LIVE! Lorain City Schools Board of Education Meeting 2/9/2026

001February >> Mr. I'm sorry. Please make sure you put your name, email. also state your name for the record so that we can have that and speak directly in the microphone so that those that are watching at home can hear the question that you have. Thank you. There was there's somebody on this before me. Hello, my name is Ann Keller. I am a kindergarten teacher at Palm Elementary, a graduate of Lorraine Schools, Fairhome Longfellow, Lorraine High, and I've worked in multiple school districts as a teacher and administrator over the last 38 years. I apologize for my voice. My asthma is acting up. I'm going to see Katie Malier tomorrow, so please forgive my voice. The thing that I find unique about Lorraine City Schools is their sense of family. As a kindergarten teacher, I say

002to my kindergarteners, once mine, always mine. And they don't understand what that means. But I know what that means. That means that as a teacher, my job is to look out for them long after they leave my kindergarten classroom to care about their education and to look out for their families. I have kids that come back year after year after conferences and I don't even have them as kids anymore in my classroom, but they still come and we check in on each other. That's what family schools are about, taking care of each other. And if I'm honest, they take care of me, too. This world is a very crazy place, and there's a lot of things going on in Lraine City Schools for next year. But we need to stay as family schools so we

003can look out for each other and take care of each other. One school, one family, all together. Thank you. Julie Garcia, president, Lauren Education Association, community member, graduate also of Lurine City Schools. Members of the board of education, superintendent, and members of the community. Thank you for this opportunity to speak tonight. I am here to ask you to make one guiding commitment as you face difficult budget decisions. Protect our classrooms and the educators who serve our students every day. When we talk about cuts, we often frame them as unavoidable. But where we choose to cut is a matter of priorities. And cutting teachers should be the last resort, not the first. Teachers are the direct connection between this district and student success. They manage classrooms, adapt lessons, support students mental health, communicate with families, and

004often spend their own money to meet student needs. Reducing teaching positions increases class sizes, limits courts offerings, and directly harms the quality of education our students receive. Those losses cannot be restructured away. Before even considering cuts to teachers, this board should conduct a district-wide review of upper administration and non-instructional positions. Over time, layers of administration tend to grow and sometimes without clear evaluation of effectiveness, overlap or measurable impact on student learning. Mr. Ballard, I would appreciate if you would pay attention. This is not a personal attack on individuals. It's a call for responsible governance. Every position in this district, especially those furthest from the classroom, should be asked the same questions. How does this role directly support student learning? Is this function duplicated elsewhere? Has this position grown while classroom resources have shrunk? And is

005this the most effective use of limited public funds? If sacrifices must be made, they should be shared equitably. It should not be the people doing the most direct daily work with students who bear the greatest burden. Our district mission statement likely includes words like students, learning, excellence. Those goals are not achieved through organizational charts. They are achieved in classrooms led by teachers who are supported not stretched thinner every year. I urge this board to commit publicly to protecting instructional staff. Conduct a transparent district-wide audit of administrative roles. Ensure that budget decisions reflect what truly matters, student learning, not institutional convenience. As you make these decisions, I ask you to remember who would be standing in our classrooms tomorrow morning. Protect the people who show up for our students every single day. Look districtwide. Look up

006the ladder. And keep teachers where they belong, teaching our children. Thank you for your time and your service. Sorry. Don't Good morning or good afternoon board today. Um I'm Anastasia Kelly. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to speak. We are here to address what happened after the recent student protest and why many of us are still concerned. These the protest itself was peaceful. We exercised our first amendment right to exercise our opinions in a nonviolent way. We followed the rules of the walk out and returned to the building as instructed. However, once we came back into the building, several students had their posters taken by security staff. Some of the posters were ripped up and destroyed. These posters were not dangerous. They did not threaten anyone and they were simply a form of student

007expression. Taking and destroying them sent a message that student voices are something to be silenced rather than heard. Even if there were concerns about the posters we could display, destroying student property should never have been a response. Schools are meant to be places where students learn how to speak up respectfully and participate in civil life. What happened made many of us feel disrespected and discouraged from expressing ourselves in the future. We asking for accountability, a explanation of why this happened, a clear expectctions moving forward and assuring that student expressions and property will be handled respectfully. Thank you for your time. What we gave you today was the before and after pictures of our posters from before when we walked out and after we walked into the building. Some of them were ripped up, torn up

008by security staff and placed in the trash can. >> And yes, we were talk I have talked to Dr. Graham about this concern. They were snatched out of our hands like they were like they meant nothing. Like what we did meant nothing. And all we really want is for you guys to be >> to show accountability. >> Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Sorry, I'm very nervous. >> Okay. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Hello. Hello. Can you hear me? >> Yes. Sorry. Um I felt compelled to come here. I'm Jennifer Day. Um I'm a parent of two children who attend Lorraine High School and um a middle school student who is supported by a Lorraine City Schools IEP at in a private school setting. Um I felt compelled to come here today because I have

009seen so much commotion and so much um I don't dissident I guess um on social media regarding um the teachers um and their point of view right now and um as far as the struggles that they're going through as educators, um, parents and how and their feelings and emotions regarding their, uh, students that attend here. And then, um, a a ton of outside opinions regarding um, negative reporting about the district or um, ratings, statistics, things as such. and very little personal stories of actual students or parents from the district. And so I just wanted to share that I have two sons who attend Lorraine High School. Um I am very grateful for the district and the supports that are in place, the programs that they utilize every day, the extracurriculars that they um shine in.

010um the JOTC, which one of my sons is um a part of, uh the arts, which one of my sons is highly supportive of and um is a part of here at the school, the educators who help them every single day. the district that is trying to make these difficult decisions and is aware that they are up against, you know, a lot of heavy things. But as a community, I think that there are a lot of supportive parents who do see all these um silver linings and are supportive and wish to um have their children continue to be educated in Lorraine City Schools and are proud to be a part of. Thanks. Hello. Um, K. Costa, Admiral King, Title One reading teacher. I have a letter I'd like to read all of you. If you

011can't hear me, just let me know. Dear members of the board of education, we are writing to express our deep concern regarding the rumors of potential cuts to the title one teacher positions for the upcoming school year due to funding constraints. As title one reading teachers, we play a vital role in supporting our students, teachers, and school community. We work closely with classroom teachers to collaborate on instruction, analyze student data, and develop targeted interventions for students who are at risk or in need of additional support. Through small group and individualized instruction, we help struggling readers build essential skills that are critical for academic success and long-term achievements. Our students reading needs are significant and many require consistent specialized intervention. Without the support of Title One reading teachers, these students may fall even further behind, making

012it more difficult for them to succeed in all subject areas. Eliminating these positions would greatly impact the progress and the confidence of our most vulnerable learners. Removing the layer of support would place additional strain on staff and limit the resources available to students who need them the most. It would be detrimental to both academic achievement and school school morale. Title one reading teachers are not an extra service. We are an essential part of the educational team. We strongly support our teachers, administrators, and school community, and we are committed to doing whatever it takes to help our students succeed. We respectfully ask you to carefully consider the long-term impact of eliminating these positions and explore every possible option to preserve this critical support. Thank you for your time, consideration, and continued dedication to our students and

013schools. Sincerely, the title one reading teachers. Hello, my name is Georgia Palmer Pancer and I have a child at Larkmore Elementary, actually two, and a child at Longfellow. And there's been a lot of things online um about Larkmore and what's going on with it for next year. The only thing that I can say is let's stick to Titan Strong. Larkmore is not a school, it's a family. And a lot of those kids, that's the only family they have. And to take that away from them is not just taking away their teachers, it's taking away their family. Sometimes those are the only people that they have to count on. My children were only permitted to come into Lraine City Schools because of Dr. Lewis, only because of Larkmore. And truthfully, if there is no Larkmore next

014year, there will be no kids to be in that school from my family because Larkmore is more than a family to us. They literally go above and beyond for all of their students. More than definitely more than what they're paid for. So I ask that you definitely take into consideration that they are more than just teachers. They are more than just supports. They are literally those kids lifelines. They are their only family sometimes and their only support. That's literally all I have. Good evening. I'm Cheryl Draga. I'm a math teacher here at Lorraine High. I've been part of this district and only this district for my entire career. This is my 27th year here. I've seen admin come and go. I've seen board members come and go. And sadly, I've seen teachers come and go,

015not because they choose to. Most of my friends, most of my peers, most of my colleagues, whatever you want to call them, we choose to stay here despite being rifted once, twice, maybe even more. The young people who have left Lorraine schools have done so because of people who are sitting in your seats earlier. We choose to teach these children. We call them our kids. I have two children of my own. I don't call them my kids. I call them my boys. I call them my children. our kids are here. I don't know of many administrators who also refer to our kids as their kids. Sure, there are some some who I have great respect for and their roles are vital. But being a math teacher, real world problem solving, data analysis, database decisionmaking, I'd

016just like to make you think about not just cutting positions and dollars, but consider the correlation between how many dollars go with the different positions that you're faced with cutting. Let's say that an administrator has a salary of $100,000. 10 of those salaries is $1 million. Let's say that a starting teacher here earning a base salary of approximately $48,000. If I take 1 million divided by 48,000, we fall short of 21. I hope before you make your vote tonight, you will consider, is having 20 people face to face with their kids every day more important? Or is letting go of 10 who sit behind a desk and tell us what to do? I also ask that you consider the idea of the sister schools or the neighborhood schools. I've been around long enough to know

