001so [Music] do [Music] go ahead and call the meeting to order if we could all stand for the pledge of allegiance please all right roll call please ms slim here this is spare time here miss laird here mr price here mr ray here uh can i get a motion to approve the minutes from our regular meeting held may 9th 2022 please question by ms laird i have a second second by mrs ray any discussion roll call please is laird yes mrs ray mrs bloom mr spear too yes mr price yes motions approved uh no walk-on items tonight sure not this evening legislative report i'm going to yield that until the next meeting since we have a special presentation tonight on some legislative issues thank you moving on to the superintendent's report all right thank you
002mr price um as our in our last meeting we had some questions about some of the policies revolving or running excuse me revolving around our transgender students so we thought before we step in anything um that we shouldn't uh we thought we'd get a guest here that's an expert so i'd like to introduce melissa bondi melissa represents bricker necklacer the this is the law firm that the board has used for i think 30 years ever since i've been around so um call down in ask her if she could come and sort of give us all the ins and outs of uh what we're facing here and kind of the latest uh legal trends and listen just if you would everything you can speak of the microphone obviously that gives us into our um live stream
003so fair enough thank you very much i can do that all right all right well good evening thank you for having me um so i'm going to spend a few minutes talking about the terms that i use when i talk about this subject uh bricker and eckler is lucky to represent about 300 school districts around the state so i get to talk to boards and educators about this topic fairly frequently and i have learned not to just jump in without a little bit of background on some of the terminology so some of the things that i may talk about are sex assigned at birth that sounds like just exactly what it is you know child comes out sex is assigned at birth on a birth certificate right there's gender identity which is the way someone
004may express themselves that has three components it has a social component so names and pronouns it has a legal component they may change their names they may change their markers on birth certificates or drivers licenses so legally they may change what their what they're identifying as and then the final is the medical so there are three realms there for the most part in k-12 we don't deal with the medical we deal very frequently with first the social name changes how they identify how they dress and then we may as the students get older be dealing with some of the legal issues as they change their name legally when do we do that on our records when do we do it on diplomas those kinds of things gender expression is just what it sounds like how
005they're going to present it's the way they wear their hair the way they dress what they express right um cisgender i may use that term that is when your gender expression matches and gender identity matches your sex assigned at birth cisgender for example i wear my hair long i wear makeup i'm gender expressing as a female i am a i am a female at birth and so i would refer to myself as cisgender if someone is identifying or expressing themselves opposite of their sex assigned at birth we call that transgender it is perfectly acceptable to say a cis person or a trans person that's not considered insulting so when i talk about some of the trends in the case law what we're seeing you may hear me say cis or trans that's what i mean
006um gender non-conforming is a concept uh that i will also talk about that is when a person is expressing themselves in a way that does not conform with stereotypical gender norms so um we may have a norm that women present feminine with makeup or longer hair if a woman presents you know no makeup very short hair suits we might say that's gender non-conforming and so what we find is that the case law um takes the word sex in two different statutes which i'm going to kind of give you the overview of so that you under you can understand the legal framework of what issues schools face when you have that framework relatively firmly in your brain it's easier to get through some of the brain teasers that we face as school districts in accommodating cis
007gender and transgender students um but what we find is that gender non-conforming uh is really where the case law started um we have uh we have two statutory frameworks um title nine which is in the educational context and title seven which is in the employment context but before we get to the statute we have the constitutional and so we'll find that in making these accommodations we're going to talk about equal protection under the law and very frequently when we look at a legal issue and the courts look at a legal issue they're looking at do we extend equal protection to a cisgender student and a transgender student or do we treat them differently let me give you an example the most common one i get is the question of johnny has presented himself and said
008that he wants to be known as what do we do with that well i usually ask the question what do we do when aj alexander joseph says i don't want to be known by alexander joseph i want to be called aj do we make them fill out forms before we call them aj do we call home and say can we call them aj do we require them to get a legal name change before we call the student aj the answer is no right we typically will accommodate that so that cisgender student that says i want to be aj instead of alexander joseph we accommodate if we require a transgender student to fill out forms or seek parental permission or seek a legal name change before we go from john to jane we have not treated
009them equally under our policies and procedures so you can see that constitutional framework how it starts to play out in some of our accommodation issues before we ever even get to the statutory framework which is both the title ix and employment in in education and title vii in employment um and in addition to that what we have is we have administrative agencies that will pass regulations and so you've heard lots and lots and lots about the new title ix regs those are also they do have the force of law they are adopted by agencies they go through rulemaking and they tell us how an agency is going to enforce statute on us why is that important because for title ix if we do not comply with title ix we put our federal funds at risk
010so even though it may not be written in statute if the agency says to us this is how we intend to enforce this and we're telling you how we intend to enforce this through our regs our regulatory the regs that we pass and our regulatory guidance we need to be aware of that because the failure to do that can put the school district's funds at risk so there are multiple levels that we look at with the constitutional the statutory and the regulatory when we're looking at these um issues the case law began in the employment context um as far back as 1996 um we had our first gender non-conforming case it was a woman it's a price waterhouse cooper case um who did not present in a feminine manner in the workplace and argued that
