Board of Education Livestream - 02/28/22

001[Music] hello everyone and welcome to the regularly scheduled board meeting of akron public schools board of education on 28 february 2022 thank you everyone and welcome uh to all that is uh here we appreciate uh the large crowd today um and we're going to go ahead and get started we're going to start with the roll call um mr pendleton dr akbar here mr alexander president ms autry president dr hall aye ms jackson president mrs mckittrick here mr perry here thank you and welcome to our student board member elliott jackson from president garfield high school president thank you yes yes good to see you uh mr jackson and we're going to start off with the pledge of allegiance led by our student board member elliott jackson if everyone can please stand if they can i pledge

002allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you very much uh we now move to our community and school reflections and we will start with elliot jackson from the 10th grade at uh kenmore garfield school so welcome for joining us here today and the floor is yours hi i am elliot jackson and i'm a sophomore at kimroy garfield high school and i'm in a business management pathway this is my first year serving as a student board member and this is my first board report i'm feeling pretty good about serving guys a board member and giving my report [Laughter] since we are on the topic of feeling good i also feel like the staff

003at kilmer garfield high schools make students feel good because they make students feel like they matter as an example if your grades drop teachers will reach out to see if they can help or if there are any physical or mental problems going on mr kundu the academy coach is all around he checks on students and he tries his best to get what students need if he can't get what students need he gets the next best thing as a small forward and powerful on the kenmar garfield high school basketball team i would say that coach cundiffs attends most of the home games for support speaking of the kenmore garfield high school basketball team coach mcneil thompson iii who was co-coach of the year for aka public schools led the team to the sectional playoffs the team

004went from zero wins last season to winning eighth season which is big for us coach mcneil thompson the third pushed us because he sees something in us that we don't see in ourselves we know no matter what we can fall back on him people like academy coach kundu and coach mcneal thompson iii are needing all accurate public schools to encourage students to be their best i have two younger slimming to attend reimer clc i want them and other young students to have these type of role models while they are growing up and attending accurate public schools kenmore garfield high school has good adult role models and pathway courses that help students get out of their comfort zones like our culinary arts program the program is conducted by jennifer morales the kenmore garfield high school restaurant

005opened this february and over 400 teachers and students have been serving meals such as cold and hot sandwiches wraps and salads this november culinary students created cookie recipes and competed in a recipe contest the winning recipes were used to bake over 800 cookies for the staff here at the sylvester small building during this holiday eighty percent of the students in the culinary program earned their rise up certificate and completed training and are ready for the safe serve test the safe served credential allows students to manage a restaurant you are all invited by ms morales and the kenmore garfield high school culinary students to visit the restaurant for lunch in my pathway business management 11 students have events to the deca state competition this is an increase from last year at the competition students will present

006a solution to a business problem in a 10-minute skit they must also compete a 100 question test i can't join the deca team at the state competition because of basketball season but i wish them all good luck however i do have a recommendation about the length of class periods class prayers are almost an hour 30 minutes long it is hard for students to sit and not get distracted and bore or pull out their cell phones during long classes students get bombarded by the work and students give up i recommend 45 to 50 minute classes because it allows students to focus on one topic at a time and it helps students manage time the student board and i look forward to attending the diversity equity and inclusion training with the elected board members on march 6th

007and 7th here at the sylvester small building dr s kent butler the president of the american council association will facilitate the training on behalf of the student board and myself we wish all akron public schools and families good health thank you very much elliot uh great update it's good to know all the great things happening at camera garfield and what you're doing with deca as well as the rest of your decades i also was in deca so i know how that regional competition is i know it's kind of hard not to be there with your fellow members but uh i know you're going to do well in basketball you know i want to open it up to the board if there's any uh comments or anything that they want to make to elliott specifically then

008we'll move forward with other community and school reflections mrs jackson yes thank you i would just like to thank you on a very well done report also i'm excited to test out this restaurant as i would be at your school this wednesday so let her know i'm coming someone to take her up on that invite and um again to see what a well-rounded and multifaceted learner you are taking part in so many things so i want to commend you on that and your commitment to your education and being balanced thank you thank you very much anyone else all right thank you again elliot great job and we now open it up to the rest of the board for any community or school reflections ms autry thank you mr president um i just wanted to i

009know we're going to be discussing this later on in the agenda but i just wanted to acknowledge the emails that i've already received regarding the cdc changes and so i just wanted those who took the time to formulate emails and reach out um to know that uh that they were read and i acknowledge that and understand and just a reminder that we're all in this together and so we do understand that the mass have not been easy part of this whole thing and that in a perfect world we wouldn't have them i understand that but we've never been one to be you know followers per se but i just again wanted to acknowledge that uh those letters that were taken uh the time that was taken to send those emails out also i just wanted

010to thank the staff at harris jackson annex who i was able to visit since we last met had a really good time at the annex i don't know if you guys remember that little tent thing that they do in the gym and everyone hides under a color so i happened to come in on the gym class and all the kids were hiding so i got to pretend like where the kids at they're all gone and so then they all came out and hugged me and that's just the best feeling in the world to have a bunch of elementary kids wrap their arms around your legs so but mrs aller and her team over there is doing a really good job and just thank you for that invitation awesome awesome thank you very much ms autry

011anyone else dr hall yeah i just want to echo and add to what ms autry said about the um the commentary around the mask um you know again it is something that we'll be you know talking about tonight but i think the important thing to remember in addition to what ms autry said as well is that regardless of ultimately what decision we we we come to uh in the coming weeks um you know there are going to be folks who are going to have a differing opinion right um you know it's unfortunate that this topic like a lot of topics around as it relates to the pandemic have become so divisive and so the one thing i just want to really ask for for folks who are watching either you know and is that please

012please please just know that everything that we're doing is is we're trying to act in the best interest of our students as well as our staff and i just would ask it's a request and a call for um for civil and rational discourse so even though we may disagree on some of these things you know please let's let's let's let's remember that we're all adults um and that the way in the ways in which we talk and treat each other that there are younger folks who are watching us talk entries are there in these in these ways and so so again above all else can we elevate civil and rational discourse as we continue to unpack this topic uh moving forward so that's all i have to add mr president thank you very much anyone

013else miss jackson thank you mr president um yes um since our last meeting i've had the pleasure to visit um two of our wonderful schools within my um kenmore garfield cluster uh the first one being mickey bright the principal there i think it's music is that how you pronounce it i hope i didn't butcher her name she was wonderful very welcoming front desk was amazing upon entering the building the building was beautiful it just was a whole good energy when you entered into mickey bright it's like you felt welcome there it was a place that you just felt like i would send my kid to this school and i actually i'm told some people that but the one of the things that was so the most impressive takeaway from visiting the school was miss braiding

014mary brady as a gym teacher and when i you know many people who know me know i always use the term excellence looks different because it does and it's a difference between good and great and okay and basic and what was so amazing about this gym teacher is that she had within the gym her own resource room and i know audrey you talked about last meeting the four different resource rooms in the district and mickey bright has one in on their facility but she has a separate one in her gym that she has um garnered resources from her relation relationships her connections it has tennis shoes in it for the students i hear she collects food and gives snacks to the kids off her own time and resources and i said this is how excellence

015looks different it's the commitment and the dedication of a gym teacher to go above and beyond to make sure that no student will enter her gym not having tinny shoes not having resources so i really commend that gym teacher because it's not just gym it's the impact that she has on those young people each day to know that they're cared about additionally in the gym it's it was something like a collage i want to say like a cutout of the state of ohio and it's a major collage with all these pictures of lebron james and things within the city of akron and you know it's that same what they see they can be and i thought how amazing is this gym teacher that this is a focal point in her gym that each time a

016learner comes in this gym not only do they feel cared about acknowledged and recognized but they also see what they can be in their great state with their own akron's own lebron james on the wall so i was very blown away and i just kudos to her for just having that intestinal fortitude that passion to educate in the spirit of excellence also the kindergarten i went into the kindergarten classroom mrs seward and it was so great to see those little kindergartners with the one-on-one technology that they had in the classrooms but not only that i went over to um one little young man's student and he was logging on and i said hey show me how you log on and he was like okay wait let me find the letters and numbers what was great

017for me is because he was able to identify and recognize that he needed a number nine that it was h j k like saying them as he was putting in the code and i thought wow not only he's making the connection but i know he recognizes as a kindergartner his numbers and his letter order and so i thought that was very impressive also they had a great um co-teaching model and this is all that mickey bright so mickey bright is doing some wonderful things nestled in that community and so i definitely wanted to highlight that i also went to innis and had the pleasure to meet with the principal and walk around the building the principal was very nice as well i went to voras elementary which is another elementary school that is nestled away

018and again amazing um the principal mrs douglas and her dean of students i think his name is mcferrin great energy excited um this at that school that one of their learners i think interviewed you um superintendent and so the dean of student was just really excited about what they were doing and you know it's great when someone's excited about what they do because it's contagious and so i was like i mean what can i do how can i be a part of this so i'm going to attend i think they're having like a math night or they're having an event on march 9th that i'm excited to attend i made sure i put it on my schedule but it's just to be encouraged and uplifted that is wonderful things happen in our district beautiful young

019people so creative i've seen so many creative styles and different people in the classrooms and so i just i thought i'd share that i know it was a lot but you know thank you very much we definitely appreciate it and it's good to hear all the great things happening in our district anyone else mr alexander yes this saturday uh i participated in osba trustee meeting and it was the first meeting of the year it was a long meeting it was 5.5 hours so it was a lot that was going on they they had orientation because we have some new trustees that came aboard so there was part of the presentation was orientation for those individuals uh they talked about the role of trustees and our roles and things that we should do uh talk about

020ethics a big part of us too about the budget they talked about their budget and then one of the the sessions that uh we talked about which is pretty big was nsba and osba uh and what's going on with nsbn osb and that was about an hour long conversation so we had a lot that was being discussed during that time and uh we were there was some some concerns i know that board members on this board uh talked about cube and wanted to be able to participate in cube so i asked some questions about that they didn't have all the answers yet but uh i did talk to the executive director rick lewis this morning and he said that nsba was having a meeting this afternoon and they were going to discuss that and he

021would get back to me so as soon as he gets back to me i will get back to all of our board and our treasurer and superintendent so that you all know what they decided whether we can attend uh nsba cube conferences this year and that's what mr lewis was trying to get us to be able to do to participate in the nsba cube programming this year uh also he's going to give me an update of what's going on with this new organization because osba was getting out of nsba and so uh he's going to give us an update hopefully next month what osba is doing their role and right now there's about 22 other states that's on board with this here and there's a group of individuals who are part of this committee and

022one is a was a member of cube and he is on the committee to see what they can try to get us an experience that we have for for cube so it was a lot of good discussion that was going on there again it was a lengthy lengthy meeting and uh there's a lot going on so uh once i get more information as far as nsba and cube i will get back to everybody and make sure to uh we know where we stand because we don't have a lot of time because the nsba normally has their conference in april but cube has theirs in september so we have time for for both really a little bit of time thank you very much anyone else okay um i have one thing i usually save mine for

023my report but i thought this was a fun thing fun fact that i wanted to share as we as a district wrap up black history month uh as we also uh wanted to take some time to recognize the black history that has been exhibited right here among us from this board so a few things i wanted to mention out of the 175 year history of akron public schools there has only been 15 members of the of the board that have been uh black and we are actually living in a moment of history uh where for the first time uh six of the seven members on this board are black and that's the first time that has ever happened in the history of akron public schools and the board of education so i thought that was

024something good to acknowledge also there's only been there's been about 290 individuals who have served on this board and that means five percent of that number uh has been members of the black community and with that being said uh i wanted to recognize uh not not only the first uh black member of our community on the board but also there's been eight of those 15 black members who also served as president and so i wanted to take this time to just call out their names and first uh recognized uh reverend eugene morgan who in 1968 began serving this board as the first black member um and then in 1972 became the first black person to ever serve as president of this board um he was followed by helen arnold who also served as president of

025this board reverend ronald fowler who also served as president of this board linda omobian who served as president the reverend curtis walker paul allison our very own bruce alexander and myself so just wanted to acknowledge uh that we are living in history uh right now as well so uh i want to thank you for that and that's uh what i wanted to share so thank you [Applause] so with that being said as we're living in our 175th year of akron public schools and exhibiting black excellence that looks different as ms jackson talked about one of the things that's been important to us is ensuring that we provide opportunity for our public to address us and so we will move to request to address the board and we have three individuals here who have requested to

