001[Music] good evening everyone and welcome to the regularly scheduled board meeting of akron public schools board of education on 25 april 2022 we appreciate everyone being here today and we will start off with a roll call mr pendleton dr akbar here mr alexander president ms autry here dr hall aye ms jackson present mrs mckittrick here mr perry i'm here thank you thank you very much next we move to our pledge of allegiance since we don't have a student here mr parody mind leading us i pledge allegiance thank you very much the next item on our agenda is community and school reflections and any board members have any community or school reflections they would like to share mrs mckittrick thank you president akbar i attended the luther d smith east high school hall of fame induction
002on well april 21st whatever day of the week that was and it was a lovely event and superintendent fowler mack was inducted into the hall of fame for her work with east high school and the coaching and things she did there so it was a lovely event and congratulations to the other one two three four people who are also inducted thank you thank you very much anyone else miss jackson oh i found the first i'm the first to miss audrey thank you mr president and so i just wanted to um share that i had the pleasure of earlier today uh attending an event over at my alma mater uh booktle clc and we had the uh opportunity and and pleasure to receive a generous donation and support from the cleveland browns and so we'll be
003receiving turf at that school and so it was just if you knew my story you would know how much this is really impactful for me but just speaking as a community member i just want to share my thanks and appreciation for being able to see this come to fruition just understanding how important sports are to that community you know i live five minutes away from that school and so it means a lot for those students to be able to have that as a member of this school board i am just happy to be a part of the administration who who was able to make this happen for the school and i really just want to thank superintendent fowler mack you know for working her magic and making this happen um again it really it means
004a lot to that community and so it was just an honor to be there and watch this come to life so thank you again to the cleveland browns and to superintendent for making this happen and it was a pleasure to be there today and thank you dr hall you did a great job with your introduction to the mayor all right i guess i'll go next if i can thank you very much miss jackson ms jackson and then dr uh [Music] i mean beauty before age [Laughter] so thank you dr hall and mr president so i had the pleasure of visiting pfeiffer elementary and it was a wonderful experience i met a one an exceptional math teacher miss mcdonald i believe is her name an award-winning math teacher a teacher that's known for having the highest
005test results in math within the state as i understand it so i was very excited to hear that we have such an exceptional educator within our district and i immediately thought like you know how do we maximize things like this when we have a teacher getting such results serving as the same demographic which we have alarming concerns about academic and performance so i was delighted to like learn about her to google her a little bit and the things that she's done in the classroom and i think they have a wonderful model going on over there at pfeiffer she's clearly as i say the award-winning teacher and so she and she's received results and it's shown in her students academic gains and so um i really like the innovation you know you talk a lot about
006innovative ideas to maximize education and educational opportunities for our children and i think it's really cool because they have this system in place because she's strong one of her sweet spot is mathematics but we know elementary teachers they teach the whole gambit but her and one of her colleagues have been kind of co-teaching working with each other where they switch with their elementary students so she teaches math while her colleague who is stronger in language arts domain focuses on language arts and i said this is a wonderful model and something that i think should be highlighted and i just want to say kudos to this teacher she's i think she said she's been at that building for over 20 years possibly and i was just excited to hear about this and to know that gains
007are happening and this is something different i mean we know we can switch you know in middle school and high school but when you have strong teachers work together in order to maximize results i thought that was really good the principal was very engaging and committed to her school and just like firestone park we know that it is an older building and so some things are needed but i think it just highlights that when teachers are committed and are focused and love what they do we still get gains because you can have a beautiful building and no results and i think we care about the output and the results and we want them to have wonderful buildings i think they should i think students should be in a wonderful environment but it delights me when
008you see educators who are committed who are in the trenches serving their learners in 100 degree classrooms because they don't have central air but they're still getting gained so it was a wonderful experience and i'm just being excited to be able to see the schools in our district because like i said some of these schools i was very unfamiliar with rhymer pfeiffer and to see the things that's happening there i'm very encouraged and i'm even more compet more committed to serving and supporting the teachers that are in the trenches that are helping our young people because it doesn't matter whether you have children in akron public schools or not if you live in the city if you do business in the city what comes out of these schools directly impacts you so we all need
009to have a vested stake in what's happening so i was just delighted i've been delighted in my entire kenmore garfield cluster and what i've been seeing because there is hope and so i'm encouraged by that thank you very much dr hall yeah and i appreciate that i just want to go back to ms autry's comments about today you know there were a lot of folks um who are sort of recognized community leaders that were there right we had the mayor we have the superintendent you know we have folks on city council and the state senator um sykes was there as well um you know it was also nice to see the recognition and the acknowledgement of of all the folks who have been advocating in the booktalk cluster for a long time and many names
010that i had never heard before and it was great to see them recognized in their names said out loud you know because i thought that if not for their tireless advocacy and constant you know calling of attention to the needs of that community um i don't know that today would have happened right and so um and i think with coach buckner you know um you know this this this this elderly gentleman could barely stand uh but he was there today uh to see that that that great honor take place um and so um so there so this is there are multiple generations of people that that were on hand and have been advocating um for what happened today to happen for a long time and so i so i was that was a part of
