CPS Board of Education - Aug 28, 2023

001good evening everyone I call to order the April 28 2023 business meeting of the Cincinnati board of education we welcome everyone and request everyone in the audience to silence your cell phones and electronic devices as Wagner would you please call the roll ton present Craig here Ms Jones Mrs Weinberg here president Lindy here members of the public who wish to speak may do so by clicking the chat button now if you are online this chat feature will be open for your requests for the next five minutes please submit your name your affiliation your school Community your topic and your contact information if you'd like a direct response to any question you might have as we move to item three our board priorities uh I would just mention these are coming in the month of September

002and for uh my colleagues on the board I wanted to just remind everyone that we have a work session on Wednesday of this week with our governance coaches and I wanted to flag two sets of materials that you've already received that you should take a look at before that meeting if you haven't already done so there was an email from Cindy that came out two Fridays ago that have has um Three Links in it one is uh one to read beforehand for sure and then the other two are optional and that came out two Fridays ago uh this the second piece to review there was in the weekly updates from the superintendent on Friday uh there were two documents um one is the interim goals and guard rails and the second is the progress monitoring

003calendar draft so um again looking forward to that on Wednesday I wanted to flag those documents that have come out and thank everybody for taking a look at those ahead of time um I understand that Pat is ordering pizza I'm also going to bring some kind of food with me and if people have any requests please let me know uh we'll turn it over now to uh what's that this Bolton Ms Bolton is requesting ribs I make I make no promises but yeah all right uh all right this is this is for the kosher uh board president we're gonna look into the pork ribs um and with that we'll turn it over to uh superintendent right for her update thank you president Linden you can add famine to mine while you're taking recommendations I was

004thinking Donuts you know but but if we uh we'll do our best so to just get started first of all on a on a pretty smooth opening as we've gotten started we recognize that Transportation collectively is not where we want it to be but I think we all could can agree that it is Light Years um ahead of where we were this time last year so we want to give just a bit of an update on transportation and talk about some next steps and answer any questions that you may have so overall our transformation Transportation transformation all yellow bus routes ran on the first day of school we had 340 vehicles that represent 1257 routes am npm as expected many routes did run slow on the first day uh some of that is really more

005of getting students acclimated to what those routes were and some were were late the first day not like last year but there were some that were late Metro cars were delivered to all schools before the first day of school and we are making positive sustainable changes in our tiered routes and setting the bus needs in April for the start of the year that was something we did this year piloting combined routes for schools that has gone really positively adjusting bus stop locations for efficiency and safety we have our own call center now in the call center has really gone through overall change management and they're working really well in the call center and working with contractors to improve the my stop app accuracy areas for improvement as we continue to move forward our service requests

006are changes since July the 10th there were 1790 service requests and 882 change of service requests that came in through our call center our GPS on the buses were reporting currently at 92.1 the expectation is overall 100 our on-time percentage right now is not at all where we want it to be and I do want to add here that our anchor time is 20 minutes so essentially if the bus is not based on the way that we do our on-time performance if the bus does not arrive 20 minutes before the start of school then that's not considered on time um the feedback that we're getting from schools is for the most part the buses are showing up before school starts but for some schools that may be 15 minutes before or 10 minutes before versus

007the 20-minute anchor time we are not inclined to change the anchor time at all because we do want to make sure that we are becoming as efficient as possible and students are getting to school in enough time to maneuver through through the Halls into classes we also do make sure that all students that are coming to school do have an opportunity to have breakfast even if they're not there within that 20 minute time frame the low number of buses not reporting which is pulling down the average and that was also with the anchor times as well and so we did have about to start with there were about 50 buses that were first student buses that were not reporting in terms of the GPS and so since then we do believe that that's been rectified

008but that was something that we saw in the entry I do also want to make sure that we call a board policy 8600.02 and this policy is definitely in alignment with the state law and so it's it's really we want to make sure that we address this because we've been hearing some concerns I want to go specifically to number three but we've been hearing some concerns about the assigned times for students to arrive to school or the assigned time for students to be picked up from school so our goal is to make sure that our students are at least at school at least 20 minutes before time and that they're picked up within a 15 minute time after school is out however our policy and the ode requirement gives us 30 minutes before the school

009day starts as considered in compliance and 30 minutes after the school day ends as considered in compliance so if school is out at 3 50 we have until 4 20 to pick students up from school and to be in compliance and so that is not our goal our goal is we want to make sure that our students are there like I said in enough times that they can get to breakfast and all the things they need to do before school and we also want our staff to be able to leave after school when school is out and then so if staff is there you know beyond that 20 minutes of time or 15 minutes of time if the buses aren't there that means that staff is still at the school but I did think that

010it was important that we share that in terms of the requirement 30 minutes before or 30 minutes after is still in compliance so that's something that we want to share with everyone so that as we're seeing some of those concerns we're also able to help socialize parents around that the other thing that I do want to also address and it's not on this slide but there are one two three four five about five schools that we've seen more consistently as we've worked out all of the other Kinks and all of the other linkages there are about five schools that we're still working through some of their stops so just so that you know what those schools are a Riverview has 10 routes and we have one route that's currently that currently has an issue in

011terms of getting the students dropped off on time fencer and it's really specific to Route 171 Spencer has 10 buses and there's one route that Route 171 that's had the major challenge that we're working with the linkages for that uh for gamble gamble has no um there have been no issues with the regular buses but with two of our special education routes uh two of the four special education routes there have been some challenges in the afternoon with when they're being picked up and for Roberts we they have 10 buses 10 routes and we have two issues out of the ten um the route is being broken up currently into two separate routes so this should allow us to absorb that challenge and the last one is Sands and Sans has more than the others

012so there are nine routes at Sands there are four of the routes that are issues right now and we're really digging deep into what's causing some of that some of it is just the linkage in terms of getting from one of the routes to the other so in terms of looking at the number of routes that we're having challenges with you may have heard me share just a moment ago that we have 1257 routes right now we're having challenges with 10 that's less than one percent but we do want to make sure that we're addressing those because if we're having the challenges with those that means parents are having challenges as well or we have students that are getting home late so we're looking at those this is the eighth day of school and if

013we're looking at this right now in the eight we just finished our eighth day of school so some of what we're seeing is very normal for the opening of school but it's really much better than we're seeing it than we even saw here and then we're seeing across the country so our goal is to get to excellent in terms of this area but we do know that there are some there are areas that we need to continue to work through the other thing that's important and we're asking families to do this we are we're going through the process now we're after Labor Day is when we start moving students to a holding Home Room that have not withdrawn from the district some of those students are also students that ride buses so we're asking families

014as if if you're not enrolled in the district if you're planning to attend please have your child attend school we want to make sure that there are they are accounted for and for those that have made decisions to go other places the sooner you let us know that the sooner we can can make the route more efficient for the other students that are on that route and I'll give you one example we had an example right before school where there was a student that was not routed to a bus because last year they chose to come off of the bus when that child was rerouted to the bus it added an additional eight minutes of time to every other child on the bus so every time we were adding a student or taking a student

015off of a bus it does change routes for other students so that allows us just to get to the more efficiency and also allow us to remove dead stops and those kinds of things so at this time I'll stop and open for any questions thank you very much superintendent Wright are there board members who have any questions or comments about the update this evening Ms Bolton yeah thank you and thanks for the update and then agreed it's it's far better than it was last year far better than the year before uh and those were two very difficult years for a number a number of of reasons so I appreciate that one question or we see the trend on on time from that 43 are we checking that every day do we see a trend upward

016we are seeing a trend upward and we had last week we got up to 92 that were reporting but we were still right at about 75 in terms of on time the goal in terms of Council of great City Schools is generally 90 or higher for one of our districts and so our goal really is always 95 so we're not quite at what the targeted goal is but we are seeing Improvement we've also been in direct contact pretty consistent contact with our contractors um because what we find is when the bus is not on time what our team is doing is going back in to dig in and so one of the things that we found for example is as we realized that there were some some buses that were not reporting on time when

017we did the background work on that we found that the drivers were leaving the lot late so we put in a process we where when the last bus leaves a lot there is a call that goes to our team so that we know that all of those buses are gone because if they leave late it really just backs everybody else up so we're continuing to monitor that thank you it's like that's another question now I appreciate this report on the yellow bus situation um I I uh on the yellow bus situation I've tried to go to uh I don't know kind of masochistic on my part but I've tried to be at high schools for dismissal time uh and um of course that's interesting and uh full of opportunities to observe things but I did

018notice that at Aiken which because I can walk to that school uh and stand in the town hall I did notice that at Aiken there were seven I believe yellow buses on the driveway uh ready to to exit and when they were exiting they were exiting with less than one or two kids in each of the buses and I and I I'm assuming I believe that's probably special ed uh routes but I do think that that's a I don't know how many students normally there would be and I know we we really don't have a good number and that's another topic I want to bring up a good number of how many kids are actually in each building until after Labor Day and we get through this but to me that seems really really high

019uh as it literally as they were pulling out among seven buses and I guess there's bands as well so that's something I would just like is to think about or look at and you probably already have but I did notice that the the other piece that I do hear from uh neighbors who have teenagers uh that again just like every other year we have a bus card problem and the bus card problem is probably there's maybe two or three hundred kids that aren't showing up at particular high schools yet it's not just that people are waiting for Labor Day we like to say that's the Legend part of it is that we don't many of those students those teenagers don't have bus cards they haven't gotten to the school to get the bus cards the

020bus card is a is a delay piece or it's an enrollment delay uh and so that's why we have a number of kids uh perhaps missing some weeks of school at the beginning and it and I'm sure that you're looking into that but I think that's part of our issue with some of our high schools thank you um for the first piece on Aiken I would concur that that's a part of making sure that we are um adding students that are enrolling in school but removing students that are not we do have a lot of our special needs buses that do go into Aiken so to speak to that one specifically if they were in the turnabout more than likely that was the population because the other buses pick up at the top of the

021hill and so that would probably be a distinction there we worked with Metro to get bus cards to schools before school started before the 17th so they could be picked up we also worked with them over the last two weeks so that if students went to the bus to say they were students they were letting them ride the bus to school and so we've not received concerns around that yet so I would just add if there are any of those concerns that you know about if you just share them with us we are also in the process this week of doing a robocall to families that we have not seen and will remind them of that as well for those that were enrolled with us previously when we the last time that we check we

022check enrollment about every three or four days in terms of the number of students that have enrolled or waiting on enrollment and we were on Target in terms of if students or families had gone in to enroll they were in the system to actually get enrolled so we don't have like stacks of enrollment paperwork that's waiting for students to be enrolled um so any of those specific scenarios if you'll share them with us but we'll also do a double check with the team and we'll do that robocall this week to all of the families which would include our high school families as well for our high schools though we will do a special message for them that will let them know if you don't have your bus card this is how you can still get

023to school that first day and then you can get your bus card once you get there thank you Ms Bolton comments from other board members Mr Craig so first is just kind of a question to clarify because I think we have two different types of issues when it comes to being on time right so it's arrival on time is one of you know did the bus get out on the route get to the pick up the child and bring the child to the school the departure in some cases happens also be about how do we get kids out of the building all at once onto buses to then go home right and so I was first kind of thought in there is are we seeing some of those on-time percentages more some of those issues

024that have been coming up but some of the routes being more on the arrivals the dismissals or kind of a combination so the responses that I gave um to start with those 10 that we started with those are the ones that we're seeing pretty consistently the challenges on the back end so it's in the afternoon on the dismissal so the students have been dismissed but the bus is not there to get them so that's on on that end on the front end for the on time piece that's where we have the 20-minute window so we're seeing more of the students that are getting there on time I.E before school starts just not within that 20 minute window and for a couple of these they're having challenges on the front end and the back end so

025it means for example Sans so it means that that we have to really look at that route again um it's the the amount of space for the route the number of students that are actually stopped every time we have to stop and pick up a student it adds about 90 seconds to the overall route and then if you're traffic you know if there's traffic so our routers are really working throughout the day to look at different linkages to make updates to that but this one is likely going to take some additional intricate and I think it's you know I think it's always been a challenge with the dismissal situation since we have moved away from the extra bus routes is that you know you may have it at a school both yellow and Metro trying

026to fill a small amount of space who both also pick up students with the yellow bus but also Metro having to run a routes with the community as well so I think that that it's something we're going to keep fighting through I just I think the arrival ones for me are sometimes more of the ones that we have to figure out a way to fix right because that really is just about us getting the kid on time like there's there's not those same challenges I agree um the second question I had and I wanted to see how we are seeing is I know we've did a little bit of a comparison about uh there's challenges we're seeing from yellow versus some of the Metro has there been any noticeable difference in just I guess this

027student and I guess we haven't had fully the student experience back yet I think that's one of the things we're going to do but just arrival times or running consistently those type of things that that may be a question of where we see more with Metro than we do with the yellow bus so at this point to be honest and I'm looking at my chief operations officer because we're we've been so intense on focusing on yellow buses um we have not seen the challenges with Metro I think this year so far I've received one concern about Metro at all and so we've not necessarily seen those nor have we seen the concerns with on-time performance and I'm looking at Chris to make sure that he's keeping me honest yes so just wanted to make sure

028we're just not seeing them um and I think that's a plus the other thing that we did we receive a concern about and I know we talked about this earlier and we will survey the students we're preparing those surveys to make sure that we get them out to students um once we get the school year started but um we we we did there were some concerns earlier about metro stops and students and feeling safe at the Metro stops and we talked about that at the last meeting where Metro came and so we are asking families if they see that in their stock if they will please report that to Metro they have been sending their team out to different stops to review those stops as students are there um so if they have been coming

029up that is something that they've been doing so we would just ask that that families continue to do that make them aware and they are going to check the stops and just one last thing I want to share and it's more of an antidote than a question or anything but I do know that for instance I live near a spot where there's a lovely buses that come down Montgomery Road and then they shut down the Montgomery Road right near me and so I think those are things that may happen they'll also challenge how our students get to school on time because now buses are having to take roads that they don't normally take and going past it they don't only have to go on get there and so I think some of those things as

030much as those things can be informed appearance or informed to folks if that's a change that will happen because our city does do a lot in neighboring cities that we serve uh do a lot of these type of things without there may be one or two days where that affects a number of routes but I think that's also important for a parent to know because if a bus is going to be 10 minutes late because of that or the bus is going to be 10 minutes early because of that that's again something that I think helps us keep that on time right going with Metro what with with yellow bus as well like I think more so with the yellow bus I think than really with Metro but because yellow bus are traveling more into

031some of these neighborhoods than or say a Metro has more of the public stopping points but you know again if they're having to go alternate routes or if they're having to go routes that would take them into places that are going to delay their ability to get their or change the route our city is known for construction on major roads or you know things like potholes opening up in random spots um that could be uh important part to how kids travel to and from and I think we can make that request for the updates we are at the point now where the apps for the buses are working and so we have been hearing from families that they have been able to do the tracking with the apps so that at least lets them know

032if the bus is late we I don't think we've had many examples where the buses have been early but we definitely have them where they're showing up on time and so we will make sure if there's additional information that we can get around large-scale kinds of road projects and those kinds of things we'll definitely pull that and see if we can share with me thanks Mr Craig any other board members with comments I want to share a quick question but we'll hear from Dr moffatt and then we can go back to Ms Bolton good so I I think that the board policy 8600.02 um Rob if you can bring up slide four is super important for our families I hope that we're able to get some communication out I've heard from some parents from one

033of the schools that's not mentioned um where they have they have a student with disabilities that are the bus is arriving up to an hour late from the school and so my question is in regards to communication to the families a about this policy and then B about when they're child is going to be picked up 30 minutes late from the conclusion of the school day I think that's concerning it's a lot of time and I was not aware of this policy and if we are going to be actively utilizing it I think we need to definitely increase communication around it because it gives the impression to the families that their students will be home or at least picked up within a reasonable I wouldn't expect my son or daughter to be waiting 30 minutes

034after school to for the bus to come so I really do want to ask a question around communication if this particular policy is being utilized the the school that I'm speaking of is regarding students their student that has a disability but there have been two schools that have contacted me neither of which were mentioned where the bus is actually coming up to an hour later after the school day has been um has been concluded and so my concern is if we're going to reference this policy it needs to be communicated what's the plan for that and then for Staffing how are we anticipating that staff are staying 30 to 45 minutes um past the conclusion of the school day how does that impact us there thank you so I think there are two things uh

035one this isn't new for our staff in terms of knowing that this has been a part of the policy and it's the law as well so I don't think that's been new for them one of the things that we ask at the very beginning of the year is for them to let us know the plan for coverage in the morning and coverage in the afternoon while this is the policy I don't want to as I shared early I do want to make sure that I I restate that our goal is to have students um have students having left school with really within about 15 minutes after the school day is over so our goal goal is not to organize it by 30 minutes but the reason that I wanted to share it is because of

036a few of the correspondencies that I've seen recently referenced to 30 minutes and that we are out of compliance because the student is being picked up 30 minutes after school I think the other thing that we also want to take into consideration is we are we just finished day eight of school and so we're thinking about finishing day eight there there are areas that we have to continue to review there are areas that we have to continue to focus there may be some other spots that may have had some challenges here the ones that I named for you are the ones that have been the most concerning and they've been the most consistent so those are the ones that we some of them we've worked through and have been able to address those without them

037getting to the point of consistency with these 10 routes um here so in terms of the overall communication I think our first step is to one get through next week where we are removing students that have not attended school so that we can get them in a holding location in terms of a holding homeroom so that we can then to effectively remove them from bus routes so that students can then go through a mass update if you recall last school year we did the same thing after we after the students were removed at the opening of school we used to notice this to families that said please make sure that you check PowerSchool because most of you may have updated time so after the students are moved the team then spends time working on making

038the updates because those individual students have been removed um so I think I would be in a better position at our next meeting to say where we are with this in terms of the families that still are at that 30 minute Mark so that we can communicate that with them okay thanks I appreciate that and and hopefully if we do have to utilize it we'll have a plan in place to get this notice out for this families even now yeah so if we if it if if the buses if the students are on a route that is designed to be picked up at 4 30 or I'm saying 4 30. 30 minutes after the school day is over um if that is a design for their bus after we go through all of the cleaning

039after we go through making sure that the routes are updated if that is still going to be the case for them then we will take that bus routing sheet and send specific notification to those families you're welcome thanks and my promise I'll come back Ms Bolden but I wanted to have not shared anything yet I wanted to just ask superintendent is there um this is an issue that's been high on my radar uh given everything last year and giving all the research and work that this group of people all right that you and your team did and that this group of people talked about um is there any way of sizing yet how this contrasts to where we were a year ago oh my so I would say that we can just start with the

040contrast of the first day of school I think all of us the first day of school last year probably by about 8 15 on that day all of us have probably gotten 20 or 30 emails already we had individuals that were in the front and I'm just talking anecdotally we had individuals that were in the front office um over there in the um in the lobby because their buses did not come but they didn't come at all day two got progressively worse and even when we thought we were getting better it really got more difficult the other thing that we were able to to look at if you recall we started by reporting numbers through the through the call center of about four thousand that's where we started when we started talking through where we

041were with those that called in um there was one other thing that we did this year that we think also um based on the data that we were able to collect last year had an improvement for this year as well and that was we did not have all families that needed to have or that had had an approved deviated stop last year essentially there at the end of the day they get they get sent somewhere different at the end of the day than where they're picked up in the mornings this year we did not have them redo that unless there was a change so if families had that done before it was already approved that was rolled over for them and we found that about 60 of our calls last year were simply because their

042their PM bus stop was not accurate because their deviated stops under another um a person that was doing leadership they had started uh canceling all of those out so that was a lesson learned for us I think the other place that we go we are monitoring at this point daily what we're getting in terms of calls that come into the call center how long it takes for that call to be answered I saw something today that said appearance said it took them 45 minutes to get their call answered I'm looking for that data because as we as we go through the data it's really been an average of about eight minutes I think for each of the calls is it eight minutes is that right about eight minutes for the calls that are coming in

043one of the calls from last week just trying to give you some of the updates one of the calls and one of the things that we found last week is one of the families that reached out to me um shared that he called she was calling the call center but nobody was answering so I was call I called the call center as well and what we found is that in the mailbox as families were calling in um there was a message that said there are a lot of calls right now are there other calls and um You can call back at another time and then it went into music but if you didn't pay if you didn't list if you didn't hold on you wouldn't have known that you would have gone into music and

044then after that it would tell you you're number eight in the call queue so we just simply changed that message so that when families call in now they're hearing something different they know where they are in the call queue and they have the option to go online a lot of the families have been going online they can go online and complete um the um request online and then the staff is following up with it from there so I think that that looking at the anecdotal information that we're getting looking at the calls that are actually coming in to our call Center for um for transportation I'm taking the questions that we're getting from schools and the responsiveness that we have from schools as well I think all of those things together are really sharing with