026address us so i want to call them out in order and then uh actually just share a few of the rules um or procedures that we've outlined and so we have uh first uh christina ball followed by suzanne graham which will be rounded out by uh ronald smith and you will have uh each will have three minutes to give your presentation uh to share with us uh whatever is on your mind we ask that you resist any uh comments that are specifically targeting um specific personnel or student information and if that is the topic of your conversation then you can just let us know and we can recess uh briefly into executive session to hear your comments and then we'll return so uh with that being said mrs ball is she here okay seeing not

027seeing christina ball we will move to suzanne graham from downtown akron partnership thank you for joining us today hi thank you so much for the opportunity to be here so just for some clarification so if i'm calling out a compliment for a specific staff person should i reserve that and make it a generalization no compliments are fine [Laughter] grievances are not fantastic thank you well thank you so much for this opportunity uh i was truly inspired by superintendent fowler max bkine330 campaign and i thought that it was high time that i come and pay it forward a little bit and tell you some great things and community partnerships that are in place in downtown we are so grateful that you have your administrative offices as part of the downtown district and also we're very fortunate

028to have this nif stem middle school as part of the downtown district and the stem high school on our periphery so the nift stem middle school has worked with us in prior years with their problem-based learning and we were fortunate to be able to partner with them again and come up with some great ideas for making downtown a more walkable and vibrant neighborhood and i wanted to thank coach brenda leighton as well as instructional leader morgan for their excellent curriculum design and their willingness to partner with us as a community partner the learners had incredible ideas so creative when you talk about creative students they really came up with wonderful ideas and we hope to be able to move some of them forward in the future then i also wanted to complement the mandarin program

029that coach king liang is in charge of she worked with our organization as well as with the university of akron global ties asia inc and a number of community partners to create the first lunar new year celebration in downtown it was a wonderful partnership it was excellent to see some of the learners be able to learn from a master instructor through a connection that coach liang made with us and we hope to again continue that into the future more than 1100 people came down to celebrate lunar new year in downtown and we look forward to that event growing as well so thank you so much you're doing amazing things and thank you for your leadership [Applause] thank you very much miss graham we appreciate that presentation and all that you're doing for downtown akron next

030we have ron smith thank you very much for being here mr smith yeah and thank you for allowing me i want to say good evening everybody's here members of the first of all i start with president agbar miss christine fowler mack who i'm just not seeing for the first time since you joined us members of the school board and all you wonderful people here i'm here today for a specific reason but let me um first of all i know i got three minutes i'm gonna take two to say what i'm gonna say and i'll say it succinctly and quick and i'll tell you this in about 15 seconds when i'm in the classroom with the students they'll say mr smith are you going to preach today i said if you get in the echo do

031what you're supposed to do by way of your schoolwork in the context of hospital be done in the classroom in a learning environment mr smith will not preach to you today but if you don't do what you got to do i'm going to preach to you because it has 180 school days as i understand it so like if you just learn one thing every day at the end of the school year you learn 180 things that you can tell your parents now that's my backdrop let me quickly get into why i'm here today i'm not on behalf of the students in the akron public school district wide but particularly three schools that i've spent a lot of time the last three years that's brookdale clc firestone clc eclc now booktube and eclc demographically are pretty

032close in terms of the demographics firestone on the other hand is pretty close it's about half and half in terms of the demographics so the problem is folks is the problem is with the cell phone now i know this is a tough sale it's going to be hard to deal with this because you've had problems with it before and it's kind of like who's going to take this responsibility that's been a problem i get that i understand that but by the same token and at the end of the day if it's truly about the children there's a cliche and it's often spoken that is children are the lifeblood of every society children are our future if in fact we believe that and we're just not saying that and if it's true then we have to

033save these children we have a crisis folks in our schools and this is an observation it's not opinion it's a spectrum i've worked in those three schools but i've also worked in virus i'm sorry stonesville for four months wildwood for the whole year and i can tell you there's a fundamental difference in how the kids learn with the cell phone white students on one hand when they use a cell phone they use it as a tool in learning black kids on the other hand when they use it they use it as a toy so there's not much learning going on and then out of there comes a lot of problems now there's a resolution there's a solution we come up with and so i'm going to pass this out now the board you know on

034the back of there you'll see it's what we call a cell phone holder [Music] very inexpensive big enough that we can put it up against the wall near the teacher's desk because there's a rule that students are not allowed to come to the teacher's desk without first asking permission the problem was that some of the students say well mr smith somebody might steal my cell phone and i said well we've got some structures in place that we can prevent that that won't be a problem but the children have told me that they can multitask and i thought about that i said well i don't really think you can well doing some research dr renee maroy as i was pronounced he's a psychologist at vanderbilt university says that human beings cannot multitask although we can do

035a myriad of tasks the human brain the body's not built it's not wired to multitask the children seem to think that they can sometimes say well you really can't multitask what's happening with the cell phones is when they're using this as a toy and not a tool there's a lot of fights there's a whole lot of things that are going on because they're texting each other they're getting the group chats and out of there comes a lot of things that we don't want anti-social behavior we don't we don't need that in the schools in and around the schools it's been a problem i think you've seen articles in the papers and a lot of talk about that so i'm sorry to uh interrupt you uh but uh you have gone a little over a minute

036over your time okay uh so i just wanted to thank you on behalf of the board for uh sharing your thoughts with us today i'm also gonna ask that you follow up with um the madam superintendent or our designated to if you want to talk further about this specific uh proposal okay well thank you and thank you for allowing me that time thank you very much mr smith thank you very much everyone for uh joining us today [Applause] we will move to our next item on the agenda which is recognitions um where we will recognize uh one of our stalwart uh long-serving board members lisa mansfield for her outstanding work with osba and so i want to turn it over to madam superintendent sure good evening to members of the board and and the community

037it gives me great pleasure to make this recognition this evening lisa mansfield is receiving the osba training award just a few weeks ago we received good news and so that we want to take a moment to mention and recognize lisa mansfield who is receiving a select award from the ohio school boards association or osba as we often refer to it she is one of 50 members or even past members in ohio to be given this award that is out of 3 400 board members statewide they selected 50. next month at the northeast region spring conference she will be given the osba training award lisa mansfield represents so very well the tenets of what it meant to be a dedicated servant in fact osba's training award is part of their five star awards program saluting service

038training aptitude and recognition those of us know lisa and know all too well that she is one that really seeks to master every aspect of board service when she was a member of the board and gives her all in everything she does and she really dedicated herself in this sense to training and they wish to recognize that lisa's real strength beyond just being a very prepared and trained board member when she was a part of the board was her personal way of connecting with others others on the board the community our families our staff and most importantly students so i know you were very proud of elliott here tonight she made a point of taking interest in all and in what they were doing aps has been so proud to have had mrs mansfield to

039not only serve and lead with us but to do so with her whole heart in everything that she's done for akron the city and for aps so although you've stepped away you are being recognized by osba so we felt like it was really fitting to give you this award uh in in person and in front of the board with whom you served with so lisa if you come forward we'd like to present you with this award i don't have a hand thank you did you want to see him um i'll just say thank you again it's always been my deepest pleasure to in any way represent this district and the folks that serve and to all the history that uh dr akbar mentioned especially the good parts of what we've been able to do together

040so i look forward to what we'll all continue to do together for this community and i do miss you all i do thank you [Applause] thank you very much and again congratulations to mrs mansfield we next move to approval of the previous meeting minutes from the regular meeting scheduled on monday february 14 2022 we will entertain a motion to approve uh or yeah approve those previous many minutes i so move is improperly moved by mr perry it's their second second it's been seconded by dr hall any discussion on the motion hearing none mr pendleton roll call vote please mr perry yes dr hall aye ms jackson yes mrs mckittrick yes dr akbar yes mr alexander yes ms autry yes thank you thank you very much we now move to personnel recommendations madam superintendent thank you

041very much and before we get into the personnel recommendations i'd like to call director mcvay to the side podium to make some introductions good evening before i call the folks up who are present tonight i wanted to mention that in the personnel recommendations is a recommendation for jasmine waters to be hired as our college access program manager she was unable to be at the board meeting tonight but she is going to be coming at the next board meeting and at that meeting i will bring her up and introduce her to you all next lori hale if you could come up please miss hale graduated from the university of akron in 2008 with her k-12 intervention specialist degree and was hired directly out of college with akron public schools she taught at mickey bright for nine

042years working both in the now programs cross categorical and briefly as a lead teacher in 2012 she earned her master's in school leadership and administration from the university of akron where he moved to bridges in 2017 and taught second grade until she began supporting the school as a behavior coach for the past five years she found her home as a bulldog where she finds joy working with exceptional students at bridges tonight we are recommending her to fill the vacant assistant principal position at bridges congratulations i'm grateful that i get to continue to work with an amazing group of students and an exceptional group of compassionate and hard-working staff and paraprofessionals and support staff at bridges and it's just really a blessing thank you all right rachel tucker come on over rachel is our current director

043of the college and career academies of akron at akron public schools and she is responsible for leading the district in the transformation to college and career academies and ensuring all aps students graduate from high school prepared for college career and life prior to her role as the director of college and career academies rachel worked served in a variety of leadership positions including roles in the office of special education and principal for bridges learning center and north high school while at north high school rachel led her team of staff students families and business partners and piloting the college and career academy model for the district the success of the pilot program at north paved the way for the district to implement the model at seven additional akron high schools and to begin expanding the model at

044aps middle and elementary schools rachel is a founding fellow with the national career academy coalition and the akron public schools lead with the ford ngl network she continually collaborates with districts across the nation to learn and share best practices among practitioners she earned her bachelor's degree in special education and master's degree in educational administration from youngstown state university at this time we are recommending her for the chief of leadership and learning assistant superintendent position congratulations thank you so much i would like to express my gratitude to the board of education and superintendent fowler mack for this exciting opportunity i've had over 25 years of experience working in the akron public schools and i really continue to be inspired by the young people that we serve the teachers that we serve with and the outstanding leadership

045of this district the idea of excellence through equity and the college and career academy framework really requires us to be human-centered right makes us make sure that our students graduate ready for whatever it is they choose to do after high school and make sure that our scholars our staff our families are seen valued and heard this new organizational structure that superintendent mack has laid out will allow us to really deepen our implementation of all of that work i appreciate your confidence in me to really be the chief of leadership and learning and deepen this work and so that we're committed to work along all the outstanding talented people in this room in our schools and in our community so our charge is to really bring this vision to fruition and i appreciate the opportunity thank

046you wonderful thank you for those introductions we're really excited by all of the talent that we have amongst us and talent that is so committed to our children and especially having brought home the recommendation around the chief of leadership and learning because we've talked about that position for quite a while and they're so pleased to have such strength in our presence that is willing to step up and work uh in a new way uh with with the team and so really appreciate uh your uh accepting this challenge uh rachel and look forward to working with you as we work together uh with the entire team and also uh congratulations to you as well lori glad to see you finish off that license and step into that space so with that i wish to also recommend

047the approval of the personnel recommendations in categories 5 through 16. and as we do that i also want to make mention of the fact that tucked within those personnel recommendations is also something to both celebrate but something that is bittersweet and so we will be as well asking you to act regrettably on the official retirement of dr ellen mcwilliams woods within those that personnel section and just to remind you ellen began her career at the akron public schools in 1989 as an interpreter for the hearing impaired in 1992 she became a consultant for the medicaid program and then in 1996 she moved into the role of special education coordinator in july 2002 ellen became the director of special education and in january 2008 became the assistant superintendent for the district as you already know she

048has been instrumental in the implementation of many instructional and educational programs over the course of her career most significantly is her involvement with the establishment of the college and career academies of akron her dedication to the students family staff of this district is beyond behind everything that she does she truly cares about aps and we know it is hard for her to end her career with us but we wish her well in whatever path she pursues moving forward and i personally do thank her for the way in which she has supported me in my first year as the superintendent to allow me to to get to know the district through my eyes but yet also guiding and making sure i understand the context and us understand all of the many strengths that we have in

049our midst so we want to take special moment to recognize dr mcwilliams woods within our set of personnel recommendations [Applause] thank you very much madam superintendent uh we now uh will accept the motion to accept the uh personnel recommendations has been properly moved by dr hall is there a second second been seconded by mr perry any discussion on uh the motion to approve the personnel recommendations uh mr alexander we're going to approve all but one right [Laughter] nothing yet uh all right well i i do want to just take this time also to thank dr mcwilliams woods for all all of her work with this district most of you know i worked with dr mick williams woods and yvonne cover and smothers prior to joining the board and it's always a pleasure to work with

