001hey ryan i'm on all right we're about to get started [Music] good evening everyone and welcome to the regularly scheduled board meeting on 11 april 2022 uh it is good to have everyone here and we're going to start off today's meeting uh with a roll call here mr alexander president here dr hall here mr perry here i'd also like to welcome our student board member alum set from early college high school yes hello um and we also have uh mr pendleton um joining us virtually uh who is our treasurer thank you very much and we appreciate mr atkins for standing in for him here in person we will now start with our pledge of allegiance and led by our student board member salaam liberty and justice forum yes all right i'm going to start over
002because i noticed my mic was not on um thank you very much everyone we now move to our community and school reflections we will start with our student board member salaam saeed who is a 12th grader at akron early college and i believe one of our first student board members and is still with us and graduating soon so we're excited to hear from you thank you hello everybody my name is salem saeed i am the final founding student board member this is my fourth consecutive year serving currently we are in the month of ramadan ramadan is a month where one fasts from sun up to sundown i am currently fasting as well as many other students in akron public schools there should be an awareness about fasting during ramadan for example i have experienced questions
003about what i could and could not eat and i am sure other students like me experience the same thing it is an exciting time for me during the month of ramadan there should be an awareness about ramadan other holidays that are celebrated by the diverse students of akron public schools in addition to fasting i am a senior at acronym college high school and a full-time college student at the university of akron this has allowed me to learn a lot about myself if you if you really want something you have to go for it and now i am learning what that really means this semester for example tell me what it is like to work hard for something i am passionate about and in this case it is nursing i am taking human anatomy and physiology
004too and this class has shown me that going to class and taking notes is not that simple in reality you need to you need to understand the concepts at their fullest potential i have to be a diligent student and go over my notes every day it is worth it because i will receive my high school diploma on may 5th and two days later on may 7th i will receive my associate's degrees and arts my goal is to finish my bachelor's degree within two years after receiving my associate and then go straight into my master's program which is an msn master of science and nursing my goal is to have scholarships that pay my full tuition i am currently eligible to receive the innovation generation scholarship i am the first person in my family to go
005to college this experience will change my family's life financially because i received the associate's degree as an acronym college student for no cost and hopefully scholarships will help pay for the remaining cost of my education this will and has taken the stress off my family my plan is to assist my siblings financially when they go to college students who are the first in their families to go to college need a lot of assistance they need one-on-one scheduled time where their counselors shall develop a plan starting early senior year like august students have dedicated scheduled time with their counselors and a plan they are more likely to reach their goals parents also need help from akron public schools in understanding their students transition from high school to college my parents did not understand what it takes
006to go to college like completing college applications applying for a financial aid and the time it will take for me to complete my college assignments so i can graduate with my associates and bachelor's degree i feel students in agri-public schools should learn what they are passionate about at a young age when students learn what they are passionate about they can take advantage of opportunities like acronym college and further themselves and their families it is important that parents receive information and training about what it takes to go to college and to graduate and to graduate from college if students and parents get information and experiences early then the students can be on their way to academic success which can change them and their parents lives for the better thank you for all the opportunities and experiences
007on behalf of the student board we wish all akron public students and their families good health thank you [Applause] thank you very much for sharing more information and education about ramadan and also your experience at early college and we are excited to hear about your plans uh for the future as one of our founding board members i can say on behalf of the entire board we appreciate you helping us build the plane and your great council and advice as a student board member but also as a student leader who has helped what i believe to build one of the remarkable jewels of our district so thank you very much for being here and your service with that being said we now open the floor for the remaining board members to share any other community and
008school reflections are there any miss jackson good evening everyone um since our last meeting i had the pleasure of visiting rhymer clc where i was so excited to meet the principal i hope i said her name right mrs casapio does anyone know cassiopa cassiopa thank you mrs cassiopa i want to say her name right because she is so fantastic the climate of the school was amazing they had a strong sense of family culture she was excited about all the wonderful things going on in her school i met the librarian young people multiple teachers and other support staff and it was just a great place to be and one of the things i was really encouraged and inspired by with miss cassiopo was just her passion and her innovative thinking for what was taking place in
009her school for instance when i walked into the school as i was speaking with her and the school counselor who was fantastic as well it delighted me to see a school counselor that was in tune with what was happening in the school and able to speak to the initiatives of the school and the students that they served with effortlessly but they had this student i want to say it was like an affirmation or mission statement and when you walk up the stairs it's this wonderful artwork that has the school mascot and then it has these words and it ends we are family and it's all encouraging words that they say and so um the principal she explained to me oh we say this every morning my students recite this and i love when someone is
010confident because some people can fake it till you make it but the real deal always comes out and you know it always comes out in the wash right so she said oh any of my students can say this and i love confidence like that right and i said oh is that right i said okay so as we're walking i see the student ambassadors i said hey can you recite to me your mission statement and turn and face that wall and so they were nervous right but i said either this lady is the real deal or we're about to see fire right and so they started after the nerves settled and the counselor was there said you guys know it say what you know and they recited it succinctly with confidence and i was delighted in
011it because it was all positivity and it was reaffirming who they were as a school what they were going to do as members of this family in this school right so i thought that was great the students were also they told me about being ambassadors what they loved about the school and i asked them questions like well what does it mean to be an ambassador and they said when people like you come visit show you all the great things we're doing here and i thought right and i thought absolutely absolutely so they were getting ready for their spring presentation so i was able to see that type of practice i also was so delighted to see their library fully stocked and it was clear that they have a librarian that is engaged with the content