011it that i was probably the most moved by was that that they were all there and i know what it's like to be the alumni of a place that is that that is doing well and receiving recognition i could see the those folks were shining like if you had not known that ms audrey was booked alumni like you would have known uh you would have known you know um you know i think the same thing goes for uh um councilman neal and others who were there that were um he was very jubilant um you know about about today um so that was the part that i i thought was you know because it's always nice for folks who are elected officials and leaders to get recognition that's great um but it's it's also what makes
012it what made what made the day special for me was the fact that we were recognizing all these folks who don't get recognized ever and you know they've seen their time you know their their prime time in the sun kind of come and go and to be able to kind of call a lot of them out um today you know for for another day in the sun in recognition and and thanking them i thought that was very powerful so i just wanted to say again um you know certainly echo miss autry's um um thanking miss miss fowler mack for her for her work as well um you know but also want to recognize um those folks that have been that have been fighting that fight in that community for decades um and so um so
013yeah i'll i'll stop talking there i i guess i'll i guess i'll say one thing i did get the coach to get me to get i guess i got him to give me one old book though jersey so i can i can wear it because i said i would make sure i'm representing when i come to these games next year um and i said and also too uh i said coach i said you know now we got this new field coming in i'm going to see a third football state title come uh to book the high school so and by the way i mean you know you know all joking aside i mean like if you look at mascots in the city i mean i'm i'm i'm a north high viking but i have to
014see that the best mascot the griffin is the best mascot in the city of akron it just is i mean a lot a lot of other great mascots but that griffin you know that's that's powerful you know it's a powerful mascot there's a powerful mythology that that's behind that i think it's only fitting that that brookdale high school has that mascot so i will leave my comments there and send my time back to you mr president but thank you very much dr hall anyone else mr alexander thank you mr president yes i want to also echo the sentiments that both my colleagues mentioned about today it was very energizing it gave me so much energy today to be there because you know working and booked on being with those kids for a number of years
015uh and then coming in and seeing what the people wanted for a long time then advocating for it to get a field and we always talked about trying to have a field on the east and the west side of the now we finally have it on the west side where the students can be there the community was very happy the students were really really happy it was nice to see the students happy because that's their field basically and they're going to be sharing it with the community so tonight it was nice event uh i really enjoyed it thanks to cleveland browns i want to thank our our superintendent again who worked some magic as well and then it was some coaches there you know it was dr hall was talking about coach buckner and coach
016buckner was basically the history of that football football field over that football team that district he he brought so much and developed so many players from brookdale high school and so it was glad to see him there and glad to see him be recognized as well as coach scott who was there a long time the track coach you know who was there as well so it was nice to see those and it's nice for the book the community i'm i'm very very happy for him long time coming and been advocating for it for a long time and i know mrs alter when i was a liaison at booktube she stayed on me about it and we and we brought it to the athletic commission committee and now it's really come to fruition so i'm glad
017to see that happen uh also i wanted to talk about ohio school board association everyone should have gotten a notice that came from them about them getting into a new organization foundation it's called the consortium of state school boards association uh and it's uh uh they they know they've noted it that uh they've signed a resolution officially to be in this organization there was 21 other states around the united states who's partisan they're looking at about four more states that's probably going to join as well and a lot of them it's kind of a bittersweet to a certain extent because some of these a lot of these or all of these school boards were part of uh nsba and due to some things that were going on there they've kind of got themselves out and
018now they're uh joining this new or new organization association and so it's nice there uh that they're gonna have it but i kind of hate them see them compete like with cube we don't know cube was a very good part of nsba this new organization is going to have what they call the urban institute they want to try to they don't want to duplicate what uh cube has done but they want to bring some the urban flavor to the organize this organization there's going to be a a conference probably between the end of summer early fall that they want to have a part of the urban institute which i think will be good for all of us to go and see what that's all about and it seems like it's going to be a nice
019organization it seems like more and more state associations across the country are starting to get with and they're going to start to join and again it's kind of bittersweet because i was on the you know board of nsba and now we're having this come and possibly take over but there were some issues there with nsba but uh hopefully they'll bring everything that we all need as school board members so we can help our school districts and then help our our students which uh which is the bottom line getting what we need as board members to come help uh our districts in terms of trickle down to help our students so uh that's about it if there's any questions anyone has any questions for me i'll try to answer anything i can if i don't know
020the answer i'll get it and bring it back to you thank you thank you very much anyone else all right hearing none we will uh now move to uh request to address the board we do have one uh request to address the board um here and then we have uh we will move into executive session afterwards to hear uh some others okay got it sorry yes so we have two um yes so we have two uh requests to address the board here uh to today and then we'll uh have um another one in the executive session uh which we'll deal with in a second so we'll uh move first uh to joy uh scrutins uh and i just wanted to uh welcome you for joining us here virtually uh but also wanted to say that
021the board of education is excited all the time to have involvement and to hear from the community we offer this opportunity we typically do not respond back but may defer your comments for further um resolution and conversation to the superintendent or others in the district you have three minutes to share uh what you would like to share with the board and then i just wanted to remind you to not mention any student data or any complaints specifically to any personnel should you need that we will add that to executive session as well without further ado uh mrs gretchen good afternoon good evening everyone and i hope that what i've written is not a i don't it's not a complaint but it is a concern so please whatever however i i'm addressing this concern is don't