011her gender non-conformance cost her promotions she argued she was not feminine enough that her supervisors expected pantyhose and skirts and long hair in sales the supreme court said that is a form of sex discrimination to treat someone differently because they do not conform to a gender stereotype that was our very first introduction to the word sex which is just three little letters that is a form of sex discrimination that gender non-conformance and it was in the employment context we've had that expand over the years from gender non-conformance to sexual orientation um so we now know that the supreme court has said um in the boss doc case in 2020 that sexual orientation and gender identity also fall under those three little letters of sex so to to discriminate against someone in employment because of their
012sexual orientation or their gender identity is a form of sex discrimination as well that's under title vii we then had in 2020 you will remember we were under a different presidential administration we had an administration at that time that said that's where that stops we're only going to extend coverage under the word sex to sexual orientation and gender identity under title vii it doesn't go any farther on january 1st of 2021 the biden administration passed an executive order saying we believe that boss doc in title vii should have equal force in title ix so now schools and educational entities you too will be pulled under this notion that sex discrimination is not just gender non-conforming but it will protect gender identity and sexual orientation and so one of the first things i say when i
013get questions about where does this come from and how settled is this area um as you can see it change it can change um with an administrative change i don't know what the next administration what they will say right what i can tell you is that we have case law that is percolating through the courts even though we have these regulatory agencies and administrations telling us how they'll enforce we also have the courts looking at these arguments and in general what we will find or what we have found is that the courts read the word sex pretty broadly in most cases where title ix has been challenged on either gender identity or sexual orientation most circuits have found that there is protection under title ix there is a split of authority right now um a
014couple of things you need to know when i say split of authority so my courts we have district courts those are in the states right they move up into the circuit courts which cover multiple states and then we have the supreme court boss stock in title vii is a supreme court case where it's there until the supreme court says otherwise the title ix case law we sit in the sixth circuit the sixth circuit has said that title nine does cover sex orientation and gender identity the eleventh circuit which is out of florida not where you sit has held otherwise they faced a um an issue on bathroom accommodation so which bathroom may a transgender student use and the policies had generally been falling that if you prohibited a student or individual from using the restroom
015or the facility with which they identified that was a form of sex discrimination and that was uniform until the 11th circuit last year said we don't think so they went they ruled the way all the rest of the circuit courts had ruled and then they took the decision on bonk which means normally a three panel judge hears it all of the judges heard it and they reversed themselves and they said we don't believe that title ix would cover that actually it's on appeal but that's why they pulled it back was because they bel there was a debate on that issue if the 11th circuit holds on that decision we will have a circuit split on this issue which means it would be ripe to go up to the supreme court so again an area that's
016not settled on this issue but generally what you find is the administration that that is in you know that is putting people in in the administrative agencies will tell the agencies here's my here are my enforcement priorities so right now again we're in an administration where the administration is telling the department of education we will enforce title ix on school districts to the protection of transgender students um and and also in sexual orientation and so we know that if we end up before the office of civil rights that's where they're going to enforce that's how they will enforce um and so we try to keep our finger on the pulse of that when we're you know telling districts how does this happen you know where are we on this issue i know that facility usage
017is one of those areas where communities very frequently focus a lot on as i mentioned uh we have a sixth circuit case that tells us it's a highland case so it came out of the southern district of ohio it was a district that prohibited transgender students from using the restroom in which they identify that was challenged by the individual by then joined by the office for civil rights um and ultimately the um [Music] the sixth circuit took it after it came out of ohio and said it was a form of discrimination on equal protection so they didn't use title ix but that's the current state of law in ohio in the sixth circuit that um it would be a violation of equal protection to deny a student the ability to use the restroom with which
018they identify that is currently the status of the law here and again unless the 11th circuit ends up taking their case up to the supremes that's where we're stuck at the moment so um the equal protection clause as i mentioned um to me is one of the stronger arguments i don't know that you're ever going to get anyone to agree um [Music] that we um on the way we interpret law if lawyers if everyone could come to agreement on how we interpret law we wouldn't need lawyers right um and so i think there's always arguments on both sides but i do think that the equal protection argument is got a lot less wiggle room um and so when i'm advising districts i often will fall back in that framework of what do i ask of
019my cisgender students what do i ask of my transgender students do i protect them the same am i asking for the same things am i enforcing my policies the same way for example we don't generally tell a cisgender student i'm going to make an announcement to your community that you're using this restroom were we to make an announcement to our community that we had a transgender student that was going to use a particular restroom we would be treating that transgender student differently than we do our cisgender students and so again i find that the equal protection argument makes these things a little bit easier when you start to back them up from a lot of the emotion in can i pass that equal protection argument um so i i knew i know that that was
