001if you can let us know when you flip the switch hear anything so hopefully that's okay all right uh welcome everyone to uh the regular school board meeting on the 8th of march 2021 uh of the akron public schools board of education we're excited to be here today and look forward to a very uh fruitful uh and productive meeting today we'll start off with our roll call uh mr pendleton dr akbar here mr alexander president miss autry here mr bravo here dr hall aye mrs mansfield here thank you mrs mchitrick here and welcome to our student board member michaela perryman from north high school north high school he's got it had to say sorry i had to say it with the welcome welcome thank you that's my school board member welcome uh michaela perryman uh
002and that actually while we're talking about you thank you for joining uh the board today and if you could lead us in the uh pledge of allegiance we would greatly appreciate that enough carried in there or i just can't hear anything are you on me 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 we appreciate you uh providing us uh with your pledge of allegiance we're gonna move to uh community and school reflections and in fact we're gonna start uh with you uh miss pyramid you want to provide us with your um reflections uh there we are excited to have you here representing north high school uh so we want to hear from you okay
003well hello everybody um my name is makayla pyramid and i'm a senior at north high school i'm currently been accepted into kent state university and playing she left out on the best part [Laughter] we're gonna uh we're gonna wait to uh hopefully this pyramid can come back get kicked out we thank everyone for their patience as you know sometimes we can't predict this is kitri had her hand up for community and school reflections i'll get her back in the next 30 seconds we'll go to you and then the moment we get uh mrs pearman miss pearman back we will go student board member for their report let's see if we can get a few minutes okay uh this is mckittrick if you want to give your reflection uh yeah okay yeah yeah i'm sorry about
004the meeting uh go ahead we'll go ahead with you just congratulations just for being separate at kent state by the way thank you okay as a senior i'm excited to return back to school to participate in all the senior activities hopefully we can have a prom because it's one of the activities i'm looking forward to the most is something that i always thought would be a part of my life before graduating high school people i know are excited to and even preparing by looking for dresses and finding a day prom is a way to have a final goodbye before graduation i heard that the governor has approved for schools to have prom and i really hope that aps follows along and allows us to participate in prom my younger sister and i are returning to
005in-person learning my younger sister attends sam salem elementary to see all of her friends and catch up during the pandemic both of us weren't as active as we used to be getting back to school will allow both both her and i to be more active and she can participate in her favorite class which is gym like many seniors i am employed part-time i work at tj maxx in cuyahoga falls i don't have my driver's license yet but plan on getting it soon since i don't have my license i have to catch the metro bus to and from work on the metro there are groups of two seats for two people but with the pandemic metro is only allowing one person per seat i know there are many students from schools all over akron that use
006metro as the reliable transportation to and from school this may make it hard for some of the students that will need to take the bus to and from school because the capacity allowed on the buses has lowered has there been any discussion between aps and metro services about how students will have transportation to get back and forth to school if there are no plans with metro then i would like to recommend having an aps bus transport students that are not able to fit on the metro buses because of the capacity limits on behalf of the student board we hope the process of moving from online to in person will go smoothly as well as having smooth continuation of online learning we wish students their families and staff could help and thank you very much michaela
007and i think that suggestion is one that definitely is one we should uh take a look at um definitely sounds like something we should look at the pandemic has changed a lot and transportation is one of those so thank you again for your service congratulations on being a senior and everything that you have in your future we're definitely appreciative of you we look forward to seeing some great things from you michaela thank you thank you uh so we'll open it up for uh the rest of the board to do their community and school reflections we'll start with mrs mckittrick and line up in the chat thank you mr president and thanks makayla for your report and as we enter our second week of women's history month i want to say happy international women's day to
008everyone and thank you to all the women in the aps family for your contributions and for the continued positive impact you have on all of our students thank you thank you very much mrs mckittrick is there anyone else hi sorry serious tech issues here in the mansfield house so can you guys hear me okay all right good thank you so um a couple things it's been a busy couple of weeks so um just a shout out to deb folk uh bruce reverend walker and um dr james for their presentation on clcs the urban network uh to ellen for the league of women voters anti-racism program that was presented just a fantastic job dr mcwilliams woods just really enjoyed that and thought it was incredibly informative you really made us aps proud for sure a big
009thanks to tanya from the love akron group that meets every monday morning early early they get up at uh and start praying for education at 7 00 a.m and i know she's reached out to a couple of us um and she reached out this week and we had a good conversation it's nice to know that someone has us in their best thoughts and and indeed their prayers and um a big shout out for a program that i got to participate in with miller south art teachers they had an artist that we are presenting at the courthouse named danny ratcliffe who's a black artist and um at the very last minute we put together a live program for them because um the artist had planned to do that from his studio and it wasn't going to
010work so we did it from the bounce innovation hub and we were able to go live with jazz musicians and he was sketching them and the students were live asking incredible questions it was quite an experience in the possibilities of distance learning and what that could bring because we were able to all be together even though we were spread across the city so huge shout outs to carolyn hersch to pat jolly to miss schantz and miss rich for making that program possible for those sixth grade art students it was really a great experience and the exposure to a real live working um artist in akron was was great for our students so thanks for the time oh and just real quick shout out to my cluster i got to do a quick drive around this
011morning and watch some drop off and uh i did get to speak to mrs dean she was one of the people who was out at king um it was so great to see students walking to to school and parents dropping off and smiles even though it was just in their eyes because we couldn't see their mouth so thanks so much i said all of that muted all right my apologies thank you very much mrs mansfield for that great uh reflection and miss autry you're up next and anyone else who has a reflection please line up in the chat thank you mr president um i just wanted to uh briefly uh acknowledge and thank um all the folks who took the time to participate i'm in the focus groups and the surveys in regards to our
