Board of Education Livestream - 05/08/23

001[Music] thank you [Music] greetings and salutations and welcome to this regular schedule board meeting for me for Monday May 8th 2023 um is there a motion to approve a treasure Pro Temp so moved nominate one first job you saw Perry for treasurer Pro town thank you bro is there a second second by Miss Autry is there any discussion roll call I'll do roll call on this um Mr Alexander president Mrs Kendrick yes Miss Autry yes Miss Jackson present Mr Perry I'm here okay so now we will move to you didn't call yourself oh Dr Hall aye folks we're dealing without a treasure tonight so we are we are we are approving a temporary treasure Pro Temp to to preside uh this evening so apologies for some of the confusion with regard to that okay so

002next we are going to rise for the Pledge of Allegiance we have Cadet second Lieutenant Valencia Brown the corporate Commander we'll talk about okay let's do it all right are you all are you online okay okay or art oh freeze it all right I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God Into the Storm with liberty and justice for all right butter bye oh my god oh March hi I'm Cadet second Lieutenant delancia Brown I've been in a program for two years and you guys may have seen me before I am the varsity Color Guard Commander so I've been here a lot doing Color Guard we wanted to give our junior varsity a chance since their first year Cadets and

003newer students um I've like I've said up before I've been in program for two years when I first heard of the program I was not convinced colonel was giving a speech in my freshman seminar class and she was talking about him like no this isn't for me and she pulled me out into the hallway to talk to me about it I'm still like no so she pulled me in the hallway after school and I went into the classroom and they were talking to me about it they're like just try it so they were like if you don't like it after two weeks then you can stop and I'm like okay so that's how I got here um I yeah that's how I got here I love it a lot so you can see that we

004have trophies over there we won those trophies at two drill meets those were our first Drew meat since covid and with every Cadet that went to the drill meets those were like second year Cadets like I've already said when we started this program we knew nothing of Drew so we won those first place first second and third place trophies with only [Applause] four [Music] hello I am Senior Airman battle I've been in the program I'm a first year Cadet hello I am Cadet technical Sergeant Coleman and I am a first year Cadet hello I am Cadet Master Sergeant woods and I am a second year Cadet hello I am Cadet senior Airman First Year Cadet students from the board yeah Mr I've got a question but a comment for uh Cadet Coleman was it Coleman

005you said I just wanted to commend you because I saw you in guys in here practicing before and you know when the flag went in your face you didn't lose it like you kept it together so I want to commend you for that that was pretty awesome I saw you practice it kept going in your face so awesome uh-huh yes I I yes Mr Mr Alexander taking over what happened you know it's really interesting um our program we have it's uh I think a lot of it is just um it lends itself a lot of times women are really looking for opportunities to step up and grow as leaders and this is really an environment uh and for a lot of people in our program they don't really fit into a lot of other things

006a lot of the Athletics and things like that we're kind of um we all we all know we're weird you know we're we're doing something that no one else in and very few people in the entire District are doing but the the girls seem to really grow into it a lot faster a lot of times than the guys [Music] one of the things that they really tried to do with this program this is my second year here and they specifically recruited a female to be on the instruction team because we have so many females and there's a lot of different issues that come with a large group of girls versus so um you know there's that good job Miss Jackson I wouldn't say here we heard Excellence looks different we need our Armed Forces I

007say I'd rather be in a safe country than an unsafe one so I want to commend you all too for your efforts and additionally current Lieutenant Colonel Commander is that it okay I saw you earlier in the week or last week right and I saw you Cadet morale they came and presented at my school and did a wonderful job and who was the other Cadet his name John Blaze what a name down please okay who was a freshman they did a wonderful job you're doing a great job with these young people and I do want to commend you for your work and your efforts and another thing to address is that this um they take they can join ROTC in place of gym so we may not see a lot of males because they may

008prefer to keep their gym class not that they're not interested in Armed Forces but they may prefer to be in gym where the young ladies may not but um kudos to you all thank you for your service to give back they did come in the middle of the week to present to some middle school students and I was there they did a great job the colonel is training them on public speaking developing them she made sure that all the questions went to the Learners Cadet Brown exemplified leadership by even stepping back and letting then Blaze was a freshman to take the Forefront but answering questions I you guys did a wonderful job so I just want to highlight that kudos to you all I'm very proud of you Miss Autry thank you for the seniors

009um do you have any future plans at this time on this team there are three sophomores and one freshman no seniors so what are your plans or interests you have an interest in going into the service or do you even know yet yes I do if I go into service I want to do Special Forces it doesn't matter which one but I want to do Special Forces um it's still pending I would like to join the Air Force after I graduate high school but it's depending if I would like to have the college experience um I'm really not thinking about joining but I feel like if I do it will be a great experience for me so yeah [Music] I plan on joining the Air Force After High School fantastic are there other questions so

010I just want to conclude by saying thank you again for being here thank you as well uh and I just would offer up if any of you decide that you'd like to join the Army instead please reach out I'd be happy to help you with that as well so thank you everybody oh yeah absolutely yes yes please Ms Jackson how are how early you guys have to get up no that's okay to her that's fine how early do you have to get up to train for drill about training oh and that's primarily because the busing a lot of the students either walk or ride the bus to school so it's a lot harder for them to get to school before school at our at booktube so we do most of our drill practices after school

011for about an hour okay actually I was in Navy ROTC at Garfield High School and we practiced at 5 30 A.M that's fine that was back when we walked up hill both ways to school you're just saying all right Mr Ford sorry go ahead it's a little puppy there [Music] I know I know I need to get my picture taken too take a photography [Laughter] just give me a smile right there I'm gonna take at least two they look fantastic two more here we go there we go thank you congratulations [Applause] thank you colonel [Music] all right next we will proceed to Community School Reflections are there any Mr Perry sure thank you president Hall so last week doing the uh election day on Tuesday had a lot of teachers specifically from Resnick reach out

012to me I know there's other clcs that are used as polling locations in our in our school system a lot of teachers a lot of parents a lot of emails phone calls those kind of things and the subject of those calls was the um the fact that the school was still open on a PO on a voting day and the parents raised concerns to me specifically about you know our Scholars being there at the school when the public is coming in to vote and I took those those complaints those issues very seriously I contacted superintendent outley we discussed it Monday evening and I thank her and Dr Thompson for following up on what I requested but we're looking for alternative solutions to having you know the voting taking place in our schools I know next

013year we're going to try to do something different if we can but all the options are on the table I just want to make sure I assure all the teachers and everybody at Resnick and all the other clcs we are looking into seeing what we can do and maybe been having the kids not be in school that day for sure but I want to say that while they were there on Tuesday you know one of our best security officers was there I went in myself on Tuesday morning and saw her there uh you know guarding the hallway you know people would come in and vote and go right out from the gym to the front door and not go anywhere else in the school so it was definitely safe I want to assure all the

014parents of that when I was there I saw my own eyes you know I have a son who goes there obviously so I went in and it was very safe but next year we'll look at doing you know other options to see what we can do to not have the kids be there for sure but thank you parents for reaching out thank you Miss simmonsberger uh Miss Ulrich all the teachers who called me from Resnick last week and we're definitely looking at that so thank you all right great thank you other community and school reflections Miss Jackson ladies first [Music] all right so since the last time we met I did have the privilege to visit bookstore high school and spend some time with the principal over there I just love visiting the building it's

015very inviting and just a good energy just with the staff from the front desk and just all around and I really enjoy being there additionally I want to highlight um you know I always talk about Youth entrepreneurships and entrepreneurs and um so one of our Garfield High School alumni he graduated in 2010 um Trayvon Gordon he came and he gave uh he donated 18 custom-made suits to uh let me see six seniors the principal um Anthony Anderson who was a young man who was shot um and uh disabled as a result and his mother was so grateful and just thought her son probably would never even get to go to prom and he made him a custom suit as well he also gave the coaching staff and the athletic director suits and one of the

016cool things about this young man and we talk about Excellence looks different because he these suits are sharp the quality the detail and he had the picture and the inside scenes of the the team of the moment and I thought that that was very good but most importantly it was his his philanthropic his his desire to want to give back and to highlight a school within his community so I'd still want to make sure that we highlight and Shout out our youth entrepreneurs that are products of our school additionally he has not stopped in his educational Endeavors recently graduating himself with their Masters in Business Administration from Savannah State and this is he is APS we are APS right and Excellence looks different he's a product of us um Garfield grad I have to say

017that again and he supported uh one of the high schools in our area so shout out to uh Trayvon Gordon of vonta's clothing line you guys can Google him sometime and if you see if you go to book those page they also covered it I think Channel 3 News did a coverage of it and it's just really good to see that in our community additionally I have the opportunity um to attend and on serve as the MC for the 33rd judge Harold K Stubbs scholarship Awards and lo and behold one of our championship team members from the booktube basketball team Marcel Boyce Jr was one of the recipients of the scholarship and so if you guys recall when Marcel was here I highlight the fact he's not only an athlete but he's also a scholar

018because I had the pleasure to meet with him when I saw Dr Sims and he's a member of that National Honor Society so he received a scholarship also Jared Brantley from booktube CLC received a scholarship Natalya Hatfield from East CLC she was awarded a scholarship a Monica's third event from East CLC receives a scholarship and Evan swoot from nif stem high school he received the scholarship and what was so cool about Evan is because it was a presentation right um Tech they did a presentation it was about leadership to tell yes and he was one of the scholars that was highlighted and I said wow Excellence looks different right it comes out in every um part additionally hawatha sankari from Firestone CLC she received the scholarship and the full ride scholarship of the night went

019to a young lady by the name of Sydney Wade and she too attends uh Firestone CLC so I just thought that it would be good for us to acknowledge and highlight them because I am very proud of these young people and it's a wonderful thing when the community supports such scholarships as the hero case stubs because we support our Scholars scholars in that way so I think those Scholars deserve a round of applause if you don't mind thank you and it reminds us that great things are happening in Akron public schools just um lastly I would like to know when I came in tonight I met a lot of the IB students and their projects that they did and while these kids are amazing it was third graders from let's see Resnick King what was

020the other school on this on this side um oh they're they're not in here anyway they did such a great job telling me about the Ronald McDonald House the Urban League the Metro Parks and I said the young like nine years old and I said Metro Parks needs to pay the little girl who talked about them because she talked about so many facets of the Metro Parks that I was just not aware of that existed and so she did a phenomenal job but I was especially impressed too by our high schoolers from Firestone High School and I'm so much so that I'm like hey I want to read your research one young lady she did something about women in the Catholic church and she said it's like about four thousand words and I said I'm

021interested just because she was so excited about it another young man did why do we seek knowledge I think and I just really cool in another one young man who's in the audience sitting right in the front row did a great job about the impact of soy in the estrogen levels on impacting with the testosterone psychoestrogen right psychoestrogen yeah yes so and he wants to be a chemist and he's looking to go to the University of Akron so when we talk about you know homegrown and staying locally to be educated I'm just excited about what they're doing and what their teacher is doing in the IB Program because the student highlighted the young lady I'm talking about is she here who did the other women in the Catholic church but she talked about how impactful

022oh there's the teacher go ahead put your hand up so because listen when when students tell you they have a phenomenal teacher and it's a wonderful program it's the truth a teacher doesn't have to boast with himself this you know the Bible says you know a tree by is true you know a teacher by their fruit and our students are our fruit so I want to say kudos to you and thank you and I'm excited that I got an opportunity to see all these wonderful Learners you guys did a great job every table I stopped by you did a phenomenal job so excellent excellent excellent thank you all right thank you Miss Jackson are there other oh yes Miss Audrey Mr President and so I just want to also uh give kudos to the IB

023presentations we didn't have enough time 30 minutes wasn't enough to see all of them but a special uh kudos to them and the coordinators involved with that um and then the team from uh Resnick they all greeted me in French and so it was amazing I'm like wow somebody give a shout out to Mr stowaway you're talking about the French he's a French teacher over there so it's bonjour Mr star awesome awesome um and so also speaking of greatness I just want to say uh Happy Teachers week and nurses week they happen to fall during the same week so that's one of the many reasons why I have a special affinity for teachers because I'm a nurse as well thank you thank you thank you for all that you do and so since we last

024met I had the opportunity to visit Garfield CLC where I was invited they had a culmination assembly this past Friday to have had mental health week and they did various things throughout the week they had a resource Fair they had speakers and when I came one Friday they had an MC Johnny Adams who's also APS booked a grad former NFL player and now he has a non-profit he goes around to many of our schools just encouraging our young people but he just was a great speaker he had the students really encouraged for me it just felt really good to see our young people having Joy being happy there's so much heavy stuff going on in the world so to see the young people enjoying themselves also I want to give a shout out to Mr

025Rose and his team over there who put all of that together they had also a speaker Dr Devon Carter he is a professor at the University of Akron he's working over there with the LeBron James piece over there the university and he's also a rapper so he told his story and in between telling his story he has songs he performed like four different songs but it was all relevant the students enjoyed it and so again it was a joy just to be there and experience that also along the same vein student voice was really strong in this last week or so and I just want to congratulate all of those students who have been using their voice just to share how they feel about different things I know there was a locker room experience the

026third one of the year that took place about a hundred Scholars that were in attendance to that they had breakout groups around resiliency and self-awareness and the female scholar athletes put poems together that are going to be published so I'm looking forward to seeing that and then also stem school had a panel discussion around mental health so again this all kind of comes back to our teachers who go above Beyond providing these opportunities and resources for our young people so I just want to tell them thanks again and I think that's it and also thanks to dream of Whitfield because I know she's just behind the scenes doing so much uh helping Elevate these student voices as well thank you I'm Mr Alexander that's a good segue into teachers and administrators um it was brought

027to my attention that two of our uh APS administrators got an award and that on April the 22nd Don Harper received an award from OA BSE is Ohio Alliance of black school Educators and for inspiring her teachers the students parents and and being in a cluster like North with the Clusters very diverse she she got awarded for that so congratulations to her uh and all she's done for the students of her school and APS also on uh in April uh Miss Dreama Whitfield she received an award as well from the black woman's caucus and the theme was saluting women of influence power and purpose and uh Mrs Whitfield again does works with our student Representatives which is a does a very good job and it was mentioned earlier that she uh how well she does

028and works with our students so congratulations to her as well thank you [Music] other uh thank you Mr Alexander are there other requests I'm sorry other community reflections [Music] I want to give a shout out to all the creatives the innovator the art teachers the music teachers and thanks to Miss Kim Wilson to make sure that I got my painting that girl is on fire so she's making sure that that's being secure for me so thank you so much I do appreciate it into the Young Artists I cannot wait to hang it in my office because it was a wonderful work and um you guys are doing great a great job in the district I just wish we could put a micro you know just a lens a laser over all the great things that

029many of these teachers are doing because it is happening I have bear witness to it I've been in classrooms and I know a lot of times we may hear about the negative and that's and that's really that's sad I mean it's the reality right but I want to make it my business to highlight also the positive because there is a Remnant and positive things are happening APS and we do have some exceptional caring teachers that are putting in the work and bringing out the goal the treasure that is within our young people and so it's important that we continue to cultivate and encourage that because we are better together and we can move our district forward together because we have great young people that we're serving and I'm excited to see what they will become

030in the world especially when I see these IB presentations and they're talking to me um when the young man says I'm going to be a chemist and I'm like absolutely you are and I took a picture of them I said because I'm going to say I knew you here before you got there and I saw this and I believe that he's going to attain exactly that motivational speaking should be in your future too Miss Jackson um I'll pay I'll pay for that um other other community at school reflections okay I'll just add two things quickly um so I had a chance so I got asked to be a judge for the bhutanese Community Association of Akron they were doing a grant funded essay competition and invitations went out to students at Tallmadge Woodridge Cuyahoga Falls

