001[Music] oh yeah so down [Music] yes [Applause] oh yeah [Music] um [Music] um [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] coming tonight i'd like to call this portion of the meeting to order the board had met in executive session for consideration of a public employee we're now returned to public session and so if you would join us in the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice thank you very much thanks uh our first item in business is adoption of the agenda is there a motion so moved second it's been moved and seconded that we adopt the agenda as presented this requires a role called vote mr zeeman mr saunders aye mr callahan aye ms beebe
002aye ms peter barcelona aye ms casenberger aye thank you next item is approval of minutes from the regular meeting held january 18th and the special board of education meeting held january 27th we've had a chance to read these are there any additions corrections okay hearing none is their motion to approve so moved second it's been moved and seconded that we approved the minutes all in favor signify by saying i i opposed and the minutes are approved and that brings us to the superintendent's report good evening president shaughnessy vice president caligan distinguished board members treasurer zeman my first update tonight will be given by dr palumbo with our staff spotlight thank you superintendent midswicky board members we have two individuals that we are going to honor tonight and first we will begin with barb haas as
003part of the sixth grade team at garfield middle school intervention specialist barb haas believes she has a unique role in helping to set up new middle schoolers for success whether it's assuaging the the anxieties surrounding lockers schedules or new social dynamics barb takes pride in helping her sixth grade students manage their new environment in order to be academically successful they come here as elementary students and we send them on to seventh grade as middle schoolers says var who is in her 30th year with the district barb works to foster a growth mindset with her students through her gentle encouragement to always try without worrying about failing her passion for teaching remains high even after teaching for three decades and nearly year round when you count her past 10 years as a summer school instructor barb's
004wealth of experience serves to benefit not only her students but her colleagues as well it's good to have barb on the grade sixth floor at garfield because we know if we have questions or concerns ms haas is a valuable resource says barb's nominator paraprofessional neil reprite thank you so much barb for all that you have done for decades of lakewood students needing support and their own personal cheerleader and we have a gift certificate for you for the ranger shop and mrs shaughnessy has something for you as well thank you what your devotion is amazing 30 years and i'm all those students have been very lucky to have you in their lives so i want to thank you on behalf of the board and myself that's marvelous and we just have this very simple thank you
005thank you so much thank you do you want to say something is someone here with you that you'd like to introduce [Applause] um and our next staff member that we'd like to acknowledge is jed perlman jed couldn't be happier reporting to work every day as a paraprofessional helping out in the social studies classrooms at lakewood high school it's a second career he never imagined but he is grateful for the opportunity i love it exclaims judd after leaving a long corporate career judd's wife pam a substitute teacher in the district suggested that he apply for the paraprofessional position his students and colleagues have been the beneficiaries ever since teacher alex cama jed's nominator is impressed by judd's dedication to the students he offers to help every student and will help during any free period or before
006or after school says alex who also noted that jed keeps their social studies class coming along seamlessly when alex is absent whether it's helping a student complete their ever5 financial literacy program or helping them prep for the state test jed is available for whatever a student needs whenever they need it the key says judd is building relationships and being as honest as you can with the students after working in the for-profit world jazz jed says the school district's mission is very refreshing i am doing something where i'm contributing to a person all i want is to see the kids do better he says thank you jed for all that you and your wonderful family continue to bring to lakewood city schools [Applause] mr perlman thank you so much for joining the schools and for all
007you've brought to our students would you care to say anything and recognize anyone who is here with you thank you my wife daughters significant others son is here today good and i'd like to also thank the incredible teachers and parapros that i work with i'm filled with gratitude for them and our students go rangers girlfriend i can't tell they're happy with you too i think if anyone in the family wanted to take pictures you can come up and do that i still smile thank you dr palumbo next i would like to invite principal of lakewood high school mark walter thank you mr zwicky president shaughnessy vice president callahan distinguished board members mr zeeman so i have the opportunity to embarrass uh one of lakewood high school's finest students and let me tell you one of
008the most challenging things that mrs nedswiki ever asked is you need to pick one of the 1300 students to nominate as the is the student spotlight for lakewood high school so as i tend to do i went to mrs firstenberg and i said oh my gosh who are we gonna immediately she said maggie mcgahn without hesitation and then i've known maggie now six years wow um and uh we started looking at all the things that maggie does and it was really a no-brainer so let me tell you a little bit about maggie she's an 11th grader here at lakewood high school she takes rigorous courses she maintains a 4.225 cumulative gpa and one of the things i found fascinating was she's an ap cal correct me if i'm wrong advanced chemistry in ap english but
009she's also in art and focus and ceramics so she's got this scientific brain this english brain this mathematical brain and a creative brain and i think that's so impressive she also participated in volleyball and track h2o's home alone project and the water science seminar maggie is an honest and hard working hard worker who quietly leads by example when asked to describe maggie one of her teachers indicated that she is so thankful to have maggie in class because she is a heart filler because of her smile positivity kind and compassionate nature the aforementioned characteristics not only make maggie a fabulous person but the perfect choice for the spotlight student for lakewood high school congratulations maggie yeah maggie this is uh just a sign of our thanks and appreciation for all that you're doing for your fellow
010students and i'm sure for your teachers and administrators here help stamp someone and you even with your mask you can tell you're smiling because you have smiling eyes thank you very much you're welcome would you like to introduce anyone that's here with you just my family right over there raise your hands okay wait what about your dad oh um he's not here but he's traveling okay and he's watching on yeah oh good that's great that's great okay we're all so careful great job mr welter you're going to stay aren't you just kidding and so wait i have a heart filler i love that oh yes i love that that's amazing congratulations so mr walter you are going to share a building report tonight would it be you or yes well actually i am going to
