001all right we live good all right good evening everyone if we could start with a moment of silent prayer thank you please stand for the pledge mr benton here mrs booher here mrs davis here mrs thomas here mr swagger here we want to start on with the topics for discussion if everyone had a chance to read that i didn't receive any questions back so i'm assuming everyone has it was on the resolution okay um i don't know if we wanted to read that into the record or if we just leave it uh on the resolution board resolution did you want to take action on the resolution this evening i think we're i think we wanted to change this maybe yeah want to discuss a little bit yep yeah we're going to discuss it and then
002we'll uh vote on it probably the next thing if we words but the concept there is uh you know we want to make it known to the public what dollars will be and won't be coming in with the intel project and other developments down there so we're not specifically saying it's that property down there and how our tripartite agreement works and just how we have to earmark those dollars for the future growth so as those dollars come in you know really it's it's designed or anticipated to uh be steered toward capital expenses additional buildings additional classrooms things of those nature and then the growth that comes along with those meaning in any type of uh increase in enrollment uh the the uh residents would be continuing the same tax rate and really what our resolution
003and we're going to work on some uh wording on it but it's the concept of this board that the tax dollars brought in by those developments down there in the industrial or in the tripartite agreement area need to pay for their sales and future growth that come with it and that our current residents of our school district will need to continue to pay their current school taxes the levies so we're trying to make it everyone understands and we earmark those dollars to not see any increases in the the amount of uh school taxes needed by our residents so we're trying to make sure that any agreement we have down there those dollars get earmarked toward that we will need our renewals so the current taxes that we have out there for income tax and our
004uh what's deemed an emergency levy because we can't change the wording on it uh those types of things that will be coming up we'll need renewals on those but we will not be asking for any increases because we'll be earmarking those new dollars to cover those so we're going to be working as a board to come up with a resolution that kind of puts that all together and then vote on that so just for the public that's what we're working on when we talk about the resolution does any other board member have any comment or concern or question on that i think you covered the monies needed for tax renewal so renewal renewal not additional that's going to get tricky yeah and that's our concern is to make sure that the residents understand renewals will
005be needed it's just additional taxes is what we're avoiding and i think everyone up here knows that this board has taken our fiscal responsibility seriously since we've got on this board i know personally that i've tried you know with the goal of when i got on the board felt like we should be able to go at least 20 years without any new additional taxes so that's kind of the goal that we're going after you know whether or not we can get there we feel like if we do these things right and that we're fiscally conservative and we earmark those dollars that as long as we get the continued support of the community there should be no need to ask for additional dollars time will tell but that's that's our goal here and that's why we
006want to work on a resolution to hold this board and future boards accountable to that uh with that uh mr dixon we'll get back to you on the proposed resolution that you have uh each individual board member received that in the email if you've got uh grammatical type things or philosophical things that we want to put in there uh just kind of spelling that out and then at that time uh we'll have uh our treasurer miss pulley uh present just you know some of the dollars and get out facts we want to get out the facts of the the issue we have as a board is there's a lot going on out there but until we know what is being built how many people are employed we just know estimates we can provide estimates and
007that's what a lot of it'll be uh because until actual people are hired and they're you know earning wages paying wages and the development itself because we don't get any of the taxes off of the wages down there we get uh through our tripartite agreement we get reimbursed for the property value that gets waived so as more buildings are built and fabrication units are brought on board that raises the property value therefore that's how the schools are funded so as things are built is when dollars will start coming in so from a school board standpoint there are no dollars additional dollars coming in until we actually see buildings going up and values increasing down there so at this point there is no change in our economic status for the school district and could you also
008explain that it goes beyond intel it's whoever locates in there can you explain that to them because we also we also are getting additional funding for existing buildings that are in our school district so can you explain that sure yeah and uh the tripartite agreement is between us new albany development and the in whatever corporation moves in and that's why i mentioned earlier we're not this resolution won't be an intel resolution it's a resolution for all companies that move in there so from what we've heard there's going to be a lot of support companies that come in that support the intel property so this will apply to those properties as well so we have the tripartite agreement that we have reimburses us for a portion of the lost tax dollars down there through the tax
009abatement that they do receive we receive some payments back from the city of new albany through the agreement the new albany development corporation that tries to make us close to whole on all those no more than whole but as close to whole as we can get through those so this tripartite agreement and the resolution will apply to any development within those uh 1900 acres plus or minus plus whatever has been annexed that we see currently uh down there that we do receive some dollars from such as facebook and in those organizations that have already occupied space down there well done with that um mr dixon if you want to move on to your recommendations yes i know it's not typical for us to take a lot of action at the work sessions but there's a