031and north and these kids were amazing they gave a five minute uh talks on a topic that that impacts their community and and impacts the world topics such as gun violence depression male suicide things of that nature and so to your point Mr Jackson about about how Excellence looks different you know I was really amazed at you know students whose parents and grandparents don't even really speak English that well and just how how they've mastered um you know the language and just how articulate they were when they were communicating I did find out after I got there that there was no one that there were no students from North entered into the competition so they tricked me a little bit I said next year we're going to have some students from North and entered into

032this competition as well and so the second thing I also share is uh I also had a chance to with the superintendent we had a chance to attend the annual Miller South uh Visual Arts auction on Friday and talk about amazing artwork it was the first time I walked into a place uh well I'm sorry let me rephrase that um I didn't know that I couldn't afford Student Art until I walked into the Miller South Art Auction uh because some of these pieces were were just so well done and they were not cheap at all there was no uh discounts going to school board members let me tell you that much uh so uh so but no and so I just want to you know shout out again it was at agrona and they had

033the students art on display everywhere inside there and just I mean it was nothing short of amazing when you walk through like you like you felt you were walking through Wonderland and just the quality you know again there was a number of pieces I wanted to purchase I just couldn't afford to purchase and so uh to your point Miss Jackson you know I think I'm gonna have to figure out how I get some a line of credit um to purchase some of these pieces because because I want to because I want to get on the on the on the ground level so I can say hey I bought I bought your first piece when you were when you were in eighth grade at Miller South and now you're just world famous artist and this piece

034is now worth millions of dollars and I got it for 400 which was a lot Friday night so um but um anyway so [Laughter] you're right you're right you're right um so and also we just want to shout out all the teachers and parents who were there as well um you know again you know they were it was a packed house in there and I also want to thank uh Miss outly for being there as well she may have comments about it later on in her report but uh but it was nothing sort of amazing so um again I'm always you know I'm always amazed at how talented um and I should stop being amazed because every time I walk into Miller South and I see that it's the level of Talent on display uh

035it's in students who are so young it really just blows you away so um are there any dish I think I was the last Community School reflection Ms Jackson anything else you want that nothing else [Music] [Laughter] okay all right so we're going to move to a request to address the board um so I'll read the usual uh Preamble um participants will not be permanent to speak on matters related to vendor or business matters formal complaints grievances specific student or Student Records Personnel matters and potential or pending legal matters please keep your comments to three minutes or less the board will not respond but we'll sign through the superintendent the appropriate person for follow-up I see that there's a number of folks from North High School thank you for coming out tonight um you know

036it's okay thank you for being here as as some of you may or may not know there are two of us on the school board who are North High School alumni um that's myself and Mr Alexander um you know I'm class of 2018 so I'm I'm younger than I'm just kidding just kidding just kidding just kidding um so so we're excited to see you all here um just as a as a preamble um to to to some of the comments um I was following some of the commentary on Facebook about the North High School building I just wanted to reiterate to those of you who are going to speak on the topic that this board has not made any decisions on what we're doing with regard to any of these buildings whether it be Miller

037South or stem or North nothing has been decided at all so I so I do want to clear up any miscommunication that may have occurred on that topic we have not decided anything so we are still in the deliberation and making uh well we're still in the deliberation and reviewing plans phase um so having said that um let's go with and I'll just uh gazelle Smith remove the yeah let's get the just told me [Music] casual M Smith Senior president of South High class of 1967 1191 Dover Avenue a case study how a Grassroots group went to war with the Akron Board of Education fighting the Akron plan to decommissioned schools and reassign pupils and one the Akron plan proposed reassignment of 3851 pupils as seven schools would be closed 85 percent of those to

038be affected were black blacks were only 31 percent of the population Robertson School task force established a goal to keep a neighborhood school as defined by the Robinson Community open and operating and ensure quality education in the neighborhood School West Side neighbors Incorporated West Side neighbors was formed in 1965 as a demonstration model for Effective integrated living West Side neighbors objected to the acting plan because in addition to placing unfair burden on black students the plan would increase racial isolation in two schools that were already racially consecrated concentrated spoke to high and West Junior High the citizens for Education equality Coalition a coalition made up of West Side neighbors Robson School task force and others an area why a coalition of people who were concerned about the extent and duration of racial isolation in Akron

039public schools the citizens for Education quality Coalition told the Akron Board of vacation repeatedly negotiate or litigate January the 13th 1978 a legal suit was filed the suits stated the Akron plan to decommission schools and reassign people's place an unfair burden on minority students the Board of Education created racially identifiable schools the verdict in 1980 the sixth Circuit Court of Appeals found the acting plan to the decommissioned schools and reassign pupils was unconstitutional because race was used as a factor in closing schools court rules in favor of the Akron Board of Education as it related to the allegation the boards caused racial identify both schools there were two remedies on the table Robinson school would be reopened all fine Federal students would be reassigned to Robertson School the second was students from Kenmore I would

040be reassigned to Sapphire because the South High community did not fight the good fight for four years and other circumstances the plaintiffs in the lawsuit bail versus the Akron Board of Education so the for the remedy reopening Robinson school and closing fine filter and reassigning all of the fine Federal students to Robinson Kimball High School was given 40 years of life from the citizens for Education equality Coalition when it could have been different now Kenmore is advocating getting students from millisol and decommissioning Miller South as we continue on this tedious Journey the South High Community needs to have flexibility of method and steadfastness not being flim-flamed or Hoodwinked by the Akron Board of Education it does not make any difference who we elect to send through the Akron Board of Education the Willie Lynch outcomes

041prevail we are no more than an ATM machine at the time of 11. taxation without representation we are now organizing in the best tradition of Saul Alinsky first half of May input on the future of Miller South from the community June 2nd 2023 at Centenary United Methodist Church a conference of stakeholders to develop a working position for the Miller South to go forward on June 3rd 10 a.m at your body Hills neighborhood parade to commemorate the legacy of South High and Miller South and serve as a rallying point for future Miller software endeavors third verse same as the first demands cease and decease on plotting to remove milosoft and visual performing arts school from 1055 East Avenue to meet with our preservation of Miller South leadership team in the next 10 days to go over

042the facts and figures on bringing the Miller South building up to the building building standards most songs have four verses so maybe I'll be back for the fourth first thank you Mr Smith can I have Janice Weaver please good evening my name is Janice Weaver and I'm the academy coach at North High School I emailed you on behalf of my school over a month ago and I am returning here today along with my fellow staff students and community members to formally request that North High School return to a priority in the district's long-term operational plan and not be contingent on a combined permanent Improvement and operating Levy as you know there are now several options for this board to consider it started however with four these four options were generated over 18 long months of

043research and hundreds of meetings with internal and external experts they looked at the future of APs objectively through up population data enrollment data and budget constraints each of these initial options prioritized North High School these experts understood that our 100 year old building which is literally crumbling around us needs to be rebuilt immediately we were thrilled to finally be on the docket to receive the appropriate facilities to educate our diverse students our excitement however was stifled as more options were added to the list to be considered now with North's rebuild being contingent on levees somehow North went from being a certainty to a maybe and other groups wants took precedence over our basic needs once again North's 1000 combined students and staff are being left behind and we risk continuing to miss out on the

044equity that the rest of the district receives the last time we passed a levy was in 2012. superintendent James was quoted in the paper stating I've been here for over 20 years and have never seen anything like this our businesses rallied behind us I've seen our citizens volunteer from PTA moms to retirees we put everything we had into this campaign I personally remember going door to door with students passing out flyers it was quite the victory we live in a very different Akron today economically reputationally structurally the average Akron home price has more than doubled since then which means that property taxes have increased as well Akron sewer bills are up grocery prices are through the roof not to mention other post-coveted Financial hardships we would be banking on a good faith turnout of Voters

045from every other cluster that already have what they want for their communities and whose budgets are already being stretched we would be hoping to offset that through tremendous voter turnout in a cluster where half of the adult population with school-aged children speak English as a second language which makes voting a challenge not to mention tacking North onto the current projected millage of the impending operating Levy would make for a higher combined millage than 2012. as an Akron resident APS employee and long-time advocate of both it pains me to say that I am not as optimistic as some an operating Levy is inevitable but Norse inclusion in it is not what are our contingency plans for North if it does not pass we've waited so long to rebuild that we'll need an estimated 15 million dollars

046to keep us operational even before we break ground tack on costs due to delays in unsupported levies and our situation becomes even more dire I wish each group advocating for their schools and clusters could get what they want but we all know that that's not a possibility I urge this board to return to the original recommendations that took over 18 months and 100 and hundreds of meetings to create they're based on data facts and basic needs thank you thank you Tina boys good evening board members superintendent outley thanks for listening to me once again you have a lot of important decisions in front of you so I just I'm not sure if you received this document that was handed out at a neighborhood meeting where close to 100 people attended about the future of Pfeiffer

047elementary school but I just wanted to recap a few of those statistics for you Akron Kenmore is akron's second largest neighborhood since 1999 APS has decreased our footprint by 60 percent after our neighborhood as well as others in the community voted for a quarter percent income tax increase our our footprint was then decreased by another 50 percent in 1999 Miller South School for the Performing Visual and Performing Arts was part of the Kenmore cluster it is our history APS has decreased our schools from 10 to 4 and if they close Pfeiffer that would be three three for akron's second largest neighborhood a middle school and two grade schools neither of which is north of wilbeth road or Kenmore Boulevard two of our neighborhood's biggest thoroughfares kenmore's other two grade schools could not absorb all of

048pifer's students in Kenmore grade schools Kenmore grade schoolers would be displaced once again our students would be displaced to Firestone Park schools over four miles away the proposed KHS campus is one block from Kenmore Boulevard with six recording studios two live music venues several visual art studios and a handful of Youth and art center non-profits this exists we did not invent this for this discussion the city has invested much in Kenmore Boulevard as has the Community Development Corporation in our neighborhood at the March 13th APS board meeting board members pledged not to decrease aps's footprint in Kenmore once again as you know Akron voted for change on Tuesday Akron has watched as things have the two top issues and I you know I haven't mentioned this but I I was a candidate for counsel the

049two top issues I've heard in my community are safety and lack of Education in Kenmore lack of educational opportunities lack of opportunities for our youth in our neighborhood our kids have to leave our neighborhood to do things okay this mayor mayor left I should say was voted in because of a promise he made to reactivate akron's schools to be Community Learning Centers the very thing they were promised to be when the former male pasqualic convinced an already disheartened Kenmore neighborhood to vote for that so that income tax increase I think all of you received a letter from him as well we are holding you to this please do not decrease the footprint in Kenmore please allow our pifer students to continue to walk to school thank you very much thank you Miss voice Frozen asimi

050this is our students this is our student School Board member from North High School welcome back Frozen thank you good evening my name is frozen azimi I'm a junior not high school I arrived in the United States in 2020 from Sri Lanka I was born in Afghanistan moved to Dubai and then to Sri Lanka for safety as many Afghan people were getting deported from Dubai I began Middle School at Jennings where I only went for three days and then we had we started online learning my freshman year was also online tonight I am here as a voice for the students of North High School to ask that you are considered voting for the plan to ensure a school is rebuilt I am requesting that the plan does not require a levy to be passed I

051trust that you will do what is best for our students and Families many of our families in our community are adjusting to American culture and may not understand the discussion around rebuilding our school in fact in my family my mother is the only aware of the situation because I have told her about it she has encouraged me to speak to you all about this while while every other high school is within our school district has been rebuilt North High School remains old a legacy building where other parts of the city have been suffered declines in enrollment Nor Hell has increased our population in part due to many immigrant families like mine our families have brought our language our food our tradition to make for an amazing experience if you haven't ever visited our school during

052culture fair you should really try as the first school within our district to trailblaze the College and Career Academy model we are grateful for the relationship and support we have in a Community Partnership we have been fortunate to offer many resources to our family including a food pantry and a clothing Center the the spaces we have to provide are crowded and old and the image it provided to our families is ugly compared to other high schools in our community we at North High School while your school district missions to be fair and inclusive over 20 countries are represented in our North in our school and we learn about different cultures every day the leadership opportunities our students have had here like mine as a student Boardman member as a student board member had been have

053it have been great all of us deserve a safe and inspiring school to learn in I encourage you to work together to provide that for us before I close I would like to invite all of you to attend a relay to rebuild event taking place on Saturday May 20th 2023 at North High School from 11 A.M to 1 pm our soccer team City Series champs will be hosting yours games we will have cultural foods and one of our teachers DJing the event in addition to the fun you will also get the chance to experience what it's like to walk in this shoes offer student in North High School please come and see the buckets in our classroom collecting water experience the temperatures that range from 55 to 85 degrees on the same day and sit

054in a desk with my classmate where the ceiling tail fell and crushed it is too late for me I'm a classmate to experience the new building but it's not too late for the younger kids in our community please put note first we don't have much time left oh and one more thing since our practice soccer soccer field is currently under constructions and we don't have a home field for our games for our city Series champs to play on please consider including this in our building plans thank you [Applause] Brian capranis hi everybody my name is Brian capronus I'm a school counselor at North High School I've been there for 10 years a proud Garfield High School graduate and I live in the North cluster it seems over the past few meetings the ltop plan has

055like Miss Weaver so eloquently said changed greatly there were some plans before that look like we didn't need to have a levy in place but now it looks like that might be the case hopefully that's not the case so we can figure out a way to get North built without using a levy because I think like Ms Weaver said built using a levy or getting a levy past is going to be a challenge some of the good things in North we've done over the past 10 years since I've been there we've increased their graduation rate from as low as 54 percent up to 80 percent I think even this last time we're maybe close to 84 percent of 2022 70 percent of our seniors in this year's graduating class are going to earn a 12

056point industry credential which we're really proud of and it's something we've come along with we're trending in the right direction with the hard work of our students and our staff we may not be a crown jewel but we should be a priority as the only population that's growing in APS every day are students like frozen talked about have active ceiling leaks in one of the rooms there's a bucket in the corner where the boards are warped and the floors become softer when you step on it and so when it rained all last week just rain pouring out of there into the classroom in one of our hallways by the gym for the past few months is fixed now but there was a tarp it was collecting rain water as it flew in from the outside

057down the hose into the trash bucket and that third one was closed four months in one of the classrooms with the ceiling tile these ceiling tiles here were gone subfloor cracked came down right next to a student's desk they could see through to the school uh to the classroom above some of our boilers and our air handlers are really bad right now there was man so I can see the boiler system from my window and for the past I don't know probably he's from we'll call it August till it got cold outside in September there was a crew there daily to work on the boiler just so we could be warm this time of year and then when it came in today luckily it's warm that's great but luckily when I came in today I

058walked right in the boilers are on some of the classrooms today walked into one with 86 degrees and he had an air conditioner going and then you walk somewhere else in the building and it's you know kids wearing hoodies and are cold so the the temperature extremes are just wild in our entryway we have flags for all the ethnicities and cultures and countries have been there before of our students but the ceiling above is made of asbestos so when we have events like culture Fair other events like that students will come in even though we tell them not to take the flags out because they're proud of where they're from but then it knocks the asbestos down on the ceiling and in the round of the students so that's one of the things that you

059know we deal with on a semi-regular basis and safety too when you think about when you come into a new building right you come into the vestibule and you like you know you buzz in you go into the main office and there's it's pretty secure at North when you buzz in at door four you come in you have access to two stairwells that take you right upstairs without going through the main office you have to walk around a corner to go to the main office there's our SRO there but if he's not in his office just maintaining and watching everything you have free reign of the whole building we have added a security guard there with the new metal detectors but you can walk right in the north and get in anywhere you want as