011defer to mrs firstenberger again um because she's worked diligently with our our new courses and then we also have mrs sisa here and some of her students to represent lakewood high school so i will turn it over to mrs fersenberger so as we know over the last couple of years we've worked really hard to determine what the lakewood vision of a graduate looks like between last school year and this school year in terms of new courses our focus has been how can we add courses that are going to fit what our vision looks like so we're going to give you um a real live view of what it looks like baby hello i'm colin and i am one of the students in this year's broadcast journalism class broadcast journalism is just one of three new
012courses that were offered this year at lakewood high school with the help of my fellow classmates we will be giving a brief introduction into these three classes up first aimee with dr renoff to tell us more about native american studies hi i'm here with dr jay and we're going to be asking a few questions about native american studies so my first question is what can students expect from this class well they can expect a deeper dive into the history and culture of native americans predominantly focused on north america but also including south america and central america too they can expect to understand a little bit about native religion cosmology history and you know the challenges that they face from contact with europeans the present status of native americans as sovereign tribal people living in sovereign
013nations within the wider united states so we begin with a focus on the present and and the present status of native americans because it's very important to view them not as artifacts in a history museum but as living breathing resisting in some ways people and then we kind of go from there why is this class different than any other lhs history electives offered before well i mean it is a new elective i i think it would it would be the commonality would be it would help students uh go a little deeper into an area of interest but i also think it's something that is different in the sense that we have covered these topics in the curriculum but not with as much depth and understanding as the subject merits so i think it has it
014has really filled an important void uh in our regular history classes even though we we try to cover things uh we just can't quite do the topic justice why would you recommend a student to take this class i'd recommend the student to take this class or any class to become a better citizen okay understanding native american history and culture is a great way to understand our own history and culture and a great way to learn how to make our society better for everybody so i think in essence the only reason i would recommend any class to any student would be how can it help what can you do through this class to contribute as a citizen to the wider society when is this class offered well this year it's been offered you know one section
015each semester it's a semester-long course so i fully anticipate that it will be offered uh at least one section if not two uh each semester going forward so when you talk to your counselor or whatever i'd encourage you to sign up for native american studies thank you dr g thank you amy thank you amy and dr greenough the second class we will be talking about is studies in black american history with mr sparks i have the opportunity to speak with mr sparks about this in class for your class who can sign up for this class uh this class is actually the elective class so any grade 9 through 12 is welcome to join the class and at being a semester-long class anyone has the opportunity to sign up for in their high school years for
016students taking this class what can they expect going into it the ultimate goal for this class for me especially as well as the district's goal is to build perspective uh history yes students already take us history throughout their time with high school but this class gives more perspective on u.s history through lens and perspectives of black americans some first-hand accounts we cover things like reconstruction like slavery like the underground railroad civil rights movement through the lens and perspectives of black americans to hear their such stories too and u.s history there's so much information already this class just gives more opportunity to build on those perspectives and hear personal stories from actual black americans in their history why is this class different than other history classes in lakewood high school i believe just the angle this
017class really takes you usually promotes discussion as well as taking perspectives and situations that are sometimes often i don't want to ignore but not always shine light upon through other history courses and this class of being elective gives opportunity to have longer discussions to build perspective taking a look at other sources other materials that are from black americans that sometimes at the end of the day we don't have time for in our other core social studies classes and it also gives students of color more perspective and more history that is more relevant to them students signing up for classes why would you recommend this class to them i guess for me as a teacher i just no matter what class it is i always like to promote a positive classroom environment room and i want
018this to be a safe space for students from all backgrounds i want students to feel represented at lakewood high school and me being a teacher of color in the building i believe it's my responsibility to give students of color and any student opportunity to find a home in the school and feel represented and have the history shown that is not always shown in any other class and just give more perspective to the school because in our society obviously we're becoming more educated but i also think we still still have some challenges facing us every day and i think building more perspectives hearing other people's backgrounds and stories will help us better understand the past to make a better future for ourselves too as a society thank you mr sparks and our third offering is broadcast
019journalism which made this possible our very own anthony had the opportunity to speak with mrs cesa about this course what can students expect from this class broadcast journalism is an english elective so it's a nice combination of components you might find in a traditional english class combined with an environment of collaboration and mirroring aspects of a broadcast newsroom why is this class different from any other english elective well my understanding is there was a broadcast program here years ago it did dissolve and with the impact video has had on modern society there was this idea that we should bring back elements of broadcast journalism and the course was then designed to do that in a more modern way why would you recommend this class to a student i would recommend the class because it offers
020an opportunity to explore many skills that will help students in the academic world and in real life situations there's a lot of collaboration students have to communicate in order to get video production accomplished there are writing skills really that element of growth mindset where students are learning by doing uh and working through the process that way so i think it offers a lot of valuable skills that students could learn or use later in life when is this class offered this is a full year elective offered through the english department so any student grades 9 through 12 could sign up for this for next year and moving forward don't miss out on this opportunity thank you anthony and ms sisa lakewood has a long history of providing plenty of options for its students these three are
