Board of Education Livestream - 08/22/22

001[Music] good evening everyone and welcome to the regularly scheduled board meeting of akron public schools on 22 august we will start with a roll call mr pendleton dr akbar here mr alexander president ms autry here dr hall aye ms jackson president mrs mckittrick mr perry i'm here thank you thank you very much we will now do uh pledge of allegiance if miss jackson do you mind leading us if you can stand those who are able [Laughter] i'm okay one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you very much and next we will move to community and school reflections any board member yes autry thank you so much mr president i just wanted to share that today i had the honor of welcoming the east cluster schools staff back during the convocation

002this morning such great energy um it was awesome to see everybody excited about returning it was like a pep rally they were they had this uh rubber thing where they were shooting t-shirts out into the crowd and it was just just a lot of fun and i just want to thank everybody uh all those staff members who continue to show up and make it happen for our students every single day who make that building work thank you very much ms autry anyone else mr perry i just want to say selfishly uh i think you know my my seventh grader plays on litchfield football team they had their first game last week against the ravenna ravens and they won big time he even got to see the field got some action out there so congratulations to

003coach o'dell and coach carter and all the litchfield field football team staff thank you very much miss jackson uh yes thank you mr president um today i had the pleasure of attending the convocation for the booktube cluster at um bukto clc and it was in fact so the energy was wonderful it was very exciting it was nice to see all of the teachers and the different administrators paraprofessionals counselors just everyone in the building getting you know like jabbed up to come back like everyone was getting really excited and i was telling the superintendent this is so great i've never been to i've only ever been to a holy convocation where a bishop is leading it so it was different to be in that setting but i was very happy and i couldn't help but think

004this type of encouragement this type of energy how do we keep this with our teachers who are you know they're about to go into trenches just like our children how can we keep that you know how can we revive them from quarter to quarter and give that same type of energy and excitement because what you feed is what will grow so seeing that was very encouraging um to me i was glad to be a part of it i was glad to be in the building and um we were greeted by the book though cheerleaders coming through the door this staff were so excited krauss you'll see their staff was off the chain i think they they won they were so like the loudest group you had a lot of representation there to book the staff

005it just was a great feeling because i felt people were excited about being educators and then my mentee elliott jackson he was on the screen the superintendent presented this wonderful visual presentation with students and staff members welcoming everyone back and one of the resonating themes that i realized that all of the learners many of the learners said on the video was thanking the teachers for staying in the game thank you for coming back to cer and i was like wow how powerful is that that you had these young people recognizing you didn't have to you could have left because a lot has been happening in the profession and a lot has left but you came back and i just want to tell you thank you i mean i just was like wow that touched it

006was touching to me because i'm like these kids recognize that like thank you for teaching me and it wasn't staged you didn't did y'all write that for them i thought i better ask because it was so well articulated that i felt it i felt that they had a level of gratitude and so that made me think these are teachers having impact in these kids life that they're thanking them for returning so i want to thank every magnificent educator because excellence looks different and it looks like you excellent educators that are staying in the game and teaching in the spirit of excellence so that's my reflection thank you very much dr hall then mr alexander so as you all know i try to add a certain degree of levity to these proceedings um so i used

007so i too went to the convocation i used it as a venue to try to trap my latest stand-up routine um it didn't go real well um you know i uh i talked to ms whitfield as i was walking and i said i said i got a joke i want to try out and she said what's the joke i said well i figured i'd get on stage all this rah-rah right after i get on stage and say welcome to pandemic year three yeah and that's she said no don't do that uh don't do that and um and um but uh so i told the crowd that i was thinking about that joke and got a few courtesy laughs and i said yeah i said that's why i didn't tell that joke i just told you

008i was gonna think about that joke i also shared that uh walking through a line of cheerleaders cheering for me i said that this is not my high school experience um they laughed at that one by the way they laughed at that that one i don't know why they laughed at that one but then after that one um but um but no in all seriousness um you know i thought was really well done uh to see all the the enthusiasm that was there i think everyone is kind of looking at this as this is kind of the first normal year that we get to have semi-normally you're right i see we're some of us are still wearing a mask right and uh cobit is on is on the rise again but um but again it

009feels like this is as close to normal as we've been uh or as we i'm sorry this is the closest to normal that we've had in three years right so i think people are looking forward to having a solid year i think last year was kind of the adjustment you're kind of getting getting used to being back in school again right you know whether you were in kindergarten or in 12th grade i think everyone needed some adjusting um you know so i think that was i think that was good to see and you know i think um there are times when you're in a gathering like that where uh it doesn't feel like it's real energy it feels like it's being manufactured um you know and i didn't i didn't feel that way at all

010um so i also had to go after your video uh i wasn't very happy about that i said wait a minute can i kick you know i gotta follow that that video i gotta follow that video uh next time let me you know next time i wanna go before her video because she had eight minutes of like entertainment and like you know great visuals and all these kids saying welcome back and i like i gotta follow that okay all right and i had jokes i didn't draw laughter um you know so but anyway um so yeah so so the the point being is that the feeling in the room was um was authentic uh i think people are genuinely speaking they're they're happy to be back uh we also i was also surprised um and

011i know that we've got data on this but i was also surprised when i would ask like who had how many of you are new you know because i want to know how many teachers were new in the crowd there were a handful i said well how many of you have five years or more once you start that down that path you got to go all the way to completion right so we got to 35 years or more and it was still like it must have been like 20 of the audience had their hands up at 30 like 30 plus 30 35 plus years which which really astounded me i said oh so those of you that have been in 35 years you were around when i was in grade school here so uh in

012this in this district still so you probably tell me how i was way way better back in the good old days but that but thanks for sticking it out was definitely appreciate it so um but yes it was it was a good time and i missed whitfield gave me some helpful pointers on the way out the door uh i'll work on for next year and we'll see if we can't get the routine um to a higher quality higher caliber that aps teachers and managers deserve um so i'll leave it there and uh mr alexander i think you we're trying to get in there too so may i say we do have video for any of you that want to see well i didn't get a chance to go to the convocation it's always exciting i

013love this time of the year because it's exciting for the teachers administrators they come and everybody comes exciting and students are getting ready to come in as well so it is an exciting time and i want to wish all the teachers administrators and our students especially to have a great year this year have an outstanding year we know that we had covet hopefully we won't have it as bad and we will be able to overcome that and be able to stay in school without having to go through a lot of the protocol that we had in the past but uh i want to wish all of you well and do a very very good job this year have a great year secondly secondly i was able to attend stark state's ribbon cutting and they just

014opened and it was very nice to see and i i wish all of us would get a chance to go up there and look they they opened a ribbon cutting for a welding and joining program and they have a nice little area up there uh i think a lot of kids want to get into welding or wanted to be in some type of welding program and we didn't have that around here but now any kids who may want to be involved with welding or joining they can be involved they have the top of the line equipment in there they have people who are actual welders who welded for a number of years i think the the one gentleman was telling me he's the lead person there and he's been welding for over 40 years and

015he's one of the instructors there so i like to say that uh if we have any kids who in our district who want to get into welding please have a look at start state's welding program and uh check into it something they may like and because we know that welding or welders are been far few between and there's a lot of people need things that are to have welded including in our uh you know our cars and you know things that we're making for in production that we need so uh i want to say uh thank you to them and also i want to thank dr caver because she was there to help cut the ribbon and when they asked me to cut i said no it should be someone from akron public schools who

016cut the ribbon so they asked us both to get up there and cut the rib help cut the ribbon for that opening so that was nice and glad that she was able to see and meet some people there who she can build some relationships with in the future thank you thank you very much anyone else i just had one more comment sorry one more comment just a quick housekeeping item so this is my request i made sure they knew this before i left um so when i had to go to the microphone to speak at the convocation it was set a foot too high um so that was very embarrassing that i had to adjust the microphone down a full foot from the guy was speaking before me so we want to work on that

017for next time so no no know your speaker let's make sure the microphones are set to where they um you know so anyway i just wanted to share that thank you all right we're going to move on because i don't feel your pain i do not feel your pain on that one it's my everyday life all right anyone else all right hearing and seeing none we will move forward to the next item on our agenda which is request to address the board we do have one request to address the board pastor gregory harrison in regards to the esther's spending we will ask you to speak at this podium here in the middle if you want to make sure that the mic is on before you get started you'll have three minutes and as long as

018you're not lodging a complaint about a specific person personnel or anything we just give you three minutes to share with us what you're on your mind and we'll do our best to the right person afterwards okay thank you thank you very much certainly don't want to call anyone out by name but i was so glad to hear the congratulations and the accolades for our teachers i don't care what system we have in place i don't care what new fancy whatever we get at the backbone is our teachers so i would pray that we would never be in a situation where we are giving them a final best last option but that we are looking at our teachers as our most valuable resource uh so i'm gonna start my time now that was just my commentary

019um i i i want to ask a question and i had a chance to talk briefly with the superintendent about this last week why are black kids running from the police why are black kids running from the police they're running from the police because they have come into a system that is full of despair treatment and that first system is the school system that is the very first system that our kids will come into why are our kids being suspended why are black kids being suspended four to one and if we're not going to ask that question if we're not going to really put that question on the table when we come to equity when we come to spending when we come to building systems we have to ask why are our kids running they're

020running because in a similar situation they are going to be treated different and that started in kindergarten i was looking at some numbers 87 of our kindergarten start reading at a proficient level that drops by the third grade to 52 52 of our kindergarten our third graders are not reading at proficiency so all of these community partnerships all of these bold goals are not really effective but what is effective we have to do more of the numbers that the statistics that we're using at the last board meeting i heard that numbers can be toxic numbers are what they are they are what they are it's how we use them do we choose to take real numbers and use that as a baseline so all of the training that we're talking about where did we start

021all of these programs that we're initiating where do we start how do we know in three years that we have accomplished anything we are spending a lot of money the district is spending a lot of money is it sustainable because at some point we have to come to citizens for a levy the only thing that we can do to voice our pleasure or displeasure is vote on school board members and vote a levy up or down that's where we come in that's where our participation is so what i've asked the school board is to really look at this equity and not just by the words but really look at what we're spending um i'm not going to say your name but miss mckittrick i'm not saying your name but i thank you for your conviction

022and your voting you're our voice we have to challenge some of these systems some of these spendings we have to challenge while our kids are being suspended you have a picture ramus lewis 15 years old killed paris wix august 29 2013 he could not read 15 years old he could not read could not spell his middle name i'm done but when we're talking about equity let's not just talk about it let's challenge systems that are in place that have failed kids and let's invest in what has really worked for our kids and that's our teachers thank you very much we now move to the next item on our agenda which is approval of the previous meeting minutes we have two previous meeting minutes the first one is the regular meeting minute from monday 8 august