050all of you and uh you know we've seen your your hard work for many many years so thank you uh very much with that being said if there's no other discussion items we would do 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 very much uh nets on our agenda are the resolutions and motions on the consent agenda madam superintendent yes sir i wish to recommend the approval of the resolutions and motions presented in category 21. they are in proper format and i move for their approval thank you very much we have received those resolutions and motions on the consent agenda uh is there a motion to approve so moved from property moved by ms autry

051is there a second second seconded by dr hall any discussion on the resolution's emotions on the consent agenda hearing and saying done roll call vote mr pendleton dr akbar yes mr alexander yes ms autry yes mr perry yes dr hall aye ms jackson yes mrs mckittrick yes thank you very much and now we move to business affairs recommendations madam superintendent yes sir i wish to recommend the approval of the business affairs recommendations in category 23. there are again some really notable resolutions that the board is going to be acting upon within this section and just wanted to take a chance to highlight two first of all we have a national author coming to town that will be at sam salem school and so we're really excited about the opportunity for our students to engage with

052the national author and that is in 23.10 and it is the author of patrick picklebottom and the penny book so that author will be coming to town and we'll have to sneak over when that occurs as well there is a really a partnership that is worthy of mention and spotlighting in 23.18 it you are going to be acting on the memorandum of understanding between the district and united way of summit and medina county on behalf of the family resource centers and this will establish the agreements around not only our existing but set up the agreements for how it is we build additional family resource centers as we move the work forward so we're so thankful for the partnership from united way of summit at medina county and wanted to make mention of that as well

053so i move i recommend approval of those business affairs recommendations in categories 23. thank you very much we have heard those business and affairs recommendations is there a motion on the table i still move it's been moved by mr perry it's their second second seconded by mr alexander any discussion on that motion hearing is saying now we will do a roll call vote mr pendleton mr perry yes dr hall aye ms jackson yes mrs mckittrick yes dr akbar yes but abstain on 23.9 thank you mr alexander yes ms autry yes thank you very much and we will now move to superintendent's report madam superintendent thank you sir uh we have a few items that we are going to cover uh in this section of our agenda tonight and so i'm going to first frame them

054and then as well we'll keep the meeting moving by having members of our team come before you in in the order i will describe first i would like to begin my report by expressing appreciation and thanks for the many positive ways in which our district staff families and the broader community has responded to our organic and fun-filled effort to spotlight and demonstrate kindness on a more regular basis throughout our community and schools through our be kind 330 campaign we have been really capturing amongst our students random acts of kindness and the results were overwhelming in the community to have so many business leaders also step forward and say here's the ways in which our organization is also joining in and as well even other school districts that are doing a spin-off of be kind ohio

055to really join in on spreading kindness and we we invite any and all who want to have that type of focus to do so we also just want to make mention that gojo industries did donate over 20 000 vials 20 000 plus vials of purell as their first act of comprehensive random act of kindness and so our students got bottles like this and actually even larger bottles that they could take home with them and as an act of kindness reminding them and their families to not only be kind but in doing so being healthy and and so we really want to thank all that have participated thus far and just to remind you you can capture on your cell phone any random act of kindness that you see and we are collecting those uh pictures

056and videos and adding them to our website so that we can really celebrate so much of what's right in our world while day to day our students are bombarded if they turn on the television or interact sometimes with others of so many things that are frustrating there still is a lot happening that's right and they can contribute to that i would next like to acknowledge [Music] a one of our partners and that was already covered in the resolution so also in the resolutions you voted on in 19.8 was a gift and just want to take a moment to acknowledge that gift uh we want to thank a real friend a long time friend of education and onto a person who has an entrepreneurial spirit through the borton de morgan foundation we were here in the

057akron schools among those selected as a recipient of its recent round of grants and we welcomed the gift of 20 thousand dollars by the foundation's trustees at the borton burton d morgan foundation akron public schools plans to use those grant funds to support students enrolled in akron after school program in the spring summer and fall of this this year and the upcoming year the burton d morgan foundation focuses its grant funding on supporting entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship education in northeast ohio however occasionally the foundation makes one-time proactive grants to deserving organizations that serve our community and noted that this is an area in which we are focused and excelling so the akron after school program which provides extended learning opportunities to hundreds of students each year was honored to be chosen for this grant so just

058wanted to bring your awareness to that the next topic just to cover briefly i would like to acknowledge the improving state of covet 19 transmission in akron and throughout aps our safety protocols and proactive actions are working on friday the centers for disease control announced it would no longer simply look at the number of positive covic cases in a certain time period before deciding whether to increase or decrease community safeguards instead it will now include in its equation the severity of cases the community impact from them and the community vaccination levels so in essence we have an additional way to look at what's happening within our community under the new guidance the cdc now recommends categorizing covet community levels as high medium or low and then they outline strategies communities should use for each of

059these summit county is faring well now and really as it received its first ranking within that new system it is at a low category our city is reporting its lowest numbers of new positive cases daily since last july we are really tracking quite carefully the number of percentage of students and also adults in our community who have received vaccinations so while our current cases are very low we also still have some work to do around ensuring that the vaccination levels do increase and we're going to talk about that in a few minutes where mrs folk is going to be able to share a new partnership that we have entered into so right now we're going to do two things as it relates to where we are with the covet spread first we're going to continue

060to follow the guidance of the elect the health officials in our area and our health officials are acknowledging here locally the fact that we are seeing some progress and attribute that to all of the measures in place but the summit county public health and local hospitals here are continuing to recommend mass use in schools as we work to increase the levels of vaccinations amongst our young people we know that we need to make our decisions longer term with our stakeholders input in mind so we as we keep masking in place right now and continue to monitor that over the next week and a half we will also issue a survey to get the input from our families and our faculty and staff here at the school around masking so that we are making decisions not

061only knowing where we stand today and how to move forward but also knowing if there are any other safety protocols and measures that need to put into place so this afternoon i did alert our faculty and staff that for now we are maintaining our current practice of masking in schools with your support if that's what you choose to do to continue to support that that that would be our stance while we gathered that additional information so that i could bring that information back to the board along with what we know or with the numbers so we will have the survey issued and tabulated by march 18th positioning us to be able to update the board yet again on that topic i will now describe then a three-part update which is full of some good information

062that's going to be delivered in a real succinct way so we have three different groups that are going to join us first we're going to have mr kenya harrington and mr keith lichty that they're going to assist me in coming to provide the board a less than 10 minute update around the analysis currently underway to assist the board in the community in providing input and ideas around how we should face our most pressing facility and long-term planning efforts around our schools across our system our key data and information has now been organized to help us better understand what is happening within our district and within our city and what they're going to describe is then how we together can begin to make decisions moving forward thank you superintendent fowler mack board president akbar board members

063thank you for having us myself mr lichty mrs folk we wanted to take time and update you on our long-term operational plan and we have under 10 minutes so we're going to be succinct like the superintendent said to provide context we'll be opening the doors on our final clc building in school year 2223 closing out near two decades of major renovations and new construction that touched over 70 percent of our school buildings in recent past many other changes to our facilities operations and city also occurred including several school consolidations shifting enrollment boundaries and population trends and the introduction of new school models we're now looking ahead to determine the best plan for the remaining buildings and co-curricular athletic spaces untouched by the clc campaign and also to plot the path to answering a number of

064near medium and long-term operational questions that have significant interdependencies as leaders we've sought to design a long-term operational plan that will use every opportunity even those decisions typically thought of as purely operational in nature to move closer to the academic achievement health and well-being and equity goals we are seeking for our students and to most fully realize the potential of our schools as community anchors therefore we want to provide you the time frame of the work that we're doing uh with the usage of our fact-based data spreadsheet and recommendations that are made around the sensitive questions that come about so if you look you'll see the arrows pointing from quarter 3 20 21 when we started this work moving all the way out to quarter 3 20 22. so we've set foundations for decisions ahead

065we build data driven perspectives to ground planning and currently we're working to enlist our community as partners in planning work and that's in round one and then we'll begin launching scenario planning which we've started to do and then we'll move to phase two around two of the listing community partners and the planning work as well so we wanted to give you an idea of how the long-term operational planning team works it's a very methodical process we know that every decision we make can cause a domino effect and that we also need to make sure that we're including all stakeholders in the community so we're going to walk you through what this process looks like and show you an example with harris jackson so step one is really digging into the data ken you talked about

066that fact based database we'll share that in a moment but after that deep dive into the data then step two we make sure we're framing the questions so what is the problem that we're trying to solve and we make sure that everybody collectively understands that mission step three is looking at the data having the conversations and the back and forth dialogue about what is every possible outcome that we can have to this problem and the team works through that and presents those findings to the leadership step four is making those recommendations to leadership and then obviously step five then acting upon that decision uh so a little bit more about that fact based database it has over 100 different reports at least around these four areas and so they're really all helping to triangulate the

067data and to make sure everybody on the business side of the house speaks the same language as the academic side of the house so we have at the very top academic or excuse me program quality so that includes things around academics social emotional health of the building facility condition and utilization so what's happening in our building how many classes are full how many how many students and teachers can it hold student choice and enrollment so looking at those trends and what's happening in our buildings and our clusters across the district and then finally resources this is especially important right now as we know we have esser funds for the next few years so how are we spending our money wisely so we're going to take you through what that looked like for this latest question

068we were trying to answer which is what can we do with the current state of the north hill schools and the over capacity of harris jackson so as i mentioned step one was really diving into the data around north hill and harris jackson and we're really determined to really wrap that up that the elementary enrollment over time is steadily increasing in the north hill and then even more so in the harris jackson and then you know we know that they continue to be over capacity they felt tight when they moved in and it's just getting tighter as time goes so here's just a couple of graphics to just to give you an idea of some of the things that we were looking at you can see in the chart on the left that overall our

069elementary enrollment has been going down in other clusters across the district but you can see it is rising in the north hill and the chart on the right further shows that and you can see that we have quite a dramatic difference in the north hill neighborhood this second chart shows that enrollment trajectory over time you can see that leggett and forest hill remain pretty much steady and finley and harris jackson again are on the rise and we expect it next year to be even larger so that was step one of the process step two is making sure that we're identifying you know what is the problem that we're trying to solve we knew that you know we could not provide the permanent solution yet so our team was looking at what is those most immediate

070needs that we can solve and we wanted to make sure that we weren't solving it on the backs of the teachers so how could we give them some relief without just raising class sizes and then step two we'll be diving deeper into those issues and and coming back to the team and coming back to the stakeholders to determine what is that larger set of uh items solutions that need to be implemented so when we look at step three it's identify and assess viable and impact of solutions so therefore trying to make sure that we're looking at things thoughtful and mindful so when we talk about harris jackson some of the example options we understood to maintain relocation of kindergarten classes at essex create repurpose more spaces on harris jackson's site to accommodate classroom and or

071student intervention needs find and utilize alternative spaces close to harris-jackson so working with mrs folk and mr lawson we've done some investigation to look at that option as well reduce district-driven space usage for special populations work closely with school team to plan for homeroom configuration aligned to the 24 to 1 student-to-teacher ratio increase student-teacher ratio and then further limit enrollment for students outside of zone boundaries implement a capped classroom methodology and shift enrollment boundaries to neighboring schools so those are all the different solutions that were discussed and once again making sure we're being thoughtful and what is decided yeah so as kenya mentioned each one of those were unpacked and discussed at length so that we could come up with the following recommendations which was to keep harris to keep kindergarten classes over at essex

072and actually probably adding one more because we think we'll need seven classes over there next year and then launch efforts to ensure that our implementation is thoughtful and uh and that we engage all of the stakeholders so we wanted to also uh provide you with a visual of what we're doing as we as it relates to our other buildings so if you look in the the far left column you'll see the schools and or the topics uh for discussion points in the middle we wanted to make sure we categorized the questions with implications for the experience of students and staff in the upcoming school year so these are time sensitive questions and then that far right column we understand that this work does not stop and as we start to look at solutions they may

073create or have other questions that evolve so we want to make sure we're looking beyond and we're making sure we're being mindful in whatever we decide with our stakeholders and with our leadership and that's just an additional for our buildings as well thank you so much team and so kenya and keith are a subset of a core team that has really taken the lead on gathering all of our information and setting the tables so that uh those across the district we can hopefully have one set of quest you know uh time together where we're problem solving uh then really to have one group make a decision and then move on and the other group says but wait you forgot about uh transportation or you forgot about uh the food service when you think about the