012superintendent search you know i know sometimes you get surveys and you wonder if you're ever really hurt i just wanted to make sure that that folks know that we received you know hundreds of pages of comments regarding that and that i i personally read it because it's important just to know and i just wanted to again thank all the uh the administrators the teachers the students the pta folks the community members and partners who who took the time to give us their feedback on that and thank you so much it has been heard thank you very much miss audrey uh anyone else with dr hall yes thanks dr akbar um so um okay i'm the first person who's gonna say this but i'm excited to have our kids back in school uh so i i
013believe k through two and our uh special ed kids are back in school uh uh as of today um if they're not then i'm embarrassed about saying that in public it's not like that i don't know what i'm talking about but i believe that they're back in school today um so i was very excited about that got some emotional parents indicating as such um so and next week you know we have our three through twelve back so um so so these are exciting times i know um a lot of students have been anxious to get back to school um you know this might be the only time in history where students are not looking for i'm not looking forward to a snow day because they've had a lot of those in the last year uh
014continuously um so so and then also uh i wanted to echo what ms autry said um as usual um she steals my thunder on the best best choice topics uh but uh but yeah i mean yeah so again when deca what hit what you had to say as well that you know that feedback was was integral um i know that i've gotten some other text messages and emails and phone calls from folks about about the same topic and just want to encourage folks to continue reaching out to us um you know we are here um our best ability is our availability uh and our ability you know to to listen and learn and so um so so thank you for that so that's all i've got mr president thank you very much uh anyone else
015all right um so miss audrey and dr hall took my points i'll just add that the last surveys were done by parents we appreciate our parents for giving us feedback had overwhelming response from you definitely appreciate it uh we also uh i got an email actually a few hours ago asking if we were still accepting feedback so i want to uh just say that um we're not accepting more feedback on our surveys but we will have some open sessions doing our superintendent search provide more feedback and join uh in that process so thank you thank you thank you ahead and move forward and we do have a request to address the board uh and this request is from pamela hixson stevenson the director of akron summit council county public library in request for an endorsement
016of the renewal of the library's operating levy uh so thank you very much uh pamela for joining us i wanted to uh just share with you you have three minutes and uh this doesn't seem like a topic where you would directly disparage anyone but i just want to make you know you can't do that but we are happy to have you here with us today thank you very much dr akbar and thank you board members for listening to my brief but important comments i wanted to wish you a good evening and congratulations on kids returning to school not only to the board of education but to the hundreds and hundreds of staff members who've had roles and responsibilities and all of that i do want to discuss with you an important question that will be
017posed to the community in the spring primary this year and that is the question of renewing the akron summit county public library's current 1.9 mill operating levy i am speaking to you this evening in order to request the board of education's endorsement for this levy renewal and also for permission to place levy signs on school property we did this back in 15 when we were on the ballot and of course we've had a mutually beneficial relationship in that regard as i mentioned the the levy is simply a renewal of our current 1.9 mil operating levy that means there's not any additional fund being asked and it's also not even a replacement which would take advantage of the new uh property value so it's basically the same dollars that the public approved in 2015. i also
018wanted to highlight just quickly which which i know you already know there has been a long-standing partnership between public schools and public libraries in our country for decades and decades but particularly here in akron we've had i believe a very fruitful and strong and supportive of the community type of partnership um and those um partnerships and activities have come uh both informally and formally and you will see that in the in the resolution um because it details those relationships so again i'm here to ask for your endorsement and i'm not sure i apologize this is my first board of education meeting i don't know if it's appropriate to offer to answer questions but i'm willing to if that's appropriate if not please feel free to contact me at the library and i'll be happy to
019discuss anything with you that you would like to know more about thank you thank you very much miss dixon stevenson uh we don't accept questions at this time but we definitely appreciate you uh we will consider this resolution either at some point today or at a future meeting i'm not sure if you need it done today or not um you do uh one of the board members would need to uh ask this to be added to you second yes okay um i believe i just saw that right it went right right past me uh so i received a motion to add the uh levy um resolution for the libraries to new business for today by mr bravo seconded by uh mr alexander um questions comments or concerns um mr pendleton and dr akbar excuse me
020just to clarify this is adding it to new business for uh later this evening correct yes yes yes we do have a motion in a second uh mrs mansfield i may if i may i made the motion um just to do so normally we would approve this now do is there any discussion later or does anyone see a need for it to be under new business the resolution is listed there so i thought that we were voting on it now too but i'm unclear also i i just i just want to know when can i get a yard sign for my yard that's all right so well we typically don't do votes to a community is good reflections which is why i said new business would be a new business item for us um that's
021fine we do but that's nice that's fine yeah so yes okay okay mrs mckendrick yes dr akbar yes mr alexander yes ms autry yes mr bravo yes i dr hall added under new business thank you okay thank you very much next we'll go to recognition of winter sports these coaches and teams and we're going to turn it over to attend it yes and i'll hand it over to our district athletic director mr vasilati good evening everyone we greatly appreciate this time to recap and recognize our student athletes and teams from this winter and it's a winter sports season that's not over yet as we'll get to later we still have a team competing at a high level thank you also for the opportunity to have winter sports this year to dr james and the board
022of education thank you to our student athletes coaches and parents for being patient through this season with the protocols and doing your best to follow those which of course has included rapid testing for our wrestling teams coaches and basketball teams and coaches so we greatly appreciate that one of the great life lessons of extracurriculars is handling adversity when things don't go well and you face challenges that maybe you'd rather not face and our student athletes coaches uh our teams in general have done a great job of that through the winter so i want to salute them for that we'll start by recapping our team accomplishments in girls bowling this year our bowling championships were held at stonehenge as usual the girls title is won by fire stunk congratulations to the falcons there boys bowling championship