0232022 and then the second one is the special meeting minutes from wednesday uh 10 august 2022. is there a motion on the table to approve the previous meeting minutes iso move it's been properly moved by mr perry it's their second second it's been seconded by dr hall any discussion on the previous meeting minutes hearing a sing now we will do a roll call vote please mr pendleton mr jackson yes mrs mckittrick yes dr akbar yes mr alexander yes ms archery yes mr perry yes dr hall aye thank you very much we now move to personnel recommendations madam superintendent yes good evening i wish to recommend approval of the personnel recommendations presented in categories 5 through 17. thank you very much has been properly recommended for the personnel uh is there a motion on the table

024isil move lisbon properly moved by mr perry is there a second second which has been seconded by ms autry any discussion on the personnel recommendations any discussion on the personnel recommendations any discussion on the personnel recommendations we will now do a roll call vote please mr pendleton mrs mckittrick no on 5.9 6.3 6.4 6.6 6.7 yes on the rest thank you dr akbar yes mr alexander yes ms autry yes mr perry yes dr hall aye ms jackson yes thank you very much we now move to resolutions and motions on the consent agenda madam superintendent yes sir i wish to recommend approval of the resolutions and motions presented in category 22. they are in proper format i move for their approval please thank you very much it's been uh properly uh recommended the resolutions and motions

025on the agenda is there a motion on the table so move it's been properly moved by mr alexander is there a second second it's been seconded by dr hall any discussion on the motion any discussion on the motion hearing and saying none we will do a roll call vote for the resolution emotions on the consent agenda mr pendleton dr akbar yes mr alexander yes ms autry yes mr perry yes dr hall aye ms jackson yes mrs mckittrick yes thank you thank you very much we now move to business affairs recommendations madam superintendent yes please i wish to recommend approval of the business affairs recommendations presented in category 23. thank you very much we have received the business affairs recommendations is there a motion on the table iso move it's been properly moved by mr perry

026it's their second second it's been seconded by mr alexander any discussion on the business affairs recommendations dr hall yeah so i have a question about item 23. it's the west music company purchase i i was trying to understand [Music] so these were schools that were selected for the save the music grant and we're using esther three dollars it looks like to purchase instruments so did the grant not cover the cost of instruments i guess it's a question i had with regard to 23.20 and i can read it and i can read it out loud it just says here i wish to recommend the purchase of 430 musical instruments 86 for each of the five elementary schools selected for the save i'm sorry for the for the save the music grant including mickey bright porter's path

027reimer sam sandler schumacher from west music company total cost not to exceed 61 thousand dollars approximately be charged to um fund 507-2239 which is which is the sr3 fund uh again i was trying to understand is did the grant not cover the cost of the instruments i'm not sure the degree to which the grant covered the total costs um i wasn't prepared to have that information here with us tonight so it is allowing us to provide music education um across the system but i'm not sure to what degree the coverage where it's stopped we can provide follow-up information to the board okay thank you very much any other discussion i'm miss autry thank you mr president um my question is regarding item 23.18 the proving ground collaborative agreement with harvard college i was just wondering

028if we could just get a little bit more information for this three-year agreement that we're having including which department they're going to be working most closely with what does it look like this collaboration sure and they are going to be working with our student services division with our attendance initiative and you might recall last year several times we brought to you the data around chronic absenteeism because that was of great concern not only here in our district but also was of concern in districts throughout ohio and so the proving grounds strategy is a research-based strategy that allows district teams to have access to the best practices and to be coached and mentored within um the structure of this collaborative uh with so it's not only our district but we will also be partnered with other

029districts throughout the state and throughout the nation the state of ohio brought this opportunity and made it available to us and we were affiliated with the proving ground strategy i think a few years back and with dr lash coming on board and having used that resource successfully in her former district we decided to re-engage especially given our data so dr lash if you want to take at the side microphone and if there's anything else you want to add thank you superintendent fowler mack i would only add um so again as superintendent stated my former experience and so harvard proving ground they work with school districts and so here specifically will help us to take a look at our data and really do some root cause analysis in looking at absenteeism and help us to design

030interventions and when we implement those interventions they also take data to give us feedback as to whether the intervention is getting us the impact that we want and then we make a decision there to scale up that intervention and as i understand it last year the district did do one of the proving ground interventions and that is the k3 postcard intervention and so i can tell you again former experience what we learned was that some of our families of younger students sometimes in absences may not have realized that our younger learners were actually like learning school and so the postcard intervention upon absences teachers would hand write the lessons that students missed for that day and send those home in backpack and what the research indicated was that via being mailed or sent home in

031the backpack they really didn't see a difference that sending them home in the backpack created enough of an awareness to have impact on attendance and so that is one of the proven strategies that has been used there are others but they really do in working with partner districts help you to look at your data and design an intervention and um get the research around it so follow up i have about yes i think miss audrey did you okay um so so that was called that was a postcard you said that had that had the lessons that were missed on the postcard so that's one that we said that they said that we chose to implement based off of the data yes and what grade levels was that for that k through three k through three

032okay okay so so we chose implement starting last year last year it was implemented okay gotcha and then so and then so we looked at attendance data for k-3 at the end of this year we saw that there was a an improvement so um and that i don't have the answer to but what what i can also add to that and and i can't i can only speak to what i've learned but um but what i do know is that sometimes and and again my experience with them um they will have already researched a strategy to the extent that you may not have to implement on a smaller scale that you can go full full-blown or just implement it without taking the the data to see what the impact is that there's enough evidence to

033support that it will cause an impact that they don't monitor the data to give you the impact of what's happening in your district and so the k-3 postcard may it may have been that situation here i'm not sure but i can definitely find out for you there is another intervention that i implemented in a former experience that we did not do small scale because again they had enough research behind it to say this does make a difference in absences and so go ahead and implement full scale i don't know if that helps but no it does i mean so yeah i mean i i get that right so um but it's still nice to see how how it affects it how it impacts the numbers in in your district right so um so that's so

034that's why i asked the question um so when we did it k three was it was that was that citywide or was that just in a couple of schools that we did that it was just in a couple schools and i would have to like call a lifeline to get those um schools because i don't remember off the top of my head that's fine that's fine we did it in schools where we had you know saw the trends of the data and so um you actually um in the approvals this evening in 19.3 we also received resources to help support even that postcard strategy yeah because i love to see how our numbers were were impacted in those schools right i mean so again listen i'm not questioning whether the strategy works right i mean

035don't misunderstand me i just would like to see like well like sure how do numbers improve you know um from putting in place a tried and trusted you know strategy i mean you know did we see you know the kind of improvement that we would hope to see or was it underperforming you know um so it's just it's just it's just feedback right um so and then my other question was going to be i don't know if it's for you dr lash um but it's just maybe it's for senior staff in general um but have we but is it but is this the first time that we've done this kind of work to try to get get at a root cause as it as it relates to absenteeism in our schools i do not believe

036so and go ahead yeah we've done excuse me we've done other you know kind of efforts to try to get at some of the root causes um with with our attendance what we're trying to do is to make sure much like occurred with the postcard strategy in the schools where we were seeing the trends that there is a lot of follow-up on acting on that data so we have you know understood more broadly what we believe to be some of the reasons and you know things like some kids don't have alarm clocks things like that we gave out clocks and things of that nature but we really want to watch the strategy more closely because our chronic absenteeism data has um you know worsened um and again it worsened other places but we want to

037solve that and get back on the right track so yeah so so one more question um which is going to be so i know that obviously with the report card in ohio like over time the way that we define certain things changes over time right um and so has there been a change in how we define chronic absenteeism over time so like if i go back to three years ago were we defining it differently right so i know i know as an example if a kid was x minutes late to school they were kind of this absent missing part of the day i mean again i'm just i'm just asking this question out loud so so and i asked that because as we're thinking about interventions that we think would be impactful are we also

038dealing with a moving target as well with with regard to how we define some of these things i guess i i guess that's the question i'm asking yes that is a great question and okay okay okay okay well so i'm asking right so how do we figure out what the right interventions are if how we define the opportunity is changing over time right because that's vexing right i mean so i wholeheartedly um agree with your statement and you know and what's underneath that statement and it is really challenging it's the state of education you're going to see even this year in a few weeks when the report cards come out it's yet you know another iteration of a brand new report card that where there are shifts in the way things are calculated including we

039have had shifts over how our attendance is calculated at the state and those sorts of things you're going to hear some of that in a minute when we go into our updates on the advanced aps three and three we're going to in some places talk about we've now had a new baseline established so our ability to report on what was given as the initial metric is no longer able to be relevant you know those sorts of things but it won't stop us from continuing to know what an acceptable attendance rate is and being able to work with our community our families and strategies like the postcards one of the things that we know is that when we better communicate and truly get to the place where we can establish that partnership we can help to

040build an understanding that in those early grades it's not babysitting there's there's a lot of learning going on and it matters that children are at school daily and that they're on time and ready to learn those sorts of things so those are what the strategies are trying to help us do establish the partnerships so that we can have the supports in place for the scholars their families to have them at school yeah all right thank you thank you thank you dr lash appreciate it you're very welcome mr alexander did you oh okay anyone else any other discussion actually i just have one more comment it's not it's not a question it's more of a comment it's um so i'm i'm i'm picking on 23.14 for a minute but it's but um it's it's a question

041i i try to periodically ask and that is when we're looking at professional development um for groups within our schools um my understanding and please clean me up here if i have this wrong but my understanding is that typically that that professional development is sort of tied to a school's a school's quality improvement plan right you know that um so one of the things that i that i would i would find helpful is when we're approving these dollar amounts for example this is forty thousand dollars in totality like you know it'd be nice to know um what metrics are we hoping to impact with this professional development you know like what because because it because because to a board member it just reads as being very nebulous like i don't know like you know we

042approve it or disprove it right but i don't know i don't know what i'm approving all right i mean so something i know it's professional development and i know it's tied to a 90-day plan in most cases but it but it just would be nice that we could tie it to hey they're using this professional development to try to impact these three areas of opportunity for that particular school so that's just it's just a comment you know so okay yeah i'm just going to comment maybe for all of us as the board members to sort of be helpful is one of the things i've done over the years is when i look at something like this and i don't understand it i contact that administrator and they can tell me explain it to me so

