001Okay, get started. Good evening and welcome to this Akran public schools uh committee on student achievement instructional policy on June 2nd, 2025. I am Diana Autri, chair. I'm joined with co-chair member hall. also like to acknowledge President Jackson and member Molnar here at this time and Dr. Caver. Um we're going to go ahead and get started and for the first time we do have someone that would like to address this committee and so we'll ask you to come up. Looks like Sensei Matthew Zahand Zahan. Thank you. And and you are with Zahan's martial arts. Zahhan's Martial Arts. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. So you'll have three minutes uh to address us and you can proceed. Absulong, a fifth grader in STEM middle school, took his own life in March of 2024 due to bullying at the
002age of 11 years old. The Akran Beacon Journal published an in-depth article on this situation. Family's lawsuit cited two reasonings for this event. Extremely poor communication within the district and administration and an apparent lack of integrity. people in administration caring more about an image than the reality of the situation. My name is Sensei Matt Zahan with Zahan's Martial Arts in Akran, Ohio. I know many teachers and principles in APS. I have run an anti-bullying program, 12 ways for kids to handle bullies without fighting called Bully Buster in over 20 schools across four districts for over 10 years. This program is free as I volunteer my time to help the students. I have been working to no avail to get my bully buster into a room for the last decade. Today, I speak out for this
003young boy that killed himself and for all children being bullied. Same as the Beacon reported, the community and I have only been able to reach the same two conclusions on why there's been no success in my endeavor. Extremely poor communication and an apparent lack of integrity to help the students. Let me explain the evidence. On my first few attempts to help the Akran schools pre and postcoid, I was told to fill out an action form to approve my program. In all instances, I never heard back after thorough followup about acceptance or denial. Then in April of 2024, after a Abayesh's passing and attempting to help again, I was told I would be in contact with administrators and schoolboard members to get this program going. There were seven people I was supposed to meet with, including
004Wanda Lash, director of student and family services. Not one person showed up on time or to the meeting place. One person showed up late, Wanda not included nor heard from, and then one person who was not originally in the setup. And again, I was told progress would be made and to fill out this action form. I never heard back after thorough follow-up. Fast forward to May 2025. I find out no one on the school board was aware of my program. A breakthrough occurred when a member and Resnik principal, Elizabeth Toppen, vetted and approved my program for a free assembly for the Resnick kids. Again, I was told to fill out the action form. I never received any feedback. Toppin continued to follow up asking if the approval went through for the form. A day before
005the program was set to begin Monday, May 19th, she was told, not me, that my program was denied due to lack of researchbased SCCL practices. I was mad for many reasons. One main reason based on the paper I distributed to all of you. A review from a 30 plus year veteran teacher who has my program in his school explains how this program meets the Ohio standards for education regarding social and emotional learning. There are many people who care about helping the kids of our community. One of these people is Ashley Schmid, president of Resnik PTA. She sent an email adding the superintendent Mary Outley and the chair of this committee Diana stating how one this program is researchbased. two, how the action form does not allow any research to be submitted on it and how
006this prog how this process that had been going on for weeks was pulled out from under us at the last minute by an unknown name. Again, to Ashley and M's dismay, though Mary Outley and Diana Autry were aware of this, we simply received nothing. No words, no response. This lack of communication may be costing students of our district more programs than we are aware. I believe this lack communication may be partly due to pandering of an image and not wanting to hold accountability for the issues that are prevalent within the district. One must acknowledge a problem before we fix it. I stand before you today speaking on behalf of Abayesha's family and all Akran families. You have been aware and I will continue to make you aware. The ball is in your court. Please, instead
007of ignoring what I have been saying as the last 10 years has shown, show us the integrity that you claim you have for all of our students. How can we get Bully Buster going into these schools? I'm a fighter. I do not quit. I am not here to fight the board, literally nor figuratively. I am here to work with the board, hold our administrators accountable, and be a team to help the students of our Akran community. I do this because I care and I love each student with every bit of my heart. When I heard the passing of this young boy's life, I originally started this program because of a young boy in Cincinnati, Ohio named Gabriel Tay that took his life due to bullying. If we can do anything to help these kids, I
008am here to help at whatever cost possible completely free of charge. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Zahan. um certainly am aware at this time and we have your information. Thank you. And so moving on and our is our are our minutes uh from our previous meeting. Um are there any additions or corrections to those minutes? Seeing none, we'll accept them as submitted and then we will now move on to our discussion topics in item 2.01. 01. Dr. Caver. Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. Good afternoon, uh, board members, uh, President Jackson, uh, Chair, Miss Altree, Miss Mrs. Hall, and Dr. Molinar. Thank you for being here. We have three items to discuss today. So, we're going to start first with science. Um, Miss Dr. Halasa is here to go over the um K2 science adoption uh
009to tell you a little bit more about what transpired with our science adoption and where we are. Dr. Hasa, I'm going to put your presentation up and there's a clicker right there so that you can advance your slides once I get going. Thank you everyone. Thank you for having me this um evening. Um Miss Jackson or President Jackson um chair um Miss Autri and Summer Hall and Dr. Monarch. Um what I want to talk about is the K through adoption and review process our first year and next steps. Um obviously we're doing the theory of change. We're also working obviously through the academic achievement um cornerstone for commitment. We um all know our beautiful mission and vision. So of time I just want to re-re the bottom line for the science department is that we
010notice um inequalities um that were happening through um our process and um uh basically we want to make sure that we reach justice. That's the bottom line where you can see and this is the same um visual that I showed last year when we went through our science uh and health adoption. Um basically we have the same team that was reconnected again and I'll explain why we had to revisit this. Um our process happened with our six-hour options and professional development. We started to notice that some of the labs um that we were implementing um had failures in it. there seemed to be some inadequate standard alignments that we needed. Um material description um discrepancies that were happening within the electronic portion of it and the science department actually presented these findings to our um
