001The January 26, 2026 regular meeting of the Chardon Local Schools Board of Education is called to order. This meeting is being held in accordance with section 3313.15 of the Ohio Advice Code. Deb, would you please call the roll? Mrs. Beinkenschott. Here. Mrs. Clark. No. Mr. Gajotra. Here. Mr. Landeith. Here. And Mr. Majet. Here. Welcome to the January 26, 2026 regular meeting of the Chardon Local Schools Board of Education. Prior to this meeting, each board member received further review and consideration the agenda and materials associated with each agenda item for the board's consideration via the Electronic Board of Education Agenda System or DOCS. The public can access the agenda through the school district's website one day prior to the board meeting. Pursuant to Board of Education Policy 0165, this meeting is a meeting of the Board
002of Education and public for the purpose of conducting the school district's business and is not to be considered a public community meeting. There are two opportunities for public participation during the meeting as indicated in agenda items designated as public participation. Board members have the opportunity to call the superintendent and chief financial officer for information concerning agenda items and to request if needed additional information. Upon request to the superintendent, the district shall make reasonable accommodation for a disabled person to be able to participate in this activity. This meeting may also be replayed for later viewing on the GTE network and video and demand site. The Chardon Local School District is not responsible for the video and or audio quality or future availability of such recording. Okay, first item is the adoption of the agenda. Do we
003have a motion to adopt the agenda as presented? So moved. James. Second. Okay, any questions or comments about the agenda as presented? Hearing none, that would you please call the roll. Mr. Medyat. Yes. Mrs. Plankenship. Yes. Mrs. Clark. Yes. Mr. Galhotra. Yes. And Mr. Landis. Yes. Okay, that brings us to the Pledge of Allegiance. Tonight we're being led by first grade Monson Elementary student Jack Gallo. He will lead us in the Pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay, Jack, you want to come up here? Really good job. Great job. In recognition of first grade Monson Elementary Thank you, Jack. And Mr. Mascale, would you, if I could impose on you
004to send me a copy of that picture? Because our communications director normally gets it, but weather and everything today, so that'd be great. We could use it for social and that type of thing. So I appreciate that. Thank you. The mission of the Sharpton Local School District, we commit to high achievement for all students. Okay, with first hearing of the public? We have public hearing before that. Right, first hearing of the public. Public hearing. Oh, okay. Sorry, I was reading that wrong. Okay. Yeah. So, Madam President, members of board, I've communicated this to you previously. This is the first public hearing on the instructional calendar for the 27-28 school year, academic year. I want to emphasize 27-28, excuse me, provided the breakdown for you of the elementary, middle school, high school, instructional days, instructional hours,
005and so on, as well as the draft of the calendar. By Ohio law, the board is restricted from taking any action on the calendar for 30 days, until 30 days, following the initial hearing on the calendar. We typically do our calendars two years in advance, so I will be happy to answer any questions, but this evening there's no recommendation concerning this item. Hearing none, thank you. Well, and again, just to note, this will be presented at the March meeting, because the meeting does not provide 30 days. Okay, now we can go to the hearing of the public. There are none. Okay, so that takes us to the consent agenda. We have eight items on tonight's consent agenda. Item 4.1 is approval of minutes as detailed in the associated closure. Item 4.2, approval of the warrantless
006check pay report is detailed in the enclosure. Item 4.3, approval of administrative certified licensed classified supplemental non-contractable personnel compensation related items is detailed in the enclosure. Item 4.4 is approval of memorandum of understanding between Kent State University and Chardonnay School District for the delivery of college credit plus courses as detailed in the enclosure. Item 4.5, agreement between Lakeland Community College and Chardonnay Local School District for the delivery of college credit plus courses as detailed in the enclosure. Item 4.6, approval of a memorandum of understanding between Lake Erie College and Chardonnay School District for student teaching placement within the Chardonnay Local Schools is detailed in the enclosure. Item 4.7, approval of student services agreement with Applewood as detailed in the enclosure. And item 4.8, approval of an overnight out-of-state field trip for the Chardonnay High School
007wrestling team as detailed in the enclosure. Recommending your approval. Do we have a motion and a second? I'll second. Are there any questions or comments about the consent agenda? It's I don't know if this is the trip to Toledo. It's outlined in the agreement. Give me one moment please. This is actually Austin Towne Fitch High School and they'll be but they'll be staying overnight. Any other questions or comments about the consent agenda? No? Would you please call the roll? Mrs. Clark? Yes. Mr. Galhotra? Yes. Mr. Landis? Yes. Mr. Midyak? Yes. And Mrs. Blankenship? Yes. Thank you Madam President, members of the board. Item 5.1 is the presentation of student liaison report given the weather this evening. We cancelled the liaisons off. They will catch up with us at the next board meeting. Moving on to