074decisions that you've made so our process allows for all of our stakeholders from varying perspectives that are providing and leading service in our district to be at the table to make the initial recommendations that then become socialized and out in the community so with the board with the community but it's not that we all have to start you know at ground level of without having some of the thinking done that begins to get us on our way so hopefully this gives you a sense of the long-term planning that is trying to address right away the most pressing challenges as we set the table for really a broader planning exercise that say how do we really tackle some of these challenges and facilities and a long-term vision of our schools in a more comprehensive way come

075the fall so any immediate questions for these gentlemen i know the board has wrestled with some of this through your committee work and we will continue to come back to the committee for the absol the deep dive sure dr hall yeah so so first off thanks for the time that you both took to put this together um so you know i want to channel a couple of questions i've got from parents on north hill about this topic um the first one i i wanted to ask was um why are we continuing to move the kindergartners as opposed to the older students you know i know that there are a number of parents that i've spoken to that are concerned about that being the move um and so i'm sure that there's a rationale that that

076that you come up with as a part of this process that would explain why we chose kindergartners as opposed to moving the older students at harris jackson and if you care to elaborate i can take that one yeah so i i think we when we initially looked at the programming that was already occurring in the annex it was servicing preschool students already in that building and so some of the modifications even to the physical structure already were in place to accommodate them so that was one of the influencing factors into thinking about kindergarten families as well our older students have already established themselves in their school community so we would be actually moving students that were in progress of finishing their careers temporarily as opposed to families that had yet to start with their students

077and so mainly because of the what we were able to do developmentally for all of those littles in one place and taking a note off the fact that many districts actually create early childhood centers because then you can concentrate services supports and create really an environment uh for children and so for us and thinking about a difficult choice in a short period of time um that was the decision uh that we made so we'll ask a follow-up to that um uh so so it sounds like so and i was trying i'm trying to keep up because you guys went pretty fast um i i get that your time restrained but i'm trying to keep up with sort of the the options that that were all being considered and it sounds like with the wrapping was

078slide 17 um but um but it sounds like from what you're saying miss farmack that one of the options on here i'm not sure it's on here would be to further develop essex as a early as a sort of early childhood you know center and keep students there in the long term is that something that's so it might be so the board that's one of the things that the board may wish to explore as we truly tackle the longer term issue of the growth in the north cluster because even as we saw from just last year to this this upcoming year we grew by uh potentially by another whole cohort of students so there is still very significant growth occurring in in that cluster yeah i've got one more but i'll refer to my colleagues

079they want to jump in all right uh mr alexander yeah so and and i like what you're saying because you keep the key there's smaller kids in one location and you can provide the services there in that one building versus moving from building the building it's a little easier for them than it is for the older kids but my question is are we looking at the demographics of the younger individuals who are coming in because we're saying this might be here but it might change and so it could change that when we look at the demographics of those the population the senses of those coming in they may they may go back and so the numbers may not be as high which means you have to probably move them back to harris jackson so we're

080looking at that data correct we are looking at the data and i don't know if the team cares to make any remarks so we looked at not only what is today but we've looked at the trends to look at you know what the trends have been and one of the great things i think we're seeing is the demographics are holding and we know where they're actually even increasing a bit and then one of the things um mrs folk has done along with our team is we've commissioned though a longer demographic study so we've just you know kind of finalized that so we will actually have someone dive deep and we'll have a 10-year view of what we anticipate happening across our city not only in this particular area so by the time come the fall

081when you are really wrestling with what are some of the significant plans in moving forward you will also have that report about enrollment trends as well thank you okay sorry any other questions okay thank you okay so i just have one question and it's around [Music] equity and how we overlay equity with decisions around facility development and i didn't see that on here and the other thing that i was thinking about is as we're looking at all of our facility decision making if we can see you know with each building what are the equity indicators and what strategies are associated with each indicator so as we're making decisions we know okay if there's greater numbers of students with ieps in this building can we're going to need more classrooms for uh smaller uh interventions so

082just thinking about what those are and us being able to see that would be critical that's really exciting because uh one of the pieces and ways in which we do look at the data is through the lens of equity so we do have it cut in ways that we can show you you know through an equity lens here's what equity looks like across our district across buildings in terms of the way in which we're making decisions not only through this process but also when we're able to update you as well around our equity framework because we parallel have been spending time developing and understanding our resource data to understand where the resources sit as it relates to equity and how we're distributing funds and what might be the ways in which as we move forward

083we would do that consistently so we'll be able to update you as well from a resource in shortly and then we can actually spend time just on how does equity play itself out in this process in our update when we come back to the um the boards committee or even here in a board meeting okay thank you i i just wanted to make sure that my my point was that it wasn't included in the slides at least i didn't see it when you had the different buildings and the different factors that were being considered equity wasn't called out specifically and when you fail to do that sometimes when decisions get made things get overlooked i know that you have a process but it's good to have it included directly on that chart right we'll choose

084those slides next time we'll use those exact slides and we'll also share those with you sure thank you i've got one more i got one more my may um okay the final question the final question um is uh so that and and there may be a prohibition against this i just want to make sure i'm asking it because this was the other question i've been asked in the community over there is um there are other schools that are on north hill uh blessed trinity saint anthony some others and so were there issues with co-locating students so that way they're closer i mean so i mean was that something that we looked at from a collocation standpoint and you know there's a prohibition like what is the prohibition and if there's not mrs folk uh in

085the presentation i had shared that some of the things that her and mr lawson did but i'll let her speak to okay roger that thank you good evening actually many of those buildings that you remember being on north hill have already been repurposed so as an example saint anthony's is running as a regular school christ the king is now steel academy saint martha's as you remember is now a senior citizen's home the school that was located at st hedwig's has been taken over completely by orianna house we actually toured prior to mrs fowler matt coming the uh urban vision location and we contacted them in their image for a major renovation of a kitchen and a licensed daycare so that limited the space as well so we did look at other locations that we could

086take somebody and put them in there but you're also then looking not only for classroom space you're looking for kitchen space gym space and other amenities to make sure to your point about equity that we're servicing the needs of the students in an equitable fashion so it was the place that could do that was essex for the kindergartners gosh i gotcha thank you you just made me feel very old thank you um north hill has changed quite a bit since i love there thank you okay so we're gonna transition to the second uh presentation uh that will be again a brief presentation deborah folk will share the good news about a new partnership that we have with children's hospital okay for this one i'm going to quite take off my mask because i am well

087socially distanced good evening how are you it's nice to see you all at this time i wanted to update you the last time we talked about some interesting information regarding kovid we indicated to you that we were going to have testing available at school clinics and this started in november of where students or staff who were symptomatic could report to the location school clinic and if they needed to and would like to they could take a school provided test home to administer it under the qualification necessary to determine if they were positive or negative for covid at this time we have a brand new partnership it is with akron children's hospital and we are very pleased to announce that we are started to implement on-site testing because we have met those qualifications to go ahead

088and be part of the celia waiver which allows our rns who are located at our middle schools and high schools to do actual testing on site so therefore this began in february it actually started the last time we were going to meet with you we wanted to share this prior to it starting but we got delayed slightly so it actually started the week of august february 21st so therefore our goals are actually to test so that our students not only could stay in school and our staff members could stay in school but they'd have knowledge of their personal health so those free tech take-home tests would still be available but we could go ahead and do it on site so our first thing to do in working with children's was the rns had to become

089seriously a licensed shirt that meant that they had to go through the training that their license allows them to administer a pcr test this is different than the take-home test which is an antigen test we then develop the partnership with them to include this testing and we're in the process of making sure that for our minor students we are outreaching to our parents because we do need parental consent to do so so we have reviewed the legal documents for notification of this process at the schools for parents to be notified we'll have the information available on the website they can download the actual document that they can fill out and return to us so we will have it on file should a student present to the clinic with symptoms we will contact the parent please

090you know come see debbie at the school would you like us to give you a take-home test would you like us to go ahead and do it on site and so therefore that's the process that we put together to start this wonderful opportunity to expand this program so at this time i can tell you that the week of the 21st we started with our east middle school and high school and our firestone litchfield we wanted one on the east side one on the west side and so therefore the staff and students can present to the clinics and we will be rolling this out continually to the last middle of march so there are certain groups of schools each week this week it is stem high stem middle bridges and it will go forward through the

091week of the 14th of march with our last school the elementaries the staff there is not certified they are not our ends so we will have specified times that if i went to say case and i wanted to have my son tested i could go directly to my nearest middle school or high school at a time and they would be very happy to administer the test we feel that this allows not only our parents but our staff and our students to know what the next step are so that if they test positive for covet obviously we're going to say please take debbie home make sure that she remains confidently home for the required five days return when her symptoms improve following the standard procedures but if debbie's test comes back negative then it's determining what

092is the next steps for debbie to can she still need to go home because she truly is sick with something else that's not covered related or is she allowed to remain in school because our goal is to have students in school being safe being healthy and still addressing their care and needs so we have rolled this out starting as i said the week of the 21st we should have it done by the middle of march and we are thrilled to have this as an opportunity for our families to be serviced at our locations as another part of dealing with covet on a daily basis thank you thank you mrs falk any immediate questions about the new partnership we will definitely keep you posted uh but we're trying to make sure access is not a challenge

093for our families and so we will continue to be as creative and we are so blessed to have so many partners in the community willing to step forward in this way thank you so much you're welcome lastly in our three-part section i'm going to turn this mic over to again dr mcwilliams woods and cfo pendleton who are going to come back you recall at the last board meeting there was a high level sharing of the esser plans and the focus areas for the district thus far and we were going to use this time to really engage you further and to get your feedback so [Music] dr mcwilliams woods and ryan thank you it's great to be back up here and i i feel as though every single thing that we have talked about tonight has

094led us to one of the focus areas that we have identified in esser because we have talked about facility needs and operation needs and that long-term planning needs we've talked about equity and making sure that we're looking at our equity across facilities across resources our incredible board member duo the jacksons tonight wasn't that good they talked about uh the academic supports received at kenmore garfield and the incredible social emotional climate wrap around supports those additionally are focus areas in our esser plan so everything you know has led us tonight to the plan that we presented last time to you to really tee up this evening for input ryan is going to talk through a couple things just to bring us back focused on this topic and then you have a handout in front of you

095that has the focus areas that i was just referencing that will lead us to our open discussion tonight let's start with a little bit more an additional framing if you remember we renamed this presentation the sustainable recovery and redesign or the do now build toward and this slide really captures we talk about this being a presentation into itself this really captures not only our journey in post-pandemic recovery in the spending of these one-time federal funds but it's really a national representation of what school districts are facing and so we talk about our three allocations of federal monies esther one two and three and what's nuance in this slide that we didn't talk about last time but let's just highlight it for you in the next couple is this response and recovery on sr1 which was

096about 10 million dollars look at the time and space that we have to respond and plan with those funds her two allocations 40 million dollars look at the compressed time that we have to respond and to plan esther 3 allocation is 96 million dollars and now look at the time that we have to respond and plan this is this is a nat this is a national phenomenon and school districts this slide is actually in partnership with the consultant we're working with ers and this is the slide that they put together and the green section is that compression in districts how they have to respond and plan you'll notice we have a couple components here about what is our do now build toward vision how do we equitably distribute our resources throughout this you're going to

097be seeing that in the coming meetings and then how do we make sure that our planning is sustainable just to show you where some of our sr3 monies have gone already where are we strategically investing those dollars well primarily in the classroom there's about eight million dollars here where those are the buckets of where we're spending monies right now so those are already pledged committed and spent i added this slide back in on the presentation because i do think it is our charge it's our charge for the board superintendent administrative team are charged to hold each other accountable that we have to be in that far right box we have to be in the sustainable innovation and redesign that every district in the circumstance that we're talking about we responded with recovery strategies we spent

098additional dollars to do so throughout that process we're learning innovative strategies and that's what everybody wants to capture that we move forward and that's what that third box represents is the sustainable redesign from all those things that we're learning post pandemic so these are the nine focus areas that we reviewed with all of you last time they have been honed through all of the feedback from families and from staff and focus groups that we've done over the past few months and it is now your time after reflecting on what we covered last time especially the you know family and staff survey information anything that you've heard out in the community and all the constituents that you represent for us to open it up to have you reflect on what do you believe should be the

099priorities what are you hearing within this what should we make sure we emphasize anything along those lines in terms of input to make sure we capture it as we do the final work on the plan over this next month to month and a half thank you very much any questions for dr mcwilliams woods or mr pendleton dr hall yeah thanks i mean so let's make sure i heard you correctly um as well so um when we're talking through these nine areas here i guess the only question that kind of popped in my brain when we met last time was um i think what would be helpful is to see some some examples of the kinds of things we're talking about when we say for example when we're saying equity versus engagement right those are two