010time some timely issues that would help us out by doing so tonight so have just a few items to bring before you this evening uh under superintendent's recommendations i'd ask that you would approve items five a through c the first one would be to authorize the expenditure of forty thousand seven hundred forty nine dollars ninety five cents from the funds received in the meta facebook grant for the purchase of the shopbot equipment which i sent you information on uh prior to the meeting again this is from totally funded out of grant dollars it's an exceptional machine to allow our students to apply their knowledge uh that they're learning in in the classrooms and actually produce items so we since it exceeds the 25 000 threshold for a single purchase we want to bring that before
011the board is required under item b to approve a service agreement with the learning spectrum as presented at a cost of forty four thousand two hundred and thirty dollars we do expect to see one more of these agreements come forth in the june meeting for a a second child um and i've given you information prior to the meeting relative to this particular situation uh item c uh to approve updated grading marks uh for standards based grading k through five as presented those are the three uh general recommendations i have for you this evening uh on the do we want to pull those out for separate votes or do we want to have just an overall discussion please okay if i can get a motion for a and b i'll make the motion a second discussion
012on a and b i think uh the ed briefs were pretty clear on those as far as what we were doing there utilizing the grant money that we received from facebook to buy the shop bought equipment and the other ones the learning spectrum which is a an issue we've been working on uh to try to find spots so any other questions or concerns on those two with that call the role please mr benton yes mrs brewer yes mrs davis yes mrs thomas yes mr swagger yes i can get a motion on item c motion can i get a second that's like a new discussion this is not a first time we've read this concept or idea uh i'm surprised we're seeing it now when we haven't it hasn't been on our agenda as of recent
013i'm i'm sure i bear the same feelings i had on this particular issue many years ago because it's not it's been in the works a long time i'm going to defer just for a minute because i want to know what the tenor of the board is does anybody else have any feelings about this so is this meaning that we would have secure needs improvement is that what standards-based grading is indicating for k-5 basically k through would remain the same as it is now the standards reference grade grading system uh when you get to grades four and five now that we're moving to an intermediate school concept we felt it was time to provide a transition right now we leave grade five at the elementary we come to the middle school and we go into and
014we go into letter grades so this would allow uh as presented in your briefs that this would allow for there to be a transition we still have the standards-based designations uh grades four and five but there'd also be a letter equivalent uh put in on the final grade in each nine weeks relative to the core courses and uh the other thing this does is go into four different areas k through five uh to match up with our learning progressions uh the four areas and i'd be happy to let our principals expand on any questions beyond that if you and i went to the curriculum meeting was it february of 2020 i don't know something like that let's say it was that um and we discussed about the grades um particularly that when the students get
015into junior homing but they are not when they hit sixth grade that's the first time that they're seeing a letter grade and that's the first time mom and dad know that they are not up to what we recognize nationally as a letter grade so they're very surprised at that and i think we need to make sure that we're having a letter grade at the fourth and fifth grade level and that's that's what this is meant to do is get a little transitioning so you're not coming cold right out of standard reference and go right into it on the report card it would have a letter grade on it yes you'll see four you would see four indicators basically one through four you'll you'll have the as we all know the good thing about standards reference
016gradient it tells us more about what the children know i as a parent can look at that and say well i know i need to work on these math concepts or these reading concepts and so it tells me more than just seeing a letter because what's a great what's great i would disagree because as a parent when i looked at that it didn't help me to know that my child was struggling so when she got to junior high it was a complete surprise to us that she was struggling well i think with what was sent over as a parent who gets report cards now um it looks like what would be happening in four and five is it's adding one more category which i think is great because we have secure right they got it
017and we have developing and as a parent you're like oh that's a really that could be a wide range and so with the new proposal there's something sort of an intermediate between the two am i correct and so i like that because you can see are they on sort of the lower end of developing versus closer to secure so i do think it gives you a little more indicator of if there's closer to the secure end or the limited inverses right now it's kind of a big area so to me letter grade or not i do like that it adds one more component in which i think just it it specifies a little bit better where your child is i think the letter grade specifies where your child is more than developing but as long