008Superintendent's section of the agenda. I have a few items to report on in the superintendent's report, excuse me, before moving into recommendations for this evening. First, January is Board of Education recognition month by the Ohio School Boards Association and I would just like to take a moment to thank each of you for your commitment to our students and for your service to the community. There are a few tokens of appreciation for you at your place. There's a note journal that Mason Cole, our communications director, put together for you. Some nice coasters that were done by the Park and Munson students and thought those were kind of neat, something hopefully you'll enjoy. And we also have a number of items over here on the table. I would encourage you to stop maybe after the meeting and
009take a look at some of the notes that our students wrote, some really neat things that they did to capture the work of school board members. So again, thank you and I'll take a pause for a moment because I know Mrs. Blankenship picked out two notes that she wanted to share. Yeah, I just thought they stuck out to me. Thank you for all the snow days and holidays we've had off school. This is from Olivia in fourth grade, so actually you can probably thank Mr. Hanlon or Dr. Hanlon because he's the one that calls the days off when it's snow days with the help of Steve and everybody else in your district. They start at, what, four in the morning to go out and give or take, right? So and then this one stuck out
010to me. Thank you, Board of Education. Thank you for what you do, even though I have no idea what that is. Whatever you do, thank you. That's from Evan in seventh grade. So Evan, thank you. Some days I wonder too. So thank you. Thank you, Karen. Yeah, and thank you to all the schools for what, you know, doing this every year for us. Moving on, I communicated this to the board previously, but again want to publicly congratulate our transportation director, John Schnau, who was selected by the Ohio Association of School Business Administrators as the 2026 Ohio Transportation Director of the Year. We've certainly known that Josh is an outstanding transportation director and does everything possible to make sure that we transport students safely and efficiently in our district, but congratulate Josh on this certainly well-deserved
011recognition by the Ohio Association of School Business Officials. They will be here in person at our April Board meeting, correct? Yes, April 20th. To acknowledge Josh, so we'll hold off on a more formal recognition until that time. Future public education, Geauga County, I shared this with the board at our last meeting, so I won't go into great detail other than to again remind that we are pulling together all school districts from Geauga County and also including the ESC, the Western Reserve, and Auburn Career Center to examine the impact of proposed constitutional amendment to eliminate property taxes. And at the last meeting, we did not have a formal meeting date and time, so just sharing with the board that this joint meeting with representation by superintendents, treasurers, a board member, and a community member from each
012district will be next Monday, February 2nd at 5 p.m. and that meeting will be held at the Geauga County Public Library Administration Building down on Ravenwood Drive and we'll begin exploring what the impact is of this constitutional amendment on funding school districts in Geauga County. There are a couple of notable or a few notable agenda items this evening. I thought I would hit those now in advance of recommendations and if we have any questions, we can certainly take that on during discussion of the particular item. We've already spoken about the calendar, item 6.4. I just want to call that out. This is an agreement with ABE. Alan Bradley has served as the roof consultant for all of the other projects in our school district. The only school building that was remaining for roof replacement is
013Park Elementary School and the auditorium and that was basically because of the general condition of those roofs did not require replacement time that we did all the other roofs in the district. This recommendation is not for the roof replacement work but for the consultant study to develop group specification for the auditorium roof replacement that we anticipate undertaking this summer. Item 6.6 is an agreement with the City of Chardon to enter into a shared cost agreement to develop pickleball courts at the site of the current tennis courts by the pool and this will be a cost sharing and also a use sharing with the City of Chardon going forward. Item 6.7 is an agreement with ECS Midwest for a phase two environmental assessment on the former bus compound behind Chardon High School. The phase two recommendation
014came out of the initial phase one assessment. Given the history of that, the use of that property to store buses, underground fuel tanks, you know just a long history of parking vehicles on a gravel lot it is appropriate to undertake a phase two assessment to determine if any remediation work will be necessary on that site prior to considering any future construction behind the high school. What a phase one does is it takes a look at basically the prior use of the property and the history of the property and again it's pretty logical given that we've parked vehicles on there for many many years that it would be it would progress to a phase two assessment just with the likelihood of vehicles leaking oil or fuel or whatever it might be over time it would be
015appropriate to to do that. So it really wasn't too surprising that there was a recommendation for a phase two. And finally item 6.8 these are board policies on second reading and approval this evening. Up to today I did not receive any community input concerning those policies since first reading so they are being recommended to the boards of consideration this evening. So with that moving forward to superintendent's recommendations for this evening item 6.2 we have approval of one graduating senior from Chardon High School who has met all of the graduation requirements identified in board policy. I am recommending your approval. So moved do we have a second? Second. James. Any questions or comments? Congratulations to the senior for completing the requirements. Then would you please go roll? Mrs. Bikinshott? Yes. Mrs. Clark? Yes. Mr. Gauhotra? Yes.