060soon as you're buzzing as a visitor um but and you know when you come here you can't even get like I can't get above the third floor with my badge so when there's zero students here we serve kids Pre-K to 12 in North High School um could we push this down the road further sure but as Weber said it's going to cost millions and millions and millions of dollars and at that point in time I don't know if North is going to be able to function as a warm safe and dry School then I'll leave you with this this one really got me it's about seven years ago I took a student to leadership Akron the leadership American event at book the high school so we're walking around she's like just in awe of the

061whole place because it had just been built and it looked great and she turned to me and goes I can't believe this is like where you can go to school this makes you want to learn this is so awesome and then what do I say to her I have nothing I can say so just please make us a priority if you can thank you [Applause] Jake Holland [Music] I'm adjusted some kind of tall sorry first and foremost thank you for the time um my uh first off Jake Holland 351 Keith Avenue in the Firestone District Resnick uh Mr Perry my original uh thought was to come here and and you know talk to you about it sounds like what you have heard a lot of already about uh using Resnick as a polling location I'm

062not gonna you know preach to you here because it sounds like you guys are considering that as something as a safety concern but not just that also you know the logistics of having you know you've you know having a security officer there and while I'm sure it's safe we can all agree that we live in a pretty crazy world these days and you know the risk to anything is too great so I was considering sitting back there because you already talked about it just not coming up but hearing a lot of people here talk and I've never spoken at a public meeting so I'm going to pretend that all of you are also cheering for me right now so thank you for humoring me um but what resonated me and uh Miss oh gosh I

063think she left um talking about the clcs being used as sort of the community Bedrock that they were intended to be and I want to challenge something you said Mr Perry to where oh well it sounded like what you were kind of saying was maybe we just won't use the clcs as polling locations I would challenge that we should be using them as polling locations and we should be closing the schools I mean what better way to get involved in your community than showing up to vote right being a part of the democratic process having a place that is recognizable and not to knock the smaller polling centers but a lot of times it's smaller churches or community centers that aren't as widely known in the community especially for people in our community that may

064not have English as their first language but you can say hey we're voting at the high school and pretty much everybody should know where that or the CLC I'm sorry people pretty much should know where that is for the most part so I'm a big proponent of at the national scale everyone should have the day off on primary day and on the general election day in November and primaries in May around here but I know it varies so this isn't just directed at the acronym School Board I mean I think it should be ever but I think the board has an opportunity to sort of set an example of hey we want to hear the voice of everyone in our community we're going to close the schools on our primary days and our general election

065days everyone can come here to vote and I know it's the solution of that is not quite as easy as me sitting here talking about it but something I think the board should consider and again kind of getting the clcs to be that Community the Bedrock and what better place to start than voting there so thank you for the time and thank you for all the north people uh Omar uh Jimenez absolutely [Music] Hello Larry good evening everybody my name is Omar Jimenez I am sayulical one representative here for northeast Ohio and I'm here to discuss about a contracted serve as that APS currently has with a security company called Royce they used to be called tenable and this new company called Roy's purchased them and they are doing services for APS that quite frankly

066are safety team members which we have a few here behind us can do the job but I want to put a spotlight and let you guys know what you know the kind of company that Roy's is so that we understand that they're contrary to software renewal very very shortly and we want to make sure that you guys understand uh you know who you're dealing with so Royce is not a good company overall they have a history of extensive wage theft one of the worst private sector offenders in the state they are currently under investigation for illegal anti-union activity as well as they have a bad reputation because of their extreme High turnover below market rate wages and no pay time off I've spoken directly to some of the officers and I've confirmed that they don't

067have any type of sick days holidays vacations they just come to work get paid and go home um and quite honestly APS does not need Royce again we have our safety team members here that are more than capable of creating a safe and welcoming environment for Akron schools and Akron students they have a better ability to connect with and develop relationships with the students something that a contracted service don't really care for they're just here to do a job and go home but our safety team they're invested in the community they're invested in their schools and they'll do a great job um also APS didn't choose Royce as I mentioned earlier they chose tenable unfortunately Roy's bought them out and now Royce is yeah you know the individuals in charge and it's been about 13

06814 years since this has happened so it's not something that just sprung overnight it's been quite a while uh finally Royce officers should have the same opportunities for good long-term employment that the safety team members have we will welcome them as members of local one if they so choose to but regardless of that they all should have a living wage with some good benefits uh Royce is not just locally here in Akron they are everywhere within Ohio and other states specifically in Cleveland uh Royce has been losing a lot of their work across the Cleveland Market they've gotten three major Property Owners they've have not renewed their contract as well because of the bad behavior that they've created over the years and they've opted for other contractors with better track record that do respect their

069workers and treat them well and then finally we understand that our safety team members cannot do and perform out the job that uh actual security company a monitoring company can do so you know we understand that as you know something realistic um if ibf still believes that they need some supplemental security that is necessary for long term for monitoring you late hours in the day et cetera Etc uh we'll be welcome you know we'll have the opportunity to talk to APS to talk about responsible contractors that they may be able to hire that we know will treat employees with the respect and dignity thank you Dev I think it's blue gel [Applause] [Music] good uh good evening my name is Deborah Joe and I am a Nepali Refugee student who attends North High School I'm

070here today to speak to you about the issues occurring at my school due to our diverse population our students families are not able to understand the current situation or and they aren't able to make their voices heard because of the language barriers other schools are able to make their voices heard but not our school for that reason I feel it was necessary to come out up here and speak out not only for my school but for my community as well North High School is in desperate need of a new building the current School building was built during the 1930s and as such it is very very old our hallways are cramped and congested making it difficult to navigate between the classes the ceilings in some of our classrooms leak when it rains and some of

071the air conditioning systems are just unreliable but most of the classes not even having air conditioning leading to unbearable heat during those warmer Weathers These Are Not Mere inconveniences they are real problems that have a significant impact on the learning environment in the health and the safety of our students but this is not just about the physical state of our school building it's about the fact that North High School deserves to be put at the top of the list when it comes to funding for a new building why is because North High School is the oldest high school in our district the only high school that has not been rebuilt and as such it is it has served our community for the longest period of time now it is time for our high school to

072receive the attention it deserves it is time we take action by investing in a new building which will provide our students with a safe comfortable and proper environment which will encourage growth in the success of our students it is time for us to show our students that we care we value their education and we value their future so I encourage you all to consider and support the construction of a new building for North High School let us not only provide a Better Learning environment for our students but also a better environment for our teachers as well thank you for your attention [Applause] Alma I think it's crya de Blasio hello I'm Alma Korea de Blasio got the Elmo part right that's good a proud teacher at North High School 17 years go Vikings um there

073is a charm at working in a legacy building having built-in wooden closets mind you no insulation between the wood and outside wall it's okay it's skeleton keys for the closets that don't work anymore wood floors that are still kind of well warped in some places and missing in other places an actual slate for my chalkboard Slate from 1930 for my chalkboard concerned that our community our community at North is unable to express as you know North has a high Refugee population and our parents and Guardians do not speak English and are unaware that their students are missing out the major part of our English language Learners in their first years the first the newcomers right are regulated to classrooms in the oldest Antiquated parts of the building when your life has been so disrupted that

074you live in camps for most of it or you're under constant threat in the country come from you are sometimes happy to settle especially if you have no idea idea how it could be the Litany of problems we have and some of these you've heard before leaky air conditioners that are brand new but they're you know at least I have one now this year and leaky ceilings that drop water and crud ceiling tiles daily the previous environmentalist or Health Department inspector that came a couple weeks ago inspected a strange substance that is in my room every day even if I sweep it up saying quote yeah I don't know what that is we'll have to test it unquote but then that person has been replaced so I don't know if the new person knows about

075this mysterious substance yet so I do worry about my health and that of my colleagues all the time and even the students right we're the ones who spend our time my lifetime in that classroom especially when we don't know what we're being exposed to our students complain no because you know at least they have a roof at a school to go to these rooms cannot have serious work done without concerns of asbestos which is definitely in our building and the fire marshal is always warning us about news not using extension cords in the classroom yet I cannot plug in my projector without extension cords because of where the electrical outlets are but do our students complain no because some don't have computers where they came from some may say these are small issues and people

076ask me all the time what can we do for your classroom and I always say since I've gone so long without I'm not sure how to answer the things that need fixing go beyond a 200 gift card things like a teacher bathroom on each floor would be nice a foam or some kind of security call walkie-talkie at my end of the building for safety concerns would be nice currently I have to leave my classroom go down halfway through the hall and enter another portion of the building to access a phone in the building okay a PA system that worked properly in every room either it's too loud or it's too quiet would be nice fire doors so we could close but we can't because they blocked the security cameras that would be nice for the

077students the bathrooms are not convenient as they are on alternating floors at least in the old building right girls on one floor boys and the other girls on another they have no trash receptacles in the girl's stalls there's one main one in the room but we did just get doors on the Stalls so that was two years ago I think in the bathroom sinks there are separate Taps for hot and cold water so you get super hot on this side super cold in the Sun and then often the bathrooms are closed due to plumbing problems okay uh same for the teachers bathrooms they're the same issues so the students go for one room which is freezing to their next class which is boiling hot in fact one of our newer rooms this today as you've

078already heard was 86 degrees just this morning some have new Prometheus boards which is great and then some of us like me have broken Smart Boards which are not going to get fixed but do our students complain no not really most of them don't even know what they're missing or don't know how to complain about it their parents or Guardians cannot lead a campaign because they don't know the English they do not know their rights or they are too afraid of what could be done to them if they cause a Ruckus you know knowing where they come from we talk about equity in the classroom but what is said and what is done are two different things North is the one high school with a growing student body and the community in North Hill is

079growing and thriving and it would be really overwhelming for these new and nearly new immigrants from North Hill to pull their kids from that Vibrant Community and send them off to other communities for their education if we start doing that we're depriving our students of their Equitable future thank you [Applause] [Music] it was I'm sorry I think this is um Elizabeth de Blasio good evening I am her daughter so um I'm here today alongside my mother fellow APS colleagues and students of North High School as an APS substitute teacher I spent much time at North High School a daughter of an immigrant that immigrated to North Hill and a student that started at eps I'm here today to stand in solidarity with the community and use my voice to uplift their concerns after discussing concerns

080with staff members and students a recurring theme that should be highlighted is the word community and how much that means to North High School if you know anything about North Hill the community is Central to a diverse and thriving cultures that make up the north side of Akron a community that wants to stay flourishing the students of NHS share something beautiful a space to harmonize different cultures a hub for international Refuge this being said the students and Community deserve a safe and healthy space a space that isn't immediately alarming with the many red flags and health concerns that are very apparent in the infrastructure at North a key concern to a new space is the disconnect between those doing the building and those who will live with it after it is crucial to take into

081consideration The Way North Hill moves noting that many students travel by foot three of examples of the immediate needs for the building and needs that people have been asking for for years are here a new roof what is a building without a core structure there are many places that the ceiling are not worth replacing but inevitability leak again and need to be replaced this is not cost effective the first second and third floors of the old section need to be replaced large sections of those have cracks and those cracks have asbestos being said safety tests to monitor substances that are within the infrastructure a study from the international Journal of environmental health tells us that asbestos leads to exposure and high risk of mesothelioma and lung cancer these are the conditions that your students and

082staff are in every day the last thing I will note is the switch in Health Inspectors the previously appointed health inspector had been in the building to test abnormal substances found in the classroom especially in the 1930s wing a concern of the people in the building is that if these notes are not passed on what actions will be taken in the next steps will the re-inspection of these substances and infecting the infrastructure at North High School are they going to be left to advocate for their own safety like they have been for years or will the district finally take accountability on its pipe part for providing a healthy and safe place for the environment of our students it is important to have a community engaged response not just one with Administration input but those with

083the voices of whom are affected a response that will not disrupt the way this community moves and lives by displacing and forgetting about them throughout the process please take the words for me the people of North Hill in the community seriously and commit to a community-involved response because you care show us that you care about this community thank you [Applause] okay great thank you for all that came to address the board tonight we certainly appreciate the time and the effort and thought that went into your commentary as I've said before this board is a board you know I think we've hopefully demonstrate it multiple times how much we do listen and we are listening now and again and we will continue to do so uh having said that again as a reminder this board has

084not made any decisions yet but as you have heard from multiple speakers uh we have multiple uh things that need to be done and there are limited and finite resources you know that we are working with and so so no matter what this board ultimately decides it's not going to make everybody in this community and I mean the community at large I mean North Hill but I'm saying the community at large is not going to make everybody happy and so so you know we please know that we are doing the best that we can too um to not just review options and solicit other uh uh options and IDs as well but we also are working to be responsible stewards of The Limited dollars that we do have to spend to address these things um

085and so you know the passage of a levy has to occur you know whether whether we add an operating a Pion levy on or not I mean we have to pass in Levy um you know as a quick history lesson you know every six to eight years since 1979 we've essentially asked for new operating dollars by the time we get to 2024 we will have gone I want to say 12 or 13 years without having asked for a single dollar from the community so so again I I say all that's to say that we're going to need um not not just your support but this but the support of a lot of others who are not in this room to ensure that we pass our first Levy in 13 years that is critical we are

086not be starved um having said that I know that there are a number of folks in the room who who may want to exit and we have other Regulators that we want to do so out of courtesy though for those who are who we are going to recognize next uh we'll take a five-minute recess to allow those who want to leave to go ahead and leave and then we'll resume in five minutes and we'll begin our recognitions we are in recess at 6 50. foreign [Music] foreign meeting for May 8th 2023 we're back in session at 7 04 p.m next we are going to move to recognitions uh Madam superintendent well we have our District's athletic director Joe vasilotti with us and I'm not going to say why he's here because I don't want to

087steal his Thunder so I'll let Mr vasilati come up good evening everyone thank you thank you for the opportunity to celebrate the success of Firestone swim program up here joining me is head coach Cindy dial she yes very much deserves Applause coach has been at it for a long time 25 years of those at Firestone 20 is head coach so you know it's human nature to take sustained Excellence for granted I think but every year I'm reminded of how awesome that program is when I go to a meet when I hear about the money raised in their swim-a-thon every year before the season running total now is over 150 000 for Akron Children's Hospital through the years that's been accumulated by their great work so that community service is much appreciated thank you very much

088sustained Excellence through the years we have a Hall of Fame now in the district we're in our second year and we we've just named our new our second class coming in eight more student athletes and of those 16 now those 16 student athletes three are Firestone swimmers which is pretty awesome when you think of the 90 plus years of history of of Athletics and APS and those three swimmers joined Mr Alexander as a member of the Hall of Fame and so it's just another example of the awesome nature of the program but without further Ado we're here to honor the 2023 team some of the members here are our seniors and some are not but our goal is to honor the state qualifiers and seniors and we're going by grade level in alphabetical order and

089Coach I'm going to give you the certificates here they should be in order of presentation there we go notice the green paper clip by the way steel things like this yeah it's all yours my gift to you my gift I don't know about my like my pen I don't know about that all right we'll start with freshman Sarah Schuler Sarah please come forward [Applause] congratulations Sarah as a freshman Sarah you can stay up here we'll turn it pretty cool for a freshman in the girl on the girls relay teams that qualify for State congratulations Sarah next we'll go to our juniors in alphabetical order Eva Nixon Eva qualified for states in the 400 freestyle relay part of that Girls Relay Team that finished 15th congratulations Eva Stanley kneecamps a Junior couldn't be with us tonight