018as the letter grades on there so that one proposed here has four it's got mastery approaching that is that what we're talking about and then it's got developing and limited i think it is okay yeah go ahead yeah go ahead and i didn't know how does the grade relate like is a you know is it a b c d is that an equal so um there are two parts to this and the first part is what k through five will share which is the four marks and as mr dixon said they correlate to the work that we've done with all of our learning progressions and so it's very descriptive in that the mastery says yes they have mastered the grade level standard the approaching mastery says that they've got the foundational information but they still
019need help with the actual grade level material whereas the developing now says that they are still working on the foundational skills and then limited is even with help they're still not quite at the foundational skills so that will be consistent k through five but the intermediate school would like to then do an overall letter traditional letter grade for the core classes for the four core classes or five if you include language arts separately from reading so what would happen is students would see and parents would see on the grade card reading at the top with the traditional letter grade underneath the essential skills and where they are with the standards referenced as far as are they mastering this particular part of reading or are they still developing this particular part of reading so the traditional
020letter grade will be averaged but it will be averaged from and we haven't chosen this number yet so meant the last say three or five marks that the student had because we don't want to completely go away from the standards-based grading concept of if a student takes a test on something in september and they practice and work and by december they have mastered it don't know that it's really fair to average in the september grade so we're going to determine um what number of grades will be averaged into that traditional mark but there will be a traditional grade for reading language arts math social studies and science would that be at each nine weeks we just half did i missed each night okay chris do you currently give a letter grade at middle school i
021think i know the answer thank you we do all letter grades at the middle school what i like about the transition piece is um it helps move parents into that so often we laugh because we'll have parents call us after the first nine weeks and say my child was a straight a student until they got to sixth grade we're like well they weren't because there were no letter grades before sixth grade so it kind of gives them a better understanding of grades if that makes sense yeah don't we i assume we give minuses and pluses so we know we're strong we do we do and as a parent i would tell you that more said than the letters i'm more concerned by the teacher comment on that report card absolutely because teachers can put anything
022they want on there that's going to give you lots of information about why the letter grade is what it is i guess i assume they were already doing that when they issue a letter grade they do already give that background so you know whether you're a childhood is doing well or are they are they a b minus and what where are they weak and what can we do to make them a b or b plus right and i'm just saying that sometimes those parent comments explain that even more for a parent so it helps them understand that and i think it's better now too because unlike the way it used to be parents can access grades any time any day of the week so they can see exactly where their students are at all the
023grade levels through progress book and what needs to be done if there's if there's work missing things outstanding it's hard for me to pull away from the traditional i wouldn't be opposed to a one-year look at this but i've not seen it work and i don't know how the parents are really going to receive this because i've not heard any comments they don't know it so if it doesn't go well i just want to clarify we haven't had traditional before this is a step to put traditional letter grades back in so that we truly can be the transition from elementary to middle so they will see what they saw before which are the marks that are standards referenced but now they will also see a traditional letter grade so that they can begin to make
024that transition to middle school so we're not removing anything we're actually adding i i got that okay i got that i don't think i explained myself very well but i got what you said i can't expect you for doing that well it's a big change yeah i guess we're we're currently going k5 without any letter grades this will make a k3 and then we'll have letter grades and four or five so it's a move that i think it was really has a response to what we have heard over the years here about needing that transition that we bring this before you so we can get it in the handbooks because we've already approved the old great scale on the handbook so we want to get that corrected before it goes out well we do have
025then when we go to middle school we have letter grade and then high school we have 11th grade good college it's a lot of great so and this may work well i just like to see all sides of it so i'm not opposed to it but i'm not just eager either so i like it yes i like letter grades yes back into it right i know that but i and i and it would appear it's really even going to be a little more work for the teachers to be honest because they're going to have to put more comments in there is that am i understanding that correctly now oh to do that i'm ready to go okay can you call the roll mr benton yes mrs bird yes mrs davis yes mrs thomas yeah sister
026swagger yes motion carries thank you thanks for the understanding under personnel uh have a few items for you uh so that we may move forward with our staffing for next year under item 6a asking you to accept the resignation from lindsey bevere as high school secretary and we thank her for her service under item b to accept the resignation of josh herb is varsity wrestling coach excuse me to under item d uh excuse imc to accept the resignation of josh clark as middle school wrestling coach under item d to approve a limited contract for beth whistler and this is based on a high-rise code and the number of days she served as a long-term substitute within our district we must award a contract to finish out the year under item e to prove the pupil