021just a small sample of the courses available at lakewood high school we hope you enjoyed this brief look into these new courses thank you [Applause] so at this time i would like to introduce mrs susan sisa one of our amazing english teachers and three of her students who are going to talk with you a little bit about how they've been able to apply their broadcast journalism class to the lakewood vision of a graduate um hi i'm julia jackson i'm a senior here um so i would say one of the most important things i've learned or have been learning in broadcast journalism is like more communication and collaboration skills because i'm usually more of an independent worker but it really helped me like break the barrier and be more comfortable with working with people and i
022actually look forward to working people with people during class so yeah it's very fun [Applause] hello i'm colin roberts i'm a senior here i would say that the broadcast journalism class has allowed us to present more students and things that involve them with empathy this month since it's black history month we have been doing a spotlight on black artists through the announcements and i think that is a very good thing that we've done so far and we've also done other things with lgbtq information throughout the announcements to give students that might not know much about black artists and lgbtq and stuff a more good understanding through the announcements [Applause] hello i am gabriel cortes i'm from i'm a for exchange student here in lakewood one of them and i feel this is a really good
023opportunity more like for me because really helped me to improve my english because i'm an english learner also it's a class that you have to work in group has have a really good communication so i think that that's also something that help you like for life because in the professional your professional life you have to be a communicative person so for that reason i was really interested in that class also was a english a really fun english credit so i was also interesting because i feel it was good for me to kind of express myself through this program and also in the announcements of the school so yeah thank you [Applause] hi i'm susan sisa i'm thrilled that i was able to lead this class this year i'm very grateful for these students for stepping
024up and talking to you a little bit about what they've learned it's been a great program it's a working in progress kind of activity um definitely that idea of growth mindset where you know we may not be exactly where we want to be yet but we are going to take the steps to get there and learn through our experiences the communication is huge we talk a lot about writing for the ear because you know with broadcasting when you're putting scripts together people only hear that information one time it's not something they go back and re-read so we've talked about that in reference to student writing and communication the collaboration that julia mentioned is essential to making the class work everything involves teamwork different roles that students have to participate in in order to get the
025video announcements going news packages that we're trying to put together a huge thank you to mr doug buncey he runs our production room where the students really get to take on the roles of the different equipment and things that the school has been able to provide which is excellent we're looking forward to a new production studio that is in the works so that will be great as well i know colin mentioned empathy the students in the class are so great about wanting to recognize all the students in the building we really try to take the time to make sure that everyone is represented in the information that we're giving to the school so that's an important component i'm very fortunate that i have right now two foreign exchange students gabriel is one it does offer
026a global awareness for us both of the foreign exchange students that i have have background in broadcasting so that has been nice as well to see their perspective from other countries other schools and bringing that into the classroom so that's been great and then lastly we just are trying to promote creative and critical thinking in the projects and the packages that we're putting together in addition to the packages we're doing for black history month we have students that are interested in highlighting the lhs pets so students are going to send in pictures of their pets we're going to put a package together about that some students are working on some sports packages some want to highlight the film club the music department the drama department so there's a lot of different ways that we're hoping
027to promote lakewood high school and lakewood community so it's been a great experience and we thank you [Applause] so then the final aspect that we wanted to touch upon in our report this evening is the two new history electives that you saw in the video so the native american studies and then studies in black american history and i think that both mr sparks and dr g did a phenomenal job describing how those courses fit within our vision of a graduate the other thing that our district has been focused on is our diversity equity inclusion and belonging and i think that both of those courses lend themselves very well um to that initiative for example um i was speaking with a young lady i happened to be on the elevator with her walking up to my
028office one day and i asked her you know how things were going what her favorite class was and she mentioned dr g's class they had been doing um a project on different tribes um in our country and she was able to through this project trace her heritage back to this particular tribe so that's the one that she presented on and then with mr sparks with the studies in black american history and what is also great because we had that elective this year that's part of the reason why we were selected to be able to offer the ap black studies course next year because college board was looking for school districts that were already offering a course of that of that nature so are there any questions just just i think to say how impressed i
029am by the work you're doing uh by the fact that the fact that you're doing it that that we're looking at a time when i think broadcast journalism is on is on a cliff you know and it can go one way or the other there's you're the fact that you're taking a long serious look at how to be good journalists and what that means uh it's it's impressive i wish you luck with the rest of the year and then go out and fix it and i'll say thank you so much for giving up your evening time to come and talk to us it's my favorite part of our meetings frequently is to hear students talking about what they're learning and our staff talking about how they're helping our students learn so thank you very much
030thank you our final presentation tonight is again dr palumbo and she's going to share the update on the revised draft dress code vice president shaughnessy excuse me president shaughnessy vice president callahan just oh sorry people that are um in our audience except for the directors they're not allowed to leave if anybody would like to leave right now you're more than welcome to you will be offending us or you can stay and listen to the rest of the reports either way thank you so much for that i'm one of the students here so we need to get that one back up and thank you all for coming thank you congratulations again me you don't want to stay in the center got it i think we might just have to go manual and let mr zeeman okay