017things come and go in education and it all comes full circle. Here we are again. Don't believe whoever's telling you that teachers want sister schools. It doesn't matter what the teachers want. You're here to represent the community. And the community made it very clear when we attempted sister schools that it is not in their best interest, that it is not what they want. And they are the people who voted you in here. or thank you. >> Thank you. Uh, first I would like to say thank you for the clocks not being on on the screens and for you um all respecting everybody's uh voice and and giving them a chance to speak tonight. Um I I have a couple things. I want to start off with the negative uh um opinions that are happening on

018social media. And while it um it hurts to see that we are 607, I do think we are more than a test score. And uh my three children that I birthed in the in the one that I get to claim are all doing great things. In fact, my youngest just started her new job today. Um and she's working uh with an organization where her office is downtown and she'll be working in Cleveland Heights High School um preparing um the the lowest 10% of uh academic class um and preparing them for the workforce. How I wish she could be here uh in Lraine where uh we are definitely tight and proud. Um my son um is uh the head coach at Overberlin High School and my daughter Desiree uh loves working at Walmart and she's been

019there for I want to say 10 years and climbs up the ladder there and then we all know uh Sly is back in Columbus finishing up his doctorate. Um, so there are great things that happen in in Lraine City Schools and our teachers here are amazing. When uh Paulo came and had his meeting with us, he said that our teachers are amazing and that if we plug them in any school, top performing school, Olan, Tangi, Avon Lake, Amherst, wherever it might be, that those children will continue succeeding because our teachers are amazing. that it's the other things that our kids need um that we've tried to provide for um that might have led and I I said might have led to uh some of our uh financial uh issues here is that we have um

020given um as much as I feel that we can uh we could always do better of course but um we help with the clothing and we help with the um wellness coaches and uh like we say, we've tried to put in a lot of extras here and and the state doesn't uh send any more money uh for the things that our kids need. Um and I I I know it's a a hard decision that you guys will have to make. Um, I am asking you guys respectfully to cut from the top before you um touch those that are in the classroom every day with kiddos. Um, and then I I wrote this. Dear President Nazario, Lorraine City School duly elected board of education members, treasurer Miss Tia, um, treasure department superintendent Graham and assistant superintendent

021Scott in May, several months ago when I was vice president of the board, I asked my fellow board members, Courtney, Mr. Sturge, Mark Ballard, and then President Jay Ferguson to join me in requesting a pause on all trips, travel, conferences, and pay increases until the financial situation was better understood. While I understand that many times the fees and costs come directly from funding meant for those Somebody's texting me, I'm busy. Um uh oh uh for those specific expenses, we have immediate needs here. We do not have extra time um as we need people locked in and committed to helping our students succeed, our families to be engaged, our families to be engaged, finding solutions to increasing attendance, to pass a levy, which we need desperately. So, everybody that's saying vote no, we need to be

022out there saying vote yes, please, and and letting them know why. Uh we need all the community, all the staff. Um we need everybody on board this time around um and locked in to get this levy passed. uh even if we disagree with with some decisions that the board or the administration make um our children and our educators will be directly affected worse if we do not pass a levy. Um the the sorry to go back uh to pass a levy to balance the budget to not be 607 and not to mention it is a horrible look to both staff and the community alike. Now, as a community member, I'm asking all of you to immediately halt all travel and pay increases bonuses. Um, I was just told that there were bonuses received by the

023administration. Um, I'm not sure if that's true, but I would like to know that answer, please. I am now asking, and this might have everybody dislike me, but I am asking that all staff members will consider taking a decrease in salary. 5% would be $3.5 million approximately. Miss Tia doesn't like to give us exacts, right, until she's got the information directly in front of her. Additionally, I am asking that attendance to conferences be audited. Are the trips to these events, whether in Cleveland, Columbus, out of state, or to the ESC, worth the time and funds? Do the people that attend the trips come back and share the information? Are the ideas learned, implemented here? Do board members follow the board and district policy and present the information back to the board when they return from

024a conference? I believe everyone who doesn't follow the policy or procedure should have their reimbursements denied and or be build for any expenses paid by the district credit cards and funds. Further, there are people traveling, some as experts, speaking at uh engagements on subjects that would be beneficial for either our staff or community. In some cases, both. How do people go around the nation speaking on things that they don't address here or we are failing miserably at? And our parents and families could use that information. board members. Um I thank you for your attention to this matter and uh my thoughts are with you as you guys are considering plans and I hope that the I hope you're uh open to everything that you received tonight. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> I'm just going

025to put your name on it. I think they have your contact information. I think so. You're welcome. >> Go ahead. I'm just filling in Barbie's name for her. >> Okay. >> Hi, I'm Jamie. I am the lace president and as well a media clerk here at Lorraine City Schools. I'm just here to speak of the importance of school nurses, media clerks, secretaries, and our ASL interpreters and how these positions support the daily operation of our schools. These staff members are the backbone of every school building. They are the people students and families interact with on a daily basis, keeping the school safe, organized, and accessible. School nurses care for the students health and safety. Media clerks enhance reading, literacy, and access to learning resources. School secretaries keep the offices running smoothly and serve as the

026primary connection with families. ASL interpreters ensure deaf and heart of hearing students have equal access to learning opportunities. We understand that our district is facing a financial crisis and that difficult decisions must be made. However, we hope the district will take a district-wide perspective and carefully evaluate how each position impacts students and families by prioritizing secretaries to run offices, media clerks to support learning, nurses to care for students, and our ASL interpreters to provide equal access. We can make changes thoughtfully while continuing to serve our students effectively. Budget reductions are necessary. We are aware of that. However, we encourage reviewing upper administration and the positions do that do not work directly with students before reducing the roles that support students and families every day. These positions are essential to safety, equity, and smooth operations of

027our schools. Working together, we can find solutions that preserve these critical services. Thank you for your time. Uh hello, my name is Summer Harvey. Um I am a graduate of uh Lorraine City Schools as well as a parent of a graduate and two current students. Um I want to first um express to you Dr. Graham specifically that my heart goes out to you and I from the beginning have genuinely believe that you um cared about our community and our kids and um this has to be incredibly difficult as well as the vote that the board is going to have to um come to terms with today. So just know that we all understand. Um but moving on from that, I just kind of want to piggyback on what pretty much everyone else has said that

028um starting at the top has to be the plan. The the thought of directly like going directly to the teachers is absolutely insane to me. Um, being a graduate myself with three students through the system, I'm not going to say that there's not been an administrator that made an impact, but I will tell you that my kids probably wouldn't remember a name. They had not made an impact in a way that is direct to them. If they didn't have if there was no media person to put out a social media post in two weeks, oh well. But guess what? My kid's math teacher is still going to be there who was helping her get her scores up. So, please just understand that the community as a whole will be completely outraged and enraged if the

029tops are teacher he or the cuts, I'm sorry, are teacher heavy. Thank you. Hi, my name is Brandon Vosotzki. I am a parent of a graduate from Lorraine High and a current student in Lraine High. And this is largely redundant, but repetition for emphasis, right? So, it it really is one of those things if I don't envy the role that you guys have, the position that you're in, we understand that a large part of this is not unique to the city of Lraine or to Lraine City Schools. At the same time, the most fundamental aspects of education are buildings, teachers, and students. So, as has been said repeatedly, I am begging you to look at creative solutions, but importantly to look at making cuts from the top, making cuts at at the administrative level, being

030transparent of those numbers of of the teacher mentioned earlier, the hard numbers. So even for me it's hard to have an informed decision, informed input on this as much as I would like to be a constructive part of this. So I'd love to see the numbers laid out of where the cuts are coming from, why they are coming from there, but absolutely we have to protect our kids and part of doing that is protecting these teachers. So that's that will be a second of the public. So if you're still thinking you're not going to be a second hearing of the public once we go through the rest of the agenda and before we move on I do want to say thank you for everyone who did come out today because you care about our kids

031and as one of the teachers said they are our kids and I say that too as a board member that they're are kids. I have a graduate from here and I have four um daughters who are going to school here. Um and I just want to share this. Um this has been a really hard couple weeks for me going through the meetings and the talks and the emails of the cuts and what we have to do. Um, but when I was at General Johnny last week for an award ceremony for my daughter, uh, Miss Davis asked any sixth graders that wanted to get up and talk why they love General Johnny. And I feel that I needed that because the amount of sixth graders that got up and thanked their teachers was amazing. that said

032they come to school for their teachers, their teachers make them feel welcomed, their teachers love them, their principal makes them feel like a kid. These are sixth graders getting up talking to their classmates, which is hard. That's really hard for a sixth grader to get up in front of a room of classmates and parents and talk. And I needed that um to just to help. It made things um while never easier, but it definitely did help to see these kids talk about how much they value you. And I know this was just one school, one grade, but I'm sure if we went to every school and asked them the same question, we would get a lot of the same answers. So before we watch the plan, um which is going to be very hard and

033these are not final decisions, um I just want to thank you for what you do for our kids every day. >> Um can I please have a motion to approve the minutes from the February 2nd special board meeting? >> So moved. >> Support. Um, any discussion? Roll call. >> Dr. Balor? >> Yes. >> Mr. Sturgil? >> Yes. >> Mrs. Nazario? >> Yes. >> Mrs. Rosario? >> Yes. >> Mr. Balor? >> Yes. >> Um, any old business to share? >> Uh, reports and recommendation of the treasurer. >> I have items 8.01 through 8.04 for approval. >> So, move. Do >> I have a second? support. >> Any discussion? >> I believe we had even 20,000 again of just over 20,000 donations from the community which is amazing. Every every board meeting we just have more and