011vendor and um we uh explained um what um was going on and they were more than open to responsive solutions. However, those solutions were not going to work for what we needed. So ultimately we were reimbursed our of money from our K through2 adoption and we decided to adopt SAVAS which is already 3 through five being used. So that now makes that consistency K through um five for um SAVIS. Um in addition to that uh we found out that it was not only something that the teachers are already familiar with with math. So it's not a new platform for them to to evaluate. The um adoption for um SAVIS will spread again like I said to fifth grade. The transition is very easy. Um and it will help reinforce what's going on in fifth grade
012for OSTs. Um this opportunity is to make sure that our youngest scholars um really have an opportunity to be reflective scientists and critical thinkers. Um, and so as um, this is the end of my presentation and I'm open to any questions or concerns. Thank you, Dr. Halasa. Um, are there any questions, concerns for Dr. Halasi? Dr. Hassa, Dr. Molar, thank you. Sorry that was so fast. So, I was asked to be quick today. Plus, I have a hundred things going on. So yes, I appreciate it. But to clarify, so I know what I'm doing. So the move to Savas, is this going to be brought to the board for approval on Monday the 9th? Yes. Okay. Thank you. Yes. And it is and the books are already um here for you to look at. Especially
013the kindergarten is much more friendlier and um like I said, it's more it definitely just helped us move forward. And I want to emphasize something very important about Akran public schools is that we really listened to the voice of our teachers when they were going through this process. When they became frustrated, we addressed it right away and the vendor was very excellent in working through this with us. It's just it would take so much more to uphold. So, you know, when we looked at our alternative, which was already the top, we've already gone through this process very well and it's been used already three through five, we knew we had a win-win situation for us. member Hall. Thank you, Miss Halasa, for your leadership. Um, and also for your followth through. You saw something that
014was not working, you went and um acted on that and we got a refund. So, you know, instead of just wasting money letting books just sit on the shelves that we don't need or anything like that, I just thank you for your due diligence, for following up, listening to the teachers. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Anything else? Any other questions? Thank you so much, Dr. Hassa. Thank you guys. Have a wonderful evening. And if you have any question or concern, Dr. Caver and I are more than happy to address them. Thank you. Thank you. And just for clarification, we will not ask for a vote on July 9th. Uh it will be on the agenda as the mo as the um resolution, but the actual vote will be at the board meeting after that.
015Okay. All right. Thank you. So, next we have another textbook adoption. Um, this one is uh for CCAA. So, Marcy Ebrite will come to the podium with um is Nate coming or Dr. Green's coming up. All right. Whole team. Good evening board members. Uh thank you very much for your time this evening. We are going to be sharing with you our textbook adopt pin for college and careermies addressing some of our pathways and courses. If you're not aware, we do have about 270 unique courses in our secondary suite with college and careermies. So, uh and some of them were in in in pretty deep need of a refresher. So, uh my team is going to go over that tonight. Kenthian Green is our CTA specialist who has been leading the charge all year long uh
016looking at the textbook adoption process and where we needed to uh make movement and uh our coordinator Nate Rurian which you all know very well. I'm going to turn it over to them. Good afternoon everyone. Road of call having been established. Thank you guys so much for having us here. Um I'm going to try to get through this quickly. Uh so our textbook adoption process began in the month of January, continued until exactly two weeks ago because we went over um quite a few of our pathways, ensuring that we were able to obtain texts that were relevant and that were um preparing our students for not just college but beyond. Um this is in alignment with our mission and vision. Um when it comes to our coherence framework, it is embedded in the instructional core
017as it pertains to our content. Um and as said by um Dr. Halasa, this pertains to cornerstone number two. So our textbook adoption process in CCAA began with the establishment of a textbook adoption committee comprised of various stakeholders including our CCAA uh partners and teachers. We then moved into securing printed or digital materials um from vendors and the vendors that we uh worked with were Goodwill, Wilcox, Pearson, Savis, Sengage and McGra Hill. Um we held weekly meetings where partners ca or excuse me um where the publishers came and they uh presented their texts, they presented their learning platforms to our committee and through that process we evaluated the resources. We vetted them out um guided by our benchmarks for selecting highquality materials and um through our instructional materials review tool. All of our committees uh
018concluded by uh cons making consensus on a final textbook recommendation which I am going to present to you now. What you see here on the screen is our textbook sample evaluation tool. It is used by every single committee and it was used to vet all of our um text that we considered. It covers seven indicators beginning with questions and tasks that reflect grade level standards. Um it moves on to assessments, differentiation, um college and career readiness and technical skill attainment. Our committee priorities were to focus on digital resources as much as possible. um ensuring that digital resources actually integrates with Google Classroom and the other software that is currently used by APS, that our curriculum aligns with web exam course blueprints to ensure that our students are um being proficient in technical skill attainment and
019that our instructional materials are getting them there. Um, we made sure that our that what we were looking at aligned with CTSO initiatives because that's where we have a lot of our realworld learning, where we have a lot of our um, college and career prep experiences for our students. And then last but not least, we made sure that resources equipped students with the skills and the knowledge that they would need to succeed in the modern workforce. So those were all the things that were guiding our conversations as we vetted these um, instructional materials. So there were five pathways that we are bringing to the board for recommendation of text. Um our education professions which is at both Firestone and Bookl, our energy and environmental protection pathway which is at Garfield. Um and well I'll say
020leave that for some other time. And then um our entrepreneurship and marketing pathway which is at six of our high schools. Our family and consumer science courses which is also found at our six um high schools our six traditional high schools. And then our academy prep courses which are at book East Higher and I Promise Jennings Lichfield and Miller South middle schools. Okay. So, um, I just did something weird. There we go. So, on our education professions committee, there were four, uh, committee members that assisted us in vetting this out. This pathway is special in that it is not just there for teachers, but it is there to introduce our students to a wide variety of industries that are aligning with education. So it starts with a very broad view of education and then narrows