012that those learners are being exposed to so i was just excited to see reimer and to be honest before i joined this board that was not a school that i would have been familiar with and i said this is definitely a hidden jewel in the community and i was also excited because the principal spoke to me about her other experience as a social worker and as a result of those relationships she fostered the relationship to get the artwork in the middle of the hallway which was from a retired art teacher and i thought relationships and collaboration in manners but she also talked about the relationship that she has with the ymca and how the ymca is in her building after school and what they offer to her students and so i just want to say
013kudos to those that are part of the reimer family the staff as well as the principal because it really is encouraging to see great things like this happening in our district strong foundational things happening and as i've been visiting the cluster every week i've tried to like lay eyes on each school that i've been assigned as part of my cluster and then i want to get to the other ones but i'm very encouraged about the elementaries that i've seen so far and i thought fundamentally the foundation that i'm seeing being laid in the elementaries it gives hope and it gives me a sense of focus as i start to visit middle and high school because if they're this strong at elementary there's no way that our output is not going to be strong if we're
014doing it right so kudos to the reimer family and miss cassiopo that's it right i said it the best way i could but it's it charge it to um the head and not the heart because she truly was a delight in her love for her students and her school her staff was just amazing and i'm i'm grateful to have met her to be honest i really am all right that's all i have thank you very much miss jackson anyone else miss autry thank you mr president since we last met um i had the pleasure of attending the creative and culinary arts student showcase last week um and for those who aren't familiar it was a collaboration between akron public schools our college and career academies and the north hill community development corporation and so the
015brookdale culinary arts program under the direction of holly henderson their students provided wonderful food that evening and then the art students from jennings and north clc had art displayed and i just wanted to acknowledge that this was a quality event it was really well attended it was exciting i got to meet with several students i told him i'd give him a shout out manfred malia and aja they had wonderful art and they really i mean had their heart into it and mrs payton young their art teacher is doing a really good job with them over there and so it's just a really good example of that collaborative effort it really was a good event i had the thai chicken pea curry sauteed vegetables over jasmine rice it was delicious i wanted the soul rolls but
016they sold out really quickly but i just wanted to give a shout out to that whole process including the college and career academy coaches mrs deanna edwards and kenny green just a wonderful effort so thank you for that opportunity from those hard-working folks in our district thank you thank you very much mrs mckittrick last monday i attended project grads march gradness and what a wonderful event that always is it's always so much fun and it's a really relaxed fun atmosphere and it's not stuffy if i'm allowed to say that it's um people walking around having fun playing family feud it's um it's a really great event and and the work they do really helps kids so thank you to jackie silas but butler and her entire team for putting on such a wonderful event thank
017you very much anyone else yeah i'll jump in i'll jump in dr akbar my mate dr hall yeah and apologies i'm not sure how to raise my hand on here so um i'm not sure if you guys would see it but anyways i'll just i'll just interrupt until you guys tell me to stop doing otherwise i just want to echo what uh miss mckittrick was talking about we were at i was also at the project grad event as well and um and i just wanted to pick you back off we said the family feud um all i gotta say is that um aps we got to get our game up because um i don't think we had i don't think there was a single aps uh family few team um and so and there was
018i apologize but i was watching it pretty closely and i didn't see a single aps family few team and i think next year like we need to have a team the board needs to need to get a team then we need to dominate that event next year because uh from what i saw i think we could dominate that event very easily i think we just selected you as the leader of the team so and i am competitive so i i was i was i was scouting you know the other teams so i i think i think i think we can take them so anyway those are those those are my comments uh thanks for indulging me thank you very much dr hall any other comments all right i will save my reflections in my for
019my report so we will move to request to address the board here we have one individual here to address the board just to give some background for everyone we are excited whenever anyone wants to come address us we just wanted to let you know that typically we we don't give a response um but we may direct uh you to a specific staff member through the superintendent to follow up um also we give you have three minutes uh to share uh your thoughts as long as it's not a direct um you know grievance for a specific staff member or something about a specific student incident we will hear those if it's one of those two that i just mentioned please let us know and we will go into executive session and hear your grievance at that
020point with that being said we do have friend wilson here to speak with us today so if you want to come to this podium here mr lawson will make sure that it's on and working and then you'll have three minutes to share your thoughts thank you for joining us today fran yeah thank you for having me my name is fran wilson i'm a west hillian in west hill i'm a fourth generation acronym my pronouns are they them i've come before the board to ask you to please consider a resolution to oppose house bill 616 which is on its face uh racist and is very dehumanizing for the queer community i was in third grade when i was first bullied and called gay on the playground at recess yeah i at that time i had no
021idea what the word gay meant and it felt like something dirty and wrong in fifth grade i was pushed in the hallway and called queer at that time i had no idea what queer meant and i felt confused for being approached in attack with something that i knew nothing about it wasn't until i was 17 years old that i met my first openly proud queer person and i didn't know that was an option at the time being open and proud and queer and i slowly began to realize that i actually started to relate a lot to that person i started to come out at 21 and it's been a tough journey of identity and home and faith and family and community today i stand a proud queer acronyte a non-binary acne knight someone who wishes
022that they would have been educated to understand what gay and queer meant so that i would have heard it in a safe schooling environment instead of having it spit at me at my elementary school before even i knew that i was queer so i'm asking the board to please consider a resolution to oppose the atrocious ohio house bill 616 thank you for your time thank you very much thank you at this point we will move to the approval of the previous meeting minutes from the regular meeting from 29 march 2022 is there a motion on the table so moved it was improperly moved by mrs mckittrick is there a second second it's been seconded by mr alexander to approve the previous meeting minutes from 29 march 2022 is there any discussion hearing and seeing none
023miss atkins roll call vote please perry yes hall aye jackson yes mckittrick yes akbar yes alexander yes autry yes thank you very much miss atkins and next we will move to our personnel recommendations from madam superintendent madam superintendent good evening dr akbar and to members of the board this evening i wish to recommend the approval of personnel recommendations presented in categories 5 through 16. thank you very much it's been probably recommended for the personnel recommendations uh is there a motion on the table i so move them probably moved by mr perry is there a second second seconded by mrs mckittrick any discussion on the personnel recommendations for matters superintendent erin seeing none roll call vote mr atkins hall hi jackson yes mckittrick yes akbar yes alexander yes audrey yes perry yes thank you very much