043i get a better understanding of what's going on give me a deeper understanding uh because we have you know so much time here at the board meetings and we can get it but if it's something that i think will it needs to be asked in in the school board meeting than i accident but that way it helps me to get a better understanding because they're explaining it to me one-on-one versus me having to ask here at the board meeting yeah so just a quick comment on that um so i appreciate the the comment on that um there are times though when there's five or six professional developments that are in here and i don't i mean i you know i know we all have day jobs too you know so i don't i don't necessarily

044want to call up administrators at buildings and start asking them quizzing them about hey i saw this as an abort agenda you know i feel like there's a more appropriate way to go without asking that question and getting that getting that response instead of me as a board member calling a school administrator to do that so again not opposed to doing that but i yeah i i'm assuming that there's a more a better a more preferred yeah i wasn't saying to call the school administrator but we have the administrators all these people around here who have all those answers for us so those are the ones who i call i'm not calling the school i'm calling these individuals they're the ones who know what's going on they can explain to me because they're the ones

045who are right involved with that then they can explain it to me one of the people and she probably i called all the time was deborah falk and she got right back to me before the board meetings even if i asked her that morning which i try not to because but if i can answer earlier in the week before the board meeting roger then she can give me that information i got a better understanding that's why i don't say a whole lot sometime in these because i've already got the answers from those individuals thank you we'll also look and see what additional information we can add in the descriptor but then also can make you aware of which are the persons responsible for each one of these levels that you can get any additional questions

046answered because these are tied to most often the school improvement plan so there's usually a lot of detail within that yeah thank you very much any other questions okay so i only have one because i did ask my other ones earlier the one that just popped up at me that i i did not ask because i didn't think about it until now is around edmonton uh i know we approved that last year to support our online learning with some agreement i think with the aea around supporting classes for students who wanted to learn online and that we were going to be brought back kind of how that happened and what successes occurred there and then i see that we have a quarter of a million dollars here to approve i'm wondering if this is separate

047and above from what we approved last year or is this an extension of last year i believe it's an extension of our of our agreement with edmontom mr hatcher is that accurate or right and we can provide the board with an update as to where we are with the numbers of students enrolled in our online learning option we just post covit now have a body of families that desire that option and are using it fully and so we can provide you with the numbers of who finished last year which it grew actually during the course of the year and who has taken advantage of that this year as well thank you and the other piece that i wanted to just make sure i brought back up is there were a lot of concerns from families

048and this is why i know we were looking to get this information back around uh the the instruction that happens with edmentum and uh supposed to be you know a specific time that they went to class and there was someone they were only supposed to be in class with aps students and i know that was something that we worked through and i just want to make sure that we're still getting that type of agreement if we're you know spending that type of money and this is coming directly out of general fund not arpa dollars or anything else so i think that's important yes we we did work through those types of challenges during the course of the year where the sections that should have been solely devoted to akron public school systems to make sure

049they were and actually last year too we were trying to meet a lot of different student populations needs and so we've kind of cleaned that up as well and so we're really clear about which students will be taking advantage of these offerings versus what are the other alternative ways programs that we have to serve our students mr hatcher was there anything else that you felt like we should make sure the board knows if you could go to the bike thank you he oversees our over our online learning sure just just a couple things to add uh miss fowler mac one is that yes i can assure you that the issue that we had experienced last year regarding ensuring that our aps online students in grades k to five were exclusively in classrooms led by teachers

050dedicated to us was fixed last year at the beginning as well as as we transition into creating 2223 programming i would be happy to show you some of the other enhancements that we have utilized based on lessons learned for aps online through post pandemic and then in addition to that the expectation that we have to meet our needs of our families and today's diverse learners has also been taken into account as we prepared for the upcoming school year we feel confident in our numbers we feel confident in the supports that we're able to provide our families and then also the evolution of students that we found post-pandemic it had posed a great deal of challenges trying to meet the needs of our diverse families but we really feel that we learned a great deal about

051what educating in an online environment should entail and then to make sure that this equity is weaved through to ensure that families no matter if they choose to access their education from the confinements of their home that it still meets the needs of what we expect for our graduates to leave us with so i appreciate the question i appreciate the challenges that families were holding us to a very high standard as we were learning as we were trying to continue to meet the needs of students and families for free and their right to a free and public education given what their families were going through as they were dealing with the uncertainties of hovit thank you thank you one last thing before i go to dr hall i appreciate that mr hatcher one of the

052things that i'm interested in also is as we think about uh making more seats available for online learning we also have to i think you know be very cognizant of the equity of who actually benefits from online learning and who that actually creates an even greater disparity for and so that we can communicate that with those families as they're making the decision to whether or not to put their student in online learning or to put them in a brick and mortar because i think that's important uh because this isn't something that has had you know you know years and years of support for in many of our our families so i think having that additional information to be able to be pursed out by the type of student that is successful there and then also

053what supports are available if you fall outside of that ram so that we can make sure that they're successful as well if they do still choose to do online learning we've spent actually quite a bit of time talking about that very topic dr akbar and planning for that along with determining what does monitoring look like how do we continue to dialogue with the families it's that delicate balance of honoring the request of the family and allowing them to make the choice that they feel is best for their scholar while weighing that with the sometimes reality that those situations aren't in the best interest of the child and working for them but we want to try a great deal of interventions and supports first but we have discussed you know what will it look like when

054we're at that place where we have to say you know what for your child's best interest it really is better that they're in a brick and mortar setting because they're just not finding success and after we're able to determine an array of interventions and supports so we'll continue to work in that area and can keep you abreast as to here's what we're finding here's what that looks like but we do have a way to monitor that per student to monitor each student thank you dr hall yeah um mr hatcher i definitely appreciate your time in answering the questions here today um i would i would say yes i would love to see um follow up on i think you offered a duplication around the enhancements in regard to lessons learned um i mean i would

055love to see that if you wouldn't mind if you would mind sharing that with us and then my second comment was just going to be i mean online learning is is becoming larger and larger um i'm sorry more more preferred option i should say um you know i can't tell how many how many students families that were not advocates of online learning um pretty pandemic that during the pandemic found that their students actually performed there were students there were some students who performed better right students that have depression anxiety issues you know diagnosed i should say diagnosed anxiety depression issues um that they found that their students actually performed much better in the online environment and so i know there's quite a bit of angst around well gosh is that all going to go away

056is my student going to be forced to go back within you know you know back to school if you will um you know so i know that was a concern um to that point though i think the doctor agrees point i've let i mean if we've got demographic data on who our online students are i love i'd love to see some of that as well um you know and then and then my last actually actually it's a question my question was going to be um i know that we had a conversation at some point in the past about when we were talking about sort of the potential of online learning to be able to offer classes that weren't efficient to offer at every school right so like latin or chinese or something like that reminds

057all right well i can't offer that at every school but i can offer an online version maybe i can get 50 kids from across the district you know to join an online class are we have we um have we gathered any momentum in that regard as far as being able to come up with more exotic types of courses like that and and then and then getting students enrolled i guess is the question or is that still more of a work in progress that is more of a work in progress because that will require us to to to do that in collaboration um with our teachers union that sort of thing when we're watching uh the the impact of all of this and we do hope to also be at a place in some time in

058the future where we're able to offer some of those online options in-house that it's not necessarily needing to be facilitated through a partnership or organization but as you state to make sure that um just our set of offerings is as broad as possible that may also need to be in our interest so we're we're still going to pick back up and continue to explore thank you very much miss alexander yeah i just want to say just a little history so we we know about online learning before the pandemic started we had online learning probably about seven eight years ago maybe even longer than that and one of the things that we found out is that the students were the one who told us that they did better online some of these students so we took

059this information we put them in these classes and they start working they start showing they were making progress these kids were doing well and so we do need those options as you were saying dr hall some of these kids do want to be online and some one that we that was one of the things we had discussed is possible some classes being online and continue to have online as well as have in person because some of these kids were doing well at home and some were doing online and some were doing better in school so we want to have kind of a combination of that so this has been going on for at least somebody has to help me at least eight years uh of when we first started the first online school and i

060think it started if i'm not mistaken with some students over at garfield and i can't think of mrs she'll kill me if i you know i forgot her last name debbie howard can you help me she was over at garfield she did the online learning debra don't worry about it but i can't remember her but she don't kill me for not knowing her last name but anyhow she was one of the individuals who started this online uh help with this online schooling as well all right thank you very much any other discussion on business affairs hearing sing nine uh we'll do a roll call vote please mr pendleton mr alexander yes ms autry yes mr perry yes dr hall no on 23.5 22.7 23.10.17 13.18 23.20 yes thank you miss jackson yes mrs mckittrick no

061on 23 5 23 7 23 10 23 17 23 18 and 23 20 yes on the rest thank you dr akbar yes thank you very much we now move to uh superintendent's report madam superintendent sure good evening so we are going to go through an update here this evening that i will have several of the team members assist with but before i do so just want to go through a few updates and recognitions so the first recognition you already spoke in your reflections about the success of our convocation that took place today which was a celebration of our staff and really i'm glad it came across how thrilled we are that staff members continue to choose aps as their place where they're giving of their time and talents today's convocation took the hands and minds

062of many and it really was owned out in the clusters so that they were able to put their own touch on the different celebrations but every great initiative takes a captain and i just also wanted to take a moment to thank one of the primary captains of all that you saw today and this individual actually made their way around to every single site today and so marcy we just want to thank you for your high level leadership in working across all of those teams and attending to every detail and you have to be exhausted i i was exhausted and i didn't make it to every site but you did and so we thank you for your leadership uh in that and thank you to all of the administrators present and our teachers and students and

063other staff members who participated it starts us off on the right track also too just by way of update and recognition our backpack adventure was last week where we in partnership with the cleveland zoo and many different partners across the city were able to welcome our families and scholars back to the school year and to make sure that our students left with backpacks full of school supplies the first night i attended the opening night and in that night we had over 3 000 students and family members alone it was jam-packed and so a lot of persons again around the room and also working with our school staff participated and showed up but our families as well during that occasion expressed enthusiasm it was great energy they're ready to go and so we're going to make

064available kind of the database of all the pictures we took great pictures where we were able to capture the moment both for the families but also for the district to be able to use and celebrate so we're off and again our students especially the littles complained a bit about how heavy the backpacks were but they are loaded up and ready to go so we reminded parents that you might even want to take some of the things out and save them until about november-ish when you know things need to be replenished and things of that nature oh but um oh i see miss sykes in the back so stancey thank you she was the captain of that endeavor along with working across our team so thank you stancey for your leadership just want to remind you