022take it as a complaint but it is a concern for everybody so i'm going to read what i wrote and hopefully it won't be the whole three minutes but first president all of our board members thank you so much for giving me this opportunity i appreciate it um i am a teacher in the district i have been a a part of akron public schools for many many years over 10 years as well as my husband and all of my children i'm also a big supporter of akron public schools so that's where i'm coming from in this case it's regarding miller's south so for over 10 consecutive years i have been a parent of miller south performing art school i have seen a total of seven staff of color one esterlene jones retired my first year
023as a parent there two teachers which were long-term subs three counselors and one talented principal mrs don wilson although i am pleased to have had all seven of these wonderful leaders none of them have been in the building all at the same time the only saving grace of any constant representation has been the guidance counselors and i see that that is possibly soon to change at which point we will have zero staff of color at miller south in leadership so often akron public schools say they want equality for all there are support groups and clubs for our lgbtq students our foreign non-english speaking students special needs and gifted scholars for all of these students there is staff to help them grow understand how to be acclimated with their peers and aid in their goals i
024want the same thing for brown students and other students of color administration often complain of the social and behavioral issues of our students the fact is when students can relate and build relationships with those who they feel comfortable with we can see true long-term change in those students we all know that children emulate what they see as possibilities in their own life when a child sees a reflection or resemblance of themselves they consciously and subconsciously can paint themselves into that role this is why our new supreme court justice contanji brown president obama and our very own new superintendent christine fowler mack makes such a difference without such representations people of color specifically our young people do not see any opportunity or chance for them to become such leaders in 2022 it is not acceptable for
025akron public schools to not have representation of a diverse staff in any school specifically our unique miller south school of the performing arts what is simply surprising is that i am making this request in 2022 but nonetheless here we are so you may be asking mrs gretchen's what do you want us to do i want the school board to seek out search for and hire qualified minority staff i know for a fact that such teachers exist have applied and have been overlooked or simply denied when it comes to miller south i want to see changes that can only come from there being a sincere a sense of urgency from the administration of miller south to diversify their staff and lastly i would like for my children and all children to see reflections of themselves and
026for non-minority students to experience leadership that comes from everyone not just a majority who's in charge that's what i have to bring to you today everybody i thank you for listening to me and hopefully we will see something change at miller south school of performing arts thank you very much mrs gretchens we definitely appreciate you and i invite you as well to talk further with our superintendent if you would like i will and i i have sent an email beginning of the school year um i will gladly make an appointment if that's so if that's where i should go next then um greatly yes it is uh thank you very much we definitely appreciate you okay thank you nets on our request to address the board we will move to nathan geros who is here
027and the same preamble applies to you so i'm sure i don't need to repeat that but if you would like me to i can if not okay the mic in the center there is yours thank you good evening my name is nathan dross and i'm here today to share my thoughts on the harm house bill 616 will have on our state and communities in addition to the racial and gender oppression in the bill i would like to emphasize how misguided the prohibition of diversity equity and inclusion outcomes truly is in this bill i earned a diversity and inclusion certification from cornell university i did not once ever feel blamed for the past nor was i ever to feel that i was a villain for being a white male there was no inherited white guilt instructed
028in that program instead we learned things like unconscious bias engagement versus satisfaction a workplace climate where people feel psychological safety and meaningfulness and learning about challenges that many people face that i may have been unaware of there is a real severe lack of knowledge of what diversity means as evidenced by those who wrote this bill and those who support it diversity simply is the differences or variety among people physically ideologically or behaviorally and each form of diversity requires us to acknowledge advantages and disadvantages that exist in our society i have run a non-profit organization for four years called leadership influencing teen empowerment or light that provides leadership development training and emotional intelligence in class with students typically high school students and you cannot be a quality servant leader and ignore the importance of diversity equity
029and inclusion in those classes with the students we have an exercise where the students list their top five most important values a leader should possess and frequently we hear words like open-mindedness acceptance fairness and diversity on our evaluation sheets students say i learned how to be a leader in groups and how to fix our differences another even said that their favorite part of the program was talking about diversity and the diversity of everyone and how anyone can be a leader if that's their goal america is a diverse nation and instead of trying to silence those differences education on what those differences are and how we can bring the best out of each other through inclusion to accomplish a common vision should not be illegal but should be the essence of an educational system that prepares
030young people to lead in the 21st century our problems are socially culturally and politically are not about having discussions about diversity but rather not having enough discussions about diversity i hope my words here tonight help reinforce your decision to dissent against house bill 616 as the value of diversity and inclusion training can add to the lives of the people in this community we must not buy into the fear and propaganda expressed by fragile politicians who wish to silence voices and suppress freedom of speech and expression thank you thank you very much mr dross we definitely appreciate your words with that being said we do have a need to recess into executive session to hear the remaining requests to address the board the president will entertain a motion to recess into executive session pursuant to ohio
031revised code 121.22 g5 for the purposes of considering matters required to be kept confidential by federal law or regulation of or state statute is there a motion so moved it's probably moved by ms dr hall and it's been seconded by mr perry is there any discussion on emotion hearing is thing none roll call vote please mr pendleton ms autry yes mr perry yes dr hall aye ms jackson yes mrs mckittrick yes dr akbar yes mr alexander yes thank you we now stand to a brief recess for executive session uh for uh address uh request to address the board and we will be retiring shortly thank you [Music] hello everyone and welcome back to the uh regularly scheduled board meeting of akron public schools on 25 april 2022 we have just returned from executive session and