027activity positions as listed which is one chip wall to serve as a varsity girls soccer coach those are the personnel items we'd like to bring before you this evening if i can get a motion please a motion a second discussion yes i'd like to start with b i s and c and they're losing some coaches in a given area um i thought at the last meeting we were going to discuss those and determine the ultimate focus of the program and are we still doing that i mean that's fine to accept the resignation i'm just kidding is that to follow and to piggyback off of that are these just the standard into the year contract once or they intending to come back are we all here so these two uh coaches have decided to not come
028back for the 22-23 wrestling season um so that is i guess interesting timing that has no bearing on the topic i guess of what we were going to decide for the upcoming year these are just two coaches that have decided to not continue okay so we'll continue on with our discussion yes yes you'll be bringing data to determine our direction next yeah next meeting sure absolutely i have some of that prepared um for tonight of the financial end of the wrestling program but um you know i don't know what all else is needed okay point being i i wasn't going to post these following resignation from my notes in your ad briefs i certainly wouldn't post these i just thought further discussion might be necessary given the data we received at the last meeting yeah
029that's correct thank you any other questions comments on the question on item e uh i'm not sure that i know the numbers i know you did a quick overview and i've got them at home but what what were the numbers in girls soccer are you referring to like the participation numbers yes um sorry he has it most recent season we had 22 which is a pretty tough number uh for having having two soccer teams you play 11 at a time so when i'm talking you know 22 is tough when you bet if you're trying to play varsity and jv so we went into last season expecting to play much more jv games than we actually ended up playing and we couldn't really play anything outside of a scrimmage both levels on the same day so
030we did end up playing a few scrimmages and off the top of my head maybe 10 jv games with a normal season 17 but all of those had to be separate days than a varsity game so we'll see what the numbers look like for this year but we are probably looking for the varsity girls soccer program going into it planning like we'll have one team and one varsity coach and if these first few workouts and the turnout looks a little bit better then we can look at doing the opposite of what i did last year i hated having a bunch of jv games that we then had to either cancel or move dates so i'm kind of doing the opposite of that this year and if i look at this chart right we have three
031graduating seniors that played this year so yes we get more than three coming up absolutely so there's larger very much a chance okay um but in a perfect world you you still would have more than 24 or 25 so that's some decisions that need to be made it looks like our high was only 27 in the last six years so it's been close to that number regularly but with soccer you can play uh three halves yep that's right so so it's not an absolute like you play a varsity game you can play a half game so there's some flexibility from a coaching standpoint where you really get into trouble if there's injuries and or illness exactly and that that 22 number was you know from august right before we maybe had a couple injuries and
032coping case here there so what we're saying is eighth current eighth grade girls and moving up if you're interested in soccer that's absolutely that's absolutely what i'm saying we made a post about i made an email about that just the other day we are having a program uh a high school girls soccer meeting tomorrow i know it's tough timing because a lot of eighth graders are on a trip right now but we really wanted to get it done before the end of the school year um so anyone watching um please send me an email if you're interested uh and playing girl soccer if your your daughter daughter's interested in playing and was a part of pro if you were not a part of the program especially last year you're still looking at data on the
033other programs to see where we should enhance programs or take away and become sports yeah absolutely thanks and i appreciate the board's consideration and i again we typically don't bring these at work sessions but given the circumstances and the timing of finding this candidate to recommend we want to take advantage of these next two weeks get the program rolling any other questions comments call the role please mr benton yes mrs biller yeah mrs davis yes mrs thomas yes mr swagger yes motion carries did we have any i think i skipped any uh public comment and that's why i asked mr thomas you're up so for those who don't we i'm alan thomas i came here to johnstown in 2016 after i retired in the middle of cherokee yeah if you could pull the mic down
034it's not better yeah that's better trying to make this my retirement place and i always want to come back to a local community be part of that community i work for licking memorial hospital as you can tell by my scrubs i came here straight from work downtown urgent care and uh i also volunteer as a football coach for mike carter so i will see you on the sidelines friday nights during football season and the london camp here next month so i do want to be a part of the community back in august i brought some stuff in front of the board and mr dixon pertaining to a specific book that was being passed out to our kids for book reports and we we revisited that issue with dr with mr dixon in january and there
035was some policy things that were being discussed and worked out at that time and i'm glad to announce that i believe that book has been pulled is that right mr dixon yes it is and apparently there was a second book that was found as well hoping that that would and i believe the board remembers correctly i had mentioned that there's probably other books out there that shouldn't be out there and we need to scrub and look for those books and get them out of here so that our kids aren't exposed to that kind of material well unfortunately we're eight months later and there is a another series of books that's being exposed our kids have been exposed to now that particular book was not in the public library the school it was in a teacher's