023was won by ella so congrats to the ellett boys and coaches in swimming and we'll hear a lot about swimming tonight i know we have some swimmers on this meeting joining us but as a team firestone boys and girls captured their conference championship and of course that's not a city series title because they're the only swim team we have an aps however they compete in the northeast aquatic conference with a number of large area schools and did a fantastic job in winning that conference so congratulations to firestone's swimming girls and boys also firestone won our wrestling title this year they went undefeated in dual meets in the city i want to thank to the folks at north and east for hosting our dual meets this year something they weren't used to our league meets rather
024because some of them involved three teams but we appreciate their efforts to host those wrestling meets in girls basketball we had a regular season tie between kenmore garfield and brookdale both undefeated throughout the regular season they never got to face each other until the championship game which was very exciting an overtime game brookdale pulled it out it was extremely close and uh just a great competitive game on on on both sides there and boys basketball booked one the regular season uh and the league championship game over north and then just this past saturday two days ago captured the district championship at home for division two in their district very exciting they defeated norton and they'll head to regionals it's not close it's southwest of toledo in elida ohio if you've heard of that but we
025looked it up it's 199 miles from brookdale so it's a bit of a drive but they're excited uh the charter buses have been scheduled through candle coach and the team and the cheerleaders are eager to get to regionals they play this thursday at 5 30. i also want to salute firestone for being selected as a site for hosting the boys basketball division for regionals we were observed a number of times this winter by the ohsaa to see how our protocols were going they were at firestone several times and were impressed enough to award firestone to host uh regional competition for boys basketball and division four so it's a salute to firestone folks who work hard there led by athletic director brian fuller and we look forward to competition there tomorrow night a double header and
026then the championship games friday some individual accolades in the winter i mentioned girls bowling earlier and we have some of these student athletes i know on the call i'm going to recognize so not sure how the technology up if their faces could be brought up and they could smile and wave they don't have to speak but we do want to recognize some individual accomplishments here and girls bowling high game and high series for the championship championships at stonehenge were brought home by kristen treffny from firestone so congratulations kristin on the boys side a high game and high series i was kate and mark's from brookdale i also want to recognize in bowling we had a 300 game this year and it wasn't in the championships but it was in the regular season i think it
027was versus tallmadge if i remember correctly that was jacob mccoy from elliott pulled a perfect game and obviously you can't get better than that so congratulations jacob for that 300 game in wrestling want to recognize faith perriman faith is a freshman girl wrestler at kenmore garfield who qualified for the state girls meet as a freshman and what a great experience that was for her and will only help her in the future so awesome job faith also on the wrestling side voted our city wrestler of the year by the coaches was senior cole urich from ellet congrats cole and then also we had a most inspirational wrestler award this year to an excellent leader very good wrestler senior donnie ware at north in girls basketball we had players of the year this year voted on by
028the coaches and and this year and if you've seen this young lady play she's exciting she's all over the court high energy has led her team for a number of years now but city player of the year from kenmore garfield ayana lop and she just did a fantastic job leading her team like i said into that championship game and through an undefeated city regular season on the boys side you might recognize the name chris livingston chris is a junior from brookdale he was voted player of the year another outstanding season for chris one of the finest boys players we've had in the city in a while and he's still going as i said earlier good luck to chris at regionals we had a number of swimmers with individual accomplishments we had many girls and boys
029qualify for the state meet down in canton so recognize state meet qualifiers on the girls side tara grillmeyer abby comet emma moore mia nagle and molly rogers and then on the boys side state qualifiers are mason brady dominic casper gasper excuse me with a g daniel green johnny marshall and davis pickett and then at the state meet this year the top 16 placers would earn points for their team to want to recognize individuals and in some cases uh groups of individuals who earn those those points for firestone on the girls side mia nagle finished fifth place in the 100 yard breaststroke and 13th in the 200 freestyle molly rogers finished sixth place in the backstroke tara bromeyer 11th place in the 200 individual medley and then the team of molly mia tara and emma finished
030collectively fifth place in the 200 yard medley on the boys side you've probably heard the name johnny marshall i mentioned him earlier johnny finished runner-up in the 200 freestyle and then as a sophomore you can't get better than this he won a state championship first place in the 100 backstroke so awesome job johnny keep it up we're sure glad you're back for two more years again congratulations to all our winter sports student athletes and teams i want to thank the board and dr james for allowing us the time to recognize them tonight and as i said there's one team left so go griffs thursday 5 30 in the regional semifinal playing toledo central catholic thank you very much congratulations to all of our student athletes and our coaches and to our athletic director uh vasilaty
031thank you for your leadership as well um you make us proud you represent the district well uh you make all of us proud and your school's proud so thank you for uh representing with that um we will move on to the next agenda item uh which is the approval of the previous meeting minutes on the special meeting on march 1st 2021 as well as the regular meeting on february uh 22nd uh yes it's been moved by mr bravo is there a second is my country yes okay thank you uh so it's been moved by uh mr bravo seconded by mrs mckittrick uh any discussion uh mr pendleton roll call please mrs mckittrick yes dr akbar yes mr alexander yes ms autry yes mr bravo yes dr hall aye mrs mansfield yes thank you thank you
032very much uh nets uh mr superintendent we turn it over to you for personnel recommendation uh mr president i wish to recommend approval of the personnel recommendations presented in categories 5 through 16. second has been removed by mrs mckittrick segment by mr bravo in the discussion on personnel recommendations okay hearing none uh mr pendleton uh dr akbar yes mr alexander yes i'm staying from 11.1 thank you miss autry yes mr bravo yes dr hall aye mrs mansfield yes mrs mckittrick yeah thank you very much uh nets will have resolutions and motions on the agenda superintendent mr president i wish to recommend approval of the resolutions and motions presented in category 21. second all right it's been moved by mrs mckittrick executed by mr bravo and on the consent agenda hearing none will do the vote
033by roll call mr clemson mr alexander yes ms autry yes mr bravo yes dr hall hi mrs mansfield yes mrs mckendrick yes dr akbar yes thank you very much uh mr superintendent we turn it back over to you for our business affairs recommendation yes mr president i wish to recommend approval of the business affairs recommendations presented in category 23. i'd like to point out items 23.17 and 23.20 both of those are additional um safety uh supplies that are needed as we reopen uh we're constantly looking for additional items to ensure the safety of our staff and students as we reopen thank you thank you very much okay uh president sorry you're actually you're actually right i'm sorry is there a motion so moved moved by miss lost three seconds is there a second second it's