045us um that there has just been a dramatic Improvement I really appreciate that superintendent and I I the the anecdotal experience of the text messages I receive and the emails that I receive is very much in line with what you described and I just you know I know we want to continue to watch the data I know we want to hit our Targets on on Time arrival I know there are things we want to continue to work on but it was just it was it felt important to take a beat and look at how different this first eight days have been from the first eight days a year ago uh and that that's not because we got lucky and it's not because we kept our fingers crossed and hoped that it would be better it

046was because the team spent a lot of time looking really carefully at what the root causes of our issues were what levers we could pull to make it better we as a board decided we're going to pull some of those levers we're not going to pull all of them but it was a real strategy here particularly around aligning start times that is now several months later leading I hope to a different set of outcomes for families and so I just wanted to share some gratitude for my colleagues to you and your team I know this is early and I may be wrong right but we may find out that there's a problem we don't know about we will tackle that one the best we can too um but I'm grateful and proud of the work

047this group has done together and so I wanted to say thank you and I think about I'll add the last thing here is that I also don't want to give the misconception that there will never be an issue with Transportation there will never be a late bus there would never be a situation where students are picked up late because that is the nature of Transportation our goal is for that to be the exception not the rule so we want to make sure that we're continuing to be efficient and effective and make sure that we're communicating with families so that they know what's happening in terms of the overall price yes thank you I appreciate it uh as you're going to be checking with the Metro uh uh regarding the bus cards and and what have

048you and that you're doing the uh Robo call about enrollment and what have you uh can we uh it'll be a month before we see Unique Kind of ridership as I we get that on a monthly basis if I recall we can wait on that but is there a way to kind of check and I don't know that there is to guarantee that indeed our students going to high school have just that one transfer or no transfer so we can check that we we have received the information from Metro that our students only have one transfer like they shared in the presentation that they did um as I shared last year and I'll share again and I'll ask anyone that has information that's different if that is not the case and and I have to

049say that based on what's set up for students sure we do find that students take different routes because they do know how to move some of the other routes but if there is an example that you have have of that not occurring please share it with us so that we can problem solve it with Metro we asked that question last year we didn't get any examples we heard about it but we didn't get any examples of that so Metro is sharing with us that's not the case we asked for the examples we didn't get any of those examples um because in most instances what we found is that is that if students were if they did have more than one transfer it was because they weren't following the closest route so if there are any

050of those examples we'll definitely follow up if metros can demonstrate indeed from any particular stop to the stop where that kid is going whether that could go someplace else or figures out to pick somebody else up that's that's not my concern but if Metro is able to demonstrate there is a route for you that has either no transfer or one then then we're we've done our job yeah and they did that when we got one example and so that really wasn't an example because they were able to work with the child and the family to say this is the route that you should be taking thank you Ms Weinberg yes I just wanted to piggyback a little bit off of what you said president Lindy in regards to superintendent the data for transportation we all

051know that Transportation has given us the Blues in the past and so for the start for the first eight days I'll take that back for the instead of saying the first couple of days but the first eight days when do you think that we will actually be able to have those particular numbers because I would be interested to see the actual data to say as of last year around this time we had 5 000 calls this year we've had a thousand so when do you think that would be possible to not only talk about the calls in the call center um possible complaints of Miss stocks lessons ridership Etc and I know that I'm carrying to do my diligence in terms of if I get anything from the community in regards to Transportation passing it

052along to you as well right so I think we can pull the data because it is data that we monitor through last year and when we start talking about missed stops generally we don't get that information unless somebody calls us calls us about it because that's not something that we track and each of those in instances where a child has been missed what we found it was just that it was that the stop was there the child was in the right place but the driver may have missed that stop so we follow up with the managers for the um for the lots and they follow up with the drivers to make sure that the drivers you know one situation um the driver didn't new driver the driver didn't see the last page and the child

053that didn't get picked up was on the last page so once we knew that that was rectified um so we can that's something that we can provide you know as often as the board would like for us to provide that it is something that we provided last year around the on-time performance and it's just a matter of what it is that we're looking to see and the Cadence with which we would like to see that thank you okay without any other comments we'll keep moving to our next item which is hearing of the public uh we're now at the item uh on the meeting for hearing of the public each speaker will have two minutes and we'll direct all comments to the presiding officer once a request to speak has been granted you'll be invited

054to enter if you are online uh please click the camera icon to go interactive provide your name your affiliation to the district your school Community your topic and your contact information if you'd like a direct response to any question you might have this request is consistent with a board protocol and we appreciate your help in the unusual event that someone is not willing to follow this protocol we do reserve the right to end that person's time again each person will have two minutes to speak when the timer goes off your time is up please refrain from discussing any Personnel items um Mr oying how many folks do we have online tonight we have three speakers online so here's what I think we'll do I have four folks in person um we'll do three of those

055folks in person um and then we'll go to our online speakers uh and then we'll have uh CFT president Julie sellers go last um as is our usual practice um we will start I'm going to read uh three people's names at a time so if all three can come down um we'll move uh right from one person to the next so our first three uh our uh Jim beaky Angie Wilson and David McCall thank you Mr biggie there is a button on the microphone that has three lines coming out of the person's mouth or when you push it there you go you're all set thank you very much thank you Mr President uh Madam superintendent members of the board in 2015 then superintendent Mary Ronan along with the support of uh then School Board member

056e Bolton and the other members of the board initiated and started uh agriculture education and FFA at Campbell High School and 4-H at Rosenberg Academy a similar program was started in Cleveland eight years later Aiken High School and Clark along with Gamble and the existing program at the zoo school have produced results that indicate that the graduation rate growth in those schools is 12 and a half percent greater than the four percent growth in the rest of the schools in the system so I'm very happy to report that because of the education that is happening there the kids get excited about Hands-On learning and they get excited learning about agriculture where food comes from and the result is this Improvement in the meantime a local group has initiated for Asian agriculture activities outside the classroom

057year round which is helping interest the kids in learning about educate about agriculture kids get excited about the results of their handiwork bottom line is with this growth in graduation rates I'm encouraging the board in the administration to expand agriculture education to all of the Cincinnati public schools I'm also encouraging you to work now closely with Central State University which now has a college of Agriculture Cooperative Extension and agriculture teaching I thank you very much for what you're doing for educate because your growth in graduation rates means that there's going to be more productive members of society coming through the Cincinnati pool school system thank you for what you're doing thank you for what you're doing for the kids it's about the kids thank you thank you very much Mr biggie next we have Angie

058Wilson followed by David McCall followed by our first online speaker hello my name is Angie Wilson I'm a parent to a sixth grader at Spencer center for the gifted and exceptional students and this year's ptso president we enrolled our daughter in Spencer in 2021 without having set foot in the building due to pandemic restrictions making the difficult decision to leave our magnet Montessori School a community we've been part of for 11 years and make this decision we had to rely on our own research and here's what we learned a design Spencer Center was created to be different to quote from the CPS School guide class sizes are intentionally tailored to support small learning communities where students are engaged in project-based Hands-On work to bring academic Concepts to life the small class size was instrumental in

059our decision to move our child to Spencer Center site unseen in our first year we had 18 to 19 students in my child's class which to my surprise built the classroom you see the thing I learned once we were in the doors at Spencer Center is that it was designed for small class sizes and as such has physically small classrooms the following year regrouped to 21 students and also lost two teachers due to Tech and retirement this year we have grown to 29 students with no new teachers the same small classrooms the overcrowding has not only impacted learning potential but also brings concerns of an imminent flu covet season with no option for distancing simply put this is not what Spencer family signed up for superintendent right toward our building last week and has proposed

060the addition of two teachers for this school year and while I'm thankful respectfully that places is back where we were at the beginning of last year which was overcrowded then with fewer students we really hope you will see this point the CPS standard for student-teacher ratio simply cannot apply to Spencer Center which by Design is intended to be smaller the lack of teachers is chipping away at our berry Foundation please keep the promise of what Spencer Senate Spencer Center was represented to be make us whole again by granting us a minimum of three teaching positions for Spencer Center lower school please be reminded of Spencer's unique position within the district allowing us to maintain a lower students teacher ratio going forward without the repeated threat of losing our teachers each year thank you thank you

061very much Ms Wilson uh next we have uh David McCall followed by our first online speaker uh thank you for the opportunity to speak to you this evening my name is David McCall I have a daughter in third grade at Spencer back there Spencer is designed to improve the outcomes of gifted and twice exceptional students throughout specialized instruction care and attention this is a very important responsibility many of these students have been identified as cognitively advanced with Minds that work different than others they need trained professionals and extra time and support to master some comments or some concept sorry I like College's three problems or concerns first class sizes have increased in the last year with several classrooms exceeding manageable student-to-teacher ratios potentially putting at risk strong state test results second several grades including third

062have lost their Spanish language class at a time when learning languages is ideal and third resource planning appears to be short-sighted and very backward looking and failing to account for the nature of Spencer and the whole child we need you to do the right thing and authorize the deployment of additional full-time professional teaching resources as outlined in a letter I know we have submitted and work with the PTO and in particular the administration at Spencer to develop a long-term planning and resource allocation process that's forward-looking and accounts for the needs of the whole child on behalf of my family I want to thank you for your time and the hard work that you're doing thank you very much Mr McCall treatment over to Mr Hoyne thank you we have three speakers Elizabeth chasteen day will

063be first followed by Stephanie and Ben Marston followed by Joanne voidovich go ahead Miss chasteen day greetings thank you so much for having me Cincinnati public school board I appreciate each one of you for making the space for us to give public comments my name is Elizabeth chasteen Day some of you might know me as Elizabeth Hopkins formally and I am a mother to a third grader and a fifth grader both at Spencer Center I'm a lifelong CPS student I've worked on previous campaigns for CPS and I believe in our schools and I believe in our students here in Cincinnati so I'm very grateful to be able to Advocate on behalf of Cincinnati public school students uh president Lindy I saw your hand up can you hear me you sound great I was trying to

064signal to see if we could get your picture up on our screen okay you're doing great all right I'll keep going then um so I am reaching out today on behalf of other parents and also on behalf of my children and the teachers and administrators in Spencer Center to ensure that we have what we need as you all have heard multiple times already uh Spencer Center is short multiple teachers and with my children coming in this is our first year at Spencer we're already feeling the effects of oversized or sorry overcrowded classrooms also feeling the effects of teachers not being able to give that individualized attention to our students they're currently juggling 29 students in one classroom I think it's upwards of 25 students in another classroom and although we are close to state standards

065as far as students go per School room we are far and above what we need to be for gifted students inside of these classrooms I was also a gifted student when I was growing up and I know the weight and the pressure that that label does cause and so when you feel like you're failing because you're not getting the attention that you need because our students are our teachers are overworked and overstretched it can really do some damage to self-esteem to students I'm looking out not only for my own kids but also all the other kids in Spencer and also the teachers and Spencer who are really really needing the support whether that's extra paraprofessionals or other thank you very much we give a little extra time because I know we had the issue around

066the visual so thank you thank you our next speaker is Stephanie Marston followed by Joanne boydovich go ahead Miss Marston hi my name is Stephanie Marston I am the parent of a new third grader at Spencer is Harriet Marston and this is our first experience so similar to Angie we left our really beloved uh magnet Montessori which our son actually still attends and we still love it but we needed uh we knew our daughter needed something different and needed something new so we moved her to Spencer with really high hopes that she would adjust well and there would be new opportunities for her um and we were met with something that looked a lot different than what we were expecting so I think you've heard mentioned before we lost a Spanish teach um as a

067as a special and we also are in a classroom of uh 27 28 students in the third grade and the classrooms at Spencer are designed to be small the physical space is very small so I think the the biggest challenge for us is it would be so it's so needed both forever students and for the teachers and staff at Spencer for there to be additional capacity we need those additional teaching positions as Angie mentioned both in the the all in lower or school from the third grade teacher to the fourth grade teacher and that even the sixth grade is incredibly crowded so I would ask that the board continue to devote their attention to this issue and I want to specifically thank superintendent Wright for coming to visit the school and to try to see

068and help um resolve some of these issues and address them and thank you also to board members Lindsay and muraski and Weinberg for their responsiveness on this and I hope that we can figure out a way to make Spencer better as that hopefully we can retain more gifted students too within the Cincinnati public school district because it's really important to us that our children attend public schools and they also get a chance to sort of grow into their full potential so thank you so much thank you our last speaker is Joanne vordovic go ahead Miss bordevich hey uh I'm Joanne voitovich very close though um I really want to thank the board for all your replies to the email that I I sent to you guys regarding the overcrowding at Spencer I'm a second parent

069there my daughter is in fourth grade um as far as I knew there were 30 kids but she told me there was a new kid today that she hadn't met yet so I don't know if he was the 30th but um she used to put her bike in the classroom and now we leave it somewhere in the courtyard because the space is not available any longer um I know it's going to be very difficult to hire teaching staff at this uh juncture but um and I don't want to listen I don't want the school to lessen their expectations despite being shorter on qualified teaching staff and space challenges but this will cause stress and frustrated kids um who act that last year security came to my kids classroom rather regularly to help teachers maintain control

070I fear there will be a greater need this year without the individualized attention and the high requirements we do an hour and a half of homework every single day to keep up so this is in addition to teachers having given the attention last year Miss Marcy is the security guard that the school let go last year we had two and now we're down to one she knew every kid's name she knew my daughter's interests and asked her what she did on weekends she's a grandmother to a fourth grader but has a grandmotherly respect from all students until qualified staff can be secured an easy solution in my mind is bringing back a second security guard especially someone who really sees the kids and could help anyone seeming to fall between the cracks in this new

071pressure environment um I appreciate all your time and we would also love a bike rack yeah that was it thank you very much uh our last speaker this evening is CFT president Julie sellers good evening um board and superintendent and Treasurer um I just would like to say starting out kudos to the district last week the U.S Secretary of Education Dr Cordova was in Cincinnati to see in person an example of the Cincinnati model of a Community Learning Center and I really think he was very impressed with everything he saw and I hope that we are moving forward with every school to have a fully functioning Community Learning Center to provide the supports and services that students need and I would also like to say that this year it seems like it has been a

072quieter year to the start of the year with transportation and how the schools have been operating our phones have not been ringing off the hook for the like a like they have been the last few years but I do want to have another concern that I am bringing to the board because I believe it's part of your policy see and I think it's your policy that needs to be reviewed and looked at I am requesting that you delay the 24 budget recommendations this evening and include enough funds to hire additional nurses or at least an identified trained school health assistant in every school I'm here to inform you about the north nurse shortage shortages within the district all of the surrounding districts I'm sure that you saw the newspaper article they all have a nurse

073in every school and they even have substitute and traveling nurses for if a nurse is out or if a nurse needs extra assistance they have somebody that travels to do that I want to make sure that here in Cincinnati we also have a nurse in every building every day teachers office professionals and Parish to be in place to help to provide support if the nurse is not available it is not to be used if the nurse instead of hiring a nurse um I I want to share one example maybe two of um what's happening in some schools without a full-time nurse a teacher informed me of their decision to stop assisting in the distribution of medication when their nurse is not available this teacher feels that her contributions for providing medical supports have met its

074limit teachers and office professionals have their own job responsibilities that need to be their main priority when it is necessary for children to receive medication at school a school nurse assures that school children receive their medications properly as you know appropriate documentation of pharmaceutical distributions is necessary and legal if multiple employees are Distributing meds it could lead to mistakes and possibly loss of meds or giving the wrong meds this seems like a situation that could be ripe for mistakes there are also situations where they are asking non-trained medical professionals to insert an anal suppository in the classroom without another adult presence teachers do not feel comfortable with this type of situation and they feel that it is a situation that warrants having a medical professional provide this care based on Ohio Revised Code 3313 which

075does not require an employee to administer a drug unless required by board policy that's why I'm here you need to look at your board policy we do not believe that it is safe reliable or Dependable to have an unlicensed medical staff dispense prescriptions to children we believe that parents want a certified medical professional to care for their children's medical needs some examples of Staffing many schools only have a nurse two or three days per week including multiple high schools that are large Walnut only has a nurse in the afternoon SCPA only has a nurse in the morning multiple schools have nurses three days per week but each day of the week that they have a nurse assigned it is a different nurse this is not productive because it is a nurse's responsibility to also educate

076students on their medical care and medication only a certified nurse can do this and and most of the um preschools are remote um the rising stars they have remote nursing I don't know how you do remote nursing when you're responsible for giving medication but maybe that's something a new thing that I'm unaware of it is the duty of the district to accommodate students medical needs it is the district's responsibility to make sure that students are not missing out on educational experiences because the district refuses to hire a nurse for every school how many children have been sent home because they have medical needs and there is not a nurse there to take care of those needs the city again I am saying the city is responsible for public health issues I believe that the city

077should be picking up some of the costs for School nurses as a service to improve Public Health within our city after all many of our students this is their Primary Medical Care is what they're receiving at schools especially if they have medical needs I will go to the city and tell them look you used to pay for all of our nurses they cut those funds now they're cutting our funds with additional residential abatements and I'm sure all of you have received your letters about the increase of taxes and your tax value to your ha your cell your houses that is due to the residential abatements they're giving away our dollars through tiffs they're giving away our dollars through the residential abatements and they're not providing um the resources to make it whole for our students

078who are also residents of the city so something has to be done about this and I will go to as many meetings as I need to in order to make sure that this situation is rectified but it has to be done as soon as possible because our students are losing out and I believe that it is an unsafe situation in many of our schools so thank you very much thank you very much president sellers for folks who are joining us tonight and are not often with us I didn't read this piece and I sometimes do it says the contract between the Cincinnati Federation of teachers and Cincinnati public schools grants the CFT president the right to speak at any meeting and there's the tradition of that time being both at the end of the uh

079meeting without the two minute time limit um I believe the superintendent wanted to offer a response on Spencer I will I don't generally give responses to public comment but I did want to share uh in terms of just some of the follow-up and thank you to our Spencer families that are here tonight um you know being new to the district last year and really getting involved and engage in what's happening in schools there was a bit of information that was shared this year one of our board members shared that we've actually talked about it when the concerns came up at Spencer and one of the things that he shared was I want to make sure that we he shared in a response to the family but I do want to make sure that we honor

080um the commitments that were made to the Spencer families and until that time that was not something that had been discussed with with me as the new leader in the district um so what we were able to do last week is able to go out to Spencer I've been on Spencer's Campus before so that wasn't the first time but go out to Spencer look at those three grade levels that were having challenges walk the classrooms of those three grade levels as well and see where the challenges were so I think I heard one of the parents share today that as we think about where we are in terms of contract language only third grade by numbers is out of compliance and we have a tax process that we do at the beginning of each year

081to allow us to look at those numbers and then add additional staff um however fourth and sixth grade are large and one of the things that I shared in the follow-up is looking at the size of the classrooms and looking at our sixth grade bodies in terms of the size of the classrooms it's a growing population so we know what that begins to look like so we are working in partnership with the school I do ask that we do have Grace in terms of this one of the challenges as we think through it we do operate on a project a projection and Spencer was projected to lose students so that's how they lost staff that's how they've been losing staff over the last several years I applaud the staff at the school I applaud the

082families for really the recruitment efforts that they put in at Spencer so Spencer is actually up 50 students over what they were expected to lose so that's really important but as a result of that that means that some more work has to happen there in terms of Staffing so as I shared with the principal I did ask my team to look at the other grade levels so that we could look at the three opportunities there in terms of positions but that's not a quick process and so what that means is we can add the additional positions in terms of substitutes or vacancies for Subs but we still have to get staff to go into into those positions so the principal has the option at this point um to go whichever direction she chooses to go

083there but we will need to go through the tech process to determine if there are other staff members that are in the district that would be able to go into those positions so I don't want to give the misconception that just because the positions are added that that means the position is added in tomorrow you actually get a person so I think what I would like to share is we are we are continuing to look at it the principal has actually shared all of the information with me from the decisions that were made at that time and there's some additional conversations for us to have in terms of the work and what that looks like with the board as we move forward so did want to share that with the families and also share that

084with the board in terms of where we are with next steps thank you superintendent and I want to apologize underneath my computer was a form for one more speaker that I did not see uh so we have on Elizabeth Simpson for two minutes and I want to apologize for not seeing this under my laptop is it I know all right well my name is Elizabeth Simpson and I have a fourth grader at Spencer Center and we chose Spencer this year because of the promise of a challenging curriculum the small class sizes and most importantly in hopes that he will find his people and what I mean by that is my son like many children who go to Spencer is considered twice exceptional so this means that he is gifted and and that and can include

085autistic ADHD dyslexia anxiety as you may know if you have a 2E student that his statement regarding the odds of being in a class with his friends as a 33.33 chance repeating mom may sound familiar to you Spencer is a school filled with two e-kids just like mine and these kids think and process information differently and they may be more emotionally and intellectually sensitive which means that these kids require more specialized education and small class sizes to reach their potential when we toured we were told that class sizes were small usually between 12 to 15 students however my son has 30 kids in his fourth grade class we came from a school with 23 children one teacher and one parent so for our two e-kids like my son it is critical that they have these