024next we move to resolutions and motions on the consent agenda madam superintendent yes sir those i wish to recommend the approval of the resolutions and motions presented in category 21. they are in proper format i move for their approval thank you very much uh is there a motion on the table for the consent agenda i so move it's been properly moved by mr perry is there second second seconded by mr alexander to approve the resolution's emotions on the consent engine any discussion hearing and seeing none mr atkins roll call vote please audrey yes perry yes hall hi jackson yes mckittrick yes akbar yes alexander yes thank you very much next we move to business affairs recommendations madam superintendent yes and finally i wish to recommend the approval of the business affairs recommendations presented in category
02523. thank you very much it's been properly recommended for the business affairs recommendations are there any motions on the table so moved it's been properly moved by mrs mckittrick is there a second second it's been seconded by mr perry is there any discussion on the business affairs recommendation hearing and seeing none uh roll call vote please mr atkins perry yes paul jackson yes mckittrick yes akbar yes but i'm staying from 23.3 alexander yes autry yes thank you very much for the approval of the business affairs recommendations we will now move to our superintendence report madam superintendent yes and again good evening it is cold and rainy outside but we're full of warmth here on the inside uh as you noted in your recallings of your visitations and things of that nature there there's a lot
026of positive activity that's been occurring in our schools and through our staff members so we're very very fortunate to be able to lead in a district with so many talented adults and students one of the things i wanted to draw your attention to which is on our screen is that as you know we have a grassroots campaign happening across the district called be kind 330. the message is simple encourage kindness give kindness be kind i shared that information with you about be kind 330 in the past today and in future board meetings we just wanted you to have a glimpse of what's been happening since we introduced the concept and invited the buildings to get engaged and really with no real directive because we wanted it to be something sincere and authentic but what you
027see on the stage is a school i would like to highlight for you this is vorsclc which celebrated autism awareness month in combination with be kind 330. scholars in the achieve classrooms helped increase understanding and acceptance of those who have autism by modeling acts of kindness including operating a kindness cart the photo there shows the kindness cart that is traveling throughout the building uh the goal especially last week which was a big week of emphasis was to give the scholars in the achieved classrooms useful social and real world world skills as they practice their communication skills the kindness cart traveled through the building offering snacks and beverages to adults students are also holding popcorn sills each friday in april at the end of the month all of the proceeds from the popcorn sale will go
028to the autism society of greater akron on behalf of vors clc and the district's be kind initiative kindness in the district is spreading in the community and within our schools be kind 330 has a mission to encourage individuals to bring positivity and kindness to the community celebrating autism awareness month while also celebrating the be kind 330 is a perfect combination if you want more information or if you happen to observe any of our students engaging in acts of kindness we ask that you please continue to send photos we're now making sure that many of the things that our buildings are sending are available on the website and also we're beginning to use the app so that whenever you're having a challenging day you can always take a peek and really be inspired by our students
029and our staff members throughout the district kindness really is something simple that can have a huge effect and we're so glad that our scholars and our staff members are embracing it as well as the the broader community so that is my first update to you secondly is just to draw your awareness board members you have before you on the table and we've also begun wide scale advertisements with throughout the community about the summer experience programming the the range of programming that is available for our students actually pre-k through through 12th grade this summer so registration is now open and actually parents have been parents caregivers have been very responsive so we already have a number of students engaged in the adventure of their choice but summer programming will run june 6 through august 12th and
030again as you came in earlier today the commercials were playing but we certainly hope even during the summer you'll be able to go out and visit and kind of see how our students are continuing to be engaged in in learning as well and was already mentioned the elementary showcase is getting ready to take place and is so we hope that you do have your calendars marked for may that you can join us as we celebrate all of the accomplishments of our preschoolers through with in collaboration with the gar foundation are in arts spark so there's there's lots you can get engaged in and see young people um really doing great things and continuing to learn as a feature of tonight's board meeting i've asked some of our colleagues to join me in sharing a set
031of new programming that we're offering to ensure that we are supporting whether it be our parents or young people still in the community that really want to upskill themselves so i'm going to ask if rachel teca would join me and then mrs stancy sykes will also be joining us along with one of our valued partners from connexus they're going to share with you how we are extending the knowledge services and relationships of our college and career academies to others in the community rachel board of education thank you for allowing this wonderful group of people to share some celebrations with regard to opportunities for not only our students but also for also for our families with me tonight i have stancy sykes who is a family and community partner specialist as well as amica holmes from
032connexus neo where she's the engagement manager in charge of the healthcare sector so i'm going to give a very brief kind of high level overview of this opportunity and then i'm going to turn it over to these fine women our vision has always been to be able to use the spaces that we have within akron public schools to try to build the capacity of our families to fill some of the workforce needs within our community we have state-of-the-art facilities with our lab spaces and our equipment that really do align to the workforce needs of northeast ohio so when you think about our manufacturing space our it labs our healthcare pathways the vision has always been you know we use them from eight to three but there's also additional time in the evenings that is available
033to be able to you know maximize that space that really help our communities continue to grow so in the initial phase with the hewlett foundation grant we put a strategy around that how can we utilize our spaces to really provide some opportunities for additional learning for our families and our community we tried a couple different pathways that didn't get a lot of traction to be honest with you we had an opportunity around manufacturing we had a little bit of opportunity around i.t that was a little bit more difficult to get some traction with what we did get a lot of traction with was in the healthcare sector which is fantastic it's a huge need in our community and so i really wanted to have the opportunity to share that great work that's stancy sykes beth