034been seconded by uh mr alexander um and any discussion okay hearing none i just wanted to add that uh 23.21 we wanted to just recognize uh the professional development of the board today for approval as well discussion hearing that uh vote by roll call mr clemson ms autry mr bravo yes dr hall aye this is mansfield yes this is mckittrick yes dr akbar yes mr alexander yes thank you thank you very much uh mr pillington uh dr james uh superintendent report uh yes um so the one item that's in uh my report is in regards to uh spring sports um as we've done with fall in winter sports there is a resolution uh for your consideration to actually allow the competition for spring sports this one also adds uh sports for middle schools on a
035truncated schedule but as we return our middle and high school students back next week we have included the documents from our athletic committee and i do certainly recommend that we allow those competitions for both high school and middle school to take place okay a discussion on that item from the board i just had one question about that if i may um okay dr oh yeah yeah thank you um sorry my camera keeps blinking in and out my apologies um um so have there been any any any issues uh with respect to uh to testing or has that sort of unfolded in a way that's very sort of uh smooth and uh and efficient um i'll let mrs spoke answer that question but there have been some issues not related to the actual you know the
036process that we're using for testing but the fact that there have been some uh positives uh in that as i spoke good evening we have had a very successful testing program for our contact sports which were considered basketball and wrestling we have had a few incidents of both students and staff found being found positive therefore we followed the protocols to file the positive person with summit county and also did the direct contacts as a follow-up those teams involved were then sent into quarantine and could not practice nor participate until the quarantining was completed which everybody did successfully and what the teams were able to return on time at the end of the quarantine session so i would say basically we did a wonderful job the students were very positively impacted by being able to be
037tested and i think it was a good understanding of how the testing runs out and i do commend mr vasilati because that testing schedule got to be very creative as we moved our testers from location to location multiple times on one day depending on which sport was playing within the time frame that we needed to so i can't tell you that it wasn't with its ups and downs but we got through it and we are very successfully going into postseason and able to test our current basketball team that will be playing at the higher level as well as they go forward great thank you i appreciate that miss gold thank you very much well i know we did receive some emails about uh some people being angry from having a quarantine but uh i i
038think that you you it was our the board's will that that happened and i think uh we followed protocol so we know at least it's working because we did hear from some angry parents so we appreciate them reaching out to us we also appreciate you for following the protocol an update is the spring sports that you are considering approving tonight to move forward are considered non-contact sports so the testing will not need to take place for the sports during the spring right so as a part of the superintendent's report there is a resolution attached there uh to return uh to sports play for um spring sports i don't know why i said it that way but uh to return of spring sports um and so uh we will either accept further discussion or a motion
039to move forward with that summon second okay i'm sorry miss miss autry yeah just for clarification too and for the public who's listening for the middle school sports so that will be inter city or will we be playing outside schools i think those are all within the city for middle school yeah that's that's correct it's all within the city our middle schools would just play one another and no teams outside of the city uh during this three week season coming up yeah i have another question too so i would track um with that being an outside sport um is that going to be i guess more open for folks to come and view those uh competitions or will it still be limited to x amount of tickets per athlete mrs audrey i can address that
040there is a new order from the ohio department of health and the ohio high school association they have increased the amount of spectators from 15 to 25 percent of the actual seating inside into 30 for actual seating and outside venues so you will see some additional seating allowed but it will still not be the capacity of the total seats in either venue thank you very much mr hook any other questions or comments discussion okay so uh we'll accept the uh motion if there is one at this time so i moved it's moving by mr bravo second it's been seconded by miss autry uh any other discussion okay we'll do the vote on the return to uh spring sports by uh voter roll call um mister mr bravo sorry didn't think i was first yes thank
041you dr hall sorry i that was funny mrs mansfield yes mrs mckittrick yes dr akbar yes mr alexander yes ms autry yes thank you thank you very much mr superintendent uh yes so um uh in line with uh miss perryman we are aware of prom and graduation so we're working through uh those with the principles in terms of venues and you know just making sure that we can move forward and that that is safe so i got that message um also i uh i along with mayor oregon visited a couple of our sites this morning i'm very happy to report there were a lot of smiling faces kids very excited to be back and a lot of smiling faces from staff we visited helen arnold uh resnick and also uh harris jackson and actually at
042harris jackson lunch was in progress and so we're using the not only the cafetorium but the auditorium as well because they have five lunch periods of a hundred kids each and so they were all properly spaced and um from what we saw everything was working like clockwork and then also i'd like to turn it over to mrs spoke to talk about metro because that issue had come up earlier uh in our plans for safety thank you dr james in line to getting ready for school aps did reach out to metro because there are some different regulations as alluded to in the statements made earlier by our wonderful student board member yes metro buses are not able to accommodate the same number of students and please realize that they go under federal mandates so therefore i
043can tell you that a 45 foot bus can only have 25 people on it at once and a 30 foot to 35 foot bus can only have 20. here that that was a reality and an understanding from the department of transportation we our student services team sat down with them to find out exactly what routes we would have impacted we do not have chasers available for some of our heavier used schools but they will be setting extra buses on those routes with the times that we gave them but our students will be reporting we have advised all of our schools of the routes that served their individual schools and made some adjustments to the routes that they actually have running on the hour so that our staff will be housed at the transit center to
044make sure our students safely travel in and out of the metro transit center as they travel back and forth and we expect that all of our students should be pretty much out of the metro transit center by 4 30. so we are actively working with metro along with summit county health as those adjustments may change with the guidelines and the lifting of some of the sanctions that are currently in line for coveted reality but we have to do it piece by piece as they are under the federal regulations of transport not the ohio department of ed for student transport thank you and that was all i had mr president thank you very much any uh questions for the superintendent okay hearing none uh president's report so uh there's a few items uh for the president's