086small class sizes I am requesting that Spencer be allowed to hire at least three additional staff so their promise of small class sizes can be fulfilled and all of our kids especially these two e-kids which Grace the halls of Spencer can be successful in the classroom thank you thank you very much um so we are concluding our um hearing of the public item on our agenda and what we have next is approval of minutes followed by committee reports I'd like to ask the board one of our presentations and discussions this night is the district vision and Mission and we do have Monica from the alma group who's available and ready to start that section would people be opposed to us doing that first and then coming back to minutes and committee reports Mr muraski says

087yes Carolyn says yes Ms Jones any concerns great okay so then I think um Rob I think we have uh Monica uh ready to join as a presenter um and we'll pick right back up with uh approval of minutes and committee reports uh as soon as we are finished hello Monica hello hi everybody good evening am I coming through clearly your office looks remarkably like an elementary school library I happen to be in an elementary school library and thrilled to join you all from this wonderful environment tonight um excellent and we're delighted to have you and we will turn things over to you excellent and I know as always you have lots of uh things to cover tonight um and so I'm planned to be with you for about 30 minutes uh this evening um

088our goal for uh for our time together is to give you first and foremost an update uh on the results of a community survey that the alma team completed at the request of the board over the summer months related to your District's vision mission and forecast so I wanted to share uh about the responses that were received the demographics of those responses and the themes that came out of that feedback in addition I then want to share a little bit about the implications of that and provide a final recommended draft of the vision mission and forecast My Hope Is that the board members will each have the opportunity to provide feedback on that vision mission and forecast so that you can then move forward to either vote to finalize or to have the final direction

089that the alma team needs to be needs to to receive in order to get you through the Finish Line um so why don't we go ahead and move on to the second slide here uh this is a quick overview of our time just as I've uh spelled it out and if you can move to slide three uh and um want to always begin our conversation with a com with a review of our shared purpose for this particular Endeavor which is to revise the mission and vision for the district based on the input of the Cincinnati public schools Community the goal is to develop a shared forecast for this Vision that will illustrate what the district looks like locally regionally and nationally when you are successful if you can move to the next slide uh so

090we are at the very final stage of our work here we launched our work earlier in the spring we reviewed input collected during the superintendent search and the superintendent's entry process Alma the alma team came on site and conducted one-on-one meetings and a focus group sessions with members of the community we then extended those meetings um to allow for more people to participate we had a series of meetings that took place virtually we launched a community survey and this is our I believe third meeting with the board where we have reviewed the input provided and worked on drafting our statements if you move to the next slide there's just a little bit more detail on what I shared here a couple of things that I wanted to highlight one is that we invited over 300

091CPS community members to join us in our meetings uh in our sessions in person which were in may we had four sessions and 25 staff parents community members joined we then had virtual listening sessions of five additional of the board's requests 65 additional members registered for those meetings our community survey which is what we're sharing tonight has collected over 2 000 responses and notably those responses mirror the demographics of your students I'll share a little bit more about that um shortly the food move to the next slide great thank you so what you see here is a breakdown in our survey we asked individuals how they were connected to the community uh just around about half or 50.4 percent of the respondents where either parents caregivers or family members of students at CPS uh 41

092where staff members those included school-based staff and central office staff 3.6 percent identified as community members or Community Partners just under three percent of all respondents uh were students um we had talked as a board early on about what would be an ideal or minimum percent of uh response rate or representatives of the community right now about 13 of Staff serving in CPS responded to our survey and we believe approximately 5.5 percent of families were served so that was there was a specific note of five percent um being a sort of a something we would Aspire for given that the survey was going out in the summer months and we just just exceeded that percent obviously the more the better but we were pretty uh pleased with the response rate that we received if we

093move to the next slide we have some information here on the demographics of the respondents and you know as in all of our surveys we always provide the option if people prefer not to answer uh these questions 10 prefer not to answer uh 33 percent uh of the respondents identified as African-American afro-caribbean or black uh 43.5 percent um identified as Caucasian euro-american or white uh 5.6 identified as latinx as a point of comparison the Cincinnati Community demographics uh are 50 percent white 39 black um four percent latinx two percent Asian and four percent multi-racial uh this was a check all that applies so we don't have a section in this graph or multiracial um that the numbers are coming in fairly close to the Cincinnati Community demographics so if we can move to the next

094slide I wanted to share a little bit about what we heard and what we see is the implications for the work we've been doing around mission and vision so first of all the the survey response is by and large affirmed the recommended revisions to the mission and vision that the board has been discussing and that was really reinforced by the community conversations that we had in late spring much of the feedback centered around a desire for Community Partnership and creating a learning environment that allows students to reach their Highest Potential so what we heard in the survey was a desire to see the different members of the community directly reflected in the mission and vision a focus on equity and Equitable outcomes with a real point and emphasis on clarifying what even we mean by

095equity there's a focus on centering the needs of all students and the potential of all students um we and we've discussed with the board the desire to use the term each and every we think it's an important distinction but still very aligned with what the community is asking for and finally there was a a primary focus on ensuring academic success for for all students as well um we actually if we move to the next slide thank you we actually analyzed so we had a number of open text questions where people could just share whatever they they wanted over 1400 respondents provided feedback on the current vision statement and when we analyze what people shared there were there were five themes overall people liked that the current vision statement describes what CPS aspires to be as

096a school system the majority of respondents said that it describes what we want for our students the majority of respondents felt that the current vision statement aligns with our values and that it is inspiring uh fewer you know the lower a slightly lower number about 56 percent said found that it is realistic and achievable um when we asked which parts of the current vision statement people felt were more important ensuring Equitable access and CPS will be a community where phrases that people really liked in the current vision statement uh when we analyze reform responses around inspirational words and phrases about cps's future stage if we can move to the next slide um many people noted uh the desire to mention ensuring Equitable access unleashing student potential came up by 18 of the free form responses

097the notion of world-class education was mentioned very frequently as well as the focus of community we go to the next slide when we asked individual what was missing from the vision statement 17 said nothing was missing 16 percent said they don't like any of it 13 felt that diversity Equity inclusion and belonging um were needed and 10 percent said preparing for future for life for employment uh were all things that they felt were missing in the in the current vision statement similarly if we move to slide 12 we asked respondents for feedback on the current mission statement and what we heard was a majority of people felt the current mission statement was clear and easy to understand felt that the mission statement currently describes your most important work 60 felt it reflects your priorities as

098a community and 43 percent that it explains how you will achieve your vision which also tended to be something that people ask for in our focus groups as just a little more clarity on what you mean by the words that are there how you would actually go about it educate all students was chosen as the most important phrase to keep in um and this was by significant margin if we move to the next slide we also asked people to describe for us what they saw as cps's most important work this focus on educating students preparing students for Life engaging citizens and ensuring a culture of Excellence these were all themes that were reinforced in the freeform responses to the survey if you move to the next slide when we asked individuals what they felt was

099missing 600 people responded again 23 percent felt nothing was missing from the current mission statement 16 said they didn't like any part of the mission statement and then 10 said what was missing was how it will be done how the mission will be achieved nine percent again felt that what was missing was his focus on diversity Equity inclusion and belonging so again we continue to see a lot of alignment with the same things that the board has been discussing in our current in our previous conversations as well as the community and the members that came and sat down and met with us uh when we were there and then when we had our extended sessions so in line with this if you move to the next slide we asked the question what will CPS be

100doing if it successfully moves towards its vision for students we wanted to try to get additional Clarity on how people think you will achieve this and what the actions are um and again we did have some very strong themes so here are the top five um out of 800 freeform responses 27 of your community specifically called out academic achievement and academic success 20 of your community called out relevant engaging or forward-looking curriculum that prepares students for for their futures for their life for their careers 16 again called out diversity Equity inclusion and belonging and increasing a focus on or eliminating um um inequities entirely 16 percent focused on attracting retaining developing teachers and leaders and this is important we'll we'll see in a moment as we examine uh the current draft of your mission and

101vision and then 12 percent talked about providing a safe disciplined learning environment so we know that safety has been an important concern um not just in Cincinnati but in a number of other communities as well but this was the first time that this peaked among the independent comments um as a as something that was really important for CPS to accomplish and the next slide we've got additional feedback we asked if there was anything else that people wanted to share the top categories of comments were related to attracting retaining developing empowering teachers and leaders in particular there were comments related to what should or should not be taught as part of the district's curriculum and again this focused on providing a safe learning environment so what I wanted to do now was to share the final

102drafts of our vision mission statement and the forecast and then would love to pause for reactions feedback thoughts uh both on the survey results as well as on the drafted statements themselves they'll give you a moment to read these statements on your own and then we'll read them out loud so the vision statement as drafted now taking into account the many thoughtful conversations with the community with the board and incorporating the feedback from 2000 plus survey respondents as well is a vision statement that Cincinnati public schools will be a system of excellent schools where every student is seen safe empowered and prepared to pursue their life's Passions the current drafts or final draft of the mission statement is we are students Educators families staff and Community working together to provide high quality instruction and opportunities

103that make lifelong learning and true economic Mobility possible for each of our students and if you move on to the next slide the CPS forecast what will be true about CPS when we succeed as for the categories the first is that CPS will be a top attractor and retainer of talent this means you are the employer of choice for educators and all staff and that you retain Talent teachers choose to stay here your staff choose to stay here that our graduates are highly sought after they're highly sought after by universities employers and Military they are able to access direct Pathways to fields that offer genuine economic mobility and build generational wealth that our district will be nationally recognized for its Innovation and cultural responsiveness for embracing students cross-cultural identities in The Learning Experience for individualized

104support and success for the whole Student Success for students not being defined solely through test results but also uniquely defined for each student and that families and communities will be full partners and decision makers with the district so these are Concepts that we feel become the output of your vision and mission statement and also reflect the values and the things that are so important to the community that should be achieved if you are actualizing your vision and Mission so with that I would love to pause I and would love to hear comments and feedback from the board um and and from the superintendent as well um happy if we can to go back one slide so that the drafted vision and Mission and statement is on the screen but also welcome the opportunity uh can

105move around to any slide to answer any questions um as well for members of the board thank you very much Monica uh board members comments or questions about the vision proposal the mission proposal or the forecast proposal is Bolton I would like to talk a little bit about the the data that's been produced as well which I think is outstanding I would like to talk a little bit more about that but from a standpoint of the vision and the mission statement my recollection of vision mission statement does require a resolution but more particularly it and these are this is a wonderful uh way to have board participate in kind of finalizing the vision and mission statement but I would suggest to my colleagues that the forecast is something we really haven't spent as much time

106on as we have with the vision and the mission and unfortunately or fortunately depending upon how you feel about everybody up here uh the there in January January 1 or so there will be a new board and I I would kind of think that we should be doing the vision in the mission because of the work that's been done but I think the forecast might be better served if it's part of the work that the uh new board and and when I say newborn that could be just the change of one or a change of three or goodness knows that but I just think that I feel confident about vision mission because so much work has been done the forecast I think is still kind of thin and might be a great opportunity for a

107new board to kind of pass on or evolve or develop but that I as I've said in the last few times I've loved the work the engagement work and I love the efforts that have been made and I'm happy to start talking about how the vision and mission statement can evolve I was very pleased too with the demographics that were presented those are not the demographics that are normally seen or viewed as being the demographics of Greater Cincinnati or this school district I think that's very important that we're looking at that um the I have some other things that part of what I'm missing uh is the whole child piece and I love that idea the two P's of the partnership and potential uh I think capture a lot of of what all of we've

108been trying to do but I'll I'll be quiet now but I do think the forecast can wait but I do think we're extremely close to vision and Mission thank you Ms Bolton Other Board member comments questions Dr Muffin I really do like the mission I think it's very close to being inclusive it it sounds to it to me like it is inclusive of students um our teachers our staff families and the community the district has been known for inclusion and collaboration so I think to have that in a mission statement solidifies what we as a board value and including all of those voices all of those perspectives this is not just something that is top down this is something that is inclusive of everyone I really really like that another key point that I like

109is that true economic Mobility is inclusive of a variety of things it's not just about those students that choose to go to college it could be a student who is graduated successfully and starts their own business I'd like the fact that the economic Mobility piece is inclusive of um more intrinsically what the student and their family could value and so the the vision statement I'm not as happy about but I do like it um I think it's a great start it's a system of excellent schools and I will stand by all of our schools I think we've got excellence in every single one of them I think we do need to do better at getting that message out but I do want that it just needs a little something more but I think it's definitely

110on the right track for sure and I just wanted to say that I love the mission and how it's inclusive and it specifically calls out all the parts of the CPS Village that make this Village significant and important thank you Dr Moffitt Other Board member comments or questions his chance yes thank you um I think Monica you guys did a great job pulling all this stuff together because I remember when you were here the last time and trying to uh get seven board members on the same page with all the little sticky notes and all that I think that was hard but this looks really good I think I I agree with um Miss Bolton's comment about whatever is decided once it's decided we have it has to be done by resolution I remember that

111being part of our last uh strategic uh Focus um the mission statement I I am very comfortable with I remember us sort of massaging this and it it covers I think everything that I remember us saying we wanted to uh stay in our mission statement and I think it drives a point so I'm happy about that the vision statement I could I think I agreed with Dr Moffitt there's something when I think about a vision statement I want I wanted it's to me it has to hit me in a very powerful way and while it's good it's not a powerful as powerful as I like it it could be just one or two words or something like that I don't know but the other thing um I have to disagree in terms of what Liz

112Bolton is saying about the forecast I actually like the forecast I thought yeah I I thought it was very clear and very concise very straightforward and gives Direction um I don't know I would be interested in hearing more from Miss Bolton about why she would want the new board to work on the forecast I want to hear more about that because I won't be here okay so I want my footprint on this when it's done okay so but I actually like the forecast I thought it was really good so that's my those are my comments thank you Miss Jones who's that Mrs Weinberg that is um I had to really take a minute to just repeat to myself reading the proposed Mission and the vision and I'm going to say that I do like both

113of them except for in the vision I feel like we are missing student student centered and I feel like in the vision um excuse me the mission aspect we're missing the word Equitable and I recall seeing on page 521 where it talks about what the community community had suggested and they put four big ideas and I don't know how we can incorporate I feel like it's worthy already and um it's this isn't it it's not it yet but I think we're getting there and I don't know if there's any possibility in taking some words out and maybe putting the word um that I stated for the vision in terms of um students centered somewhere within there and then in the mission statements somehow putting the word Equitable so that's what I wanted to add thank

114you Mrs Weinberg Mr Craig Mr moraski anything you want to share you don't have to Mr Craig anything Mr moraski thank you president Wendy uh I like both of them too um I agree with uh Dr Moffitt and Carolyn I think Miss Jones to a point about the vision statement I like the vision statement um I said I've said this the whole time no I like this in the same instead of like three words long so I'm probably never gonna like the vision statement but I'll vote for it I like the mission statement aside from the lack of Oxford comma after staff Mr moraski would you say that last piece I missed it I like the mission statement aside from the absence of Oxford comma after staff okay I won't vote to approve that written

115that one but I appreciate that Mr Craig so Mike's soul and my uh the Oscar comma there moments um because I saw it initially I was thinking man Mike just said this is the last time we did this also but um I actually like uh our mission statement I think maybe adding something in with regards to something like Equitable opportunities maybe a way to address some of the things that uh Mrs Weinberg was talking about um because I I agree that that was one of the things that was highlighted within some of the comments um I think the vision the only thing I would say to it and this is where I think it's very hard to do vision statements that truly hold the test of time is that oftentimes vision statements are supposed to

116compel you to feel motivated to go do something and I think the weirdness of this is that the comments from people that like they're the feedback that we got from the community was not about wanting us to put something in that said you know we are superheroes now like kind of moment right like the you know we're the Justice League of Education now it doesn't feel like what the community wanted us to put down um because a lot of what they're talking about wasn't there right like wasn't wasn't that it was more in line with what we actually probably have on paper so that's why I think it's a I actually think it's a really strong one you know again there may be a few words were here and there to kind of punch uh

117something out to elicit something to seek in the future um but I do think it's very interesting both on the mission and the vision the feedback we got is both either they thought nothing was missing or they thought everything was wrong so like tells me we're on the right path um it tells me we have some of the right things there uh I also think it is an interesting thought with regards to the diversity equity and inclusion and belonging piece that and I hope maybe Monica can clarify some of this with it for both of those it was information that both people supporting it and people opposing it as feedback and so in some ways I think it is important that the district has always stood for expanding equity and inclusiveness within the district and

118so in some ways even for those folks who were opposing it I almost want to have something there to tell those folks nah this is what we do what our district does and so I I would tend to agree a little bit uh with board member Weinberg on that that needing that language there to really punch into what we as a district have stood up for and stood on the Forefront of also calling out the fact that we've been one of the few places in the states who continues to push ahead of the state ahead of others to expand the opportunities for Equity within our district in the in the role that Equity will play and how we make decisions within the district so I think just maybe having something in there that says it

119in the uh Mission and and maybe adding some language in the vision that kind of pushes us would be good but again I also like what we have here too thank you Mr Craig I'll share just a couple quick quick Reflections I think um to the comment that Ms Bolton made about the data and the demographics I just wanted to Echo that um one of the things I've appreciated every time we've worked with Monica and the Oma group is the the care that they put into getting both a high volume of responses when we do community engagement but also a diversity of responses uh that we can actually check against the composition of the student body of the district um so thank you for for doing that and I think that I think that's a

120fabulous fabulous process um I happen to really like the vision as it's written the mission as it's written and the forecast as it's written um I think it um I was um I have some skepticism we'd be able to get to something that really resonated for me and I genuinely like all three of those uh I think that the choice point we're going to have in front of us is how long do we keep working on it to try to get it to perfect and I think there will always be with 7 people with seven different perspectives there will always be some pieces that don't quite feel perfect for everybody but that's why we live in a democracy uh and so I do want to try to find some way to move this forward and

121move this to closure I also want to honor the current contract and engagement we have with Monica where I think this is the end of it so if we if we want more we're going to have to ask them if they're available for more and then pay for more um of course Monica if I'm wrong on any of that I'm assuming you'll tell me um but you know my my proposal for how we how we move forward and you want to check this with the group is I love this idea of a resolution I think that makes a lot of sense um I think Monica has heard some um feedback from the group tonight um and I'm wondering I'm not tied to any of this but I'm wondering Monica if um you and your team

122might be willing to share with us uh sometime after tonight's meeting um whether there are any modifications you might propose to the three pieces based on what you heard in this meeting we could get that written up in the form of a resolution for our next meeting and then we could have a vote on those pieces and if people want to propose amendments you know we can we can do amendments but we just work through our process um and then um we move forward um so that I'm again tied to none of that but but as a way to try to move this forward um Ms Bolton I think moving it Forward is is certainly everybody's hope that the forecast but that's but if I could I since I didn't really contribute yet about the

123actual wording of the vision and Mission since that might be your charge Monica can I just if it's okay with you uh the on the vision Cincinnati public schools will be a system of excellent schools you know I like that idea of system of schools I don't know if it's excellent or successful but I can live with excellent love it but where every student is seen I I that is that pleases me poetically but I think it it's kind of weird for some people that might read it I would value I would say more that every student is valued rather than seen because a lot of folks read this well of course they're seeing we're taking attendance they're sitting in the chair I mean poetically it's beautiful it reads lovely but it's safe I would

124rather say that worries me uh that is that that's a red flag right there I think supported would be would be better I love empowered and I love prepared and certainly to pursue their life's passions I think that's I think that's that's great Down based upon the data that you all produced I I I love that one phrase that came out that we are a community uh and I would say students Educators families staff and citizens if we did we are a community and I think working together to provide high quality I just would prefer a warmer word than instruction like learning high quality learning and then I need an adjective for a balance on opportunities and I don't know what that what those enriching or what I don't know I need some sort of

125definer for the opportunities and lifelong learning again great um and I love the very the very left-wing end of this which is through economic Mobility possible for each of our students that is that's hardcore I love it that's hardcore but that's those really suggestions for Mission Vision and I still think forecast is is not ready but we're close on this at these other two so Monica reactions on your end or or anything you want to share to yes thank you so much I appreciate all of the feedback I'm hearing a lot of agreement on the mission statement it feels very close I think very easy to to address uh and and incorporate that feedback and get it back to you all for final resolution um I like your recommendation board president to have a final

126edit or final version that incorporates what we've offered and then to allow you all to have your resolution and make amendments in your next meeting this does technically conclude our um our engagement this evening but always happy to support I do think you're very close what I would recommend on the mission on the vision statement um for those who are feeling like it's it's not quite there um if you have specific wording uh like some of the things that have been offered tonight that you can offer in this conversation or some more specificity on what would create that sort of punch uh we can make a go uh we can make a go at that um that that would be my only uh question there I think adding Equitable opportunities I liked um Mr Craig's