034more donation. It's amazing what people are donating for our kids. My roll call. >> Dr. Balor. >> Yes. >> Mr. Sturgil. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Mazzario. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Rosario? >> Yes. >> Mr. Ballard? >> Yes. reports and recommendation of the superintendent. Okay, >> let me get through the agenda portion of this first. And to President Aario's point, there is nothing on here that approves anything we're going to be talking about later. Um, but I'll get to that in a couple seconds. But in terms of the uh agenda, I'd like the board to consider for approval items 9.01 to 9.07, personnel matters. So move support. Any discussion? Uh, roll call. >> Mr. Sturgil? >> Yes. >> Dr. Ballard? >> Yes. >> Mrs. Nazario? >> Yes. >> Mrs. Rosario? >> Yes. >> Mr. Ballard? >>

035Yes. >> Like the board to consider for approval items 10.01 to 10.13. Operations matters. >> So move. >> Second. >> Any discussion? >> A roll call. >> Dr. Bal. >> Yes. >> Mr. Balor. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Nazario. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Mr. Rosario. >> Yes. >> Mr. Sturgil. >> Yes. >> Okay. And I guess I'd like to to ramp on here for a couple of seconds just to kind of say uh what got us to this point and then I'm going to tell you what this is and what it isn't. And I'm going to have Ross walk us through um a PowerPoint of things that um again a lot of folks asked us to consider and put down on paper. So that's where we are tonight. Again, the board will not we're not recommending

036anything for a vote. uh we have uh many more opportunities to speak and engage between now and when decisions be made. Uh but again, I want to make sure that folks are up to speed. Uh but first of all, how do we get here? We receive um information consistently from our state legislators, our federal legislators, our federal government, and our county. And what we were told in May and Juneish uh was very very very different than the reality that took place when we actually got our funds in June, July, and August. And the difference was a little over $6 million. And most of you know how school districts are run. We can't have major cuts in August. Um obviously the table set. We had to have school. So we couldn't make any major um cuts

037for this year. So that $6 million that is sitting here that we need to remedy. But we also have it's $6 million per year. So it's also $6 million next year. Now, our plan all along was to uh pass our renewal levies in November and then put up a levy in the spring and if those things would have followed through, we'd be business as usual. I make sure we continue with the quality program that we're providing. Um, obviously things changed and in for in order for us to continue to provide uh what we've been providing and what we plan to provide would cost us about 22 mills to to the community. And I think realistically speaking, we know that's not much of a of a chance. So what we need to do, according to OD,

038ODW, I guess now, uh we need to cut $18 million as a result of the changes from our legislators, state, federal, and local. Uh that cost us the money that we didn't plan on losing. So what Ross is going to put up here, and and by the way, first we focused on the renewal levy because if it would have failed, instead of talking about $18 million, we'd be talking about $31 million worth of cuts. So without uh and levies are confusing enough. So we tried not to confuse this with that. And then as soon as we got done with the renewal levies, OD put us through an exercise that we had to accomplish to demonstrate that we can cut $18 million because if we can't then they they will come in and do it. So

039what we did under the direction of the board and and because we were told by OD, we come up with ways to do that. Um but again because the process that OD gave us was like six weeks. We had to come up with a plan. It didn't allow us to go through things the way we would have preferred, which is engaging people first and then going back to say here's what we'll do. So again, the plans that we're going to show here tonight, we're not going to ask the board to vote on. There's still a number of opportunities for us to engage with you to learn and listen more uh through surveys. I think we have a town hall scheduled, Mariah, Wednesday at 3:00. It's going to be the Zoom or Google town halls because

040that's what you requested last time and they were effective. Uh then we'll do another one with our community. Uh but again there are a number of folks who came up here and said we need to establish priorities and we need to reach out to find out what all those are from a number of different perspectives that are in this room and in our community. So what Ross is going to put up on the board are ways that we can do it but and OD will whatever the board votes on probably at the next board meeting uh OD will implement if we can't come up with something better. So again, our goal is to come up with when you cut we already cut $6.5 million out of our budget over the last two years. Now it's

041another $18 million out of $110 million budget. It's it's awful. It's absolutely awful. These are programs. These are people. These are lives. Um it's it's an awful awful situation. And again, it's the education of our children. Uh so uh we take it very very seriously. We're doing the best we can with the hand we're dealt. Uh but again, we do want to listen to you more. And there have been many opportunities between now and uh when we implement a plan, not necessarily a board votes on something that OD makes us vote on to demonstrate that we can make the cuts should we need to. Okay. But I'm going to defer to Ross and uh have him walk us through again some scenarios. >> Yeah. Thank you. Good evening. So, we're going to talk through four

042big things. We're going to go in some specificity about how we got to this position and and make sure we're we're clear on legislatively what's happened and then how we got from May to now with the reductions that we need to make. We'll go through some drafts for possibilities to reach the $18 million that we need to reach. We'll talk a bit about the importance of the May levy and we are going to finish with a call to action here for our our presentation this evening. I do want to say on the front end that we are presenting options but for anybody any group that would be impacted by these where we have not spoken with them in person yet we are not including them or their group in the presentation. We want to be

043very intentional about meeting with people in person to discuss um where we are, why their program may be proposed for reduction um and that they don't find out about it here in this format like this tonight. >> And to be clear, I've already spoke with many people who we know are going to be a part of the reduction in force and obviously these are administrators who we knew exactly who they are. With other positions in the district, it's not always as easy to know who the person is because with teachers, it's lure, it's uh uh it's years of experience, it's tenure, it's non-tenure. Same thing with different uh union groups. We don't know at the end of the day who those people are. For a lot of our administrators, we do. Um so many of

044those conversations have already taken place uh and there are more that need to take place uh before we start sharing names in specific positions. So again, our goal is to be as respectful to people as we can be um during just again just during an awful time. Yep. All right. So, how we got here, um, I do want to just tell a brief um, really hard uh, interaction I had with one of our staff members a couple weeks ago. She's a first year teacher and I was following up with her and she's somebody that I'd recruited hard last spring to come work here. And, uh, I was sitting in her classroom. She's just doing great and uh, she has all year. And so in a private moment, she just pulled me aside and asked if

045she would have a job next year, that she had heard rumors that we're going to have reductions and how does that work and is she safe? And um I tell her I I I can't guarantee you are and you likely may lose your job out of this. And she welled up a bit and said, "But I I love my students and I moved here to be able to take this job and you're telling me that I may not have a job?" And I said, "That's right." Um, and she looked right back at me and said, "Then why did you recruit me so hard? Why did you work so hard to get me here?" And and I told her, "Look, because I was so impressed by your interview and when I saw you present and just

046the way you worked in the um sample lesson with the kids, and I just felt like you're going to be a really excellent fit." and um I didn't have a good answer for her other than this is the hand that we're dealt right now and it sucks and it's been absolutely brutal working through this and and we owe it to our community to you to our students to understand how we got to this position and then how we're going to work to to get out of it. So, um I think it's important to understand first how we receive our funding. And for us, the largest percentage of our funding comes from the state, just under 61%. Our next biggest is local and about the same as federal. So for us, what happens at the state

047level has a huge impact on us day-to-day, much more so than many other school districts, very similar to many other urban school districts. So what happens in Columbus dramatically impacts us day-to-day with our funding. So a lot of numbers here. I'm going to highlight a few. This is from our five-year forecast back in May. We could see on the horizon just like many school districts that when you project out three, four, and five years, it gets hard to project that far out into the future. And at that time there were three different proposals for funding. The governor had a proposal. The House of Representatives had a proposal, the Senate had a proposal. And so at our May forecast presentation, um, our treasurer, Miss Kernney, presented two scenarios, with renewal levies and without renewal levies. In

048both cases, we were solvent and okay through fiscal year 2027, so through next school year. And with renewal levies, we were going to be solvent through fiscal year 2028. And to Dr. Graham's point earlier, this is what you plan on when we budget. So, how did we end up where we are? So, House Bill 96, which is the banium budget that passed on June 30th, dramatically reduced the money that we receive. So, by $4.9 million this year, next school year by $6 million. And you can see the exact amounts listed right there. We were not expecting this and neither was any other school district in an urban setting. 36 urban school districts, including us, lost $52 million in the state budget. You can read all these articles here. They're all live links, so when you

049access the minutes, you can go and read all the articles and get the specificity here. But this p impacted 36 school districts who were specifically targeted for a reduction of funds in the state bianium budget. Also on June 30th, which was an absolutely brutal day, we were informed that federal title money was being frozen with no guarantee of release. We were concerned, deeply concerned about our ability to start school. as many of our salaries are connected to our federal money. So in August, right before school started, that money was unfrozen and Ohio received 169.9 million, which was a decrease in $15 million. And again, you can read about that here and the date on it's August 19th. For us, that was a reduction of $787,38 on top of the reduction that we just got in

050the state budget. To make matters worse, in October, our learning county commissioners um exercised their right to double the property tax breaks for homeowners in the county. the day after our state legislature overrode the governor's veto, which decreased education funding for our county by $10.9 million starting in 2026. For us, that was an additional loss of a little over $1 million in local funds. Again, starting now. So, in summary, on June 30th, we lost $4.9 million that we were not planning on losing. Other urban school districts were not planning on losing either. In August, we'd lost an additional $787,000 and in October, an additional $1 million. All that we were not planning on in May for a total of $6.7 million. So, who else is impacted? You've seen the headlines. I'm going to emphasize them

051here. Couple months ago, Cleveland announced that they'll be closing 23 schools and doing mass reductions as they were severely impacted by the reduction in education funding. Canton City Schools a couple of weeks ago announced that they had $17.7 million that they needed to account for. They will also be closing schools, selling schools, and doing massive reductions in staff. Akran public schools is in the same boat. Toledo public schools also in the same situation. They did some layoffs that took effect a few days ago. Columbus City Schools now has over $100 million budget deficit. Cincinnati public schools will be doing significant staff reductions. Dayton public schools is in the same shape. And then locally when we look at the impact of our county commissioner's decisions, this is the impact for the school districts in our county.