021in the 12th grade to this um the foundations of teachings course. This it was our first committee to meet and they went ahead and recommended the f the text that you see here on the screen for their review. Um the reason why they chose these particular texts um the comments are there on the screen. They really felt that these um texts that these resources were those that would prepare students for what it was like to be in college and to be an educator in a college level course. They also enjoyed that the learning objectives were very clear. Um and then of course they really really um felt that it was important that these texts highlighted diversity and had diversity spotlights within them. Our marketing and entrepreneurship committee um was comprised of three people, two teachers
022and an APS staff member. They met from March to the beginning of April. Um this pathway is um focused on preparing students for the business world and giving them idea um ideas about entrepreneurship and marketing. So they recommended the text here marketing fundamentals advanced marketing and retailing and etailing. The retailing and etailing text will be used exclusively for our 12th grade courses in this pathway. Um, and the beauty of the texts that they have suggest that they have recommended here is that they are structured to align 100% with a marketing plan. So every chapter, every section of the text literally guides students through a marketing plan. It starts off with unit one which is this is a marketing plan and it goes into you know at um each section of a marketing plan concluding with
023that. So our students will actually have you know a um real business item at the end of their class and their pathway um experience. Our third committee is the energy and environmental protections committee. This is a pathway that is at Garfield CLC and it was created with the support of First Energy. This is a very unique um pathway and it is not there is not one like it anywhere. It was created right here at APS. And because of that, we have our pathway course sequence right there on the board or on the screen. Starting with natural resources in the 10th grade, energy systems in 11th grade, and then in 12th grade, they have environmental systems and parks and recreation management. So, you see that it is a w it runs the gamut of um topics
024within energy and sustainability. They've recommended three texts for their pathway and again that last text aggracience will be used exclusively for 12th grade. um they chose these texts because they felt that, you know, with these courses being so unique and so um catered to what we're trying to achieve here at APS, they felt that these texts really would allow for us not just to be different, but to make sure that um the standards that we are teaching are concise, that they are standardized, and that they're really allowing students to get a good understanding of what energy and environment um what what that industry looks like in the real world. Our family and consumer science courses also are adopting a textbook that um our high school courses um had a path or had a committee membership
025of three um a teacher and two staff members, one of which is our district family and consumer science consultant. They met from the beginning of April till three weeks ago or excuse me, two weeks ago. And our family and consumer science classes are um comprised of many of our general elective classes that are in the high school. What am I doing? Okay, sorry. So, um they've recommended four texts for four different courses. They have a course called child development and the reason why they are recommending that text is because it has a feature called virtual baby and it it was fun for us more more than and so we knew the kids would love it. But basically you go in they ask you a few questions and they say surprise you have a baby and
026for the rest of the course they have to make decisions based on what they're learning that affects the baby. And so um we really thought that that was an engaging piece for a general elective course. We also um have the lifespan development which has a similar feature within it in our guide to good foods and nutrition and wellness. Those are for our foods classes. Um and what was enjoyable about those texts was that they actually had the recipes within it. They had the skill sets. So it was very user friendly for our teachers. So last but not least is our academy prep courses in the middle school. Our academy prep courses equip middle school students with the soften academic skills needed for a successful transition into their high schoolmies and they include the classes of
027sixth grade seminar academy prep 101 and academy prep 2011. They've recommended um one text that will be able to cover our academy 101 and 2011 courses and it is entitled life skills for the 21st century. Um this is a great great resource because it connects to our CTSO. So when you see there it says I I also value the connection to FCCLA. FCCLA is one of our um career technical student organizations and it really expouses leadership within the um classroom. Additionally, this text in particular gave the teachers resources for reinforcing um language arts and math within the CTE classroom. You know, also aligning with our district uh goals. So, we were really excited to see that. Um we have a lot of CTE teachers that would love to support the core and we um thought
028this would be a great way to get them involved in that work. So, those are our recommendations. Um, and I hope I didn't go too fast. Uh, if are there any questions or comments? Thank you very much, uh, for your presentation. I really appreciate how it was put together and the comments and how you broke it down, where these pathways were at because I know that's just not common knowledge for all of us to have all of that in mind. So, I appreciate how you uh presented that to us. Um, are there any questions from the members? Member Hall. Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, quick question. Yes. Um, for the energy, environment, and protections. Um, I'm looking at the ARGA science um, agriculture and natural resource um, yes, book. Yes. Does the students do the
029students get hand-on experience like with the city's recreation or And I'm so glad you asked that because I was going to tell you about that and then I decided not to. Please tell me cuz I want hands-on learning experience. Let me tell you about that pathway. That pathway right now just got through with the plant sales that they're giving to the community. So our kids are literally learning how to do marketing. They're learning how to actually take what they're learning in the classroom and sell it. But on top of that, um Nate and so many of of our CTE, um employees, team members have literally just begun a um building of a greenhouse right on Garfield's um property line. Thank you. Um, and we're all excited about it and we are we have so many
030things in planned and in place so that students can have that hand-on experience that you're talking about right there at their school. We don't have to put them in the buses. They will be right there. And we're focused on, you know, realworld school-based enterprises, things that they can take away from their experience at Garfield and apply them once they graduate. So, we have so much invested in that pathway because we believe in that pathway. just to follow. Okay. No, that's awesome. Thank you. I knew about that greenhouse when I visited Garfield. Um they had showed me the land and all of that, but I guess more to that hands-on and I love what we're doing, but for jobs because this is like a senior 12th grade course, right? So with jobs and if they're into