127recommendation around that as well as Miss Weinberg so we can um you know that that would probably be what we would add uh in the mission statement there great um yeah I I would also say I think on in terms of the CPS forecast I I understand Miss Bolton's um comment there uh it would I would recommend at least um if they're pieces that still feel missing or that you would want to add there um if we could get that feedback this evening um that before we conclude that would be helpful as well so those would be my only remaining questions at this point thank you Monica I know Mr Craig had a thought that he wanted to share and then we'll open to others too I just want to share my my one thought

128on the forecast I actually agreed with uh Boardman Jones that I actually like what's in here the only thing I would want to do is maybe reorder um because I think adding moving the families up in front of what our district will be nationally recognize for um makes a lot more sense because I think if we do all those three things and our forecast then that then we will be recognized for all the things that the district the standing fair for and so I think it just gives a little bit more of a emphasis to who those folks are um so that that was the only thing I was going to suggest with regard to the forecast and if we could move to slide to the next slide I think then we then what it

129is referring to so you're suggesting moving that fourth bullet that says families and communities and making it the third bullet so then it concludes with our district will be nationally recognized for is that correct okay thank you and then I think Monica you were asking for are there other ads or questions or deletions that people wanted to mention about the forecast while we have the time tonight yeah Miss Bolton I know on the we will be atop a tractor a retainer of talent and obviously that's that's Chris that's crucial and very important but I would also like one thing carrying over from the last effort that we've made is that we attract and people choose to come to our schools I mean that that we are we are the the get the major markets here

130I don't know how to say that but families choose our schools I mean I think that would get us on that Competitive Edge that we need to get back to where we want to to do that I still do I think the idea of moving the order is a good idea and I I do think too that um uh the The Innovation it's Innovation cultural I think there's something to be said about our locally generated Innovation or something or that we are an Innovative force of not just uh here but everywhere something but I I there's a skeleton huh if Mrs Jones wants to pass the forecast before she retires from the board I will live with that if it is somewhat different just because I love her but this forecast isn't quite ready but

131that's okay she'll leave us to do to do our Magic or she'll change your mind um thank you Ms Bolden any other uh feedback from Monica on the forecast and then just to say thank you again Monica for your time for your engagement for your team's work to Eliana to everyone um thank you thank you thank you uh and is there anything else you need from us this evening I wanted to invite I can't see all who's in the room um so I wasn't sure if the superintendent there is there and if she had any comments that she any thoughts on this yes thank you hey there how are you um good thanks I would just just like to say thank you and thank you for the work that's been put into this process because

132we did have pre-meetings I was already prepared for what we would see tonight and so I don't think that there are any um comments commentary feedback that has been provided by the board tonight that would just make life very difficult for the work that we're doing so there isn't anything that I've heard tonight that we could not move forward with and that does not align perfectly with the strategies that have been already provided for the Strategic plan for coming from the leadership so I'm just really excited right now and looking forward to us getting to resolutions so that we can get a fully baked strategic plan so that we can really get the work forward thank you thank you very much superintendent thank you Monica any last questions you have for us none at all

133just want to continue to acknowledge the superintendent and the board for all of your thoughtfulness throughout this process and um just to offer as a final word um really have continued to see the alignment and the natural progression from the things we heard uh well over a year ago now in the superintendent search process all the way to today so just continue to appreciate how you are centering uh the voice of the community and everything that you're doing uh congratulations on all of the great work you're doing with the opening of the school year and the alma team continues to cheer from the sidelines uh and and very excited for the wonderful things you'll get to accomplish this year thank you very much Monica we would love to continue spending I would love to continue

134spending time with you we have a full agenda behind ahead of us for the rest of this evening we will say uh farewell uh and look forward to catching you next time excellent thank you goodbye everybody thank you and so we will hop back to pick up uh with the approval of minutes on item e on our agenda is there a motion to approve the special meeting minutes from July 17th in the business meeting minutes from July 17th thank you Mr Craig is there a second thank you Ms Bolton any discussion on the approval of the minutes all in favor signify by saying aye aye any opposed minutes are approved we're going to hear three committee reports this evening and then we'll have a motion to approve all three uh first we're going to hear

135from the ad hoc attendance boundaries committee from chair moffatt so thank you president Lindy um we this is unfortunately from the July meeting so we're a little time a little delayed on time but we are preparing our reports working collaboratively with all of the committee members to get our report together for the um upcoming For an upcoming um meeting where we will expand a little bit more on this the ad hoc committee boundary the ad hoc attendance boundary committee meeting minutes are posted I'm going to highlight a couple of things because I think that I want to again add Clarity I do have one Committee Member that continues to bring us back and so I want to again add Clarity to what the original charge is and continues to be for the the ad hoc

136attendance boundary committee um the charge is to look within the corridors attendance and enrollment of schools that are most impacted by things that are going on in the community it's actually in the minutes on page three but I want to make certain that I say that we are attempting as a committee to look at the broad big picture of um our system of schools and how they are being impacted by things like enrollment Transportation cost per pupil programming Etc and so that that is our charge however so there are some times where particular schools come and advocate for their needs which I personally think is perfectly fine um but we did spend a significant amount of time talking about Bramble and discussing these the small little cluster of schools that are impacted by the purchase

137of Bramble again I won't go into the specific details of of every Community question and they are listed but there were some very good uh some very good robust discussion on Bramble and um the the littles the land of the littles is how I call them and the impact of Bramble on John P Parker Woodford Schroeder ultimately what does that look like and so I urge the community to go in and look at those again pointing out specific things that may be of Interest we did have one Committee Member that stated that one of our charges is one of the things that we're looking at as a district is trying to reinvent a middle school system a true High School model and the need to start to trust each other it's on page three and

138it's really really significant um a historical perspective as to why the committee was formed and what our the connectivity is to our charge we um we had some action items that we will be discussing unfortunately we had to move our August meeting but we will have to I don't know if we have a I don't remember if we have a date specifically but that is come we're going to have two meetings in September and we will talk about the following action items we will have um our Chief Information officer reported that he looked at the analysis of capacity across the three corridors and compared the amount of open seats at various schools to see if there was the ability to shift grades or School populations and we're going to talk about that we also as

139another action item we're going to look at the cost of transportation for the high schools and what would it look like what would it be for Middle School Middle grades and a middle school versus transporting Middle grades to the high school again these are written this is on page six and these are action items for the next meeting another action item is the consideration of in year two for Bramble what is the plan for John P Parker middle school and teachers and another action item is the communication to families that that should have happened earlier family engagement family communication was a significant piece we will also be looking at um gamble um the administration and superintendent asked that we revisit some of the historical promises that were made regarding specific schools and so we are

140going to take a look at those to ensure that as an ad hoc committee we're able to inform Administration and then support on the directives from the board um our next meeting Phyllis do we have a date for that September 28th is the one but we were going to have one in between there but keep keep posted I don't think we've landed on a specific day from the committee but um he posted we were going to plan on having one right after Labor Day and then an additional one as our regular meeting on September the 28th I do encourage the community to go and look at the written report that also has some additional attachments with specifics regarding enrollment and I I submit these as written thank you chair mobit any questions for the ad

141hoc attendance boundaries committee okay hearing none we'll keep moving to our next committee report which will come from Mr moraski in the policy and Equity committee thank you president Lindy policy and Equity committee met on Friday August 18th at 9am um our whole committee was there we began with a quick uh status of the bylaws which we'll talk about later but uh the good news is and not to beat a dead horse but I would like to send my thanks on behalf of our entire committee for how engaged the board has been on this process and uh general counsel's office has been super on top of everything the entire time so uh we've gotten to a pretty complete spot we have one more thing to talk about tonight um so we'll save that for later

142I don't want to give any spoilers um policy 1100 we discussed uh the district organization um this was placed on the agenda by Miss Bolton and uh the consensus at the end of the conversation was largely that we thought the policy was was sound and invisible and wants to say anything at the end I would absolutely welcome her too I brought up a concern about discussing the admit uh superintendent's organizational chart in our committee which we didn't um but we all agreed we were comfortable discussing the policy um and felt I think pretty good that the policy establishes sort of chain of command or whatever you might want to call it community board superintendent Administration um uh also sort of part and parcel of that is policy 1210 which is board superintendent relationship um the

143policy is printed word for word in in the minutes and again I think we uh thought it was sound um there's a part I would uh draw your attention to um we determined um changes are not needed for policy 1100 as they established at the board has statutory responsibilities for oversight and carrying out the Mission Vision and goals which is certainly timely for tonight's discussion um Miss Weinberg uh we were all grateful for this had asked that policy 6152 and 6152.01 be placed on the agenda these are regarding student fees um this was a rose a while ago kind of out of the um um this editorial comment the irresponsible article printed by The Inquirer and reported on Fox 19 about how we don't let kids walk at graduation which was a lie um if

144they don't have their fees it also left out a big part of the story that we do our best to make sure these fees are all paid and people receive their diploma as such however there was obviously confusion which is what leads to lies oftentimes unfortunately very public um and we discussed you know Miss Bolton Rob she we don't she didn't want fees for anything and we all agree um there are certain things we have to there's Ohio law and things like that that we have to follow whether we want to or not um but we had an awesome discussion and and we're going to um uh look at this policy I believe again in our September 15th meeting um so thanks again to Ms Weinberg for bringing that up we just want to be

145crystal crystal clear with the community that we are not going to penalize our students and use graduation or or time out of class or anything like that if their families cannot afford to pay as Ms Bolton Said in this reflected in the minutes this is an issue that being difficulty to pay these fees for well more than half our students and so we just want to make sure we're explicit about that RC 7250 uh commemoration of school facilities um uh we we discussed this in light of a course Lighthouse and I brought this up months and months ago about the need to rename Lighthouse that was kind of in the agreement we had with them no one's upset you know but they would like to move on you know uh have us get rid of

146the name it can be confusing for people um also with the Bramble school we understand that um you know the superintendent Administration have begun some of this compute Community involvement I'm not going to pretend to know what everybody wants schools to be called I do know at least anecdotally people like the name Bramble um Miss Bolton brought up you know and we're proud of this that most of our schools are named after people and people that have done really really great things um although there's a serious lack of female people that are schools are named after we are happy about the racial diversity of the people our schools are named after so we have these two opportunities we need to make this decision as we were talking about this Miss Bolton and I kind of

147got triggered I think because we had recalled that we had made a decision a board and a half ago to name the Cincinnati Digital Academy whatever it's called but the governor Gilligan Digital Academy we thought this was a done deal I'm happy to say that I I asked general counsel holding in the moment draft a resolution I'm pulled the Band-Aid off I'm tired of talking about this and then forgetting about it and then it coming up again this is the last school if I had my way we will named after a white male but Governor Gilligan absolutely deserves it after he was governor he came and served on our school board he's a big part of the reason we have Community Learning Centers Etc and so the last board and a half ago had decided

148this so we never did it you all will have a resolution that's a draft in your inboxes thank you general counsel Hoang I am ready to put it before us and make us vote on it uh as soon as possible because this this should have happened a year and a half or two years ago um other business uh Miss Bolton brought up refugees from Ukraine um unique issues uh to them moving into our school district um Miss Weinberg I believe it was Miss Weinberg to tell you the telephone um piece correct I think it was it wasn't me I think everyone should have a cell phone and be able to use it uh so it wasn't me uh cellular telephones and electronic communication um this was brought up because someone on a bus um was

149trying to discipline a student for having the cell phone out and we're like that's that seems like that probably shouldn't have happened and so thoughts and Clarity on that um general counsel hoing informed our committee the policy does not prohibit cell phones he stated disruptive user cell phone uh could be caused for confiscation in the device um the policy for buses being canceled Ms Weinberg inquired if there was a policy that restricts parents from picking up their children when buses are canceled general counsel hoing reported general rule would be that a parent as long as there is confirmation that's a child's parent or an emergency contact or someone who's been given permission to pick up a child would be permitted to pick up the student I'm not in the habit of reading these things word

150for word as you know but I think that was important to read for people if they're watching the 52 folks watch and just so you know you have every right to do that if you are one of those people that's on that list that the teachers have you fill out that I am now familiar with or if you're it's you yourself so we will discuss on September 15th the student fees on waiver school fees um and then we dismissed sorry at 10 01 a.m um I motioned uh and Committee Member Bolton seconded the motion to recess and new executive session to discuss employment of a Public Employee or official and then the meeting ended at 10 16 a.m I present the minutes is written thank you chair moraski any questions on the policy and Equity

151committee meeting Ms Bolton yes I appreciate the chairs uh minutes I think they're accurate and good I was pleased to resurface what we thought had already been done which was uh naming uh naming uh CDA after Governor Gilligan for some very obvious reasons uh and kind of the last uh not so much guy or Caucasian but then the final one of the greatest Generation regarding a World War II service an educator professor and as you point out the remarkable thing of coming from the governorship and deciding that school board was so important for a retired Governor to serve so I appreciate that I would only kind of add I don't want to misstate this and I hope this is within keeping uh the chair talks in terms of the two policies that were brought forward

152based upon I think um vice president Craig's assignment to policy and also uh member Jones uh talking in terms of listening to go back to policy regarding the org chart and I think it rightfully so did and the two policies uh I agree that there those policies did not need to change but I think part of the dialogue that occurred and maybe it was a monologue on my part I'm not sure but I saw some nodding if you will uh regarding the fact that it is not it does not mutual it does not exclude the role of the board in either the relationship between the superintendent and and the and the board nor does the existence of a CEO necessarily uh negate the role that the board can play uh in advising or suggesting um

153uh the district organization not the not the superintendent's um executive team which we've been deferred almost always but the actual organization of the district there's a part for the district to play so I think that was sort of where we were when we then adjourned into executive session but as always a great policy meeting and uh thank you for uh doing the agenda and so inclusively thank you thank you Ms Bolton Mr Craig just quick question I know we you talked about it um Mike with regard to the naming of schools you know we have the one that that you both have referenced but I think you also mentioned that there were the other two with Bramble and Lighthouse and is it just that you uh you all were raising that to find out kind

154of the status and as we move forward what would happen with regard to those two processes that's right um and uh um unfortunately superintendent couldn't be there because she was out of school um but and if correct me if I was wrong but I've believed the Madisonville Community has been reached out to about these two new schools and like potential names I actually we were asked to wait to ask questions about the names until after we got through more of the engagement process that was a part of the initial surveying we do have a survey on the site right now that's just responsive to recommendations for what the former Bramble will look like and then once we get through that process which right now I believe we're looking at making recommendations to the board in

155October perfect and then once we get through that process we can open up again and and take names and get give recommendations or have those available for the board if that's the will of the board yeah I think we're on the same page thank you thank you Mr Craig Ms Bolton just again to bring up the lighthouse uh effort that is is not necessarily circulating through the community or is it is it only Bramble that's circulating right so so Lighthouse was new to me in terms of us beginning to think about a name for that so we can definitely discuss what kind of Engagement you may like from the administrative team to get some feedback on it but that my response was in reference to right well what I call Bramble but the former Brim

156thank you very much any last questions for the policy committee before we keep going for our third report moving on to our third report will come from chair Bolton from Budget Finance and growth thank you president Lindy uh that are provided uh and of great interest and uh I my first item here is actually and I might need the treasurer to help me say this but a tremendous amount of the time of the meeting was spent on what I understand to be the bad meeting good the treasurer please tell the community and the board what is the bad meeting so educators are Infamous for using acronyms for everything the bad seminar stands for budget something in discussion analysis and discussion and it's hosted by ODE in our finance department and they go over all the

157changes that are applicable to the state funding formula and they announced that they're actually separating ode and creating a new organization um and so those are noted in the minutes there thank you Treasurer uh we asked as a committee to have that report back and I know the treasurer sent two of her top people to the bad meeting and we got the report back from the bad committee meeting and this takes up about three or four pages within the treasurer's report and indeed it it earned its title uh particularly this time not just the initials because uh it did describe as this treasure mentioned the change in ode and those sort of structures and also outlined quite carefully and quite specifically some of the issues regarding uh Universal vouchers but I will allow all that

158to be read by y'all in both the key takeaways that the treasurer's office presented to us and then also at the end of the major details at the very end of the uh minutes we also a great thing that the treasurer and a member Moffett have put together or the town the financial Town Hall meetings those scheduled that schedule and those topics were discussed and that's on page three uh we also had uh the report back from the Hamilton County tax incentive review Council update and not surprisingly uh with a lot of those Turk highlights I would suggest a careful reading regarding the cras on throughout the treasures report we also had the investment update that was in our work plan and then also heard from the treasurer that two more things will be added

159to particular treasure reports uh and those are what are those Treasurer Wagner so they're they're included in the treasures report for tonight one of them is the return of advances um so if you recall at the end of each fiscal year there's no grants is allowed to be in a deficit cash position and they are they're they run that way because we excuse me we spend the money first and then we ask for reimbursement so in June's expenses don't get reversed until July the general fund has to advance cash to those funds to keep them in a positive cash situation and then right after that you just reverse that entry put the cash back in the general funds as we get reimbursed so um but I can't move money between funds without the board's Authority

160the the other section in that Treasures report is the annual transfer amount so we're required by the ofsc when we did our billion dollar facility master plan to set aside a half Bill value into a building maintenance fund 3.2 million dollars every year and that money is used to do minor repairs and upkeep in the buildings like replacing filters um broken plumbing that kind of thing um the second report is an annual requirement um by ODE to do an investment report publicly adopted by the board it's just an annual requirement to have it publicly approved and now it's required to include that correct those two thank you we also then heard a transportation a review and uh kind of with great anticipation as to you know when it first day what it was going to

161look like and and indeed we also heard extensive presentation regarding the budget we appreciate the additional opportunities to discuss the budget and be aware of Transportation through finance committee uh again I encourage members to look at the last several pages to get the update from that uh bad committee uh meeting and I submit for approval thank you chair Bolden any questions for Budget Finance and growth hearing none is there a motion to approve all three committee reports thank you Mrs Weinberg is there a second second thank you vice president Craig we've had our discussion all in favor or last call anything we missed okay all in favor please signify by saying aye aye any opposed committee reports are accepted we'll move now um we're on item G we have done uh the first item under

162G and we're going to move on to the second um which is the fy24 budget update okay so we are excited to uh present our budget recommendations for this school year I do want to start by saying that there is not an expectation that we would have a decision tonight our request is that we have well we have one request in terms of positions um just so that we're able to get work moving forward but our request would be that we're able to review take the rest of the month to review the budget make any recommendations for updates such that at our final meeting in September that we would be able to move to the approval of the budget or with any recommend updated recommendations point of clarification rest of the month it's August 28th

163the rest of August rest of August and September I'm thinking September my head is already so the request would be to take this for the next week for our next meeting yes I'm in September I apologize okay so I think that in one of our conversations we had that our president asked us to lead with the headline so we would like to lead with the headline and the headline is what we're presenting to you tonight is a balanced budget um this is a balanced budget based on all of the work that we've been able to do in the background there are a couple of things that I do want to call out as we're moving through um the budget one and when we started I'm at our very first iteration we were at a 20

164million dollar deficit um outside of that and you will see throughout the presentation but outside of that we were able to balance the budget um the board approved for a four percent increase for our staff so we were able to do that with the four percent increase for the staff as well as we were able to also do this without any major cuts across the district so there was no recommendation for risks there were no recommendations no major recommendations for a change of of vacancies or any of those things and so we did want to share that moving forward so this just breaks down a bit kind of where we started with our FY 23 actual and then where we ended up at this point our net reduction of 25 million in our base expenditures

165and that was our 613 through our 588 so thinking about what we actually had and what we generated we did receive the increase that came when there was the update from the um the overall House Bill and as a result of that we were able to see a bit more in terms of our base and our base allocation ify 25 budget and I think that this is something that we will be saying at nauseum throughout every conversation that we have because one of the things that we do want to know is that our fy25 budget will be much more difficult with the loss of Esther number one and automatically going in knowing that there's only a six million dollar there's only an anticipated six million dollars of new Revenue expected so when we receive our

166budget allocations we know that those are for two years so based on what we know right now or next year there's already um there's only an additional six million dollars um the other thing that I will also address is we as we think about Esser there were some decisions that were made on the board early on when we went through each of the Esser iterations and the desire of course was at the end to think about doing things that were only one-time kinds of things we didn't do that to start with and so where where that leaves us now is that we we are in the third year Professor all extra dollars have to be accounted for by the end of June June 2024 and they have to be paid out by the end of

167September and so knowing that we are really having to monitor it limits some of the things that we can do out of Esser and the expectations for how Esser is used have now changed so as we are coming to you with the information for the budget that is assuming that the Esser budgets that we've reviewed those funds are are already expended or already accounted for in terms of the recommendations that we make so anything that's not um supported based on our recommendations then that means that we'd have to go back and find where else in the budget we remove those things from because right now this is based on our best thinking next slide for 2023 just to kind of take us through our responsiveness and the recommendation for the budget for 2023-24 the recommendation

168is responsive to our identified areas of need and to the ABCs as we think specifically we looked around sustainable Staffing over our high school transformation high quality instruction and focused resources so as we think about our budget and our budget items we're looking through those areas in terms of making sure that we're aligning with those areas of focus for our 2324 budget what you'll notice is for the sustainable Staffing the Staffing to formula and transitioning out of Essa funded roles so we were able to look at many of the roles that had been funded the decision was made early on that that was the process that needed to be used to maintain positions at that time and that's something that we support but we have been looking at ways that we can transition out of