034winter from my office from college and career academies really worked collaboratively designed to design this opportunity and then amica came in and added an additional layer so we're going to share that with you tonight and be around to answer any questions you might have there you go all right just to give a little background about connexus for those of you who may not know we are a non-profit organization and we make the connection between system partners to build a thriving workforce in summit county our three main sectors that we focus on are healthcare technology and manufacturing which i oversee the healthcare and what we do is just convene and convene some of our partners whether it's employers whether it's education partners whether it's government entities um to just hear about some of the workforce needs
035that they have and come up with innovation innovative solutions around workforce development and programming we also serve as as a strategic partner with college and careers academies through akron public schools to also serve as public service excuse me public service arts business and communication so really how we got to this point was we all know that covet 19 has taken a huge impact on health care so we listen to our employer partners and we also um just listened to some of the challenges they were facing around recruitment and retention people were leaving health care every single day and it was hard to get those spots filled and make some of these front-line positions attractive so we really honed in and focused on the stna position and how can we make this um how can we
036make this this position attractive to recruit people to enter into the workforce that are interested in getting into healthcare and using that as a stepping stone into health care and also just letting people know that these jobs are essential as well as good jobs we also convened some focus groups in the community we conducted them with community members just to listen to why people were leaving health care and why people were not going into health care and some of the things that came to light were about the wages that people were receiving as well as the culture of the workplace so the response that we had with some funding that we secured through the national fund for workforce solutions we introduced some initiatives to our employer partners based on some of their workforce needs so
037we offered some of that supervisor training which helped to focus on managers to create that culture an inclusive culture for frontline workers and create a supportive environment we also introduced success coaching for new hires within their first 90 days to give them that person that they could connect with to overcome some of those barriers so whether it was child care whether it was transportation they knew exactly who they could go to just to kind of ease that brunt of being new in this position we got the demands of covid we got you know managers who may or may not really understand the culture so just anything that we could do to help people stay in health care because we know those first 90 days of employment are very very crucial and then also we pitched
038a community campaign to recruit and train 125 front-line workers so whether it was medical assistant whether it was nursing assistants nurses and especially focused on black residents in the community because that's where that culture piece really came about when we had those focus groups that a lot of the black residents did not feel appreciated and supported in their positions um so this is going on through may of 2023 and again the little diagram just kind of outlines what i'm saying so we connected with community partners to connect and recruit in the community so this is where aps and ms sykes has been a great um a great influence to what we're doing training them all so all of our training is conducted through stark state university with the stna training which takes about five weeks
039long and then also connecting them with those employers that we that we work with on a daily basis through our healthcare sector partnership to get these people into jobs so a little bit of progress that we have thus far so out of our goal of 125 we currently have had 67 enroll since the fall of 2021. out of those 67 seven have been current aps students so some of those senior students they have taken advantage of this opportunity and enrolled in the sdna training program as well as 27 members whether it was aps alumni whether it was family members or community members of aps with the work of ms sykes she was able to recruit 27 of those people to a role in the program 80 percent have completed training thus far so i just
040want to talk just really really briefly this partnership that we have had with aps this was the largest amount of numbers that we've had so far with all of our cohorts so um just alone with january 19th and january 27th we had 27 people enroll that was huge now because of this momentum that we have going stark state is is really working with us how can we get partners involved how can we mimic the great work that akron public schools have has done to support our programming so right now we have a open house which is coming up on may the 10th from one to four where we're recruiting more community members to come learn about the stna program and some of the supports that go along with the program so now i'm going to
041turn it over to ms sykes to talk a little bit about how the program worked and some support she provided to families thank you amica okay so i just want to share briefly with you some of the highlights there's so much that went on but i do want to point some things out for you so we did begin with the information sessions just to give the community some information about what to expect what are we going to do on our end from aps perspective and what you can expect as a student in the program so we also invited them to register at that information session and also make a plan to participate and move forward we ended up with two cohorts a day and an evening class and it was when i counted up the
042weeks it was eight to nine weeks for uh the program participants and as far as the sdna training they had classroom training they also had a hands-on experience in their labs and also some some clinical experiences out in the community so here are just a few photos so the bottom there that's from the information session that we have right here in our building to north main and uh the top right that's from the first day of class so i went over the first day and was taking pictures and make sure um they were there they were so excited and i didn't embarrass them too much but i was so glad to see them so that was like a first in-person check-in while they were going through the session and then i also made sure that
043we had a mid check-in in person as well so some of the supports that we provided there was free tuition and fees for those who participated in the program we also offer free uniforms that included their scrubs their shoes their socks their masks whatever they needed books were included in this as well and when it came to transportation connexus also provided for the participants gas cards at their first check-in and then i went back again and presented those to them at admit check-in we also provided bus passes if they needed those health screenings and background checks this was very important so one of the requirements of the program is that you need to complete a background check and you also have to do a health screening so just think about getting a health screening and
044what that might entail with their day so to make it more convenient for those who participated in the program we actually work with a partner uh some health partnered with college and career academies and they conducted the screenings here and the background checks typically what happens if you're going to pursue this program at stark state you need to do that at their canton campus again we wanted to reduce barriers so we asked can you do that in akron instead of the canton campus they thought about it they said we can do that and then i said well can you do it here and they said yes so they did it the same day we had the health screenings so now you just have one trip to make instead of multiple trips to make and again