031agriculture like city recreation, um S Metro Parks, Ohio Area Canal Way Coalition, like those different organizations could probably I'm not going to speak for them, but you know, come visit the school, learn that, and then give them some more resources where they can potentially get jobs after high school to go into those fields. Absolutely. So, you know, we have all of our partners that would partner with the pathway directly and I believe some of them already are partnered with them and of course we have our jog partnership. Uh we have two different ways that kids would go about that. We'd match them with their pathway into jog partnerships as well and we also have our internships which work directly with our college and career academy partners. So, we're always looking for more partners who wish
032to engage we uh with our pathways if they're not already uh across the board. So that would be the ways in which we are planning for senior level internships um you know and also sophomore, junior and senior uh job placements throughout the summer and through the school year so that they have those experiences in those fields. So thank you. Any other questions Mr. Alexander? Yes. And I I I didn't pay attention, but you said in the energy and environmental protections th those that's the only one in Akran or only one where? So that is the only pathway that we have like that here in APS. Okay. Okay. And it was at Garfield. Got it. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you um for the presentation. So I have a a few
033questions. Um, when you say we're looking for more community partnerships, I'm curious as to how exactly does that work? Um, because we say these things and the young man just presented about a free program for our students. So, I'm just curious on what is the actual levels to where they're sitting down and even the board is informed of the programs or the partnerships that's being offered to our learners. And to member Hall's point about the the handson and the career portion, I love um when um the the team presented at the last instructional policy meeting and it was a lot of things that I seen come to fruition that I was questioning and asking for when I first became a board member. And I think that's a wonderful thing because it's building and I love
034that we went younger, right? And so the modeling happens younger. So, because if I if I get if something tries to get introduced to me, by the time I'm in the 10th grade, a lot of times by 10th grade, I'm already active in whatever my interests are, whether those are good or bad interests. So, if you're trying to get me to go to the parks and all this, I'm not I could not care to a certain degree, but I could try to get what I need just to graduate. But as far as careers and I know we have career fairs. I know that um the Kyhoga Valley Park does something with AAN because I went and I visited there and I said, "Well, I don't know that the board knows this information because as I'm
035sitting here, these collaborations and partnerships when they're talking about middle schools um and what they're doing, I know I'm like I'm not president of the board and I wasn't clear on on this, but it was great to hear that we are fostering those relationships." So, I just want to put that out there because we have great programming in APS. Um, but what is great programming if it's not actualized as an asset into our learners lives. So I I just think a senior getting introduced it's a little too late in my in some cases. I mean we try to reach all we can when we have things that are embedded programming to where the internship the paid internship the journeyman track whatever that is it when people that are watching this meeting how do they get
036that seat at the table and they say I I'm yeah I want to be a partner. I've been trying to be a partner for 10 years. How what how was that actual I'm and I really want a good answer like on a mic and if you can't give it to me today that's fine. I well I could give you a very robust answer but I do feel like it's probably at a good point where we sort of update where we're at with partnerships in Akran public schools. You know we are year one in college and careermies in the elementary and envisioning what the partnerships look like looking existing partnerships that they have partnership advisory. We've had existing partnerships through G Foundation in our elementary essential experiences which I think is part of what you're talking
037about those. We have guaranteed grade level communitydriven IBL's in partnership experiences and our secondary schools just as a brief snapshot. We have over 300 partners. We have 100 plus middle school nonprofits because that's the middle that's the middle school vision is that students understand problems in their communities and how to solve them. So nonprofits fit that bill exactly. And then they get into business and industry as they get into their second into the high school uh area which we have about 200 partners there serving about 250 partnerships because many of them serve at multiple schools and multiple locations and multiple pathways. So we could get into we have a pretty robust field in the way in which they engage. Akran Community Foundation at our middle schools is our broker partner for all nonprofits. Uh and
038so whenever a non we need a nonprofit interest in the middle school. So you have a group of students who are interested in say food scarcity issues around the city and then we would pair those students up directly with that nonprofit and so that they can investigate and understand how they go about solving that problem. And in the high school obviously they pair either withmies or directly with pathways. United Way in the city acts as our partner broker in that. Once the partner brokers had worked with any community partners, they get turned over to our partner engagement coordinator, which is Beth Winter, and then she onboards them, gets the contract signed, and then they get turned over to a building academy coach. And the academy coach then helps work with all the teachers at the
039school-based level to ensure all the um experiences are going off. And then those partners agree to numerous sets of commitments. And you probably heard us have talked a lot that it was always time and talent because that's not let me just re I think I'll send it in writing what I'm asking because that was a lot of information and I thank you for that but that's not what I was asking. So I'm going to send it in writing so that it's very clear what I'm asking. Um and I won't belabor the meeting long. Thank you Madam Chair. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any other questions? Dr. Molar. Thank you. Um, just since you're up there and I I appreciate I think I know where the questioning you're heading and I agree with it
040and I'm wondering if maybe it might be helpful also to get a perspective. I don't know it would be if it would be easier to view our partnership landscape by partner or by building. And so I don't know if that's something as a board or something we see how many how many people do we have in what ways interacting with this building or how many buildings is this partner working with? I I don't know because I don't know how many partners we have and how many buildings they're in, but something to think about. Thank you. Thank you. Good points. Any other questions? I did just want to ask a quick question. My son, who's now 23, I remember when he was in high school, he brought a little baby home. So, is that still in
041place, too? I know you mentioned I know you mentioned a virtual baby, but yeah, that and he's not made me a Grammy yet. Baby, think it over. Is what is that what it was called? Baby think it over. When you had the babies you brought home. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. All right. And so our last presentation for today um is going to involve um CCAA as well as our uh community uh partnership department. So Dr. Chapman's going to come up and join Miss Ebrite or Marcy's going to take care of it. Okay. Yes, I'll get your presentation ready. Back up. All right. We are super excited to share this with you. You will see anou. So, this is going to be our ask. It's on the last slide.