036personal library however this particular book is actually in our public library and not only is it this book and just to be clear i didn't go into every book okay but there are there's a whole series of these books the book that i looked at was called a court of mist a court of mist and fury the author's name is sarah mass m-a-a-s but this book that i found was part of a series a court of thorns and roses a court of wings and ruin and there was another i wrote it down a court of silver flames okay there's three other books out there in this series that are untitled at this time um so when i was researching this book and the information pertaining to this book i found some quotes online about how
037wonderful this book was if you look at the back of this book it'll tell you that it's a new york times bestseller just like that other book was and how great it was and fantastic but when you actually get in and read some of the material in this book and you find out that it's in your school library you realize that this book didn't really ever make it through the court of decency didn't make it through the court of common sense and if our kids were caught but this book on this campus brought on this campus from somewhere else then we would probably all be going to the to the court of law okay our kids would be expelled they'd be in trouble if they were taken if they had taken this book and we're
038reading it to some friends at lunch and let's say ms almandinger over here's this material there's probably going to be some suspensions and some detentions and those kind of things or mr gooseberry either way and rightly so because this book is not a decent book now i'm not going to read from this book for anybody and i'm certainly not going to do it here in public because you wouldn't let me get past the first two or three sentences but what i'm going to do all right guys i'm going to pass out okay a few snippets that i clipped out just a book i found these on page 55. i mean i found these in chapter 55 online and i didn't really need to go any deeper it's pretty disgusting and again just like that other
039book thank you so i asked for a copy of the books that are in our public library at our high school because i wanted to find out if this book was there not only is this book there but most of the books in that series are there so here's the this is the printout that i got from mr dixon today about the inventory in our library and all these books i'm going to talk about are from the same author so she's writing this material in one book you can bet there's some of this same one material and all the rest of her books it was the same with that other guy that we talked about both of his books had this inappropriate material so i mentioned the court series but there's air and fire kingdom
040of ash throne of glass tower of dawn so that's nine books that this lady's written that are in our public library and that's the kind of material you're getting from so you know it's been eight months right and i brought this other book up eight months ago and now i found this book so i found two books and when you add these others it could be potentially 11 books that i found in eight months not even looking for these books this came to me out of the blue it was an assignment my daughter had eight months ago she was having trouble working on the assignment i didn't quite understand the book put the information on the questions that were being asked from her english teacher so my wife tried to help her and we found
041out what was in this book i wasn't looking for this book either but it's out there so if i can find 11 books in eight months i just wonder what we could find if we really put our hands together and start looking for this garbage and get it out of here so here's what i think we should do i think we should you know in the military we used to call it a gi party the ncos would all go down to the barracks they'd do an inspection barracks wasn't up to snuff and pull all the soldiers out of their rooms but a big party they cleaned the barracks to get the filth out of there until it meets the nco standard well i think maybe we should do a little gi part here called a
042book cleaning party maybe the staff faculty administration i don't care who it takes go through all these books find out where this garbage is and get rid of it and clear this school district of this field this is pornographic material the only reason i'm sorry this is i've seen material the only reason it's not pornographic is because there's no pictures in the book but you can draw a picture in your mind based on that information you're looking at right there pretty distinct and disgusting okay the other thing i would like to see happen is i would like to see our attorney contact the ohio state board of education and file a lawsuit against this author and their publishing company because they're doing it virginia and they're getting away with it they're getting successful i've got
043some information here about where this is this is a snippet i found on the internet it says battle over books in virginia beach now targets barnes and noble amazon it's making its way through the circuit court here's what it says at a request a congressional candidate a virginia beach circuit court judge has found probable cause that two books that can be found in school libraries in the city are obscene now the candidate is asking the court to restrict access to the books in privately owned bookstores if you go on and read the article it talks about how a motion for a temporary restraining order prohibits selling or lending either title two miners was filed with a circuit court wednesday for a court of mist and fury the motion state requests stopping the seller distribution to
044minors to any person who publishes sales rents lens transports or interstate commerce or commercially distributes or exhibits the push so it's making its way through the court in virginia i think we need to do that here in ohio this is the heart of it all well we need to be the tip of the spear too we're going to be the heart of it all and get this crap out of our schools uh there's one other point i wanted to make based on ohio statute we are in violation of distributing distributing obscenity to if i can find it i'm sure our attorney could probably tell me that what i did with it me just a sec well anyway oh here it is ohio revised code section 2907.321 pandering obscenity involving a minor or impaired person no