045when you have to make a doctor's appointment it could be the next week the next month who knows so it was just very convenient for them to work that out and like i mentioned before we had the check-ins uh weekly we had virtual check-ins so we met we had conversations about uh what happened the past week what are you looking for in the upcoming weeks we had conversation about academics as well as some folks were saying okay my little one is getting ready for kindergarten how do i get that going what do i need to do so it was perfect time to have those conversations and follow up with them to give them that information and then of course we had an end program celebration where they could bring their families out and be celebrated
046with all the hard work that they participated in as well so they received certificates from aps thank you so much superintendent father matt for those um they also received a plaque of inspirational encouraging words we had dinner uh it was so exciting to see the families come in and bring them flowers and just encourage them one of the this is our am cohort and this is a picture from our pm cohort one of the family members when i called to remind her you know we're having the end of year celebration how many will you bring she mentioned to me that she it was her due date and i said oh well don't worry about it we'll get everything to you after the fact i'll drop it off it's okay she said no i'll probably go
047into labor before or after and i said but it's okay she said no no i'll be there and so about 40 minutes to do the celebration she comes in with her family including the new baby she had just been discharged from the hospital and this was her first stop before she went home she said she did not want to miss it so to your point relationships and collaboration they definitely matter so um and so these are some more pictures from the celebration so some of the next steps so for those who completed the program some of them are being promoted at their current jobs and they'll be doing more work using the training that they receive through the stna program others are deciding to move on through the to the lpn program and then to
048the rn program some are doing the medical assisting and others are really excited to just see what else they can do in education and they're thinking about counseling and just all other types of areas so again just being there to support them through this it's just been a phenomenal experience and thank you all for this opportunity [Applause] thank you for sharing that opportunity that's been again made available to our parents to our students things of that nature uh when miss tekka says you know we've tried this in other pathway areas i do believe one of the secret sauces this time was the miss sykes effect because i would meet with her on a periodic basis and she always entered our meetings with let me tell you what's going on uh what's been happening in a
049positive way there also were times where uh you know because she's got some hooks but so she also was let me tell you what barrier we're running up against and so we would problem solve about you know kind of how do we remove barriers uh to really keep our families and students encouraged because success breeds success so one of the things we wanted to make sure is that not only was this stna certification possible but also that there was a clear pathway to say and when you're ready to go to the next level here's how you do that too and so i think the model is something we will continue to perfect we already know through our college and career work that having the supports available and having someone to cheerlead for you and also
050expect you know the best and expect you're going to attend and follow through things of that nature that that makes a difference so again thank you thank you connexus you all just our fabulous partners all the way around so we really appreciate all that you do to amica so board members that is my report thank you very much um next we will move to the president's report and so there's a few things i too attended the project grad march gratness and um as i shared with a few others that that event either was the best march greatness event we ever had or i was just so dang happy to be out the house [Laughter] i think it might be a combination of both it really was a great event the food was phenomenal i also
051could have been very hungry um and the games i didn't win the 50-50 kind of sad about that um but it was good to see uh mrs jackson miss jackson up there and getting all of the cheers for her outfit so that was pretty awesome and so it was really just fun but at the end of the day it was for a good cause raising money uh for some outstanding students to go to college and at the end of the day if you could have fun and send us kids to school and have a better future uh i mean it got to be the best thing in america right so i'm really excited to attend that um i also had opportunity um between our last meeting and now to visit helen arnold and that school
052is uh obviously uh named after a former board president um but also just the school's energy uh is really changing and transforming in in a positive way i think that i've always gotten great vibes and energies in that school but this time there was just so much more happening that was really good so there was a group in the auditorium beginning to practice and they asked if i could stay but unfortunately i had this thing called a j.o.b so i had to go to that but it was just really good to see all the students and energy we had three ambassadors who showed me around and we went into one of the classrooms and they said this is our class and i was like okay great um and one of the students was saying yes
053and this is outside is where they show all of our work and they were doing different uh i don't even know what it's called but basically uh the different books that they were doing it was like a hundred book challenge or something like that and they were they were showing all the books that the students in that class had read it was so many i was overwhelmed by how many books there were so uh that was pretty amazing we also i had the opportunity to talk to mr c um during that time as well and one of the students mentioned going through the saturday academy and so i asked what's the saturday academy and he beamed up and wanted to tell me all about the saturday academy and i think that the saturday academy and
054i already talked to uh madam superintendent about this is really a diamond and a rough and a great best practice they do it for uh to get students ready for the the test however i think that that is a great thing just to think about for students so that they don't fall behind as well and i'm just one wondering how can we extend that and other schools but obviously offer it more often but either way his energy was great before we start talking about saturday academy but then once saturday academy came up i learned a lot about it and what he's doing and what the students are doing with that so i just wanted to share that experience with everyone and hopefully if you get time you can go check out helen arnold and seeing
055more of what they're there they have to offer oh let me also say they have this a reward program that comes out this vending machine i'm probably gonna get this wrong but i was pretty excited about the freaking vending machine because it had so many cool different things in it and they get i'm going to call them coupons or coins i think they're coins whatever they get certain things for doing different great things and learning uh part of their their year and they get so many they can go redeem it at the vending machine and i thought that was uh pretty phenomenal it wasn't there the last time i was there and i think i was there in like november or something and so uh it was just kind of cool to see some of
056the great new things so i just wanted to share that as well with that being said i do have one other thing that i wanted to share with the board so and actually we had one of the speakers talk about it i wanted to share a little bit about just my thoughts about what we as public education advocates should be thinking about and caring about and so i i wanted to just read this statement in regards to house bill 616 which is somewhat of a combination of florida's don't say gay and then also the uh house bill i think it's 327 and it's really just an abomination of a bill and i wanted to uh just share this with everyone so i firmly believe that public education uh should uplift all regardless of race sex