031let's go one more slide there we go okay thank you very much mr zeeman um so president shaughnessy vice president callahan uh distinguished board members superintendent nizwiki treasurer zeman thank you very much for the opportunity to share with you the dress code work that is before you this evening on a first reading so i'll start by just sharing a little bit of history with you about how this work came to be our previous superintendent had charged dr robin pettigrew robin beaver's pettigrew to begin this work during the 2021 school year and in 2122 superintendent nizwiki asked me to join in the work we began with a small team of administrators to be to begin and then we quickly expanded the team the first expansion of the team included parents megan millsaur and rachel burns they
032were co-founders of advocates for dress code reform they had conducted a survey of parents and brought that information to the table so we were very excited to have them join us we then expanded our group beyond our administrators to include teachers the teachers worked with their building administrators to get additional student input and then we concluded with a district level survey went out in november was due back in december and we had over 1200 respondents to that particular survey so kent if you can advance what we will do is talk a little bit first about what i learned as a part of this process because this was a new experience for me one of the things i learned is particularly from the parents and the administrators i learned a new verb that students could be
033coded or dress coded that was a verb i was not familiar with so we we also or i also learned that our staff our students and our family families and our administrators were a little bit weary of the current dress code and the attempts to reinforce the dress code it appeared that oftentimes students and even sometimes our staff didn't really understand the why behind some of the rules and regulations that were part of the dress code and then certainly you know in education we always work to do no harm and that maybe in some instances around dress code there was there was some harm that was being done in in terms of female students and maybe losing more instructional time based on dress code issues than were their male counterparts so that became a very
034important focus of our work so when when we began the work we we decided that we wanted something that would be applicable pre-k through 12 so that we didn't have something different at the middle school and high school level from the elementary we talked a lot about what what wasn't working and we spent a lot of time looking at the 2016 dress code when it was last revised and at one point we had this this moment of instead of going through what we currently have and saying what isn't working about it let's kind of re-envision and reimagine what could work and in that attempt to re-envision we made a decision to gather input around and use as our kind of skeletal framework is the oregon national organization for women now they actually developed a model
035dress code we used that as our springboard and we really began our work there the next several slides will focus on how we garnered input and um kind of using that input in conjunction with the the framework of the um oregon now model dress code i thought it was interesting too that the oregon now model dress code was created in 2016 and our previous dress code was 2016 and in 2016 we weren't quite prepared for what um oregon now was was bringing forward but i think in 2022 we're ready to make some shifts so in terms of input obviously i mentioned we had administrator participation on mr mrs firstenberger's out in the audience there so when we get to questions she might be able to jump in a little bit so we also had teacher
036participation jessica murphy who is one of our newest teachers was joined us as as a high school representative and mrs firstenberger really did a great event with high school students kind of what she and mr welter called a town hall for the students to really lay out what we were looking at and get feedback from them and it was really exciting to me when the teachers and the administrators at the high school level came back and said hey you know what the students feel is okay and not okay is really in line with what we've been talking about so it was that was a very nice moment at the middle school level we also had participation terry knapp tracy kuhn were two of the individuals that joined us for the middle school obviously dr pettigrew
037who's probably in the hospital having a baby right about now she joined us as well as april patton from harding they met with student groups and again when they came back to the table they said hey um were we really found that what the students feel is okay and not okay it is really in line with what we're looking to do so that was another positive step for us in terms of elementary input we did have mr eric fortuna sit on the committee with us to represent elementary administrators and we did have a harrison teacher on kelly brown join us to represent our elementary teachers so really there are what i would say are six key components or agreements to the dress code that we are proposing and we found that we really had consensus
038in so many areas and i'll talk about each of those safety acceptability philosophy values and beliefs goals and then basics so in terms of safety we really had key agreements with the oregon now model and our framework that safety is paramount that middle school and high sc at the middle school and high school level ids are crucial and that's they must be worn be visible at all time for those middle schoolers and high schoolers and that students may not conceal their identity and that we are very firm about that and that any kind of violation would be dealt with in a serious manner the next area of wide agreement was acceptability that the final decision of what is acceptable rests with the district administrators and anything that would vary from what is described would be
039something that would be processed with a district administrator and i'll talk a little bit more about this down the road but we we want our administrative team to be central in dress code decisions going on to philosophy thank you we really again want to focus on that idea of do no harm and we do not want to create a situation where the dress code becomes more of an issue for one gender than another we absolutely want all of our students to have equitable access to their education and we don't want to reinforce any kind of stereotype be it gender a religious stereotype ethnicity orientation [Music] values and beliefs and this is really where we get into the why we wanted people to understand the why of what we were doing number one we wanted kids
040to be able to dress comfortably for school but we thought it very important that each individual is responsible to manage their own distractions without us saying you can't wear that to a female student you're going to distract the voice we did not want any unintended barriers to school attendance we didn't want a student to not be able to come or to be sent home because of a dress code issue we wanted to minimize conflict and inconsistent discipline and coming back to the administrative piece we wanted teachers to be able to focus on teaching we do not want teachers to be bearing the burden of dress code enforcement that if a teacher would have a concern that they would immediately refer that to the building level administrator and that they would not approach a student during