020one of the issues um that had raised some concern when i was preparing for this presentation one of the things i went back and looked at was whether fremont had local ordinances because we talked about the constitution we talked about statutes we talked about regulatory guidance fremont does not name sexual orientation or gender orientation in any of their eeo ordinances but interestingly the board does have a policy it's gba which does list gender identity and sexual orientation as protected classes so the board has actually already adopted a policy that has defined those as part of discrimination on the basis of sex so just keeping that little tidbit in mind um hopefully i hit the biggies for you guys um look through my notes real quick questions that i had received i think we talked about
021the fact that you know on any given day how positive am i that how a court's going to rule in the end i'm not and that is one of the reasons that when we advise boards very frequently a board will come to us and say i want a policy i want to make this black and white for my community i want to know exactly how we're going to deal with this issue when it comes to name changes when it comes to records when it comes to facility usage when it comes to locker rooms i often will say i don't think that that's a wise plan for a couple of reasons number one you will have students and employees that are in different stages of transition some may be at a social stage of transition some
022may be ready for a medical transition right but they may need different things at different times and so we want to accommodate them so that they can partake in our programs and activities uh in in the most safe and harassment-free way as they can and so i don't like to come up with a bright line hard and fast rules i do think it's a case-by-case basis what do you as an individual need to be able to access our services what do you need to be able to participate in your education what do you need to be able to participate in your um in your job and i frequently will get the question but what about everyone else how does that affect everyone else particularly in facility usage for those who are not comfortable let's say
023with that accommodation um and i will frequently advise that i think from a practical matter one of the best things we can do is create privacy spaces for all individuals if there are cisgender individuals who are not comfortable with transgender individuals in their locker room the more room more spaces we have in locker rooms for privacy for all of our students so our transgender and our cisgender the better off we are i don't know if you guys can remember going back to middle school i didn't like changing in front of people and i would have been really happy with a private stall um and and i do think that for those individuals we do have to keep into into um you know account how do we keep everyone comfortable and able to learn and able
024to access our programming and there may be people who have very legitimate reasons for not feeling comfortable we have constitutional challenges for example on the first amendment individuals who believe that particularly in the employment context teachers who have argued to recognize a student's transgender name gender identity is a violation of their first amendment exercise of religion and we have courts that are entertaining both sides of that argument and i don't know where that's going to end up so i think again i come back to how do we create spaces where we're accommodating all beliefs right and maybe some of that means that we are creating additional privacy spaces particularly in our facilities um for those who are not ready or not comfortable with that so as a practical matter that's not a legal suggestion but
025that's a practical matter that i've had many districts uh work into i've had multiple districts that have moved to all gender neutral restrooms single stall restrooms and then they have created additional privacy spaces and locker rooms for precisely that reason i think with that i'm happy to go into some of the records issues but i i know facilities were the big issue um that you guys were concerned about so john do you have anything you think i didn't know and i was looking through my list i think you covered everything that we had asked you i didn't know the board had anything i have a quick question i just want to make sure i i think i understand um the order of all of this so the policies that we get the recommendations come from
026the ohio school board association based on laws as they exist at that time so am i correct john in that that recommendation for the particular policy was based on the biden administration's uh um directives and the agencies who put together the uh regulations that we have to comply with they interpreted that recommendation based on that i fairly safely say that and are we is it a fair assumption to say that and potentially not complying with that based on how the law is interpreted at least it through our district as of right now then that would potentially equate to us being at risk on federal funds so you're what you would be at risk of at that point would be not following your own board policy which is always a you know you promulgated it you're
027going to follow it right it's generally the way that goes on policy that language i'm sure was a result of the biden administration's executive order however one thing that i didn't mention that your question raises is that i believe last month the biden administration and it's it's an update to my recent materials so the last set of materials wouldn't have it um the food and drug administration if you can believe it uh which which um i can leave anything with the government yeah they they run your free and reduced lunch programs which of course have an anti-discrimination provision to them um they have recently pronounced that the educational policies that in that govern those must now expressly include a prohibition of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity so they are the
028first of the administrative agencies in this administration that have come out and expressly said your board policy must include these this language and i don't think it's very long until the rest of the federal agencies that require anti-discrimination policies will be making a very similar pronouncement so potentially the result of not complying with that is we would lose participation in those programs correct so the the district's receipt of federal funds makes their compliance with the federal regulations and enforcement uh framework uh imperative because when you don't that's when you run the risk of of drawing a complaint and putting the funding at risk having said that i've been a school off lawyer for 22 23 years now i have only seen an enforcement action on funds once typically what happens is that the fallout politically