090he's also a Performing Artist I believe he's at the Akron Civic Theater right now doing his thing congratulations Stanley obviously a well-rounded young man um he was part of the 400 freestyle relay team for the boys that finished 18th at state next we have Junior Julia cornnaman did I say that right thank you Julia was a busy girl at States she was in the 200 freestyle finished 11th a 500 freestyle finished 15th and part of that girl's 400 freestyle relay team our last junior is Audrey savalde Audrey participated at the state meet in the 100 backstroke and also part of the 400 freestyle relay team and as mentioned earlier I think by massagree about our leadership symposiums our locker room teams Audrey's part of the Firestone group that attends our leadership Symposium so thank you

091Audrey and now for our seniors and I need to throw out a couple terms that you hear that will apply for some of these seniors the first qualification is is that of an academic All-American and for that to happen as a swimmer you need at least a 3.75 GPA in all eight semesters of high school which is pretty awesome another uh phrase you're going to hear is a swimming All-American kind of speaks for itself but specifically you have to be top 100 in the U.S in the entire country in a particular event so keep those in mind as we roll through the senior South now in alphabetical order we have Mason Brady [Applause] Mason qualifies as an academic All-American in the states he participated on that 400 freestyle relay team for the boys he will

092attend the University of Akron well he he will study respiratory therapy congratulations Mason next Tara Brill Meyer [Applause] Tara also earned academic All-American status she is also a three-time swimming All-American at the state meet she competed in the 200 individual medley finishing sixth in the state the 100 butterfly finishing 15th and also part of the 400 freestyle relay team for the girls Tara will attend Fordham University in the Bronx where he has she has pledged not to become a Yankees fan she will study biological sciences emphasis on pre-med and designs of attending Medical School eventually congrats Tara our next senior is Elle dannemiller as a senior this year I'll participated in the 100 butterfly and 100 breaststroke she will attend the University of Cincinnati and she will begin their exploratory program there as a focus

093of her academic study next is Sam commet Sam is one of those academic all-americans and that's awesome also part of the 400 relay team for the boys at the state meet Sam will attend John Carroll University he will continue as a student athlete in swimming there while majoring in engineering and physics next is senior Johnny Marshall [Applause] this might take a while I've pledged the IB folks that I'll speed it up though okay so Johnny is at 12 times swimming All-American that's 12. currently holds five Firestone school records he's a three-time state champion in the 100 backstroke at this year's meet he won that 100 backstroke for the third time also finished second the 200 freestyle was part of the 400 freestyle relay team for the boys Johnny will attend the University of Florida as

094a swimming student athlete with an academic focus in business congratulations John [Applause] and finally our last senior is Nick Michael you've heard Nick's name already with his expertise on soybeans in the chemistry lab it's no surprise he qualifies as an academic All-American again that's at least 3.75 in all eight semesters of high school he will attend the University of action Akron excuse me as a chemistry major with plans to pursue a PhD in chemistry Nick yes there you go awesome group awesome coach sustained Excellence let's hear it for Firestone swimming [Applause] and I want to be nice so so the people that are they're taller and the fact people are less taller than front so it's perfectly challenged Joe want to get you in here today I'm going to get you in here too I

095may have to move this if that's all right absolutely can we move it a little bit is it okay I just wanted to be nice I just want everybody do you want to get you in there come on you're fine okay I'm gonna take three pictures all you can do is smile and all I have to do is shut up okay so here we go I'm gonna go one two three and then I'm gonna take three pictures okay one two three one two one difference here we go right here look right here happy face one two three you make sure it's a good one and that's so good I'm gonna take two more one Smile Smile yeah there you go no well I was nobody's in trouble here nobody's in trouble you're not going to

096Prince here we go thank you two two more on three one two three and one more on three one two three congratulations today [Applause] [Music] a little bit ladies get some sleep yeah get some sleep it's bedtime yep bedtime do that homework first though [Music] bedtime [Music] okay so for our next presentation I'm gonna have some assistance from Deborah Falk if she would please come forward [Music] if the board is as large as Deborah so let's see here so we would also like to ask for Bill and Drexler to come up we are excited this evening to recognize Bill he is Akron Public Schools transportation coordinator well I'm going to leave it at that for right now and he was honored by his peers during the recent annual Ohio Association of school business officials oaspo

097state conference Mr Ann Drexler was awarded the outstanding Transportation Director award for 2023. yay something yeah yeah make sure the pictures thank you okay so we have a little bit more to read about you stand still okay so this award which which recognized him for his efforts to improve APS student Transport Services since his arrival in 2015 he has improved the overall management of the entire fleet of buses Vans upgraded routing software improved the number of transportation service contracts as well as the infrastructure assets he has been active in assisting with other APS and will ask both staff in addressing State Transportation legislative issues and Mr Ann Dressler as part of your award there's a provision which 500 will be awarded as a scholarship to an APS graduating senior from oasbo congratulations [Applause] all right

098sweet yeah well first of all I'd like to thank everybody um and yes I received the award but it's actually for Akron um I would not have received this award if it wasn't for Akron with our current board our passport superintendent turn and pass treasure all the way down Deborah ball is our number one Ally for us in the transportation department and my drivers are our drivers and mechanics and everybody so I could not get this reward if it was not for the Akron team so I do appreciate that congratulations [Applause] [Music] fantastic next we move to section three section three communications Madam superintendent [Music] so this evening we have a special IB presentation as we all know our IB program has been widely recognized as a prestigious and rigorous educational framework that prepares our

099Scholars for the challenges of an increasingly Global globalized World woohoo our district has made considerable commitments to provide this learning opportunity to our Scholars so hopefully you had an opportunity before you came into the boardroom to hear from our Scholars as they were giving presentations in the entry it is with great pleasure to turn the meeting over to our Dr caver and Nicole Vitale whose team will be providing an update on our International Baccalaureate thank you [Music] thank you [Music] so the IB program is designed to Foster critical thinking creativity and International mindedness in Scholars enabling them to become knowledgeable caring and engaged citizens of the world the presentation this evening will be done by our IB coordinators and they'll have a chance to introduce themselves to you they will provide you with an overview

100of the program and its benefits to our Scholars they will also highlight the unique features of the IB schools including the rigorous academic standards diverse scholar body and commitment to community service and Global awareness we hope that this presentation will provide you with valuable insights into the IB program and its impact on our Scholars and communities I'm delighted Now to turn this over to our IB coordinators and they'll take the lead on the presentation [Applause] [Music] so before we get started just take a minute ladies and introduce yourself and tell them where you are hi I'm Jennifer Bevin I am a third time I'm Janice and I am a 35-year APS employee I've been at King Elementary I've been quite a few years Jen Victor I'd be coordinator at case I've been in APS about

10120 years I'm also a mom of two IB students one more we'll be moving up next year and an APS graduate okay I'm Sandy Klein I am the IB coordinator at Litchfield Middle School and um I don't know I've only been here like 10 years now so no I've been at Litchfield for a while now I was trying to figure that out the other day so um 15 years at Litchfield so so I have the pleasure of introducing the programs to you tonight so this first slide is just talking about what a small community we really are for IB worldwide IB schools are a little over five thousand in the United States we have a little bit over 2 000 IBS rules and here in the state of Ohio we have 48 and of those

10248 schools six of them are right here in APS so we have four primary pyp and we have our middle school and we have our DP program so where is IB in the immediate um States surrounding us so the stars there represent school systems that have three or more of the programs we have three here at APS so the stars represent ones that have three of the four programs or more in APS in the middle there with the red star the reason where red star is we were the first urban District in the state of Ohio to have all three programs so the second district in the state of Ohio is now Cleveland Public Schools or urban districts there are 48 schools in Ohio but you can see there's only four school systems in Ohio

103that have three or more programs and we are lucky to have that and then this next slide this just shows like our journey through the pyp or through the IB we have our pyp students we have our middle year program students and our DP students it's good to note here that we have one Elementary School that actually has the preschool program case Elementary has the preschool program and we go all the way up to 12th grade for the DP program so this slide showcases um some parent quotes from Resnick on International mindedness and we wanted to Showcase this to show how well International mindedness fits in with the equity work that is so important in Akron public schools the IB focus on International mindedness stems from learner profile traits that all IB schools focus on

104so when we're really working with our students on being knowledgeable communicators inquirers open-minded caring thinkers and the other IB learner profile traits and we're asking our students to reflect on how they're growing in each of those attributes you can see how their understanding of appreciation for others appreciation diversity and that thought of international mindedness just fits hand in hand with the work that we do at Akron public schools so each of us are going to talk about some kind of a data point that our school can showcase or highlight that has to do with IB and as Laurie mentioned there are several there are many elements of the IB we've got a lot of acronyms but we also have a lot of terms that we use she mentioned learner profile traits those 10 attributes that

105we try to grow in our students to recognize a common Humanity for everybody we also teach based on inquiry and collaboration and teamwork in a local and Global context we encourage our students to have a voice in the classroom and choice so agency is another one of our vocabulary words that we use with kids and to take action based on their learning we also developed the 21st century skills that we those Real World skills soft skills that we all talk about as well as educators on our King data point um I'm trying to highlight that all of the things that I just mentioned are many of them are the portrait of an elementary scholar that the that the Akron public schools has developed and showcased so we just do it in a very synchronized and

106methodical way and I don't mean methodical in that we plan for that we plan for all of these things as part of our everyday vocabulary and lessons we did a recent survey of King students in third fourth and fifth grade and that in in they indicated that the students that's what the slide is about are given experiences to become inquirers they're given experiences to work with members in their classroom and learn those communication skills and they also are given opportunities to take action based on their learning [Music] Portage Path unfortunately couldn't be here tonight they're at an IB training and making sure that they meet the requirements for IB so I told them that I would share their data points with you their focus was around family engagement and years back when they were trying

107to get families into the building they were struggling and each time the staff would show up and they would plan different events and they would get very minimal turnout as they started the journey through IB they started incorporating in different components of it and tried to put an inquiry spin on it and teach families what IB was about and you can see that through their Journey their numbers have increased [Music] so while I'm up here I'm going to talk a little bit about the data for case and this one had to do with our state report card so when we first started this journey and through our candidate phase you can see up there that our state report card was not too good we were receiving an F at that time so we went through

108our first two years of our candidate phase we were then authorized and we moved up a slight bit to a d this year should we have received that's a rating from the state and we know that there was a change with the grades but we would have anticipated a b or a c on that um and this is consistent amongst the map testing and I ready testing as well additionally according to Ohio Department of Education three of the five APS elementary schools with the most overall stars are IB schools [Music] so similar to case sharing their growth Resnick wanted to share our achievement results from our state report card from the 2021-2022 school year as you can see as Jen was pointing out there was B's and C's and then the state switched their ranking

109and so it Stars this year or last year so in early literacy Resnick received three stars in progress four stars and in gap closure we had five stars again has seen growth and then we were very proud that even after covid that we were able to keep our achievement to what we were seeing pre-covered so very proud of our Scholars and our teachers for our achievements okay so I'm here to talk about Litchfield and we had two things that we wanted to highlight one of the things we wanted to highlight was talking about that learner profile so with our PBIS initiative we really took the learner profile and integrated it and last year we were recognized as one of the middle schools in Ohio to get the Bronze award from the state of Ohio for

110our initiatives and we are trying to do that again this year we've already added another level another tier to our PBIS system so we are applying again and then our other data point is around service projects in the community so you can see before IB we didn't have anything during authorization we had eighth grade that we had three-fourths participating so during authorization in part of our program is the eighth grade has to do a community project so all the eighth graders do a project in groups of three or one depending and how they can better the community so this year after our after our current evaluation phase we decided we wanted to add the sixth and seventh graders in on this service projects so we have sixth and seventh graders that as a class with

111their cooperating teacher are doing services to the community so that shows our data for [Music] I'm going to speak for just a minute about Firestone but before I do that you've seen middle school and Elementary School diagrams up on the the board that big circle is the IB Focus right in the center of it you'll see the the images of children that's because the learner profile which we spoke about at the very beginning is the central point of what IB is about and creating those globally aware critical thinkers that are going to go out into our world and make it a better place so I just wanted to give you kind of a a focal point for you as you looked at that diagram and really understood why we are so passionate about the IB

112program it in APS firestone's program has been around for 25 years we are graduating our 26th class which is pretty phenomenal you will hear in just a few minutes from some of those students but you also saw some of them at the very beginning they are an amazing group of kids we tout the fact that we're 100 graduation rate our College acceptance is a hundred percent not all 100 percent go to college some of them choose to take a gap year some of them choose to do community service but they make their way back to that secondary experience or that post-secondary experience and they go far beyond that some of the people that some of the young people you talk to today are going to pursue degrees in medicine in engineering and their dreams go

113far beyond what the classroom offers part of that is because of the diversity and the globalization that they learn about in their classrooms on a daily basis the average exam score for Firestone is a 4.81 out of seven uh and then the worldwide score is a 4.91 that's worldwide that's over 5 000 schools that's pretty amazing and the IB diploma is awarded it Firestone we would love to be 100 the reality of the world is that not everybody is going to get that diploma but our percentage rate is fairly High the worldwide diploma is 83.4 percent for a program that's been around for much longer than firestone's program hopefully we'll get to that 83.4 percent with a little bit more longevity um so I wanted to just touch base about the um accountability and continuous

114Improvement through the IB organization so once we are authorized all of our schools we do go through periodic reviews and evaluations so every five years we do undergo an evaluation with the IB organization we have to do a self-study with our staffs we fill out a preliminary review and then an IB team either comes to the school or during covid we had virtual meets and they're there for two to three days talking to students talking to parents talking to the teachers and then they after the school visit if you look up there after the school visit they do a report they gather all the information the evaluators and then they share it with the schools and then that allows us to plan an action plan so we can put goals on there we can refine

115our skills they tell us our strengths and they tell us our challenges as well so we're their whole goal is to make us continuously improve and set goals for ourselves so you've heard from us and we live this we believe it with every ounce of our being we would not be in these positions if we didn't but there's other stakeholders that we thought you might like to hear from also so we want to share their voices with you everybody [Music] I am a teacher that values the required teaching approaches that come with being an IB teacher such as inquiry and concept based learning here in case we dive deep into our standards in a transdisciplinary way we watch our kids grow as they use various approaches to learning such as communication skills thinking skills and

116their settlement skills I love being an IB teacher because of the Partnerships that grow and develop between the students and the teachers everyone becomes the learner and everyone becomes a teacher the agency that students have to be a part of their education is just helpful that's why I'd be I am currently an IB educator at kclc I currently support the students in all achieve unit I truly learned a new love for teaching the collaboration professional development and Global mindset evolved me into a lifelong mono and IB is the reason I continue to be a teacher I made 2 000 IB grad from Firestone high school and current APS parent of a fifth grader at stem and triplets in kindergarten at Resnick I'd be is everybody taught me to ask questions and solve problems this is

117an essential part of my children's education in the IB Program IB is community-based thinking showed me the importance of contributing to the world around us and has helped teach my children to make thoughtful contributions to their community and made them more empathetic to others [Music] the balanced curriculum of the IB diploma program has given me the academic experience my needs succeed in the real world why we IB has helped me become a better risk taker and a better communicator through IBM but so many new quotes progressed by social skills it made me a more caring person [Music] IBU was a great challenge to develop my Communicator skills and help benefit my social skills strengthening that relationship with my teachers my coaches my family and my friends the IB program helps me strive to be an

118Inquirer knowledgeable and caring through high quality education for a better world [Music] view service is helping change the lives of animals so when it comes to doing that sort of service it just brings me happiness and just a good feeling to help those that need it Mr Roblox challenge was part of our full screen IV unit by sharing Hall of Fame in Clues [Music] and the teachers and community members these projects in a better world [Music] [Applause] [Music] there's no more so that's the conclusion of our presentation to you on the yib for all of us we want to thank you for listening to us and for continuing to support what we see as such an instrumental program in providing rigor challenge preparation and I don't know just plain good Humanity but thank you again