065know all assembled and also any families who are listening that have questions about supplies and things of that nature we do have a link on our website on the back to school page that talks about the suggested supplies and it's just to give families an idea of if they feel like their students don't have the resources from other places and it looks like this that they can get on and by great level it talks about other items that might be purchased but one of the things that we are doing is trying to make sure every classroom has uh and it has what they need to get started this year so even in a one-time way we were able to increase the resources that were allocated to our buildings for our classrooms at every level so

066we do believe that our students will have what they need they'll have what they need but that information along with many other tidbits that families might be looking for is being populated on our back to school web page one of the other things that board members you have at your seats and that will be going home to our families is our this year's school calendar and we're really pleased that we tried to actually enhance our calendar this year the pictures that are throughout the calendar are actually the original artwork of our scholars throughout the city and so and we've not always sent these as a resource as a communication resource home to each of our households but we are going to make them available for families as well so that they can follow along with

067key dates and especially when you get towards the end of it to make sure that there is reference information so that if there's ever a question that's not already populated they know who to call or how to reach someone and when in doubt we have a wonderful engagement center so when in doubt persons can always just call our engagement center to get the information that they need but we're proud of this year's calendar and each year we hope to have a theme of something that we can celebrate but then also can continue to listen for the types of information that our families need and we'll make those available but we you have the first batch hot off the press this coming i think this coming saturday the 27th we will be cutting the ribbon for

068our newest clc building and our last in the first round of facilities planning so the new garfield will be coming online officially with the ribbon-cutting ceremony on the 27th and the ceremony starts at 1 o'clock from 1 to 3. we know for you miss jackson you miss mckittrick that being your alma mater uh that you have already seen the building but to be able to be there to be host as the rest of the community has access to that um should be a wonderful occasion and we're really hopefully using this opportunity as an engagement opportunity as well with both the kenmore garfield communities and so we're really looking for this to be a community kind of celebration a homecoming so um we have some exciting things planned and we're we're happy to be at this

069point successfully and thanks to all staff in the room including deb folk and her staff who have attended to details to make sure everything is open and working and things of that nature we we appreciate all that everyone has done um and last but not least before we go into the presentation i just wanted to provide you with an update around covid uh because it is something that while we don't want to declare we're in yet another year of the pandemic we do have to still acknowledge is with us will be with us and we are we are learning to effectively work through that situation so in preparation for the start of the new year and knowing that the center for disease control did make some adjustments to the requirements from everything from social distancing

070to to really talking about testing and things of that nature we put together a faq sheet that we tried to anticipate what type of information might parents or staff members need and so we do have an updated faq you have one at your seats but we have posted this to the website and we are making this available in our buildings and in any parent meetings we have in essence we are in the we're beginning the year much of where we left off last year we continue to highly encourage persons to be safe and and we know already ways to be as safe as possible is the masking things of that nature but ultimately masks are optional so they're encouraged but optional and we continue to encourage hand washing we will continue to sanitize things of

071that nature but the cdc has moved in its requirements of social distancing you know both on in transportation vehicles and also in the classrooms so where we don't have to organize students in those ways and so we will continue to have ppe hand sanitizer all of that plentifully available in our schools we may periodically depending on the trends of covet do some testing for our athletes just to make sure that we all remain safe but there is no standard requirement anymore that we test athletes before every game there's no tests to stay those types of policies have been altered so please when you have an opportunity take a chance to look at the faq sheet and and if you have any other questions or if we've omitted something that is really important that should be

072included we will make those modifications we'll consider this a living a living document so as we know differently we'll update it and we'll alert you and we'll alert families but just wanted to bring your awareness to its existence okay so now i'm going to turn to the last thing we wanted to do you recall when we had our last board meeting we updated the board on the data and practices uh related to the racial equity policy and we did that knowing that the so what the next steps and things of that nature we weren't going to take those discussions into our equity committee meetings the board's equity committee meeting and also our instructional policy committee meetings and at that time i said there would be a part two because one of the things we know

073that we should be doing is as well updating the board on the advanced aps three and three and so tonight we're going to walk you through at a high level some information about the advanced aps three and three so i'll go through the sections and then we will have the opportunity if there are any broad questions or comments that you'd like to provide to myself and the team you know we'll be able to do that at the end and then we will then take a deeper dive on both the data and metrics from the racial equity policy that dealt a lot with discipline and any other racial disparities across the district and then this being the broader uh three and three document um and its sub components one of the things i found when working

074with the team um as we were preparing for this presentation and actually all years we've been doing the work is the fact that this document which of course you're very familiar with um it has uh quite a number of sub-components and so and some that are different than even the what is called for in the racial policy itself and so as we smooth across and get to a common set of metrics one of the other things that we're going to do is not just continue to look at where we are relative to this assembly of information but we're going to want to smooth across and make sure that we're comfortable with what are the set of things that we want to consistently and commonly watch over time that may not be everything but give us

075enough information that to know that our system is making strides in the right direction for each of our students so we do have some smoothing and some decision points in the near future to say of all the things we could watch which could be many what what is most important for us to pay attention to thank you in advance to dr caver rachel teca carla chapman deborah folk cfo pendleton stancy sykes kathy mcveigh and angela carter all of whom contributed to updating these data points we thought it might be we also are testing format so you can also give feedback at a later point in time in what thief format is best to help you be able to determine where we are just kind of at a glance so we're trying some color coding so

076where you see green those are areas of course we are seeing a great progress and where we're able to highlight progress against the goal where you see yellow we've made some strides in stride significant but where you see red is areas where we we have yet to really we feel like make substantial progress that we can say that we're well on our way so we set this up to look very much like the visual of the advanced aps three and three and so first we're going to talk about academic achievement and then we'll go into some of the sub components so the first broader goal under academic achievement had to do with increasing the four-year graduation rate from 80.2 to 85 and we we will make sure that all of you get the the presentation

077sent to you and so um so it's really all about the graduation rate itself and and then in the sub components we also have information about the academic recovery and advancement work based learning and so what we've done there is for the action items we have the action item itself and then we have the progress listed and then we also have information about next steps and so we're going to make sure that you have that that type of information so i am going to ask um ms teca and dr caver if you'll go to that side microphone and i'm just going to let you highlight any of the areas that you um and then we're going to give you the report itself and then we'll have a follow-up dialogue because there is a lot of

078detail in in those components so first i would just like to say that overall for the class of 2022 our four-year graduation rate is 85.3 percent so let me first just give you that as preliminary data that i would later give you once the report card comes out and we get want to give you a lot of the metrics in terms of where we are with our report card but overall just looking at what we are looking at today the first one is a recap of some information you've heard already about our scholars that participate in our summer experiences program so there's some data listed here in terms of what has happened and the fact that we had 308 credits earned through credit rep recovery this summer and we also had 188 credits for credit

079advancement another item sure okay sure so yeah you know in that whole idea of really using our summer time and advancing our students opportunities in the summer we did start with a partnership with youth opportunities unlimited and that opportunity this summer allowed for over 40 of our rising seniors to be in paid employment this summer that's aligned to their pathway so they also picked up 250 hours of work-based learning in the summer with a great partnership with ylu okay sure so a little bit about freshman academies we have been tracking this data over the last four years with our academy work and so the numbers that you see on the screen are for the 21-22 school year when we look at the trend data for our freshman academies we did see a little bit of

080a decrease in the percentage of students ending 9th grade with a 3.0 gpa or higher but a little bit of an improvement in the number of students a freshman earning six and a half credits or more so we're going to continue to support that implementation of freshman academies with effective teaming and building teacher efficacy and student success and then the last item we've had really good success with making sure that our high school students have a 10-year plan they create their 10-year plan in the freshman seminar course it's then reviewed annually with their counselor and then is actually transferred over into an electronic version called the graduation success plan and it's updated annually with their counselors so making really good progress on this first indicator okay we'll move on um these had to do with

081the attendance rate so we just spent quite a bit of time talking about the decreases that we saw in attendance not only in our district and but yet was seen in the field kind of broadly in attendance so where you see red is not because there has been a lack of action taken by the school district through its stay in the game campaign and things of that nature but when we look at the metric the metric itself was to increase district-wide attendance rate from 93.4 percent to 95 and we are starting from a very different base there so is there anything more you wanted to say about any of the attendance i would only add that we also have to remember that last year due to covet and people having to quarantine and be in

082isolation that our attendance rates have been impacted by that information as well because things like chronic absenteeism still counts those absences against us so just when you're looking at this data please remember that we also were greatly impacted in some of these metrics by the pandemic sure there are no ways to record though online learners check in for attendance because um for the earlier comment that was made as far as they're supposed to be a set time that they're supposed to log in for online learning wouldn't it be a way so we can't get credit for them being as present to where it wouldn't count against our absenteeism yeah so to my knowledge again i'm new to akron but they will get credit for participation during the time that they are participating do you want

083to see you want to add power to that howard might want to add something because we we actually did work through um mid-year last year and near the end of the year um a system of how to better monitor our students check-in process and things of that nature so that we could get credit for that data um what we've what we have done we we for sure are able to capture all of the online hours through admentum in the work that they provide us that's for sure documented and right now um tamiko hatcher and cheryl paradise are working on developing a strategy to document the hours offline so we can also include them in our reporting process so i've got the online pieces because i can pull that down and they're they're working right now

084on the uh offline where you're actually reading offline you're not interactive with the computer at this point does that make sense so the parent in that process i know that the parent is going to have to document some of the work that they're doing at home on a document that it's a google doc i believe it's what they're working with so that we can actually add those two things together and get as the maximum return on our ftes that we can that's okay i apologize so i believe the comment that i was referencing was just that the pandemic had affected those scholars when they are at home or when they had to quarantine so that's what i was talking about in terms of when they were quarantined or had to be in isolation or had

085to stay quarantined for maybe a family member then when they were absent then those absences are still whether they're excused or unexcused they're still account in our attendance performance for the district so i'm sorry i hopefully that helps okay but i think your question was very appropriate because we did learn and did start to work on as well not just when students are online but how do we capture evidence of when they're offline as well and that they're still attending to their work so we had some learnings last year about how to more appropriately do that so that it will impact positively our attendance rates so i have a question because i can't see anything that's on that screen so it would be helpful to get it in advance but can you vocalize what the