042There will be anou that comes to board about this, but I wanted to have a chance to talk to you about this opportunity um with uh the trust for public lands community schoolyard project. Oh, and I got to advance. I was waiting for you to do something over there. Okay. Um, and I always love the our mission and vision statements I think are spot on. I know sometimes we we go through them very quickly, but whenever I talk about these to people, I said, "What word stands out to you?" And I hear architects of their future. Architects of their future. Being able to design, build out that tool chest of things that students will need to to thrive in the world. And this is a great example of those a piece that we'll be able
043to add to students tool chest um and in the community. Uh it goes across all four cornerstones. And I think you'll see that as we talk about what this particular project and uh partnership is bringing to the table for our students. So uh in the center of our our one graphic it says build a better Akran. And so thinking about that that piece where how can we leverage our CLC space to better benefit the community it serves. So thinking about the land around our CLC's, the outdoor space, generally unused and un untapped areas in neighborhoods. And then you think about school systems across the country really that outside space is generally just either a little concrete jungle of nothingness or not always the most uh welcoming space to come and sit and hang out, right?
044So, so what could we do with that space and what could new ways could we embrace our neighborhoods who come into that space as a community learning center not just the inside of the building but the outside space of the building as well. So, uh a few months ago actually uh Dr. Chapman met with uh ran into this lovely woman called Kayla Gashki and I'm going to invite her up to this up here to talk to you briefly about what Trust for Public Land is and what they do. Thank you, Mercy, and thank you all for having me down here today. Um, I'm Kayla. My, um, office is located in Cleveland, Ohio, but Trust for Public Land is a national nonprofit. We've been around for 52 years, but we've been in Ohio for 51 years.
045Um, and we work Ohioide. I am our parks for people program coordinator. And in that time, um, Trust Public Land has traditionally been conserving land. We've done a lot of stuff around the national park and getting land into their hands well before it was a national park. We help build trails. We help build parks. But our mission is really to connect everyone to nature. We all know, I don't have to like go through it all like the benefits of like mentally, physically, emotionally when you're connected to that outdoor space. And that shouldn't be a privilege. It should be a right. And so like our work is to make sure that everyone has a quality park within 10-minute walk of their home. Um that's how we started getting involved in this schoolyards program, the community schoolyards
046program. We've been doing this for almost 20 years across the country, but we just brought it to Ohio in the last couple of years. We have our first project in East Cleveland. Um Dr. Chapman and a few other folks came up for our groundbreaking there. It was really fun. Um and we're really really excited to be able to bring this to Akran. Um, I think of all of the school districts we've kind of had conversations with, you guys are very well positioned and like in line in terms of mission and connecting to communities with the CLC program. Um, and just so many great partners already that I think this is a perfect fit. Um, so nationally we've done over 350 schoolyards. Um, we have a lot of learning, but we know that a lot of
047our places across the country look like this. Maybe they have a grass. often they don't have play equipment. Often they're contributing to like heat island effects. This is not inviting. As Marcy um pointed out, this is not something that the community sees as an asset necessarily. Um but if na nationally we opened up our schoolyards to our communities, um over 10 million students would have access to nature right right outside their doorstep. Um so what we do at Trust Public Land is work with the school community. um work directly with the students and then we work with the neighborhood surrounding the school to redesign the spaces that already exist to make them inviting, engaging, um make them greener, um welcoming. We do a lot of storm water capture. We make sure there's play equipment. Um
048and essentially we're turning this like empty schoolyard into a park um that is welcoming and open after hours so that the community can enjoy it. We do this by having the students take the lead. We go in and do like a several week process to co-design that space with the students. We're exposing them to like new career pathways, whether it's landscape architecture or a sewer district or park um renovations. Um and we're making sure we bring in folks that have that expertise that looks like our students to expose them to those careers and design that space together. So, we're responding to what they're saying they want in their own community. And we're asking them to kind of be planners and go out in their neighborhoods in their community and co-plan. We're not asking them just
049to create a playground. We're asking them to create a park for their neighborhood. So, we like we'll send postcards to the neighborhood. We'll do events. Um, but it's a deep engagement project to make sure that we're welcoming in all of the stakeholders of the community and we're co-creating this space. I could go on and on, but I'll I'll be I'll be brief. All right. Thank you. So, uh, Kayla came in and she presented this to, uh, a senior leadership at one point and we thought, do we want to move forward with, uh, potentially looking at what this could mean for Akran? And when you look at a space, this is before. I just want you to see that again because I always look at there's a bunch of pictures like this on their website, this
