law to prohibit us from considering the use the legal use of um cannabis or or any uh cannabis derivatives outside of

188work um so i built that into the policy down here we will take it out of our panel for testing except to the extent that it's required under a federal law because the federal government still classifies this as as an illegal substance so um consistent with commissioner clarke's requests and a few other nods at the time we specifically listed those positions that would not be exempted from a marijuana test either pre-employment or during employment and they and they are just they are these they are for the moment it says including but not limited to but these are the only ones at this moment we just wanted to leave a little flexibility in case a new class came up that we don't have at the moment um and before it catches up with us many policy

189but this is how it reads so we've tried to we've tried to capture both areas of concerns we've restricted it out of the pre-employment for everybody else so we don't even see it there's no temptation and for everybody going forward anybody else it would be just this just this group of people so anybody who's coming on board would know that this is something they're going to be tested for if they're applying for one of these specifically enumerated titles i hope that uh again it only applies to pre-employment drug testing any employee suspected being under the influence of any drug you know including marijuana while at work we can still subject to drug testing um and if we find it we can discipline for it the same as if it was alcohol which is also a

190legal substance but not allowable at work so that's where we that's where we are trying to make it as easy as possible so any questions let me know okay so um bringing this back with these changes was essentially a speed bump process of getting this one [Music] through so what i'd like to do is call for a vote to have it released from policy committee i have a motion i'll move it okay i have a motion you have a second i see commissioner malloy has come back green are you seconding it second okay so all in favor aye all right see one two three four five uh is ricardo uh ricardo's and i if i can lip read and i think so i think that's unanimous right rhema yes i've recorded that okay all right

191that takes care of that we will be um will this be the first one that gets um the uh first second and third reading uh at the board level will our pilot will that policy have passed by then uh it'll be close all right i'll turn the floor back over to steve if you're ready to present those special ed packets that's not me that's that's for him oh that yeah that will actually be myself with the um support of um special education council yolanda osama wade and jean mcnamara who is the compliance director for special education so i will start the presentation okay so just to kind of um start and remind people where we are um in this process so this was a graphic that i shared when we originally discussed the policy manual

192review process so we have successfully gone through subcommittee district administration and community input as well as the second review by subcommittee for special education policies included in part one and part two um we also take it back to the policy cal and now we are going over here now and then we'll be discussing uh moving it out of policy into full board so some of the individuals who have contributed to the process of reviewing these policies it would be commissioner powell as the policy chairperson um other commissioners have joined in the meeting superintendent dr myers smalls has joined us occasionally executive cabinet had the opportunity to review um all policies general counsel participates in our um subcommittee meetings um chief counsel for special education reviewed all of the policies to ensure compliance with any updated

193federal states um education well mandates um again she did that in collaboration with mr mcnamara the special education compliance director cpac was given the opportunity to weigh in on all policies and provide recommendations and updates as well as attend the meetings and then i also um attend all policy subcommittee meetings so the process has been just to reiterate that the um first level of review occurred special education department um led by mr mcnamara and ms osama wade um those recommendations were then forwarded to the entire policy subcommittee for review in advance of our meetings and then mr mcnamara joined all policy subcommittee meetings to walk us through each and every one of those policies individually with all changes and enough to oblige us and answer all of the questions that we had related to those

194changes after that process was completed it was sent out to both cpac and executive cabinet um giving proceeding providing 30-day review window for each section of those policies um after they review we um those policies are returned to the subcommittee and so we would then um continue uh in that review process subcommittee discussed any recommendations that were provided by cpac and cabinet um and we also um excuse me mr mcnamara and ms assange wade provide written feedback to questions presented by cpac in relation to the special education policies that we've been reviewing they were all adopted in february 2012 and um since that time no further updates and changes have been made and so um it was quite a lift for uh mississaugaway to mr mcnamara to go ahead and bring those into alignment so