029is so the heat that a public entity takes for fighting that becomes one of those things that eventually you settle so i don't think the government truly does come after funds you know every day but the political fallout is never very fun and that's typically where those um settle rather than in an enforcement action for funds but that's the ultimate risk is that you're you put your funds at risk it sounds like blackmail nope you can always say no to the federal funds i know but private schools do it and you kind of don't have a choice oh i absolutely agree i get but but i will tell you that's that's why private schools will very frequently only operate off of tuition because they get to say no to the regulatory frameworks this is related
030on the fringe not not directly but on the fringe i know since we have parents here and people watching and it's kind of a hot topic in our community like it is the rest of the nation um uh of the the florida legislation in regards to teaching of these topics curriculum curriculum um hey i gotta say i i understand a piece of that now i don't want to exclude absolutely anyone we love all children and they want them we want them to feel safe and included and loved here but we had to have a well-educated well-experienced lawyer interpret the terms of lgbtq identity for us and i i can't imagine young children deciphering that so you kind of brought to light for me um a topic and and maybe for others at home why that
031might be an area of um conflict for some do you have any thoughts on that well any good lawyer will tell you don't jump off a bridge before you have to and so we are watching the legislature here in ohio very closely because we know that there is debate on language that is very similar to the florida bills happening in our state house and so i'm reluctant to make many to to do much more than say we're watching it um and that we see what's happening i believe that curriculum i truly do believe that curriculum is very different from this legal framework um and i you know to sense from me not as a lawyer is i i want to leave the curriculum to my educators not to my legislators so um i hope that's
032where we land because i think in the end local government and those people who are in the schools closest to the students will be able to make those decisions without an edict from a legislative um body um [Music] i don't know where we'll land there we're watching and we promise we'll have a bulletin as soon as there's something um the board we do we do pepper uh clients and anyone who wants to we have um we are all very active on twitter and so all of the many of the lawyers will tweet out as we're watching things um that's the first place you're going to see it and we are very good about putting bulletins out um and so you can subscribe to our little bulletins you might ultimately be like okay bricker's putting out
033too many of these i don't want them but they are there so what i thank you for your time thank you thank you very much i really appreciate it for all the information my pleasure um we didn't have anything else under the actually i did just quickly if i may sure we've before we just well this portion of our programming since it's kind of the work session part um denise has uh brought the kind of the first official draft of our um strategic plan so our intention really is to give you this tonight um let you look at it for a couple weeks and then we'll talk about it more next time when you've seen it so i know you've you've you've seen portions of this parts of this we've we've tweaked it a couple
034of times out of our committee meetings some of you are in those meetings as well but this is kind of the first see the first final draft is that a good way to say it denise so i'm passing this out anything else to add denise about that no i was just going to just comment um good evening board members we've had our health and wellness subcommittee as well as our finance subcommittee meet to review and give some feedback and so what mr jetweller is passing out for you is like you said it's that um first final draft um that we would like your eyes on and then hopefully um any comments that you might have in the next couple of weeks please share those back with mr detweiler and if you remember our timeline from
035the very beginning which feels like months and months and months ago um our hope was to have uh it approved at the june 13th board agenda meeting so and then we will have our work cut out for us for the next three years okay any questions on that process obviously take a look at that and we'll chew on that next time okay thank you all right thank you and that does conclude then my portion of the board's uh work session yes sir thank you okay uh so we'll move on to the community part first hearing of the public if anyone would like to address the board please come up to the podium state your name and address just for the record we would like you to limit it to five minutes so we can include
036anyone else that would like to speak so if anyone would like to address the board more than welcome to at this point nobody at this time okay uh moving on to recommendations of the superintendent then thank you very much mr price um first thing are a couple resignations uh candace queen and jennifer shimanowski mele item two would like your approval on a termination of a probationary period this evening item two uh item three um administrative appointments of two psychologists um anymore in our world psychologists are like unicorns aren't they mrs abernathy we found two unicorns lucky us so we are going to get them while we can so with your approval we'll we'll get them on board this evening um we have a couple of appointments here jordan kramer will be at krogan as an
037intervention specialist another unicorn and then jackie manoski will continue then she's a long-term sub at ross and now will be our full-time teacher at ross and then courtney warner also language arts at ross high school item b then um we have bus driver michael cobles pass his license and is ready to roll and darren lee is also joining us as a bus driver it's good to see those some of our last crop of people have gotten through the training process uh student teacher mentors there's a small stipend from the universities with your approval we can grant those to these teachers you'll notice some are full and some are half so that's why there's a different amount there student teacher mentors then are listed at the bottom those are from heidelberg so each university has a
038little different rate item five was bowling green item six is heidelberg that brings us to our first roll call can i get a motion to approve items one through six please question by mrs spear too i have a second second second by miss laird any discussion roll call please mrs spear yes ms laird yes mrs bloom yes mrs ray mr price yes motions approved thank you very much we pulled um actually tom for your your benefits you could vote on item six we um pulled your name off of item seven as an abstention uh for tia price or the same stipend because you know i would say no i don't know i don't want to cause any trouble that's about that i don't know if you want her as a mentor oh stay out of