041the course of instruction regarding any dress code concern or violation because what we heard from families and from students was that that can create a very uncomfortable situation with a student feeling like they're being called out in front of their peers so the goals really again are a safe learning environment students having choice students being able to express their gender being able to wear religious attire without any fear of getting in trouble where we would have no offensive images or language no profanity hate speech or pornography demonstrated through a student's dress no images or language that would depict or advocate violence or alcohol or drugs and that all of our students would be treated equitably regardless of their gender their race their ethnicity their orientation religion their body type or their choice of style so
042here is really where we get to the basics a little bit of why but then really the what so we know that responsibility for student attire rests with the student and sometimes parents and guardians as well we know for our little ones sometimes mom and dad are not only buying the outfit but helping you to determine what you're wearing that day we do not want the attire to interfere with the health or safety of any student we don't want to create a hostile or intimidating atmosphere we want students to have choice and that really there are some restrictions that are warranted so that we can meet our educational goals and we're going to talk about those three principles the first basic principle is that for all students at all times certain body parts must be
043covered and that would be the genitals buttocks nipples covered with material that cannot be seen through that material that is opaque um the other basic is that there are things that you have to wear when you come to school you have to wear a shirt you have to wear a bottom and you have to wear shoes now that bottom could be a dress could be leggings skirt shorts pants sweatpants and then you know we don't want to be again the shoe police but we recognize that for pe you may need to have a specific type of a footwear so that you're safe in pe um and just that there are some at some times you know like a particular course beyond pe that might require you to change the way that you're dressing maybe a
044job readiness but that we certainly wanted to make sure that that wasn't um you know promoting culturally specific attire for students so then there is what you you as a student may not wear you may not wear violent languages or image images images or language that would depict drugs or alcohol or anything that would be illegal you may not wear something that shows hate speech profanity or pornography you may not wear anything that has language or image that would create a hostile or intimidating environment you may not wear visible underwear with the understanding that a waistband or a strap is not a violation of this you may not wear sunglasses inside a building you may not wear and these last three i'll circle back to crop tops halter tops or spaghetti straps or bathing suits
045unless you're on the pool deck and about to hop in the water hats or headwear that conceals the student identity or hoods inside of the building with the understanding that a hoodie would be okay as long as your hood is not up it's it's down and a few of those items have astericks and when we did our survey we we made some adjustments and then we also had some additional adjustments based on discussion of those survey results mr walter and i had had quite a few discussions and we really appreciated his input and support as we tried to work through what was appropriate so in terms of our survey process we released the survey we drafted and released the survey in november it went to parents staff and community members it closed on december 1st
046we had over 1200 respondents more than a thousand were parents over 100 were employees and 77 were community members and the survey results you have those in your packet but i'll talk through i'll talk through those briefly with you we asked the participants to several statements and whether they agreed or disagreed several of the statements that you see on that slide are almost no-brainers people agreed that a dress code should play a role in maintaining a safe learning environment that comfortable clothing of choice was important for kids that kids should be able to express their identified gender and their religion we threw a couple to see if people would disagree um offensive images are permitted no nobody wants anybody to wear offensive images you should be able to depict violence alcohol or drugs no absolutely
047not you should not we are our respondents agreed that students should be treated fairly that partic specific areas on the body should be covered and that students should be required to wear a top or a bottom so these next slides are very hard to see up on the screen but you do have them in your packet and basically this went through the the types of closing clothing excuse me that should not be allowed so obviously you're going to see there the respondents did not believe violent language or images should be allowed anything that would depict drug use or alcohol hate speech or profanity language that create a hostile environment visible underwear sunglasses inside of the building tube tops and strapless tops those are things we would not thank you and then in terms of things
048that should be permitted um this is where it got a little bit more challenging some people thought yes to spaghetti straps some people thought no most people thought no to crop tops or halter tops bathing suits obviously no unless you're going to the pool most respondents did think that hats excuse me a half of the hoodies most respondents felt should be allowed hats was was kind of torn athletic attire should be allowed ripped jeans should be allowed yoga pants religious headwear and there was no option 13 i don't know why that showed up on the results so if you go back those are probably about four slides and you don't need to but you'll remember where i had those asterisks those were some some really challenging decisions based on um the feedback we got and
049in the end what was decided was that crop tops halter tops and spaghetti straps bathing suits except on the pool deck not allowed hats or headwear if they conceal a student's identity they are not allowed the hood itself is not allowed but the hoodie would be allowed and we had a lot of discussion with our high school staff on that so i apologize because this has been a little longer than i intended but obviously the this dress code is before you for two readings with the intent that it would go into play at the high school for fourth quarter and then in our other buildings next year we will rely on the buildings to communicate the information to the students but also the building handbooks would be updated to include the new information and you
050have the dress code in your packet it's like a front and back page so a lot at one time i apologize but questions i can answer i i don't have a question just a couple of comments i think outstanding presentation what really stands out to me is is addressing any harm you know that do no harm um and ensuring that that there's no disparate treatment or disparate impact um and and i think also when you include so many in the process so many stakeholders um to me it's it's it's sort of reminiscent of vision of a lakewood graduate you know when you bring everybody together to come to it um we can say it's it's our dress code uh and i and i think that it's more likely uh to to be successful so i
051i commend you on the process thank you if i if i could just add so i'll lead to something but i just want to note i was part of the committee that helped revise this back in 16. and i i guess just as a point of of like i guess history at this point the dress code before 16 was like pages and pages long very very prescriptive and on top of it like objectively really was treating women differently than men or male students differently than female students and so i do want to note that i think a lot of progress was made in the um by going down to one page and having it much more open but indeed it then helped us get where we are here in the sense that it indeed also