045report that i want to go over uh and some of it is a discussion with the board to just uh say that one of the things that uh we have coming up is our meeting on thursday at 6 p.m to discuss superintendent candidates and to review those so that will happen on thursday at 6 00 p.m um to date i i think that everyone's good with that so i haven't heard anything uh questioning that we'll have um mr uh horton and his team join us again for that meeting um the uh return for a board meetings is on the agenda today we'll discuss that uh in new business uh i wanted to just share that and we'll uh in that um in that discussion uh which i was necessarily something we talked about before um
046was that we would uh be required to have limited uh in-person um uh public invitations or how do i say that uh public participation i should say that uh attending our meetings in person so we would be we would actually uh have to have that available for those who want to desire to come join us uh we'll still obviously follow all uh of the current aps policies on uh physical distancing uh as well as the board being spaced out so just wanted to add that level of context uh which was which was something i found out on friday uh prior to uh since we had that discussion um at our last meeting before the resolution comes before you so we'll talk about that more uh in new business uh also uh did receive a request
047we have a meeting um tentatively or try or slate it for march 23rd um and i know we had discussed starting earlier but looks like you have to start at five now is that a challenge for anyone we could we would try to start between two and three on the 23rd but now it looks like we have to start at five um i'm looking now dr upward this was the 23rd right yes just checking a request from board member to start later due to meeting a work conflict and i just wanted to uh make sure before we uh changed it on the schedules so we said five o'clock on the 23rd roger that yep that works for for me uh i can make it i'll make it work yep okay thank you very much everyone
048for being flexible and uh working with us uh on that so thank you very much uh the next item is uh it looks like everyone but maybe one person um and we couldn't find the time that everyone was able to make it so we have all but one person um uh possibly able to make the joint meeting with the board and city council which is slated for april uh first and that is not an april fools joke um and so we are slated to meet at 5 30 that day with city council we have discussed uh dr hall and i have discussed with uh president margot somerville some agenda items one of them uh being broadband access uh maybe some joint uh process or a resolution that we can all work on uh with the
049city and uh the school district and so that's one thing that's on the agenda that we know we'll talk about else that you want to discuss get with me uh soon i'll be uh dr hall and i will be meeting with city council uh leadership for first meeting to finalize the agenda and send that out uh at present it will be an hour hour and a half maps meetings so it won't be an agenda where there will be 80 things on there so just to know that we're not going to go elephant in one sitting i'll have two or three discussion items and uh uh have another meeting potentially in the summer as well uh with the city council so uh i see miss mckittrick mrs mckittrick thanks mr president i'm sorry could you tell
050me what time again on the first uh 5 30 which uh ruth i think already put on everyone's calendars okay thank you thank you okay and then just two other items uh and so one is that we were supposed to do uh mr pendleton's evaluation today we are going to push that back to march 22nd um and so just wanted to let everyone know uh did have that conversation with mr pendleton and we're to just push that back reading and the last item uh to discuss is just uh to let everyone know that um we have had some discussions and some questions uh from the board and so we're referring uh to finance committee uh just a review of the administrative salary structure and then we'll have a vote and discussion at our next meeting
051on march 22nd about that so just wanted to uh let everyone know about that and i think that's all that i have anything um so any questions about anything that i um uh thank you very much everyone we're gonna move it uh to treasures report with mr pendleton thank you dr akbar quick report tonight before i get into my comments as a reminder i'll be reaching out for a finance committee next week in reference to what dr akbar just talked about administrative salary structure and as well as our finance strategic plan quick comments regarding house bill 126 we are presenting written opponent testimony to house bill 126 thanks to dr james and the ohio 8 coalition this weekend for working on this opponent testimony very quickly this has come back in this form house bill
052126 it was prior in december 2020 as house bill 75 and all the way back to december of 2018 it was house bill 343 all of which we have opposed and have partnered with uh compromises along the way the background of this is representative maron uh files a process that is overly burdensome on school boards and how it a value evaluates property and the border revision process and as ms autry talked about i believe in our previous board meeting about the advocacy page in house bill 920 it is in direct conflict of house bill 920 and it really reduces the board's ability to collect all taxes in a fair and equitable manner so if this were to go through and again this is the third or fourth attempt at this bill we believe that we
053will be successful this time it would undo unduly burden some taxpayers versus others we could talk about this more in finance committee in detail i'll forge your opponent testimony but again special thanks to dr james in the ohio 8 coalition for wrapping around us in this opponent testimony is much more powerful when they're hearing from the eight urbans than just a single individual so that concludes my report tonight and back to you dr akbar thank you very much mr pendleton anybody else has any questions for the uh treasure of the year all right that's awesome by the way i'm just staying fast here uh all right so uh it looks like there's no questions thank you very much uh mr pendleton uh we're gonna move to our committee room doctor you muted did you mute
054it was that muted that whole time i couldn't have been no no okay i'm like i swear i've heard laughter that those uh treasures here thing um okay so i don't know how that happened um but we're at committee reports and we'll move to the legal contracts and board policy uh we're go mr alexander no report at this time thank you okay thank you very much uh next is financing capital management mr bravo no report at this time okay thank you very much instructional policy and student achievement mrs uh i'll start if that's okay oh yes i'm sorry yes that's fine so really quickly just to um refresh everybody's memories the akron public schools received the hewlett foundation and chan zuckerberg initiative foundation grants and each of those is 1.5 million dollars and the shan
055zuckerberg grant funds our elementary college and career academy strategies and our dei work and as far as any administrative costs or indirect costs for each the handling of each of those grants just to make sure everybody knows that no monies come out of those grants to support any administrative costs so that money goes directly to the projects that it's supposed to be funding that's all for me okay mrs mansfield do you have anything else um i'm going to let miss autry introduce dr mick williams woods topic i believe um that came up in scrimmage today yes thank you mrs mansfield so with the return of in-person education uh one of the questions that i've been fielding was surrounding testing um and how that's gonna work so it was mentioned this morning um house bill 67