169some of those positions the next High School transformation so targeted Staffing and supports to improve High School outcomes and overall equity and the third of course that's that's truly important to the work that we're doing is high quality instruction so prioritizing teachers of record over other support roles to ensure best first instruction for students so making sure that we are looking to fill vacancies in classrooms first as we're thinking about other roles that would be responsive to student needs and the last is focus resources so Equitable resourcing to meet specific needs and the one we call out here is our English Learners English Learners are students that are also at risk in other areas so in sustainable Staffing is to go back to a slide that you have seen before about how it's driven as

170a part of the overall budget budget and Staffing process is Formula driven and I know there are a variety of conversations about whether to use a formula or not but one of the things that we that's important that we share as we think about what we do instead of a formula um there are some positions that we're able to fund out of title one because Title One is designed to be used um to support students over and Beyond what's already provided so if we look at another model that is not formulaic in nature then we're not able to use Title One funds for that because there's not a way for us to determine and that includes teaching positions there's not a way for us to determine what those allocations would look like at schools and

171so we do have some opportunity to do some changes with allocations as we move into the year and further and get involved in where we go for next year but that's something for us to keep in mind so we start by predicting enrollment running Staffing formulas considering appeals from from principals updating Staffing allocations and then finalizing non-personnel budgets and then we go through these the Staffing appeals criteria that were a part of how we got to the overall appeal was was there a correction for the formula um this was this an area that were implications or adjustments needed for class size any school Improvement expectations and then overall program needs that were available to schools the formula Improvement made to increase leadership support on campus so there was an update of the formula for last

172year in previous years uh if students were at one at 550 students then there was an assistant principal that was given so up to 550 students there was not additional assistance in the school building for the principal and for and the way that we thought about and think about where we're looking to go with with instruction how we're looking for teachers principles to truly be the instructional leaders in their building making sure that there's someone else in the building to also help support that work so this year the formula was changed to one at 350 students with the exception of high school each High School this year was also given an assistant principal and therefore for example Spencer who's only at 334 students they do have an assistant principal so they didn't have a security

173additional security Personnel but they did get an additional assistant principle this year and then the formula was driven in terms of of the additional numbers after that so the number of APs for the district for this year increased from 40 based on the formula increased from 49 APS to 65 APS and the schools to the right identify as schools that now have an assistant principal that did not have an assistant principal before um so this implication was overall an impact of two million dollars for the budget you better understand CPS better we're better than the National Standard recommendation for counselors overall for Council ratios and I think that this is something that's a celebration as we think about where we go this year with the budget so the American school counselor Association recommends a ratio

174in for high school so from 7th to 12th grade a ratio of 250 to one students to counselors and so we gave a breakdown here of what those numbers are for us moving into this year with the increase of where we've gone with counselors and this is really a testament to the work that the board had previously done around the focus on counselors uh and then moving into this year with the new and addressed focus on counselors it got us really below the national average and I do think that that's something for us to call out and something to be recognized and also making certain that we're recognizing the support that that provides to our students um also for last year there is a difference here because last year the ratio was 364 to 1.

175so just in one year with the increase of the counselors It's a difference of the 364 now the 204. EPS provides a dedicated social worker for every school and this is also a celebration for the district this is an area the district has worked on for a period of time um the ratio for social work is also 250 to one and that is not something that's as well known as widely known in terms of a national average and so as our district we're getting closer to the 250 not quite there yet but with the addition of the attended social workers for this year our ratio is 365 to 1. but it is a celebration that we do have social workers in every one of our school buildings non-formula positions that were closed out in line

176with the Esser plan so HR work with staff in each of the positions to match the best fit Alternatives based on their area of expertise and their overall qualifications and credentials in the district while maintaining needed services at schools there have been a lot of conversation around these individual positions um School Community coordinators assistant school Community coordinators Career Tech coordinators and the primary reading Specialists that were all funded out of Esser High School transformation so three strategic High School roles to support overall AP ABCs the ap of culture and Community the graduation Council and there was a lot of conversation around the graduation counselor and the attendant social worker so at each one of our high knees high schools there is an additional person to work in these particular areas and graduation the graduation counselor

177after discussion was based on the graduation rate of the individual school so you'll notice that there are 11 ftes for the AP of culture and community and the attended social worker but there were 10 for graduation so each of these uh at the at the bottom it gives the impact on the overall budget for these particular positions 1.46 for APS of culture 1.19 for graduation counselor and the 1.19 for the attendant social worker as well the aps of culture currently are funded out of Esser and the other two positions are are funded out of Title One so they are they are are not on the other list in terms of looking at the general funding positions all right Equity focus on English Learners with continued support for reading and math overall um so after getting

178feedback from schools it was important as a part of our strategy thinking around budget how we were going to provide additional support to our schools that had a large population of English language Learners so for our Title One schools that had a population of greater than of 20 or greater or their English Learners they each of those schools received an additional SEO coordinator and that person works specifically with students and families and works in in partnership with the school staff there were 13 ftes for this funded out of Title One at 1.06 million reading specialist and math Specialists also in each of the schools based on the school's data and so for reading Specialists and math Specialists a portion of it was funded out of title one and the other portion out of title two

179the overall impact to those budgets was 7.4 million for reading Specialists and 4.41 million for our math specialist so there have been a some conversation around uh positions and central office positions so this is one of the first that we would like to share central office position realignment Nets overall and overall reduction of two ftes and 142 000 and so it's important that we share this because there was some misconception that there were a lot of additional positions that were added at the district level but actually there was the reduction of two positions and 142 thousand dollars as we begin to think about the presenting a balanced budget and sharing with you uh the balanced budget overall so when we spoke with you before at that point we had gotten right to about 13 million

180dollars so we talked to you about the things that we had done um to change the six or seven million already and we also discussed that there were a lot of other areas that we will be looking at to get to the balance so how did we address the overall 13 million dollar deficit um first we did a there was a reduced indirect cost funding and essentially for the for any of our grant funded areas there are indirect costs that you can then um make sure that you take that savings to the general fund so that's what we did we reduce the unspent encumbered funds from fy23 and this area is really important because one of the things that we do want to make sure and we don't have a choice actually that we work

181through this year is really making sure that we are being fiscally sound with the way we think about our dollars and so this year we did a zero phase modified zero-based budget where it was not just a matter of of offices rolling over the budget from year to year but also doing a focus on what's really needed to make sure that we're having the level of impact and services that we need so from last year we noticed that already there is um there is there was an increase of six million dollars that that was in the budget that was not used and so we were able to recapture those those funds and also in Esser there was an additional two million dollars so we were able to recapture that as well we reduced our central

182office vacancies we shared that with you earlier and that was 5.4 million also and this is one that I'm I'm um that we do want to share we did receive an additional Grant from this from the state to offset our early childhood salaries with increased Grant funds and that was to the tune we were actually given positions but that was to the tune of about two million dollars so that did allow us to then free up those funds to be able to use them to offset the overall deficit and the last which I'm expecting some questions around this one and when we get to the end of the presentation our Treasurer can have some additional conversation here but aligning the funding to Cincinnati preschool promise Master agreement so there was an additional request that was

183outside of the master agreement for Cincinnati preschool promise and we are recommending that we take that as a total savings as well instead of doing the increase in that area this is a breakdown and I don't think this is 4 00 of the monies that we use at the district level offer salaries and fringe benefits um so when you break when you do the breakdown 77 percent go to salaries and benefits and so being able to make sure we get to a balanced budget without impacting this I do think it's something again to be noted so a few areas for you next slide please this is one that you've actually seen before so a few areas for you and this gets into some of the questions that came up as a part of um the

184finance committee meeting or from questions that have come from board members but this is a campus position comparison so this gives a breakdown of the positions that we had last school year and what the allocations were for this school year in each of the areas um by the actual content area and what that impact looked like I think it's also important to note that if you recall as we think about balancing School budgets were already set so there wasn't anything that we could do to balance with school budgets so the 20 million dollars that we had to balance had to come from the district office and so being able to do that and being able to balance without any major uh changes in movement and positions is something again that I do want to make

185sure that we reiterate next slide so the also the recall for new positions um there were some questions around the differences in positions and if there were more positions that were requested that were not a part of the the information that been shared with the board these are the only positions that have been recommended as new positions for this school year these are this is an actual slide that you have seen before but did want to call this up specifically um the impact of the general fund or the assistant principles due to the formula change a request for a position as a transition Advocate to work specifically with the promise Center and students that are transitioning from the promise Center back to their home schools a a manager for our counselors knowing that our counselors

186have increased in the work of counselors is very specific and detail to the work that they're doing and as you also saw from our human resources audit there is a lot of additional work that needs to be done through that space and so wanted to make sure that that was obvious and relevant in the budget and so these are the positions that requested as a part of that if you'll also notice in these positions most of the positions are specific to Civil Service type positions or their cast connected positions that would really be those that are involved in the processes and doing the actual work the other funds um our other funds these are other funds that were used for these particular positions so for example the graduation Council and attended social worker and the

187aps of culture graduation counselor and attended social worker were Title One APS of culture uh currently are Esser as well as ESL coordinators title one and we did receive a grant for special populations a talent recruiter specialist for special populations so just here is just a couple of resources to share with you we did I believe print them out as well so that you have them in hard copy but for for you and for those that are watching here these are the central office position reduction and that's the summary for the positions we were asked to include the uh savings for that area as well but if you'll notice at the very bottom where it says note uh see the full list of reductions and add if you click there it opens up and it

188shows you all of the reductions and the ads and the actual amount for that so if you'll just click that one for us so it takes you to the complete document um what the ad what the changes were what the ads were where the reductions were and the dollar amount that would along with that so it gives you full transparency into where those recommendations were or where the changes were we can go back to the other slides likewise on the next slide this is the central office position slide and this covers the central office position addition summary and it works the same way so in terms of each of those positions it talks about the changes in the total savings but if you also click that button as well it gives the breakdown for each

189of the areas by the overall elt area as well so that gives you the specificity around the position the total amount and where the changes are and the decrease from last year to this year in the recommendation and I think that and this is the last slide and and then we'll open up for questions but this date this gives us the link this gives you the link here to each of the other presentations and information that we've shared around the budget so that it's all in one place um so that if there are additional questions we can go back to these areas for a point as a point of reference I believe that's the last one okay so I'm going to turn to our Treasurer right now to see if there's anything else that you

190want to add before we open up for questions no but that was the easiest budget presentation I didn't have to do great job uh thank you superintendent and thank you Treasurer uh and so just so that I and the board are clear I heard you say and thank you very very clearly at the beginning that the uh request is not to approve this budget tonight um the request will come at the end of September to approve the budget and so what's helpful tonight is any feedback or questions about this absent those questions this is what will come forward uh at the end of September that's correct one more thing that I do want to make sure that we call out if you go back to the slot with the positions um the one ask that

191we would have is that the positions that are listed that we've not moved forward with that we're able to move forward with those positions because they are critical to the work that we're doing in the organization and so if they're not the the assistant principles that part is is done already um but the transition Advocate um the manager for counselors if we had to wait on those until after the the rest of the budget was done that is something that that is definitely doable but the positions for human resources with everything that we're doing to make sure that we're getting up and running being able to do that sooner than later is also really important the other thing in terms of just a few of the contracts and I and this speaks specifically to some

192of the changes that we made in terms of insourcing versus out at least two of the contracts are in um technology and the way that we've actualized some of that change is by when we look to start the change in the contract so if we don't if we're not able to move forward in terms of that change then we don't ex we don't actually get the the decrease that we're looking for from the contract so that would be one that we would be looking to move forward um through our treasurer's report for the next time I think you talked about um and other than that it's really just feedback for um next steps moving forward and any questions that we have um the last thing that I did think was important in terms of calling

193up and I know that you've gone through all of the individual reports but one of the questions from last year that was a a pretty big discussion was around Schedule E and so the budget while you when you actually look at the line by line analysis of the budget there is an increase in the budget this year for Schedule E the total increase is about nine hundred thousand dollars however the actualized increase is four hundred and six thousand the difference is last year uh when Schedule E was updated The Fringe was not put in up front so we had to work through that the entire time this year um the 400 000 covered that Fringe that wasn't done last year and an additional 500 and 6 000 which is responsive to the requests that were

194made by schools that they could actually support what schools will say is they've not seen that yet and that is accurate because it has not been approved so what they've seen at this point has been what they had last year once that is approved then we would be able to move forward and make those funds available to schools so that they can complete their overall schedule e-budgets thank you superintendent Trisha Wagner yes I just I do want to make a couple um comments so in this packet that you have in front of you the first couple Pages represents the comparison from the last year's budget to this year's recommended recommended draft budget and I've included both the general fund and Esther together because things were switched between funds and looking at One Fund at a

195time would be confusing for example if you just looked at the general funds you would see that Transportation dropped by 19 million dollars but we did not cut Transportation which has shifted more money into Esser to help us spend that so I'm trying to give you an Apple's apples comparison um then right after that is the current draft of the Esther budget um keep going there you go um and one thing that we did want to point out is that we ended the year with about 112 million dollars to spend by June 30 has to be paid out by September 30 or we send the money back um there's about 98 million dollars in that 112 million dollar budget that is recurring and so fiscal year to what I'm just telling telling us now fiscal

196year 23 is going to be very or 25 is going to be a very painful budget process um but I will say that 14 million of that 98 is related to the facilities improvements that need to happen like the roofs and the chillers and stuff like that we never intended to put that in the general funds we knew we couldn't absorb it so we talked about the possibility of a DI Levy or um tops of borrowing um so then so that's the Esser document there and then after that are the position changes that were requested by specific board members um in the in the detail that was asked for it um anticipating a question about CPP so they're excuse me their budget request included three new items that were not outlined in the master agreement

197that go above and beyond um one of which was extended uh Year services and the master agreement specifically states that it's the school year services that to be funded the second item was an a change to the income qualifications to the family um that is clearly defined in the master agreement so we would take a renegotiation to change that and then the third item was an increase to the cost of quality by 10 percent and so the master agreement only allows for a three percent growth each year and that cost of quality Factor um and so I backed it back down to the three percent those allowable in the agreement um so the three of those things equaled about 1.5 million um and so we um there was a little bit of difference in how

198much cash they already had on hand sorry just reduced the budget by 1.4 to stay within the master agreement that's in place thank you uh superintendent thank you Treasurer uh so request for tonight we're looking for overall feedback um uh approval on those additional positions and approval for those Tech contracts that would come through not tonight but at the next business meeting board members Mr moraski thank you um I actually have two questions and uh Treasurer wagnerance they did one regarding the preschool promise so the question then for me there's still a question which is the master agreement and weren't we supposed to have a new one or renegotiate or want we talking about having a new one in my misremembering all this because that's a fairly big drop um and I you know I

199don't know what the income change was but I remember even when coach coach Ozzy was on this board and we had this conversation about if we're not reaching kids and we're doing our best and we have money we can get more kids and we should have a conversation about chain you know changing the income level so I I'm just confused like what's going on with the master agreement I guess thanks so the master agreement expired on its terms last uh last summer we extended it mutually for a short period of time but um it's expired our position has been that the status quo continues to apply unless there's changes negotiated um preschool promise sent us a draft uh and we sent a draft Redline we sent back our response I do think it's in their

200Court in terms of uh you know a uh it responding to us I will say also that most of the changes that they proposed we recommended going back to kind of the status quo of where we've been the last five years is that helpful yeah no yeah yeah it's helpful to me I mean it kind of it confirms I think what I thought that the master agreement it's like in limbo and I just if if it matters I would just like to put out my piece that I I would like to get that going and get it done um it's a big drop um and preschool is really really important and I think it's been beneficial for the community so I'm kind of concerned about it um I don't often throw out monkey wrenches and

201things it's not really my way but that one really kind of sticks with me the second one um would be um just Clarity on the project connect reduction that's the difference in Grant funds and so that's that Grant is going away and so that's what's left and then are they still be holding the fundraise for those dollars or are we able to help them at all because I know the fundraising and I know we can't do everything so I'm not asking for that but was that a grant for a specific like program or CCP or Project Connect Project Connect yes we're still assisting in fundraising so for example we still we still can't fundraise so for example the Showcase um that was done recently there was an increase um it went from 5000 in one

202year to 10 the next year not only can we continue to fundraise but we can also continue to apply for Grants great thanks thank you Mr moraski Ms Jones was signaling and then we'll go to Mrs Weinberg okay yeah I think I just asked Miss Bolton the question but I'm gonna put it on the table so I I'm trying to absorb what uh member moraski said so the CPP agreement the mou agreement is that did the board did we do any negotiating yeah so it's not approved okay uh just certain time was responding we'll go to Mrs Weinberg so just to add um if we recall we received information for c for this uh for CCP oh CPP I'm sorry and that came to the board for recommendations and then based on those recommendations that

203went back to the CPP I'm thinking about ccip uh CC Cincinnati preschool promise board um and so that's where it is right now in terms of any follow-up and Next Step so we will ask our Council to follow up with them as early as tomorrow to kind of see where we are to start the additional conversations yes I just wanted to add um I would agree I think that the 1.4 that is a huge drop um it would be very concerning for preschool um preschool is very important I hope that also dear to my heart and I just want to put there put out there on the record that I would definitely not be in agreeance for a 1.4 reduction what is it thank you Mrs Weinberg is it more than 1.4 if we could

204the treasure if she'll clarify that information because we're saying a reduction and I I think the reality is it's going back to where we were versus not giving an increase that's been requested um so that's a little bit different than uh just a reduction and before she speaks I do have a question so if you're looking at the slide here and it specifically States I think it was 12 million and then it's going down to 10 million is that correct on your side here am I reading correctly so I think it says preschool promise curriculum for 27. I think there's a number of 12 986 482 but then it's going down to 10 702 466. is that correct treasure would you turn your mic on for us thank you very much sorry so which slide

205are you referring to I'm sorry um I think it's the recommended balanced budget slide 103. so the budget unit 0.27 is shared between um TPP and CPS so that negative is the offset of the Early Childhood Grant monies that we're using that where you put it like right um the 2.2 million dollar grant that we got we are offsetting Cincinnati public schools Early Childhood salaries by that 2.2 million dollars so it's not related to CPP at all that budget unit is CPS and CPP together so their budget for fiscal year 23 was 11.5 million their budgets asked for fiscal year 24 was 11.1 but it included all those three new items now keep in mind that the CPP the levy that we receive we're only generating 15 million dollars a year in Revenue so what

206work together we've out we're out spending that annual allocation of 15 million dollars so we're spending much more rapidly the unspent cash that had at the beginning of the levy we're going to run out of that a lot faster than we'd anticipated in 26 so we're going to run out of it 25 if we keep spending at the rate we're spending so we have to make a decision about how we're going to continue funding Early Childhood growth foreign thank you treasure Wagner we got Mrs Weinberg did you have an additional question or did I cover it I don't all right Dr moffatt so I I do understand um the the CPP that we were they were we were under spending we were banking some of that money and then as we've gone on they've tapped

207into some of the reserve but I've been Fielding phone calls all weekend and I didn't understand and they are keep you they keep using the term we're cutting and I was very defensive and saying no it's not a cut it's just not an approval but it feels like a cut when they've asked for 1.5 million based because we are basing our they've increased their calculation it's based on a five year ago spend which I'm assuming doesn't include cost of living and things like that and they've increased their anticipated expenses based off of maybe current trends and we're stopping that so so the 1.5 million dollars is not a cut because it is new there was a new budget line items for them so we're not taking that away from them we're just not funding it

208because it's not part of the agreement I've got that I understand that very clearly but the requested budgeted amount included the 1.5 million that's correct okay so we're not approving what they're requesting that they need to run their programming right because they requested a budget that was outside above and beyond the master agreement that is correct I completely get it but the master agreement expired June 30th of 2022 yes yes around it expired a year ago and we're still in negotiation so it feels to me like we're going to punt to adhere to something that's expired but that's in the process of being renewed now so why would we not just wait and this is the question I'm asking why would we not just wait until they get their Master agreement because it's in the

209process of being renewed right why wouldn't we just wait until they've gotten that finalized which could potentially include the justification for their 1.5 million were you suggesting to wait what the budget approval well if okay let me let me back up because I want to understand they're requesting 1.5 million dollar increase in their budget we are denying that because we're saying it's not in a master agreement that has expired am I am I aligned at the moment that's correct okay but they're in the process of reviewing their Master agreement to us is that right it's my knowledge roughly the ball's in their core yes okay so if they were to get their Master agreement to us and it justifies the one 0.5 increase that they were requesting would we be in a position to go