016Mr. Landy? Yes. And Mr. Midgett? Yes. Thank you Madam President. Members for next item for consideration is item 6.3. This is the approval of the agreement between Alan Bradley, Adam Brad and Chardon Local Schools for development of the park auditorium roofing specifications as detailed in the closure. I am recommending your approval. Do we have a motion and a second? So moved. Okay. Can everybody turn your mics on? I just realized you're not on. Thanks. Okay do we have any questions or comments? So this is just to clarify the proposal we're not approving a new roof we have to see how expensive it is first. Correct the process that will be undertaken is we first engage our consultant to develop the specification, the bid specification. Then next thing that we'll be doing is taking the project
017out to bid and allowing proposed roofing contractors to submit sealed bids on the project. We'll have the bid opening and then come back to the board with the recommendation for contractor to do that work. This is in the 2027 budget, right? It currently is. Yes and we anticipate this would this was in our five-year capital improvement plan to do this replacement and we anticipate undertaking this work late May, early June and through the summer having completed prior to the start of the school year. Any other questions or comments about this? Hearing none, would you please call the roll? Mrs. Clark? Yes. Mr. Gehoshua? Yes. Mr. Landis? Yes. Mr. Midyat? Yes. Thank you Madam President, members board. Next item is item 6.4, approval of agreement between pastor photography and Chardonville schools for school photography services for
018the 25-26 school year. Just a brief comment following motion. Second? I am recommending. So moved. Do we have a second? Second. Thank you Madam President, members board. School districts had a long-standing relationship with pastor photography. They've done outstanding work for us. All that you're doing this evening is consolidating under one unified agreement to provide services that they provide to us. Do we have any questions or comments? So this is basically, usually they have the agreement with each of the schools and this is just, like you said, consolidate everything into one. Right. And pastor has been our photographer for many years. I would like to thank them for everything that they've done for the district. Any other questions or comments? Would you please call the roll? Mrs. Blankenship? Yes. Mrs. Clark? Yes. Mr. Gehoshua? Yes. Mr.
019Landis? Yes. And Mr. Midgett? Yes. Thank you Madam President, members board. Next item is item 6.5, approval of the agreement with the city of Chardonville for the development of the pickleball courts at the site of the current tennis courts. Following the motion, second, I'll just have a brief comment. Do we have a motion and a second? So moved. I'll second. Thank you Madam President, members board. So this agreement, which has been approved by Council already, basically outlines both cost sharing. Steve has developed a projection for what it will take to, and these, our current tennis courts needed some work anyways. So we have an estimate of approximately 60-65 thousand to do that work, to upgrade the surface down there and then do the necessary conversion to create pickleball courts. As you may have seen in
020the agreement, the city of Chardonville is committed to figure out to receive 35,000 for that work to be completed. It is anticipated then that this will be a shared use facility between the entities where the city of Chardonville will run adult leagues and other pickleball activities. We are envisioning, had discussions about incorporating this into physical education, potentially student club, those types of things to utilize the courts as well. So that's what the plan is. Just a question. I think I've read the agreement just this afternoon, but why, what's the reason behind a 10-year agreement? Is that from the city or why is it only 10 years? What is that, what's the essence of that? I think, yes, it was, we went back and forth with the city on the development of the agreement and I
021think it was just envisioned that at the completion of that initial term, then we would review the agreement and see if changes are necessary. Ten years, maybe the service needs to be redone, you know, who knows. So I think, and even if notwithstanding the 10-year limitate term on the agreement, there's also a severance clause within the agreement as well. Either party could end the agreement sooner if necessary. So I think it was just seemed to be a reasonable length of time to evaluate the arrangement and see if something different. I mean, the school is paying all the maintenance costs. We'll maintain it. We'll maintain it, right. So what is the ongoing relationship for the 10 years with them? I mean, giving you some money, how is it going to be done? What are they obligating