039that tag out i'm out she's not here she's actually coaching you're talking tough this is on record mr praise you know that i'm safe all right can i get a motion to approve item seven please motion by mrs ray can i have a second second second by mrs bloom any discussion roll call please mrs ray yeah mrs bloom yes mrs spear too yes ms laird yes motions approved thank you very much i'm moving on item eight uh these are all status changes due to increased education with your approval i think it's just a good uh sign that our teachers are always learning lifelong learners item nine um and this is beginning a whole section of summer school stuff like remember two months ago you approved the program one month ago you approved the leaders and
040now we're going to staff those so as far as summer school we've got one here for the atkinson elementary school that's the first section there top the next page is uh dawn south is the secretary for said program and krogan elementary is the next paragraph and those teachers are listed there starting with lamar baker uh regina reid has agreed to be our secretary at our krogan program and uh for bus drivers there we have um starting with ashley and ending with lori smith drivers for the elementary summer intervention program uh three-fourths down the page there we have teachers for the middle school program got a few people there that are ready to help us and then the fms summer prevention program these are our bus drivers that will help us with our middle school program
041turning top of page six uh bus driver for the classroom to career program which is a high school program but separate than the other michael baker will help us with that um also then we have a set of teachers helping us with our credit recovery this summer at ross high school and then the next program is the summer intervention for our state testing and those teachers are listed you see a couple names that are the same they will kind of pass back and forth between those programs as needed this is a students come and go flow kind of thing so wherever they're needed that's where they'll be item 10 then is a substitute supervisor for the summer program and then it substitutes maria asasi and then another list for support staff let's make sure we
042have cook's custodians everybody helping us for substitute services food service program for our summer programs kathy adams day and affiliator at the top of the next page in high school candy cane who's our current high school manager as well that brings us to item 12 substitute food service programs those substitutes then rebecca banda and tammy hottinger there's our summer program all right i'm gonna get a motion to approve items eight through twelve please some mode motion by mrs bloom i have a second second second by miss layered any discussion just quickly if you've kind of looked back through those you see it's a lot of esser i mean this really is i don't make that very public these are esser funds intended for this very purpose to help kids get caught up i just want
043to point that out mr price thank you does this bring us to a full staff for the program or do we still have some we're waiting on numbers to be quite honest we don't really know what full staff means yet because you don't know what our student participation is going to be so we will react accordingly so i think which kind of started with a bare bones start if we have an overwhelming response we'll hit the bricks again for some more staffing but we're trying to shoot in that balance trying to find out kind of how many we'll need for the program really based on student response can you walk the parents through the eligibility and the requirements for kids participating and i'm just looking for is it voluntary or if academically they're behind by
044certain markers is it required yeah no there's no no required summer program it is all voluntary these are if you want to help us kind of how we identified those students absolutely thank you for our elementary programs and our middle school program we've asked our teachers to provide us some input so we created a sort of a multi-criterion referral form so the teachers have the opportunity to look at at the elementary level we're looking at their reading language arts grades off of their report card their math grades we're looking at attendance we're looking at their i-ready scores so that gives us some a really good well-rounded picture of our child and then there's even an opportunity just kind of that open box for the classroom teacher to share some information that has been with that
045child all year long to make sure that we have that those multi-criterion sheets are collected given to the coordinators that have been approved for the programs and then they initiate those communications to our families thus far it's kind of mixed we have some of our families that have said thank you for notifying me but we don't we're not looking for a summer intervention and then we have other families that have already signed up and are very very excited we also our building principals are talking about the program in their building so we have sometimes parents calling making that self-referral the teacher may feel like the child is doing an adequate job and maybe didn't refer them but the parent has come forward and said please consider my child in this mix as well so then
046we try to collect all of that same information so that we can look at apples to apples with all of our children um and put that together so that's kind of the process where we are currently which is mr dettweiler said we're trying to make sure that once we have a stronger number we get a little bit closer i know we're getting we're getting there and it's fast but um but just that communication back and forth um and then we'll make sure that we have students ready and we'll get the information to our busing and get them into our sites and then teach them up silently for for a good three weeks and then you said that was k through eight that's k through eight um high school thank you mr price high school's a
047little bit different story that credit recovery component um is again we struggle we can't mandate um for for a student to participate but we are strongly encouraging that credit recovery program is designed specifically for any of our high school age students who are credit deficient which means that either this year or previous years they have actually failed the course and therefore we're not awarded the credits that they need to earn towards graduation so they have the opportunity um it's an online component in the summer it's edge annuity which we are using all of the school year but we also then place teachers in that lab at ross high school and we have staff available to sit next to work with redo um and motivate and engage our students from eight to four i'm sorry eight