210back and and give them what they're asking for well you would have to negotiate so that the answer is yes we would be in a position the cash reserves are there we could increase the appropriation to include that extra cash but the district has to approve the master they just don't run a master agreement and then we just sign off on it as a negotiation we have to agree to everything that's in there there are conditions in the master agreement that aren't necessarily being followed like they were supposed to do a whole bunch of fundraising the remember the last dollar in was a huge deal when we were writing that Master agreement we're following that because we're using gobloads of federal and state grants that get spent first the general fund is the last dollar

211in so um there are certain items in the agreement that need revision but the both parties have to agree to one before we can fund them okay well that was one of my first questions and just as as a community member I voted and supported the school promise um and I I don't feel comfortable taking their their requested amount and voting against that so I'm hoping that we can find some sort of in the master agreement and the requested amount that they are requesting my other question is around the positions that we are funding with Esser funds and it looks like the apia culture is funded by Esser Super Subs are also funded by us or but we've cut the coordinator positions which were funded by Esser is that right um I think that's like

21213. Rob can you go back to that please so I want to understand my a couple of questions my first question is if those positions that were newly created are funded by Esser and Esser stands to go away how do we maintain that my other question is why did we cut those positions those coordinator positions if we were funding them from the same pot how do we continue to fund those positions I believe it's like 13 months um that ours are funded so two I'm sorry so two things um the first is when we initially presented all of the positions we presented how they would be funded one of the things that we talked about for the assistant principle of of culture and Community is that at the end of this year we would have

213to make a decision as to whether or not that would be a position that we would keep in The District in the budget or we would fund it how we would fund it moving forward so that was that was clarified early on the additional positions if we think about the school Community coordinators and the assistant school Community coordinators and the Career Tech overall there's conversation around strategy and what the roles were doing so if we recall the way that we got to this place with the school Community coordinators and the assistant school Community coordinators is the year that I came the conversation for those roles had already started because those roles have been placed in as historic roles in the district has there been conversation at the human resource level um as well as conversation

214with the treasurer and Leadership that the positions were not not there was an alignment with the positions and so when we got involved in it realized that that was the case one of the first actions was it was shared with me then that these positions are being cut I asked the question and that was in June of my when I first arrived I asked anyone been notified I was told that they had not been notified and I shared that is not an action that we would take at that time that we would do notification and we would move forward a year removed from there which is what we did but within those positions we did identify areas that were necessary in terms of thinking about strategically how we're moving the district forward overall and so

215with that there were there were positions that were absorbed in other positions there were job descriptions that were updated and individuals were matched with those jobs so as a part of that one of those was the ESL coordinator that was identified four schools that had a larger population of ell students um the Career Tech coordinators if we recall when we first started talking about careertech the initial thought process around that was that those roles would become the role that was serving as the graduation specialist that was the first position that was brought there was a lot of conversation around that there was discussion from the unions around that and so that those individuals were not able to be absorbed into those roles because that position had to become a school counselor so at that point

216those individuals then had to be placed into jobs for which they were qualified so I guess the answer is that we're going to have to revisit the potential keeping those positions that are new because they're all funded by Esser and Esther is going away just for the AP of culture the other positions are funded through Title One um my other question was um local nurses we've gotten some information this evening and I've asked about School nurses before seemed to cause some consternation yet we're here again can you tell me about how the funding of School nurses they're currently being funded by Esser right yeah what's the plan for School nurses after Esser yeah I think that that is a larger conversation for all of us when it comes to the plan for everything that we're

217funding after Essa um so just to add a little bit of clarity to the school nurses and this is the same response that I gave previously um initially we had 65 nurses that were funded out of Esser the health department was only able to provide 48 nurses so instead of us carrying another year vacancies that we were not able to fill we reduced that contract to the 48 nurses that they could provide right now of those 48 they're actually 45 that are in service and there are three vacancies from the health department likewise we also we we also fund 17 LPNs as well so with the combination of our our nurses and the LPNs we have schools on a three four or five day coverage depending on what's needed in the school building I think

218the greater question is and we have had some of this conversation with our Union leadership it really comes back to where the board ultimately when we get to the point of having the discussions around Esser what are we looking to have to do the funding on because if we are funding nurses if we're funding health health needs of funding any of those things I think as we we know that there is you know the funding that we won't have next year from Esser the conversation becomes what are we not funding if we're going to fund that so I think that there is opportunity for us to have the discussion while you know I understand what our president sellers shared tonight in terms of other areas around us in terms of nursing that is not the

219norm across the country it's not the norm across the country that every school has a dedicated nurse in their school building not outside of covet but for covet we know how we got to that place but it's just ultimately a decision that the board would have to make and then we would have to determine what we don't fund if we're going to fund that I actually love president sellers recommendation of having conversation I don't know if we'll get support for it of having conversations with the city about funding the nurses I don't know that that will necessarily happen we're trying to still get them to fund our crossing guards but um I think it's something it's really something for us to discuss and to think about the other thing that we're also working through and

220we have some upcoming meetings with the health department is there is an entire conversation around silver skilled nursing skilled nursing Services versus not um and so that's just another conversation that we're working through currently with the health department thank you I think this is definitely a conversation for our joint upcoming meeting September the 13th or around nurses and we'll bring up crossing guards too so we'll get to that later in the meeting but thank you so much thank you very much Dr moffatt any other uh comments folks who've not gone yet I think we've heard from Ms Jones we'll come back in a second Ms Ms Bolden you know we got it I haven't I've been gone yet and I'd like to go too but want to hear from everybody first please Bolton that is

221not brief uh so that's why I'm telling you to go there I promise we'll come back around I just want to give everybody a first chance um I heard that promise uh I am really glad that we're not voting on this tonight and I'm really glad that we're going to have 30 some days to have some reality therapy on this board and the reality therapy on this board is uh the cliff that the treasure has outlined over a number of years now it's not a euphemism it's not just some sort of a uh analogy there's a cliff and it's happening and very frankly when we vote on this budget at the end of September on October 1 we're going to start living the nightmare of fiscal year 25. because help me out just using the

222the my favorite word transportation how much how many dollars for transportation are we getting uh out of Esser to meet this 50-some million dollar is it 19 million okay there you go rest my case folks 19 million dollars of Esser for our transportation budget well next time in in fy25 will we have Esser still based on all the information we have right now no that's what we've done it okay so now our transportation we're having some success now we might have real numbers instead of the numbers we've been working with on transportation for three or four years and having to pay 30 you know 15 million later or whatever now next year after we hopefully after a year of this working trending positively we're going to have 20 million dollars less to spend on Transportation

223now I I have now found out tonight why my name has been mud with everybody that loves preschool promise because here's the reality we cannot agree to do something that's not in the general agreement now if you all want to change the general agreement go tell the cap go tell general counsel and the superintendent to change it and get those things because you cannot agree to an increase or a request that's not part of what the voters voted on change the agreement we'll do what you want to do but that has to be there so I I'm pleased that Administration is recognizing the value of having an agreement and having made a commitment to to the public and keeping it uh sounds like we're willing to change the agreement but you better look into what

224that then means for our preschool experience being year long you better look into the experience of whether or not it's quality seats or not quality seats because the governor and the infinite stupid experience of preschool for the state has been now to Discount the issue of quality seats and our whole thing with the public was quality seats so I'm sorry but we we need some reality therapy for 30 days and looking at this I I have to tell you that this is as much information as ever been given in my 16 years and I appreciate it I appreciate it from the treasure I appreciate it from the superintendent I appreciate it from the board that kept saying we're not ready to vote yet I mean that's our function but this 24-25 we need to make

225some more strides in 24 to even have a chance at 25. this is really rough stuff because we have become dependent upon Esser we are dependent upon Esser and we have now used in part Esser and other funds which is other funds were come that's normal the title one or whatever we've used it to make us continue our service but also balance and it's gone how much how many is the question how many Esser dollars are in this budget 112 112 million okay and that's 112 million in this budget that we've you know is balanced will that 112 million dollars be here next year no no all right reality therapy four board members so I have some other specific questions I'd like to ask uh but I'll I'll try to take a breath and have

226some reality therapy for myself thank you very much Ms Bolton I'm going to share some thoughts and I promise we're going to we'll come back around a second time anybody who's not gone once wanna go okay um I wanted to share um uh I I shared a lot with what Ms Bolden shared about this is the I think most comprehensive budget presentation I've seen Ms Bolden has 16 years I've got almost four so different different number but I just want to share some gratitude for the detail and Clarity I think to be really specific to it for me the Criterion for voting on the budget is whether or not it's going to do the most we can to advance our goals and guard rails that's it you know like we have decided as a board

227but based on what we've heard from the community members here are the five areas of student outcomes we need to prioritize the most uh hear the values that we need to honor as we work on that to what extent does this budget do that and I think there's lots of examples in here that it does uh to share just a couple um I think the focus on high schools you know two of our guard rail or our goals are about increasing the number of students particularly students of color graduating with a industry-based credential or college credit plus I think there's a lot of focus on making our high schools stronger places similarly we have a guard rail around graduation from high school which is important on its own and because we can't do well on

228the state report card absent and improvement in our graduation rate and we have strategies that are aligned to that and I think finding ways to make those kinds of Investments even in the context of having to lower the overall budget is really hard uh and so I want to I want to just note and appreciate the administration for all of your work on that front um I think though I you know I I share I think the concern about what the future looks like um I think we're gonna bind with Essa right because we either spend it now or we lose it so I'm glad we're spending so much Sr dollars I think we should spend all of our extra dollars I don't want to send a dime of that back to the federal government

229I want to spend it on kids and families and staff here in Cincinnati uh and uh we do need a plan for the future so I want to agree with that piece I also I think Dr moffatt said something I really agree with around the the uh support in the community for preschool uh and so the one I think the one question I have on this is around the preschool promise funding um and look I think I want to be like I I think people have tried to do the right thing I don't want anybody to take away from this that I think you know the administration or or Council or anybody I mean if there's been a delay in the master agreement it's been because of us not because of you all like I

230don't think that's anybody's fault um and I empathize with where preschool promises um because I think they've been waiting for a master agreement for a long time um I think they've been trying to do the best that they can um and I also think that you know they submitted their budget to us much much earlier in the spring and at least as I understand and that could be wrong like the first indication they got that the the total dollar amount they asked for which was right in line with what they asked for last year that that wouldn't come through as fairly recent and just as as a former executive director of a non-profit I know how challenging it is to find out Midstream that you might not have the funding that you thought you were

231going to have uh I don't know what the right answer is I I also understand the arguments people are making I'd like to do as much as we can to do right by that partnership and I really believe in preschool um my only question uh was related to the preschool promise piece and I wanted to ask am I right on thinking that you know because that Levy money needs to be spent on preschool even if we don't give them that funding that they requested because it's outside the scope of the now expired Master agreement I don't understand how that accounts for a savings for us because does not have to be spent on preschool anyway that was that was I think my only question correct the 15 million dollar annual amount is to be spent

232on the expansion of preschool for both organizations not just CPP we have our own expansion program so um they redo reducing that value in the budget help balance the budget to down to the 608. um so there isn't uh unless the levy expires there's not a time limit on when that money has to be spent general fund monies can continue to roll if that Levy expires and we don't get it renewed that will be a different conversation we won't be supporting very much preschool I appreciate it and I'm for tonight honestly I'm good I mean if people want a superintendent don't let me cut you off but I just wanted to share that piece yeah so if we can go a second time I promised Ms Jones she would go we'd come back to her

233next and then we'll come to Dr moffatt in the treasure for the very comprehensive report which I think for me somebody who struggles with understanding numbers it really gives me a really really good picture of where we are at this point in time and it answered a lot of my questions I I think every ever since I've been on this board every single year we the budget process has been tenuous it's been difficult it's been um I I don't know I don't know what other words to say about it it's been really really hard one of the things that I've noticed about this budget process and in this particular presentation is I I believe and I think it's fair and it should have happened that the superintendent is trying to align with the vision of

234where we're going with goals and guardrails and all that that makes perfect sense to me but I also understand board member um Bolton's position about the cliff and where we are but I'm not quite sure how we address that and and I'm not quite sure how we address it because next year even if we addressed it next year it's going to be something else there's always something new that adds to you know what you add to or what you take away from the budget so I'm not clear what I'm not clear I guess where the the specific issues are that would get us to a point where we can actually approve a budget by next month or you know and I know if I'm making sense or not because I think that there's we've had

235all through this process we've always had we've always had all these questions about how the dollars are spent what positions this that and this at some point we're gonna have to come to some agreement that we have to move forward and take action on it my concern is that we'll have another four to three Vote or five to two vote which I don't want we should be able to fully support this budget I don't know I I don't know what to do my suggestion I was going to put on the table and I'll just throw it out there if it needs to be assignment if people don't agree with it that's fine I think we just need the we need to take one session where all we do is figure this out where all we

236do is work is figure this out like put all of these questions on the table because we have to approve a budget I don't think we can extend it any longer right we have to and we have to give it the time but I also want to say to my colleagues we can't slice and dice this thing to death we have to have some faith in moving forward on this to make a decision about it and I'm and when I say slice and dice I mean in the in the minutia I'm not you know the big buckets I get it I get questions about the big butt uh buckets but we can't just slice and dice and why this this this why is this not important why is this more important I mean we have

237to trust that the superintendent and the treasurer know what's important where our values are what we've talked about and put it in here so that's going to be my suggestion is that we take one meeting to do this even if it's an added meeting I know people don't like to do more meetings but we might have to do that thank you Ms Jones we'll go to Dr Moffitt or superintendo and respond okay so Dr mobit and then we'll go to miss my work I almost forgot my question can you tell me what the savings has been for the preschool promise I know that they've been kind of coming under budget and every year we had been um kind of saving some of their allotment of the money can you tell me what that the amount

238is so this year the estimated under spend is about 2 2.1 million so can you describe can you explain and understand I I know what that is but I want to make sure that my colleagues do can you explain what the understand is for preschool promise right so every year they get in a lot of budget and they underspend it every year they've never spent their budget every year this year fiscal year 23 they're ending the year with about two million dollars of unspent cash that we've given to them as part of their budget so if I'm liking this and I kind of want I want to again explain this to me like I'm through no no offense will be taken if we if they've understood the the only reason why we're not giving them

239their 1.5 is because of the master agreement that right that's correct okay so there's a two approximate two million dollar under spend from last year to this year and there will be if we don't approve that 1.5 million there will be and then again anticipated to million dollar underspin again is that right so I I don't I can't predict how they're going to spend their money but they've traditionally underspent um up to to two and a half million dollars each year if we just assume that things are the same let's let's just assume that it's going to be around 2 million does that money accumulate so that it's 2 million from 2021 to million from 2022 to me from 2023. so we have a document that we've shared at finance committee that shows both organizations

240and how that money's been under spent but there's nothing in the language that says United Way or CPP underspend two million dollars it goes into their specific pocket it goes into preschool expansion it rolls back to the general fund it's a preschool expansion it's not segregated by CPP or CPS it's just there I understand this I'm just I don't know of my colleagues do because they may not be on budget so that's the reason why I'm asking these questions okay so that money isn't banked it's just kind of it could have been spent it's it's banked in a special cost center for Early Childhood expansion it can't be spent on we can't spend it on kindergarten or second grade or anything else it is specifically earmarked for the expansion of preschool for both organizations not

241one or the other gotcha okay thanks um so I I wanted to make a point um um yeah never mind okay um we next we have Mary followed Mrs Weinberg followed by vice president Craig and I actually don't even need to ask my question thank you board member Moffett that was going to be my question I just wanted to have a better understanding of that actual breakdown and what that meant so thank you thank you very much Mr Craig uh so I wanted to start with again thinking uh the team of folks that I know to put together this budget and the team of folks that I know throughout the district who have been working really hard um to get us to a balanced budget um one is our first couple of questions and I

242have a statement I'll make at the end of it but the first question is just on I know as we get to Labor Day we know there will be some reallocation of needs in schools based on what attendance back and it looks like those type of factors and so just wanted to kind of better understand how that would affect what we are uh budget-wise looking at as well as if there are additional needs of things that we are still working to hire for and positions that we're looking to fill how would that factor into our budget predictions so the uh what you're referencing is what we've called the tax process the teacher allocation committee and there are a variety of feelings about that process but that is the process that we've used um to allocate

243um staff to schools is based on projections the reason that it's important to review that information in the fall and I don't think any of us love the process I mean it's challenging for everyone it's challenging for us it's challenging for families it's challenging for students but it's where we are and the reason that it's important is because we we cannot right-size schools until we get bodies in seats so for example like the Spencer example that was used earlier today based on the historical data for the last three years of Spencer they were projected to be 50 students less than they have currently and so they went from I think their projection was 287 and there it um at 3 37 right now and that was based on three years of historical Trend data now

244moving into this year uh we'll move out of that a little bit because then the the Esser year I'm sorry the covet year isn't isn't looked at the same way even though we tried to um give some kind of leeway and leniency in terms of that um so that's one the second thing that's a part of the tax process that we've been discussing a bit is that the thought around class size and I think that it's important for us to talk about when we begin to look at the changes and nuances that we do in class size that also translates into additional positions which is exactly where we want to be we want to make sure that we have teachers in front of students and smaller class sizes but we also have to present the

245impact on the budget to that so right now we're believing based on where we are that we presented the balanced budget based on where we are with with what it appears to be in terms of enrollment right now it may take some shift thing but I don't know that we would see anything that would be major in terms of that but we would need to we wouldn't be in a position where we can just keep all schools harmless right we would have to do some movement around to get staff in the positions where they're needed based on schools that have a greater enrollment than we anticipated or classrooms that have greater enrollment Etc and then my second question gets a little bit into a conversation that I know the board's gonna eventually have with regard

246to our facilities needs and and whatnot within the district but I think that's also something for us to think about that nothing within this or a small portion of our Sr dollars that we're using now are going to whether it's in addition to a building or a modification or repair or whatever but not something systematic of our uh district and and changing whether it's doing major repairs that are you know fixing all the roofs or something like that so these are costs that still will be occurring in our future years as we go forward right that's correct and I think the other thing to add to that so we know we've been discussing uh effect finding around facilities because it's a it's a necessary conversation we have beautiful buildings we have um put back into

247those buildings the money that was set aside um when we went through the facilities master plan to make sure that we could do some of the upkeep and repairs in those buildings but now the buildings are older and and so they're needing other things so we have buildings that they need new roofs um and they need other repairs for the buildings or we have some schools that are expanding and other schools that are not expanding so much and so it's really um you know the general fun and that's one of the benefits of funding like Esser that we've not had before um you know in my tenure of of of leadership in the organization in organization educational organizations the one thing that was different about Esser we've gotten other dollars previously but the one thing

248that was different about Esser is that you could use it on cap improvements and other funding that we received from any of the Opera funds or any of the release funds or any of those funds they could not have they were not able to be used for those purposes so as a district we the district approved the board approved for us to do some of those minor things but they also had to be connected to areas that were under the qualifications for how you could spend those dollars for Esser I think the one other thing that I'll add is just like board member Bolton shared you know we have the increases in transportation and we know that there are some greater there's some greater decisions that we will have to make as a board and

249superintendent and Treasurer team around that because we know one of the things that's really causing our transportation increase to happen across the district and one of those is open enrollment it is it is it is it is causing a challenge for us this year just like like everything that has happened post covet and it was the same way Post 9 11 you know things that people said that things happened Post 9 11 and eventually they would go back those those things never went back and then for covet it's the same thing and so one of the things that's also happened is everybody else's dollars are going up so one of the things that's going up right now is fuel cost has increased for us so when we think about the other areas in terms of

250Maintenance right now we have we've not talked about technology but the second largest area here is technology because technology has almost become the need for technology has become like a utility for us and so there are other conversations to have because those are things that are built into this budget right now as well and to also answer the other question there was some conversation the treasurer and I had because we we thought that the there's a meeting I think scheduled the second Saturday in October that we were preparing to come to the board to have some conversations around um projections and for next year recommendations the kinds of things that we're seeing because the 112 the 112 the 112 million is real and as we're talking about the areas that we're looking to go whether

251it's something as simple as nursing that impacts that 112 knowing that what we get next year from the state is designed to be only six million dollars over what they gave us this year so those are really conversations that we we look forward to having and uh you know again to be brief because I know we are getting later and later as the hours ago I I want to just you know I tend to do this a lot at budgeting finance and and so this Bull's probably used to it as well as Dr Robinson but you know I think this is the reality that some of these conversations we're going to have is really about we cannot do today or we cannot do tomorrow the same way we do today because we just don't have

252the support from our state to do this we don't have the reality that our budgets will allow for it and so that may mean we have to make decisions about how the district is actually operating in a way that makes sure that we're securing a quality education for all of our students but also that we are providing programming that we are expanding you know areas for our students to grow in and do that all within a budget that's smaller and that's a really tough task to do if all we are thinking about is can we do it the same way we do it we did it today tomorrow and so I I applaud uh board member Bolton on the on speaking to the fact that this is just going to be a reality check where