022to? There's still shared use of the facility. Okay, that's it. That's great. So I think the idea of a pickleball court is a good idea. This is obviously a growing sport and it's going to give our students and the community exposure to that. However, one note is that this sport has a reputation for being particularly noisy to the point that a few months ago, one city in California, Carmel, made news for banning pickleball in their city. So while I would support the pickleball courts, I just want, I don't want to want lost the noise issue. I'm not an acoustics engineer or sound engineer, but the quick research that I did online, it can be a nuisance within 250 feet of the courts. The nearest home is 170 feet away. There are four homes within 250
023feet. So I don't know if we're thinking about noise mitigation in terms of physical noise mitigation or time restriction, but I think that's something that we should think about as we move forward. Thank you for your comment. That that it was something that was discussed that would rest primarily with planning commission to determine what they, you know, they find that there's an issue. But to your point, no, we're not looking at any noise mitigation or anything like that. Mike, can I? So this isn't exactly the same, but in the parks and rec board I sat on, there was an issue maybe over the summer with the chalet and people who live back to the chalet about that being too noisy. So the agreement with those residents who came in the park was to close the
024park earlier. It used to be an 11 o'clock close time. Now the parks close at nine 30. So if the residents do come up, I'm assuming they're going to follow the same rules there. But they're definitely, if you come to a parks and rec meeting, very open to hearing any issues. And so it seems like the residents were happy with that earlier close all and then the police were gonna be more on patrol there. So this is actually further back behind that. I think it would be more the Canfield homes, but they've had an issue recently with that and they think they resolved it well, relatively well. You know, I would note too, this is actually a pretty, um, low population of town. You know, there's not a lot of residents back in there, but
025those on Canfield are close by and like to Andrea's point, I mean, it can be remedied with, you know, time restriction. There's also a tree line between the courts and those homes. So that might provide some noise, some noise mitigation, but sort of bring that up. In the past, there was not a tree line between the Shelley and the homes and they had put one up. So yeah, I think they already have that here. So hopefully that'll help. But I know the park, if they have complaints, will definitely address it because they just did that this summer with the other ones. I haven't been down there for a while, but we don't have lighting down there, did we? There's lighting. It's on a timer, basically community members that are using the tennis courts. They can
026turn the light on. It stays on time. Okay, maybe that would be a way to control to not be able to turn the lights on after a certain time. And that's why, like the volleyball courts, the lighting, instead of going off of 11, those goes off at 9 30. They, you know, move that. So yeah, I assume this would follow the same rules. Any other questions or comments about the pickleball agreement? Hearing none. Would you please have a roll? This is Clark. Yeah. Mr. Gallagher. Yes. Mr. Landis. Yes. Mr. Midgett. Yes. And Mrs. Blankenship. Yes. Thank you, Madam President, members of board. Next item is item 6.6. This is the approval of the proposed agreement with ECS Midwest to end up the phase two parking lot assessment at Sharpton High School. As detailed in the
027closure, I'm recommending your approval. So moved. Do we have a second? Second. James. Any questions or comments? Hearing none, Doug, would you please call the roll? Mrs. Blankenship. Yes. Mrs. Clark. Yes. Mr. Gallagher. Yes. Mr. Landis. Yes. And Mr. Midgett. Yes. Thank you, Madam President, members of board. The final item I have to say in the evening is item 6.7. These support policies and second reading and approval. As noted previously, there has been no community input concerning the proposed policy changes, therefore I am recommending approval. Do we have a motion and a second? So moved. I'll second it. Any questions or comments about the policies? Doug, would you please call the roll? Mrs. Clark. Yes. Mr. Gallagher. Yes. Mr. Landis. Yes. Mr. Midgett. Yes. And Mrs. Blankenship. Yes. Thank you, Madam President, members of board.