057gender identity socioeconomic status or physical cognitive or emotional ability public education in schools shouldn't be a place where fear resides but should be a place for compassion respect and dignity hateful rhetoric and discriminate discriminatory actions have no place in public education and shouldn't be legislated hbo616 is a hazard to children into the existence of public education the bill stokes the flames of some of some adults deeply held hatred divisiveness and fear-mongering that doesn't belong anywhere near our education of our youth this country is vast enough for everyone to live learn and grow we should celebrate everyone's uniquenesses and individual individuality instead of trying to find ways to raise people's existence from the curriculum at a time when a pressing issue in education is ensuring all students see themselves in their schools and in the classroom
058this bill combines the disgusting pieces of other divisive bills and adds language from the repugnant florida bill this bill is an endangerment to children and the purpose of public education as a tool for the advancement of all people we all should be concerned about bills like this and the negative effects that it have on our children and the assault on the respect and civility we should be promoting as a society in general this kind of mendacious for a propaganda mask as legislation has no place in our state nor our school it undermines teachers and places our schools as a target of aberrant politics which is inappropriate i believe for our schools for our youth and what we should be standing for as a society and with that being said that's my personal statement and i
059wanted to open the floor up now to really uh have a conversation around what i believe is our duty is to protect all of our kids and our system um and the laws that are made in this state do affect the decisions that we make and what we do and so i thought that would be good if we could talk a little bit about our appetite to consider a resolution at our next meeting to oppose house bill mrs mckittrick i would support a resolution to oppose house bill 616 thank you very much and i also think that people who are educators should be left to educate the children and lawmakers unless they are specialists in education should leave the educating to those who are specialists thank you very much ms alexander yes i agree that
060all kids should have an opportunity to learn and no matter what race creek they come from they should all have the opportunity to learn they shouldn't be as stated by our speaker or our person who wanted to speak today to the board uh stated that how he had to uh go through some traumatic times uh because of his his identity and that shouldn't happen to any kid because it hurts kids and hurts them not just that time it hurts them in their future and so i do believe too uh that these these students should get the best and have the best they can get and we should be protective of our students and not allow legislators who want to put some type of legislation that will hurt our kids into the school system or any
061school system so that it would cause more problems than it would uh allowing the kids to have a safe place to get an education so and i don't know a whole lot about the bill yet i haven't read it so if we do need to oppose it it's something i i feel strong about i would agree to oppose a resolution as well thank you very much and i also want to just say that i believe uh miss alexander meant to say they not him so just wanted to make sure or them yep thanks miss jackson as mr alexander said i would want to read more up on the bill i just started to peruse it a bit when it was mentioned however i think all students should be safe at all times in school and
062as i understand it we have policies in place and against bullying and harassment and based off what was shared about the experience in school it sounds to me that that can be deemed as bullying and harassment so if we have policies in place i think a bigger question is the accountability of enforcing policies that's already in place that's supposed to protect all children all children regardless of what their um sexual orientation is their race or um their gender idea identity we have policies that's already in place that is supposed to be for the protection of the children and so i think my question is how can students be empowered to know that these policies are working for them that already exist that is supposed to be for them betterment of all students that currently attend
063schools and so with that being said i think i don't know necessarily like i said i'm not familiar i need to look more into the bill that citing for a resolution and saying that's protecting children is the answer because we have things in place that should already be executed to protect all learners within the schools and i think the the bigger question is if that's not happening why and we need to hold people accountable regardless of how the student is being assauded or verbally abused they should be protected based on policies that are already in place yes i appreciate that comment i'm going to go to dr hall in a second i just wanted to add that unfortunately people's hatred knows no bounds so the kindness and fidelity to education and providing the sanctity of
064safety for the school environment for every kid is not the will of everybody and i think that what opposing bills like this do just like we opposed uh the the horrible decision by the state school board and you know also uh did our resolution to say public racism is a public health crisis you know people who have different identities um gender identities or what have you uh are people too and uh they deserve to see themselves in um the curriculum the other piece of this is this bill isn't just you know it'll be it's not just about not saying gay which is what florida's law was this bill is more so about a combination of what they're calling divisive uh curriculum or elements or what have you concepts and they're saying you know being gay
065is one of them but also things around race and so we specifically called out in our policy racial uh equity because even though these are things uh you know in the world that i live in this is all things that people should be doing but i wouldn't have a job if everybody was doing it right so uh it's very important that we do stand up for our most marginalized communities who are vulnerable from legislation like this which ultimately can override our policy so uh dr hall yeah dr agbar appreciate your comments um yeah i mean so i would also support uh that resolution and i would say that i know that that there's some of us on the board that are still doing some reading and research on this i would point uh i would
066i would respectfully suggest um a couple editorials that are in the columbus dispatch as a great place to start uh some of that background reading um there's one that actually came out just yesterday um in the columbus dispatch and and i beg you know i beg the partner of anybody over at the academic journal if there had been if there had been articles uh i'm sorry articles in the abj i haven't seen them um there have been again my apologies but i've seen two great ones in dispatch on this topic the first one came out yesterday was called uh our view let ohio teachers teach truth um educators kids are casualties of of raging culture of war um which is a great art which is a great title the second one that is um i
067think came out a few days prior to that was an editorial that um talks about i think the title was um our view uh ohio's lgbtq kids would be forced in closet while lawmakers don't say gay copy um you know so again you know um so those are two editorials that i i would you know respectfully um you know ask folks to take a look at or read through um if you're looking for some you know some background information and a really interesting and i think um very fair and pragmatic honest look um at uh house bill 616. um so again so again again so you know dispatch again a great source to read through i'd love to see the abj uh put something out on this and again apologies to them if they have