045person with knowledge of the character of the material or performance involved shall do any of the following create reproduce or publish promote or advertise create direct or produce advertise promote buy procure possess or control any obscene material that has a minor or impaired person as one of its participants so we're in violation guys we've got to get ourselves straight we need to do what i used to call tighten up our shot group on this right i mean you got a whole big company coming here lots of intel and all these other companies and stuff well they're going to think of our school district for letting this kind of crap along that's all i have if anybody has any questions of me all this information is free on the internet you can find it easily i
046literally worked today so i didn't have between patients i had time to find all this so with just a little bit of effort i was able to uncover this if you'd like mr dixon i can give you a copy of the books that are in your library at the high school i don't know if they're at the middle school or the or the junior i didn't get a chance to scrub those libraries but again i found 11 books in eight months not even looking for it so i think we should start with mr thomas thank you for bringing this uh in uh we do have uh under our policies a process and procedure to file a disagreement on materials within the schools i'll make sure you get copies of that so we can take this
047through the proper due process and we can certainly involve our attorneys this has been an ongoing discussion with the board and administration over this past year as you've articulated and it needs to continue i think we're going about it backwards i think what we need to do is we need to find these books and get them off our shelves and then figure out if they can come back and not leave them there until we get some policy straight that's what i believe i believe our attorney would probably agree with that um that's where we have to be careful and we have been consulting with our attorneys on these issues and and and we have to there's a certain policy certain procedure we have to follow um but this is a strict policy right here that
048says we're violating okay is it not actually we got an opinion on that that mr dixon will be happy to share if we get that far but on the obscene material it is schools have certain leeway that i don't necessarily agree with but uh and then on the obscene on the minor it applies to the character in the book and a lot of these books don't give an age of the character again wholeheartedly against this but that's what some of the legal stuff that we've been getting back about some of the reasons that some of these can't just be in violation of the orc that doesn't mean it's not in violation of our community standards and our community expectations that's a different conversation i just don't think that our school should be distributing information to
049our kids that they couldn't bring into the school wouldn't it disagree with you on that at all and that they couldn't stand up there and read to the crowd i couldn't read that you could not read that i know that you couldn't read this couldn't you couldn't read the first two sentences or the third isn't there such a thing that we we all know each other in this room isn't there something we can do to band together and say how do we think we could fix it i'm not talking about the legal thing and i'm not talking about banning a book i'm just talking about looking at a book reading a book having working knowledge of what the contents of the book would be and deciding whether you want to be the teacher that would
050distribute that that tells us something about where we are uh everybody has a difference of opinion mine isn't necessarily right but i sure would like to know especially on this book right here if we had a group together and 10 of them said this book's appropriate i'm in the wrong place so i'd like to see how we might look to ourselves and say how can we your principals superintendents etc we have a host of years of qualifications that make you uh the right people for the job we never get a chance to talk to you to tell you that but when parents get a hold of this stuff is not going to be easy and they're going to go right here with blame and i don't blame them because that's where i would go we
051are the recipient the voice of people so we're i'm asking you for help from you because you are the educators you have all the experience in the world to determine whether something can be right or wrong for our district but we can't go on in another eight months and find another 10 books but we can't do anything about it because an attorney says well you can't do whatever let's find out what we can do i like can do within the limits i understand the law but i also let's see what we can do within the law so we need to be on guard i don't know what do we do i would just have one last comment i understand that there are probably possibly a parent out there two or five or twenty that would
052say that it's okay for their kids to see that material but i stand up for the majority of the people in this community not the minority the majority and i think we need to start paying more attention to the majority instead of the manure thank you alan appreciate that uh i do know we've discussed this at nauseum at the board level about starting a curriculum committee or a review committee uh how does that work and then obviously the daunting task of going through thousands upon thousands upon thousands of books and who how does that start and where do you start that's that's the challenge do you start at that end of the bookshelf and start reading every book and going down to the next bookshelf or do you look for authors that we know are
053problematic or at least controversial those are the that's that's the part of the challenge or do you work on what's new coming in teachers agreed on the new books i think we all came to agreement on that it's the existing ones as these none of these would be caught under our under the proposed process not a single one of these would have been found because they're not new that's the challenge we have someone would have to enter in every book that we currently own into that program i'm asking i don't um um and i'm not looking for a dictate i just want us to have something a beginning i think you almost have to take i mean there's a little bit of a pattern here of here that you can see um and you can