028There's my section. Thanks, Mike. Thank you, Madam President, members of the board. First, I want to thank the board. Thank you so much for your leadership. Chardon School is very, very lucky to have you and so am I. So I just want to thank you for that, first of all. So moving on to 7.1. 7.1 is the financial summary for December, the last day of calendar year 2025. As usual, I have a brief AI video of December 2025, and we're just going to go through the summary real quick. The loads. First report we always look at is our bank reconciliation, our balance at the end of the calendar year, 23,179,862. We did balance book to bank at the end of the month. The adjustments that you see on here are just some outstanding payroll that
029did it clear from the last payroll that was close to the end of the month. We always look at the financial summary or I like to call it cash reconciliation or a cash summary. I'm sorry. We always look at the third column from the right to make sure there isn't any negatives, and as you see, there are a couple. First of all, we have one in the 022 fund. That's our workers' comp. We pay our workers' comp in December, and we post workers' comp expenses all year after every payroll. So we're coming out of this a little bit every month, and this will be in the positive by the end of the year. The last place you see a negative in the third column is grants, and that's because we spend them first and then
030we're reimbursed. One thing I did kind of want to capitalize on on this report is the 070 fund. That's the fund that we're running the final phase for this building out of and the tennis court donation, and I just noticed today, and I talked to Mr. Kohlfell, we still have 65,000 of that fund to encumber. We look at our spending plan, and we're still comparing our spending plan to the October forecast, and really it's a lot closer than it looks, and I'm just going to jump to this next slide. We're 334,000 collected more than anticipated. That's the projection. That's only because I adjusted our, I'm adjusting our appropriations. You'll see it later to add 300,000 vocational into revenue and 300,000 into expenditures. It's actually a wash, but we're actually keeping track of the cost of
031vocational program, so I had to adjust the books to account for it. Also on the expenditure side, and you can see the 300,000 right here in other revenue, the 486,000, very explainable. I added 300,000 of course for the vocational and 150,000 dollars for Chromebooks that we're going to purchase this year for the teachers. So our monthly revenue, we collected 753,176. This is up from last year. Big reason it's up from that last year is because we collected MRDD pass-through funding. We got an advance in December, so we got it up front, and we didn't get that this time last year. Our monthly expenditures, 2,947,543, also up from last year in salaries and benefits, but down in other, which is capital outlay, which is explainable. You can see it more in the year-to-date. Year-to-date, we spent
03219,547,391. That is more than we did last year. I mean, that's revenue. We received 19,547,391, which is more than last year in all areas, and we spent 18,549,734, which is less than last year. You can see by this chart down here, it's because of capital outlay. We spent more on this building last year. We're not spending as much capital outlay this year. Salaries, we've completed 13 of 26 pays. Our salaries for December, 1,729,441, very average amount. We're right here where the star is, so that looks great. Our true days of cash, general fund balance is 17,936, and after open purchase orders, it's down to 15 million. Our average monthly expenditure estimate is 3.4 million. Daily, 174,000. We have 103 days before open purchase orders and 89 after. We always look at this chart down here
033on the left, and we're following it perfectly. We're right here. We're going to go a little bit lower in January, and then we're going to start receiving our tax revenue for the second collection, so it'll go back up again. This over here graph is just the same thing as this. This is a bar graph and line graph. Food service, we look at every month. We did have a deficit in food service of only $4,555. Red line is 25. Blue line is 26. You can see they're pretty much following the same. The ending balance in the food service fund is $506,924. The goal really is to get this fund to $300,000. This fund used to be pretty much an in-and-out fund, and I think, Karen, you remember we used to have to transfer money into the
034food service fund. When we went through COVID, this fund gained a lot of revenue, so now we're spending off the revenue. We've been purchasing a lot of equipment. We have not raised food prices. In fact, we lowered them two years ago for the students, so we're taking the savings to our families until we get to $300,000, and then we're going to go back to normal. Well, this will be pretty much an in-and-out fund. Permanent improvement, we're right here. Permanent improvement is back in the black. It will come back in the black, of course. We talked about this all year after we get our next tax collection. Revenue, we just got a small amount of revenue. It was actually from an adjustment. The expenditures is what I really wanted to capitalize on. We did buy some