032we will now move to the next item on our agenda which is recognitions of the ohio school bus driver safety rodeo and madame superintendent good evening dr akbar and members of the board we had our staff participate in in the rodeo just this weekend and so i believe deborah is going to come forward and oh yes bill i'm sorry i didn't see you if you come to one of the mics and give us a taste of what occurred there we're excited to have see that a bus rodeo and we have above your for your viewing this is our staff that participated these actually did the testing and the driving and i will explain to mr andexter will tell you exactly what this entails this is an annual event we have participated for a number of
033years bill would you like to share how the day went it's on okay so actually this art started back in uh august of 2021 is when the board and superintendent made a recommendation that we could use akron public schools school buses during the rodeo so first of all the regional committee would like to thank the board for allowing us to use our akron buses it does give us a little bit of an advantage during the contest so but we do appreciate that and and some of the reasons one of the couple of the reasons why they like us like using our buses is that first of all a lot of schools can't buy five to ten buses all the same year exactly the same and we do we're fortunate that we can buy those because
034to be have a bus in the in the rodeo the bus has to be exactly the same so we do have a person that comes out they look at our buses and they they down two of our buses because actually when the exhaust was hanging out like a half an inch too far and it was just different from the other buses so the buses that we supply have to be exactly the same so there's that so so thank you this all started back in august and then in january starting in january january the uh i'm part of the committee in northeast ohio and we start having our meetings like once a month to lead up to what happened on saturday and as deborah said this is an annual event akron's been doing this for a
035number of years and one of these days i'm going to put all the awards together and present it on our wall down there because there's there's probably 50 trophies and plaques and everything else that we have gathered over the years that picture is up those are were the eight drivers that participated starting from left going to right is melissa kuzegan leslie fair melody tinsley yolanda wilson faye tackett annie phillips trina taylor and valerie thomas now we did had two teams of four and we did have four out of the eight were rookies considered rookies so we had a young team this year the spring break kind of held us back a little bit because a lot of people were on vacation and they didn't participate usually we have anywhere from 16 people participating in this
036plus we have anywhere from 10 to 15 judges which is our own staff to go up there and spend the day and do the judging so we had we still had a good turnout and while that picture is up there that we were fortunate to have two of our drivers they qualify for state it would be leslie fair who's the second one from the left she scored she was in sixth place and annie phillips is in sec uh she's the third one from the right uh and she scored second place out of the region so the top six go to state and then we have three alternates and i believe the state rodeo is may 7. so how our day starts well actually the drivers have been working for the last three weeks three or
037four weeks they've been practicing if you come down to our bus garage area you'll see buses moving around and they're going through the maneuverabilities and then how our day started on saturday was our drivers came down to the garage they were here about 5 15 in the morning they pulled out at six o'clock and and this year's event was held at streetsboro city schools and so they pulled in around seven o'clock up there and that's when the buses were there and then registration starts shortly after that about 7 30 8 o'clock is registration so what our drivers have to do is well not just our drivers but all the drivers have to do is they have to do a written test and then they have to do a pre-trip of a bus and those buses
038were supplied by ravenna city schools for the pre-trip they have to do an alley dock they have to do diminishing skills which means they drive a bus down between some poles and by time they get to the end you only have three inches on each side of the bus to clear those poles they have to do offset they have to do a right turn stop line they have to do multiple drop drop off and pickups and they have to do a serpentine so you have to take a 40 foot bus pull it up through and then you have to back it through three times through the cones without hitting the cones a few cones were knocked down not by our bus driver and then the last event was railroad crossing so then after we take
039this we again we had some volunteers helping with um the tabulation deborah falk was there she helped us for the tabulation part of it and then at the end there's awards are given you know the plaques are given out the awards to give and the teams and everything they have door prizes for everybody so it's in a day-long event and this is a pretty serious thing because this is the book just for the northeast region so these are all the rules and regulations that we have to go through and everything is again if we had an exhaust that was half an inch sticking out too far they down you know they down our bus so but all it was a great day we had no grievances filed that's a good thing and uh and usually
040we do have grievances because somebody's not happy with something but it's a good way for all the drivers in the area some of the local schools like one of the schools locally that's a purdue competition for us is norton city schools and they did actually they they did very well this year they had first team um on that but nordonia was there akron peterman strutters hudson crestwood local all knows about 15 schools and there was this year the numbers were down we had 50 bus drivers and we and we had eight of them in there so those are the tops those are the top six and the alternates that are going to the state and you see annie is down in front with the which we should have won the t-shirt there's a t-shirt contest
041we should have won it i should have filed agreements on that one but we did win the table decor contest which there's not a picture of that right there not yet but hopefully soon mark williamson and his group mr ryan rittenhouse written house mr rittenhouse came out to our event and he spent a couple hours out there doing a lot of videotaping and i don't know if you know dr bolin from the state of ohio from ode he was there and did an interview so hopefully when they get it all what they do you know back in the behind the scenes we'll have some more pictures and some video [Music] wonderful thank you and congratulations we we love the fact that we are learning at every level of the organization so thank you so much