056specifically and i will allow dr mcwilliams woods to explain a little bit further what it what it means and where we're at thank you uh mrs autry and my uh my instructional policy committee thank you very much so so i wanted to just highlight um house bill 67 that does address testing in the state of ohio this has not passed the senate yet it's supposed to be in a committee with the senate tomorrow with hopefully bringing it to the full senate further this week we're hoping the timeline works out that well because testing state testing is coming up very quickly so i wanted to just highlight a couple things that that if this does go through will impact our testing and i'll show you what that looks like on our schedule the good news is
057that there is some uh flexibility and relief particularly on the graduation requirements but not quite as much relief as we were hoping for with the state tests itself and the administration of state tests what has happened and when we talk about state tests i think it's really important and i mentioned this at scrimmage this morning that people don't realize when we say state tests most of our state tests are actually required by the u.s department of education and that's how we if we're going to take federal school improvement funding which every district does in the state of ohio then you also have to do the testing that's required to draw down those funds and the state sets those provisions up for us but it's actually required from the u.s department of education the biden administration
058just put out guidance that they are not going to waive the their u.s department of ed required testing um but they will waive if the states apply for this which we we will do once this house bill 67 passes but uh they will waive the consequences of state testing for our report cards for school improvement status and the you know the locations that can come from that so knowing that that uh is is coming from the u.s department of ed what the state has done is put together this house bill 67 our state legislator laters to to direct the state on what to ask the u.s department of ed for in their waiver so the first thing here is mandating the spring testing window that it will extend the state testing window so we still
059have to give the test but they're going to give us an additional week beyond the extension they had already given us about a month ago they're going to extend it now through this may 7th and may 21st for math science and social studies and we do all of our testing online since we've been one-to-one um for five years now we do all of our testing online the uh the second thing um just to highlight is this it requires the department of ed to make sure that we get the test results back in a timely manner to make decisions about our third grade students because of the third grade guarantee and wanting to make sure that we get summer intervention for students the third grade guarantee had already for this year they had said that we're
060not going to be retaining students based on the third grade tests so that part in the ohio state law was already waived which is good but this directs us just to make sure that the assessment results come back in time for summer intervention for third grade then for graduation requirements there's a few very important things that are very positive the first thing is that it permits school districts to grant that for any student we can grant a diploma if a student is considered and deemed on track to graduate for those of you who remember last year we had this same provision that if students are demonstrating that they have been on track to graduate then if this bill passes we can we can have look at all of their credits their assessments that they've taken
061and if we deem that they're on track to graduate then we can list them and issue them a diploma the second thing that is really important is that we can actually also use uh hang on i must have missed it here um oh it's over here because it was already in the bill that we can also use the final course grade in a course to go towards uh instead of or in lieu of a test score so this also was a provision that they did last spring that they're just carrying over and applying so instead of having to hit a specific mark on a test score you can use a grade in the course and then that turns into an equivalency of a test score and you can use that for graduation these are both
062very very important critical flexibility items if this bill passes through the senate um and then gets signed by the governor that will be able to use for graduation uh purposes now let me just show you uh to mrs autry's question then about what kind of impact does that have on us going into the spring so we this is a list of all of the assessments coming into the spring for our students now this far right column lists the grades but when you look at the state assessments that are all required here the this is our english language proficiency the act here's all the state tests that i was just mentioning and then we have gifted assessments and career ed assessments that are required those are still no matter what happens with house bill 67 these
063assessments are still going to be required um that and they're required for both in-person students and remote students so we will have to figure a way to have our remote students come in for the assessments to make sure that they take those now the flexibility that they provided for those high school exams where you can use a course grade uh for the students instead of an exam that will help that students will have to come in and retake lots of exams so that will certainly give us some relief but but we still have to give the suite of assessments mrs autry was that did that cover all the topics i think so yeah so good news for some flexibility for graduation and extension and timeline it's too bad that we didn't from the us department
064of ed get a full waiver of assessments just because especially for us coming back to school now i wish we didn't have to i would want to prioritize every single second on uh direct instruction with students versus stopping and taking assessments but i it will in the big scope of things it will help us look and see where our students are for planning for next year but i just hate to take that time right now when we're just coming back to school okay thank you very much any questions or discussion for what was presented okay hearing that uh i'll just say uh thank you dr mcwilliams woods for uh providing that i know that that you know with the pandemic and everything um people been wondering about uh whether or not there would be some
065flexibility uh with uh graduation uh um as well as the end of the term test so i think this does help uh provide some some information on the path forward in that way it looks like mrs mckittrick may have a question for you though uh mrs mckittrick nope sorry my hands up earlier sorry you literally just popped up in the middle of my screen uh she must have a question uh okay well thank you very much dr mcwilliams woods uh and the uh committee instructional policy uh committee so the nets will have the equity committee uh dr hall sure thanks mr president um so we we met uh recently as well and had a um well first we welcomed um a new member to the committee miss hughes that came with principal promo from um
066from book doll clc and uh she was she's a fantastic addition and uh right away uh was a fantastic community a contributing member of our committee uh we had a very robust conversation around uh our hr uh uh practices specifically our hiring practices and so miss mcveigh was gracious enough to come and provide a presentation where we had a chance to kind of talk about sort of being a background and um and have discussion around sort of the history of our hiring we had a chance to talk about kind of current state what were some of the opportunities from an equity standpoint i was very open and honest discussion um and uh you know we talked about things such as how could we better our pre-screening of applicants um and how could we um you