035appliances for this building. We had instrument repairs. We had furniture for this building, but the really big thing here is we received the money from the blank grant that we applied for, what, Steve, three years ago, and that was for paying for all of the work out in the parking lot and tearing up the foundations that was spent out of the PI fund. So we had received it in the 493. All I did was a journal entry and moved the expenditure, so it opened up all of this budget in the PI fund that Steve is very quickly putting towards things on the cap plan. When you presented in November, did you account for the extra $480 coming in? Yes, it was accounted for in the spreadsheet. Okay, so you've got it spent already. Perfect. So
036the last one is our health insurance fund, our 024 fund. Our new reserve amount starting in January is going to be $1.948. Right now we're still operating, this is December, so the reserve amount is $1.8. We have an ending balance of $2.3, which is excellent. You can see from the graph. And then come January, we're going to see a dip in January, and if you look at this graph and you really analyze it, there's always a dip in January, because that's when we pay the seed money for HSA accounts, so we're going to have higher costs in January, but then it's going to level out after that. Are there any questions? Good. So moving on to 7.2. 7.2 is generous donations as detailed in associated enclosures. I am recommending for your approval. So moved. Do
037we have a second? Second. James? Any questions or comments about donations? As usual, I'd like to thank our community for these generous donations. We have a lot of things coming in for the Shardin's Care Closet, AC4P Jeremy's Kids, and of course our anonymous donor for the tennis court. So all of our donations are greatly appreciated. Would you please call the roll? Mrs. Pichachip? Yes. Mrs. Clark? Yes. Mr. Gallagher? Yes. Mr. Landys? Yes. And Mr. Medjatt? Yes. Thank you, Madam President, members of the board. Next item on my agenda, 7.3. 7.3 is equipment disposal as detailed in the associated enclosures. I am recommending your approval. Do we have a motion and a second for equipment disposals? So moved. James? Second. Andrea? Any questions or comments about equipment disposals? Hearing none, would you please call the roll?
038Mr. Medjatt? Yes. Mrs. Blankenship? Yes. Mrs. Clark? Yes. Mr. Gajotra? Yes. And Mr. Landys? Yes. Thank you, Madam President, members of the board. Next item on my agenda is 7.4. This is final appropriation measures. Amendment number four for fiscal year 26 is detailed in the associated enclosure. I'm recommending for your approval. Do we have a motion and a second? So moved. James? I'll second. Any questions or comments about appropriations? Would you please call the roll? Mr. Medjatt? Yes. Mrs. Blankenship? Yes. Mrs. Clark? Yes. Mr. Gajotra? Yes. And Mr. Landys? Yes. Thank you, Madam President, members of the board. Final item, 7.5. 7.5 is a budget and purpose statement for the Shard and Care Closet is detailed in the associated enclosure. I am recommending your approval. Do we have a motion and a second? So moved.
039Do we have a second? I'll second it. Any questions or comments about the Shard Care Closet budget? I just want to say I think this is a great thing that they started at the high school and it seems to be a very popular item for people to contribute to and I'm assuming that people are utilizing it too. Anyone else? Deb, would you please call the roll? Mrs. Blankenship? Yes. Mrs. Clark? Yes. Mr. Gajotra? Yes. Mr. Landys? Yes. And Mr. Medjatt? Yes. That concludes my section. Thank you. Thanks, Deb. So that brings us to the Board of Education reports. Gordon, do you have anything to report on the Shard and Schools Foundation? Just briefly, they only had two grants in process. They're going to be putting out the document for applying for the new grants probably
040in February for the new year. There was not that many grants that were actually requested. When I spoke to them, they said there needs to be more communication because they're not getting that many grants or grant requests and I think it's just a communication issue and I'm going to work with them. I've got some suggestions. They're not just, one thing, when you look at their, I looked at their bylaws, they're not restricted to doing curriculum or a lot of the things they've done in the past. They could do capital projects. They could do, they did do furniture and they could do technology. They're very open to us. Give us, we have funds there. They have, yeah, they'd like to have more requests, more requests. So it's us communicating what the needs are and just kind
041of looking at it maybe differently and I think that there's a great opportunity to raise money for the Shard and Schools Foundation. I think I've mentioned that I'm donating all my pay that I get to the Shard and Schools Foundation. So it's a great resource for the community, great resource for the schools and they're saying, hey, we can give more. So it's a message, something we can think about. Yeah, I know over the years they've done a lot for the schools and actually when you talk about technology, they're the ones that bought the first round of Chromebooks for one of the classrooms and got us started down that road. So so yeah, it's a great group of people that are involved with the Foundation. So we appreciate everything that they do. Yes, that's great. Okay,