052sort of outlived its moment in the sense that while it was an improvement we had some more work to go but i just wanted to note that at least it was an interim step because i worry had we still been with that four page one i don't know that we would have ended up here now and so i'm just really appreciative of not only everybody who participated in this process here in this past year who who raised some very very fair and appropriate questions for the collective and had some great ideas but to also then of course thank all the people who contributed in 16 to sort of give us these moments to to get where we are so i'll just say too that again this is this i mean verbiage-wise it is a little
053longer than the one we have right now but it does provide more of that context and that questioning because i will say uh not just as a parent of two teenagers but in general it sometimes it was a little wacky to try to figure out like why are these jeans that we can buy at the store why are these not okay like to be in school like why does it matter if there's a hole in my knee when i need to be studying math or what have you so i appreciate the fact that now in this version it is the what like what's okay or what's not okay but then there's a little bit more context so i just want to say thank you thank you and i do think that the 2016 work was
054huge and it was critical in getting us to where we are in six years you know styles have changed um yoga pants are now you know it that's just that's what everybody wears and and um who's to say what's covered when you know like does my shirt cover my buttocks i don't know if my jacket does i hope it does you know some people could say it doesn't some people could say it doesn't i don't know sorry yeah i'd just like to channel first of all i'd like to echo what emma said i've been involved in this issue somewhat tangentially through volunteer and pta uh roles in the past and in 2016 so they did do a i think it the last time it had been looked at before then was about 10 years or
055prior so it's it was they did a tremendous job then i'm really glad that this was taken up this time and the way uh the process is something to be commended in terms of how inclusive it was and that it's so important for kids to have a voice for students have a voice in this kind of a process because it directly affects them and you know i think the other thing that this your presentation in the the process indicates is how important this is i think sometimes people might think it's no big deal or oh we should just have to wear uniforms or who cares if you can wear a hoodie or whatever but this is a time in their lives when students are learning about their you know some of them are experiencing realizations
056about their own gender identity and expression their own um whether it's their own religious identity expression or embracing different aspects of their racial identity there's a lot of different ways that uh students are learning to express themselves as individuals and dress and hair color and style and all those things are really important so this is this is not to be taken lightly and i'm glad it wasn't i'm glad it was taken so seriously and with such a tremendous amount of respect to the students themselves so i really appreciate that um i do have two questions first one is i know in here you're taking the responsibility away from the teachers in terms of enforcement which i think is really wise my question is sort of how that's being communicated out so that you don't have
057the rogue teacher who's still pulling people out of class because you know that can be not only disruptive in that moment to that student who frequently is a female student but also creates a feeling of them walking through the halls feeling looked at and judged so the fact that i'm wondering how that's sort of being put to bed number one and then my second question is what is our process for looking at the dress code on a regular basis going forward so in response to your first question actually as we have gone out into the buildings and done our listen and learns maggie has had me just give the staff a little update that the dress code work had been initiated that it would be coming before all of you in february so that is
058one of the things that we're highlighting in our sessions with staff certainly we will also rely on the building principles to communicate with their staff and just a quick shout out i mentioned that mrs firstenberger was one of the administrators mrs bruning is here too she was another one of the administrators that sat on the committee with us so thank you um and we really haven't set a regular um schedule to relook at at the dress code but certainly that would be something mrs nidzwiki and i could talk about and we could be in communication with our administrative team we meet with them at least monthly sometimes two to two to three times a month so thank you okay thanks thank you dr palumbo just one uh additional update i wanted to share with all
059of you is that on january 31st we started the north lot project which is uh the beginning of a softball team room back on the north wad uh and and there was also some work done previously to the press box where we added heat and so we are excited about the prospect of this new um project being completed by march 1st for the girls to start wow good good good and that concludes the superintendent's reports thank you very much okay we now move on to our discussion of agenda items that we will vote on at our next meeting in the majority of cases um first item is the finance report miss petri barcelona thank you very much president shaughnessy um three items as is i guess two items are typical one is just an extra
060so i'll speak through those so we have before us the investments purchased and matured through december of last year so 2021 we have those materials that matured as well as information on outstanding investments the investment earnings for regular board funds during december totaled just over thirteen thousand dollars bringing our fiscal year to date earnings to just over thirty one thousand dollars and just a note the fiscal year for the school year is is a summer start and end so we're like midway through at this point on financial information through december 2021 um our general fund receipts totaled uh 1484 000. and our general fund expenditures totaled 5 635 000. uh we have the fiscal year 20 our 2022 summary and the five-year forecast reflects various changes from uh last fiscal year and on the revenue
061side our year-to-date actual and projected revenues are trending with the five-year forecast any variances are timing related and should resolve themselves in future months on the expenditure side our year-to-date actual and projected expenditures are trending along with the five-year forecast any variances are timing related as previously stated so key factors within the summary we do have the inclusion of the esser funds the e-s-s-e-r so that's one two and three and the financial impact of both to both short-term and long-term strategies and initiatives regarding both personnel and non-personnel costs in the district numerous changes made to the state revenue funding calculations and related tuition and uh student wellness expenditures in the most recently passed biennial and yeah we've talked about some of these items and then ultimately two cash reserves are sufficient through fiscal year 2024.