068and i just missed it um you know but um but i would like to see our our local paper also um weigh in on this topic and and at least try to educate some folks on it here locally uh because not everyone's looking at the columbus dispatch uh on a regular basis um but yeah so i'd also support um a resolution opposing that as well so um thank you for your time thank you very much dr hall anyone else okay um did you i'm sorry did you have some yes no i just wanted to state that i haven't had the opportunity to delve deeply into you know the bill um i just know a little bit of what i heard in its relation to the florida bill which is not something that i would support
069and so if it has any similarities to that you know i would certainly support a resolution against those types of thinking and ideas for our schools and to miss jackson's point as well just knowing what we already have in place making sure us as a district are you know already making sure that those types of uh you know things aren't occurring within our district but as a you know public education advocate in general certainly that's not something i would you know be against that resolution thank you very much mr perry mr president i'm certainly against house bill 616. i think it's it's instructive for me if you read the actual language of the concept divisive or inherently racist concepts include diversity equity and inclusion if that's not racist i don't know what it is so
070i strongly support what they said coming in here and giving us uh you know their thoughts about this and it's racist it just is thank you very much so it sounds like [Music] the majority of the board at least wants us to consider a resolution at our next meeting so i will work with mr pendleton to bring forth that resolution for your consideration so with that being said that will conclude my report any questions or further discussion hearing seeing none we do have mr pendleton virtually i believe he's giving his own report but i want to make sure that's accurate good evening i'll be giving my report uh mostly an executive session tonight okay thank you very much thank you all right so we will move uh to our committee reports legal contracts and work
071policy committee mr alexander yes uh legal policy uh committee met on march 30th all that was present was mrs mckendrick mr perry dr akbar superintendent fowler mack mr pendleton who were present we reviewed student name and pronoun policy this this policy as well as the review of the employee name and pronoun policy both were reviewed they were i'm sorry the committee reviewed these draft policies the policy has been shared with senior staff and board members to for review mrs fido will review the suggestions and incorporate them into the draft policy before begin before bringing it to the legal and policy committee for the final reading we also reviewed live stream broadcast of board meeting policy this draft has been drafted this policy has been drafted and shared with the board in the recent friday notes
072of superintendent follower mack and then reviewed the assignments within the district policy and this policy as well has been drafted and shared with the board and mrs fowler mack's friday notes that is a report from the legal policy committee thank you thanks thank you very much uh miss miss jackson let me add a amendment mrs jackson was there briefly we love you [Laughter] all right any questions for miss alexander okay uh hearing none um we will reflect that mrs jackson was president for that meeting we will now move to finance and capital management committee ms altre thank you mr president and so at our most recent meeting we just discussed the ongoing work towards our upcoming may forecast and esther plans we will be presented with these items the board as a whole over two
073meetings upcoming in may but the bulk of our meeting was around the long-term operational planning process with some of those highlights including an estimated need of 113 million dollars in repairs just to get our buildings that weren't touched by the clc project warm dry and safe so those are just some basic needs we've been doing a lot of patching up over the years and i think madame superintendent stated we're doing patches on patches now and so that is something that needs to be remedied as we're moving forward also there was a lot of discussion around the kenmore garfield building that continues to be you know very important to that community as well as everyone else and so there was a lot of robust conversation about around that topic that's going to be ongoing we're going
074to be having to make some really you know tough decisions as a board moving forward so that's kind of what we discussed i don't know if ms jackson has anything she'd like to add or miss dr hall who was also there i would probably defer to dr hall because i think he had some great insight concerning the kenmore garfield current building so yeah yeah yeah thanks miss audrey thanks jackie happy to weigh in yeah i think as a part of that robust conversation i think we talked about the um deleterious impact that had that closing that building is going to have on the local economy we talked about there being a people cost and an economic cost we talked about some of the concerns around crime you know that can spring up around uh closed
075buildings we've seen it already um in other in other parts of vacamer boats have closed um you know so and as i recall from that meeting i know that we had a conversation about trade-offs um you know and that you know if we're going to make it uh make it a priority um to address the camera situation in a more immediate way uh that that could that could require us making some trade-offs uh because you know you can't do everything all at the same time um so while we have the capacity to do some things concurrently we can't do everything concurrently and so i think that's where my recollection is that's that's where we we left it um and i think that i think we're i think we're eagerly waiting um to see some options
076on what a plan including those trade-offs is going to look like and how we address that so those are my comments and thanks for giving the opportunity to win this afternoon that's all thank you very much any questions for finance and capital management hearing and seeing none we will move to instructional policy and student achievement i don't know which of the trio will be doing that so i'm just going to turn it over whoever starting will start i'm going to start with ms autry thank you and so at our most recent instructional policy uh meeting we did hear an update from mrs teca regarding the process of the board approval for graded courses of study that get pulled down from the approved career tech education courses from ode um and then she did send a
077video to all of us uh regarding that as well so if you haven't seen that yet certainly take advantage but essentially we are expanding the course offerings that we have for our pathways and so i learned i think i already knew this but i was refreshed that our advisory boards at each school helped decide what those courses are for our pathways and so that's expanded for our health sciences pathways i'm correct and so that was this one area that we did discuss at instructional policy okay moving on part of we had a presentation from josh allen about a new program that will help us with attendance because we've had some significant attendance issues particularly in the covet era and coming out of covet and so this is a free program to akron public schools from
078the ohio department of education and it's called the engage ohio attendance recovery program and it's support for students who are chronically absent in k-12 no cost to aps through 2023 the district opt-in is voluntary and it it engages counselors who will assess the need and offer families and students a success coach and the outreach includes phone calls texts social media and the u.s mail free one-on-one support to students and families to help manage academic and social emotional barriers to try and get to the root of why kids aren't coming to school and how we can help fix that so there are three levels of outreach general outreach just call and check to see if the child's okay if more barriers exist then what are some additional strategies to help and if a child isn't attending