052We're not alone in this. There was no way for us to plan for the amount of reduction in such a short amount of time that we experienced. And just from the headlines and then knowing many people in those other impacted districts, they didn't know either. and we're all in it together. Across the county, Lorraine County was one of a tiny number of counties that chose to exercise their right to double the property tax breaks that directly fund schools. Every school district in Wayne County was impacted by that and we all found out in October. So, where did the money go? Charter schools have had a 9.4% increase in funding from our state legislature year-over-year. The federal government sent Ohio back in September an additional $15 million to fund charter schools. How about vouchers? In this

053bianium, we have allocated $2.5 billion for vouchers. And for those new to vouchers and and what that means, that means public tax dollars to fund private education. Here's what the voucher funding looks like in the state budget over the last three budget bills. It's doubled. There's a group of over 300 school districts that have banded together to sue the state legislature over vouchers, arguing that it is unconstitutional to fund private education with public money. So on February 5th, a bill was proposed in our state legislature to cut funding for the school districts who would dare exercise our constitutional right to sue. This is the playing field we're working in right now. It's devastating and we feel it deeply. So we have to try to figure out how to navigate out of this when the system

054has very heavily worked to engineer it not just for us but for other school districts across Ohio as well. So we will do our call to action later. There are two parts to this. First Dr. Dr. Graham referenced earlier, we have a timeline, a tight timeline that we have to submit to the Department of Education and Workforce that shows that we can make $18 million in reductions. And if not, we'll enter fiscal caution and fiscal emergency if we can't from there. We will not have the Department of Education to come in and run our finances. So, we have to go through that exercise. A little bit later, we are going to ask though that we band together because the system that is impacting us is impacting frankly the majority of students across Ohio and not

055in a good way. So yes, we have to come up with our plans here and we banded together before to work to get House Bill 70 uh eliminated. it's still hanging around to get us out and we need to band together again because the path that we're on is not a good one for urban ed specifically and public ed as a whole. So it gives us no pleasure at all to talk about options to reduce programming, services, supports by $18 million. This is devastating work. It's devastating for our students, for our families, the community as a whole. Our students do need to learn traditional academics and they also need some food and they need extra social emotional supports and general care and this cuts at many of those things. So, we're going to present draft

056options to reduce $18 million in spending starting next school year. We will not make reductions in positions immediately. As Dr. Graham mentioned earlier our our extremely challenging uh decision. It wasn't a hard decision. The the outcome of the decision is hard. When we when we first took the large hit with the state bianium, we had to decide do we do reductions right then or do we honor contracts and those uh who are committed to and our students and employ through the year. And we chose to employ through the year and we do that a thousand times over. So, we will honor contracts through the end of the year and the starting uh reductions would start for next school year. We do need to be more efficient with how we use our schools. We'll get into

057that um in some depth. We also want to try to make sure that we do our very best to maintain programming that our community and students expect. And we have to be creative to find new ways to generate revenue. Nobody's coming to bail us out from Columbus. Nobody's bailing us out from the county level right now either. So, we have to find creative ways to generate new revenue. Our class of 25 is going to report, and we're extremely proud of this, the highest graduation rate since 2009, the second highest since 2003. We have to keep going with that upward trajectory. Our enrollment is gradually creeping back up. We have to keep going with that upward trajectory. So remember as we go through this tonight, we are intentionally not including pro proposed programmatic reductions if we

058have not talked with the people yet um in person. All right. So our first exercise that we need to look at was how efficient are we with using our facilities and our staffing is part of that. So here's our reality in elementary school. We have 10,000 or 10 schools built for 3,800 students. Seven schools that are designed for 350 students, three schools that are designed for 450 students. We currently have 3,77 students. That's 81 capacity of our space. So, we aren't extremely efficient across the board with how we're using our space right now at the elementary level. Here's our enrollment over the last 10 years. You can see the significant downward turn when the state took us over. And then you can also see the gradual upward climb from when we bottomed out. Our students

059and families are gradually returning. They are more confident in us. They value the programming. And with that, we still have to find ways to be more efficient. Here's our enrollment to capacity by school. So you can see each individual elementary school, their current enrollment, the capacity, and then the percent use. Again, on the system and how it's engineered, there's a high revised code. You can follow that link. Any public school that dips below 60% capacity in the prior year has to be offered for sale into a charter school. We can't let that happen here. So we have schools that are below 80% highlighted in yellow and we do have a school that is under 70% highlighted there in orange. So we do have to be careful. Charter schools are everywhere. Their funding is going up

060and they would love to have one of our schools. So our current staffing looks like this. We have 10 assistant principles, 25 encore teachers, six English language specialists, six gifted intervention specialists, 48 intervention specialists, five media clerks, 57 pair professionals, 10 principles, and 124 home room teachers in elementary school. Average class size is 22 students. Here's where we run into some inefficiencies. On the low end, we have classes as low as 12 students. And in that very same grade in another school, we have class sizes as high as 28 students. We have some inefficiencies. The way that our population has shifted from when the schools were built is very different now than from when it was planned 25 years ago and then built over the last 20 years. The average teachers per grade per school

061is just a touch over two. So we're going to show two proposals. So, our board has asked for multiple options and we'll show two proposals. One is a paired model and then one is a K5 model. Both proposals do include repurposing two of our elementary schools. We'll start with the paired model. So, in this model, we would have four K2 schools. We would have four 35 schools. They'd be paired by geog uh geography and for transportation. Now, somebody showed me this morning uh pictures of students like clinging to a bridge. We would not have students walk across the bridge. The boundaries we have right now are very very draft and will change based on community feedback and enrollment adjustments if this is the direction that um as a board you decide that uh we should

062go. So what we propose in this option is that we would pair Admiral King and Larkmore, Frankento and Tony Morrison, Hawthorne and Stevens and Helenstein or Rice and Palmer. Our enrollments at each of the schools would go up quite a bit and our percent usage would go up. Again, these boundaries will change some. We have cushion built in right now for open enrollment where we have um some schools have many students coming in and others going out. So this this will all look a little bit different after feedback and massaging the borders. What this would allow for increased collaboration instructional design. So in most grade levels in each school we would increase from an average of two teachers per grade level to four. We value collaboration very highly and it we strongly believe that our

063teachers working together to design instruction for students in teams is the best approach that we can possibly have to designing meaningful impactful instruction for our students. This would also help with increased instructional alignment across schools. So instead of having 10 approaches now, we would work to get much better on the same page with four. A huge advantage of this is it would allow us to provide services in home schools instead of hubs right as we do right now. So we have hubs if you received services for giftedness, for language and special education. Our students with disabilities alone, we bus 277 students to a different school from their home school. right now to get a service separating them from their friends, siblings, and this would allow us to provide those services in the home school. It

064also would allow us to maintain most of our encore programming. Our transportation would be much more efficient. Currently, we run 19 routes in the morning. We run 17 in the afternoon. We would be able to do 14 in both cases. We'd have fewer buses. they would be fuller. We would maintain the two miles as we have now. I mentioned this before again. We currently have 200 students with disabilities who we bus to a school for a program separate from their home school. So there would be tremendous advantage in this proposal for service delivery closer to home. These are very draft. On the left side are our current boundaries. On the right are boundaries. Um, an initial draft. These will likely be revised a little bit, but you can see what a Tony Morrison Frankosinto boundary

065would look like, what a Hawthorne and Steven boundary would look like, an Admiral King and Larkmore boundary, and Henstein Rice and Palm. We also worked hard with this to try to make sure that around safety zones um with bridges, busy streets, railroad tracks that we're using those as part of the boundaries. Again, these will look a little bit different should the board decide to go down this route. Proposed staffing in this model. So, what we propose is that we would have four assistant principles in this model. We'd have them share schools. So they would be primarily stationed at the 35 school and then they would also work the partner K2 school. Encore teachers we would reduce to 16. English language specialists to four gifted to three. Intervention specialists we would reduce by two to 46.