100distinct different focus areas at least here on the page but are they really two distinct different areas right so is equity engagement really could that really be one category right so so i see so so and the other thing i wanted to ask is for example if so it's thinking through how does this how do these examples sort of flow through to what happens in the classroom right so and and so when you think about our report cards right how do we ultimately trace the dollars we're spending towards actual movement in academic metrics so the analogy would be like on in health care whenever we get into a new program i don't know how is it ultimately going to affect my readmission rate in my ed visits for example right so because you know those

101are real patient care outcomes right patient satisfaction for example right so here you know in my head the parallel goes well if i'm talking about an equity audit and the human resource department you know how does that how does it ultimately impact it you know what happens in the classroom right so so how do we sort of draw and i'm not asking to do that tonight i'm just simply saying like as i'm thinking through in my head the different areas how does it all how does it ultimately tie back to impacting what is happening in the classroom um so that's my broad kind of comment sure not really a question i think absolutely i think what i hear is in our plan to make it incredibly clear how you know the the visuals that we

102always use is the classrooms in the center of the universe and that's in the middle of everything so drawing those connections that when we're talking about a business affairs audit or human resource what does that actually mean for the classroom and make sure that's clear that's great feedback because because the answer could be for example human resource department oh well we're going to get you know a more diverse teaching you know cohort right so that translates to you know again three or four different things right so so that's just a very sort of basic example of what i'm talking about um you know so completely makes sense okay any other questions or comments so if there's not anything i will ask my one i want to say thank you because uh you this answers the

103vast majority of my first question um it's because my my major question was going to be around uh how do we showcase the the priorities in dollars and cents specifically around what happens in school buildings and so one of the things that's very important to me is reducing class size and i see that as number one are you on this sheet so i don't even have to go into that so that's great as well as my number two was counselors and so that's your number two as well so i see some synergy around our um priorities here the one thing though i was wondering is um well it's two things one around virtual tutoring what i've heard from parents is that virtual tutoring has not been successful for them and so i'm wondering how do

104we bolster some of those finances to in-person tutoring and then the last question i had is around ensuring that we can utilize this money to diversify our teaching force and i forget the name of the program but dr glover used to present about it the teacher you grow your own pipeline program how do we use this opportunity to expand that programming because currently we weren't spending any district money we had a 50 000 grant so how do we dedicate actual district money especially esther funds which can actually assist in uh diversifying our classroom uh teaching force so those are my questions that's great well really i guess the one with the question one was that feedback comment right and i just wanted to just highlight again that this this chart itself uh is the chart

105of even while we are planning these were the steps that we took uh just really wanting to first and foremost uh ensure that our first priority was shoring up what we felt like needed to happen in schools closest to teachers and students so these are things even before we're done with the plan are our ways that we have already started to spend some of the funds to uh you know first look at you know the the students staff and those those connections and then as you think about the priorities even in the broader plan we will even be able to do more so just wanted to draw that distinction between what's here and those things are already in progress and happening versus what we have yet to do to add on to that within the

106allowable because we can't just do any old things we do have some parameters we have to be responsible for i mean i think the the everything that you're saying word capturing you know in the notes so that we can make sure that the tutoring piece that we have clarity around both up offering virtual and in-person options we definitely you know certainly want to to be able to do that yeah i just had one quick question um with regard to the aps family resource centers i know that we have resource centers now i think we do this but i just want to ask it out loud are we tracking um how much and what type of each intervention and service we're providing in those family resource centers yes actually and we have our representative here tonight

107from united way that yes that is part of the metrics that carla chapman and her team monitor that along with united way the metrics of all the services outcomes yes gotcha okay i'll just add for that too that you know tied to the student service uh type of line that we're talking about within our structure moving forward we'll be even able to deepen that because right now i love how we talk about carla and her team and it's it's carla they used to talk about me like that in my former district so part of this this theme of capacity is uh one of the ways in which we're going to really be able to get our arms wrapped around uh some of those needs and both in service and in knowing so all right okay

108i appreciate that and i also just want to just thank you for both of these documents uh because they really um in a more detailed way answer many of my questions but one of the things that this might be a question for mr pendleton and mrs fowler mack it's one of the things i think will be helpful also is as we're prioritizing where to spend this large amount of money that we have now you know how can we map it out to sustainability and thinking about building capacity around many of these areas have been long-standing challenges for education and so it's great to be able to you know infuse this money in these ways some of these things won't be sustainable obviously but i think it will be great to be able to begin to

109talk about how do we prioritize what does maintain and sustain right and i'll start and then mr pendleton if you want to add one of the things that we did even with the support of the team that we engaged to assist us with thinking about that was to think about that notion of sustainability right out the gate so what we learned from was during the race to the top era where you had resources and then you faced this cliff you know there was this day at which those resources were no more and um really uh you a more abrupt way systems were needing to make cuts and things of that nature i think the premise of the esser plans or the user resources when given understood that we were first in a very unique time

110period in our country we had faced a tremendous pandemic and we were in a unique time period in which we were going to need to both respond but also hopefully leverage this moment to reinvent moving forward so there is an expectation of both to be occurring so with that in mind there are ways to think about it to plan for it in the long run that think what do we do now and we might have some things that we do now some ways in which we infuse some capacity now to really more substantially get on our way but in the long run what is our point of view about sustainability so right out the gate you know before we're even starting to initiate some of the actions we have that point of view we do

111have a framework that considers that and it's something we talk about all the time because we don't want to be at the place so not everything we do are we considering permanent but also not everything we do there are some things that we do think will build the capacity for a longer range way of being in the system could not say it any better but what i would add to dr akbar is to your question do your question is that the uh members of the general assembly are watching this very specifically and there's already been claims made that we are using these funds in unsustainable manners so we we do here not we here in the global conversation what we have to maintain that transparency is the five-year forecast in document which is reflective of

112all those federal funds and general funds and how they come in and out of our books and that's that process as finance committee knows is updated monthly so that'll be our primary financial planning tool document to bring back to the board every month finance look at your finance reports that come before the board and then in may when we have our full esser planning that will be reflective in the five-year forecast thank you mr alexander i'm going to go back i was going to piggyback up say something about what dr hall was saying at the family resource center and i had an opportunity this past week and i'm going to get some more information got to have all my information right miss miss chapman but i was able to participate in a panel this week

113when they were the young lady from united way was talking about what they're doing with these family resources and it's really nice and so i'm going to wait until i get all my ducks in order with mrs chapman and then i will come back and there's a group called ashay the four four individuals from our area who are part of this national piece that's going on and one of them is our own i want to i'll say that later but as soon as i get there from ms chapman you guys will hear more about it thank you thank you very much anyone else miss altering thank you mr president so i have more uh comments i have talked to several folks in the community and just been kind of listening and it it all seems

114to be coming back to this uh this mental health um and how that's just really been a big thing for everybody on every level and so i can see how that can actually flow through all of these focused areas but i'm thinking it would be very valuable for us to maybe invest in more mental health services i know we have you know an organization we work with already but we all know with a district our size i think that we could benefit from some more services so i would like to see that intentionally done because it's just so important in terms of this pandemic and how it's affected us all and then also in terms of a similar topic but recreation and leveraging how we utilize our clcs i think there's opportunities there to really

115expand how we use them opening them up you know after hours because i know that was the initial thing when we first started the project and so just maybe you know looking more into that and even also using our students and their fresh ideas that they have i'm really excited about the innovation grants and so students i think i would like to see them at the forefront of making some decisions and also empowering the communities to decide what it is that they need for themselves as well this is uh i'm sorry we agree uh wholeheartedly with you and i think those are ways in which we've been talking about dedicating coordination to extended learning and services and opportunities for kids after school more programming in that regard but also in terms of those mental health

116services mental health services behavioral health services some of those student services so we that that is actually we've been talking about this notion of a a big bet you know thinking of all that we're doing what are the biggest bets that we're making that really at the end of the day uh support our students and their experience in our schools and so some of those extended opportunities services are the types of things that we we really want to make those big bets around yeah i think you mirrored beautifully the family and staff voice i mean that if it's bold on these charts that's what was just universally came through in our focus groups and our surveys and now we have to we do have to organize around this you know now we have to put

117those structures in place to be able to say so how do we really build those mental health partnerships to go deeper instead of what we currently have because we have it but obviously what we're hearing is it's not enough and we need that's the biggest thing that came out of the the survey and the focus groups is we had this category but what we walked away was that we have to add a lot more and probably you know how we weight the funds it's going to be more than what we anticipated that we'll bring to you at bay because this these two areas came out as the greatest need across the survey and that was universal for staff community and family members and then students as well with the student focus groups that we did

118the superintendent ran one with our student board members as well yeah so just i guess a quick clarifying question so the family resource centers i mean to ms autry's point about the the the mental behavioral health standpoint if if a student's family member parent or parental figure is having mental behavioral sort of health problems or issues are they are those being addressed through the lens of the family resource centers as well we we can do that through the family resource centers or through our current partnerships with our mental health services minority behavioral health red oak green leaf that are in our schools they also do direct referrals or they have their own therapists for adults as well gotcha and so this is this may sound like a shameless plug but um it really is not

119but suma health system is as you as you may know um is uh is is investing heavily in this area okay um because they've seen it as as and dr daveny can speak more articulately more eloquently than i can about this topic but um but again we're making a substantial investment you know as far as building like building infrastructure um and other services to support mental and behavioral health here in the community as well um because we seem as as a and i'll be canadian with you like it's not an area that you know from a from a payment standpoint zuma's not going to get rich doing this right so but it's but we're doing it because it's what's best for the community and it's identified need and so that might be so that gets

120me to my last point which is as we're thinking through these areas here and i know i said this last time but um i really want to emphasize the fact that like i know we're not doing this alone right and there are others who have escrow funds or extra types of funds that they've got and so thinking about how do we partner with them to make our dollars go further and last longer and are hence more sustainable i think that's i think that's i think that's integral to the work as well yeah and i you seem as kind of a you know example here but like i look at additional extra-curricular activities and i mean we've got other you know whether it's boys and girls club or boy scouts of america and you know girl

121scouts i mean you know there's a lot of different groups um ymca big brother i mean i i don't want anybody out here but but it but it's pretty exhausting folks who who have some funding who have some funds as well but are also looking for how they can partner with us and synergize as well so so for me like so it's not on your list but i'd love to hear as we're sort of moving our plan forward who are we partnering with in focus area number five can we put who are we partners on at focus area number six and to what degree you know so anyways it's my last comment thank you there is a lot of synergy in this community around these same areas as i investigated your question last time about

122let's look exactly at what the other priorities are with the city and the county and folks right here in the audience with united way just rolled out or getting to the point of rolling out their bold goals that have mental health services as well that they're also recognizing and then all of the agencies that you mentioned the hospitals i think there is a lot of synergy around coming together around some of these common goals which is the best way to do it because then you can really pull together some significant resources to help and we we keep good wishes in the air because we also did engage in grant writing with quite a few organizations that we have yet to hear the results from those grants but we do hope to even be able to

123expand our mental and behavioral health services through securing and partnership what we probably neither one of us could do alone so we we have written a series of grants that we will be hearing back from soon thank you very much ms jackson thank you mr president my question is ellen and i mentioned multiple mental health organizations that we already partner with and based off the last presentation we met what ms autry has stated in mr hall it's still a recurring question of great concern so then my concern is how we are evaluating the current effectiveness of those who we are already in partnership because just to put more money to expand a practice that we aren't sure is being effective or utilized to the best extent for our demographics that we're serving would be a

124lack of wisdom so what type of evaluations and assessments have we put into place in the sense of a survey or feedback of how these organizations are being utilized and how it's helping if at all they are healthy excellent it's a great great thing anyone else okay so the final points that i have then we'll wrap up this item dr mcwilliams was you previously presented on i'm going to call it probably something different because in in the words of dr hall not to have a shameless plug for my employer working in higher ed there's intercession and i'm not sure i can't remember what it was called but there was this outstanding i believe innovative option that you offered students during between semesters to help them continue to get caught up i'm wondering how do we

125promote and uplift those type of innovative ideas as well through this plan i i think that's excellent that's actually the brainchild of that man right now there mr black the intercession is what it's called that i think these resources enable us to go deeper with that we actually spent two hours this afternoon with my curriculum instruction team really digging deeply into starting to frame like what would these strategies underneath some of these strategic investments look like and i think that is an excellent point that we'll be able to to build out to be able to build in time just as mr jackson was saying build in time to get the academic supports needed thank you and then my last point and i couldn't leave here without saying this as the equity data kind of a