042thank you for letting us share [Applause] thank you very much we definitely appreciate your commitment and your uh precision around those clones so thank you very much um dr hall yeah i i just had one one quick question uh with regard to backing up the server um were you required to go a minimum a minimum speed backing up they could not stop because it couldn't stop okay yeah once they start the maneuverability they cannot stop when you see the pictures in the future you'll see some there's white lines on the tires and we've got the chalked up tires okay and that's what the judges are looking at they just cannot stop years ago there used to be timing but they took the way they took away the timing okay but the bus just cannot stop
043once it starts moving awesome okay thank you all right thank you very much uh we now move to approval of previous meeting minutes from 11 april 2022 is there a motion iso move improperly moved by mr perry you say a second it's been seconded by dr hall any discussion on the motion to approve the previous meeting minutes from 11 april 2022 hearing and seeing none roll call vote mr pendleton dr hall aye ms jackson yes mrs mckittrick yes dr akbar yes mr alexander yes ms autry yes mr perry yes thank you thank you very much next we have personnel recommendations madam superintendent thank you prior to my asking for your approval of personnel recommendations i just wanted to draw attention to item 17.1 where i regret to inform the board that the we have had
044a death occur of one of our bus drivers tamara hahn who has been with the transportation department for 11 years she passed on april 15 2022 and we've extended our sincere condolences on behalf of the district to her family but wanted to draw your attention to that with the resolutions i wish to recommend approval of the personnel recommendations presented in category 6 through 17 this evening thank you very much it's been properly recommended for the personnel recommendations is there a motion to accept soul move second is improperly moved by mrs mckittrick seconded by mr perry any discussion on the personnel recommendations you're answering none roll call vote please mr pendleton ms autry yes mr perry yes dr hall aye ms jackson yes mrs mckittrick yes dr akbar yes mr alexander yes thank you thank you
045very much and uh nets we have resolutions and motions on the consent agenda madam superintendent yes sir and as we look to the resolutions and motions again i'd like to draw your attention to item 20.4 on the agenda there we are celebrating the ohio attorney general's office has determined that the akron public school district qualifies for the school safety training grant under the provisions of house bill 110 for next school year this grant in the amount of a hundred and twelve thousand dollars in some has been received for district use and so as we develop more fully our our strategies for safety we we do have some additional resources that we can apply to that with that i request the approval of recommendations excuse me as the resolutions and motions presented in category 22. they
046are in proper format and i recommend their approval thank you very much the resolutions emotions on the consent agenda has been properly moved forward is there a is there a motion so moved second it's been properly moved by mrs mcgittrick and seconded by dr hall any discussion hearing a single roll call vote please mr pendleton mr perry yes dr hall aye ms jackson yes mrs mckittrick yes dr akbar yes mr alexander yes ms archery yes thank you thank you very much next we move to business affairs recommendations madam superintendent yes sir and for the business affairs recommendation i recommend approval of those recommendations presented in categories 24. thank you very much it's been properly recommended the for business affairs is there is there a motion on the table so moved second it's been properly moved
047by dr hall seconded by mr perry any discussion hearing and seeing none we will move to roll call vote mr pendleton miss jackson yes mrs mckittrick yes dr akbar yes mr alexander yes ms autry yes mr perry yes dr hall aye thank you thank you very much and we now move to our superintendent's report madam superintendent yes sir i'm going to share a few items with you here this evening and as we have previously discussed in our meetings one of the things i always want to do is to put a smile on your face by giving you a glimpse of how our be kind initiative is progressing so again our message is simple encourage kindness give kindness and be kind it's something that we want to encourage with our students and our staff but also
048with the broader community at the last board meeting i shared how the highlight how the highlights of the campaign were occurring at one of our school today i'd like to introduce you to jennings clc where students have been spreading kindness mrs balant i believe who is the jennings school counselor and mr mark smith the school counselor intern worked with students that wanted to spread kindness and needed some support this the student initiated an activity was a to establish a kindness station and set that up during lunch in recess students visiting the table could pick up a kindness challenge to complete or take a compliment or a positive message and pass it on to someone some of those messages are on the tables in front of you that students then could come over to the cart
049and spread around most students actually participated in both the kindness challenge and they took a compliment to pass on to someone else mrs balant shared that there were many teachers excited that they were recipients of the cards that the students took during that lunch period the photos show the kindness station and some of the kindness challenge cards you can also see from one of the photos that this was a popular station showing that kindness is spreading we will continue to encourage kindness and again we're really pleased that as we're looking out and about in the community we are starting to see campaigns pop up from many different organizations that are telling students that they're hearing them loud and clear and are trying to do their part so just just thought that would make you smile
050uh the next uh thing i would like to review uh is also a celebration as part of the board agenda this evening in item 6.8 there was a reclassification for one of our administrators who is filling one of the positions that we had discussed earlier this year so mr larry johnson who is currently the campus principal at firestone will be stepping back into the position that he was serving in at the beginning of this year which is a principal supervisor position at high school i think we know all who know larry know that he comes with a great deal of respect and being able to support his fellow administrators in this way while continuing to grow himself is a really great use of his his skills and talents so we're excited to have him join
051the leadership team also too just an update we haven't talked in a while about covet 19 but it's worthwhile to just say that we're not out of the woods if you've been watching any of the trends the health trends in the community and so we continue while we're not talking about it as much on a day-to-day basis we are continuing to track what's happening with covet 19 and are continuing to encourage safety measures in our schools so to encourage the hand washing to encourage when possible the distance it is mass optional still at this point but many students do choose students and staff members to wear wear their mask but the cases instances of covid are ticking up not only in summit county but quite honestly if you look across the nation they are ticking