066Media clerks to four. PAR professionals would stay I'm sorry we go to 50. We'd have eight head principles and 98 home room teachers. So for class size, we would have an average of 26 and a half. On the low end, we'd be 23 students and on the high end we estimate 31 students. And again, the average teacher per grade per school would be four in this in this model. For start and end times, we could keep our current times. We would also be able to stagger elementary times by 10 minutes. The the big um variable here is that we need to have our full fleet of buses to do the high school route and we need approximately 30 minutes in between elementary, middle, and high school. And this is something we definitely want to seek

067additional input um should the board decide to pursue this this option. In this model, we estimate our savings would be 7,324,935. And this and every other estimation is subject to change based on funding changes and enrollment changes. The other option that we propose for elementary would be to stay in K5 neighborhood schools. So what we would propose here is that um we would have these eight schools stay as neighborhoodbased K through five schools. You can see the projected enrollment again against the capacity and then the percent usage and some of the advantages here. Um we would have very similar staffing as currently at each school. So we would average just a touch over two teachers per grade level per school. Many of you mentioned earlier in the first public comment session the importance of a

068neighborhood school and the family feel. It's why the community decided to build 10 schools 25 years ago. Communities who build schools now try to build as few schools as possible. It's the least costly way of doing it. One of the downsides is they aren't neighborhood based. So absolutely one of the pros in this option is to keep that neighborhood base. Service delivery u would be very similar to how it is now. We would not be able to have students with disabilities uh giftedness and language receive services all in their home schools. We simply would not be able to provide that. And this also would allow us to maintain most of our encore programming. Our transportation would be very similar as it is now. We actually don't estimate being able to reduce our routes by going

069to this model to be very similar. So um again we estimate approximately 19 in the morning 17 in the afternoon. Again subject to change based on enrollment but we don't estimate a difference in transportation in this model. And again we mentioned already uh they students with disabilities giftedness would would continue to be bus to hub schools. These boundaries like the last boundaries are subject to change. This is a draft again of what those boundaries uh could look like. Again, are current on the left and the proposed boundaries in this model on the right. Again, we tried to make adjustments based on major roads, train tracks, bridges. Our proposed staffing in this model, we propose eight assistant principles in this model, 16 encore teachers, again, again, four English language specialists, three gifted intervention specialists in this

070model, 48 intervention specialists, again four media clerks, same again 50 pair professionals, eight principles, and we would need we estimate 104 teachers. In this model, class size would go up to 24.2 students. we would have um more disparity on the low end and the high end. We'd be a little bit less efficient in this model. So, we estimate right now that we would have class sizes as low as 17 students for some teachers and as high as 31.5 for other teachers. And again, the average teacher per school in this model we estimate would be just a little over two. So, this model is not quite as um economically efficient. We project that we would save $5,984,756 in this model and again subject to change based on funding adjustments and enrollment changes. So in summary from

071a staffing perspective, this is what we currently have what a paired schools model would look like and a K5 schools model would look like. class size and teachers per grade summary. This is what it would look like. And again, service delivery for our students with disabilities, students with giftedness, and students with language acquisition. and then the saving summary. There are definite pros and cons to both models. Let's talk about preschool specifically. Our current configuration, we currently serve 374 students on site. We provide services to students with disabilities in the community through our itinerant um specialists served on 10 sites. We have 15 full day classrooms, five half-day classrooms. Preschool is um preschool is a hard one. We we spent $4,630,384 on preschool last school year. We get funding for about half of that. We've worked

072extremely hard on preschool. The results of our preschool have been excellent and we we need to look at how we do preschool again. Um currently we have one associate director of preschool, two community preschool support specialists, six itinerant teachers, 37 pair professionals and 20 teachers. What we're proposing right now for preschool is that we would move all preschool to Garfield Elementary. Garfield is most centrally located in the city. So when you map from the farthest outreaches of the city, it is the most centrally located. We would still serve all students with disabilities as were legally required and we would work our best to have as many classrooms set up in the 87 model. So eight students with disabilities, seven without. We would switch in this model to all half-day preschool. And we would also want

073to develop a community and family hub for partner organizations to work out of the school. From a staffing standpoint, side by side, where we currently are with what we're proposing in this is that we would uh have an associate director who would assume multiple other responsibilities. We would go from two community preschool support specialists to one, from six itinerant teachers to four, from 37 pair professionals to 14. We would need a principal for this school and we would go from 20 teachers to nine. In this model, we project savings with this of 2,675,56. for students with autism, the most significant symptoms of autism. What we're proposing is that we would repurpose Washington Elementary to serve these students. These are students that have the most severe symptoms who we have not been able to currently serve.

074We currently send students who have the most significant symptoms associated with autism to several different counties and facilities for service. And we're estimating that we're spending approximately $6.5 million this year or will spend that much this year by the time the year is over for our students with disabilities at separate facilities and that's approximately 120 students >> with $1.5 million being just transportation. >> So we have to find a way to be creative to provide better service to our students to our families and in a much more efficient way. taking some of our most vulnerable students and sending them on a bus or on a van to Westlake or to Sanduski. We we need to do better than that. So, we need to provide a quality education, frankly, a better a much more convenient education

075for our students and families in our district and at a much much lower cost than we're currently spending. So, what we're proposing is that we would repurpose uh Washington Elementary aligned to the board president that Linda Code or the presentation that Linda Code gave about six weeks ago. And this school would serve only students with autism, the most significant symptoms with autism. We would start with eight classrooms and in each classroom we would have one teacher and two pair of professionals. My teacher would need to be an intervention specialist and the maximum class size of students would be six. So to staff the school we would need a school leader, a nurse, an occupational therapy therapist, 16 pair professionals, one speech and language pathologist and we would need nine teachers, eight intervention specialists, one general

076education teacher. There's an upfront cost to this and we have worked with Menor City Schools and specifically their school mentor cares. They've had a school extremely successful school for 15 years and we estimate in in working with uh their school director and their treasurer. The upfront cost for us would be $3 million and then to expect ongoing costs of $2.5 million. The average cost for us right now per student with autism at a separate facility ranges between $90,000 and $100,000 per year. After working with Men Cares now over the last several months, we estimate that we would be able to save or generate income of approximately $2.9 million per year starting with eight classrooms. We want to start smaller on this. This is an extremely ambitious undertaking and then we would want to grow and

077expand from there. We have to provide highquality service to our students with the most significant disabilities and needs. The way we're doing it, we believe we can do better and more convenient and just in a in a much more dignified manner to our families and our students. We've been calling families now for about the last six weeks and there is significant interest by families to have their children return and attend school within our city limits Titan Virtual School. So we opened registration for this a couple of weeks ago. This is another way that we look we look at as an opportunity for us to provide better quality instruction at a better price than what we're getting right now. So this would be an online school. Mrs. D'Angelos did a presentation on this to the board

078again not too long ago targeting students in grades 6 through 12. Since the start of this school year, we've had 85 students leave us to enroll in a digital school. So be it Steel City, Ohio virtual and we want them to stay here. All total in the city limits we have approximately 450 students who are enrolled in an online school. There's a niche here that we need to tap into to keep our students with us. So the benefits here, students would graduate with a Lorraine High School degree. They could participate in our extracurricular activities. They can reenroll in person at any time. and they have flexibility around their work schedule to do their work and then office hours with our staff. The cost on this to start, it's $23 a month per student and that's

079for the internet access. The computers were donated to us by T-Mobile. We have to legally provide internet access to the students in an online school. The startup cost here is $26,000 plus the $23 a month per student. For every student that we keep with us or bring back from somewhere else, that generates $8,195.85 for us. Let's get into middle school. For middle school, we're proposing a new master schedule. So currently we have six periods in our middle school day. We're proposing that we would go to five. Our period length would go from 51 minutes to 60 minutes. We currently don't have dedicated time for a soft start or close, but we want to connect and align that with elementary school. So what we're proposing is that first period would be lengthened by 15 minutes for

080the soft start home room attendance social emotional activities and the soft close would be lengthened um it would be attached to seven or the final period of the day I got think the numbering here with lunches in my head the final period of the day it' be seven minutes longer we would increase our Titan time from the 30 minutes that it is right now to 40 minutes and for the instructional time in core classes It would increase by 8,874 minutes currently to 10,440 minutes. It's the equivalent of adding 30 additional class periods from this school year to next school year by lengthening 9 minutes per uh per day. We also would have to make some very difficult decisions around electives. Currently, students take two electives per semester. They would be allowed to take one going

081forward in this schedule. So, we would have some reductions there. It does allow us though, as I said earlier, to increase by a lot instruction in core courses. Again, aligns with our elementary soft starts and closes. It does allow us the required time for high dosage tutoring. The third grade reading guarantee this year is up to sixth grade, next year seventh grade, the following year 8th grade. So, this would allow us to meet the requirements of the of the third grade reading guarantee with scheduled time. It also allows us to space our lunches. So, currently we have students going and coming into the cafeteria at the same exact time. What we've learned from the high school this year is there is great benefit to having one group of students moving at a time and not

082two. So, we would have space lunches. It would also allow us to clean the cafeteria, turn it over, and make sure that all students are back in class and not loitering in the hallways. We would be able to do great specific encore offerings. We would not have the 78 splits anymore, and we would not have split classes around lunches. So, to staff this, what we're proposing here, currently, we have 54 core teachers. So, that's ELA, math, science, and social studies. We would need 43 Encore, we currently have 27. In this, we would need 15. Teachers currently teach four out of six periods. They would teach four out of five in this schedule. And students would select one encore class per semester instead of two. And we are not proposing changes to principles, assistant principles, counselors,

083intervention specialists, or pair professionals. In this, we project savings at middle school with these adjustments to be 3,318,873. Again, subject to change based on funding and enrollment, elementary and middle school title programming. What we're proposing is a significant adjustment to how we use our Title One funds. We have flexibility being schoolwide in all of our schools, which means that greater than 40% of our students qualify for free reduced price lunch, which gives us a lot of flexibility with how we use our Title One money. So, what we are proposing is that we would repurpose the 10 elementary teachers and six middle school teachers into classroom teacher roles. This would allow us to save 16 additional classroom teacher positions from general fund. Lorraine High and Success. We've made very significant adjustments to both Lorraine High and