253a lot of us in understanding that we're gonna have to make a hard decision and people are not going to like the decision we make so uh you know and I think you know former Jones gets the benefit of not having to be around for some of these our decisions but um the reality is that we just cannot do the same thing going forward without additional funding from somewhere and so I think that's going to be a conversation about what other funding sources we might need whether the resources we would need um and then lastly on the preschool promising I think it's important that we yes provide quality preschool preschool education and I think we should support it uh a lot of it but I do want to point out like things like increasing uh

254pay by like 10 is a huge jump that even as we've had these conversations my understanding is that we've always pushed back on that part and we've we've pushed back in our response to the master agreement and so I think there are aspects of it that yes we can have the discussion and the Board needs to make that decision and we need to get the best agreement done um but I think we want to want to make sure that we don't set ourselves up for uh expanding something that we never agreed to in the first place in a way that would affect now how we budget going forward but also the expectations of what's going to be in that long-term Mass agreement and what we're asking for other folks to do I know we've spent

255we've talked about this in budget and finance we spend so much of our other dollars first and that is a really really positive thing that we've been able to find all those resources but that also means that that was something that they were tasked to do as well as part of that agreement so I think that's all that conversation needs to be done for the mass agreement and if we can push them to get that conversation done quicker so we can get something more finalized uh but I again want to apply the hard work that was done to put this together and to really get us to a budget a balanced budget which is strange to see sometimes when uh where we started from was a huge gap foreign thank you very much Mr Craig

256I think as we prepare to move on to our next piece sorry Ms Bolton go ahead thank you uh to begin with uh the 20 additional the additional 20 million dollars that we received from the state we are spending and we are using to help balance the budget okay that is reasonable and next year that'll be six million but um yes that increased revenue from the state is how we paid for the four percent Cola there you go thank you for that specificity I was hoping you'd say something like that great um and I appreciate you mentioning about the 25 it's in this slide about how that's how difficult that's going to be a question of moving ahead like sustaining uh staff I know we did agree in one of those other late night meetings

257so when we were agreeing about the you know the AP for culture and what have you we did talk and we have talked about the formulas and using the small a smaller number than the maximum number within the CFT range and I hope as we are moving which should not require renegotiation but I hope as we are moving forward to 24-25 that maybe there is some sort of a plan we talked about kind of moving in that direction but I haven't seen it it happen yet I mean so I think that would be helpful because again that was a late night agreement and I'm hoping everyone remembers it yeah so what we shared was we wouldn't have done it before now because the first time that we would come back to the conversation would be

258tag from where we talked about it before so though the formula that's been been consistently used and there was it was really specificity around the fourth through sixth grade that caused the most consternation but that is the formula that has been used for many many years and what we asked the team to do this year after we met um last week with our Union leads and our bi-monthly meeting is we did ask that when we run the formulas this year or we would run the um allocations this when we go through the tax process that we run that showing both the number at 27 so if we were at the 27 number this was fourth through sixth grade but if we were at the Min number the max number before it becomes an additional um

259oversized classroom pay that we run it at that number and then at the highest number before it would become an additional teacher so that we can then take that analyze and analyze it by school and see what kind of impact it would have overall for budget but also what it would do in terms of positions in terms of vacancies for teachers and classrooms so that could be something that we use for now or something that we're preparing for as we think about next school year as well thank you thank you um also uh the counselor piece that's wonderful I appreciate that but I think we also have to recognize coming into 25 in a few months as we start to plan that does not are meeting those standards which is great does not uh does

260not say anything about our our k-6 buildings that's correct so that is just for that's just 7 12. those are just at 712 nrk8 buildings and our K-12 and our k-12s I just want to make sure because sometimes that leaves the impression that it's all of our buildings but now I'm sure the pressure now for 25 will be to start to do what we can do about our our elementaries and offering the counseling um and if if we could uh think in terms of uh the ads that you've made in APS you know I'm very opposed to that except the fact that I'm assuming in fy25 there won't be any school that is less than 300. that's the reality because there's going to be major consolidation and reorganization whether it's Transportation or whether it's tools

261it's that's it has to be done and it just I don't buy this number but I do recall from ad hoc changing uh from uh Whitton uh Academy Mid Hills Academy and College Hill and what have you it was a few hundred thousand dollars in transportation costs savings by not having that kind of division so those are places where we can do it and then the title one I think that's been a great discussion this year uh and I think schools participated in it and I appreciate it I don't know very frankly myself included if the slides that talk about central office and cuts and ads or whatever is uh going to be believed yet based of just upon the slides so probably need a little bit more data there uh the other pieces I

262still am uncertain about vacancies and what do they count as Cuts do they count is we're not filling them is it money that we carry forward I mean it'd be great to know the number and maybe I missed it in all of this the number of vacancies throughout the district uh particularly those that were carrying Care Professionals I'm sure we have hundreds of vacancies prepare I mean and how is that being carried on the budget as part of the tally and then you said earlier a new tech earlier than maybe we do that was it I think you're up to date your update that would be great uh I already told you about nobody believing the ones about this so that's okay uh you already know that and I think I can stop accept um

263I think it is unwise to add those HR positions at this time and I don't know about the contract piece but it's I think we can hold off on the I would suggest holding off on those four or five uh editions at least for another couple of weeks until we about whatever it is we need to talk about thank you thank you Ms Bolden um foreign yeah so just a few things thank you to respond to one I think I responded to the class size question the second um one of the reasons that it was important to us because we anticipated that there would be a question around the central office positions so in the appendix in the link there is actually the entire Excel that shows the positions last year the number of positions

264that were in the number of ftes that were in that position and the numbers that we have this year as well so that allows in anyone that would like to review those to go in and look at it line by line also as a part of our Union leagues meeting last week we did review this information with our union leaders as a part of once it was actually public information um on the site we did review that with them and were able to address any questions that were there so that was a part of that as well in terms of the HR positions I do understand that I think my only concern is and I understand why my only concern is regardless to what happens for next year we still have Staffing that we're trying

265to get done for this year and so even if we were in a position for a couple of them to post the positions even if they weren't positions that we were able to feel after the fact that that's a conversation that we're open um to moving forward with with that I think the last in terms of the um the conversations around where we go next year and one of the ones that you just referred to was the number of schools that are below 350. there's a lot of conversation to be had in the space of where we go next as we think about 112 million dollar deficit the only thing that that I would um you know ask the board as we prepare for that is there is no one scenario that everybody is going

266to like and so when we bring the recommendations I would just ask for Grace as we bring those recommendations because simultaneously while we're working on recommendations ad hoc is also working on recommendations and making recommendations about what needs to happen next what we're looking at with boundaries what we're looking at with classes and all of those different things what we're looking at were programs and so we want to work in alignment with that but in order for us to be prepared to bring some level of a starting point in terms of a conversation to the board in October we have to start working as well so taking the feedback that we're getting from ad hoc taking what we think we're hearing through that looking at the very real issue that we know we have going

267into next year and bringing it such that we're able to have some discussion around it but knowing when we come in that there are there are there are going to have to be some things that are majorly different so that's just just in terms of feedback along those lines on the facilities then that it would seem to me that we would need to find another three million or 4 million dollars somewhere there so from the standpoint of having cops having a certificate of participation especially with this re-evaluation of property a lot of ideas are happening out there that's not necessarily permanent Improvement but I I would really suggest that we kind of Target 50 55 million in certificates of participation for our facility efforts to move so we can make moves like you're talking about

268and when we do come for our fact finding and we discuss facilities I think that that will be one of the areas that I at least put out even though I know we can't have discussion about it but at least lets us know based on feedback that we have gotten from Finance the treasurer and I have really worked through what those different scenarios would look like and how we may look at moving forward with that thank you Ms Bolton um I think question just Choice Point here for the superintendent and Treasurer before we move forward you know we started this discussion you were looking for feedback from the board on the presentations as a whole I feel like we got that the second thing you asked for was about whether the additional positions in that

269slide were approved by the board to move forward on I think there we've heard the spread of opinions on that one um I'll share I think I do disagree with my colleague Ms Bolton on this one or the reasons you've shared in the past and the issues we've had in resourcing our HR function and the way that we need to and the impact that has on all of our staff uh you know I think that and to find a way to do that in a way that it still brings forward a balanced budget I think is is a good thing um but I acknowledge there's a difference of opinion um we could spend some more time there tonight and get clarity maybe uh you know I don't have to be right I could be wrong

270uh in the eyes of the other folks on the board or you could continue to think about this and pick it up next time with yeah yeah so I think the only thing um you know there are there are a couple of positions there that I think are more Mission critical right now than others and they would really be the ones that are assisting with input where we're where we are right now and I think that those are the tech positions the other positions to wait two or three weeks so wait until the end of of September to have more discussion around I think that's perfectly fine but those positions knowing we're getting ready to go through attack process we're following up and getting ready to start moving into Schedule E process we don't want

271the same issues and we work with the team in terms of alignment we don't want the same issues and there's and there's one there around benefits that position as well that's the third one because that goes hand in hand with the with the benefits audit so we don't want to end up in the same place this year we've worked with the team to set up systems and organize what needs to happen next we don't want that we don't want to end up in the same place this year that we were last year and honestly when I when we really dig in um and work look at the team look at the feedback that has been provided the the HR audit report that came from the council only confirmed the things that we'd already seen and

272they're just there are some additional people power that's needed there to get some of those things done so I think that that's helpful and so I think the question for the group then is for the that more narrowly defined set of positions which are the uh Tech positions you mentioned and the benefit data analyst position that's correct and Rob if you'll go back to the slide so that I'll be very specific to just those three positions I want to call their names the right names and it's in the appendix yeah I think it's slide 22. 22. okay under HR is the HR tech for civil service the HR tech for certificated and the benefits data analyst yeah so I think that that certainly seems eminently reasonable to me other other board members disagree or agree

273Mr moraski can you turn your mic on if you can hear you agree thank you Ms Jones but this is in no particular order like or anybody yeah uh Ms Weinberg is it thumbs up okay Ms Bolden the ones on the right so the ones on the under already done with the exception of the posting of the talent recruiter specialist we have not done that because we were going through this process but that's actually in a grant that is um that's a foundation Grant it's not title a title one Grant but we wanted to honor the process and wait to go to the price so on the left is the three that are are mentioned the the the the two HR Tech positions and the benefit data analyst for right now we need all of

274the positions but for right now at least if we can get those okay and thank you Ms Bolton any other uh Mr Craig or Dr Moffett I was gonna say he's fine with me I think it's fine I just have some some concerns and that's just me um I know I spoke with our internal auditor and she had also done an audit because I asked specifically about the Council of great City Schools audit and in comparison to what she had done with regard to um benefits and HR and there were some she didn't have all of the opportunity for engagement with regard to Administration but there were some disparities there so I'm just a little reserved on that because I think we need to also look at our internal our internal auditor and what her

275recommendations were as well that's just my personal opinion I'm happy to go with the group but I do think that we have an internal auditor that has had an opportunity to do some um audit of HR and I think we need to look at that too but again I'm not trying to delay for the point all right thank you very much and superintendent yeah it's for clarity the internal auditor did a benefits audit I believe it started in 2021 the school year of 2022 there was a lot of work that was with the human resources team however it never got resolved it was presented in terms of it was presented to the audit committee and there were a lot of concerns from the audit committee around the fact that it never got resolved and so

276that was one of the first audits that we reviewed and coming in it was specific very very specific to benefits I think the difference in the benefits audit and the full HR audit that we had done by the Council of great City Schools is the the audit for the Council of great City Schools identified some of the very same things that the benefits audit identified but it also went deeper in terms of overall processing how the org how the organizational structure was set up what we're doing in terms of systems so forth and so on so I do agree that there is value to the internal Auditor's benefit audit that was completed but at the same time this is in partnership with that one of the things was that we needed an outside there was

277a recommendation of having an outside entity that was doing oversight of benefits so responsive to that is an RFP that we put out for that as well as this position right here so that's very responsive both to her audit and a portion of the audit that was done by the council right I appreciate all of that I think I wanna talking about that then I want to make sure we get to this Tech contract piece before we move to the next I just think that we need to we need to we have the internal auditor for the Public's edification reports to the board and I think that there has been work done that we just need to make certain that we're being responsible for and to and I before we I'm just saying before we

278um approve that I think we should just at least hear from the internal auditor that's just me or at least read the report and we can certainly uh determine if we want to do that in addition I think for the purpose of tonight what I'm grateful for is getting Clarity on this second item there was a third uh which was the tech contracts and the next treasurer's report yeah did you get what you needed from the board on that front I think I'm hearing um from the board that there would be support in terms of that as well we won't actualize the savings if we don't move forward with that particular item and um that was a difference of insourcing versus is outsourcing So currently it's outsourced we did it for the three month period

279to make sure that we honored the process but ask but we're moving into getting outside of that three-month period so if we don't go ahead and insource the position then we won't actualize the difference and I think it's like 330 000 I'm looking at Jeremy for him to respond um 35 000. only 35 000. so still every little bit counts so we want to make sure that we're able to actually make the savings on that one thank you um any any concerns in that front otherwise we'll keep moving excellent great so thank you uh superintendent thank you treasure thank you board members thank you everybody who's here and is and is staying with us through our 922 mark on our meeting this evening I promise we're going to try and move through this as fast

280as we can and still do it well um the last discussion item we have for tonight is about our bylaws uh chair moraski my understanding is we're almost done uh we have just one or two outstanding questions which we're going to figure out tonight yeah uh thank you president Wendy uh we are about finished and so um if y'all permit me I would like to just kind of wrap this up if we could um and you know we've kind of been given these sort of like time parameters and we've been able to do it every time um and it is getting late and I do respect that so at 9 38 if that's cool with everybody we'll just stop the conversation if we're not finished no big deal mid-sentence moving on it's been uh it's

281been really again it's been really great sorry I've been singing a lot um um getting uh choked up about the conclusion of this process get really choked up when I talk about this it's been really great this process everyone's been um excellent throughout it I feel like we've all worked together really well um it's been a lot of feedback that our committee has taken and so the final thing we have to get some alignment on is bylaw zero one two two dot one member powers uh you will see the the pieces in red um that are still up for discussion these largely involve um requests for information from an individual board member to the superintendent unsurprisingly um this one gets into a little more detail than some of the other ones um in that it

282stipulates responses that are voluminous at least one copy will be placed in the board office no board member or member of the public requesting the full document will be denied that's your requests an executive summary will be provided to board members letter C says superintendent Treasurer will assign the appropriate staff to respond uh D says a board member May consult directly with general counsel or the internal auditor of the district the part I left out is a redlined new newer part in letter B um that I feel like some of the sticking points um have come from the superintendent or Treasurer shall acknowledge receipt of request for information within 24 to 48 hours responses individual board member requests should be provided promptly all board members that was taken out um but the 24 to 48

283hour piece is in there and this one's up for discussion uh letter A B C and D are fill in the works if we can get alignment on ABC and D there's no change to AC or D recommended there is change recommended to be and you all have this in front hasn't changed Mr Rocky's one one clarifying question um and I know that I was not at the last meeting um there isn't part also of zero one zero zero uh definitions of requests for information um there's a paragraph in there um I think the committee worked really hard on this because I Think It's Tricky uh and I I like what you all came up with um that says that if the information or data requested is not readily available the superintendent or Treasurer May

284request the board member to restate the request as an assignment during the next successive board meeting is that something that you all covered in the discussion of the last meeting we did we and I believe we elected to leave that in there okay that way if you want but yeah you weren't here I wasn't here I think you all worked hard on it I think that makes sense um and so the discussion tonight is zero one two two dot one member Powers Yeah uh and you're asking for feedback from everybody on a or B or C or D all four those were the four um that we hadn't discussed that there was still some need for discussion on and so if there's if people are cool with a b c and d then we're done

285essentially or if there's one letter that people have uh you know more passionate about than others we can talk about that one great thank you very much Mr brosky yeah uh vice president Craig I was just gonna say um I think we for an effort to be consistent make sure that we change the language with regard to the superintendent and treasure to all three of the folks who report to us um so that was the only thing I would add into that throughout the bylaws Mr moski you want to just do this all right cool I guess yeah Miss Bolton less awkward just a question of request for information but it is written and it is in other places or it kind of not not duplicative but it is other places whether it's definitions or

286whatever is a board member able to make a request of the people uh that you just that vice president Craig just mentioned and when we make that request is it a request in writing and the responses to all board members wait the way it says it here and I'm certainly no expert I appreciate you having the faith in me to ask me that question but the way it's written here the way I would read it's a board member May consult directly with general counsel or the internal auditor that's it if you wanted it could be more specific though I don't uh the word consult is a different request for information is I've thought there was somewhere still in the bylaws there was a request for information uh still written and that all board members will

287receive the response I think that a addresses what you're describing as Bolton it says yeah I mean I think I think this is squarely on what you're saying and it says a request for information from an individual board member should be directed to and then I'm inserting vice president Craig's any of those three positions and then it says and copied to all board members but I think that's yeah the language change it's actually four positions he reports that the superintendent we will report in the bylaws I think it's consistent with what's here though because it gives it's really explicit about board members Consulting with general counsel directly so yeah I mean I I think so but again I'm not I'm not the gatekeeper I've just been coordinating the whole thing but yeah it makes sense

288to me I'm gonna pull my old card out and it's 16 years if a board member had a request or was interested in getting some sort of statement or having a conversation with general counsel they could have it now the way it was covered was a dual report which I think is confusing for general counsel and for board and the superintendent and everybody else but uh excluding now is that the suggestion from you president Lindy that we're excluding our ability to reach out to uh Council no no I just was saying that I think what's written here covers the piece that you're getting at if we insert the language if we add the two positions yes yeah yeah and that's what we're saying we would add it throughout though Miss bull I think is that

289what Mr Gray was saying like every time it says superintendent Treasurer thank you yeah and then that would cover us four I think there are two issues one is who is a direct report to the board [Music] the other is can a board member consult with general counsel and the piece that I was trying to say is that the proposal that's come out of the policy committee as I read it honors a Time old tradition of not tradition I think uh by law that board members can consult with general counsel I think that's in here I think it's explicit I think it's an item D I think what I was hearing from Mr Craig and please tell me if I heard this right is that there are three direct reports to the board there's the

290superintendent there's the treasure there's the chief auditor and so the recommendation I heard was that we update to the three everywhere and I think the thing that's important is that is also consistent with any board member being able to consult with general counsel which is addressed in D again I'm not saying we have to do X or Y I'm just trying to clarify what I thought I was hearing from folks yeah Mike is or Mr moraski's Insurance that's what I heard the only the only the only difference for me would be general counsel being able to be inclusive in that request for information piece yeah but yeah I think we're all on the same I'm hearing the same thing but I I think there's a majority that agree with that if not it's possible the

291community would be surprised to find out general counsel for Cincinnati public schools is not a direct report to the school board so as well as the superintendent so it's just a confusing role and we've played it by being a dual report I will say I do have concerns that the idea of us having supervisory role in The General Counsel position because technically general counsel does not represent any one of us individually he represents the district and so there may be times where the role of the general counsel is to uh that that would come in conflict and so what I want to make sure that we're clear about dual reporting sounds nice it actually means nothing because technically you have one person that you are evaluated by and then you have someone else who also

292may have a say and conversation and have the opportunity to talk and so I think that is something that does need to be clarified in the bylaws as to that role specific and that tip deal what I don't think there's a confusion about is that I do think there's an importancy for us to have access to and communication with and be able to make requests of and do all these types of things that we would do of anyone else who reports to us I just do have a big opposition to the idea of a of us doing like an evaluation that type of role as a supervisor um for the for the general counsel position for a specific reason that again technically The General Counsel position is an employee of the district and not someone

293that uh the board and historically in the same way that the treasurer the superintendent the auditor would have been I I had the clarification needs to come in the terminology direct report so it you know it would be great if we could just have some clarifying statement because I mean historically in practice and in about we don't evaluate the legal counsel but what what does direct report means he has some thoughts that we have some Authority in that role we have a relationship with I which is what I think people are saying needs to be clarified but I think it needs to State we do not have supervisory oversight around his employment that kind of thing that so that might be help helpful to clarify that so I I asked a couple of Administrators like

294historically what has been the practice and it has to my knowledge to board member Bolton's point it's always been the evaluation is done by the superintendent but there was a dotted line there I think too if there was a dotted line there and that it has been the evaluation was by the superintendent but it but there was a dotted line I think to board member vice president Jones's I'm sorry Lord vice president um uh Craig's point the The General Counsel doesn't represent board members individually and he also does not represent the superintendent but individually either he represents the district and I think that our interest is to protect the district whenever I've asked general counsel a question it has been in response to protecting the district my movement as a board member and I think

295that I have some concerns around potential conflicts of interest um in the representation solely going to to the superintendent I believe it should be a dual Report with the evaluation being done by the superintendent but the comfortability and it being stated in the bylaws that he also reports to the board as well so that there isn't an appearance of um a potential conflict in representation and I I have concerns with that now so that's just my opinion and we have three minutes left Miss Weinberg hasn't said anything USA thing this one I know you're part of these conversations this whole time so if you don't it's okay I don't at this moment fine thank you so I don't think we're going to get resolution here in two minutes but it does sound like um we