052up again so we are going to continue the message to our students around safety precautions to our students and families also today we just received an alert this afternoon that summit county public health department will again offer drive-through clinics for covet 19 vaccines vaccinations us tomorrow from nine to five and on the west market street location so 1867 west market street if persons still have not been vaccinated and or required the booster you can go through that drive-through setting they really want to try to make it as convenient as possible they will be offering both the pfizer and the moderna vaccine in accordance with cdc guideline lines the boosters themselves are for individuals who are age 50 or up are age 12 and older for the pfizer and or 18 or older for the moderna
053so just if you have any friends or family members if we could all continue to message safety uh first and that we want to be cautious as much as we can but also to to take advantage of these opportunities and should the data really tick up in a significant way of course we will bring that information before the board so we can talk about how it is where we're operating here in the district this is day one where we are returning from spring break for our students and staff members many of whom took advantage of the time to get some much needed and well-deserved rest but now we turn our attention to the season where our scholars can show us what they know and what they've learned it is testing season across the state in
054our schools prior to break our scholars completed the english language arts portions of state tests but now that they're rested and ready they will tackle the larger portion math science social studies between april 11 and may 6. so we thank our staff for not only preparing them but continuing to support them during this time period as we all recall it's been quite the year still dealing with the impacts of covid but ensuring that our classrooms remain very focused and our our staff have done an exemplary job at doing just that and now we'll know more about where our students are so that we can further support them tomorrow is an important day we've had lots of excitement in our district and tomorrow it continues tomorrow a group of educators will be in akron with us
055for the entire day including representatives from the state department of education several school district leaders and members of their team persons representing a variety of urban leagues and also some national educators associated with the wallace foundation the education leadership and learning collaborative is who who these folks are it's a project that was born out of the work of the wallace foundation focused on creator greater equity in education so the national ellc creates an opportunity for state teams comprised of district leaders state leaders and then community partners and members of the urban league nationally to learn from one another and establish partnerships to better support learning in communities so a branch of that national ellc is the ohio coalition and northeast ohio in particular is a group of districts along with the state department that really
056has focused heavily on what equity and good instruction look like in in school districts so we're excited for them to come to akron and see our our work here and to see how it is that our college and career academies are addressing the needs of our students lastly i i like many of you just have to say two words or more about this afternoon and the groundbreaking ceremony with the cleveland browns as we as i left the event today i just continue to think this is so much more than a field it's symbolism it's a visual reminder to our students of the fact that they're they're worth it that they deserve to be in a state-of-the-art you know area um developing and competing and they also are surrounded by many persons who support them and
057want the best for them and so i hope this is just the first of many ways in which we can continue to send messages to our young people that there are those around them that are willing to step up on their behalf and so i do appreciate all of the board members who were able to be there those who weren't but that were sending great vibes i was really really pleased i reached out to mr buckner to say it just wouldn't be the same if you know your name is on the field and i believe he held one of the winningest coaching records ever we also need our young people to understand that they like we stand on the shoulders of so many who have toiled who didn't have the same opportunities and things of
058that nature but we want them to know them and to know that they too are continuing to wish the best for those young people but we also want to deeply embed in their spirit this understanding that you go through life to achieve so that you can come back to serve and we want them to be the next persons who are opening a door of opportunity and making something possible in their home communities or elsewhere because to whom much is given they're able to do that so was very excited to have such the legacy as board member hall stated to be with us and to see the range of parents of community members of students of staff members our district staff came over as well to offer their support because that village is what it's going
059to take to really support all of our children to high levels of excellence so that concludes my report thank you very much are there any questions for the superintendent all right hearing none we will move to the president's report [Music] one thing um and then just to re-talk about something from last week so as you uh are probably aware we're moving into uh evaluation season um and so you should rece have received the email today um about that as well as one two weeks ago um and we just want to make sure that we get those in um in enough time for us to do our evaluation of the superintendent in may and i think we all have that on our calendars already so um we have about two weeks i believe three weeks maybe
060yeah three weeks for that so look forward to uh completing that um in as much time as possible um so that we don't have to you know track you down or anything so appreciate that and with that being said uh the other item i i hope that we would uh have uh before us today the resolution that we talked about uh we don't have it uh before us but it is something i believe based off our last discussion that this board is willing to move forward with the resolution to oppose house bill 616 for all it's the detrimental effects that it will have one of the things i wanted to just bring to your attention that the bill proposes is not only what i would call really detrimental [Music] penalties for teachers for having candid
061conversations based off teachable moments [Music] but also it could have really negative effects on our district when you think about the penalties of withholding state funds because of someone's making an accusation of that and then we also know that you know based off what we've seen even our state school board and their failure to really support equity and racial equity specifically in our schools leaving it up to their hands to make decisions to define some of these penalties and processes could prove to be very detrimental so i wanted to just share that with the board as we continue to think through this and open up any discussions based off the information that's been sent to you over the last two weeks if there's any additional comments anyone wants to make okay um seeing none i