126professional thank you i just want to make sure that the devil i'm sorry the details aren't lost around this aggregation and so i don't know exactly how the surveys if what demographics were added into the surveys but i think it's important to to not get lost in the the frequency of of data points meaning everything's kind of solidifying round one where we might have our nepali families for example all um coalescing around one uh strategy or support but it might get lost because it's not a large group same with any other of our type of population so i'm not sure how we've disaggregated even if it's just by cluster to be able to look at the data by cluster to see if those same type of strategies and supports and needs outlined by cluster is

127highlighted and it's not missed you will be pleased to know that i sent you that today to answer that question that you had about that cluster breakdown so you'll be able to take a look at that but i agree wholeheartedly we did we did grab the cluster information we didn't go deeper on the surveys with other demographics but i think it's an excellent point that we can certainly do that with staff and families moving forward okay thank you very much we appreciate is that all you have madam superintendent um that is uh all for the um for the super attendance report so thank you very much tim thank you very much we appreciate um the great opportunity we had to see and witness uh so many staff members today and and your report and so

128we thank you thank you we now move to the president's report i gave our our great highlight around our black history month fact the one other thing that i had was about meeting virtually as you all know the the state legislature has given us the green light to begin meeting uh virtually again um my hope is that we continue to meet in person however i wanted to open up the discussion to the board because that is an option and we do have to work with mr pendleton and the rest of the staff here to ensure that we are appropriately resourced uh to do the the online again and i think if we remember trying to do online and in person was a little difficult but not saying that we can't do it again because we

129do have the green light to do it by the state so any comments or questions about that mr alexander i would say as long as we look at and watch what uh summit county public health and and is doing and giving us in data and if we can continue to meet in person to do so but if it seems like we we may need to go virtual then let's go virtual at that point in time that's just my thought and input okay miss jackson and also for clarity since now it's been approved for virtual if a member is not present are they going to be able to log on virtually and still vote well that was part of what i wanted why i wanted to open it so i'm glad that you asked that clarity

130legally we could offer that definitely i guess i wanted to know is that the will of this body to have some members be able to participate virtually and others in person oh yeah i know i'm i'm not talking about permanent vote virtually either i'm just saying as any meeting if that's an option i mean we can legally do it now uh as you may remember we were uh uh allowed to do that during 2020 and then it went away for this year actually i think last summer into this year so is what's the will of this body what sort of comment if i may i you know i think you know um you know i may be being overly overly direct here but i mean we're all professionals and grown-ups um and and i think

131that you know i don't think it and we've gotten to know each other well enough that if you know a person needs to make a decision to be virtual for whatever reason i'm happy to support the person in making that decision um so so i i would be so to answer your question you know i would be in favor of allowing virtual voting you know and participation so i'm in agreement as well okay anyone else okay so it seems like we want to have that option i just want to make sure that we at least my understanding and maybe mr pendleton can help me wanted to make sure that [Music] there's logistics that goes in go into that and so we we do have to be sure that we give our district staff enough notice

132to do that and i know mrs fowler mack will probably be involved in that as well and i don't know if that has anything to do with notice or anything but i do know we have to facilitate that with those logistics and howard shaking his head enthusiastically so all right so um the last thing is i i think if we want to make sure that we give at least 24-hour notice if we have to do that to give them time to facilitate that is that enough time yes yes okay all right so we'll do 24 hour notice if you can't be here you still want to participate virtually otherwise um when we can't get it done then you can also participate virtually it just won't be in the same way so all right with that

133being said that is the conclusion of my report i wanted to make sure we had that settled and we moved to our uh i'm sorry are there any questions for me i shouldn't just assume there's no questions all right we'll move to treasurer's report mr pendleton thank you mr president three items tonight the first is under pending legislation just a quick recap house bill 126 has stalled a few times and if you remember finance committee and our board committee as a whole that's the property tax valuation due process complaint procedure i understand from a call today that it's potentially being amended and reintroduced for a vote as early as tomorrow so keep you posted on that if you haven't had an opportunity i will send you a link on recent backpack bill house bill 290

134testimony it's an interesting dialogue from the bill sponsors in an opening q a from the sponsors i'd encourage you to take a look at that and then fair school funding plan 2.0 and the cause to keep our new school funding formula in law we are starting that road show again tomorrow we'll be hosting a statewide webinar to engage members of our 609 school districts in the necessity of keeping that formula in place and you heard a little bit of my sentiment about esther funds and sometimes that complicates messaging so we will get you a copy of that presentation the second item is finance reports i encourage you to take a look at finance reports pre-pandemic finance report variances were a couple percentage at most now uh during the pandemic and virtual operation remember we were

135some 20 million 20 million plus dollars under budget we also have this large infusion of federal funds there's a lot of movement in these financial reports and i want to make sure that you're well aware heading into the may forecast we'll take deeper dives in finance committee but if there's any questions any highlights or pull outs we want to do at the committee the whole be more than happy to do that finally in the third section was the amounts and rates resolution so a lot of numbers there packed into that resolution that resolution is required between the school district and the county budget commission it's a great way for us to triangulate data but also pledge to our taxpayers that we're spending money wisely and how it's being allocated 10 plus years on average with

136our operating levy history there's also a lot of information packed in there about the house bill 920 which also gets left off just to put into perspective that original millage that you saw in 1976 i think it says it collects around 30 million if house bill 920 wasn't in place that collection would be well over 60 million so that's the importance and stewardship that you provide to your community about these dollars so there's a lot packed into that resolution that concludes my report mr president thank you thank you very much any questions for mr pendleton okay uh hearing none i do have just one as we prepare for the may forecast which is uh just so for everyone to know it's a very important forecast for us i thought maybe it might be good to

137try to break that presentation up into two presentations so the meeting before the meeting we have to uh pass it and then also at that meeting it's a lot to take in um and i know i've spent time with you mr pendleton asking questions trying to break things down i might have a better understanding of that uh now so i just wanted as a non-finance person uh wanted to ask that maybe we get that broken down in two different presentations i think we're well positioned to do that in partnership with the superintendent and our esser plant so we'll be really specific about what pieces can bridge across those two may board meetings i think that's a great idea thank you very much any other questions or feedback for mr pendleton okay hearing none we'll go

138to committee reports legal contracts and board policy mr alexander no report but we are currently in the process of coming up with a date and time for our next uh policy meeting because there's some uh pieces that need to be gathered and done and once we get that then we'll have another date and time okay any questions for miss alexander hearing on financing capital management finance and capital management ms autry thank you mr president so our finance committee meeting actually consisted of the presentation we received tonight on the long-term operational plan so we just had a really robust conversation around that and again thank you for mr harrington and and keith and deborah and ellen who you know provided really good information um and they were also able to share how they were able to

139roll out the information uh when we had to make the changes for harris jackson last year how they really engaged the families they were able to you know ride the bus over there experience what the bus ride would be you know for their children actually meet the actual kindergarten teachers and so it was just nice to hear you know all that background information that goes into play with making those decisions and so that was really the bulk of our our meeting those discussions i didn't know miss jackson if you had anything else to offer her app okay thank you very much any questions or discussion items for uh finance and capital management okay hearing none instructional policy and student achievement no report okay i'm not used to that i think you caught me off guard

140so thank you very much any questions comments for mrs mckittrick hearing none equity committee dr hall uh new report we are meeting next month which is wednesday no we're okay month is here already today's the 28th folks there's only 28 days in february i'll be here all week tip your waiters only dr hall all right thank you very much next we will move to unfinished business the establishment of administrative positions yes and so i'm not sure when we last were together board we had a presentation about the organizational planning that is underway and it's actually really fitting to have this conversation after such robust other types of conversations that we've had here tonight about the forward facing needs and design that we want to have for our students to be able to impact their day-to-day

141experience in our district the type of information needs and monitoring that needs to occur and having really observed the organization as i presented in our last meeting i believe consistent with what essa kind of predicted esther kind of predicted that we would need some additional capacity for this point in time so part of the recommendation was to make sure that there are the supports necessary for that are in place for our schools through the supervisor of secondary principles to be able to support principals and then principals in turn being able to effectively support students and staff the director of student and family services to get a better coordination alignment going so that we can deepen those services better understand where we are succeeding where we have challenges to really focus in an area given the

142volatile world in which we live to ensure that there is safety and security practices and partnerships that are not only evident in our district but that uh the training needed for our staff to be well trained for our students to be well trained that those things are also in place and then again consistent with uh one of our esser big bets and our focus and this point in time is to expand the learning opportunities extended day opportunities that are available for our students so to have that coordinator position focused in that way and um we already have many of those services that exist in our district but it's really uh you know kind of accentuating that type of focus in relationship to our our values so the board had requested for to be able to

143ask some additional specific questions as it relates to this need for additional capacity in our district and just wanted to open that up myself and mr pendleton will also be able to assist me in responding to any of your questions all right thank you very much any uh questions or comments for madam superintendent may i say one more thing uh we also last week talked about operations and so we'll talk about that in our coming meeting but for tonight these recommendations that are listed before you are the recommendations that hopefully get your consideration thank you very much miss mckittry thank you president akbar so when i look at these four positions in the salary ranges and if you add the low end and the high end we're talking about an increase to staff from four

144hundred 425 five dollars and seventy two cents to the high range which is five hundred fourteen thousand eight hundred thirty two dollars and sixty two cents and i i shared with you that my concern is as we head well a couple concerns but primarily as we head into negotiations my concern is for how this handicaps us to negotiate fairly with our collective bargaining units particularly in light of the fact that we talk so much about living wages and so that's my primary concern i have some secondary concerns around the perception whether accurate or not that the administration is already very top-heavy and adding these four more positions will only validate that concern and then my third concern is [Music] these only indirectly impacts students and student learning and i think to be looking at half

145a million dollars without directly impacting student or classroom learning that's also a concern of mine thank you mrs mckittrick and just to respond again to a few of those concerns first of all just wanted to bring attention to the fact that of those positions not all of that is additional dollars some of those are repurposing roles and services that exist currently so like in the coordination of expanded learning we do have some project management coordination that is occurring presently our director of safety and security we do have a role that is combined you know that combines both the safety and security and student services ends so just you know we have provided some um ideas more about those salaries but again uh mr pendleton as we talked with his office we would be able to

146flush that out even further as we go into our forecasting uh period here that has is coming up in may it is true that district services are in indirect support to students i think the only opportunities that we have for more direct support are our teachers are our primary our teachers are those service providers pure professionals everything else in the district is a more indirect uh support but in when an indirect support is functioning well our students benefit and so part of what we've looked through is the the feedback of asking those teachers who are the direct supporters the principals who are in day-to-day contact with our students what is your experience like what do you need us to be able to do to put you in a position where you're able to be most

147effective with our students our teachers and our principals are very busy right now doing and responding but we talked a lot this evening about even some of the coordination the expansion the understanding that needs to occur in our district in order to keep our vision and plans moving forward so that takes a level of capacity so while i understand we are also as the sheet we shared tonight even through our esther plans before we're even done with the broader plan we are investing in those areas that are closest to students and we did that first but we also have to invest in the overall structure of support to be able to effectively run the district but also to plan for the future while many are in the trenches of responding now so i think it's

148the place we are in it is what the work looks like it is not offered with the intent of begrudging anyone anything so we we do have projections as it relates to negotiations as negotiations as we go into that aspect that we will have to address but we are taking into account not only what the capacity needs are of the system but this notion of sustainability and to be able to use our dollars wisely so i also invite you mr pendleton to make any remarks as well about how hampered we might be or what the financial thoughts are about that so i received a question that i thought would be better in graphic form just for some comparison sake and we can further detail from here and as that goes around i put this together

149just in a few minutes leading up to the board meeting but it's a good comparison of our spending to frame properly orange is building operations red is instruction the light blue is people supports and the green is staff supports and if you were guessing i had a detailed spreadsheet if all those percentages but the story is that on average you see after public school spends about 2 300 expense of operating but that in itself i think thanks the greater question question of how do we compare to other districts to our statewide average we're aligned pretty equally with our statewide average trying to see the chart on average spent sixteen thousand dollars a percentage there but if you break that percentage down across our district to our comparisons that's about fifteen percent i think the more