086percentage is i know you said that the we're working from a different starting attendance rate so what attendance rate are we starting at and where are we now i'm going to let howard give you the specifics from our ems data for attendance rate the attendance rate that has been reported previously was based on half-day and whole day absences and it was based on the length of the school day it is now reported on the minutes of instruction lost by the student dramatically different all right so the best example i could give you if i if you would allow me to do that we could say let's say in a secondary environment that the student missed first period every day all year long that would not show up in a half day or a whole day

087attendance absence yet that student would have missed the equivalent of 13 of the school years instructional time so it's dramatically different what we're trying to report and so you're seeing a huge change in the baseline because we're reporting which includes excused and unexcused absences it doesn't matter and which is any suspensions or immunization when a student is isn't allowed in the school because they haven't been immunized all right all those now are instructional minutes lost which is what the state now requires us to report and that's a dramatically dramatically excuse me different comparison you can't compare the two and so i think when you see [Music] and dr aquire if you want the numbers i can just state exactly what's on here for you because i know that it is small yeah that's what i'm

088asking the numbers yeah so one of the metrics was how many students had eight or fewer absences previously and we were trying to trying to make an improvement from 64 percent we are now at 33 and that was eight or fewer absences again i preface that with this also includes children that were at home possibly for covett reasons as well and then another figure that we were looking at was chronic absenteeism and that one is totally as he stated is totally different and i don't have what the rate was previously on hand but i would like to say that's what howard is trying to inform you all that we have to start with a new baseline because of the way it's calculated and as of today our chronic absenteeism rate is 49 thank you so

089um based off the chronic absentee rate that means we're looking at getting it down to 39 at the end of this year because it just says decreasing by 10 percent but going back to the attendance rate what is the current attendance rate howard do you have the overall attendance rate at this time for last year because we are i know that we are still there are some metrics which is why we haven't did the report out for the um from the report card so there are some metrics we don't have but he may have that information i believe that it's going to be around 87 percent attendance rate do you know how much of an increase that is from last year it's a decrease it's a decrease it's a decrease everything related to attendance chronic

090absenteeism attendance in general were decreases from the previous year in coming back and that is a consistent trend yeah last year was a very volatile year with the ins and outs and the quarantine rules and and we could not mark children present when they were out in those instances so yeah right so i don't have a question uh i just have a i guess it's just comment um i i will confess that i i don't i don't sure i'm not sure i comprehend the relationship between chronic absenteeism and attendance rate um so when i see that almost half our students for this baseline are chronically absent i i guess i don't comprehend how we still have a rate of attendance that is 87 so that's the part that i don't understand i'm not asking for

091an explanation right now because i know that there's a lot of information here yeah and we could be here for the next four hours and asking questions and so like i know i'm a big question answers i'm not going to do that uh but it's just one of the things that when we come back so once we get this and we can go through it um that's one of the things i'll follow up and ask about is because i don't comprehend the the relationship there i'm sure that there's a mathematical relation i just don't follow it yet so anyway so plea please carry on thank you dr hall and yes we will get you that information about chronic absenteeism absenteeism and the way the state calculates that which is a little bit different than our

092overall attendance rate so thank you for um those comments right should we go on yes we'll we'll go on and um just one thing the metric in the middle there is great progress there and that one um was asking us to monitor the recruitment of community stakeholders to deliver key messages who is supporting the stay in the game talking about why attendance matters those sorts of things and so that that is being tracked through that initiative and through our family and community engagement outreach the next set of metrics have to do with ensuring that the overall big metric is to ensure 100 of seniors earn at least one three-point industry credential and then there are sub goals within that industry credential and most of which we are on our way with so go ahead sure

093so really this is an area of strength for us when we look at the work that we've accomplished over the last few years with regard to industry credentials if you look at the first metric at the top over 2137 industry credentials were earned in grades 9 through 12 across the district so that's a huge testimony to our career tech education teachers and our students and our business partners really working together to get our kids to pass adult level assessments right they're ready to be competitive in whatever their pathway field would be to meet the goal that was established 49 percent of our students in the graduating class of 2022 earned at least one three-point credential which is why that's indicated as yellow we still have a ways to go with that but we're moving in

094the right direction many students earn more than one industry credential so that was just tracking it by seniors in that class yes yeah so every industry credential that come from the state of ohio has different points associated with it some some of the industry credentials are a 12 point credential some are a one point there's a three a six and right right so a three-point credential is just really it could be across any field in any of the career pathways that are established by ode um there isn't really a lot of significance miss jackson between a three point a one point or 12 point the state just associates point values to different credentials correct correct it has it has and some of it's interesting to me some of the interest rate industry credentials are really

095really rigorous like comptia a plus for it students and it's a six point credential but it's really difficult and then another credential is is issued a different value of points and it may be a little bit easier to obtain for students so it's it's just the state the val the state of ohio associates point values to each industry credential correct okay a lot of good information so on another really positive note here of all of the 54 pathways across the city 98 of our pathways have an identified 12-point plan because they can stack industry credentials to get to that 12-point initiative so a lot of good work happening in our in our high schools around industry credentials thank you and then the um last two uh action points under uh this this area in the

096academic achievement one was related to establishing a financial reporting system and process to report academic return on investment for the academic goals established by this plan and so we do have a great deal of data and information about resources and where they're flowing and but we do still need to determine a methodology for academic return on investment which is more complex so there we are planning to convene a committee to determine the reporting system and method for determining this return on investment and what that means in this in this context lastly i assume the the other bottom bullet i assume it was an extension of the previous bullet because it says the finance committee will work on this goal in the first quarter and so i would assume that goal had to do with the

097previous bullet about the financial reporting system and not the overall industry credential goal in the black header so with that assumption our report back is that again we've begun to look at a lot of the data and information as it relates to resource equity and things of that nature and so we've looked at building by building program data and then overall district data around program supports but we'll need to better understand what it is we are trying to accomplish as it relates to return on investments i think some of our updating was challenged by the fact that we have new persons that weren't here when the three and three was established and so we still need to engage with the board through committee to backfill some of the understanding about where some of the initial

098data came from and then also some operational definitions for some of the pieces that have yet to be attended to thank you i have two things just really quickly one all of the uh data points and metrics were set by the district so um at that time ella mcwilliams woods david james and also other key district members based off what they believe they could meet in the next three years this was also without having the data from covet and remote learning and also changes in definitions which that always happens that in graduation rates you go close to getting you get close to the goal post and then they move it we know that's what happens so all of this was based off the present data that we had at that time the other piece of

099it and i wanted to say is just about the industry credentials um at that time the industry credentials were just released and and when we were looking at all the different industry credentials that students can earn the ones that you could earn with that had three points actually appeared to be there were more options and easier to attain by just the work you do at your job some volunteering and some different other things like that and so we picked the three-point industry credential because they were easier to implement into the the school year and system that's already in place and that was something that we worked with ellen i think rachel as well on at the time so just wanted to put that out there about why that we picked the three-point credential at that

100time and kind of as we sit and kind of go through where we are today it might be because one of the things that's provided through the college and career academy updates to the task force that includes you know you all and so many others is there is a comprehensive set of metrics and updates that are given that really have to do with college career you know who's accessing the different programs and with what level of success we're finding those so we might find that we want to use some of that data and the trend information to have that as a companion piece as we continue to update this this set of metrics as well because it might present a fuller uh picture for the board to keep uh things moving um the next metric

101there had to do with the minority uh business uh the minority vendors uh that the um district is engaged with and so i know um ms chapman has been working with deborah folk there and so we actually do have distinctions within munis that are tracking our engagement with minority business enterprise and so we're able to see you know what our participation is um ladies was there anything else in particular so again we talked about vendor participation there at nine percent and where that's moved and so for that actual percentage there's lots of information but i'm not sure in a one-to-one way we trailed that back to the participation at a certain percentage wanted to bring one to your attention that you just recently approved as a minority business enterprise you previously just approved child nutrition

102to change its major food preventer through urgent necessity that is a minority business that has just come into the ohio area out of florida and that value of that contract was 3.4 million dollars for the next school year so we are looking and engaging in these kind of outreaches as much as we can through the process and we have been very successful in working with the local akron in cleveland chambers and it was jim did a really great job when he presented the ability to work with aps at the urban league presentation that was a very nice event so we are looking as you can see amazon now knows and if you have not seen the amount of amazon delivery boxes that comes to aps it's quite astounding and they actually have mbes listed on

103their website that come up first and we're working on the next tier one this one it's a very interesting proposal and we've been working on it for over 12 months to get the tile active so that when we go out to our online portal to do purchases our office supply products will go to a tier one level a tier one level mbe means that they are represented and all the products they have go through that so we've made some very large advancements on this now i will tell you we're working towards that nine percent but it is not the easiest thing to do because a number of community organizations have never realized they could apply to be an mbe it is not that hard to do they just need to be directed into those kind

104of offerings that are available and we've worked with the city to even come in and teach people how to do this so we're working in that part of that uh next part now the last part you'll see reviewing a vms is a vendor management system that will help us id and track mbes and when we were planning to work in this particular area with mr jim leonard who's our purchasing agent that was an item we actually put into the budget for fy 23. so those are some of the advances we have made towards the mbe increasing offering and doing part of that particular work with us during this last year thank you i have a question i know when we talked about this in 2020 we were at three percent and the conversation was about

105expanding beyond the barrier that mbe presents itself and counting our numbers for supplier diversity and adding a question on our intake form or whatever the rfp response form was to add a question that gave demographics of the ownership so that we could also capture businesses that may be majority uh black latinx or indigenous owned but may not be a part of the official mbe process and at the time we were shared that we could do that as a district and by doing that making nine percent would be pretty easy because we already had businesses that were majority owned that we worked with consistently most of them doing professional development if my memory is serving me correctly that could easily count if we took out the restriction of solely being mbe so can we just get

106a small update on that if my memory is correct your memory is correct and that is why we are currently doing the outreach and recording those pieces of information in our munis program there's an actual place to do that and that's why we also went to the bms that we would like to implement because it allows us to go ahead and do that research as well yes mr leonard has put information into our rfps and then we did not issue as many rfps that are official during covet because we changed some of our ways of doing business but we'll get back into more regular procurement standards now that we're back to in school session because we'll have more pd etc that will be provided indirect so we are moving in those directions and making those

107adjustments to our rfps as well as looking at two we belong to a number of national consortiums if you remember that conversation dr akbar and we're asking those questions do they have those because we have a very large advantage on those consortiums when it comes to purchasing at a very good rate which is beneficial to our budget but we also are asking those questions on those large consortium buys such as tips and etc cue etc in the local area did that help answer your question yes it did but it leads me to the next question which is uh what is the current percentage we're we're currently at five and a half percent that's pretty good we're getting there but you gave us quite you gave us a goal that's the progress we're getting it we're