062definitely appreciate uh you and i hope that uh with the draft that's out there thus far um that you get time to look at it provide feedback as well as you know add any portion of it that that you feel needs to be added as we move forward with the anticipation of it coming before us fully at our next meeting on may 9. so any questions for me on those two items we may want to review house bill 327 as well being that it's some correlating language so if we're drafting resolution for the certain issues especially the ones that you just stated um regarding teaching and non-censorship of certain things and um concepts you may want to look at that too because i don't know if it can be a something added to if you're
063thinking of a resolution for that yeah definitely i mean there's house phil bill 616 actually adds uh detrimental language around uh gender and sexuality while also adding that very horrible language around race and diversity equity inclusion training in general it also unfortunately stokes the flames of individuals who believe that anyone who is lgbt also is grooming people and or you know pedophil pedophiles and i think that's highly dangerous the language that's in the bill and the what it's actually suggesting is quite appalling and offensive so i appreciate you adding that because i think the divisive portions as well it's also offensive i actually i've read the bill because you know earlier i was unaware of that and i'm very interested because i don't know if i'm if i missed something we can talk later if
064this is not what i'm supposed to be referenced and look at because the information that you're stating that it says i see no reference of that direct language that you're referencing i see where it makes reference about no teaching for kids from kindergarten to third grade dealing with gender identity and then it says from 4th to 12th grade it didn't say it cannot be taught but as it's age-appropriate it's very vague indeed but the language when you're talking about the language that you just uh stated the statements that you made with pedophilia and things of that nature i see no reference of this as introduced i took this 134th general assembly house bill number 616 off of the website and i read it through and through highlighted to make sure i didn't miss anything and
065i don't see any of such language so is there somewhere else i should be looking so i can have a more clear insight because what you're referencing i don't see any reference in this bill in regards to the um the only reference i think to gender is not teaching gender orientation and transgender to certain to the age group and then that it could be taught but they need to be age-appropriate very vague as i said because that's object that's subjective when we talk about age appropriate but the other things you state i see no reference of that in the bill so i appreciate that comment um so i would have to pull it up which i'm trying to do now but and we could talk about it later but it's actually it is in there
066and in fact some of the comments made by um just the people who um actually put it forward is quite disturbing and it's really on par and aligned with uh you know the just position of of people who are lgbt as being pedophiles it's kind of the language being used even if you don't say the word pedophile that type of language is basically a dog whistle and people who hear it know that that's exactly what they're talking about and addresses it with yeah okay so any other comments or questions all right hearing then we will move to the treasury's report good evening thank you mr president board members i would like to review just briefly the budget process and this is a budget update with no numbers i promise to save those for later but
067we do and have been talking about a number of initiatives the district's been talking about over the past few months and the crossing of a lot of different bodies of work next month whether it be the beginning of negotiations whether it be our response to the global pandemic and the one-time federal funds that we're receiving and it also is going to all try to be reflected in the district's five-year forecast and so we'll sample that process tonight and then [Music] because there's so much of this in volume of work coming together we started to reach out to board members individually just so that there's a good foundational understanding of how the budget works i have just a very few slides to go through it's mooring on timing and process and again i promise the the
068numbers will come later as i've talked with the board before and from previous budget and forecast presentations that budgeting responsibility is one of the first top five board responsibilities it's in statute as one of your major responsibilities and that third point there it's our ability to sign contracts and hopefully you'll you'll get to see the legalese part of the five-year forecast in real time over the next few board meetings and our ability to sign contracts out in future years whether it be bargaining contracts or just regular purchase service contracts this is a major component to how we operate there's our general timeline this timeline if we really want to get down to it's about an 18-month process it really starts with the prior year we're talking about the budget for the 22-23 school year and
069it starts with a conversation with the superintendent and executive staff and board about the number of students we have in our enrollment and now we have a funding formula that counts students and funds students fast forward to about now we're taking and have just completed all of our internal meetings with senior staff and i will call them budget holders and in some regards we go through budget hearings superintendent and i and board through finance committee review the initiatives and we put them in place examples of it being like textbook adoptions we may have multiple textbook adoptions in one year we may have to catch up on the average age of our school buses so we have to escalate a number of purchases as mr andexler talked about may have chromebook purchases on a replacement schedule
070all of those things need to go into that general budget that's just a reminder of the dr hall let's go back one slide yes so who was the county budget commission in that in that bullet point like is that state appointed is that each county operates just a little bit different okay but the county budget commission does have authority over the availability of our funds and if you remember in our tax budget in january during our organizational meeting the board puts together some amounts and rates so i think we all kind of joked a little bit it's a pretty confusing resolution we're trying to clean it up but what we're doing is we're sending that to the budget commission and then they are giving us the authority to spend up to that level yes yeah
071follow that so but but who is it made up of are these are these persons who are appointed by the state are they elected by a body there's an elected official and then there's uh finance officers and then there's um an appointed board and the appointed board overseas i don't know the actual makeup outside of like county fiscal officer okay in a couple appointees like that roger that okay all right thank you thank you there's just our placemat reminder we'll bring that out a couple times a year i probably see that here in the next month just want to do a call out as we do outreach to our budget holders and senior staff members that circled timeline in there the budget documents go out in february after we've counted all the kids and we're