119and if you have any questions feel free to contact any of us at our schools and we'll be happy to invite you out to see something that's going on in our building thank you [Applause] so are there any questions from board members Miss Audrey it's not really a question just a comment I remember coming on the board in 2020 this is one of the first things I remember us voting on I want to say Portage Path was the last school and so at the time being a brand new board member you know didn't really fully understand so it's just kind of nice to see you know these many years later a true full picture of what's going on and so don't regret my vote yeah Mr Alexander yeah I just want to say thank you

120too because I'm so proud of the program because my daughter was in the first IB program at Firestone and she talks about Ivy she just said the other day Dad I got a little granddaughter she's going to be IB we got to get an IB School and she's talking Ibis he's been like 30 years out of school maybe but she's still talking this IV and I thought I don't even know what IV is really you know irritable no but but uh it is it's very good and she still lives through that today uh she she's just become a came two years ago a clinical epidemiologist and so she's still working on that and it's all because of the IB program so thank you all so are there other questions or comments from board members Miss

121Jackson [Music] I just want to say Well done to you all I had the pleasure to interact with your students and this is the real deal I talked the young lady she was in the video Litchfield she presented on today she was so excited about the learning she was very knowledgeable Authority highlighted the Firestone IB teacher and you know what her what's the young lady's name Caroline Caroline Caroline said everyone should see IB everyone should experience IB because it's so wonderful she was excited about the experiences that she has within the IB program and then when I talked to the Learners I believe from Resnick and king um they they collected eight about 850 boxes of cereal the goal was a thousand however they collected 850 or so maybe more the teacher said and the

122Akron Canton Food Bank came what what a great way to not only incorporate learning with but service and giving back and the kids were excited in a proud um about that and I was too so I want to thank you for sharing that with us I want to thank you for your passion and also the young um I'm not sure the whole cluster was two different kids on this side I know Resident was one I don't know who was on the other side but it was the Ronald McDonald House Urban League it was Resnick it was two schools though because Ronald McDonald Urban League Metro Parks and it was a fourth one anyway they were phenomenal I'm going to keep talking about the Metro Parks girl because they need to give her a scholarship a

123gift card something because I truly learned so much from that but again I don't want to belabor the point but when Excellence looks different I think we should and teachers you know sometimes we plant the season you may never see the Harvest but I'm grateful for you all because you are planning righteous and strong seeds and it's coming out of your learner so again just thank you are there other thoughts or comments questions um so I I think I just have a couple items quickly um one you know you talked a lot about the impact this program has on the students um I would love for you all to to at some point uh come back and talk about the impact that it has on you right because you know the this whole idea of

124a globalism is a fairly complex topic and whether it's being taught in a math class or a science class or what we call history nowadays or Civics I'm not sure what what we call it um you know it's it's a fairly important concept you know and so and so you are all you are all having to constantly update yourselves as well so that way you can keep teaching the curriculum you know is my understanding um and so you know so I I at some point would love to have you all come back and talk about like how it's impacted you and how your style or mode of instruction has changed since you because again when you first began teaching IB as a first year IB teacher you evolved to where you are now right um

125you know whether that means that you're a coordinator now right I mean but still you know um really loving it really would love to hear more about your journey and how you've evolved with the program I'd love to hear more about that um and then I guess my question was um I didn't under I didn't realize we had a ib preschool um that that went right over my head um so okay so so can someone just talk about that for a minute um like when did that start I feel like I should know that I mean um when did that start and like tell me more about that sure so the wonderful thing about the pyp is that IB is for all every single student that is in our school is included in we've got

126the kids that are on the IEPs we've got the kids that are gifted every child that walks through our door ideas for them at the preschool level we've got three and four-year-olds that are in the classroom play-based learning and we're still crafting the units of inquiry and so how can we get down on their level and listen to what they're doing and ask them questions to kind of capture what they're thinking about the play-based learning and introduce additional materials to support it okay so if you were to walk into our preschool teacher's classroom you would see on top of all of the lockers bins and bins and bins words don't do it justice every unit that she does every lesson that she does she changes out the materials in her room so that whatever Concepts

127the students are exploring she introduces the toys or the art supplies or the music or whatever it is to meet their needs she also has a lot of materials so that students can capture whatever it is they're thinking in a way that's meaningful to them so when you think of the traditional blocks that are in a classroom if they're building the city and they're talking about Community workers she has little blank peg people and that becomes part of the art station so that students can make the people for the community that look like them or look like their families or represent their families and it's it's really pretty incredible come check it out sometime you might not want to leave it's awesome thank you I appreciate that and selfishly I have a preschool one it's

128soon to be preschooler so I will be coming to talk with you out there so so thank you all we we we we appreciate your time thank you so much oh yeah sorry can I just um recognize our principles for a minute sure IB principals are here and there most of them are here if you guys want to stand up for a second and just let us give you a clap for the work that you do thank you thank you [Music] so at this time I would like to have Marcy is that Miss Isaac was there a picture we're supposed to do right are you sure yeah oh okay all right okay I just want to make sure that we didn't okay all right okay sorry sorry okay I'm sorry I'm sorry uh Marcy bright

129will come forth we're gonna have a topic around our jobs for Ohio graduation work based learning presentation at this time Michelle Collins is with us this evening she is the executive director of Connexus Northeast Ohio a key Community partner of the College and Career academies since the beginning Connexus and is a non-profit backbone guiding Workforce Development organization in our community we also have danico Bickley Knight is the youth and Community opportunity director for the city of akron's mayor's office his role is to work with organizations within the nonprofit sector to identify and coordinate violence reduction programs and we also have Rochelle Mitchell with Summit County coordinator for jobs for Ohio graduates she manages a staff of career Specialists throughout Summit County and supervises the boss year-round work experience program so I'm going to turn it

130over to them at this time can I just introduce them oh and we also have with us a student from Jason Jones and he has hung with us until almost eight o'clock tonight yeah I miss uh Jason's uh are you a senior this year Jason is a senior in the culinary program and he wants to speak tonight about his experience with work-based learning we also had a Miss Rebecca Williams uh she had to get home her mother wanted her home so but we appreciate them both hanging as long as they did and Jason being here and you'll hear from him shortly [Music] well thank you uh superintendent Ali president Hall on the board we wanted to bring a team together for you today to learn more about the work based learning work for our students

131in Akron public schools today in your board doc document there is an item for consideration to support work-based learning and I as as my role as the chief of schools I wanted to make sure we were clear on some really critical components of this first and foremost it has always been designed and implemented to be part of our College and Career academies to have our students be deeply embedded and work based experiences so that they come out ready for life secondly this is in an expectation from the state of Ohio as the state report card indicates we have to make sure that we are ensuring work-based learning is happening and we do get a report card measure for students who earn 250 hours of work based learning during their high school years and then lastly

132this is a continuation of our work you all approved work-based learning summer internships last year through a partnership with you youth on Opportunities Unlimited so today is just a continuation of that and we wanted to make sure we gave you all of that information before you make a decision today and with that I'm going to turn it over to our director of College and Career academies Marcie ebright thank you you also have uh on your desks a white paper that has more detailed information and the scope of this presentation may give but to read at your leisure uh later on and the consent agenda item that it goes along with is 23.1 so I do want to highlight you know in this as a true Partnership of work across jobs for Ohio graduates Connexus Neo

133the city of Akron Akron public schools have all had voices and parts in this work and I've asked them to be here tonight so that you could hear from them their contacts and how would the what they're bringing to the collective partnership uh what is work-based learning If you're sort of new to this environment and what does it mean to go out and be a work based learner similar to an internship a time where a student can go out into an environment and sort of experiment see what it's like to work Outdoors see what it's like to work at an office understand what that thing is that you dial on the desktop that you press nine and dial out we have interns come in and they have to figure out how to use an office

134phone just being in those environments and being able to understand that and then see if they like it right to see if I want to be in that environment so it's providing all those practical experiences that we can give kids while they're in school so that they aren't heading off into college or into a training program and realize later that I really don't like this environment that I found myself in so having those opportunities that we give them now that's it in a nutshell so as I was authentic real world experiences tied to their academics Technical and professional skills it's also aligned to their program of study as much as possible so if they're studying the culinary arts we try to find them placements in culinary or related type programs where they can have that

135type of experience including employment learning plan in place that means that the employer and the student have a plan in place for what they're going to learn while they're there our employers need to understand that kids don't come in with a huge range of technical skills already that they are Learners right they're not coming in to do this massive job they're coming in to get some experience on that job site so they sit down and they think about what are the things and the goals that they're going to have while they're at that learning environment and then they provide them with evaluations at the conclusion of the experience and they may vary widely based on what type of environment students will be in some benefits for students and for the district around work based learning

136as Ms techa mentioned it is a report card measure it is required on our federal state at indicators with ode and our Career Technical plan as a Career Technical planning district that report card as well we know that all future work Trends indicate that employees wants or employers want their employees to come into the work base environment with the skills and assets and experiences well how do they get skills and assets and experiences if they never have chances to get skills and assets and experiences so it's really important that beyond the classroom we're able to provide those for our students and prepare them uh looks to increase the student's Social Capital gives them networking opportunities gets to meet other adults in the industry and Fields in which they are interested in immersive experiences so you

137can give them simulated environments I didn't know this until I started really digging into some of this work that you can do simulated work environments you can do school-based Enterprises entrepreneurship activities count and all of this that kids can document work-based learning activities but being able to really be immersed in that and understand it is the key focus of this piece it's also a critical recovery component that we'll speak to and really growing opportunity for local Akron Talent so tapping them and making sure that they have those opportunities in Akron we've been building business Partnerships engagements for the last five years this has been a focus of the the board and the instructional policy priority uh we've been meeting with industry sector Partnerships since 2021 designing and thinking about what this would look like between

138our students and our schools and the industries as Rachel mentioned we've had prior approval last summer when we did our field test and pilot out there I'm going to talk a little bit about some of the Lessons Learned with that and we have had in our schools what we've called in our senior year some targeted kids that were able to take advantage of it and some other outside agencies that were able to work with our students so but nothing systemic up until this point our field test last year the things that we learned as we came away from that that we knew that we needed to continue Equitable access across the experience so it wasn't just for some students or a few students or the kids in that pathway or at that school that got

139the opportunities that they were really deliberate about all students having Equitable access and being able to take advantage of this throughout High School design structures for the greatest success right now what we learned from that pilot last year was that we did not have the structures for the greatest success and we nearly needed to think back sit down and sit with other thinkers around this topic and figure out how we were going to get those structures ready being able to track all the hours and data sounds like an easy task but when you have students across multiple different experiences many times over their high school years having a way to collect that data accurately report it so that the student gets the benefit we get the benefit and we're able to see what type of

140experiences that we've been giving our students holistically we learned that we needed to make sure that our students families and Scholars students and families and community members as well as our Partnerships were well informed about what it means meant to be a participant in work based learning and that we needed mentors in the schools that we needed someone at the school that they could turn to that could troubleshoot issues they may having and is just dedicated to this particular work and it isn't placed on somebody else you may or may not have the time to assist them so the youth employment design team came together and thought through all of those issues and their recommendation was a need for a local broker Partners to support the work and I'm going to kill and Jog here

141all right thank you Marcy so again my name is Rochelle Mitchell and I am the county coordinator for Joshua graduates child support graduates has been in existence since 1987. we currently serve youth who are in need of trying to make a decision on what their Direction they're trying to go to overcome those obstacles that they have right now in their life to make be better citizens as they transition from school to work currently we are excited and we are we can't wait to partner with Akron public schools with this workplace learning initiative we are planning to right now we have 150 businesses that we have already connected with that are already on board with this work by learning initiative and Martha needed to cue the next page for me he did it okay um okay

142so um but yeah we are really excited and like I said we have 150 employers right now that are already on board this is not something that is new to job for our graduates we call ourselves a jog as well this is not something that is new we have been doing this for 10 plus years as far as connecting our youth with these career-based initiatives with employers to try to get them in the interest that they're interested in when they work with us we are currently housed in all Akron public schools there will be a coordinator there will be housed that will go to the different schools to work with those career specials that we actually have in those schools that would be that Mentor that extra support that Marcy was alluding to to provide

143that assistance for their students and some of you don't may not know me but I have done this program for a long when I was a little kid for summer youth and I was a supervisor then so when Marquis go out and they need that assistance my Specialists know we got to get it done because we'll make sure our kids are being successful and those employers are actually giving them those tools those skills and that work experience that they need when they're working on those jobs we currently have 525 businesses that are committed to us right now and we have over 250 students that we plan to employ this summer and we plan to have them with a six to eight percent pathway match for this upcoming summer and these are some of the jobs

144that some of our kids have had over the LA over the Summers with some of our business partner our relationships we have with some of our businesses you can see here we have Athen Classic Auto Body which is here on the north side of Akron the talk of town screen printing I'm not sure where that one's at but we do I know we've worked with them for quite some time Robert Stilley Harley-Davidson who we have them as well as for example Automotive our retail marketing a lot of the businesses whatever we try to need because they all have those different career Pathways we try to align those kids up in those different facets Market Street Grill and 91.3 Summit and showcase meets um again this is a great opportunity for us it's a great opportunity

145for the students to be here at Akron public schools what better way to align them with this opportunity with this collaboration with the College and Career academies to align them with the opportunity to have them liberal wage once they graduate from high school thank you [Music] so good evening um thanks for having me my name is daniko Buckley Knight I serve as the youth and Community opportunity director for the mayor's office city of Akron basically my role is to identify what can we do from the mayor's office to identify ways to improve the community ways to improve our youth and ways to improve our young adults and if we're really focusing on the youth the young adults in the community we'll see a better community and we'll see the reduction of violence my position was

146created though from the community during that racial Equity social justice task force you know due to the George Floyd murder in Minneapolis you know Akron created a task force to really look at some of the things that we can improve and one of the things that we talked about was how we have a lot of violences going on in our community so a position was created to kind of serve as that liaison between the mayor's office and the community to really be able to improve and address the violence that is going on in our community one of the tasks that I have been um kind of you know one of my tasks is to create a strategic plan around violence intervention and prevention um this community had a plan put together in 2019 but there

147really wasn't a person that was full-time to move that that's that plan forward so that's kind of what my task is so looking at the Strategic plan we have eight strategies that we want to address to improve our community and reduce the violence and really what we did what I did particularly was looked at about five different reports that really highlighted that young adults really are expressing the need of livable wage employment opportunities and that is like the number one issue that they deemed to want to um kind of like address in order to change The Narrative of their of their life so as after you know heavy consideration of those um those different reports we wanted to make sure that we incorporated a plan that has an approach around Workforce Development in our strategic

148plan so approach eight is a Workforce Development and basically Education and Training to provide young people with the skills necessary to earn enough income to afford adequate shelter food and other necessities for sex for a satisfactory standard of living and that is again a summary of those young juvenile young adults who've been incarcerated and talked about some of the things that they wanted to prove to improve their life um one of the recommended many recommended actions is to promote and expand the partnership that we're talking about with businesses jobs in Ohio graduates Akron public schools College of career Readiness the out of school Time network uh Summit County Job and Family Services and others to provide a right array array of job and Entrepreneurship training and placement opportunities so that is again highlighted specifically in