195i really want to take the opportunity to thank them for all of their hard work um and effort where that was um applied policies were updated to use plain language as appropriate understanding that um some portions were lifted directly from regulations and so we made minimal changes there i'm going to turn it over now to um jeannie yolanda to go through just some of the significant changes to those policies again um commissioners you were provided the policies um about a week or two ago just to have review time um and i'm gonna note that um our original plan included the review of policy 4205 and 4206 but once we were in committee it was realized that both of those policies apply outside of special education into the general education population and because they're pre um

196special education services and so those will return to the schools section and will be reviewed later just so you're hearing why there's a jump in numbers so um gina yolanda if you'd like to go ahead well thank you everybody for having us tonight um we will be brief we'll go through uh just really the major changes to each of the policies and uh yolanda and i will just switch uh off back and forth the uh first policy that we're looking at is uh 4200 special education dis plan um the the main part of this that was changed they were again minimal changes specifically to uh meeting the state's guidelines we were removing some wording uh regarding the space plan for the district um being developed by boces and that is no longer a requirement based

197uh it's not developed by boces it's the districts and then the changes to uh this piece were very minimal again putting in here that we were going to not only develop a plan but uh implemented and monitor the plan and i believe this plan was submitted to the uh board at a previous meeting and it was approved and adopted for the next one yolanda you're muted sorry about that can you hear me now yes okay uh i just want to echo gene sentiments in uh thanking uh everyone for having us here it's certainly an honor and a pleasure to serve um for policy 4201 this one involves parent participation uh and it's really all about the aspects of informed consent under the idea and what we found in this policy was that there were several

198areas where the policy really needed to specify when consent needed to be in writing which is pretty much all the time so we um modified various portions of that policy to reflect that the um informed consent must be informed written consent we also in since covid there's been a development and there was a change in the regulation to allow for parents to provide consent electronically and so we updated the policy to reflect that portion uh of the regulation that changed and so that was aligned um and um that's pretty much it the rest was formatting in 4201. okay um 4202 really references it just talks about um what a student definition what a student with a disability means some reporting requirements and uh information on the least restrictive environment uh the changes were duplicate statements

199regarding again the space plan and you're going to see that in a couple of the policies where we removed the duplication because we actually have a policy that deals with the space plan so um we've removed the duplication for that plan uh which is covered and i don't have the policy number but we'll see it as it comes up and that's all that the changes were for so in 4203 uh this is the policy that requires the board to authorize and direct the superintendent of schools to establish and maintain administrative practices and procedures consistent with state policies for things like child fine um cse and cpsc convocations faith data and data maintenance and privacy and in this policy all we did was change some formatting and we also removed references to the ed law from

200the main body that were sandwiched in in various places and placed them in the reference section for reader friendliness was that for 4203 okay 4204 is the policy for the allocation of space where we made the changes and removed it uh the wording in here again um removes the plan being designed by the boces and that's what it used to be so uh now it just states that the allocation of space is there for students with disability within a district for at least restrictive and that it should be that there should be stability and continuity for the programs within the district to meet their needs that was the only change to that policy so in 4207 which is the policy concerning the board's duties to appoint the committee on special education and that policy outlines

201the membership panel that has to exist on a csc team and all we did was change the title we had the title director for the director of special education where it stated that the director of special education shall be responsible to the superintendent for establishing administrative practices and procedures for training all district personnel responsible for carrying out the provisions of part 200 and so we changed that title to the chief and or executive director of special education changing that from director okay policy 4208 is the appointment and the training in the committee on special education and preschool special education basically this kind of outlines the membership within the committees and the change here was to clarify and update mandated committee members uh specifically around the general education teacher being of the child or a general

202education teacher that could be potential for a child that hasn't been classified yet attending the meeting also the change was to remove the mandated parent member rep we used to have to have a parent on every cse meeting that representative had been removed in the regulations and it is there if a parent would like a parent rep they just have to request that parent member to be there and they have to give it to us uh 72 hours prior to the cse and that is all of the changes for that policy and so in policy 4209 which covers the development and provisions of students ieps in that one we noticed we found and also checking against the regulation but it's certainly glaring to us that there was an omission of for their iep services especially