050before and after of what that potentially could mean for a community or a neighborhood in our city. So, we were pretty excited about what we could potentially do. Uh so at that point we drew inspiration as we thought about this from our middle school CCA model in particular as I was speaking earlier to the idea of nonprofits engaging uh the inquiry the agency and voice that we want students to have in a project really matches that type of work that we're doing for our students. We thought about our secondary scholars a lot in this process. We know we have playgrounds in our elementaryaries and especially with our new CLC's, they're super cute. But I I drew inspiration or we drew inspiration from uh when our when our STEM Robin STEM kids went over to Robinson
051CLC. Excuse me, my throat's dry. Uh when they went to Robinson CLC and they had done all the remodeling of the space and they were going to go out and take down the playground and the kids all said, "No, we want the playground out here." They were using it as a hangout zone. It was a nice inviting space for them to sit outside and swing and talk as our big high schoolers enjoying this little playground set outside of their school. So, it has stayed. And we drew some inspiration from that, thinking about our existing high school spaces that aren't super welcoming and places for kids to sit and just be with each other and have outdoor space together. And then we thought about opportunities in our communities and where we could bring uh our neighborhoods
052together uh and how valuable our students have said having an active community space in their neighborhood was important. We saw that with the students with the apprentice park project and that was their entire pitch to the city and all the fundraising and work that they've done on that was around how important it was that that Kenmore neighborhood had a place where they could gather together, have birthday parties, have celebrations and have events in a safe and fun environment. So, we knew that this was important. Um, and so then we went and we evaluated several potential areas to see if there's spaces in Akran that we could start with um or start with and uh one at least one place. So, uh uh uh Dr. Chapman, Deb Folk, myself, Mr. Keenan, Tiffany Lundy, Darlene Scheler, and
053Megan Manion uh dove into the resources that Kayla left for us and started to uh look at existing space at our schools to see if there was options here for us. So, uh we did take uh several proposed sites uh as we were looking at one, hoping to get one, and we received approval from the prior and current superintendent for two so to see if we could move forward on them. One of which, if you're familiar with Jennings, um that's the picture on the left, that big space in the back out there. Anybody ever walked that path behind Jennings? Um I've heard they call it the bowl, and it's sort of like a a sort of a half soccer field that's not super soccery. Uh and that and and that it's right in the middle
054of the neighborhood, if you can picture that area around Jenny, all the houses that surround that area. So, uh, that was a big site for us to look at because we thought what a great blank slate that we could turn into a real great community area for not only the kids but the the people that live in that in that neighborhood to be able to enjoy a green space that's engaging. And then there's uh also as we thought about our new build with North um the pitch there was we already have existing outdoor green space that'll be part of the architectural design and how could we use uh the uh trust for public lands schoolyard project to help elevate those two spaces. So those are the two that we were uh have asked to include
055in theou uh to see if we can move forward. We know these are many year projects down the line. These are many misses many years of design. Uh we anticipate 100% fundraising uh especially with the Jennings project because we will look at that community and the city community to say how are we going to reinvision this space for the North Hill community. Um Kaylee can talk a little bit more if you'd like her to, but they bring in those resources to help us fund raise and their design team to think about that. So those pieces um don't fall to us. But what does fall to us is to bring the kids, the community members, the the partners, the the teachers, the the uh who want to come to the table and think about if I
056could dream up something that that space could be for our community and our students, what could it look like? And then start to price out what that would be and then we start fundraising for money. So uh that is what these projects are about. Um so uh the ask for you will be to approve a memorandum of understanding between trust for public lands and APS to begin that work of fundraising, designing, planning, recruiting and enriching. Uh I did link uh in the presentation which I think will be live to you if you don't have it already the full community schoolyard program presentation and a draft of theou uh that we're going back and forth now between uh uh trust for public land and us on just a couple of items. Uh but it's about 99%
057ready. So when it comes to board it'll be complete uh version and I'm going to stop there. Any questions? Thank you. I'm really excited about this. Um but I'll defer to my colleagues. Member Hall, thank you for that presentation. This is exciting. And my first question here was how much is this going to cost? Um and you're saying 100% fundraising. So, no money coming out of general fund or anything like that. Okay. I'm hold you said that I miss Kyla. I mean the employee time. We're going to have employee time obviously to it. But so is that then like overtime for employee time or is this Tiffany Lundy's are my extended learning program manager and she's been tasked with sort of helping to organize it. So time on her to uh make sure that she's
058organizing during the day. Uh so your full-time employee cost but not extended time. No. Okay. So my quick question is um I also wrote down Jennings when you were saying your presentation and it popped up Jennings but I know that Jennings is starting to kind of like overflow in students right because I didn't realize that Jennings pull in so many elementary schools to that one middle school and they were saying something about trailers um with the trailers that will be um cuz I think she was thinking of them going in the back but if we're going to take away that space and put this um public lands piece. Um where would those trailers then go? I'm going to let Mr. Keenan speak to that if that's okay because I'm not familiar with the trailer. Sure.