149our strategic plan as one of the recommended actions and lastly I'm messing up now nope was there another one yeah yeah yeah we'll go back there we go and then one of the other recommended actions I just wanted to highlight that we have in our strategic plan is to expand marketing initiatives to increase Community awareness of Workforce Development and programs and opportunities and then lastly provide Network and mentorship and leadership development opportunities for youth with community and Business Leaders um so lastly I'll say in addition to working for the city I also work for Akron public schools I'm the varsity officer coordinator for East High School and in five years we lost five kids so this is serious work this this is something that we have to do in order to really change The Narrative

150of our community so I'm excited to be able to work with the city uh work on behalf of the city with you all to really improve the kid really improve the community and reduce the violence thank you good evening thank you president Hall and the board of education for allowing us the opportunity we've been fortunate at Connexus neo2 as was mentioned to be a longtime partner to College and Career academies providing labor market information and better connecting Community initiatives just to provide some perspective at any given time we have over 14 000 job postings in Summit County and so unfortunately oftentimes there's low interest in some of these in-demand occupations interest in filling some of these most critical Workforce needs and so we think it is important for students to gain experiences gain access to

151these opportunities early on because of the current worker shortage of course we have to acknowledge that we lost many community members to covid to the opiate crisis but unfortunately it's made it difficult for our communities businesses to keep doing business and so we think that but we see that by providing these work-based learning experiences that it allows them to get special projects done and it allows our APS students to gain new skills a concerted effort about work-based learning began back in 2021 with the industry sector Partnerships convening about 50 employers really to gain insight as to what can we learn from those who are offering experiences to high school and college students as well as to understand better why wouldn't you offer these experiences to our students more recently we've been able to generate more

152interest with employers by inviting Akron public schools and Jog to participate and to get the information out in front of about 60 employers and we've since been able to connect them directly to jog and Akron public schools to Garner more and more interest later on this summer we're going to put out a resource to employers to really help them think through how do they provide meaningful experiences for students and really this is informed by a lot of the College and Career Academy partners that already exist and then finally we anticipate that work-based learning experiences can inform a student's next career move hopefully converting into employment down the road but we have been identifying organizations that can support them with that transition to full-time employment so to the point made earlier about keeping Learners here we

153want students to stay locally to fill our local Workforce needs so we continue to meet with College and Career academies to brainstorm how do we better connect students to local resources like jog like our public Workforce system so that graduates of Akron public schools can continue to have access to resources and remove any barriers that would present them from working in our community thank you board for considering this work-based learning initiative and the value we know it will bring to enrich our students lives and enrich our local economy thank you so this summer we're expanding opportunities using a summer programming and I think I talked about that with you a few weeks ago and we did a presentation on our expanded learning briefly part of it introduced you to Carolyn French who is the coordinator

154from jog that is placed right here in the College and Career Academy's office and is starting to work with the other job specialists in the building to get students placement for the summer so right this summer we are expanding to serve at least 300 kids that's like our floor we're gonna get more so at least 300 kids and then throughout the school year all of those job Specialists out there can serve for 40 to 50 kids on their caseload you know at any given time so students could be in work based experiences stop go into something else another kid could come on board so you could look at about 500 students out in the field throughout the year rotating in and out of job experiences so the long-term sustainability team has been meeting so beyond

155this year what are we looking for because this isn't just a one and done this is something we know we've got the design we know we've got a good plan in place we're going to get the systems and structures implemented right now start recruiting kids live through this year and then we're planning for long-term sustainability with all of the partners that you've been hearing from the out of school Time network in the city have been meeting and thinking about what do we need to do to keep this going forward and where were those pots of dollars come from to pay students the staff and everything that needs to happen to continue the programming [Music] so we're looking for some accountability measures at the end that the reporting measure looks at 15 percent of Scholars in

156each of our pathways so if I'm in the masonry pathway and there's a hundred students that means 15 other students by the time they graduate in their graduation cohort would have been going through that um to beat that to meet that measure so and we'll have all of those students 100 aligned to the Ohio Means job seal we're going to increase those post-secondary placements we're going to align those graduation plans directly to what the scholar needs are so those alternative competencies are being accessed for all of them and increase the graduation attendance and engagement we're looking for 90 satisfaction out of our students and their placements and the employers with our students [Music] so us we could stop talking I'll turn it over to Jason and she can speak to you about his experience in

157work-based learning hi my name is Jason Jones I'm a senior at book to COC I have been in a drug program for two years prior to joining a drug I struggled with focusing dealing with my emotions this this program has helped me work on these these things to support with support and work work experience I completed my work work experience at Boston Fitness Center and guest services I really enjoy helping customers and working with kids working there taught me a responsibility work ethic how to deal with people and my boss taught me a lot about what companies expect from employees and and how to set myself apart from other like large crowds and stuff this experience helped me with my own business better the brand with dealing with customers and after graduation I will be

158attending Notre Dame college to study business thank you for having me thank you for States appreciate that okay at this time I'd like to pause for any questions questions from members of the board you have a slide that has some of the businesses that are partnering with APS um are there any bigger businesses because these are small businesses and I'm wondering because the request of us tonight is 425 000 so what are these other businesses what what financial piece do they put into this whole thing well basically what it is the program we are um government funded so a lot of the students will receive funding through tan of funds that we receive for that work experience and what we do is that we most of our employers are aware that what we want the

159goal of the program is to hire our participants once they complete this program and for the most part most of our employers do hire our participants for example like Jason's alluded to he was working at Ball Street fitness center which is with the city of Akron they wanted to hire him but because he's going to college they can't hire him so we do have those relationships where we have those employers and their the relationship is that they hire our participants once they complete the program okay so then my follow-up is then the 425 thousand dollars what does that Buy that uh right now the programming has exists through jog uh deals primarily with students below the federal poverty level and then the incentives that go along with it so the grants that they're bringing continue

160to serve those students with these dollars we'll be all students will have the opportunity so the income guidance is sort of any kid who's thinking I want to take on an internship uh can meet with the job specialist and on the back end they would decide which one of the buckets of money we would be funding them from so the the investment that we're making now is adding to the dollars that jog is bringing from all of their grand dollars so there's a wider variety of dollars to pull from to fund their students pay students are getting 15 an hour for so this money is paying the students so the employers aren't paying the students correct yes so one of the biggest benefits and obstacles we've had previously to implementing work-based learning is imagine you

161want to there's hundreds of employers out there everyone has a different way they onboard kit onboard an employee oriented employee paperwork they have to go through background checks they have to go through if they have drug testing or not all the different steps you can imagine that they have to go through so essentially they get hired by jog jog places one of our high quality students with a business partner who has agreed to take on a student learner so they're not having to go through all the extra paperwork of being employed or anything that that employer has to go through on their end they're taking in one of our students employed through jock so we manage all of that for them is that does that clear that up yeah that's probably a little messy so

162no they don't pay them we're paying the student directly okay and this amount is for one year yes okay thank you yes ma'am uh Miss Jackson I want to thank you all for the wonderful presentation um there was a slide I want to address because I was going Valerie kind of walked into my question slightly and just for clarification I think it is a very important piece because those who are tan of qualified are going to get 10 of funds but what will happen is students will be eliminated if they were just a few dollars over the poverty mark many of the grants that I receive for youth entrepreneurship at my job if it's Federal funding it it eliminates kids that will be wonderful for the programming but they don't qualify and so we have

163to secure private funders which goes to the point I want to hit with I think that Val was addressing when we look at collaboration we know that the city got certain as their funds for youth non-violence which aligns with this so when we're talking about getting with our other partners and Community Partners you know Mercy already brought this up too is that these a lot of these organizations are getting free labor and even though we're training our kids and we're we're as the educational component are funding it I wonder if long-term planning it's we're giving you quality students that are capable to do the job and it should be almost like a matching grant for these corporations because they're getting this labor and I would go so far even to assert that with some of

164these companies with some of the students when we talk about masonry carpentry um you know the term a journeyman that at 16 years old they can go alongside a union person and gain their skill and get paid and when they graduate possibly get Union dollars so I'm curious about I don't know which slide it is when we talk about getting with those Partners do we have a time frame on when we're talking about long-term sustainability as far as funding well we'll have a by the within the year well the design team has met a few times we have a lot of ideas on the table and funder sources to go through for long-term sustainability beyond the school year excellent and I would I would think in the next six to nine months we'll have a

165proposal to bring back about where we've landed with all of that because I think this is a great opportunity for our Learners all right thank you I think this is a great opportunity but it was a city one about mentorships and it was a it was the city of Akron uh number eight yeah right yeah one more [Laughter] time oh did he goes part yeah it was talking about like mentorships and the things that um oh no no no this is not the one I talked about mentorship the last one I believe yeah yeah I must stop pressing but yeah so um which I think is so great and I was actually looking over I was reading some things the other day and I was going to bring up to my board colleagues because at

166some point there was a mentor program I Mentor program something that the District High care Mentor okay and so I just wondered what does that look like because we know again Academy in Cleveland is doing great things with one-on-one mentors for their Learners boasting 100 graduation rate 100 acceptance into college and so I wonder how can we better help those efforts or does the city already have a framework where you have you know mentors that are going to be able to commit and walk these Learners through the Journey let me come to the mic because you you spoke you spoke exactly what I was thinking um both of you a combination so again I'm I have a son that's 17 and the son is 16 they go to Akron public schools and I hear the

167great work of what we're doing around this work based learning but my kids won't be able to participate because we make too much money but they're in this Akron public schools district that they're learning work-based experiences but they're not really necessarily eligible to be a part of the work based experience because of the income so in the space that I'm in that we're in providing some funding to be able to uh provide this opportunity to all is important and then the other part that I want to highlight is exactly what you were saying like if we do this right 10 years from now this is just the norm the norm is you go to high school you participate with this work based experience you get a job working in that field and then you graduate

168and determine what you want to do in your career we've had eight approaches and the main approach that we the city funded was around mentorship because both myself and our mayor feels that a strong Mentor group will show a mentor program will get you into those other areas of life so currently we have about 16 organizations that we're funding around mentorship and one of them is I care mentoring who will be presenting at our Health Equity Summit next week about the work that they're doing and how the city funding them has allowed them to do a little bit more similar with job jobs the city is funding jobs to be able to do more than just the traditional jogs program so hopefully 10 years from now down the line we're really looking at our community

169differently to what we're looking at currently [Music] are there other questions Mr Alexander I'm just going to comment and I'm trying to keep my mouth shut but I understand all this work that's going on because I was part of our work for jog for about 10 years I went to Private Industry I worked with the court system and so I have a lot of understanding what they're trying to do and I've also been a mentor myself my mentor is 96 years old the other one is 71 years old and they've been mentoring me since I was 14. so that is important but you got to have the money as well because I know what the with the monies that can have give when city of Akron used to give the county used to give that

170they had to meet that certain threshold and there were a lot of kids that got left out we had a lot of good kids who didn't get the opportunity to get a work experience because they didn't have the funds went there to give them that opportunity but the ones who are on the other end they got an opportunity we want to create a a a vision of a plan that will allow all of our kids because now we're getting all of our kids now we're talking about Equity now we're talking about Equitable you know so we want to make sure that happens so I understand all this I was trying to let everybody else same thing but because I've been through this I understand it I've been in those Miss Mitchell's position I work alongside

171of her I work with Miss uh Chapman for a number of years with our work experience program with Akron public schools I was a coordinator for that so I understand all this this funding and these sources but you got to have somebody's outside sources to give some money which is what you're talking about I think Val and the answer this will start and hopefully what this will create is individuals to give Workforce work employers to give money to bring these kids in so we don't have to fund it so that uh that that they'll take care of all the the funding and these kids can get the get the um uh experience in here because my my youngest daughter uh and my oldest daughter we they couldn't get into a program like this we the

172same thing so they were kind of left out but we had to try to find a way to get them into where they can get the work experience that some of these other kids were getting so I understand where we're going with the money just to start and hopefully it'll eventually eventually turn into these coming these businesses taking over and saying okay come on bring the kid we're going to pay them we're going to take over everything so I think that's where they're trying to go and that's that's my my baby right there exactly because I I just uh don't like to see kids get left behind because of something that maybe the adults don't do to help thank you thank you Mr Alexander I believe we believe this system has set up that structure

173to help that move forward that way uh I'm sorry uh I think Mr could you refers go ahead I love this program my concern is when these Ester dollars are gone then what yeah that's our concern too that's why the sustainability team has been meeting that's why I asked the question I asked because we we are going to need folks to come in because yeah September 2024 we're done with Esther and that's a chunk of money to have pulled out so I think I think the way that we've designed this is really Innovative and that's probably the purpose of us our dollars is to really think about how can you be Innovative in the design and structures to get them up and going and I think that this is going to really lay that Foundation

174so we're the sustainability team is that piece like we know that they're going to go away so if we're going to keep with Equity at being able to offer this to all students um how are we going to be able to do that long term I I don't believe the job partnership and their funding is going to go anywhere away anytime so we would still have that system and structure in place we just wouldn't be able to hit all the kids that we need to hit we wouldn't hit our we wouldn't hit our our graduation goals we wouldn't hit our report card goals so the urgency to make sure that we have long-term sustainability for funding is in place and so I believe yes and as I was talking earlier in six to nine months

175we'll come back with an answer but we're going to be on this year with it Miss Autry thank you most of these jobs are full-time or part-time they are part-time so they could transition to full-time employment well the beauty of this is is that kids could do smaller bites I could do a 50 hour internship paid internship get a check for 750 bucks at the end of it and you know not do another one until next year with another 50-hour internship comes up or maybe I find one that is longer term that's going to give me my full 250 hours and I really like it I know my first job was a fast food restaurant that was really abusive and mean when I was 16. and didn't learn a whole lot and I think that

176these are going to be a high quality experiences for kids so yes I think that they'll be able to if it's not a good fit that's why there's a job specialist in the high school that knows that student and knows the employer and will a be able to troubleshoot issues that students might be having with Transportation interpersonal you know requirements of uniforms whatever it might be that they need to overcome to make sure they can be successful in that work environment and then if it's not a good fit and they're like this doesn't really well I don't want to be outside in the sun working all day long I don't like it I want to do something that's about air conditioning let's find us something different so kids will have that chance that's what the

177choice of being able to have these experiences now it thank you and what I also appreciate about this is You Know A District like ours with so many economically disadvantaged families you know that 15 an hour is going to help support some of these households in ways um that you know maybe many of us might not understand and it's also helping us reach our district goals you know on the report card contributing you know to the required hours that they need and also just strengthening their relationships with our Pathways that we haven't existence when they're able to get into those uh I think you said 68 are lying so um and then just something else also you know we're talking about uh workers I would love to in the future see some type of component

178that uh ports are entrepreneurs in a really significant way are there other questions or comments Miss Jackson thank you Audrey find somebody else talking about entrepreneurship in a way but but to the point here you have Jason that's an entrepreneur he had to find a manufacturer right for his brand um then he had to scale up he had to understand what the return on his investment was for the said brand he's in the school I seen it and booked a hustling gritty is what we call it it's a legit word now because Duckworth wrote a book about it but we've been saying these things for a long time I saw this young man making hand signs for Bailey brand Monday and I also watched him sell out am I telling the truth the district should

179leverage that because he's not the only one I've been going throughout this district and even before I came on this board and I said this even when I was running I had kids calling my building trying to get into my program which the county knows because it's you know it's a funded through the office of Eileen Shapiro but it's a limited amount that I can take in age but they wanted to know and they're at book though they're at Firestone they're at East they're selling wigs they're making prom dresses they're customizing shoes it is a demographic the same at-risk impoverished group when we talk about non-violence the reason why I keep talking about entrepreneurship because most people that end up criminalized is because of money and the reason why I say money I joined this