203where behavior is an issue of course so we inserted behavioral the word behavioral wherever appropriate as well as changing uh the some of the we just qualified the least restrictive environment to explain and make a little bit more reader and user friendly to explain that that means that we try to educate students with disabilities with their general education peers wherever appropriate and then we also change some formatting okay is the implementation of the individualized education programs um the the only change here was specific to adding a regulatory requirement the language that we need signed parental consent to initiate special education services so after the committee decides that a child should receive services we cannot begin to implement those services until a parent gives us signed consent to do so and that was missing in this

204one that was the only change to um this policy i believe let me just see sign consent correct yes okay so in 4211 we have that we only changed um some formatting um but in going back over it uh rahima if you know you might want to just change this um presentation i did notice that we also included or qualified the definition of the least restrictive environment parenthetically to um to provide for parents choice or parent election in accordance with our managed choice policy number that is because the least restrictive environment definition includes the requirement that the site for the child's education be as close as possible to the student's home however parents we as we know may elect other locations or other sites for their children's schooling and that may not necessarily be the

205site that's closest to the student's home so we just wanted to make sure that we parentally parenthetically qualified that and other than that we did some formatting changes okay um 4212 is grouping students with disabilities by similarity of needs the only changes we really made were a little bit more than formatting there should have been areas considered for academic achievement functional performance social development was moved it was grouped with the academic line but it is a separate uh grouping so it should say academic social development physical development and management needs and that was the only other the only change to this one and then the last one in part two here is the esy services which is policy 42 13 and we updated that to align with current regulation so we checked current regulation we

206made sure that the profile of students because the regulation does provide for particular profiles for students with disabilities that must be considered for esy services so we updated we made sure that all of those areas were included in the policy and we also added the requirement per regulation that the committee include in its recommendation a statement of the reasons for why an esy recommendation as part of the iep was being recommended and then we did some formatting changes there too okay in 4214 which really discusses uh declassification of students with disabilities and then graduating and aging out the declassification information was not changed the language changed under graduating and aging students specifically because of the type of diplomas when the policy was written there's no longer an iep diploma so we had to remove that

207and had to have it reflective of the diplomas required by the state as well as let me see the requirement that states a student with a disability can remain in school until the uh the end of the school year in which that student turns 21 and the other parts were formatting and then in policy 4215 on transition services we made no changes we found it to be appropriate that is all of them that was pretty quick and brilliantly done you can all see that if we were to like actually show you track changes on all of those policies we'd be here till midnight what i'd like to do having thanked our administrative support profoundly for that overview is to remind you all that passing this out of committee um is not the end of the

208story we'll still have we still have to present it to the public in um our multi-stage process so if if you have if you feel that you haven't really studied these policies as much as you would like i would submit to you that you can trust the work of the administration here and then verify after it leaves committee by posting any questions you have to rehema who will direct them to appropriate staff to get to get an answer or if if as a policy it rings false for you uh we can raise those at future uh meetings when it's on the agenda as a discussion item does that sound fair to everyone does anyone have any burning questions right now about a particular policy i see the superintendent's hand is up thank you commissioner powell

209it's not about a particular policy i just want to commend the process this is very comprehensive it is very thorough it gets multiple stakeholders involved you know starting with the individuals who are most expert or knowledgeable in the area but then you you do a circle around so i just wanted to commend you and the committee for really really good work and i'll direct uh the vast majority of that to rahima who proposed the process and who has been regular drill sergeant about getting people to stick to the process and that's the hardest part to be honest with getting people to uh to stay on track and on timetable anybody let me just real briefly throw in that yolanda and jean this is the the work was phenomenal i mean the thoroughness the consideration the