054do a search on that and start like at this time and see that i think it's when the electronic book readers came out they needed more material to add in there and so there's all of this um unvetted unedited material really that's out there so you could go by a year that the kindles and milks came out and then um filter that way that's what i i don't know i mean electronically we don't have any of our books electronically we have titles in that but not like content of the book so we can't search through it that way we could search by title or author but you'd have to know what you're looking for yes and they're there there are there are summaries and codes with the books for age-appropriateness etc with that uh as
055is the case here so so what we have currently in place is when there's an objection to a book there's a form it's filed there's a review committee and then in the meantime we pull the book off the shelf while it's being considered decision is made that's not to say that once a decision is made somebody else might not challenge that decision and then you start that whole process because it's it's it's it's a it becomes from what legal authorities share with me a censorship issue in a public school district and uh i i can wholeheartedly agree this has no place in schools that's my personal opinion okay uh where i'm cautioning the board is we have to be careful about going through and picking and choosing because we each have different value sets to
056choose from there is no question this shouldn't be on our shelves so when it comes to our attention we take action like we did back mid-year um that's not to say you're not going to have somebody rise up legally to come against your school district for doing that that's that's the delicate balance you want to be careful be cognizant of going forward i'm pretty comfortable on these ones that are grossly obscene that i don't think we'll have much pushback but agreed on some other books it may be more of a gray area but uh based on the two uh examples i've been given i i would believe that the other nine are along those similar lines uh the challenge comes i don't i mean how many books do we have that we that's thousands yeah
057i've got uh like i said we quickly gave an inventory uh you all have copies of inventory we put out mid-year um in each of our three three buildings and uh and soon to be moving some over getting our jis established so uh i am certainly not opposed to to screening where you can we just we need to do that alongside our best legal advice going forward because we are in a public school district here and we need we need to respect the views of a majority of people um i'm busy here i believe there was a year on the spreadsheet the there was a year so i would sort on the year as a filter first because i do think it started with when the electronic readers came out unbetter not that we have
058electronic readers here but that's the contents changed because they needed so many books would the librarian not i don't know how i don't have the data how many books do we buy a year for library is it hundreds thousands i don't know how many books we bought i have to try to check out against our could we check that our purchase list and then secondly how difficult would it be on just the new books just just starting today there's always a beginning so could we start today with any new books that are brought into this district that we know it's and that's that's the challenge that's been identified tonight how do you start and go back with everything that's been accumulated for decades in a school district to review but it doesn't daunt my spirit
059that there's a beginning i agree with you i'm sure there are books i'm sure there are books from the 30s and 40s that people would argue don't belong on our shelves i think we heard some of those so we could we could go a lot of different directions here that's where i'm just being cautious that's why we have a procedure for complaints to come in that we follow and and i certainly respect your comments alan i do believe you represent the majority and you know where i stand on this i it's just that we have to be cognizant of the of the big picture here in a public school district to make sure we don't put ourselves behind the eight ball legally as a school district as is clearly stated all appreciate it good conversation
060yep thank you very much appreciate it alan thank you so are you going to do anything about it would you like to make a motion on something um do you have the do you have a list that is the list dale's going to get in and start to process the current policy process for the 11 books i'd like to have a gift see that any new books purchased for the next school year are reviewed before purchase that they have opened that librarian is the purchaser that she has a working knowledge she doesn't have to know the whole book but a working knowledge of that book and checking it through the internet looking for the key words and phrases because somehow we have to start talking on all new books or just every book any new
061book so without knowing that number what if it's 2 000 books a year then we better get some help that's what i'm asking because when we reach out to like the worthington library and that it is hundreds of books it's not you know that's what i personally i don't think one librarian has any no but i don't know how many so i'm just saying that yeah a methodology then i'm looking for okay how many people do we need to look over these books will it take 10 people two weeks or will it take 20 people one week i don't know but we don't ever start too often i've seen that we start something and we have great intentions but we don't set up a mechanism and we don't follow through because we're afraid of the