067know better examine the tools that we used uh to assess uh current applicants as well um and so it was very very open honest discussion and um you know want to thank um miss mcveigh for her contributions and leading in really reading that um there were a number of follow-up items um that we will make every effort to get miss mcveigh back in front of the committee to present on here in the next probably month or two um and then secondarily uh we also um in that meeting began that transition um to miss carla chapman who was our currently our director of community relations in dei um you know and so so she'll begin to facilitate and coordinate that money as we move forward uh much the same as mr pendleman does or back what
068we're talking about what mcgowan does for for imp and for finance committee um and so it's looking forward to her taking a more active role in um and leading that committee as we move forward as well and then also we extended um an invite recently to um uh to miss ship from the aea as well so hopefully she and or her delegate will be able to join us moving forward so that's a very concise um recap of our meeting happy to take any questions or hear any comments or concerns that anybody may have any uh questions or discussion yeah i just wanted to comment uh just uh i think dr hall did a good job in pulling mrs uh chapman in to lead that because she is has been doing a lot of uh the
069work already under equity and i think it's it was a perfect move to have her lead this and guide us and then we have a robust discussion and move forward i think it's going to be very good so thank you yeah i should add to that as well ms chapman is also going to take the lead on really setting the schedule um as we uh move forward with getting the because you know various departments all have uh equity initiatives that they are working on and so miss chapman will be taking the lead to work with those departments offline and then uh to help coordinate uh and schedule them to come before the equity committee as as we move throughout the year so there's a lot of work to be done this is going to be
070it's a very uh this will be very fast paced and we have a very uh robust agenda um every month coming forward so so if you're able to tune in to that committee please do because there's a lot going on and i would welcome this group's collective feedback so thank you again and thank you mr alexander is a discussion for the equity committee and then the communication ad hoc committee uh ms autry uh there's no report at this time but we are uh likely having a meeting at the end of the month we're just waiting to get some confirmations back thank you thank you very much uh that concludes our uh committee reports there's no unfinished business we do have two items for new business one uh being the return to in-person school and the
071other being the uh libraries levy and so we'll move to the uh return in-person board meetings i said school at first my apologies but it returned to in-person board meetings any discussion on this topic you you can raise your hand or um put your name in the chat [Music] thank you so i guess one of the things that i'm thinking about is just logistically uh you mentioned about we would have to allow a certain number of uh public uh members of the public to attend um i guess it's balancing that out will we still be having uh the capability for uh people to address the board virtually still will be doing both um and again i'm thinking about the camera you know the position of it how it's looking during the meetings can we hear
072you know if someone's at home versus someone in person going back and forth between all of that so i mean i know we have the awesome ryan written house but i'm just wondering about that how much time would we need to i guess make sure that that all looks okay and we can hear okay if should we go back in person so i'll um see if dr james has anything else to add after i share so i did uh share with uh mark williamson that i did not think that there would be any additional uh considerations based off the way we are currently doing it because our desire foundation will be that they still present and in fact that each and every one of us uh would still be uh have our computers in front
073of us and still uh presenting uh a computer so uh it will be live streamed that way uh one of the things that we talked about that we didn't necessarily want was having there be a string from the room uh just kind of broadly uh without everything happening in the room and so it'll be better if we all had our computers in front of us unmuted when it was time for us to speak uh and do it that way so that that was uh the thought process behind it and so if you're asking to address the board you would do it um on teams as well and so the only thing we will probably have to do is a space for community members to uh if there's a computer or something we have where they
074can come in feedback or their comments uh so that might be when you just said that that might be one thing that i could think of that we might need to do other discussions or considerations that have been thought about dr james i think the um uh primary method is exactly what you described is everyone still using their um you know uh chromebooks or devices to in and interact with the meeting we'll look at some uh we'll look at some other options you know with the cameras uh in some other rooms where we might have to extend if we get in-person visitors um but i'll have a little bit more uh on that a little later in the week i believe yes and i know we talked about uh security for the building and all
075of that as well um and i don't know if yet but i know that's something else that we talked about as well right a lot of that will be dependent if we're gonna be in that room um and we have you know we'll have to spread out so it'll change the configuration a little bit but security for that particular room i don't think i'll have to change as much but we will have to provide for security if we have to go to another room for uh overflow so that is one consideration that we'll have to take thank you very much i see uh mrs mckittrick then mrs mansfield thank you mr president yes my hand was up for real this time i want to uh thank whoever wrote the resolution for allowing the flexibility for
076those of us who might not yet be comfortable returning to in person still having the flexibility to be remote thank you thank you very much mr mckittrick that came directly from uh our discussions and so uh worked with brian and uh diana feidel uh to come up with the resolution based upon the discussions that we had at the last meeting so you can thank yourselves and diana and ryan for the word spending uh but the ideas all came from what you all said so mrs mansfield sorry um i think my questions have kind of been answered i just had questions about the room and if we were going to be in that room or if we looked at other spaces that might give us a chance to spread out just a little bit more and
077then it's not such a big deal if someone shows up you know the other great thing about um board meetings especially as we get toward the end of the year is the recognition of students and tonight was lovely and it's a great way to do it and it's it's a great pandemic compromise right but um the the safer and the if there are ways that we can move toward doing things in person whether that be you know i know some of the some of the schools now we do our our meetings a little bit different but i know that some schools have done their meetings in auditoriums so that there's a great air exchange in in auditoriums um i know that creates a huge issue for the folks that do tech and probably ryan rittenhouse
078has given the you know the shaking my head thing on wishing i would not ask that but you know just trying to throw out some other ideas for ways that we can um can do some of those things as safely as possible for keeping students safe keeping staff safe and yet um incorporating those things when we can do it safely just just hoping we can get back to that as as we move on just as our students and our staff are thank you very much uh any uh i know you didn't address that to any uh one person but i don't know about ryan you had any uh thoughts on that i'm sorry mr pendleton no okay um that might be something that might be something we want to consider but uh that's not something