062um we do have the financial summary report to show monthly and fiscal year-to-date cash positions for the non-general funds um let's see here appropriation modifications will ensure that we are in compliance with the state auditor's office and the county fiscal office all accounts do have sufficient funds available to cover the increase in appropriations and the amendment increases allows the district to legally encumber and pay funds up to the amounts appropriated the third item we have is we do have a resolution to approve law firms and attorneys the board has need to retain law firms and attorneys for the provision of legal services uh the district does not have in-house legal counsel in order to ensure the fees charged by the firms are appropriately defined by the board extremely properly defined the board requested engagement letters
063which details the billable fees and practices by any by any of the respondents the approval of the engagement letter does not require the board to utilize the service of the firms it is merely to document the fees and billing practices should the board or the administration need to enter into service agreements with any of the firms listed so we have those available and we'll consider that and the other items uh when voting in two weeks that concludes my report thank you thank you very much uh next discussion involves uh building sites and major purchases miss pb okay um i don't have a report today but i do want to say that superintendent nazwiki pointed out to us and i think we should share with the public the fact that our our custodians and and our
064building and ground crews did yeoman work this past week that they when you dropped by the schools i swear friday they had it cleaned up the sidewalks were clear the the parking lots were clear and available for people to come to work and i think that we should you know just say thank you to these folks for going out in those weather conditions and doing such a good job absolutely yeah thank you for bringing that up um next report is education report ms kansenburg thank you president's fancy um the first item for discussion is uh for consideration is special transportation services in accordance with the fair bus law and state transportation guidelines uh additional students since october 20-21 receiving parental transportation reimbursement uh for the 2021-2022 school year are listed so these are students that
065are travel to schools outside our district and they their parents receive reimbursement second item is the revised dress code as we've just learned about following requests from parents students and staff a joint interest committee was formed to review the dress code the committee's review and discussion yielded a new version to be adopted for the fourth quarter of the 2021-2022 school year at lakewood high school and for the entire district for the 2022-2023 school year and as i understand it the draft of the new dress code would be posted after this meeting for for public viewing um and then the last item on the agenda from the education report is gifts to lakewood schools uh lakewood high school received a gift from christine newton uh who donated 9 000 for private lesson scholarships for orchestra students
066and reese williams donated his time to restore a school cello to be used by advanced orchestra students and that concludes the educational forum thank you very much any questions regarding those great gifts now wonderful gifts yes thank you okay uh policy we have no policies to consider at this time i know at some point we'll have a big pile but not yet um next item is human resources and community services report mr callahan thank you president shaughnessy we have in our materials um to be voted on at our next meeting uh certified actions totaling 59 including uh one unpaid lebron absence five appointments 52 special compensations and one other action classified we have 13 actions three appointments including three appointments eight special compensation and two other personnel actions in the community recreation and education 24
067total actions including three in aquatics six in athletics and 15 in the fitness facility and then we also have a spreadsheet of game worker pay rate changes that we'd be voting on next time as well that concludes my report okay thank you very much we now come to other board business and i believe mr callahan you would continue i am back on thank you we do have two items that we are being asked to approve on a roll call vote on one reading this evening they are both resignations one is of a certified staff one is a classified staff mr zeeman may we combine those thank you very much so i would move approval of those items uh on one reading second it's been moved and seconded that we act on two items with one
068reading and requiring a role called vote mr zeeman mr shaughnessy aye mr callahan aye ms beebe ms peter barcelona aye ms casenberger aye thank you thank you very much uh the next uh resolution is mrs beebee's thank you we've entered into a joint agreement with the city of lakewood regarding management of baseball fields on september 20 2021 we have before us a resolution to approve an amendment to that agreement uh in regarding matters of managing those projects and and the oversight of those projects the uh we have had this this is the second reading and i'm going to move the adaption of this resolution second it's the resolution's been moved and seconded uh all in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed non-emotion passes and then i have a second resolution and we're going to
069ask to have this approved on one reading by roll call boat it's a resolution to approve an agreement with the city of lakewood for the installation of electric vehicle charging stations on the north lot at lakewood high school the northeast ohio area-wide coordinating air agency has a program for the installation of electric vehicle charging stations and they approach the city of lakewood to for potential locations city came to us and said do we have a spot we think we have a spot out here in the north lot the city will manage the billing on this and that so we won't have the issue of dealing with that there'll be one station which can charge two vehicles and we'll be going to be using parking spaces in the north lot close to the current handicapped parking
070spots so we won't be taking up handicapped spots it'll simply be adjacent to those spots and i believe we need to do this on one reading so i'm going to move approval second thank you very much it's removed and seconded that we approve a resolution for the installation of an electric vehicle charging station at lakewood high school i think that's very exciting and that would take a roll call please ms shaughnessy aye mr callahan aye ms beebe aye ms peter barcelona aye ms katzenberger aye thank you very much we now move on to communications um first we'll do uh have either of you had any comments just um subsequent to the board information going out our fiscal year 21 audit was completed um so our financial advisory committee will be having a post audit meeting