108at five and a half the pandemic and even with the pandemic and not having as many and we're at 5.5 that is progress so i appreciate it you're welcome thank you [Music] the next two sections align with increasing the diversity and recruitment and hiring of teachers from 11.37 percent to 13 percent and so i'm just going to highlight a few things in kathy mcveigh can step to the side one of the sub components had to do with growing your own strategy and so we do have two of our programs within the system at north and at brookdale where we have teacher academy programs i know for sure the one at bukdel because i talked a lot with the faculty there was one of our lower enrolled career academies and they've done a lot to try

109to address that and to build up students awareness about the profession and opportunities and so we did in the year in our beginning this school year with 11 sophomores six juniors and five seniors that are enrolled in the academy and still that's small compared to the other pathways at north we have 48 students enrolled but we are going to need to grow our own and have persons see education as a way you know as a career path and so we are continuing to draw from the best practices and to really work with our faculty and staff to really positively promote what the education career has meant to them with our students as well the other sub item in that dealt with the implementing of an alternative licensure program to provide teacher licensure pathways for current

110employees and so we have had put into place some other programming and for instance five out of five of the teachers that participated in the program have been hired by our system and so and we've also had substitute teachers that have also been involved in uh career programs things of that nature so that area is green not because of the numbers because we still need an increase in the numbers but of the persons who have engaged in the programs they have completed the programs and then subsequently have been hired anything else kathy okay angela come to the mic please thank you oh no just that currently we have 10 people participating in the program and 6 out of those 10 are black indigenous people of color and that we'll have another round of aspiring teachers

111academy for our substitute teachers or paraprofessionals that have back uh bachelor bachelor's degrees to apply in order for us to select our next group of people to participate in the ar el program and so we are hopeful that we'll get more people that have a love for akron public schools who want to be with our scholars and we'll invest in them so that we can make sure that we have building these vacancies that we have is what we need to do and then also with the grow your own we have different grants and stuff through ode that we're going to look at and then also collaborate with college and career academies as it relates to seeing the things that we can do to help with building our student capacity within those education programs that we

112have at north and brookdale that's all thank you and when you get the documents you'll also see some forward progress too with the uh city of akron civil service uh testing system where we are able for every position to have 10 qualified candidates now instead of the more limited pool so it has increased the diversity of persons that we can consider within that as well the next big metric under equity was the goal of establishing an equity committee of the board and so that's green that has happened carla jackson or carla chapman sorry we'll have you come to the sub mike for any other questions there but the sub actions in this area was to empower relevant departments and staff to create strategies and targets for this community for the committee to monitor and support

113and so there the update is that the committee has been engaged in monitoring and giving feedback around the equity and dei strategies that are being used in the district and so regular updates are um given there uh the big uh outcome of last year had to do with really working on a vision to get more specific and concrete about what we meant about excellence through equity here in our district so the vision statement a theory of action things of that nature are outcomes artifacts of that work which did spend a lot of time in the committee anything else the next level of that work then would be to use the vision and theory of action to begin the work of red threading the equity strategies throughout every division within the district and so i'm most

114excited about the cross-functional team of staff who represent everything from the finance office to our transportation division teachers administrators support staff tutors instructional specialists instructional coaches learning specialists college and career academy i'm looking across the room everyone is represented on the cross-functional team because what's most important is that we lift what is on paper and begin to use it in our everyday work so that when we come before you you recognize what equity is within everyone's role and how it is being tracked monitored evaluated as we do this work of red threading equity in the district the next set metrics dealt with the fight to really charge the team to establish a financial reporting system and processes for equity related reporting and items to be considered were listed in the sub components with the exception

115of the equity conversion you know kind of process or methodology there has been great progress in practice relative to understanding the purple expenditures that are happening the transparency and spending the public health of our data so ryan i don't know if you want to voice over anything more in that section no i think the most important piece is having further conversations with the board finance committee to really design what that the public-facing part of the reporting system looks like we we have a very robust fact base and accounting system so on a per-pupil basis from buildings to clusters and where we spend our dollars we've got lots of examples so now it's time to put that into work okay and then the last major metric in that area of equity had to do with the

116development of a facilities master plan to address capital planning and maintenance including uh building and athletic facilities with community input and so you've heard us speak a lot all throughout last year about long-term planning and to share with you updates on where we were with assembling the information that went into our fact base the fact that we engaged outside consultants to be able to assess our facilities and to be able to give us a picture of the costs that would be necessary not only for the facilities themselves but also to be able to address the athletic facilities we're at the place now where engaging with the community to develop some scenarios based on the types of information we have would be our very next steps we also did engage part way through we came to

117you and asked for support in engaging a demographer because we as we were starting to look at our demographic data we wanted to make sure that we had accurate information so that as we put forth a master's facilities plan we weren't just thinking in the here and now but we're looking years out so that is well on its way to being complete as we engage with the community this fall okay the last uh we're moving on to the engagement sections there and so we've had a lot of very positive forward progress as it relates to engagement and so the first area had to do with increasing community partnerships for our college and career academies from partners to the 300 and so and to make sure that that was taking place so yes lots of good

118news to share there so yeah just to support what mrs fowler mack just mentioned we continue to have outstanding community support for akron public schools and so we've reached the goal of over 300 partners at the high school level currently at 322 and and this isn't on the metric but i'd like to share our middle schools have over 70 non-profit partners to date so i think our community just has really responded to this to this opportunity and and it's a source of pride we are hopefully on track to name our last named integrated partner for north global tech and business so hopefully we'll have a big celebration soon to and we'll be across the district have a named integrated partner at each academy so really good news there okay thank you and then the other

119metric had to do with increasing family and caregiver connections and a figure was given there and i believe that had to do with the family liaison connections that was the baseline for that and we are well on our way to surpassing that goal as well and miss sykes did you want to say anything more about the family liaison so you will have those figures in there that really talk about all of the family connections so in total we had ending last year 11 254 family connections first i want to say thank you to each of you who work so well with our family liaisons and i always hear the board members supporting them and all that they're doing i'm looking at you because you always are a cheerleader for them ms autry just that our

120family liaisons are just continuing to do the work and one of the things that we're going to be looking forward to is training our liaisons on entering data in a new web application system so that we are better tracking their interactions with the families which families what type of services are they providing what supports which referrals so that as we move forward that we are better supporting them as we move throughout the school year another thing that we do is provide family academies we're transitioning from just doing one per semester to one a quarter so that we are again giving even more supports to families and what they need some data there's also shared with you about the different collaborations that we have when we're preparing the family academies so we have some input from

121our building administrators our educators and also community partners so we also want to work on increasing that input from all of those individuals as well so that we are sure to make sure that we are providing the best resources and information for our families were you about to say something okay and so that that's an actually an example of a place where as we kind of talk through this in committee meeting we might also want to say is there another metric that we want to watch in addition to that which gives us some feedback about family engagement as it relates to the just the liaisons or if we're also thinking about some of the engagement activities uh at our schools with parents maybe participating in conferences things of that nature we we might want to

122look at adding to that metric the next area dealt with the increasing again it was more action items under um the family and caregiver connections and so it was dealing with increasing the number of parent liaisons because we know that not all of our schools that have the ability to have a parent liaison do and so um it was saying that we wanted to increase the number from 23 to 34. um we are at 24 in terms of those liaisons and we've been exploring more deeply are there some other barriers to really being able to fill those positions because we do have open positions for parent liaisons so while we've made you know minimal movement we we still have a ways to go as it relates to that goal and then the last area in

123that whole engagement section talked about telling the aps story through marketing communications increased social media and so we've attended to that quite a bit so we talked a lot about you know our efforts in terms of both social media campaigns and then also additional outreach and we will be coming back to the board this year to talk about structure of our communications team in this year as we discussed last fall we were first going to attend to the structure of some of our other primary services but needed to also take a look at how communications is supported in the district the next metric was a metric that asked us to establish employee resource groups and uh and not only that fully functioning employee resource groups led by aps staff and so groups have been established

124and we do regularly report out on the groups their activities uh how they're growing in their impact and what and how we're supporting them in the um equity committee but um you have information there about quite a few things that the establishment the group was the goal so that goal is met but then we've gone on to talk about our progress with the groups and then the next level of work in supporting those groups and then the last one had to do with you know engaging and forming and building support within the community for the passage and ongoing support for operations levies which i think is really tied a lot to our ability to tell the aps story the transparency in reporting things of that nature so many of the previously mentioned goals and action

125items also do support that um i did make sure that that's read though to know that we haven't formally so there's been a lot of awareness and attention to the fact that we are always building relationships and readying ourselves uh to for the possibility of needing to ask for support but in terms of having a formal process things of that nature we haven't yet begun to identify timelines and a formal process related to that so that is red okay yes dr hall yeah um can you come back one slide sure please um so and you just made miss follow mac you just made the connection between um this engagement piece and the levy piece you know the i don't know that this is a question as much as it is a comment um you know

126a lot of things that are up there uh are things i mean obviously that we've all seen in the room right um because we're paying attention to it right and so we keep talking about like with regard to levy how there are so many families in akron who don't have kids in academic schools right so so and so by the way these are all great right so so i'm not being critical of what's up here i guess i'm thinking about like how do i how do i how do we um get the story in front of folks who are not paying attention right i mean like i could think of the old-fashioned ways to do it right i'm not a marketing expert right but but hey like there's a billboard on the corner and you're

127at north hill there's a billboard right there on the italian center right there right there like you know there's a traffic light right there and i can tell you what's on that billboard almost all the time even though the mic closer we're getting all right i'm talking about talking i was talking mostly to miss tekka across the room we were vibing here because the north hill thing but um but no but but my but my comment was like how do we find other ways to get folks to you know um to consume um almost against their will right i mean like we all we all watch tv you know whether it's live streaming or regular tv and they have the ads that are in but you have to watch the ad right at least the

128first 10 seconds of it right so so they're getting in your head they're getting some time in whether or not you know you want them to or not i keep thinking about you know how do we get folks to consume this story you know um you know even even they may not be wanting to pay attention aps their kids may be in private school or maybe they're seniors and they're not thinking about school at all in their universe they're bubble with you because we all live in a bubble right to a certain degree right we all have our bubbles so how do we how do we penetrate and pierce folks bubbles and and get this stuff in front of them you know um and again i can think of the old-fashioned way it's the billboard