072looking at staffing and we're looking at priorities and then there's a hearing process that we go through internally between march and the end of april april 16th it says the superintendent and i begin to review those and then you'll see the reflection of those priorities now and through the may forecast and then that budget's put into place in june and you saw that from the previous slide ms autry and i did meet we're doing some one-on-ones so that we have this deep foundational understanding of how the budget process works and the question was great one well how does it work real time how does the board have influence over the budgeting priorities and so we have a number of examples and ms autry may have some as well but just in this last year is
073a perfect example in the response to the global pandemic about how to dr hall's point the budget commission may not have given us approval in these circumstances to respond the way we do so we bring back a resolution that resolution may have the appointment of a new chief diversity officer that is a new budget initiative it may have the response of class size reduction teachers where we've had that response it may have as i talked about on the equipment or chromebook size so i think the charge and what i got from miss autry's question was we can intentionally draw from the board's initiatives and priorities how it's reflected in the budget and we'll we'll do a better job of that because a budget's kind of a hard and complicated thing to follow i'll leave you
074with two more slides and then turn it over to ms autry if she has any follow-ups and then you will be getting a phone call from me for some one-on-one deep dives into the budget uh mr perry's got a fist pump there for me in your email there are some examples here if anybody really wants to see some detail on how this process works a little bit more granularly feel free to click on those links take a deep dive into those budgets and just to bring it home these five major areas are national best practices so the planning and preparation you can see back from that 18-month process that we believe here it's reflected through the direction of the superintendent the board administrative team that instructional programming drives the budget we pay for priorities we
075always try to in a sense find the money for the programming that we believe in and then we want to ensure sustainability and that feedback loop of what you see in the five-year forecast the budget that's the important process and we all have to hold each other accountable as we are wrapping up our sr3 planning next month uh miss autry did i miss anything or have any other follow-up nope i think you did a great job so yeah it's it's a lot of information and i know sometimes me as a board member i wonder sometimes how the ideas that i might have or priorities that the board has how does it actually get reflected in the budget and it's actually it's ongoing because it's it's a live document essentially and so um so our three
076and three plan actually all the things associated with that you know are reflected in our budget so and it really also highlights the important working relationship between our treasurer and superintendent because they have to be able to respond in real time and so i was just curious about that because a lot of things have happened you know and we're out in the community folks want to know you know what are you doing and you know we have to be able to respond accordingly so it's just the meeting gave a better understanding on how that works so i think you did a great job with that thank you hey ryan just a quick follow-up to that i think that you know as we're thinking about how do we illustrate sort of how this looks for teaching
077purposes infrastructure workers i think that it's also nice to kind of show it like in in a two-year snapshot um you know with a graphic that kind of shows like kind of a timeline that kind of shows it for two consecutive years i mean that's probably the as a visual um you know some folks may be visual learners i know i certainly am um you know and that way you can kind of see the mile markers for a two year snapshot you know kind of all the same time you know just just as a thought uh and and i completely miss the county budget commission and the role that they play um so i've got some more questions i'll ask you offline but um but definitely understand that piece better than i um have thus
078far so thank you thank you dr hall in the first slide there is a link to the report right here appropriations how to report in their outlines the code statute and the members of the summit county budget commission that concluded my report thank you thank you very much any questions for the treasurer aaron sing then thank you very much we will move to committee reports and the first one is legal contracts and board policy no report this evening thank you thank you very much and we now move to finance and capital management miss autry so the committee didn't officially meet but we had the one-on-ones and so ryan's reporter was in lieu of our committee report okay thank you very much [Music] we will now move to instructional policy and student achievement thank you so
079we have a couple of things to highlight that were part of the agenda tonight the first one being a grant from the ohio department of education in the amount of and it's the whole thing so 431 thousand dollars wait sorry 431 229 and 14 cents and that is for supplemental student supplies including age-appropriate books journals bookmark pencils family guides and a drawstring bag and that is for every k-12 student to help them build their home libraries and it also provides enough funding for additional power cords and chromebook charges and next will be ms autry thank you also we've voted already on item 24.12 and so that was for scholastic books we'll be providing that for our students k-11 who will be in our summer educational enrichment experiences this summer in our school quality improvement grant
080funded buildings in the amount of almost thousand dollars the third thing is a grant which deals with transcend which is a national non-profit that supports school communities to create and spread extraordinary equitable learning environments and trends in actually trends in actually does a student experience surveys to students grade 6 through 12 talking about what they what they think and collaborate gathering the data and putting together a working document for us and the total cost is 18 000 for that relationship does that conclude your report it does thank you very much um next we move to the equity committee uh no report yeah i'm sorry no report uh but we will have um a great meeting scheduled for may 2nd thank you very much looking forward to seeing all of you there thank you very much
081um as there's no unfinished business or new business to come before the board is there anything else that any board member wants to bring before we go into executive session hearing and seeing none uh we will now um recess into i'm sorry accept a motion to recess into executive session uh pursuant to uh ohio revised code 121.22 g1 for the purposes of considering the compensation of a public employee or official of the school district g3 to discuss disputes involving the board and or school district that are subject to pending or imminent court action and g4 to prepare for negotiations as i do not believe there's actions once we return [Music] if this motion is accepted that we will only be returning to um adjourn so is there a motion on the table so moved second
082it's been properly moved by dr hall and seconded by ms autry is there any discussion on the motion hearing and seeing none roll call vote please mr clinton 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're now standing to recess into executive session [Music] okay [Music]