079school coach will reach out at least three or four times a week and the student ratio is one success coach to 40 students there's no limit on the number of referrals to the district so if we want to try and have i think we talked about a number of 11 000. of our students that maybe then that that's what we would oh there's josh allen hi josh allen josh if you would join at the mic please okay thank you we talked about is it on we talked about uh 15 000 students a little over 50 percent of our students are chronically absent and or close to and we just want to make sure that outreach is reaching to as many kids as possible especially when it's free to our district good um i just think
080we have two things that we still have to have one approval from the board and two the debt is sharing agreement sign for this to happen okay does have any questions for me questions thank you mr allen and then as always in your board packet please have a look at the family resource center the stay in the game and the i promise school updates and that's all for us thank you thank you very much any questions for instructional policy and student achievement okay thank you moving on to equity committee uh dr hall yeah thanks dr barr i would so i'll ask you you're indulged i'm gonna try to get through this without coughing all over the coughing all into the uh the camera um i may not be able to do that um anyway so
081we had a great meeting on wednesday april 6 of the equity committee and we began with the chief diversity officer report um in large part because the last two meetings we didn't get to her report that's that's critical so there's just that many things to discuss so she began by providing an update on the family and community engagement uh capacity building um so basically she shared a handout that that was listing the audit and implementation supports that have been brought in by um madam superintendent to increase the capacity for supporting outreach and community connections we highlighted three agencies the first one was the national center for families learning uh and ms chapman sort of outlined for us that uh that the ncfl really works to support um working with team leading teachers um to deepen
082their understanding and awareness and connecting with families um she also gave a shout out to miss vitale uh over at i believe cyberlink correct me if i'm wrong miss chapter i think she was over at cyberling for the work that she's done uh i guess she gave her a presentation in columbus really talking about the work that she's done supporting family engagement work in her building um the second agency that we talked about was the national network of partnership um and that's uh that's a group that really uh it really functions in partnership with johns hopkins which is a leading research and educational institution here uh in the u.s and really it's about providing um family liaisons with more research-based training you know that the program and a whole really works by working with schools
083and districts and states to implement research-based partnership programs and so so that's kind of the connection here as well and then the third agency is called the institute for educational leadership and so the iel we talked about how the iel is auditing the way that we engage with families um and through a plethora of different ways um like communications programs etc um and helping us just to learn how to better um how to better our work and connecting with families there's also a lot of data um around the number of uh contacts i think that's i think i've got here 11 000 plus contacts would be our family via our family liaisons so we have a great deal of evidence around sort of what's happening with regard to service referrals resource connections attendance and an
084additional needs around creating additional support structures um and uh and some of the new positions that this board has approved in recent weeks we'll also be supporting that work as well uh which led me to ask the question you know what does family what does creating family engagement look like outside of the buildings with family resource center so many of you know that we have four places in which we have family resource centers uh mickey bright helen arnold robinson and north uh and so but for me you know one of the blind spots that i had was well what does it look like outside of those four places and so so we had a great deal of conversation around the role that um building principals and councils and teachers play and providing those so those
085additional supports and connections in in buildings where we and the plethora of places that we have outside of those four places that that need that support i think we've said i think we've said here before that honestly if we could we could afford to put them in every building we would um you know so so so that was really a really robust uh very robust conversation around that um and then also uh we talked about in the super dentist report uh she shared with us uh the latest version of the excellence through equity uh vision uh document i think i think we're just about done with that document i think it should be pretty close to ready for prime time here uh very very shortly um and this basically is serving as the foundational document
086um that that that sort of draws from uh this this board's previous actions around the three for three and um as dr akbar mentioned earlier um our resolution declaring racism on public health emergency and some of the earlier work that mr alexander has done as well going back to 2016 2017 so uh so again really drawing from all really from drawing from all the good work that we've been doing for the last several years and creating these documents and then moving the work forward right and so so that document so that first documents just about done uh and then we were talking about connecting that through uh with our with our theory of action and so the theory of action is really what focuses on the district services and supports um that we use to
087develop action and outcomes and implementing and achieving the vision uh that's outlined in in the excellence through equity guiding document and the key thing here is that it provides accountability at every level so central office support its principals it's it's our educators which is inclusive of all teachers and support staff and then our scholars are students as well right so so everyone has their has their part to play um you know and so so so that that kind of every level is crucial um and i think mrs chapman also mentioned that theory of action has been has enjoyed a wide support um among senior level staff uh and they've got some great feedback as well so um so i think i think that that's where i would conclude my remarks um and i'll defer to
088mr alexander if there's anything that he'd like to add um i'm sure i'm sure i've probably missed something mr alexander no i think you hit it all had it all together dr hall and hit all the points that we discussed during the meeting so thank you for doing a great job okay roger that thank you thank you very much dr hall the only thing i will add is i know we discussed making updates to the document to focus on the commitments that the system will make as equity is not achieved without the system making um commitments uh to allow for it to happen so we're looking forward to those modifications at our next meeting with that being said any other discussion for equity committee okay hearing then that concludes our committee reports as there's no
089unfinished business or new business to come before the board we do have a need to recess into executive session so the board will chair will entertain a motion to recess into executive session pursuant to ohio revised code 121.22 g1 for the purposes of considering the compensation of a public employee or official of the school district and g4 preparing for negotiations thank you very much it's been properly moved by ms autry it's their second second been seconded by miss alexander any discussion on that motion hearing seeing none we will do a roll call vote mr atkins jackson yes mckittrick yes akbar yes alexander yes autry yes perry yes paul aye thank you very much as uh we do not foresee a uh any action taken after we return from executive session uh we will stand in
090adjournment into executive session at 7 00 p.m thank you very much [Music] so [Music] all right