150important numbers there i think the administrative expense is really tight range i mean within a percent of our colleagues and peers more important is where we spend money on instructional operational student and staff supports and we enlighten them to outperform those areas another based on the questions i receive is how many administrators can you have you really the total count of administrators is a misleading integration or a number we really think you ought to look at administrators so it becomes equal and representative across any any colleague over here so we can compare ourselves to urbans or our neighborhood districts and as you look at the typology of schools across ohio urbans tend to have fewer administrators for people for every 178 students we have an administrator whereas the smaller districts tend to be 150 and

151less so their actual administrative expense per pupils higher just as a simple part of a ratio and all the way up to columbus schools which has 220 students per administrator but i you know this is what i could really get together in the the details leading up to the meeting to say that we're largely in line and making the investments in the right areas and through our equity re work and resource work you'll see that even more so in detail the three to five hundred thousand dollar range this is a cfo's perspective on an investment the organization of uh in upwards of 700 million a few years ago when we were passed through with all the construction 300 to 500 000 dollars a significant number and one not to think isn't significant or doesn't have

152legacy costs however the the organization is constantly changing it's the one thing that i've learned in coming from a smaller district to one of the largest in ohio is that needs of the organization are constantly changing and simply put the pieces always move and just in the few short years that the fair school funding plan has been in case districts spent less than a hundred dollars per pupil on safety security and life supports which is now talked about in terms of social emotional learning and supports there districts are now spending over 400 per pupil over the state in this area i think one of the areas that you just saw the district taken a major investment into support of one of the positions specifically was the safety and security personnel and the recommendation for full-time

153equivalence there based on need as well as counseling so the the organization has changed dramatically over the past few decades but also just in a few short years leading up to today and the pandemic and i see our resource allocation changing in [Music] in the cfo's perspective and last comment i'll make i see it happening again i see in the next three years uh post-pandemic post-esser funds investment the pieces will move again and it will need an opportunity for review then thank you cfo pendleton and i think that's one of the things we tried to highlight last last time when we were together talking about these recommendations our recommendations in this moment they may not be our longer term needs but in order to truly get our arms around some areas where we both have

154potential but also some areas where we really need to devote some attention to we have to have the leadership the coordination the developed partnerships and then the training and development and working with with our staff our students our families occurring and these types of roles aren't in and of themselves by themselves but it's their these roles in collaboration and focused on coordination across our district that ultimately we believe that the end result will be a better experience for our students put in the position to achieve at higher rates to have their their needs met and as we service them we will continue because of the experience of our staff we will continue to evolve so we celebrate it tonight even top leadership who is retiring and will be bringing on new persons even tucked away

155that we should have highlighted but haven't yet we also had the retirement of peggy greiner in the grants division and uh fred hurr in our district who has given so much over time so we are we are at a place in our organization where we are definitely evolving while we are trying to serve a diverse set of students with a really ambitious strategy and all of that equates to a need for capacity a need for leadership as well as our abilities to continue to support well those that are very closest to our students within our schools thank you very much any uh other questions or comments for madam superintendent dr hall yeah i've got i've got several um so you know so i would echo first let me echo miss mckittrick's concerns they were i

156had similar concerns as well um you know and i've got some sort of additional sort of questions in light of what mr pendleton has shared too um not sure where to start exactly so i'll just start i have jotted notes here i'll start from the top of my scribble um but in thinking about adding you know whenever you you add any new position on you know you ideally go through the process of conducting some sort of roi analysis right um and so you know i i'd want to understand better um that analysis uh for each of these positions um because it because it is it is a pretty big change um you know all at once um that's my first question slash comment not really not really a question comment number two i'm a little

157hazy on um i know we've said several times that some of these positions aren't really new positions you know their positions maybe that have existed in some other form previously we've got to sort that out you know because i've got it for me i've got a i mean as a fiduciary i've gotta i've gotta have a crystal clear understanding of what is what exactly is new and what exactly is old spending um and i'll give an example so for example there one of the positions is this principal supervisor position um well that's a role that we think may have existed previously you know um and that's okay you know so but but if it did then this is that then it's that really a new position right so so again so that's where for me

158like that's just an example of where i just i need more clarity around that um and then also um you know mr pendleton you talked well before i get to that um i also want to make sure that we sort of draw the dots as to sort of mis i think mr pittsburgh's point like how this impacts students in the classroom but also how does it dovetail or connect with our various esser priorities as well right like how's that connect um and uh and then i kind of and then kind of the next point is when we looked at sort of the per pupil expenditures um we talked about columbus was 220 per administrator mr pendleman 220 per per administrator 220 students for administrator and after you said you said was 178 right so ostensibly

159if we were to hire additional administrators that ratio drops even drops from 178 right so for me so for example i want to understand you know how columbus is at 220 for example uh and we're at 178 and and we're making the state and we're making the case that we need more help you know so so one so want to better understand that and again these are all questions that are being asked to better understand they're not questions that are being asked to um torpedo a a plan you know that we've been talking about for a while right it's about trying to understand with greater clarity and as fiduciaries i think we have we have an obligation to make sure that we do understand these things um you know with with a bit more clarity

160um and then also too we talked about you know our needs are constantly changing right so are we gonna so are we coming back here in a year or two and saying we need to hire five more administrators um or in three years five more administrators so so i so i i want to understand better you know from a five-year forecast you know looking at changes in population and demographics and staffing you know in in sort of talent acquisition opportunities right like you know like i want to better understand like are we going to be back here in a year to being asked to approve more admin more admin positions um you know and then you know and then i also want to understand the history better right so for example you know in 13

161years prior to prior to this administration 13 years was there a year where we ever added this amount at all at the same time you know or or have we been flat for 13 years have we have we gone 13 years and haven't changed administrator head count um you know or has it or was it more steady so so again want to have that the advantage of knowing what we've and miss mansfield was here i would ask her that question um you know or mr mr i understand mr elizabeth can speak to that as well but again one understanding sort of what the history is and how we've traditionally hired these roles as far as the number and the quantity sort of all at once so again so so mike so please don't take my

162questions to be anything but seeking to understand uh and wanting to be a a responsible fiduciary um agent for this for this organization and so um so so i think i think we so for me i guess in my head you know these are not all questions that i i think you all have to have answers for tonight i just think but they're questions that i for one would like to have answer with with a bit more clarity and by the way i'm not asking anybody to answer any questions tonight so this is not me putting anybody on the hot seat or grandstanding or or anything like that i just want to make sure that we are you know fully exhausting for every board member the questions that they have or concerns that they may

163have with regard to um this set of expenditures and so um so again i'm happy to you know take comments offline or um or we can um unpack this a bit more in in another public session but so those are those are my comments and i'll see the four back to you mr president we can make sure that we follow up some of that is a lot of you know kind of how do we plan for in a ongoing way some of that mr pendleton and his team how do they account for fte on a regular basis both [Music] the fte of these additional two in terms of the budget outside of the four but also how does that play itself out as we also have people rolling off you know coming out of the

164budget retiring moving on things of that nature which is also an ongoing so it's not all ad ad but we can get to the place where we do share more about the history and how we approach this on a regular basis as as we continue to move forward but these are our needs at this particular moment that will enable us to meet the demands of this time for our students for our buildings for our staff mr alexander okay yes uh this does seem like a lot of money uh when we look at the dollars in a sense uh but i'm going to answer a question first so mr hall asked he said if lisa mansfield was here he would have asked her but the administration yeah right an administration did not uh really go up

165but they consumed more work which was really could be detrimental to them but they consumed it but they also had a number of years in their tenure that they were able to absorb and i'm going to use is uh mrs faulk for example she has a lot that she does but it probably shouldn't really be under her bailwick but with her knowledge and skills and ability she has been able to to to carry on without those duties so that is one thing so they really didn't go up because they were able to consume because they they knew the district and they knew how to handle what the the work that workload and they would be able to handle the workload as well and that was uh something that mr james looked at and that's why

166he didn't really move up now some of the new people that come in let me back up when we have people who are possibly leaving we have mrs leaving we have uh dr williams woods who will be leaving with some of these uh people leaving uh that looks like some attrition that will lose some people through attrition and so we're losing people through attrition that means that dollars are not as high because you're losing them and then if we replace them then you may not have to replace them if you're realigning the proper way with the dollars that you have to if you're paying people now and you can probably get maybe two for one or maybe uh one and a half uh per one and so when you look at it that way then

167it doesn't come up to be a lot of money and it does beats the need of our students and we do need to have administration uh who can run the district and make things that are clear and concise for uh the students because if not then we getting a in a position where the administration is overworked and overwhelmed and they can't uh continue to do their duties because it's too much but especially when you have people who aren't as tenured as these individuals so you know when i look at it i look at looked at it in that that perspective and if i'm wrong mr pendleton you can kind of you guys can tell me i'm wrong but i didn't see it being a whole lot i don't know what the amount would be because

168i didn't calculate it but i don't see it being that much and again when you're bringing in some of the new people who may not have the experience that some of the old you're going to pay them a little less money and so you can get a little bit more your bucks will go further uh during this time versus looking at a lot of money saying it's a lot of money so you got to look at all those aspects that we're talking about in order to come up with the realistic uh dollar figure if we want to but i do think that you know as an administrator of previous jobs uh i i would look at this in a manner that the the superintendent is looking at and saying that you probably would need these

169here positions and need the time to to be able to vet the people who come in for these positions and be able to get them in training and because you also have people who are someone who may come in dr mc williams wood who's leaving mrs g jack who's leaving they could be here to have a smooth transition for those individuals who may come in and so that helps with the transition helps them carry on the jobs that they may uh carry with this new um uh flow chart that we have of responsibilities for individuals so that's what i wanted to bring that out and say that i don't know if it's a as if it's really that amount of money or it's less that amount because i didn't calculate it but i would have

170to go to you mr pendleton to come up with that answer thank you thank you very much we did receive an email with that calculation which was around 400 uh thousand dollars just as an update to that but are there any other uh questions or comments um so for example i think mr alexander mentioned that you know when you replace folks folks who are retiring um that there are some cost savings there um [Music] you know and i asked this question uh honestly are we you know i'm assuming we're planning to to replace those positions miss miss jesus and dr molina's woods are those roles we're planning to replace those that we are planning to replace not every role in the district does persons retire would we replace in that way and then some of

171these new uh roles like the director of safety and security i would love not to need you know at this particular point in time but as we continue to see um in the news media preparedness is is extremely important roger that and then the last question i had was again just a clear clarifying question so for example with msg and dr williams woods impending retirements are these roles where we would expect to realize salary savings by hiring folks who have less experience i would say first and foremost we want to have the best person for the job i think it's it's probably likely that it would be some level of salary savings given the number of years of service that those persons have and so they've moved through our system accordingly so it just it

172really depends on the candidate we're able to attract and first and foremost our goal is to have the strongest candidate to carry on and even advance that their work their respective work okay thank you any other uh comments or questions okay um so i'll just make one i think that it's um based off what i i heard i don't i don't see a challenge with mrs mckittrick's [Music] statement around not being against moving forward with so many new administrative positions but doing so after uh negotiations are complete so one of the concerns that i have kind of dovetails with mrs mckittrick is when you are looking at your uh negotiations as well as your forecast you're looking at what amount of funding is available and if a 1.5 or so million dollars is encumbered for

173positions that we currently have that's not something we can use uh to make sure that we provide livable wages uh for all of our employees and even uh potentially look at how we can put our teachers on a different and better pace structure that would allow us to attract some more great teachers to the district as well as reward those outstanding teachers like the ones that um student board member elliot jackson spoke about so that's that's my thought so i i do see your point mrs mckittrick and i'm actually in support of it but also in support of these positions so uh i think that for me is really just waiting until we've exhausted that process before we move forward with adding so many new positions i acknowledge your your feedback and just want to

174continue to say to our board our our need is now so we do have a need to put in place services and supports that would allow us to be thoughtful and prepared as we go into the coming year and we we have and will continue to consider all of our resources in relationship to um our ability to effectively negotiate and again do what's right and hopefully even to think you know in really innovative significant ways about how to better position ourselves to attract retain support a highly competent staff here here in the district but this planning again we talked about it as i came in as a part of what would occur through this year and this is the point in time when i indicated i would be bringing forward and ask in order to

175be able to set us up during this point of transition especially as we're bidding farewell some of our experienced staff members and trying to amass the capacity needed to continue forward thank you very much any other comments or questions okay hearing uh none um is there any uh is there any any motions or anything anyone wants to make i make a motion that we accept the positions that the superintendent superintendent requested for us tonight so they can move forward and do the work of the district thank you i second that motion thank you very much it's been properly moved by ms alexander and seconded by mr perry to accept the four new positions as stated in unfinished business [Music] is there any discussion i just have one comment to make and that is um i