048to noon every day at ross so that's that's a huge component children have the opportunity to make up those credits and then get back on track for graduation which is what we want of them so we are highly encouraging our participation right um okay oh roll call please mrs bloom yes miss iron yes mrs spear yes mrs ray yes mr price yes motions approved thank you very much uh last two items for me are i'm 13 and 14. uh 13 is the sixth and seventh grade social studies online licenses you see that's not a lot of money in the curriculum world significant dollars but not uh some things we spend for curriculum that's just an online uh opportunity for our students to engage with our social science curriculum item 14 i'd like to explain a
049little more though that is as you remember we were finally one to one at ross high school 9 through 12. so our plan is to now as our seniors turn their devices back in we will bring those into this building and get very close to one to one for next fall in this building then these that you're approving tonight will then be the new freshman devices that our incoming freshmen this fall will get so no device at the high school will ever be more than three years old which is kind of our goal to keep that to be sort of the maybe the best fastest latest in the district and then cycle the rest of those down through the grade levels until we are completely um one to one for a district so we'll make
050sure everybody understood that um and luckily esther came at a time when we can make use of those funds for this purchase so that's item 13 and 14. right can i get a motion to prove items 13 and 14 please motion by mrs ray i have a second second by mrs espiritu any discussion real call please mrs ray this is spear team yes mrs bloom yes ms laird yes mr price yes motions approved moving on to the report of the treasurer good evening i have a couple things on the board agenda tonight for approval item 15 is some supplemental appropriations that we need last minute just to get the scholarships um paid out for the year in united way and um something for that we have to purchase with our classroom facilities that weren't foreseen
051and of course at the beginning of the year item 16 is an update to our permanent appropriations that we had at the beginning of the back in september that had gotten approved um and for those two i need an emotion for approval okay i get a motion to prove items 15 and 16 please so move motion by mrs bloom can i have a second second second by miss laird any discussion roll call please mrs bloom yes ms laird yes mrs spear too yes this is ray yes mr price yes motions approved okay um item 17 is the monthly financials for march and april for this fiscal year i'm not going to go too deep into that just because next item item 18 is five year forecasts and that'll pretty much hit on them oh they
052have them yep you should each have a copy on binder clip together at your space so if you want to look at the very last page that's the actual five-year forecast and then i'm just going to kind of go over some of the different highlights of this um it is a little better than november so it's always a good thing to see a little bit of a better state each time our main revenues are the real estate ode funding and public utilities those are our biggest areas of funding as you can see on the sheet um so in our revenues we have um the interest revenue on investments is projected down over the next couple of years part of that is that we don't have the larger dollar amounts from the construction and also just
053interest rates aren't doing as well right now if you look at one of our areas is down in revenue um trying to look at this real quick would be the medicaid and casino that also includes our bwc payments that we get if you remember last fiscal year we got a very large refund from the state um so that's part of where that going from 1.1 million down to 390 000 also i'm sure as you can imagine our casino revenue is down from the last couple years as well um and actually our medicaid reimbursements we for this fiscal year have been behind due to some reporting issues but we're working on getting those taken care of with our outside providers so that we're on better on track but we have projected out pretty much a flat
054for the next couple years in that casino medicaid line um you'll see open enrollment is um at nothing because of the change to the state funding we no longer will receive money in for an open enrollment but when we get to expenses you'll see where those purchase services are down quite a bit to make up for that loss in the open enrollment revenue you'll see our ode funding is down or the state of ohio public school funding is down again that's a change to the state formula and um how they fund our schools but once we get down to expenses you also see where there's a large decrease in the purchase service which is also a byproduct of the change to school funding so that is the highlights on the revenues um a little bit
055more overall our property tax collection has been down a little bit this year from last year and we are looking into that just because we do know that property values went up with this last um real estate valuation so we were not foreseen that it was going to be quite it was going to go down this fiscal year so we are checking into why that happened potentially it could be that people paid at the first half collections last year with like stimulus money they paid their full amount rather than paying it first half and second half so maybe that could be it but we are going to dig in deeper on that and see exactly why that's down when the values did go up this year um one really good thing is our public utility
056payments are quite a bit um higher that has a couple different factors coming into it one of it being our amp payments are no longer coming out so that is great and wonderful it's nice to see that revenue coming back in um and also we had a late payment from aep that came in late for the summer collection so we got it in this first collection of 2022 so that kind of inflated um the public utility payments um another thing with public utilities we also have the nexus pipeline they've been paying at a reduced rate currently because they're appealing their values um i think currently they're paying at 40 percent um from what we've heard at the state level that should they're hoping to be wrapped up by fall of this year and they're hopefully
057going to come in higher than what they're currently paying but they don't foresee it being anything less than what they're currently paying so we won't have to be paying back people um so those are a couple of the big things with public utilities that are going on right now how long has that been in the court i mean i know it got backed up because of covid but it's been at least what two or three years now i believe so i would say if you remember the the uh amp thing was a five year it took five years for them to to rule on that the whole time we were being overpaid which is why we had to pay pay all that six million dollars back over 18 months with interest that's right yeah we