180clip for my significance and to get to money and so once you eliminate the basic need and some people can say oh they can wait they don't got away though because you tell me I have to wait till I go to high school but Jason getting it now so if we're going to be a district and be very real about it and sustainability everyone it doesn't have to be in the job and it can be a small investment that okay Jason you looked at it you researched it okay you get 250 towards your brand and now come back and we'll match that once you show us you know that type of investment and then leveraging to where we have these platforms and buildings that we already own jobs that we already are Partners we already

181have through College and Career academies uh Connexus has been working on database and continually recruiting new partners to this conversation so it'll keep growing this is just where we're at right now and consider that when they talk about matching which I found very interesting it is like a true match so what are your interests but also what can you get to reasonably right we're good where's Transportation not going to be an obstacle for you well here's the things that we have available are you interested in checking out some of these and making that match that's best for the kid not what's best for our report card too we want we want the pathway match but it's also what's going to fit that student's profile in their interests and and what their needs are so I

182think so I think I think that's to qualifier on this slide right I mean so because because because my last question was going to be you know what does success look like right what are the kpis are tracking so we have on the side so we're using pathway match as a kpi which is what I think we're doing um but for the reasons that you just articulated it's not really about the pathway match right am I am I again for our reporting correct so yeah even though I said we would have a say we have 100 kids in a pathway we want at least 15 of them aligned to their pathway doing had completed work-based learning hours yeah there could be another 20 30 doing work-based learning hours and other areas of Interest right or

183things that they want to match with and check out it is not solely about the pathway match but it's a factor so that we could we'll hit that that marker too so we're paying attention to that because your point what I'd love to see is I'd love to see a metric that said they gave it to me in combination pathway match and student area of Interest which may not have been to your point which may not have been the pathway match you know because that number might be 95 percent and that's fantastic right so um okay and then so then last I promised my last question here is um are there other uh longitudinal kpis that maybe you're looking at so like so in two or three years you know what are some of the

184kpis that that you all think are valuable to being looking at or tracking I'm not saying that we have to have it in place today Evan is asking you know if you're being aspirational what are some things that you'd like to be looking at um from a more longitudinal well I know for the city it's going to be violence reduction right that we see greater Workforce alignment and students in our local assets and talents growing right here that we see uh greater alignment to post program placement and high quality positions um and uh those are three aspirational things I think that we could start to see as a result as uh students go through and finish and we grow and grow and grow and have more kids have these opportunities [Music] so so it's for

185us it's about our kids graduating again with tools in their in their in their pocket that help them do what they choose to do after high school and we want them to have careers not jobs and this is about making sure that they're on that road to whatever career they choose to do it's it is about it is about Pathways right we want to make sure that our kids are getting to those high level positions in every organization and this is just giving them a leg up towards that goal yeah yeah what's at that point I mean I know you talked about I think you talked earlier Miss Deca about about how this that this is a part of our College and Career pathway support right so that's why I ask about the pathway pieces

186how does it connect and to me like it doesn't have to connect as long as we're getting the the interest part that right because some of these kids are going to your point are going to work a job and they're going to be there through and say listen this is not for me and that's valuable that they learn that right so so to me like that's fine right um so but a guy just but for me like you know to miss my pictures boy I just always like to understand and we're committing this amount of money I just want to know like what does success look like and what and what are the relevant kpis because they're going to be you know we're you know we're we're getting ready to try to try and pass

187it I mean so there'll be competition for programs and so as we so as a board as we're trying to evaluate what we approve and don't approve you know or question and don't question it's important that that all the programs that are being brought that you're bringing the kpis that the board can Enlightenment terms because I'm not I'm not the expert right I mean that's that's what you all bring to the table but but for me as an evaluator um and thinking about like what we what we fund you know that the kpi piece becomes important for us to because because you're teaching us at the same time right so um and you're all Educators so you're very good at it so um thank you I don't have any more questions yeah you know what

188the kpis I think when you're talking education wise is is your um your program reports what what programs are your job kids working in what were they doing what were the percentage of those kids working uh what were their jobs uh how many liked their jobs how many didn't like their jobs uh was there I'm just gonna go in like a pre-test or post-test or some that they did that they went into that job those things and if you talk about the hours of 250 hours we we had kids working 250 hours easily doing summer programs for years and you know that was just 25 hours a week you did 24 hours time times 10 that's 250 hours they got their hours in the summertime so that that's done now they can work on the

189other piece if they need to as well so you can you can kill a whole bunch of uh uh for lack of better word you can throw a lot of stones and hit a lot of places and win you know so I think when we're doing that and when when Dr Hall talks about the kpis it's our program evaluation let's evaluate the program each program is evaluate what they're doing let's evaluate the employer let's let's evaluate the kids that the kids doing evaluation that they think the job was okay how did they like the job was it valuable I can go on and on and on about these things about this this year but that also helps and if you go into a job placement you don't like that job okay it's time for me

190to switch and go into something else College we go to college we start a major we don't like it we switch up same difference okay thank you thank you for that and um just to as a final comment uh to Miss Jackson show your point um you know I I would love to see us figure out a way to use our clcs to house these pop-ups right so you might say hey every you know every third Tuesday at book till high school it's entrepreneurial right so from like six to nine you show up and every kid from book Dole you know that's working or or maybe it's district-wide right you know any kid who has anything that they're looking to sell or Market or whatever you come to book I'm sorry bookdoll you know and

191that's your night right um and we do it once a month I mean Cadence I mean Cadence can vary but the point is is that we talk about Opening Our clcs and that's something that we still have to figure out how to do better but but that's the exact kind of venue because again like it's it's expensive to go rent space but if I know I mean we have the bounce incubator Hub downtown right but but if we could start using the clcs as many incubators for our for our entrepreneurs you know I mean I think that's powerful and you're moving around the city you know one week it's at book till the next week it's at Garfield you know it's it's it it's a traveling show if you will right so and I want

192one of those Bailey um so so we're gonna so offline we're going to work that out so um awesome well listen thank you all for it for that it was we appreciate your time thank you [Applause] all right so next we're going to move to um treasure protest was about to earn his wage tonight let's do it I'm ready I'm ready let's do it I don't care approval of the previous I so move second and move by Mr Perry absolutely Mr Perry yes Miss Jackson yes Miss Autry yes Ms McKittrick yes Mr Alexander yes Dr Hall aye okay the motion carries next we move to item um 5 through 16 personal recommendations Mano superintendent thank you I would like to bring attention to one item before you go to vote and that is 5.5 the

193retirement of Tammy Brady our executive director our director of special education yesterday also I'm sorry this says consent in here so we have to consent so what do we don't want to consent to you retiring I'm sorry I just want to point out before we move on I do want to say Miss Brady was the teacher of Resident when my boys first started years ago obviously so I've known him for a long time so congratulations yeah yeah thank you so much for your work Miss Brady we appreciate it I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry that you're escaping before we create this special that Center of Excellence I'm sorry about that um you know but uh but thank you for your for your years of service we appreciate it I had the pleasure you were an

194instructional policy meeting and I asked you some questions and I was like you know all the great ones always end up outside the classroom at some point and now return but I thank you for the opportunity it was a pleasure to have met you and even to speak with you and thank you for all the wonderful things I know that you've done just in my short while uh conversing with you that day mm-hmm okay I'm sorry I'd also like to bring attention to item 16.1 and 16.2 we had the passing of two of our APS staff members one Lynn R Delaney for 20 years prior to being hired by the Akron Board of Education Mrs Lenard Delaney worked various secretarial and bookkeeping jobs she then became involved in the PTA at pifer elementary including being

195the PTA president from 2006 until 2011. Mrs Delaney was a substitute educational assistant in 2011 Mrs Delaney was hired as a clerical assistant for the paraprofessional support staff she's worked for the Akron board of education for 17 years unfortunately Miss Delaney passed on Saturday April 29 2023 and we would like to send our deepest sympathy to the Delaney family Lynn R Keller before becoming a school bus driver miss Lynn R Keller had worked at the Akron General Medical Center and at Home Depot Ms Keller came to the Akron public schools in 2014 and was hired as a bus driver in our transportation department her supervisor said that she loved all of her kids on the bus and saved everything that they gave her she tried to help the elderly when she could and she loved

196nature and all animals Miss Keller worked for the Akron Board of Education in the transportation department for eight and a half years and she recently passed on Friday April 28th and again we would like to extend our deepest sympathy to the Keller family at this time I wish to recommend approval of the Personnel recommendations presented in categories 5 through 16. is there a motion so moved should probably move by Miss McKittrick is there a second second just taken by the sawtry is there any discussion hearing and seeing none roll call please Mr Perry Mr Perry yes Miss Jackson hi Ms McKittrick no on 7.2 and 7.3 yes on the balance one second so how do I Mark that oh Janelle oh you just put uh no in 7.27.3 but okay yeah beside okay uh Ms

197valtry yes Miss Alexander yes Dr Hall aye motion carries okay next we move to uh the approval of resolutions and motions in the consent agenda uh Madam superintendent I wish to recommend approval of the resolutions and motions presented in category 21 they are in proper format and I move their approval is there a motion so move it's been moved by Mr Alexander is there a second second a second by Miss McKittrick is there any discussion Miss Autry yes thank you I just wanted to acknowledge the almost six thousand dollars um in donations that we receive from individuals and organizations um and um for supplies food laundry gift cards for our homeless families clothes and then also we're sending some of our leadership Cadets to a Academy a leadership Cadet Academy for some of our ROTC

198so thank you for those individuals for making that happen for us thank you Miss Autry is there any further discussion roll call please Mr Perry Ms Alexander yes Ms valtry yes Mr Perry yes Dr Hall aye Ms Jackson aye Ms McKittrick yes motion carries okay next move to item 23 business Affairs recommendations Madam superintendent to recommend approval of the business Affairs recommendations presented in category 23. is there a motion so move it's been moved by Miss Autry is there a second second by Mr Perry is there any discussion hearing and seeing none roll call please Mr Perry Miss Jackson aye Mrs McKittrick no on 23.1 23.2 23.6 23.7 23.15 23.19 and 23.21 yes on the rest Ms Alexander yes Mr Perry yes Dr Hall aye Ms Daltrey yes motion carries okay next we move to

199item 25. uh the superintendents report and a superintendent thank you I am so excited this evening if they're still here an update on our scholar voice and this evening we would like to showcase our scholar voice website so Firestone seniors kanea Edwards Marquis Hodgkins and Jesse Wamsley created scholars in the Firestone Design Academy they worked with dog org solutions to create a scholar Voice logo and the landing page the three Scholars met with DOT org solutions for approximately four months and worked with two graphic artists they provided creative input and feedback and completed homework assignments to help the graphic artists design the landing page so this evening the landing page allows our Scholars and parents to register for upcoming events it will show showcase pictures of our APS scholar leaders groups and events that they're

200hosting there will also be a calendar of events and has a sign up section for Scott Scholars and adults who want to be involved with our scholar voice projects so at this time we have Dreama Whitfield who will come forth and continue the presentation [Applause] thank you so good evening as they say I'm dream of Whitfield and our scholar voice landing page came from our focus groups with our students just like our vision for excellence and Equity our students say we want to see ourselves we want to be able to go to one particular place and see ourselves and we know that our students our vision is for our students to be seen heard and valued so when you go to the landing page which is a part of the aps this is the moving

201down it's not going down thank you is a part of our APS webpage you go to the web page and find it so of course it showcases our logo if anybody wants to get involved if you're a Community member you want to get involved you can just click there and it'll take you to a page where you'll sign up it'll come directly to my email that's for our students as well as community members parents anyone who wants to be involved we also have a place that shows all of our upcoming events and there are graphic flyers for the students to see students parents and staff and they can sign up right on this page as well there's just a click here button and they can go and they can register for any events that we're

202hosting as well there's another student involvement Tab and we're asking our students do you want to get involved if there's something you want to do you can just click that button and register and that email will come directly to me we also showcase what our students are doing this is our National Junior Honor Society in each one of our middle schools has a National Junior Honor Society so there's some pictures from their Awards ceremonies as well we have our student building leadership teams and each of our high school has a student building leadership team and they're working on a challenge that they've identified in their building and we've had a couple of them already I know Ms Autry was that the one on Friday and so some of those events are happening and these are

203pictures from that [Music] as well we have our scholar board members and their pictures of our scholar board members and there's always a brief description above the pictures about what the organization does and everything is in alphabetical order and there is just a button at the bottom of each picture and you can just flick click through and you can see the other pictures as they load especially coaches he was so excited to see his picture up in life and then we have our locker room experience we met some of those students earlier today that is a part of our scholar voice and here are some pictures from those events that we host and then we have another part for our community involvement and we have it on two places because we're really anxious to get

204people and students involved so we make it very easy for them to sign up and we also have a calendar of events and it just says everything that's happening around the district regarding scholar voice what questions can I answer and so what sure Miss Jackson [Music] so this is wonderful thank you I love everything about it how it's highlighting the kids I love how you have their pictures my question um a board pop uh at one of the meetings I think it was dealing with uh policy or policy I talked about student grievances like an official process of how what channel would they go through once they hit you know just some ideas and I know this is something for us to figure out but I'm wondering once that is once we figure that out

205would this could this be a platform like with uh where they can submit that uh grievance could could that be something since this is like identified for the student to where they would have like a click State whichever your concern is the process you went through whatever we figure out that it could be on this page I will work closely with superintendent oddly and invest in accordance absolutely okay I just didn't wanted to not you know be a part of the vision but because we're talking about student voice and it's not always out of order it's just I may have went to my teacher I went to my principal so then they don't have to go to Facebook or something that they know it's an official process that where they can be heard and it

206can be handled absolutely okay great I love this good great job y'all are there any other questions yes I'm going to ask one um just only one um where are we at with the students I mean speaking of student voice I know we've talked about uh like getting a podcast Wing um any progress around that because I I would that's a podcast I would listen to every day um so is there is there any traction or is there or I guess let me rephrase that is there a more support needed from the board whether it be funding or resources is there anything that that we can do to support that he's always wonderful sure okay and we are in the process we we talk with 91.3 and so that is something that's probably going to

207happen this upcoming school year okay Roger that all right yes Miss Jackson the facilities to to do that then they get some equipment through Huntington where they could where it could be recorded maybe and booked or to do their own podcast I'm just curious where I mean I know they would need like a mentor or something or an advisor I guess is what I want to say so that they know the parameters but I know that there are places at I promise and that's one of the places that we're going to use but also um 91.3 the Summit is at Ellet and we would have that mentorship there that could help us grow I mean I'm I'm good but I'm not a podcast expert I'm just curious because book though has some type of facilities

208for recording I'll get more information I'll retalk about it when I come back and I'll find out I'll speak with principal Beecher and I'll find out more about it and I'll let you know I'll follow up with you okay I mean because where each site you can have because we have different interests and things that's going on within there every school has different things and interest that's going on so I think when we think about Transportation sometimes if I'm right at school and we talk about after school program and it utilize tlcs they can host interviews with their award people and all types of things from their Building without having to go across to Elliott if I'm from the west side if I'm at book door if I just some thoughts but this can be

209like those are some very good thoughts and speaking of you all have a scholar voice t-shirt at your site at your desk and it's your correct size and if you need additional t-shirts please let me know oh so at this time I would like to turn the mic over it's not the correct side I just want to say I am a small this is a large no yours is yours is a medium right in front of it you picked up the treasurers there's yours yeah yeah you're right I did that okay okay so at this time I would like to turn it over to our partner um Dr Jennifer Ross from the Akron Urban League and she's going to share more about one of our important scholar voice Ventures that we have going on throughout