176think there's more i think there's still more information that is outstanding um that i know i've requested here just now um so i guess we're i guess if folks want to move forward with emotion we can do that but i'm not i for one am not comfortable moving forward without having that additional information provided thank you any other mrs mckitcher i too would like to know the impact this is going to have on our ability to negotiate in good faith i wish we could have that information beforehand thank you thank you very much anyone else okay moving forward it's been properly moved and seconded to support the four new positions uh we'll do a roll call vote mr pendleton dr hall no miss jackson no mrs mckittrick no dr akbar no mr alexander yes ms

177autry yes mr perry yes thank you motion does not pass thank you very much uh motion uh fails uh i do want to just state that i think that this is a great opportunity for us to to go go back to the drawing board i think there were some questions and items and information requested and it appears to be the will of this body uh that that not that we're against the positions and moving forward to adding administrative positions but would like to consider this at a later date uh so i i do want to encourage uh the the superintendent to uh consider bringing them back uh sometime in the summer uh as there's no i'm sorry uh mr alexander yes mr president why are we going to wait till summer and take that long

178for uh a superintendent to get people in place to move uh forward and what she may need to do we're having some people who are leaving the district and i think there needs to be people who are coming in to help this transition and if we if we don't allow that to happen then we may be shooting ourselves in the foot so i think we should should not wait till june we have this is this is february and we could with the information that's been requested by board members tonight that could be uh given to them uh within the next week or so and we could come back and have a discussion way before then so we shouldn't have to wait till june i don't think so that's just my perspective thank you thank you

179very much i i just wanted to share i don't think any what was on the table today was not had nothing to do with replacing the positions of those individuals leaving the district i don't think that is a challenge or even a point that was discussed today i think what the reason why i said the summer and it could be before that but i heard some synergy around allowing us an opportunity to not have additional administrative costs on our books as we enter into negotiations with the individuals that work in our district who make the lease and to be able to utilize our fullest capacity uh to support their needs i think that's what i heard um and that's also what i supported i did not personally support not doing the positions at all so

180i just wanted to make sure i clarified why i voted and why i said what i said i'm just saying that it doesn't take that long to get information digest it and make a decision because we do that all on a regular basis where we get information we get we gather we study it and then we come back and make a decision you're talking about march april may then june that's four months so i don't think that that's a little bit long for me i don't think so i think we i don't think we should wait that long all right point taken i think we could consider it any other time as well uh mr perry yes mr president mike my concern also the superintendent brought up the phrase i heard was immediate need and

181i'm curious what you know how what that immediacy is you know whether it need to be wait until june or whether it can be something that we can you know discuss sooner if i hear immediate need that tells me that it's something that she believes we need right now so i'm with with bruce you know if we're waiting until june and we can do this before then i'd like to do it before then so i guess i'll turn them out of superintendent is there a time frame you you think uh immediate need what would satisfy that time frame yes and so as it relates to i mean we could walk down the different roles where you know with the coordinating the extended learning we're trying to leverage this summer and expanding services and opportunities for

182our students and to have that dedicated [Music] capacity to do that to do that well that's one of our things the safety and security to get a um a security plan in place such that we're more immediately in the summer prepared to even train trained teachers trained students some of those simulations things of that nature making sure that we have coordinated communicated pieces and parts relative to that you know i think we we don't we can't anticipate when we might have such a need but we aren't prepared in those ways and so there is an immediacy to that as well i could walk down through you know position by position right now we are challenged with capacity because we are both in the place of responding uh in the immediate post-pandemic sense and needing um

183to also plan and serve forward and we were challenged to do both and so again if this were a typical year um maybe but in this post-pandemic reality again that was the premise behind esser dollars to anticipate that you would be in a place where you were both recovering but also reinventing planning forward thank you very much mrs jackson um yes i'm not in disagreement with the recommendation of the superintendent and i am agreeing with expedia the expediency of as it needs to be done my concern is i'm in agreement with valerie when she states about how does this impact possible negotiations because in my time at the board we've been addressed by paraprofessionals that are currently working in a district we've been faced with the issue of teachers and having enough teachers on the

184ground working with students and those who that's what directly impacts our learning and one of our major goals as a district so when we're talking about dollars my concern the only reason my my number's a no is because if this impacts those who've already made concerns about being underpaid and stretched thin serving multiple roles subbing in classrooms going in in coverage that's a concern for me because i was concerned when we were addressed by those people who are in the trenches so i want to know for my own clarity if there is no impact and negotiation will not be stifled for what can be done for those people who are already in the trenches then it's a no-brainer i just want to be clear that these contracts or these positions it feel that when negotiation

185comes that those who are least paid it's a your your arms are tied for lack of a better word simply just because you don't have the resources to give them what you would have right no i i appreciate that uh miss jackson and for us it's not in either or um so part of the assumptions that sit behind our forecasting behind our planning is what we need to do as well in negotiations what we need to do because we have committed as a system to ensuring a livable wage for persons like those paraprofessionals and others that you were speaking of so that is in the forecasted projections as it sits today so part of what i did as i was planning and researching what the few particular needs were in this space was to work

186across with the cfo with his team to say are we able to do both it's not an either or yeah but you're saying you have that that that information is clear yeah because it could just be an oversight on my part it could be something i missed can you remember to turn your mics on when you talk yes i guess i want that same kind of immediate concern for the people who are making ten dollars an hour that's that's where i'm coming from i'm not saying these positions aren't important but i'm saying i want the same care and the same impetus to push these positions along as i want for the people in our district making 10 dollars and 13 cents an hour absolutely so we're engaged right now as well in a livable wage

187audit and study and we are poised to bring you recommendations for that aspect as well so cfo pendleton i don't know and i think that's what i'm asking for before i approve these positions that's all i'm asking for is to know that we come from a position of strength in negotiations for the people who are making the least before we approve positions at the very top that's all i'm asking for a couple points to consider understand and hear your perspective very much so and your priority the positions just from my perspective and keeping the books they do not financially impact negotiations our ability to negotiate and sign contracts and negotiate the details that does not it does not restrict our position to negotiate i would also highlight to the board that on the screen of

188the esser presentation as well as our general fund response that it's a factual statement that our first investments were in the classroom and the supports of those students food service and the like i know mrs mckittrick that does not specifically address the living wage component which we we hear loud and clear however the district's response over the last year and a half has been directly tied to students in the classroom and i know through our future conversations post our resolution tonight and the action taken that you'll want to look at ftes and dollars and where those dollars have been allocated first absolutely they've gone into students student supports instructional instructional supports and food service thank you very much uh dr hall yeah you know again you know i i appreciate you know the the the

189robust discussion we've had around this this topic um you know i think it's you know the point being that there are a lot of questions that are outstanding right and so you know i know at the february 14th board meeting uh it was valentine's day and you know this body you know collectively you know sort of made the decision that we were going to truncate conversation and questions because it was valentine's day and we had a conversation and that we would come back tonight and have a more robust conversation and q a session around this now i don't think it makes sense for us to be voting on this you know when we're just coming out of q a people i think are entitled to have time to to think and reflect upon the answers

190that they've received they may have additional questions you know so so for me it's this is a process concern for me right so um there are a lot of good questions that were brought up you know a lot of concerns that were brought up um you know and so i think i just think it makes sense to make to make sure that people have the appropriate time to digest and understand you know to mr to mr alexander's point i'm not saying that we delay this to the summer time but i'm saying that we have to make sure that we are providing ample time for the members of this body to make sure that they that they're getting their questions asked and answered and have time to reflect upon that before they're being asked to make

191a decision under the gun in session you know so um so again so i i think that this process could have been a little cleaner for me um if we had tabled this until the next board meeting you know to create the space and the air you know to have you know to get questions asked and answered and to give folks time to reflect and that didn't happen tonight so and that's so for me that's something i'd like to be a part of making sure that we do that better moving forward um and then to mr mckittrick's points too i mean i don't want to speak for mr mckittrick but you know the urgency you know we have folks who are making ten dollars and 13 cents an hour um that we could be acting

192more urgently to address their their pay rates right and so tonight we're talking about adding almost a half a million dollars in additional expenditures i think maybe what you're getting at is where's urgency to address that right i want to see that get addressed i want to see some movement around getting that addressed um you know and so and i can appreciate that point of view as well um you know and then we've talked about all the retirements you know i don't feel like i heard anything tonight that talked about succession planning and how this addresses some of those needs now if if we did address it i missed it in my apologies to this august body but i i but i didn't hear it um you know and so for me again you know

193i think that what's going to happen is the takeaway is going to be that the board you know is not supporting the superintendent's plan and that's not the narrative at all the the the narrative is that this board has questions that we want to make sure that we have the time and space to get answered before we approve a half million dollars because we are because we are fiduciaries of the district so um so i'll i'll leave it there thank you thank you very much and i'll i'll end this um portion of the meeting uh by simply saying i think uh this board just to answer some of the questions this board has the option at any moment to make a motion uh to vote on something or to table something at any time and

194so i just want to bring clarity to say that i don't think that there was a process challenge so i just want to make sure i say that because we we did bring it un an unfinished business which is continuing from the previous meeting and a member did ask for a vote a motion to vote on the item so there's no i don't think that there's any process challenges so i just wanted to make sure i said that and we can disagree on that offline if we want uh the other item i just want to say is i think this this board uh i appreciate the board's passion and i think this board what we are seeing um if if there is a narrative because we know it's going to be in the paper uh

195that it's very uh clearly displayed that this board is very passionately concerned about the urgency and the care that we take to those at the the lowest income levels within our districts over prioritizing more six-figure salaries and not saying that one is better than the other but we do want to make sure that we are prioritizing those at the lower end first and i think that's what we we heard and the last thing to mrs jackson point and i could be wrong but i believe i heard mr pendleton's response which was around the positioning of our ability to negotiate so no in the grand scheme of things we're a a half a billion dollar organization so 1.5 million dollars it does not affect our positioning but it does affect the way in which we could

196leverage uh resources in different ways so i think that that i appreciate that response but i also wanted to kind of add that context to how i see things as well that positioning and leveraging resources are also two different things so with that being said there's no other so uh go ahead mr mr alexander thank you you'll be the final comment okay um and i understand what everybody's saying i know about the low wages and those individuals and i want to make sure they get you know money as well because they do need to have a livable wage but i also look at a business you know of uh when you when you have a business you have to have people who are running your business to make sure and good people who run your

197business so the business can be successful if you don't have those people in your business it's not going to be successful it's not going to going to to be successful it's going to fail and so i understand the superintendent's need of having positions like this here but when we talk about negotiations too that we say we it won't hurt us to negotiate it won't hurt us that way it won't hurt us if we uh approve these positions uh i understand that but i also say too again that um when we gather get information um we can do it in a swift period of time or i want to change that let me say swift but a period of time people are comfortable so they can dissect it and then we can come back and make

198a decision but i don't think we need to wait and i'm going to say that again we don't need to wait that long to make sure that we need to have these positions taken care of because at the end i am looking at people who are leaving the district who have 10-year who have plenty of years in here and we need to make sure that our leader has the leverage that when these people leave she has people in positions who can pick up the ball and run with it and not miss a beat because if we miss a beat then it's going to be a issue with us and our district and what happens in the end our kids fail so we have to look at all these positions and everyone in the district as

199a whole thank you very much mr alexander i think again it's important to note that the question on the table was not about the existing positions it's about adding additional positions so i just wanted to make sure i clarified that because that is not affecting the the transition of those existing positions so with that being said there's no new business coming before the board we do have a uh need to recess into the executive session uh pursuant to uh ohio revised code 121.22 g1 for the purposes of considering the appointment employment promotion of the public employee or official of the school district and g4 preparing for negotiations so is there a motion to recess into the executive session so move second is improperly moved by dr hall seconded by um mr alexander we now stand

200in recess for exactly the session need a roll call i'm sorry uh we will do a roll call mr pendleton mr alexander yeah ms autry yes mr perry yes dr hall aye ms jackson yes this is mckittrick yes dr akbar yes thank you thank you very much and thank you for everyone for joining us i do not believe there is a need to return for action i want to end by thanking uh elliot jackson for being here with us and representing kenmore garfield well we now stand until recess i so moved [Laughter] good evening everyone and welcome back to the regular scheduled board meeting on 28 february 2022 we have uh just returned from uh recessing into executive session there's no further business to come before the board today so we will entertain a motion

201to adjourn so move second thank you very much it's been properly moved by mr alexander seconded by miss jetson we now stand in the german thank you have a good evening [Music] you