058didn't have the courtesy of taking five years to pay it back so we're hoping that if if this does swing our way and it's much better we will you know be on the other end of that maybe with the next time yeah it'd be nice to not get bent over again yes sir just to give a quick explanation since we have some guests here tonight on that particular item am i correct in saying that the amount of which utility companies were to pay was set at a certain calculation things changed and so the schools were receiving dollars based on that calculation some things changed in um the evaluation of utility companies was put together and because of that those companies went back and asked well not only could they have a reduction but could they
059get back some of what they had paid the school so it was never a case that school districts miscalculated it's that they based on what the original calculation was and then the state had to rule in which way it was going to go with some changes so and yeah that's right and the basic difference is company a paid 100 and then won the challenge and got all that money back company b is paying 40 of what they could pay and we tend to we stand to get some of that back right but the worst part about all of that is as a school district and other public entities that receive those tax dollars don't have a seat at the table in any of those discussions so we get to pay amp back or we did
060pay him back six million dollars but we had no say in the matter whatsoever that's right everything is done without us which is it makes no sense to me whatever but we're talking about state government so like i said up in the top you'll see some changes in our revenue that were directly impacted by our state funding um just to call the others um that shows you know yes our open enrollment revenue is going to be zero and our funding itself has lowered but our expenses have lowered by quite a bit um there's a purchase service line that's currently down about 4.9 million and a lot of that is actually due to this changing in state funding um if you take what we were given by the new reven or the new state funding versus
061how much our expenses have lowered that would normally we would be expensing out to the state funding were actually increased in what we netted for receiving state funding from the state a little bit so salary and benefits are of course our largest expenditure right now we are trending kind of where we thought we would be you're gonna it's gonna look like there was a really large increase between fiscal last fiscal year and this fiscal year um but that actually last fiscal year we wrote off about 1.5 million dollars um to our different federal funds so that our well that we could write off to the federal funds so we only actually had instead of the 10.9 percent increase that you see off to the side and salaries i think we only actually had a one
062or two percent increase for salaries from last year this year and then we just kind of kept a very um low increase over the next couple of years that salary inc increased from last year that you said and it was wasn't it covered relief stuff yeah mostly um in student wellness success dollars we had we were able to write off some salaries there as well and those yeah those that that money we gave to the staff does not go into the the formula for their salaries in the future just a one-time like a bonus almost not built into the base for the future so helped us give them a little bit but not commit to a future expense and let's see um we also had um equipment was lower this year versus last year probably
063due to the newer buildings that we had to put up i make some additional purchases with the startups in the new buildings but the next couple years we're going to keep them pretty flat um um we're thinking that supply levels are probably going to return to traditional levels but we also do understand that there's going to be some interest some costs have gone up on certain supplies as well so we've built some increases in to accommodate for that as well um obviously gap fuel expenses are out of this world um i know for everybody involved not just a school district but everybody so we've kind of built that in there as well the rise in the prices and um then at the very bottom you'll see there we did throw in some esser money to
064offset some of the expenses for the next three years that we get to have um to spend those funds down in addition to other uses that we're having with that funding but um we're gonna write off about 1.5 million dollars in those different expense areas to those esser dollars so that we can keep our expenses a little bit on the lower side john when it came to the fuel costs what was the numbers in your update dollar 89 in the back in november was dollar 89 and 418 i think increase just in the last six months hard to budget that yeah and food now i think we're just going to be we're just now on the front end of what that's going to be yeah i yeah i don't do a lot of shopping in
065my house i love them mrs detweiler does most of i know you find that hard to believe but she's just every day she comes home in a rant i mean just the prices are just unbelievable so i think we're going to start feeling that as that trickles into the school system it's just going to be another thing we'll have to watch [Music] so just kind of a recap of what's going on at the bottom last year we had um we were deficit spending last year this year we're projecting to not have deficit spending um and that for the next couple of years and then um you'll see in fiscal year 24 20 or fiscal year 25 and fiscal year 26 we will head back to deficit spending um so obviously we're gonna have to look
066at between you guys or the board and our director is making some decisions on how to keep those expenses down which is going to be really fun with the rising costs right okay you have any questions megan we talked a while back about putting together a breakdown of um monies left over from the build oh okay yes because some of that potentially can come back into operating an offset we were under budget we did really well thank goodness we partnered with great people to build our beautiful buildings and um did well in the budget so with some of this where we may fall short perhaps money could shift into there yeah and there's still ohs or uh ofcc ofcc is it still needs to be fine the project has to be financially closed before those