062attorney or afraid of whatever i'm not afraid i think i think there's a whole lot to this issue relative to what you're looking what you're looking for what is the criteria for obscenity i i get that but i'm saying where where does the line where is the line drawn and and so uh that's where i i would highly suggest that we we talk to our school district's attorney maybe to look at a framework from which we can approach this um and what what parameters are out there given current court cases in the history uh just so we we we proceed cautiously that'd be my recommendation to the board could we do that then and i'll be happy if we do something like that and say we're going to do it and do it because we've
063said we're going to do it haven't done it i think we need to do something i have no problem reading books i'm an avid reader i'll take the books so she and i'm sure there's other people that would volunteer to read books but this i can tell you should never be in our schools never never what i'd like to do is define for the board we're looking i agree with you alan if we focus purely on obscenity that's a nice place to start that way we get away from all the other topics and focus on obscenity and maybe we come up with i don't know who's typing this list but somebody gets to type the list of words that are you know red flag words that we would like to search for not saying that
064if a book contains one of those it'd be automatic it's just that would flag that book if we start with obscenities first virginia the school industry can find out how they started massive their state department's handling that not the local that's wouldn't that be a good place or state department so what did you do and how do you do it and that certainly gives us a legal basis although it would be different in each state but still i just don't want us to overlook and say well yeah there was another meeting we talked about that so i doubt it yeah would it be possible to have librarians come to the next board meeting to discuss their processes because i just don't know it i can ask if they could come to the gym board meeting
065but they're not well we only have one media specialist in the district does she determine content okay but she could reject them i mean just because an organization says these are the ones you could use if she perused those books she could say no no no no no no and we know that but how do we get i know there are cautions but at what point how do you start let's start and it could be well they'll never start anything they'll never start i just you know if it has any of these words in it any of this language that's where we start that's real simple okay and if there is a mechanism a software that will identify these in a book perfect but there is a process whereby anybody can read our books it
066could be a self-appointed committee you know coming in that you know take a look at our books and use the process that we have in place to file the complaint against the books on a case-by-case basis i mean this is a start right this is a start but there is a process in policy to take care of these issues when community or parents disagree with the content of a book i think it'd be helpful for you i don't know anything about the junior library guild and how they choose their books and the more we grow oh absolutely i agree please do yeah those types of things we'll put together a little list could that be helpful yep i mean i think i don't know what the junior library guild is and how they choose their
067books so that's what yeah if we take these questions to alicia perhaps and we can invite her to come and present on those issues alan is there a date on this when it arrived in our library when we purchased this you had a spreadsheet okay it's just a partial of the list that doesn't have much on it it's it's a blown up that's all right but we can find that everything's catalog on each book but i don't want to add to complexity of the problem but the problem goes beyond the library right you have personal libraries for our teachers you know how do we address that because that's that's where we ran into the problem before it was not that was actually a book that came from a public library ordered in derrick would you
068take the mic and clarify that please i just want to clarify for the record that that book we we had addressed before in executive session that was not in a personal library of a teacher that was made available through the public library i believe from worthington um that was arranged through the teacher but not like on it wasn't in the library itself was in her library in her classroom it wasn't in her library in the worthington public library and it fit the genre of the book they were researching so it was not her personal copy in a library she keeps in her room which she has that book actually was checked out from the world i'm sorry so i actually had to return it so that she could avoid late fees because it needed to
069be returned so the teacher identified the genre or the issue for the project the library identified books that would be suitable to that age group and in that library list that came out the book that should not have come here came out and i think that'll be a good question for alicia doty on that is is if a teacher does a project does it go through her always i don't know you know so those are you know those are some of the protocols we should probably ask about and put in place so okay i'll be happy to put up my questions if everyone else would just email me theirs and i'll combine it into one document and forward it on to mrexcel and we'll get her taken care of appreciate it thanks again all right
070um at this time anyone else have anything i got a five minute executive session you say that it's five minutes for me it's what everyone else does with it uh anything else and expected action and what's the purpose of the exact session uh compensation employee compensation and perhaps perhaps action don't know okay if i can get a motion or yeah second call the roll will be at 610 610 mr benton yes this is viewer yes this is davis yes this is thomas yes mr swagger yes we'll move to executive thank you well it doesn't hurt so often we're not so are we out at 6 32 yep out of executive session 632 uh at this time uh provided uh the treasurer with the administrative salaries that will go on to the next board meeting uh
071to talk about uh for approval uh she'll have those on the agenda and then does anyone else have any other topics of conversation with that can i get a motion to adjourn one second call the role please mr benton yes mrs brewer yes mrs davis yes mrs thomas yes mr swagger yes motion carries thank you