129system right i'm not saying i'm not saying i'm not saying we should go buy a bunch of billboards in akron but but you know folks who run for public office seem to think it's a pretty effective strategy you know these billboards and they get elected um it didn't work for me a time or two but just just saying um but anyway so that's that's my comment is how do we you know how do we get this story in front of folks who aren't who are not paying attention because because part of it too is it's one thing to do it when we want to pass the levy um but i but i would always but i would sort of submit that stuff that if we develop it once it's built like we should be doing

130it all the time you know so um so like if you've got student athletes that are super doing super well like let's get let's get a couple of billboards and put them up in certain parts of town and say hey this student athlete right here you know is you know an excellent football player or wrestler or tennis player or swimmer right or this person has is an excellent you know this person has a 4.4 gpa at x high school and takes you know these five classes right i mean so or these 10 students in the last year went to this school this school this school this school these kids wanted this these kids joined the military these kids started their own business and here's the name of the business right here it's right here local

131and akron you too can go you know can go free with that xaps student's business right so again so so again i don't mean to show box on the topic but i keep thinking like how do we how do we get outside of our own collective aps bubble to tell that story so i don't think there's a question there just a general comment thank you uh miss alexander and miss jackson yeah i i have a suggestion is we we may need to get a marketing firm because we need a marketing uh strategy to get all this out there and i know at one point in time we had started something like that and then it kind of fizzled but we need to have somebody who's professional who knows about marketing who can get out there

132provide a strategy for us so we can get it out there and that's marketing i mean we talked about the billboard yeah that's the old school too the billboards yes but there's other ways that these marketing people they do that for a living to get this stuff out there to market our kids which is i think is the most important market our kids even market our teachers market our academies market you know what we're doing as a whole market this this is marketing you know we got to have some way to get it out there so to me i mean i know we we may not want to spend money but sometimes you have to spend to get you know so that might be a way that we might have to do is get a

133marketing firm that can come in and help us to help us get the word out and market our products which is our kids in our district thank you um dr agbar um to that point i just have a comment i think i was thinking about this recently when i went to the convocation and just superintendent is a product of akron public schools hall myself there's a lot of wonderful people that are products of akron public school and i thought about like an ll campaign living our legacy and i remember when i was younger i would see like billboards i think it had like rita dove it would show you people who were graduates of aps but um bruce you're right because the first thing i said another firm another consultant that's more money and i

134think about because it is you have to spend money to make money but i was thinking more like grassroots because people love to see their kids highlighted people love to see people doing great things and even us who are elected by the community us being very intentional at putting things out like book though um the championships what their girls did it was almost like it was celebrated as an afterthought instead of a forethought and i was in a community and i only knew about it and i sit at board meetings twice a month really know the impact because i happen to be at an alpha scholarship banquet where they're going crazy about this girl from book doing these records she broke and what the girls track team and booktube was doing and i'm like i'm

135a whole board member and i did not know in depth this and it seemed like that's how we start it has to start with us and you know just in general putting things um outward to the community and making it more i'm visible and more known like starting like from a grassroots and so to your point i thought who better to do that than kids themselves when you properly put them like what the center that huntington i'm spending to put in the book though when you put the right collaborations when we talk about community partnerships i think about the amazing things that these kids can do with youtube and social media and things like that if given the platform in the proper way instructed on listening yeah you're going around and you're getting this good

136content but this is probably not how we want to show our school however let us show you how you can make this something great how you can really build a brand and that goes and ties back into that that one of those ease that entrepreneurship where we promote things like that so it's just some thoughts i think this is like really good we're talking about a getting a story and as far as the people in anchorage who may be sending their kids to private who may not have children that's attending the district here's the deal if you live in akron if you work in akron if you have a business in akron then what's happening in akron public schools is your business because whatever comes out of those schools come into your communities and either

137value or devalue those communities either spend money or take from those communities so when that connection is made in a real way that it does not matter if you do not have a child cross this threshold what happens in this school if you live in the city will impact you there's no way around it i don't care if you're a landlord i don't care if it's what if you own anything in akron it matters and that's what we have to keep pushing and giving them a place at the table um to share their comments and also to listen to what it is that they're seeing and how we can community wise collaborate so i think this is really good thank you and you will see more and more our efforts continue to expand in what

138we're doing around marketing how it is we're engaging the broader community and so i already said you know we engage the garfield and kenmore communities very differently so we approach the opening the ribbon cutting coming up not just thinking about families that already attend the schools but thinking that this isn't a community celebration so we really want to engage the community at large and so that was the approach taken so we'll continue to keep keep this in the forefront of our minds as a priority because we know it matters that there is broad understanding about what's happening in the schools and that we can celebrate you know with our entire community and so we do have lots of ideas and it's just a matter of um being able to focus you know kind of what

139we can you know tackle at what particular time we will be getting greater support in this area of marketing this year uh because our students are going to be taking on um telling more of the aps story themselves from a student point of view and so um dreama whitfield who works with our student leadership groups is working with them around some efforts around social media and especially telling the aps stories that's part of the body of work she's working on thank you any other questions or comments okay um i do have two one it goes back to um miss jackson's point around entrepreneurship i know we've talked about for a while uh the four e's instead of the three e's and i know we put the the fourth e in advanced aps i'm wondering at

140some point if we can get a kind of report on how uh the entrepreneurship e as well as the other three e's are being implemented to the third bullet goal under academic achievement and and getting 100 of our students to actually document their plans post-graduation within one of those four e's and then the question as it seemed like this was skipped over was around the number of community partners and financial investment and hours of engagement metrics attached to our ccas and ensuring when we did this there was great disparity among around how much was invested financially from our partners in each one of the community learning centers as well as the number of hours that they spent and unfortunately where we saw the greatest disparity were in the schools with the the greatest need so

141just wondering where we are on that metric because uh that was skipped over yes we we do have that information so i can provide you with the slide that says as of june 2022 the hours per school that was invested in in what it's looked like over the last few years so for instance uh two years ago there was a total of 18 hours that was invested whereas this year it was uh 32 000 so there has been a significant increase and then it is also broken down by school so we can provide that to see um what those hours look like and the school size matters i think in terms of where you think there are similarities so for instance at booktill there was booktalk clc there were 6650 hours of partner engagement there

142um and then at ella it was 6920 so it's really similar and then you also have similar size of schools but we we can provide you with with that type of information and that is something that is collected along with the set of metrics so we'll i'll also make sure you just have all of the sets of metrics that go to our college and career academy task force thank you any other questions hearing and seeing then anything further my own superintendent no we look forward to again at committee meetings really being able to delve into further now that we've presented just the high level data for both the policy and the aps advanced aps 3 and 3 to be able to answer any additional questions that the board might have and then hoping to have

143a conversation about uh smoothing over and just getting to what are the you know few things that we really want to watch and know well so that we can be even more effective because you know we can continue to pursue you know the range of questions but in order to be really effective and to move forward our strategy we want to be able to use our time and attention to follow up with people and to really do the work thank you thank you very much we now move to president's report and just wanted to first say welcome back to all of our teachers and students is definitely a great sight and energy to see all of our our families and students and staff members back in the buildings and walking around the community going to

144school is really great uh to see and we just wish you uh the best and happiest uh year uh this year and uh we we're definitely rooting for um all of our staff and our students to have the really the best and most stupendous year that they can we had our interviews with our trader search and i'll save that conversation for uh unfinished business but wanted to also just bring up that uh last week we the there were the greater akron lgbtq plus needs assessment data was released um at the art museum it was a pretty uh great affair and i had the opportunity to uh work with that team and then also present um on the data around education and literacy and uh one of the things that that data definitely solidified was our

145need to have a pronoun and chosen name policy so i encourage you all to go to lgbtq ohio.com actually i think it's dot org uh to look at that report uh on the needs that that's uh within our community and uh that will be my report for today and we will any uh discussion or questions hearing and seeing then we will move to the treasures report mr pendleton thank you mr president good evening everyone a low tech presentation for tonight if you could refer to your favorite placemat fiscal calendar placement really important that we just highlight for you over the next few months leading up to december in my transition what to expect if you could look at the bottom left hand of that chart you see the charts broken out in three areas summit

146county obviously which is our fiscal office our budget commission and how we clear our budget the state of ohio and our internal processes so let's start in july so as you know we just closed our books in june 30th at the end of our fiscal year and the start of our new school year our 22-23 school year i would draw your attention down to the bottom left where it says levy resolutions millage rate in a november ballot right that's not what i'm highlighting for this year but for future years please know that there is an extended timeline when evaluating those components and resolutions for resolution of necessity resolution to proceed and to the superintendent's last chart on the presentation that takes some lead time and you've finished your con conversations with communication with the public

147and obviously that's got to start first before you get to resolutions and timing so refer to this make notes on it between now and december i'm sure will add to this chart if you move on to august see tuition rates which you'll see at next month's meeting a pre-audit meeting as you remember just a couple of months ago we finished our annual audit and we have now started the audit for the previous school year so just a few months of reprieve and again we're starting another audit uh on 8 29 so that's next monday we're going to have a finance committee in which we have an agenda item of our esser federal arp dollars so we plan to go into detail in those funds and just a few highlights and i'll be seeking our finance

148committee leads assistance but a timeline of those esther dollars so that we all know intimately how those funds are to be used in the timing that they're going to be used more budget versus actual measures so some feedbacks and then i know that the board has had questions the superintendent and i can talk more about contingency we can have some programmatic people on site there but the goal that i have for you is really understand a good flow of those funds how they're going to be used in what areas what committed encumbered kind of the questions that we've had over the past few board meetings as we look to next month next month is our permanent budget you see in the top section there in september it says permanent and current fiscal year appropriations that's

149our budget so do a small presentation for you about what's different about prior years because we know that the fiscal journey of the district over the last two years has been anything but normal so i'll do a small presentation for you about the permanent budget and then as we look to november you know november is our five year forecast so it's a current reflection of our budget but down below you see in the blue section see the superintendent cfo review enrollment estimates that's a highlight for your calendar of how we begin to prepare for the next year's budget so a lot has changed over those years in terms of we've had financial disruption we've had enrollment disruption we've had the infusion of federal funds and as we return to that quote-unquote more normal operations we'll

150want to pay attention to that so i just want to draw your attention to timelines what to expect over the next here four months thank you very much any questions for mr pendleton all right hearing and seeing none we will move to committee reports legal contracts and board policy ms alexander no report thank you very much finance and capital management ms autry thank you mr president as treasurer pendleton mentioned we'll be meeting next monday so we don't have a report but i did want to share out that the joint border review did meet earlier today and one of the things that we discussed at that meeting it was a final uh report out for the the booktalk clc project um essentially we were five million dollars under budget so that's a good thing um and