042legislative report. Andrea? Yeah, so I'm gonna go by the Ohio School Boards Association's updates and the last update they put out was December 8th, which I suspect is because the assembly is not in session right now. Their update says that their first session will be mid-February and they'll convene at the beginning of February for their committees. So I would expect to start seeing more stuff then. There were 10 bills or so that went to Governor Dwine's desk in December. The ones that kind of pop out to me, the ones with, there was one, and there's so many words here, I don't remember the numbers right now, where it gives the local county budget commission more power, but our county has always done that. They've always looked over, they've always met with the school boards and
043whatnot. So that shouldn't be much different for Geauga, but some of the other counties might have a root awakening there. And then there was one to change the age requirement for kindergarten to not a set cutoff date, but the first day of school. So we will have to, I assume in our board office, better communicate with our kindergartners how, when they have to be 5-5. I think that's gonna be confusing for parents. I think it is, yeah, because I know I have a July 31st baby and they had to be August 1st when she started. So we were like, you just barely made it. Now it's like, well, what's the first day in school year this year? But I'm sure the board office will be more than willing to help them figure that out. And
044then there was some, oh my goodness, I can talk, bills that were around capping inflationary growth on property taxes, which Deb had mentioned, I believe, in the tax budget hearing. So nothing really surprising to us, but we'll see what they come back with in February. Okay, thanks. Auburn Career Center. Andrea, do you have something on that? I think Todd, there's a thing here, this is from Todd, right? Yeah, Todd sent a long one there. I just got my credentials to log in, so I will get up and running and I'll go to their February meeting and figure out what's going on. Okay, is there any, I don't know if there's anything that sticks out here. I think all the board has access to this, so if there's anything that sticks out. Okay, student-staff liaison report,
045James. Yeah, so first thank you to Mason Cole and our communications department. Mason provides the stories and the pictures and does a great job. And you can find stories like this on our website and on our social media, Facebook and Instagram. It's updated daily on there. And we don't have it. I'm working. He's getting it in there. Definitely dropped the link in. All righty, that's all right. I can make it happen. Ha, here we go. There you go. Okay, so first item this evening was thank you to Reels for their support of the Chardon High School Care Closet. As part of a fundraiser the company held this past holiday season. Reels auto donated $4,000 as well as other supplies in support of the care closet. We are incredibly grateful for the community's support of this
046initiative, so thank you Reels. Over at the middle school, sixth grade students at CMS recently enjoyed working with catapults obtained via grant which greatly enhanced their learning experience. The students learned about elastic potential energy and how to calculate speed for science standards. They then graphed their data on the coordinate plane and calculated the average speed of the projectiles launched by the catapults. Their goal was to create a castle wall out of 25 paper cups. These walls had to be at least one foot tall and each cup had to be touching at least two other cups. After the walls were constructed, the students used their catapults to launch ping pong balls to their classmates castle walls aiming to knock down as many cups as possible. Students really enjoyed this fun learning activity. Great way to learn
047science. The Chardon job training program students have been hard at work building experience and sharpening their skills alongside community partners including Heinen's. In the bakery our hilltoppers assisted in the packaging, labeling, and stocking of all butter cookies. In the produce department job training students spent their time packaging and labeling bottles of OJ as well as preparing other fruit and vegetable items. Great job everyone and keep up the great work. And to mirror Dr. Hanlon's comments earlier, congratulations to Chardon transportation director Josh Nao on being named Ohio's transportation director of the year by the Ohio Association of School Business Officials. Josh was chosen out of a highly competitive pool of candidates and will be presented the award during the OASBO 2026 annual conference and expo later this year. Along with receiving this award the district will
048receive a $2,000 scholarship to be presented to a graduating senior from the school district. And that's what I have this evening. Thanks James. Okay that takes us to new business. Do we have any new business tonight? Hearing none that brings us to hearing of the public for non-agenda items. There are none. There are none? Okay then I guess that means it brings us to meeting and adjournment. Our next board meeting will be February 17th here at the transportation building. Do we have a motion and a second to adjourn? So moved. Second. Would you please call the roll? Mrs. Clark? Yes. Mr. Gehotra? Yes. Mr. Landis? Yes. Mr. Midyat? Yes. And Mrs. Blankenship? Yes. Thank you everyone.