210the city good [Music] evening you all are Troopers my name is Dr Jennifer Ross I Am the vice president of diversity education engagement at the Akron Urban League and we wanted to speak to you about our young adult Council that we're engaging in right now in collaboration with Akron public schools and some other school districts across the city back I will say last year whenever right after the Jalen Walker incident the Department of Justice reached out to us and they wanted to hear from young adults across the city around what some thoughts and concerns they may have not particularly the Jalen Walker incident but just in general so we then thought about how can we convene students but also too not only convenient students but young adults but really Elevate and amplify their voices to

211think about maybe some initiatives or programs that we can engage in to ensure that they're having opportunities to really amplify concerns address their concerns and just take some leadership in the community so quickly we'll just talk about what student voice is and we know that student voices the student's ability to influence or participate in education or Community decision making we know it's important because if you ask a student what's wrong or what's working or what's not working they're going to tell you exactly what's needed to have or to be in a successful environment and so we understand the importance of listening to our students engaging with young adults to really identify Solutions and resolutions um to problems also putting them at the table so that they can be key decision makers opposed to us telling

212them what we think should happen or what should be done so whenever we really listen to our students our young adults take their perspectives solicit feedback from them we know that we can generate really strong programs that's going to enhance outcomes for everyone why student boys if we look at the academic research we can see that student voice is positively linked to academic outcomes because it can deepen student engagement also it provides them with feelings of autonomy belonging a sense of belonging and also competence and lastly we know that it can improve student-teacher relationships and can build Mutual trust and respect within communities more about the young adult Council as I said earlier in July of 2022 the doj reached out to us and they were really wanting to hear the perspective of young adults

213between the ages of 16 to 26 to discuss their concerns whenever we convene these young adults and we convened about 50 of them when we convene them we didn't really speak about the Jalen Walker incident we just asked them we just asked a blanket question of what are some concerns and issues that you would like to see addressed what they told us wasn't really that surprising but yet and still we we allowed them to share with us the four major things that really just they thought were critical and what they said was police accountability Police use a force things that are happening in their school systems and mental health and so we didn't want to just leave it with okay we have this report this is what they said we really wanted to think about

214now what are some solutions that should be driven based on their concerns so with that we then submitted a grant uh to the city of Akron arpa proposal to really think about what are ways that we can address their concerns and they can lead the initiative behind their issues that they think should be addressed and June and no in January of 2023 we did uh create the young adult Council program and if designed we opened it up to students and freshmen as well so we opened up the students ages 14 to 26. there's about 25 young adults in the program 16 of those young adults are Akron Public School students and so we have a few others from other schools across the county and also not only are they from students across the county but

215we also have young adults ages about 20 to 24 that are participating in the program as well and the 16 students from Akron public schools come from one of our high schools in this District we chose students students that are diverse so we chose some students who are on our scholar board we chose some students who are from our leadership our building leadership teams our locker room leadership but we also chose students from our Pathway to high school Success because we wanted a breadth of students we wanted those students who were actively involved but we also wanted those students who did have those encounters with authority we wanted those students who were experiencing some mental health problems because we really wanted to hear from them and get their input on the decision-making process absolutely thank

216you and so the goal of the program we really went we wanted to create a platform where younger dogs could serve and leaders could amplify their their voices uh we wanted to provide young adults with the opportunity to serve as Leaders because we know that leadership opportunity is critical and to engage in community social justice activities we also wanted to create Community connections and alignment with local organizations so we have many organizations that want to engage and participate but we want to be strategic about the way that we engage those organizations and lastly we wanted to create mentorship opportunities between the young adults and the older uh adults and the group but yet and still create mentorship opportunities with the facilitators as well so when we thought about the design of the program we thought

217about well who would be good to facilitate this program at the Akron Urban League and outside the Urban League we thought about Dr Erica Glover and Kenny Smith to really come in design the program and to facilitate the process in the program because we knew that she's doing great work on student work and they've been successful with working with students and APS and just across the city so there are facilitators of the program and they're doing an amazing job the program will take place over nine months and we are using a problem-based learning approach and also like a youth participant youth participatory research approach like an action research approach also to engage the students when we thought about how we wanted to evaluate the program we thought it was important that we use both an

218ethnography so we wanted Dr Glover and Kenny to act as researchers and and be a part of the research so we wanted to have internal measures so we are video recording every single session and we're looking at the sessions to really identify what the students believe is important one but also to allow them to guide and navigate the process so we want the process to be organic so we don't have a program just built out from each session we look at what's working what's not working what modifications and changes we need to create like a formative assessment and just continue to modify it to ensure that we're meeting their needs and also too to ensure that we're not dictating what the process should look like and they are so we're recording each session we're reflect

219you all do Reflections after each session we have students doing Reflections on the sessions as well and we're also going to pull some parent Reflections and pieces too just to get their voices because we understand that their voice is important around the table about these issues that they thought are critical to them we also want to have external controls as well so we know there's some validity and reliability issues around just having assessments done internally so we want to bring in that outside external evaluator to hold focus groups or probably use some surveys to really assess and get really quality feedback to see if there's one in alignment from what we're seeing internally but also to get a blind look from the outside to give a speed back to think about ways that we can

220modify and adjust the program in the future so we are using assessment and evaluation measures to really dictate the process we want to provide a platform where these young adults can share with us where what they feel are what they feel is critical to be addressed right now we want them to engage with leaders across the city with the with the city of Akron with other leaders across the community and also allow them to have a voice to say these are some of the strategies that we think should be used to really Bridge the trust and the Gap in the community so that's just a bit about our young adult Council program if you have any questions please feel free to ask or share them with us Mr Alexander where are the where the groups

221being held at uh at the Akron Airport really okay and they're after school so so this is a part of our out of school time programming what days of the week or they're held once a month on Tuesdays and Thursdays and it's from what time four and six four to six thirty thank you are there other questions Miss Audrey thank you so much for this um so if the young people decided or came to a point where they identified a task or something they wanted to do there's a program fund it right now we're funding the projects that they want to engage in they're also given incentives to I should have said this but they're given incentives to engage with us so each time they attend a session they are given a 20 gift card

222so we really want to Value their time we want to incentivize them to come because we know they could be working or doing many other things and the fact that they're taking time out of school to come and engage uh we think that's critical oh gosh yeah and the attendance been amazing so we've had two sessions what were the dates of the sessions that we just had um but they were we had our first two sessions in April they were the 22nd and the 24th uh the first day we had I believe about I would say 75 to 80 of the students attend because they did have some other um things that they had to attend the next day that on Thursday we had about 90 percent and so each session we're getting more and

223more students we are putting a cut off on students that want to engage they have to attend this next session if they're going to be a part of the process because we don't want them to think they can just jump in the process at any time and we want to keep their process consistent for all those students that are engaging thank you so much are there other questions or comments Miss Autry thank you and so it's for up to age 26. how do you uh get those older kids or young adults about six young adults and I would say those are the individuals they're around they're ranging between 20 and 26 right now uh and we were concerned thinking that they would not want to engage with the young adult with the youth because there's

224a big gap right the way that the project is being facilitated quite honestly we've designed a system where they're mentoring the youth so it's set up where they're working alongside these youth they're mentoring the youth but also too we are creating a space where they meet and they collectively work together and then at times they come back into the whole group so they are separated out through some of the process and then other times we want them engaging in some of the small circles or resorted circles that are being held as a mentor as a supporter as a guide as well because we want to rely on their expertise and also build relationships among the older young adults with the youth as well the well the young adults are a part of the program but

225we do have some organ oh you're talking about so some of them are coming from gosh I I don't want to miss quote an organization so I will get the list of organizations that they're coming from and some of them are just we have a APS teacher a counselor that's a part of the young adult counselor right next door to us um Helen Arnold so they they come from multiple organizations but to be exact I would have to get that list for you because I don't want to miss quote or say something that's not accurate sure other questions or comments thoughts Miss Jackson all right Roger that thank you for your time at least we appreciate it all right I'm not going to say good night I'm gonna say a good evening good to see

226some familiar faces here I'm going to talk intentionally about upcoming projects and I'll begin with what's coming up this summer and so we've created a summer experience called hip-hop and change and so Scholars who sign up to participate will have the opportunity to analyze culture and Community against hip-hop music so we'll look at different artists throughout the time that we're there we'll analyze the lyric the lyrics of the um of the artists obviously centering hip-hop and if you know anything about it's called the hip-hop pedagogy by Dr Chris Edmond there it is uh he has uh research that really centers bringing in what they call ciphers and so you talk about rap music or hip-hop you have ciphers where folks are battling against each other right so the cipher in terms of the the symbol

227is there but what happens in ciphers is conversations around that Fosters critical Consciousness and critical thinking and critical reflection so that Scholars are looking at community and culture and history all at the same time and having conversations about the change that they want to see in their community and even looking at the change that may have not happened as a result of the music that they're hearing so they'll start to look at look at even music over time and if things have changed over time as a result of you know some of the artists that are sharing uh some of their stories and experiences through music every day it is designed so that the end of the experiences of the experience per day The Scholar will have the opportunity to produce how they want to

228express the change they want to see video via art music spoken word videography social media and photos and so um if you look at Tick Tock if you look at all of the different ways that learning is actually happen happening virtually we want to ensure that we were able to bring that out we know that at book though they have the opportunity to create t-shirts right and so if you think about messages and learning that happens when you're a walking billboard right those are other opportunities that we wanted to allow so we purposely opened up the opportunity to provide your product in a way that is open and based upon what they want to do as to not limit their choice in terms of how they want a voice to change they actually want to

229see in their Community we will have a opportunity to go to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame we're going to have special guests that will also enter the space Dr Carter from the University of Akron we'll be entering the space and have a conversations with the scholar we have an assistant principal who intentionally does not purposely uses certain language to show Scholars that rap music can occur without any negative connotations if you will and then we're also going to have a spoken word artists that graduated from Akron public schools actually teach them her style and her framework so that they can walk away with that as well so I'll move on to the next slide this is posted on the website as well and we're also going to intentionally Target someone asked the question

230earlier today about podcasts we're going to intentionally Target Scholars that are part of the educator professional pathway at bookdo because that educator there actually is developing his own podcast and is looking at hip hop in that space as well for what I'm understanding so um Dr Chris teaches hip-hop pediculture we thought it might be a good connection for those scholars in that particular pathway the next program that we are actually going to we're hoping to launch uh this school year so we're it's in the work so I say let me give you a little background around our Shay ashay actually began under the leadership of former superintendent David James and has been carrying its way through up to this point and it's an opportunity for folks in specific cities to leaders in that City to

231have opportunities to amplify amplify leadership within that particular City so Akron was chosen Jackson Mississippi was chosen in Empire California was chosen and I'm missing one so um we met in four as four squads and our goal was to develop a sustainable program that scholars in our city could access um and be able to participate in over time this opportunity was actually funded through big picture learning and Hewlett foundation and so out of this the Akron Squad we had individuals myself from Agri Public Schools we had an individual from gar we had an individual from some health and United Way and so we convened over that eight-month period of time and this is our project and so our project is is really designed to allow Scholars to amplify not amplify voice but to create a

232cultural responsive teaching and learning experience for educators who are interested in working within their Community or culture and so these Scholars will work side by side AI with pre-service teachers from the from Kent State University and they will be learning with so we are going to mimic some of the items within the syllabus from that particular University's course and so those Scholars will be able to participate in learning with co-constructing and that's what a y par is all about you know what they believe even if it's just a resource even if it's training but they believe that Educators and staff should know when they're coming into their space into their building I want to make sure I'm not missing anything it is and we talked about why Paul and pblm1 so one of the things

233that we are going to do is ask Dr Chapin to provide the scholars the participants with the launch of the program and she's going to charge them to create this experience for educators and staff as a result of the work that's already occurring with the ete and the Dei team so we thought that was an easy fix I mean easy connection and so the work in terms of planning is is happening as we speak so from drema and Kent State have been on a call working towards trying to develop this in a way that it can be implemented next year with our Scholars with the focus on a particular I think we have a particular group in that building that we will be working with but okay the building leadership team so um and and

234that is kind of like how we're moving with the ashay project as of now um and we we do believe that we have a lot of support from big picture um in terms of other you know um resources that may occur that we might find out we need as a result of the program so um that's that's about it oh yes free that's just huge right um and so what we are hoping um that Scholars are able to do throughout the experience we haven't really designated a time is to be able to attend the Equal justice initiative the eji um and Birmingham Alabama I believe Birmingham or Montgomery um this uh this was actually an experience that we were able to encounter while we were a part of the program and it is a life-changing

235experience I highly recommend that every person in here has the opportunity to attend this Museum so what the scholars will experience is a history lesson I think my colleague Adam would appreciate this from um trans slave Atlantic the trans Atlantic slave movement encounter excuse me experience all the way through mass incarceration and so they'll be able to bring back their learnings to kind of situate and understand how things are happening in terms of time and place as a result of this experience as well so I'll pause and pivot but we did one opportunity to raise any questions respond to any questions if you all have any right at this point is there any questions okay right thank you [Applause] and I do have a be kind 330 update I would like to share with you

236I think you will love this um initiative that has started with one of our students we have another student Advocate that is helping to spread our be kind 330 messaging and the goal is to spread kindness in our schools and Community Resnick student Hadley approached her principal Mrs core with an idea she noticed that the district be kind 330 and asked if she could start a club or gathering space for students who feel alone she worked with Miss temperio resnick's counselor to create Yana stands for You Are Not Alone the mission of Yana is to make others feel happy in their school Community Jana is currently open to Resnick fifth grade students each morning being kind to ourselves and others help us feel better our physical and mental health improve our relationships with other improve

237and we have a better view of the world around us so I would just like to say thank you to Hatley at Resnick for her kindness and for helping others that concludes my report oh that's that that's fantastic that's fantastic um that's a good way to conclude next we move to president's report I don't have a report and we'll go to Treasurer support there's no treasure here to give a report um oh no this is the yeah right not the treasure Pro tip yeah right you want to say something no no um and then um and then I think we made the decision to skip committee reports tonight so we're skipping items 28.1 two three and four um and we're gonna go right to item 31.1 which is um I need a motion to recess

238into executive session for still with the orc-121.22 G1 for the purpose of considering the employment of a Public Employee or official the school district in G3 for their purpose to meet with board legal counsel to discuss disputes involving the board and or the school district that are the subject of pending or imminent Court action is there a motion so moved second it's been moved by Mr kittrick in the second by Miss Autry is there any discussion okay roll call please Mr Perry Mr Alexander yes Ms zaltry yes yes Dr Hall aye Mr Perry yes Miss Jackson yes Ms McKittrick yes motion carries okay we are now in um recess there may there will be a possible new item from the executive session so all right we're in recess at 9 32 pm thank you [Music]

239thank you it's been nice greetings and salutations welcome back we are reconvening at 1206 a.m on May 9th um for our appointment that started May 8th um May 9th now we have we are recommending at 1206. we have one item from from executive session uh just in a motion to approve the confidential settlement agreement will release and settlement agreement by in between Victoria Washington Timothy Washington Akron Public Schools Board of Education and Stephen Stephen fasic under item 32.1 is there a motion okay first and second okay who's the first all trees okay all right so it's been probably moved by Miss Autry seconded by Miss McKittrick is there any discussion it's like roll call please Mr Perry absolutely Mrs McKittrick yes Miss Alexander yes Dr Hall aye Ms Jackson yes Ms Daltrey yes Mr Perry

240yes approved six to no to zero okay okay motion carries all right next I'll take a motion to adjourn I so move to move by Mr Perry is there a second seconded by Mr Alexander any discussion okay roll call please Mr Perry yes Dr hole aye Ms Daltrey yes Mr Perry yes Miss Alexander yeah Miss Jackson yes Miss McKittrick motion carries all right we are adjourned at 12 oh 9 00 a.m on May 9th [Music]