151there were no concerns reported that the architect had with the project also there was we have a need i think for members three members on that committee to review future or building projects that have already been completed and so i guess they can contact mr president if they want to be a part of that review committee the other thing that we discussed in that meeting and carla feel free to jump in that 5 million dollars we talked about that going into a mutual pot with the city so at the end of all of the clc projects discussion will take place at that time in regards to to what to do with those funds that are left over so we potentially have hopefully with the support of the city some opportunities to address some of our

152warm safe dry projects also we discussed in that meeting the clc you should usage policy and so there was quite a bit of discussion around that and i'm just looking forward to a new piece of software we'll be getting that will essentially show the community at large like a master schedule of everything that's going on at the different clcs and then in fact the permit process to use the buildings will be electronic as well so i'm excited about that and so i didn't know if there was anything else you wanted to share out of that meeting today and i think that's it thank you very much any questions for miss altery miss mckittrick oh okay um no questions then we'll move to instructional policy and student achievement mrs mckittry there we go okay two things

153um first we are undergoing uh social studies textbook adoption and the idea is um to find racially and culturally relevant context in a couple of areas equity and social emotional learning and supports inquiry learning multiple perspectives in other words not a single history but histories so we have the perspective from many different groups of folks and that should be finalized in the spring of 2023 and miss audrey thank you we also received a presentation from adam mater who is one of our learning specialists regarding the sojourner truth project akron in which akron public schools is a partner and has an education subcommittee and so uh he just shared with us some details about that project which actually broke ground uh just last week so we were able to get that presentation and and then see

154the actual groundbreaking which is right outside the united way they're creating a plaza there that's going to have a statue of sojourner truth i think it's one of four they said maybe in the whole country and so there was a lot of work around creating educational materials for this in fact so that other districts can come and develop lesson plans and and uh use some of our resources and sharing that awesome history so there were a lot of partners involved with that also one of our prestigious graduates woodrow nash a butler graduate who's an international artist and sculptor is actually designing that sculpture of sojourner truth so that is i think all that i have and thank you thank you very much any questions for instructional policy miss uh jackson i'm glad you threw that

155in about you know woodrow because living our legacy boom right but um yeah i had a question um how old is the current correct social studies curriculum okay i can't we can't no we can get that's something we can get that later and then because um when we talk about the adoption of the new curriculum so that it gives narratives and history from different perspectives because the standards already require like supplemental texts and additional reading and context and i think teachers can pull that in with other books or supplements that they use so i'm just curious as to it's really important i just want to know like how old is the current curriculum and is it necessary why would it be necessary to have to get it based on what you what you assert it

156meaning history from multiple perspectives i was unclear on what exactly does that mean seven years oh so every every yeah right that's uh that's just the question like what pers just some clarity on that and if you don't have that now that's fine i can get it later okay i could take a stab at that um just i believe um if i'm understanding the question correctly it's why um the things discussed in the presentation are important as we um seek new materials does that no please are you asking if i may are you asking what problem are we trying to solve exactly with going with this historical perspective so so again i think one of the things that we want to make sure through all of our adoptions and we just went through this with

157our english language arts adoptions is that as we use materials in the classrooms that we have culturally relevant approaches that there is a representation so that characters in the books we read are diverse and our diverse student body can see themselves in those texts that we are ensured to share varying perspectives because one of the things we're trying to do in our young people is raise them to be critical thinkers and so from a factual basis uh but to be able to uh be presented with materials that do present multiple perspectives on you know within the course of the literature or within even making sure that that's pointed out throughout history itself so i think it's just a matter of being even more intentional as we select the materials that we're not just looking for

158updated text but we're also looking for text to meet the needs of our students to become the types of learners you know that are reflected in our portrait of a graduate to have those skills and competencies so we do look more critically at the materials as we're making those selections so we have the learning specialists themselves teachers themselves participate on the committees sure okay thank you any anyone else all right thank you very much moving on to the equity committee dr hall we don't have a report currently we are we are working to reschedule uh last monday's meeting because the equity committee chair had covet so we had to cancel that so we are working diligently to get that reschedule okay thank you very much any questions for the equity committee hearing and seeing none

159we will move to unfinished business which is the selection of our firm to do our treasure research as we've had our presentation at the special meeting on 10 august 2022 and i did not receive any further questions to to facilitate to uh the search firms that i'm assuming that means that we're ready to take a vote but we will open it up for a motion to select a firm or any discussion further that we need to have miss alexander i'd make a motion that we uh began to select uh a firm for our treasury uh cfos for akron public schools okay which firm no i didn't say which oh i'm sorry we want a specific firm oh i'm sorry someone else i apologize i apologize open it up for us to vote on whichever firm

160we wanted to select oh yes so i think at this point yeah if there's any discussion or we'll entertain a motion to select the firm i'm happy i'm happy to discuss um so you know first i think first i think it bears saying that um that you know both both vendors i thought did a great job of presenting uh their case as to why they should be the the identity selected unfortunately we can we can only select one and so um so while i so while i very much appreciate the time that was spent by both um you know when evaluating the two um on my own on my own criteria um i thought that um the osba group did edged out the other vendor that we were considering so so again so that's just

161me sort of vocalizing which of the two vendors i would be supporting so and i mean listen you know i didn't think you know again i thought both vendors were fine and i think both would do a fine job of helping us to find a replacement but um so so supporting the osva personnel over the other vendor i don't should not be taken um as um as a negative on the on the second vendor that that automated my own mind i didn't think was the the right and proper one for this particular search so i just want to i just make sure i said that as well thank you any further discussion ms autry thank you i would just say that i would agree with dr hall's comments and and i too would support the

162osba vendor for our thank you okay anyone else okay um i i just wanted to uh add that uh i thought they both uh had strengths um as well as some areas that we would have to think about personally it was hard to kind of come to this conclusion for me but i believe that uh farnsworth was the better selection because of his low locality um him being local and accurate but then two because we are and you can cover your ears right um because we are seeking we have the the treasure of the year that we're seeking to replace and i'm not trying to build his head up but we do have to i believe get a strong candidate and the one thing that kept playing in my mind after i decided i can

163get over the binders was that ferns mr farnsworth will actively go and pursue candidates across across the state that he knows would be a good fit for the district whereas there was a much more passive approach by osba because of their relationship to all of the districts and not wanting to upset one district over another um for presenting this opportunity and i appreciate that sentiment especially since you know we have a treasure that hasn't been poached until now by a different type of organization um but i do think that you know we do need to have that flexibility to go talk to um those districts that may have some strong treasures um so that was that for me that was the the edge for me um miss jackson were you about to yes i'm in

164agreement with you that would have been my selection as well i don't know if that needs to since we're not going to a phone number if i needed to add that well we do have to uh go to a vote i just wanted to make sure i said that before someone made the motion but the floor is still open for emotion let me let me can i comment on miss jackson and and your and your commentary so listen i don't disagree with anything that either of you um expressed you know i think that um i thought that the that the question when put to the osba representative uh her response was one where um you know she said you know well we wouldn't go poach someplace else but what we will do is we'll we'll

165post the job and make sure people know that it's available and then they want to pursue what they can now we're not going to go tap them on the shoulder you know for all the reasons that you just laid out right you know they don't want to upset the apple cart you know but um but in my mind it was the two positions were roughly equivalent uh in nature because they're they're putting it out in front of somebody you know just great job and i'm gonna leave the room right now and if you want to look at this and further after i leave you you're more than welcome to but i'm not gonna tap you on the shoulder i just for me it just felt like i almost wish that the person from osba just

166would have said you know we're gonna make sure everybody that that is interested that that's qualified is going to see this position right um you know so so on that particular point i i would i would i would grant um that i thought mr farns was was a bit more um um genuine if you will uh in in in in his uh approach um so again yeah so but those are those are my comments i just um you know uh to your point you know the binders are not a we're not a rate limiting um component of it for me in my head but um but yeah so again i appreciate your comments you know um again i don't think either of them is would do a bad job um you know but again i

167just was articulating my preference for the osba folks thank you very much is there a motion on the table i'll make a motion that we accept osba as our individuals who will select our next cfo so just as a correction is to serve as the search firm they will not make the selection correct i think your amendment thank you and second it's still mrs mckittrick great thank you very much it's been properly moved in uh by mr alexander and seconded by mrs mckittrick is there any discussion on this motion hearing city 9 we'll do a roll call vote mr pendleton ms autry yes mr perry yes dr hall aye ms jackson no mrs mckittrick yes dr akbar no mr alexander yes thank you motion passes thank you very much we will be contacting mrs terry

168right after this meeting to begin that process and i'll send dr hall and i will send you an update uh on that process and um you know the position has already posted and we will um give you more information on that to come with that being said there's no further business to come new business to come before the board we do have a need to recess into the executive session and there is a potential for potent possible new agenda item when we return and so we uh i will accept a motion to go into executive session pursuant to ohio revised code 121.22 g1 for the purposes of considering the dismissal of a public employee or official of the school district and g4 reviewing negotiations or bargaining sessions with employees concerning compensation other terms and conditions

169of employment is there a motion it's been properly moved by mr alexander it's their second second and then seconded by miss jackson any discussion on the motion okay hearing thing now we'll do a roll call vote please mr pendleton dr hall aye ms jackson aye mrs mckittrick yes dr akbar yes mr alexander yes ms autry yes mr perry yes thank you thank you very much and we do stand in recess now again with a possible new agenda item when we return it is 809. [Music] are we good okay all right good evening and welcome back to the regular rescheduled board meeting on 22 august uh it is 9 51 we returned from executive session we do have an item to come before the board for a motion item 32.1 uh the motion so we will

170accept a motion to approve uh the resolution of intention to demand a referee for the hearing on the termination of the teaching contract for theodore rubin is there a motion on the table it's been properly moved by ms autry is there a second second seconded by mr perry any discussion on the motion hearing ain't seen then we'll do a roll call vote please mr pendleton ms jackson yes mrs mckittrick yes dr akbar yes mr alexander yes ms autry yes mr perry yes dr hall aye thank you very much there's no other further matters to come before the board we'll accept a motion to adjourn so i'm doing properly moved by uh miss alexander it's their second been seconded by ms mckittrick we now stand in adjournment at 9 52. have a good evening [Music] you