296all and correct me if I'm wrong that we do agree in some sense that at least superintendent or Treasurer and internal auditor should be the language um so we see that seems okay so Mr Wayne we can add internal auditor Chief exam sorry uh what whatever the new title is um but and then it also just what I heard I didn't hear anything about letter C superintendent Treasurer internal auditor will sign appropriate staff to responder requests no one sees it okay um board member May consult directly with general counsel um or internal auditor of the district that may be a moot point at some point so we'll just leave that out there but the the issue now seems to be and I'm not creating fictional uh battles where there aren't any but like Mr Craig's

297point in Dr moffett's Point are like the two polar opposite examples to Mr Craig I mean serious concerns with the general counsel reporting directly to us or like having language like that and then Dr mob is thinking it should be that way I think I think Boardman Jones actually gave a great point of if we can clarify what direct report means and and how we talk about it I think that's fine I I my concern is that if direct report generally does mean that you would do an evaluation yeah but if you would be managing their employment and so that's the point that I have a concern I I think you all know me well enough to know that I'm not really interested in splitting hairs and redefining what direct report means does not seem

298like a valuable exercise for our committee I not with no disrespect Matt but I think we all know what direct report means so whether the the discussion then becomes like what is it we'll do miss Bolton and then superintendent we'll be done I'm done Mr Lindy I think a resolution to this uh is that uh supervisory responsibility for general counsel will rest with the superintendent uh that does not mean that the general counsel does not report to the board so you have to figure out that language and very frankly what would happen if indeed this general counsel only reports to the superintendent the school board will have outside counsel simple as that and it's happened before and hopefully it doesn't happen again I'm a superintendent and my president Lenny will put this back on the

299agenda then but I think we have something we're getting closer and then talk about it the next meeting and yeah we're very we're very close who will at some point have a Victory lap on getting this across the finish line but I think each time we get a little bit closer superintendent yeah the only thing that I was going to add is in the capacity of supervisor responsibility for general counsel um I think what I understand and I don't know the best way to work Smith it but I think what I understand is there are issues that arise or questions that arise that are of a legal nature that relate to the board that the board wants to ask that question directly to the general counsel that would not go through me depending on what

300those questions are and so that's been my observation in the way that we've done that work and I've not noticed there to be a challenge or a conflict in terms of doing that because the board selects when they need to do that when they need to reach out directly to the general counsel and when it is something of a more administrative nature that does need to come through the superintendent so I think that there's been some level of honoring of that and Clarity for the board around or Clarity for me from the board around if there's contact with the general counsel which happens often for a variety of things and they're not always things that are directly related to me it could be something else that's happening in the organization or or across the board

301that there is a legal question about there is a contact that happens with the general counsel and I don't see where there is a concern with that however in terms of the differences in reports or direct reports I do understand that the general counsel is a is a member of that overall executive team and a report to the superintendent so thank you and we'll pick up um at the next meeting um we're going to move uh off of our presentations to our short list of resolutions this evening uh we have two resolutions um Dr Moffett would you present the first so I will summarize this in the best interest of time I submit a resolution approving yellow school bus stops for the 2023 2024 school year I submitted as written thank you Dr moffatt is

302there a second second thank you Mrs Weinberg any discussion on the first resolution Ms Wagner would you call that vote please Ms Bolton hi Mr Craig yes Ms Jones yes Dr Maupin yes Mr moraski uh Mrs Weinberg yes president lending yes we have a second resolution from Mrs Weinberg and I will also be quick I submit a resolution approving students eligible for subsidy reimbursement and lieu of transportation for the 2023-2024 school year I submitted as written is there a second thank you Ms Jones uh any discussion on the second motion second resolution excuse me hearing none Ms Wagner would you call that vote please miss Bolton aye Mr Craig yes Miss Jones yes Dr Moffat Mr moraski this is Weinberg yes president Lindy yes also just previews of I hope Coming Attractions um currently under

303our bylaws we can do resolutions by Voice vote not by roll call the only thing we have to do by roll call is a recess into executive session um so I'm hoping just to pick up some time we can move to voice votes on these at some point I know it's not a huge Time Savings but every little bit counts um next we're on to the superintendent of schools um Mrs Weinberg would you do the retirements please yes we have three names for tonight for civil service we have Antonio Graham a high school coach at James and gamble Montessori High School we have Renee Pitts a pair of professional from Woodford Academy and we have Lisa Warren a senior support specialist from the promise Center so we want to just thank these employees for their

304service and their commitment to this District thank you very much Mrs Weinberg is there a motion to adopt the recommendations of the superintendent this evening thank you vice president Craig is there a second second thank you Ms Bolton any discussion on the superintendent's recommendations all in favor please signify by saying aye all right any opposed Ms Jones yes it's not a roll call the only thing we have to do by roll call vote in our bylaws is a recess into executives okay so if if I want to recuse or abstained or anything how do I do that great question you can I think I think I should I should ask um all in favor all opposed any abstentions at the end of the day this may not be in that time save in which case

305I won't do it let's try it the old way Ms Wagner would any discussion on the superintendent's recommendations okay hearing none uh we'll do it the old way Ms Wagner would you call the vote please Miss Bolton the old way is used for 200 years uh is yes I I think it's great I love them Mr Craig yes Miss Jones I apologize it caught me off guard because I had an abstention on um certificated Personnel item b i abstain and yes everything else yes on everything else it's Dr Moffett Mr moraski Mrs Weinberg yes president Lindy the old way has us here at 9 45 and I'm eager in any way that gets home a little earlier for folks yes uh we have a report of the treasurer is there a motion to adopt the

306treasures report this evening so move thank you Ms Jones is there a second second wonderful um at the risk of getting booed off the stage we're going to do a Voice vote I'm going to ask for abstentions afterwards I promise report no no this is cannot unilaterally make a decision like that and tell us this is now how we're doing it how can you do that uh Ms Bolton I understand that this is different from what you'd like to see us do and if the majority of the board would like to see us do something different we'll do something different uh what I shared at the outset was that I'm looking for some ways to help folks get home a little bit earlier uh and this is not a large Time Savings but it's a

307little one um and so if if there is um you know multiple folks who would like to see us do it with a roll call vote this is not the hill I'm going to die on and so we will do a roll call those uh only add that the public has a right to know how each individual board member that they've elected vote duly noted is there any discussion on the report of the treasury Ms Wagner would you call the roll call vote please by popular request Miss Bolton aye Mr Craig yes Miss Jones yes Dr Moffat oh sorry I missed that thank you Mr moraski yes yes Mrs Weinberg yes president Lindy yes um Mr moraski question for you on the uh Governor Gilligan resolution did you want that to go through this evening

308oh no that um just everybody has the copy so you can see it and we'll obviously have to talk about it and uh you know I'd like if it's okay being the one who asked him to do this to be able to reach back out to the family because there had been some communication with them in the past things went a little sideways either here or there now because we're here today so yeah no no action tonight but you know check it out and we can talk about the next meeting and be going to put that on the agenda Mr Hoying Miss Davis and then chat about it next time right thank you very much um I believe now we're in the last section of our agenda on board matters um we have one item

309tonight which is from Dr moffatt we'll come back to it when she's back um in the in the meantime are there any inquiries or updates Mrs Weinberg I really hope inquiry um this is for obviously the superintendent just in light of some of the things that have been occurring with athletic trainers I just had a couple questions that I wanted to possibly see if we could get some clarification on the process on how athletic trainers are selected for our schools um the number the specifics in terms of what schools have athletic trainers versus EMT and just kind of to get a scope of making sure that we're giving our students the student athletes um we're being Equitable in terms of making sure that they have what they need and that's just my quick inquiry thanks

310thank you Mrs Weinberg superintendent any questions the only question I have is around the difference in um I know what I shared with you earlier for how they are selected in the schools and the way that they were assigned um we do have support and coverage at all of our schools by either an athletic coordinator or a um or a a sideline doctor or an EMT when we did not what is an athletic coordinator athletic trainer all right I'm sorry athletic trainer um at all of the schools in terms of access and this year um last year when actually we have we don't have as many as we want but we have more this time this year than we had last year last year I think you remember that was when um children's um had

311a a set of schools that they were going to do athletic training for and they were not able to accommodate that last year and so we did work with another organization to provide either one of those three things that I just shared and we're doing the same this year so they picked up not just the schools that they had last year but they've also picked up the additional schools that children's had as well and so that's saying that all of our schools have the athletic trainers no they're saying that all of our schools have some level of athletic coverage so that's either an athletic trainer a sideline doctor or an EMT and is that present in all the events and practices let me verify that for you in terms of that they are present at

312the games and and specifically um the the needs that occur at the games to the event that occurred on Friday at Hughes um there was a student that went down and was hit pretty hard at the game um if others did if they were standing if they were in the sidelines and they didn't see what was happening there may be some confusion about what was going on with the child um he was actually on his back and so there was a concern that there may have been a back injury or a spinal cord injury so they followed the protocol for that so that was the reason that that took a little longer in order for that to follow in order for that to follow up but I will get the specifics on what what events

313they attend um there's also a national shortage area for athletic trainers as well so that's why we use all of those different areas to come for our students thank you you're welcome thank you Mrs Weinberg uh Dr moffatt we went briefly to inquiries and updates but I want to come back to board matters I think we have one item tonight uh which is yours well thank you so much I um I'm gonna go to the bathroom need assistance so um my question was around agenda topics and putting things on the agenda and um the official minutes in working with there's been some discrepancy with regard to them and it's and in working with the treasurer's office just for the public that doesn't know those are done by the treasurer's office um we've established that we're

314going to go back to March the 6th because that's where there seems to be some disparity significantly in the minutes and the treasurer's office has also shared that they're going to kind of put some things in place and I want to say thank you to our board admin um Mrs Bruckner because she worked really diligently to get some clarity around things that were wrong but what is the process of um agenda information listing things on the agenda I don't think we kind of collectively talked about that or at least agreed on on that so just wanting to get some some clarification around that putting things on the agenda talking about that as a group I don't remember if we talked about like the three-month process and how that because now they're they're kind of expired

315um on our priorities like how how did we come to that can you say the question one more time I just want to make sure I understand so putting things on the agenda the official minutes have been changed and let me give you an example so part of the the discrepancy that we're seeing is that board member names have been eliminated from the agenda from the minutes and so where did we agree that the minutes would look a specific way and that things would be omitted or things would not be um accurately reflected in the minutes and or the agenda part of my my problem is that the minutes are supposed to be reflective of the actions during the meeting before our constituents that may be hearing impaired or visually impaired if it's just the

316summation at high level with no specificity how are they to get the information so that's kind of that was the start of the question you know it's a great question I think um first of all I think anybody who sees anything that looks not accurate in the minutes should absolutely bring that up when we review them before we pass them and we've done that in the past I think you've done that others have done that we can we can change them um one of the things that I've been working with the treasurer's office on and our board staff on is that when uh assignments come from the board meetings assignments aren't made by an individual board member assignments are made by the board uh with a that's what we have to do them in a

317public meeting and it's got to be clear either there's a consensus or that there's a majority of support for those um in the same Vein on committee reports uh an individual Committee Member can't create an action item the committee recommends an action item that then comes to the board and the board approves so the the the piece around names is moving from Individual board members giving assignments and giving action items to the board giving assignments uh in a committee giving action items so and again I think anytime anybody sees anything that's not accurate in the minutes that are coming to a board meeting you know we have that part of every standing meeting so that anybody can request any changes okay that sort of answers my question but in the best interest of time um

318I'll just I'll just move on that's that's that's the only thing that I had under that one I have some inquiries and updates but that's the only thing on the Boardman any creation updates um is it possible to get the state data or on in looking at our sheet from um the mid-year we had mid-year data is it possible to get the state data that's in August the 7th on um or whenever it was released can we get the when will the data be ready for the um the upcoming this past year yeah so the state data doesn't come out for us in official data until October generally we've been told this year that it could be as early as September the 14th but the only data that we have right now is preliminary data

319so once that becomes available it's public facing then I can send a link or anyone can go on to Ohio um the Ohio page and access the data there okay and then um with regards to the nurses I kind of wanted to know back to my question from a while ago then can we get a report or some sort of idea on the number of students that are impacting by the nursing that that are impacted by the nurses with regard to men that are having to miss school or be impacted academically with regard to not having a nurse or having a full-time nurse in the building so I don't know I do recall the question earlier about the nursing services and students that had to be absent and I thought that I sent that so

320if I didn't I do have access to that but I'd like to update it now based on what we would have for this year across the board we have um we can if you're asking for what the services are by nurses at each of the schools I'm actually asking for I know that there are some students who are dependent upon having to have medical attention in the building is there an impact to certain students that have to have that but that cannot come to school because the nurse is either called off or the nurse is not available is that are they is there impact to students academically as far as attendance and then what would that number be okay so medically fragile students that have to have a nurse to be in school yes okay

321yes we can pull that thank you and then the last thing that I wanted to bring up was the um announcement of The Joint City CPS meeting that is being held on September the 13th I have the following agenda items as was submitted to um to Phyllis from all the board members this is in conjunction with vice mayor Kearney these are some of their suggestions as well but we have six topics uh Transportation updates um the vice mayor suggested to hear from Chief Burkhart and that that was her suggestion I'm not exactly sure why I think he gave a presentation to the to some City members I'm not exactly sure but she said suggest she suggested that cheap Project Connect they would like a presentation on homelessness in um of our school population um and

322they requested a Rebecca Beach was able to give a presentation before so they wanted some more data on the impact of homelessness for our students health checks for students to include the School nurses dental clinics and the vision school safety mile Zone designation shared comprehension review of cpsc properties and the Public Safety Academy status update so I just was saying what those topics were so that we can publicly say what they are this is a collaboration with the city and the CPS it's September the 13th um from six to eight and they will be here thank you very much I think that the topics make total sense I think it's probably and correct me if I'm wrong but up to the superintendent and Treasurer to figure out who they would want to come if anybody

323but I think the topics are really helpful that was the city's recommendation that was who they wanted but I'm perfectly fine with that that's great remember I I don't I don't think uh we were different involved in this part of it but I think I think I may have heard crossing guards as well okay um so they they would the for the meeting they would share information about an update for crossing guards that was a request from a board member to talk about crossing guards and nurses from in a collective meeting with the city and CPS so I'm not exactly sure what they're going to be presenting on our request was to get them to pay for it or at least discuss the funding of it okay and if you don't mind if you'll call

324the list one more time of what they asked for sure in terms of presentations well I'll send you the okay that's fine that's fine yeah Ms Jones I I absolutely have no questions about the agenda I am concerned about the fact that they're asking for specific people to come in and present and that's a staffing issue which really has to go through the superintendent so and I understand I I think they would do a great job in presenting but I think that request needs to be through the superintendent I mean we're talking about staff allocating time for them to do something that's part of board work and so I mean and I think if the superintendent felt like that um they should be there then it should come from her that they should be there

325and not from their requests I get it and I can always count on you to provide that perspective I think what happened is that I got plenty more to offer I know you do thank you I think what happened is though in the conversation those were people that have given the presentation before that she had seen and so she said and I put on the I don't know if you saw the email but I put on there cheap Burkhart because that's who she said she got a presentation from it is entirely up to whoever the superintendent designates that Project Connect deals with homelessness for the district that's what they wanted to talk about which was homelessness for the district and I think that that this the superintendent we were collecting the topics illness is going

326to coordinate that between Administration and the city and so there's no there's no lack of clarity on what that the superintendent can definitely assign whoever it was just I was giving you a list of the topics that the vice mayor and myself came up with in the way that they came up with them and and I'm okay with that but what I'm saying and there is no lack of clarity There's No Lack and and it we have to pass that through the superintendent to get a approval I'm not questioning them you putting it on the agenda or mentioning it or whatever I'm just making a point of clarity that we need to we need to follow our own protocol for how we manage that that's that's all thank you Dr moffatt any other inquiries or

327Updates this evening hearing none we're going to move on to assignments are there any assignments this evening Ms Bolton I may have missed this in the in the previous discussion uh but I would like to assign to the treasurer who has responsibility regarding our minutes uh to make sure that the minutes are inclusive of committee reports accepted thank you thank you any any I'm not hearing any objections from board members but any objections the record great any other assignments I'm not going to skip Kudos because I made this mistake before um Mr moraski were you signaling an assignment yeah uh real quick assignment uh to the the policy committee um yeah this is the most exciting part of the meeting flights are going off in a second uh I would like to sign up um

328good Mike I would like to assign to the policy committee uh I forget the exact number um um but I wrote it down and I sent it to Miss Davis and destroying but officially uh assigned a policy committee the relevant medication policies um to review those as per President Sellers and I think this is also Jermaine the conversation with the city and Etc and looking at that medication and dispensing thereof policy would be probably beneficial for a whole lot of reasons great any any objections hearing none last call on assignments moving on to superintendent you have a question no okay moving on to Kudos does anybody have any Kudos this evening Mrs Weinberg I have I think four slides so I'm going to go over the first slide as you can see in this particular

329picture myself and board member Moffett this past weekend we were able to attend caspa's Urban board Symposium which I will actually um write up something and bring back for the board to um kind of hear some of the things that we were able to sit in on some of the speakers and interact with some of the individuals there but listed in this picture here is Mr Mark Bobo I'm pretty sure that a lot of you know who he is and and one of the pictures below they had a student-led um kennel group in which they talked about peer Intervention which I thought was really good um up top they talked about strategic Partnerships and just collaboration and how important it is and I thought that that was really a good opportunity um for me to

330bring back some notes as well if we go to the next slide obviously we talked about this wonderful visit with the U.S Secretary of Education you can see the wonderful board here he was able to visit Euler focusing on Community Learning Centers and I think um the community they were very I guess it was a great visit for him and it was a great visit for our CPS School in terms of Oiler as well if you go to the next slide um Dr Moffett and I we were able to attend the leading men Fellowship of send Brotherhood banquet in which uh it was a really nice event showcasing our Leading Men fellows and as you can see in the particular pictures were pictured with mayor aftab and also got a chance to take a picture

331with a lot of the professors from Mount St Joe and one big thing that they announced is a partnership in which they're offering a I think it was a twenty thousand dollar scholarship yep twenty thousand dollar scholarship to the participants within the leading men fellow so I thought that that was an excellent opportunity we also had one of our um leaders from the preschool um principal battle she was on a panel and it was a great opportunity for her to Showcase how important preschool is as well we can go to the next slide we were able to go to the back to school event with DJ reader at Schroeder high school and he basically was able to furnish will not furnish but fill up a resource room with wonderful products for the students at shorter

332High School to be able to use and it was a really nice event in which I think this was their big back to school so a lot of the parents and a lot of the students were there and they were able to encounter and meet him as well and if you look in the picture on the background there is a painting that a lot of the students were able to participate in and I thought that that was a really neat picture and there was another um um drawing that was done in the gym that was done by a student and he came back to the school and we were able to take a picture with him but I was not able to get that picture so I'm not sure if Dr Moffitt has that picture

333or not and we can go to my final slide which is I had a great time with this wonderful CPS student she was on the rise I was able to actually put on my spikes and as you all know I went to the Olympics and ran really really fast and I will say that I got beat I got beat by this girl so I know that she's going to do amazing things and I just want to thank the superintendent and I want to thank all of her staff for you know making this happen it was a wonderful time and she was really excited so thank you again for that and that's all of my Kudos thank you Mrs Weinberg are there any other Kudos this evening Dr Martha I want to say that we beat

334up on the treasurer's office today but um congratulations on having your proposal accepted to present at the Greater Cincinnati um I'm sorry the Council of great City Schools conference in San Diego out as you may know hopefully you do that our Treasurer has spent a year doing Financial town halls and they are robust and very Innovative and her and her team have been diligently working to educate the community on what her office does they've created a whiteboard presentation in addition to that we've spent once a month for an hour answering Community questions about School finance and that has now been recognized and she will be able to present in San Diego in October so congratulations to you and your team for that for winning that recognition and I I know it's being watched Across the

335Nation because a couple of my cohort members have reached out and said that they watched them to so congrats thank you it's truly a team effort um because I'm not out there by myself but I do have a Kudos that I'd like to share you know if that's okay please treasure Wagner so um number the fun acquisition Staffing HR team and financial Tech and payroll worked really hard on a new process to prevent um errors on the first paycheck of the year for the certificated staff and um you know rob you don't need to pull it up that's fine I'll just talk from it um so we created this form that um has employees confirm when they show up on their first day of school that they are in fact at the right school you

336know they had to sign to say yes I showed up because every year we have a crop of people who don't return but we don't know that they don't return and we continue to pay them because they're kind of their salaried employees so I'm happy to say that this new form and we are improving on it next year we're going to do a web Forum next time but um this new practice saved 373 errors on the first paycheck and reduce the amount of payroll complaints by 37 percent so good job guys that's fabulous thank you Jen and thank you team um any other Kudos this evening okay am I missing anything anybody having no other business before us I declare our meaning adjourned