084Success Academy over the prior two years. Last school year at Lorraine High, we revised the master schedule and staffing. At Success Academy, we started that work three years ago. That resulted in eight fewer teaching positions and one fewer assistant principal position. The savings on that was $865,000, $858. At Lorraine Hind Success Academy, right now we're proposing reducing two additional staff positions. Again, we have not talked with either of those people and we're not going to include them here in the presentation tonight. The proposed savings though, estimated savings on that is $251,99. central office reductions. We've made prior reductions and we're proposing additional reductions. Again, anyone we have not talked with in person yet um is not on this list, but is there as a placeholder. So, we've previously already reduced coming into this school year

085and this is reductions going to last school year and then into this current school year and then into next school year. uh the coordinator of federal programs and grants, the executive director of secondary curriculum, executive director of secondary initiatives, director of career tech, director of instructional technology, talent coordinator, and the payroll benefits specialist. We're proposing to also reduce an administrative secretary, associate director of communications, associate director of special education, coordinator of EL504 services, the coordinator of inter murals, director of wraparound services, executive director of operations, and executive secretary, the procurement supervisor, receptionist, and one additional position. We project the savings for the going into next year to be $1,32,770. additional reductions. We do have eight additional positions um that we will announce um but after meeting with the impacted individuals and our projected savings on

086those eight positions is $626,234. In addition, um central office administrators will take a pay freeze. We have talked with union leaders about the potential um for additional pay freezes. We'll have reduced summer school positions. We are reducing non-athletic, non-performing arts supplementals. We'll have reduced overtime, reduced substitute costs for professional development, reduction in purchase services and classroom supplies. Um we'll have no new curricular adoptions. We will reduce printer and printing um uh printers and printing and then uh reduce capital outlay. So the total on that that we estimate is $5,225,0008 5,225,860. So all total what we're proposing here the the biggest difference is obviously the approach to elementary there's a firstear savings and an ongoing savings. The numbers are different because when we submit to the Department of Education, we are not allowed to submit and

087count savings until September. Since staff are paid, most staff, not all, most staff are paid through July and August, we're not allowed to submit any of that as savings. So, we have two numbers to show the first year savings since we do not and are not allowed to count fullyear savings and then the ongoing yearly savings. So in a paired elementary model, what we're proposing is we would be reducing by $18,49,683 and the ongoing yearly savings be 20,511,3 with the K5 elementary model. Our proposed reductions would be 16,870,325 and ongoing yearly savings at 19,170,824. Let's transition the importance of the May levy. So, at the last special meeting, our board decided uh to place an 11 mil levy on the ballot. That's the equivalent of $385 per year per $100,000 home value. We also had

088a bond that just came off in December, which is the equivalent of approximately $100 per year per $100,000 of home value. So the amount going forward that would be new money would be approximately $285 per year per $100,000 home value. What this would allow us to do is prevent additional cuts. It would generate $10.7 million per year. And if the levy doesn't pass, we would be forced to look at an additional 4 to8 million in reductions for the 2728 school year. Next steps, Dr. Graham mentioned already, we'll have a staff town hall. U we'll have multiple town halls. The first one being for staff uh via Zoom this coming Wednesday. We will be conducting surveys in the community starting next week. We will have additional community town halls and we are going to have to

089recruit levy workers and we're going to have to work really hard at this. We do have to submit our plan to department of education and workforce at the end of the month. So the February 23rd is our deadline on that. As Dr. Graham said earlier, we began meeting with the impacted individuals last week. We'll continue to do that. We will follow all contracts for reduction in force. Um the LEA specifically has language um for both a paired school model and K5. So depending on the option that we our board elects, we will follow that appropriate language and the LA assigned unassigned pool will open. Want to emphasize all still staff will again maintain their positions through the school year. We are not doing midear layoffs and we have begun over the last six weeks compiling

090employment supports and opportunities for impacted staff. So, we have been looking for school districts who do have openings and we've been compiling that and we'll have that ready um as soon as we start the Rift process. Call to action. We we do have to band together. Public education is under attack. Urban education in particular is under attack. In May, when we sat here and and Miss Kernney gave the five-year forecast, we knew that we had an extremely important renewal levy to actually to pass in November. We were confident that they would pass and then we knew that we were going to need to work hard to have a reasonable millage levy for new money in the short-term future. We did not know the depth and the immediacy of the reductions we were about to face

091from our state legislature, from the federal government, and our county officials. So, we are asking for us to come together and contact our representatives. So, we encourage you to contact Senator Houston and Moreno and let them know about the impact of the federal reductions on our ability to provide a high-quality education for our students. They need to hear from us in a clear, respectful manner about the impact of their decisions. We need to contact our US House representative so he can understand the impact of the reduction in funds from the federal level. At the state level, our senator and representative, they need to hear from us. and our county commissioners certainly need to hear from us as well. Their decision in October deeply impacted us and every other school district in Lraine County. And just

092very quickly, uh, their decision is made annually. Um, I actually have a conversation with Brian Baker before the meeting. He's been meeting with the our county commissioners, but please reach out to them to let them know how big of a deal this is for us because if they want to reduce our taxes again next year, uh, they have to vote on it annually. So again, please be heard. These are extremely challenging times. Gives us no pleasure at all to have this conversation tonight to present either of these options for our elementary schools. We know that thousands of lives are being impacted by the playing field that we have to play in right now. So we are asking for us to come together again in a call to action like we did to get out of

093state takeover several years ago and to advocate for fair funding. The increase in voucher dollars in the bianiums to more than double in the last three budgets to take public money and fund private ed leaves us in this position. The dramatic increase in charter funding leaves us in this position. We do need to come together and advocate for fair funding. And this concludes the presentation. >> Thank you. Can you clarify? I wrote town hall Wednesday at 3. That's not right, is it though? Cuz some of our buildings get out at 3 and some get out at 3:30. >> What time is it? >> I think it's 3:00 to 5. >> Oh, she said she hasn't done the invite yet. So, we'll make sure. >> Okay. Okay. I just I wrote down three. I didn't know

094if I wrote it down wrong, just because some of them get out at three and some get out at 3:30. >> Yep. We'll make sure everybody's available. Yeah. Thanks. >> Thank you. >> And I'd also like to thank Ross for taking the lead on this. Um I've got some Well, I got blood clots in my lungs. I didn't have the air to do this. I'm fine, but appreciate him taking a lead on this. I wasn't trying to be disrespectful. Uh but again, we need to rally around each other. Take care, folks. Uh this is a horrible time, not just for education, but for um you as people. And again, as I mentioned before, there's um this is how we feed our families. This is how we we provide health care. So, there's a lot of

095layers to the awfulness of what we're going through. And uh and I trust that we'll take care of each other in the meantime. Um but again, I want to thank you for your time and and for your presence tonight. And and I I hope that continues. Questions from the board? Anything? >> Again, no decisions have been made. Uh we keep getting more and more questions that we keep finding the answers to and then we included all those the best we could in our presentation tonight. >> That's all I have. >> Question. Okay. Um any new business? >> Committee reports. Second hearing of the public. Again, if you are going to speak, just please sign in and um put your contact information if you if we need to contact you back with an answer. Thank you.

096>> Hi, Cheryl again. Just looking for a little clarification on prior reductions and proposed reductions and you were talking about your admin reductions. There are 18 positions listed there and you said that was only a savings of $1 million. Can you say how that's possible? Sorry, math person here trying to figure it out. Well, the cuts coming into >> Hi, Julie Garcia. Um, some of the cuts that you had on the admin side on the left side. I noticed some of those cuts, are they actually cuts because those are people that left? Like the first one I saw was the title one position or no, the um special grant position. Basically, it was Vicky Timo's position. She retired, but then somebody stepped in and filled her spot. So, that really isn't a savings. Maybe I'm

097just not saying the correct thing. Um, the other thing that I'd like to point out is some of the people that have been reduced, um, I've been made aware of, and I don't know if you've been made aware, but they are all women. Women in the age group of 50ish and all women of color, and they are also people who have been here for 25, 27 years. So, I'm not sure if you're aware of that, but just wanted to point that out. Hi, George again. Mine isn't about the budgets, but mine's was a little concerning about the young ladies and their signs being taken and torn up. Um, we were very vocal about the protest and how well it went. I think we need to be vocal about why that happened and what we're doing

098to correct it as well because as students of Lorraine High, they should be respected as well. So, I was just want to point that out as well. Hi, my name is Jackie Ziggler and I currently reside in Washington. I teach fifth grade and we are impacted by the autism building or or what's going to happen with the sister schools. So, we were just wondering when you may have a decision on when you will vote for what will happen. >> Sorry. Do you need me to I don't know. Did everybody hear me? >> Yeah. No, we heard you. No, we heard you. We Well, we have to submit this to the state by the 23rd. So, we should be able to vote as long as the plan is at our next regularly scheduled board meeting. >>

099Oh, that's on the 23rd. Are we going to have to have a special one or can we do it on that day? >> Okay. So, it will be on the 23rd. February 23rd. So my next question is there we as well as our friends at Garfield are wondering what will happen to us then and how we will be put into a pool with other people as far as if the one vote happens with sister schools or not sister schools because if some friends stay in sister schools and then there is the group of about 50 of us how our jobs will be impacted because that will only be about 50 of us I believe and some friends we have more seniority than other friends and we don't know if that is exactly fair and that