059Do you know anything about trailer issue? That folk Okay. I don't think we've heard anything I don't seem like anybody knows about that particular item right now. Okay. Sorry. Yeah. you know, just cuz I visit all of my schools in my district and I know that, you know, she's going to be getting about 200 more kids um this coming school year. So, um although I love the design and I love that I think it's is it le um who has the playground in the back, but it's a city park. Mhm. That's legit. Am I correct about that? Okay. Um so, are do we have any other schools that are connected that same way with the city? Yeah, we looked we looked several Yeah, we looked at several different sites. I believe Leot was one of
060the items on the list uh that we went through. Um we had a list of pros and cons. Um and I think when it came to Jennings, it felt like the neighborhood in in which it would be serving would be beneficial to there was already maybe the park was already attached close to Leot, so maybe there wasn't a need to. Okay. Um and it wasn't, you know, this isn't like one and done. We don't ever have to do we just do one, right, Kaylee? we can just keep doing as many as we like, but we were hoping to start at least with one. Um, and then we we added we rolled in North just because we knew it would be a longer term piece and that we knew we already had some capital work that
061was going into the outside that we would just be able to enhance with some design. So that's why North came on too. So we can certainly look at other school sites as we uh proceed through there. Dr. Molnar, thanks. you kind of inspired me when you said other school sites because I was wondering of the existing playgrounds that we have and the buildings that we have in these CLC's, how many of those are are available to people during and and and under what conditions during out of school time as we get ready. The weather's finally beautiful today. Um, and I wonder if as a district we could maybe put something out sharing, you know, by the way, if you didn't know, you can still go to this like for the for the playgrounds that are
062there. This this playground is here for for you to play in on. Yeah. Thank you, Dr. Molnar. Uh, Vice President Alexander. Yes. Thank you. Um, I I was going to ask about Jennings and North and I know Jennings, you said the Bo, I'm real familiar with the bowl. Um, are we going to cut all that land off of most of the land and put uh playground staff there? Because I know a lot of those kids up there like soccer and they do a lot with soccer. So, I think, you know, being cognitive of soccer and so forth to make sure they have that up there. And also the same at North. I'm not sure. Is North going to be located at the same built in the same location? I believe so. The same location. Okay.
063So, it's going to be built on the same location. Also, those are high school kids. And I'm looking at sports again, a soccer field, football field, um baseball. Uh we're going to be able to cooperate incorp incorporate all those into that that land. And will we have enough land to do all of it? what we with the with the uh baseball, football, soccer, um and have track, you know, all those different things. I'm hoping that all all that will be incorporated in uh one design so that the community can still use it, but also the the sta the kids can be able to use it during school time for for athletics. And yes, exactly. So, the beauty about this and what we really loved about it is that it is student voice driven. We don't
064come in and tell them what they're going to put all in there. The there's a whole phase of this work for each site is around the students coming in and designing and thinking about what they would want in that space along with the community members that would be served by that space and then the architects uh on their side take it all back and draft it into beautiful prints of their ideas um and then come back for their feedback and then they revise and they say yes or no. So uh it is just going to be driven by what they say that they want in that space. Absolutely. Thank you. Any other questions? Member Hall. Um I also love the by this going to a high school too because when you look at some of
065the suburban schools, they're able to go outside and sit and have a space to separate themselves from the whole school and just, you know, be outside and like their what do they call those like little um courtyards. They call them courtyards. So something like this would be great. But again, I don't want it to take away again like members um Alexander said, away from their sports and those type of activities. Um so yeah, when we start to plan north, I would love for this to be in the conversation and making sure that we are really not just checking a box, saying this is student voice, you know, because not saying that that's what we do, but a lot of organizations will check that box. Oh, we talk to students now this is our plan. So,
066I really want us to be intentional with saying what we're going to do with our students. Thank you. Thank you, member Hall. Dr. Molar. Last thing, I promise. Um, as as we're getting everyone excited about these third spaces, yes, our student voice, but I wonder if we can get a whole community voice also. I'm thinking of parks that I've visited in other areas where they have kind of like uh grav I don't exercise but gravity powered ellipticals. So it's just equipment that you can do it by yourself. It doesn't need plugged into anything. And a lot of those are great for getting um elderly people to come and to gather and a place to go and a place to um be together and with the younger people also. Um so a full community space. So,
067what I'm hearing is you all want to be on the design teams when they get ready. Thank you. Um, thank you. So, I know they do all the fundraising. Um, does that funding also cover like the long-term maintenance of these projects? Yeah. Yeah. Long term. Then we hand it over to the school district. But we intend on like being partners with you throughout. So like after doing this for 15 years throughout the country, we've learned like there's lots of ways that we continue to be involved in schools, whether it's identifying stewardship fundraising with you. Um and there's always like a in buying any product for the school guarantee on so many years of the life cycle of those products. Um so we continue to be at the table. You're ultimately APS will be responsible for
068the space. Um, but we are committed to making sure that it is continues to be useful to you and the community long after the project. And we hope that this is just kind of the first part of the process, these two schools as like a pilot and we'll be continuing to be at the table helping design some of the other spaces that maybe you mentioned going forward if when this goes well. Thank you. So, I think it'll be really important, I guess, before final plans that the board is aware of what our costs would be in the long term. Um, and just keeping in mind, as my colleague stated, that soccer is definitely a priority. Um, because North is I think they're the city series champs, right? So, definitely. But, thank you, member or President
069Jackson. Yes, thank you. And um just to get to the money side of things as well, um I love one of my favorite words that you started this with was fundraising because I think it's important when people have skin in the game and they put in their sweat equity to raise funds because they have more of a connection with the sustainability of it um when we engage those partners. The other part is grants. Um, and so I'm curious when you said about full-time employee cost, um, what I'm, for lack of a better word, what what, no, not lack of a better word, what department would this type of project be housed under? I'm thinking it would be I I I have an understanding of where it would with facilities and um, business affairs in some
070type of a capacity. And if it's housed under that department, could it be incorporated into their their regular work? Um, and I know you have tasks that are priority, high priority. So, how can that be incorporated in their work so we don't get to member Hall's point into like just exasperated over time or what exactly are you doing? What you know, what is the work? And then um lastly I the grant part because I know that we um one of our last meetings they talked about uh the cost of a firm that we used that helped us to write grants but what they brought back to us was well worth our investment with them and then with our on staff grant person. We still have our on staff grant person Megan Manion who just retired.