071sometime in february and at that time then ms p barcelona will be able to give a report on our on our fiscal year 21 audit i can assure you that there was no sightings or citations or recommendations that were material to the district's financial statements and we'll be filling that we had two vacant positions and we'll have a resolution on hopefully the next session i'm going to follow up with them thank you now we come to board of education comments i just have two quick um communications the first is we had i think all of us received a request the same request from six different people for some information and those were referred to treasure zeman he is the person that handles this for us and i believe he's responding to those requests um and
072that's normal that's how we do it um the second thing is happily we have a joint board city council meeting scheduled for the 28th i mean we have put this on for a long time because of coven and so i'm very happy that we're doing that i think it's a garfield and six is that right okay uh we'll remind everyone but i just wanted to get out out there where i heard from uh mr o'malley and we're happy about that um that's those are my uh has anyone received any comments they'd like to share i have if i could okay thank you um first of all i certainly look forward to the the joint meeting with our colleagues on on council uh i think it was we were holding dates in march of 20 and
073uh the world sort of changed at that point so uh looking forward to getting together uh with with that group um i wanted to share i'll probably forward you you all the email but i'll summarize it uh a very heartwarming story uh that that i was uh in receipt of along with a couple of administrators from uh lakewood uh district parent megan beisel she she reached out the email um regarding an effort on the part of her son gavin who who's a hockey player and his fellow hockey players and uh these he her son and his and his colleagues wanted to recognize a student athlete that from another community from another school that that they that he did not know who had suffered a very very serious injury um in in a game um and
074they wound up recognizing the individual in a couple of ways um the first was by creating decals to go on on helmets um and at the time they were going to initially do this recognition much of the team was out actually out with covet i'm told so then they look looked to sort of regroup and do it again and what she really wanted to convey was the coach coach sankovic supported this just wholeheartedly and she wanted to recognize um that supported just how much it meant to to have that support to recognize this other player and in the end at the their final home game of the season which was just this past uh saturday they dedicated the game to this to this young man um and just an incredible display of sportsmanship you know
075across across that sport for for a colleague who had been uh pretty seriously injured and my understanding is that that it was very well received by by the the young man and by his by his family so uh but but she truly wanted to commend um our coach and and his uh just his efforts to to support uh the team so thank you thank you i'll just share overall um i mean i i know mrs bb mentioned it already just with our incredible um staff and crew who are keeping our grounds um and building safe for everybody through two weeks of basically six years worth of winters that have shown up in in lakewood and so i would just like to note two things is uh first i really just want to thank all people
076who reside in lakewood or have businesses in lakewood who are keeping their sidewalks clear or as clear as possible acknowledging that there might not be perfection right now but just as much as possible given that while you may see in schools long driver lines we still do have a lot of our students who do walk and in some cases especially if the middle schools or high schools are walking pretty great distances and so thank you very much for keeping your sidewalks clea as much as clear as possible keeping people out of the streets and i would just ask anybody who owns a business or resides in property who hasn't been able to clear to please reach out to your neighbors or please ask for help because seeing some of our kids struggle over these huge
077pile ups when people have managed to clear their driveways and then leave their sidewalks covered um it's it's pretty atrocious to see what some students have to go through especially this week and getting and getting to school so i would just really ask that if you are not able to because i recognize that might be the case to please ask for help because our students are at risk if they do have to enter the public right away or the streets including streets like hilliard um and other pretty pretty scary streets when it comes down to it as far as we don't want them there we want them on the sidewalk safe so we've had now a solid couple days of no snow so please do what you can to clear your properties and again if
078if you're in this situation ask for help or if you notice your neighbors are in this situation please offer them help um because we all need to help keep the community safe especially for the smallest ones among us who need to walk safely so again thank you for everything you're doing and please those of you who might not have been able to please get it cleaned up thank you thank you just to piggyback on that i mean liquid has been nationally recognized for some of the creative costumes that people have worn clearing sidewalks so you too could be on you know the one of these shows if you take the effort to clear your skybox you can be a dinosaur you can be a unicorn whatever works the other thing i i did received an
079interesting question from a parent about the district's um the fact that we're issuing some surveys and offering opportunities to participate in uh focus groups for strategic planning um i think they're the person who reached out to me is a little bit like well why are we doing this don't we have the vision of a lakewood graduate and um the the thing to drive home is that the vision of lakewood graduate was a result of that kind of a process i know i was involved in one of the focus groups a lot of people participated and that's how we came up with what we have up there and i think it's interesting as you know i'm sure people are picking up on the fact that we now have the board meetings for the rest of year
080at different school buildings in each school building is the opportunity to talk about how they make that how they use that as a guiding principle in their own schools so this is the opportunity to take the vision that we're already working with and figure out where to where we're going to take it next what programs should we offer i mean we saw this awesome presentation about some of the social studies classes that are available at the high school now for native american studies and black history studies and that's as a result of community participation people voiced their desire to see that kind of programming so what you know your participation and your opinions matter and so it's a great opportunity for you to participate so i just want to put a little plug for that
081out there thank you very good points we would now come to the point of public comments i don't believe anyone signed up wishing to speak so i would ask if there's a motion to a jury second second and all in favor signify by saying hi there are no opposition opposition so we are adjourned thank you very much thank you you