100has not exactly been explained to some of us yet. >> Thank you. Can do you have an answer for them or will we get back to >> We will get back. Yeah. So, we will make sure that we get an email out to the teachers as a whole. >> Yeah. The contract dictates uh the process that we have to follow. >> So, we'll meet uh with folks and let them know with your union represent or representatives to make sure they're on the same page. >> Thank you. Thank you. >> Uh Allison Quavvis. I am a preschool teacher that will be affected by this cut. We're going from 20 teachers to nine. And just looking at the layout, it says general ed will be 8 to 7, but we needed a little bit more specifics or

101clarification. At 8 and 7, that teacher has to be special ed certified to teach at 8 and seven. So that means every single classroom will be a special ed teacher only. And you're getting rid of all general ed teachers. Correct? the proposal is accepted. >> I actually can I quickly ask a question on that? So they will not have two paras either in their class because there was only 14 paras and nine teachers. So how is how will that work? >> Yep. Each each classroom would have one full-time parah and then there would be um five floating pair of professionals for the center. >> Okay. Okay. Thank you. >> I'm sorry. Five one. Go ahead. >> And again, to be clear, there's nothing's been decided. We were looked, we're looking to find out what things

102cost and how we could save money. So, nothing's been decided yet. But thank you. >> Hello, my name is Monica Swain, intervention specialist at Washington Elementary School. And both proposed plans didn't have Washington on the plan. So, is that I know you're saying that everything else is not in stone yet, but both of those plans didn't have Washington. So, is that a guarantee that Washington will be one of the schools eliminated and repurposed into one of these other schools? Thank you. >> Nothing is permanent. Nothing is finalized. Nothing's even a recommendation uh based on transportation, based on where our current students live, um or where students currently live. and based on transportation, those are the two buildings that made the most sense. But no, nothing is finalized. >> Summer Harvey, um I didn't see anything

103about the LCC relationship mentioned in the presentation. Is CCP going to be affected by this? >> It's not something that we've um recommended at this point. No. >> Okay. Um, and then there was a like specific line item where it said that students all students with disabilities um will receive services as legally required. Was that like purposefully written that way as though they're going to be losing? Is there some expected service that they're to be losing outside of support people or teachers? >> I missed the question. Did you get it? the depending on yeah depending on the grade level uh ages of the child uh children and the disability category there are limits on numbers and ratios and we will continue to make sure that we are legal legally compliant with all of those ratios.

104>> Gotcha. Um and then please don't take this the wrong way or or do but I'm confused why the board had no questions. I had 17 questions that some of them were already answered thankfully, but I don't understand how we um five of you sat here and watched through that presentation and don't have a single question >> just very quickly because we've been discussing this with the board for the past couple months. So they are they've been kept in a loop throughout >> and we did ask for it to be presented tonight >> and so for that >> yes we asked for it to be presented tonight. So we have had meetings previous and we've had a lot of questions answered already. Um a lot of the meetings were in executive session. So that was

105why we were not able to share anything because they were in executive session and so we weren't able to share anything from those meetings. So that's why we ha that's why we shared the presentation tonight and then are now we've asked for the town halls so that we can get some input from you at this point. >> Do you guys have any unanswered questions still? at this time. No, once I this I'm speaking personally for myself. >> Um I will um I of course will be attending the town hall. Um so that I can hear your concerns. I hear your concerns tonight. Um and I will also be that that in itself will bring more questions at that time. Of course I have had a lot of questions. Please know I had that. >> And

106real quick, back to your question about LCCCC and our agreement with them. Uh when we serve students here in our building, all students have access to go to any college they want to and we're required to pay for it. Um when our students do it here, it costs half as much as it does to go on their campus. So if we cut it here, they would go there and it actually cost us money. And I think the quality is better because you don't have to leave our hallways um to to get the college credits. Hi, I'm Lindsay Wright. I currently teach sorry uh second grade in Lorraine at Helen Siner Rice and I have been a teacher here in Lorraine for nine years. I'm also a product of Lurine City Schools, proud product of Lurine

107City Schools. And I live here as well. And I don't think it's fair of us to ask our community to vote for a levy of such great power when we're going to Neither of those proposals to me are enough of admin to be cut. I've keep seeing online because I'm from here that that's what they want to see and if you want that levy to pass I think there needs to be some more talk about admin being reduced. I also want to know if we are going to the sister school uh model. Um I'm at Helen Steiner Rice if that's going to be a K2 building like do I stay there or is the other school moving over to us? Um is there going to be a pool for this? I just feel like there's

108still a lot of questions that we aren't being given answers to. Thank you. >> Okay. >> Um I also am concerned that nobody asked questions from the board. Um this is that's that really is scary to me. Um also the preschool um is also very concerning. We know that our kiddos, most of our kiddos come to us unprepared. Um how is that going to help us with test scores? I believe it'll help I believe more students will leave to seek all day uh preschool or daycare um due to their parents and family schedules. Um, that was only not only but like a million something. Can we can we look at something different? Um, oh goodness. I had I had a couple things I wanted to say. Um, I respectfully I understand that this is um

109hard for you guys to do. I do think it is also uh disrespectful not to have answers tonight. Um, you know, who knows if somebody could make it to a uh a meeting, you know, on Wednesday or whenever. Um, I mean, I believe this is the first time that you guys are finding out when the meetings are. So, um, and and I I I said that I think at our first meeting of the year that, um, I appreciate how the board has been for years, for, you know, 8 12 years. Um, that there is a little back and forth. Um, no, there shouldn't be arguments, there shouldn't be whatever, but somebody comes here, where else do we get an answer from if you don't answer us now? You know, there is I mean, there is

110no town halls. I mean, maybe if something's going on, but in general, if people come to a board meeting, you guys say engagement, involvement, we're trying to be engaged, we're trying to be involved, and where else do you answer them? And most of the time when people come to the microphone, a lot of people have that question. It's not a necessarily personal, you know, issue. Um, so I asked you guys to consider um I know Miss Ziggler had a question um and Miss Wright, Mrs. Mrs. Wright, Mrs. Ziggler had a question. I asked you guys to please consider um answering those questions. And as far as we uh came together to overcome House Bill 70 and we need to do it again. Um agreed. Although I hope everybody is able to work together um you

111know admin this time, board this time and in the um and the educators um you know please I'm asking you guys and I I know you're busy and you guys got to call home with positive uh referrals. Don't forget those because that is really important and and parents love that. But please make time to call um the senators and call call everybody. Email everybody. I really believe that that is what made a difference when we were doing House Bill 70. You just got to harass them all the time. Um don't say I said to do it, but please do it. Thank you. >> Or say you said they might be like >> say Summer said I I love it. We I didn't know she was going to be here tonight. She's got a crazy work

112schedule, but let's do this and and get some money for our our district, for our kids, and for our educators. >> I think I got it. >> Hi, my name is Jenna Caesar. Uh, this is my second year in Northern City Schools. Um, I taught out of state for several years, was tenured, had everything. um was living the elementary good life and I thought you know what I'm going to come back to my family you know I was born and raised here um we moved back to my family and everything the first year great second year we get these cuts and I know it's happening everywhere um but you know that part just really sucks you know you leave being tenured to having two years under your belt um being paid as I am a

113eight-year teacher um but that's not seen in the state of Ohio. A lot of things aren't seen here. Uh what we do every day in the district, the day-to-day stuff, you know, we're the teacher, we're the mom. How many times I'm called mom every day or grandma or auntie. Um and to be in this position, it's not fair to anybody. And I'm number 80some on that seniority list. And you know, you just the outcome isn't great. However, my question is in either elementary plan, we didn't see secretaries. Um, we didn't see counselors. We didn't see speech language pathologists. Um, and there's a lot I can do in my classroom with those six-year-olds, but I can't do that other stuff. I can't be the secretary, too. I can't be the counselor that is able to do

114one-on-one with these students that ours does. Um, so to that, that's my question there. None of that was on either plan and those are huge pieces to a day-to-day life in an elementary building. So, >> yes, please. >> Yep. and and just I just the way we started any group that um could potentially be impacted um either individually or as a group that we haven't talked with yet in person, we did not intentionally intentionally did not include in the presentation tonight. >> Okay. Wait, I actually do have a question then. So, are those included in the 18 and 16 million or they're not included then since we didn't talk about them? because I guess I'm confused on this as well. >> Yes, one of those groups is included. >> So, they're included already on the

11518 and 16 >> financially, but not by >> name as a cut. >> Yes. >> Okay. >> Just one of them though because there was three I gave I gave speech language counselor and secretary. So, we're here to guess which one >> and and we we and we want to talk to the people impacted in person out of respect to them. We do not want them to find out on a PowerPoint slide and a Facebook post. We Brandon Votzki again. Um, so CCP was talked about. CTE, I don't recall seeing anything specific about that. Is that a program that is also being reviewed? Is that one of the ones that Ross just kind of referred to that hasn't been possibly discussed yet? Is there any planned impact there? >> We review it every year. not

116recommending. >> Okay. >> We have to offer so they go to the JBS and I believe our community is automatically um charged I think or automatically start paying two mills plus all the voted village. >> Gotcha. >> So there's there's a huge downside to >> No, I mean that's that's good news to me. Uh, the other question I had and and this is kind of dynamic, so I could appreciate if the answer is complicated or or maybe it hasn't been considered. So, some of these changes could make the public school district less competitive and less appealing compared to neighboring charter schools. Does any of this planning factor in any attrition or transition of students into or out of the district, I should say? Was that considered at all as part of this? You >> okay?