067funds officially get released we're always out for that yeah right about a year right yeah probably at least well well best case probably best case yes it would be nice to have those projections this is projecting a few years out so if we knew what we had a year out to offset that right helpful yeah right any other questions for megan can i get a motion to approve items 17 and 18 then so moved motioned by miss laird did i have a second second by mrs ray any other discussion on those roll call please ms laird yes mrs ray yes mrs bloom yes miss spear yes mr price yes motions approved uh board member communications and information for all the information and explaining the school the summer stuff and for the lawyer coming in and
068she tried to i'm sure explained it to the parents as best i can i mean how much it made better for them but at least she was able to come in and give some explanation um that's about it okay spiritual i might also like to thank the attorney for coming in and hopefully answering the questions answering our questions and the uh questions for the community that they had um i'm glad to see that the summer program is coming together and for the teachers and the staff that is willing to help put that together so hopefully the parents and the students take advantage of the summer program okay um congratulations to everybody that worked so hard in getting our students to a one-to-one ratio on digital devices that certainly equips them for everything from testing to
069being ready you know when they step out into the workforce and what's expected today i think that's really great um i want to thank the attorney also for coming to give us the terms and definitions that we all hear at times and and some detail on on what that has to do with what um public entities are facing in terms of policy just want to say it's easy to love and respect one another to interpret law and regulation and how that's all tied in together is a whole other ball game and particularly in in public schools and other public entities or complying with those is tied into the funding that you have to educate kids and provide programs so while i understand what she was saying that we could choose to refuse the federal funding
070as private schools choose to do that so they don't have to this is in fact a public school it is not a private school by definition it's meant to be doors open for every child in this public to come and it's funded through public dollars so well that may be technically true i don't know how practical it is true for a public school to forego public funding and still operate it it's it's unfortunate that's it this is right i knew what my holly said um i appreciate the attorney coming in to explain the things that we all have questions about um also for our um summer school i'd like to encourage the the parents to by all means you know let's encourage your children to come you know i mean i guess so they could
071come with kovid and all the all the learning that was missed in with all the other things that have been going on it'll give the students a chance to try to pay catch up or either be on to and also summer's along for kids so you know between start and finish there's a lot of you know brain power that's kind of resting so it'll give the students a chance to uh keep their minds fresh to catch up on things that possibly they may understand in in class or maybe needed a little more help on so parents let your kids come to the uh to the summer school and and the socialization plus they get lunch so you don't have to feed that um so that's pretty much what i was going to say and also
072i see something that's dear to my heart the ace mentoring program was uh funded again for with united way and that also are two ways that we can say thank you to the community because the community uh uh gives the united way and also um this the mentors are from the community to come and help and encourage our students so it's kind of a win-win situation okay either way the the we thank our community for uh first providing the funds for united way and we thank the our community for taking advantage of that and coming working with our students so i appreciate that and we're almost here at the end of the school year and for all that we've been through i don't think mr detwiler got too much square but that we've been through
073a lot and we've come out on a head i feel no we're all better for for the where and thank you for all that you've done thank you to our treasurer for keeping us on board float thanks to mrs hurt for keeping us our children up to snuffing our students so thanks for just i feel like was a pretty positive good year like everyone else um thank you for melissa for coming in explaining some of the laws that we're not experts on um we don't make the laws we don't interpret the laws um we don't and we just have to abide by the laws um whether we like them or not that's the way it is but i guess that's even more important why we should engage at a legislative level um whether it's who
074we vote for whether we voice our opinions whatever that is um you know there are times where a school district their hands are tied what are you gonna do um it's just that's what it is whether you like it or not so um for a community and and everyone to be involved that's the most important thing um also with the summer program it's great to have all those staff on board parents take advantage of it especially those high school students that are credit deficient right now if it means three weeks of work in the summer and you get to graduate next year on time do it don't don't i mean there's there's free food there's free transportation there's an online component you get teachers you know all morning long to help you one-on-one uh what
075a perfect time to to get that in and make sure you're on track to get that diploma um it's so important anymore so air conditioned building too by the way air conditioning filming yes not like the old days it's not 99 degrees at the old ross high school during the summer this is true so take advantage of it please that's why we're putting it on i mean we're grateful for those funds to be able to do that um but the more we can do the better off so i'm sure if we need more staff we'll get more staff in there it's you know let's get all the kids in there that we can that would be great during my years it's one of the saddest uh parts of graduation is when the students could didn't
076take advantage of the credit recovery uh they bought the got the tents and all the the dates for the graduation parties only to find out that their students weren't ready and parents some parents get a little angry because they feel like there's some magic button they don't realize that there are state regulations on graduation that they may not have met so i feel like the credit recovery is so important so important to keep happy parents happy students and happy school all right with that there's no reason for executive session um if i could have a motion to adjourn please questioned by miss laird you have a second second second by mrs spirit ii any discussion roll call please mrs laird yes this is spiritual yes this is blind yes mrs ray mr price yes ocean's
077approved meetings adjourned do [Music] you