210efficiency we have been trying to get these policies looked at and revised for years and nobody's ever been able to take the time it's just i think it was too daunting it just the sheer volume and you guys got us back within regs and we've been out we and you know i think we and so um you know great job both of you really appreciate it thank you thank you thanks steve thank you everyone thank you rahima you did make it uh very easy to collect all of this information and get it back to everyone so i appreciate that agreed i just want to ask you john adding to what said um gene and yolanda you um set a a standard for which the rest of the organization is obliged to follow [Laughter] oh thank

211you high expectations is a good thing right absolutely right commissioner powell yeah i'm checking the list there are no questions you know oh no i was going to say that we needed to go ahead and have a motion for it out of committee and would would anyone like to do the honors of moving this entire part one part two packet a motion i have a motion do i have a second decade okay commissioner elliott all in favor hi hi i don't see van that's the only person i need to see i i lip read that was an i okay sorry we have a unanimous vote to move all of these part one and part two of the special ed out of committee um great job heavy lift huge lift and part three will be coming

212out of our next policy committee meeting uh it's it's right it's following right on the heels of these we have already started moving into the schools portion as well um not sure if we'll be able to bring you a big packet or just a small packet next month okay is that our holy hema that is our whole agenda okay in that case i will turn the gavel back over to our board president thank you thank you good night just from a technical person oh go ahead no i said good night thank you good night um just from a technical perspective um when we literally hand the gamble back over because another question was raised what we're doing is you're adjourning your meeting and and that gives the opportunity for the next chair to uh convene

213his or her next meeting um i i before that meeting well now that means officially adjourned i did want to say willa and to everybody you are correct and near kudos to all the folks that did this rahima and everybody else who was referenced but um willa i remember when you were discussing with our newest board member uh commissioner clark uh the possibility of switching assignments and one of the reasons why you uh suggested that you serve as chair of policies because of your familiarity with it and your real desire to try to get things organized and i know you would not take credit for all the work that was done today because you couldn't because as you indicated a lot of the people did the work but i just want to make sure that

214you understand you have the boards thanks for taking on this very very intense laborers process and you're getting us through it in a way that i don't think we could do it with anybody else so thank you commissioner powell last item on the agenda is i understand that we have to go into executive snap executive session we have to go into a closed session to speak to our attorney about legal matters as you all have heard me say before on behalf of the board sometimes you got to speak to your lawyer and you have to speak to your lawyer in private because the circumstances require it and that's what the board has to do today we're going to uh adjourn we're going to briefly adjourn to speak to our lawyer we'll come back out of

215that closed session with our lawyer we'll do our survey and um then we will adjourn so i i can tell you that there's not going to be any business conducted after we come back into session accept the survey so i would encourage you folks who are watching uh to turn off your computers and turn your attention to those people who are really important in your lives but we again appreciate you attending tonight uh tom tell me when we're in a closed session and we can have that discussion with our lawyer good evening everybody uh we are back in session as i promised we had our conversation with our lawyer and that conversation is complete and as i indicated there's nothing that the board has to vote on the only thing that we have to do

216is is finish our survey which by the way uh our staff uh uh calculated or tabulated the results and we'll be releasing those sometime in the very near future uh so uh kalia why don't you put up the survey for it today and uh we'll do it and then i'll take a motion to adjourn once we're done just one second we just gotta remove your uh i'm gonna end this one don't don't your co-host abilities okay thank you okay uh is it up let's see where that i don't maybe it's just oh you don't see it either well no nothing's up oh there it is okay we got it okay uh talia tell me when everybody's set and then i'll just look for somebody i'm sure somebody will give me a motion to adjourn mr

217malloy oh yeah hang in there commissioner malloy we're almost there all right you all said all right commissioner malloy made the motion who seconded it second vice president elliot all those in favor of adjourning going home or turn off the screens and being at home indicate by saying aye aye aye good goodnight everybody be safe good night