079we've talked about thus far i'm and just some things out there right now and again some of this may not be till summer or fall but as we're you know as we're moving forward those are some things that i know that um we miss right because we are separated from each other and we're still going to have to be spread out and nothing's going to be the same but just thinking about how you know other ways we can do it and i know um there is no box anymore so we're thinking outside of something but there's we threw the box out a long time ago so we're not thinking inside any boxes and and uh just to add some additional comments there we know that this legislation allows us to operate in a virtual uh
080or in person or blended environment much like our students until the end of the uh until july 1st so there's some discussions in columbus about how to modify this and i've given my thoughts i haven't participated in any testimony but i've given my thoughts that much like our students there's been some real growth in these areas for boards of education and i think the flexibility that we've had in our committee meetings and the efficiency out of this is pretty fantastic so we'll continue to advocate for that i'm sure yeah definitely i think it's miss audrey yes miss autry and is there anyone after that line up in the chat no i'm sorry i don't okay mr alexander then dr hall yeah i know we mentioned this but what what what is the time frame that
081we're looking to come back if we come back in person i can't remember the day uh it's march 22nd so it will be our very next meeting i believe i said that correctly um did i get that right mr clemson yes uh it almost remind i thought i got it wrong for five seconds was like we start going remote on march 23rd or then i was like what was that 22nd and then we're going back 23rd this year all these dates but yeah almost a year later literally okay uh dr hall uh yes thanks mr president um apologies this has already been addressed um but i i think we mentioned that we that we would have security there um normal um but my question was going to be uh if we were if we were
082to have individuals who show up and do not want to wear a mask um you know for the in-person session be authorized to to to to remove said individuals because i'm just you know i happened i i worked the polls on election day and we had some folks that came in and refused to wear a mask and it just kind of got to be ridiculous and so um i just want to make sure that we that we're prepared in case uh we have folks who who show up and want to visit similar behavior uh upon us at our board meetings so yeah i think that's something um i'll work with jan rambler on uh and diana feidl i mean as long as it's my understanding or my belief that as long as we have you
083know it posted that you have to wear masks to come into the building i think legally we should be okay but again i'll double check with mr rambler because we do have apd officers on uh at our building for that along with our own security and so i'll i'll do a quick check on that one roger that thank you thank you very much any additional discussion okay hearing that uh entertain a motion if there is one so moved that has been moved by mr brown seconded by uh mrs mckittrick uh that was me but that's okay so sorry i i saw mrs mckittrick um picture pop up in in my face at the same time so i apologize okay no problem uh sorry uh it's been moved by uh mr bravo and seconded by uh
084miss mrs mansfield uh are there any is there any discussion further on this motion i do have one additional question and i'm sorry if it was answered i'm just trying to visualize this i guess i'm thinking about executive session so i guess it's going to be a matter of i mean are we going to stay in whatever said room or are we going to move to another room i mean we'll have to i guess clear out the public if we stay i guess the time that's going to be involved with that taking that into account for the folks that might be in person and if this was answered already i apologize i'm just again just trying to visualize that that piece of our meetings the executive session yeah thank you miss autry uh we had
085that specific conversation with anyone yet uh so it's a great point uh mr pendleton area well uh superintendent james and i talked a little bit about this we can relocate to a separate room on the second floor obviously limit the disruption for any public that are in attendance and our only requirements for the for the board policy would be to connect to those board members not present at that point in time so we we could i if the conference room on the fifth floor might be a little bit too tight but we would set up a room in the second floor that would would have fit our needs there thank you very much mr any pendleton discussion on this question okay hearing none uh little do uh vote by roll call mr pendleton please dr
086hall hi mrs mansfield yes mrs mckittrick yeah dr akbar yes mr alexander yes ms autry yes mr bravo yes thank you thank you very much um and so look forward to seeing some of you in person at our next meeting on march uh 22nd and we'll move to the next item which is the resolution to support the library levy which was presented to us by ms pamela hixon stevenson uh doing requests for uh to address the board um and so we will entertain a motion to uh to uh support that that resolution so okay it's been moved by uh miss autry it's their second second it's been segmented by mr bravo any discussion on this resolution hearing none uh we'll vote by i'm sorry uh miss autry i'm sorry it's not really a question i
087just want to thank the the public library for all that they do for our students um you know our students utilize it so much they come here after school and we have such wonderful librarians and staff and i just wanted to thank them for their continued support iraq and public schools uh well well said mr alexander no no i don't have anything sorry i'm muted so i just want to make sure all right so any other discussion hearing now we'll do a vote by roll call mr pendleton mrs mansfield yes this is mckittrick dr aspar yes yes mr alexander yes thank you miss autry yes mr bravo yes dr hall hi thank you thank you very much uh is there any other new business to come before the board today okay hearing none we're going
088to go into uh there is a need to recess into executive session pursuant to ohio revised code 121.22 g1 for the purposes of considering the employment of a public employee or official of the school district and the ohio revised code one two one point two two g three to conference with the board legal counsel concerning disputes involving the school district that are subject of pending or imminent court action it's been moved by mr bravo is there taking it by mr alexander all those in favor i'm sorry uh i'm like i'm in another meeting uh um mr uh pendleton roll call please mrs mckendrick yes dr akbar yes mr alexander yes this autry yes mr bravos dr hall hi mrs mansfield yes thank you 706. okay so thank you very much everyone uh for uh joining
089us today we will recess into executive session uh and i do not think there will be a need for uh action uh when we return so uh for joining us today we will return to adjourn with sessions so board members if you can log out fully of this meeting and log into the executive session now thank you very much by the way okay thank you very much and welcome back to the regular scheduled meeting thank you uh welcome back to the regular uh scheduled meeting of the akron board of education on 8 march 2021 from executive session and there's no further actions to uh come before the board today we will entertain a motion to adjourn so moved so move second it's been moved by mr bravo segmented by mr alexander thank you very much
090everyone we will see uh the board members on thursday uh and thank you very much for a great meeting everybody [Music] uh and thank you very much for a great meeting everybody