071She just retired but uh she has been part of the she's been part of this conversation with us the whole time too. So um I know we're doing cuts but okay. Um, and so when we look at that, I'm thinking about Digs, Home Depot, Lowe's, because these are uh organizations that has a history of investing in projects like that, like this what we're talking about, and really nurturing those relationships, which is part of like the development team within a district. nurturing relationships so that what um the chair said when we're looking at what needs to be reworked on this, what needs to happen, we have these strong partnerships where Dixs may say, "Oh, yeah, we can redo the field. We'll we'll we'll give that in kind, you know, and stuff like this." So, I just
072want us to kind of be thinking from that mind um set. I think this is wonderful. I love it. I love the use of um outdoor space and being familiar and comfortable with outdoor space. Kyhoga Valley does a wonderful educational job with somebody inner city urban like me who hate I hated outside. I like the sun that hit me but I don't like ants crawling on me, bugs flying, mosquitoes. So outside was not attractive to me. But when we talk about these inviting spaces, my teacher, mommy and principal of mine goes to safety when we open up these spaces to community. And um it was just I just seen something in Ohio uh like it's southern Ohio where a school had like a ice cream social and a man came to the ice cream social
073just cuz he saw it online and he went in, you know, it was families and people walking around and he went in and he seen a little girl and he told she was a kindergartener and he told the teacher like this was his kid. She was new new to the school and her father walked up very innocent but very easily he blended with the crowd. So I just wonder when we have these spaces and they become hangout spots or kids can walk to um how do we mitigate like pred predator risk? I know that can happen at any time but when something becomes nicer and more inviting and it's more kids it seems to bring out a certain thing. So I think that needs to be part of the discussion too as far as what
074is the safety when we say we want the community to come and enjoy. So this Thank you so much. Just just madame chair may I Dr. Caver? Thank you. Um one of the conditions of this project was that it addressed access gaps, equity gaps around outdoor spaces. It also had the potential to transform health outcomes in communities by creating walking areas, playful spaces. I'm also interested in addressing the decreasing of a carbon footprint as well as weather and extreme weather uh wear and tear on our spaces that then become abandoned places that folks um you know are no longer caring for. The part that's really exciting is the community engagement component because if we're really going to do the community engagement component, we should get to the answers to the questions that President Jackson raises.
075Who is going to care for it? What does the long-term sustainability look like? How do we become adjacent to the plans for North and not interrupting the plans for North? So, that's the part that I'm really really excited about is how we authentically engage around answering all of the questions that came up. Thank you very much. So, I know we don't own the property where Rankin is at anymore, but that's a beautiful open new green space now. So, I'm just putting that out there because West Akan could could use some some space. Thank you very much, Dr. Cber. All right. Well, thank you so much uh for all of the questions and I'll just bring to your attention that in the agenda there is a a CCAA update. you can read um an update from
076the teaching and learning department that um Dr. Helasa has many updates about what's been going on in science. And then um finally, there is just a small blurb um was a message from um Larry Johnson to answer your question about where we are with Teach for America and exploring that. So instead of putting it in an email, I decided to just bring it back here since that's where the original um topic came up. So thank you. I know we're at time. I turn it back over to Miss Sultry. Thank you. Um, and so if they're Yes, Dr. Molar. Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, quickly because I know our CCA was here. I think they just left. I was going to Oh, she's in the back. Uh, if if it would be okay with you. Um,
077our last day of school is this week, which means summer, this time next week will be summer break. And I know um in a lot of the spaces I've been lately, there have been a lot of questions about our summer programs because the summer programming is a little different. Um how we're in Schooljoy is a little different. Um a lot of the So a few years ago everything was in School Joy and now we do have some programs that we're still offering and the student might still be enrolled in it but it's not in School Joy. So um I've heard that um families will be had get an all call soon or or something like that. Um, so that way they will be notified which programs their kids are enrolled in or not enrolled in
078starting next week. And so I kind of wanted to have an opportunity to say an instructional policy on the microphone uh for anyone that might be curious about the programs in their buildings or for their families starting next week that more information is coming very soon. Am I am I doing this justice? Okay. Okay. More information is coming soon. Um, and emails and all calls will be going out. Thank you, Dr. Molnar. Um, and with that, I'd also just like to encourage everyone as we enter into our summer months to sign up for the summer reading programs at our local libraries and prevent the summer slide. And so, um, with that, um, if all minds are clear, um, we will adjourn at this time at 5:32. Thank you.