117>> Yeah, actually it was. There are a lot of things that we looked at and again a couple things at play. We got to make sure that we uh we have to save the money, right? We have to figure out a way to do that. But we also want to do it in a way that is least likely to impact enrollment. So that's why a lot of the decisions well thoughts that we have up there in terms of uh price tags and and cost of programs are the ones we considered. >> Okay. So follow-up question. Are you guys projecting a a net loss at least initially during this transition? >> Not at this time. No. >> Okay. Again, as Ross mentioned, our our enrollment has been steadily going up >> slowly. >> Hi, I'm Erica

118Turkington. Um, I teach at GJW. I've been there for 12 or 13 years. Um, my whole teaching career. Sorry. This is my life. We're a family here. I've stayed in the district because it feels like family. We we care about the kids. Um looking at the current teaching positions and the proposed we're going from 54 to 43. Um I see where on um one of the other slides it says allows for grade specific encore offerings. No more 78 splits. Is the 78 split gone? like we're just wondering where those teaching positions is that our team or is that other where are we going? >> And again, nothing has been even recommended yet, let alone decided. Uh we looked at what uh preschool cost and it cost us about $2.6 million that we don't get refunded.

119>> No, no, no. She's talking about 78 split at General >> like just across the middle school. the 78 splits. >> So, Erica, say your question again. I'm sorry. >> Um, so I teach at General. I'm on the 78 split with several of my other friends. Um, we're wondering if those 11 teaching positions going from 54 to 43 in the middle schools are from are we cutting the 78 split because it says on one of the slides that grade specific grade specific encore offerings, no more 78 splits. We're wondering is that no more 78 splits for itinerate classes or is that no more 78 split team altogether? >> So we would have again the contract will dictate what the reduction force process looks like and how that works. So seniority for middle school uh since

120there is no paired uh possibility at the middle school um would drive the reduction in force there. We would have grade level teams and then we would not have the well the encors would have grade specific classes as opposed to seventh and eighth grade classes now. >> Okay. So is the team that teaches two classes of seventh graders and two classes of eighth graders the core classes is that team going it >> not those specific people. Again, the the contract language will drive what that reduction of force looks like, but we would have grade specific teams. So, we'd have a sixth grade team, a seventh grade team, an eighth grade team at each school. We would not have split teams like we do now. >> Okay, that answers my question. Thank you. >> This is

121this okay? Um, my other question was Mr. Ross said something to the tune of our kiddos with special needs deserve a quality education and absolutely correct Mr. Ross, but I think all of our kids um deserve a quality education and my concern is with what is happening in some of the classes right now with the staff that we have right now. Um one of the reasons my daughter is now driving to Cleveland and Cleveland Heights is because of behaviors that were happening in a preschool classroom. Um, I just briefly got to speak with her before the meeting started and I asked her, "How'd it go?" And she said, "Well, I didn't get scratched today and nobody threw anything." Um, what are we going to do for the rest of the year? I mean, I don't

122think you What are we going to do to um help with the behaviors in the classrooms? I know we don't want to throw kids away and we don't want to remove kids with special needs um and isolate them. Um that's not what I'm asking you because I know sometimes that's our first response. I understand that and I'm not asking that. But I am asking what are we going to do now and how are we going to help the preschool and um anybody else that has paras with this drastic reduction. Um and the one school had a principal um the other school had a a leader. Uh what what's the difference there? And oh it's a preschool. And so if we have a principal, then are we going to get rid of the top director because

123we were only getting rid of one assistant director for preschool? >> I think the autism school also didn't have a principal, but it had a leader. So what is I guess I guess that would be a question, too. >> Yeah, please. >> We have look we don't have a solid plan right now. We need somebody that is a an an expert in autism and that they may not be licensed uh certain ways. So we're trying to leave that open but right now for example in mentor it's a she's a director I think um ours would be but we just need to make sure we have the expertise. So, regardless of title, someone needs to leave that building. >> When when she just said about actually something I wrote down that I heard you say is

124that there would be a separation from siblings in the because of the hub going to the class. Are our students not able to go though? So, if I had a second grade daughter that had a disability and Admiral King was my home school, but they had to go to Washington. I could inter my other children to Washington as well though. Correct. Correct. >> Okay. So, they're not in essence always being separated from siblings. If I do want to have my children, they can go. >> Correct. >> Thanks. >> Correct. >> I'm sorry. Go ahead. I uh I wanted to give the perspective of a parent that maybe you guys don't usually get because maybe parents um aren't this honest but when I heard your plan for the autism school and don't get me wrong um

125I know nothing about the mentor school so I do not know what the model is that you're looking at um so I'm taking that into um perspective But um as a parent, the two high school students that I was talking about who are excelling here um at Lraine High, both my sons have autism and are doing well in a regular education setting. My daughter, who I said is attending a private school through an IEP through Lraine City Schools, um is in a in one of these private school settings that you guys are referring to. um at that particular school. I know that she um let me start by saying this. I'm sorry. In Lorraine City Schools, my daughter walked out of class um I would say every four to six minutes throughout the day. She

126was a complete disruption to everyone's education around her. She was a complete disruption to every teacher who was trying to teach her. Um she was unable because of fight or flight to stay without running continually throughout the day. Um she would go to the office. She would drive the secretaries completely insane. um until they called me to emergency remove her every day from the classroom. Um she was the the teachers needed support from admin. So they would call administration to help with her or to babysit her or to contact me 30 times throughout a day at Longfellow Middle School. So, I just want you to think about the fact that that's just one child who would be in that autism school and you're proposing to take away some of the teachers to take away that

127at Longfellow there were multiple administrators and they still needed me to pick her up every day. There were multiple mental health professionals and they still there was a social worker on staff and they still needed me. There were teachers upon teachers upon teachers and she switched classes throughout the day and I still needed to come get her. And that's one child with severe behaviors, one child with this disability and proposing to put 16 like that. It it's it's scary to think that one intervention specialist without additional admin, without additional supports, without counselors on staff, without behavioral intervention specialists above the teacher. Um, it could be a very sticky situation. Um, so I just wanted to and I don't know if there's any stu um teachers that second this but it's it's very it's a difficult

128thing to deal with and um so I looked at that. I'm a behavioral health professional and um also a parent like I said of multiple children and that just it seemed like a really that's a large undertaking. Um, and I get it financially the numbers like you sold me. Um, but the but the back of my mind was like who who suffers like that state minimum education is like those teachers? It's hard to provide a state minimum education to multiple children who are trying to flee a classroom or multiple children who are punching themselves in the face or multiple children who cannot stop screaming to save their lives. Um, and without a lot of support in and out of the classroom in that school, it would be very difficult to run. Thank you. >> And

129I agree. Thank you. Good evening members of the school board. My name is Clover. I am in second grade at Steven Dhana School. I am here because I am worried about possible budget cuts that could affect my teachers and counselors. These adults help me learn, feel safe, and succeed every day. Losing them would make it much harder. Please think of students like me when making these decisions. Thank you so much for coming up. >> Hi, I'm uh Tom Price. I'm the assistant principal at Steven Danes. I just have a question, Mr. May. Thank you so much for the presentation, the numbers. has the consideration been given cuz I'm looking at a lot of people here that are talking about family and working together and speaking as a school administrator trying to run a building with

130less and less people next year is a a nearly impossible task. So has the consideration been given? Is there a number that as employees of the district and as a resident of the community if I gave back 10% of my salary or 15% of my salary could I keep my staff intact? Has that been considered? Yes. >> Is that is is there a number then we can hear publicly that we are willing to consider or talk to our unions about? >> Um actually we're meeting with the union. We've already mentioned it to the unions. We're meeting again I think tomorrow but I think the number is it 5% is three and a half million dollars to you. >> Yeah. >> So uh 10 million is what then? or I'm sorry, 10% would be >> would

131be 7 million. >> Okay. Okay. I just want to make sure we Okay. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. >> I I don't know if there's a turn limit on this, but um I had a question. It might seem kind of small or trivial, but there was a mention of only funding I I believe it was athletic and performing arts um extracurricular. So does that mean what what are we talking about cutting then at that point? Are we talking about like school clubs, key club, things of that nature, student council? >> Uh we have a lot of supplementals that are academically based uh district leadership team building leadership team PBIS MTSS and those combined are a little over $300,000. Is that right? Yeah, >> that one I'd have to check. >> Was that >>

132I'd have to check that. >> Yeah, but it's it's sub it's it's a substantial number. >> Okay. So was any of that reducing experiences or opportunities for students or because in your answer it sounds like not so much. >> No, not so much for students. What it does though is I think it digs into the heart of our leadership style here which is collaborative. >> Yeah. >> Takes away from collaboration. Yeah. >> Yeah. I'm not devaluing that. I was just I was trying to get uh parameters on on what exactly was impacted. Thank you. >> Thanks. >> Good evening. My name is Patti McHugh. I'm a longtime resident of the city of Lraine. My children went to school in the city of Lraine. My husband graduated from Admiral King in 1969. He's no longer with

133us. Um, and I'm also the secretary at Larkmore Elementary School where I'm very proud to be a secretary and a staff member with the family of Larkmore. So, in one of the slides, Mr. Ross said, "How can we create revenue?" Well, I have a simple solution to this problem if we can work it. We have several properties of land that have nothing sitting on them. The property where Lowel and Whittier were, South View High School, um, Lake View School. Those are properties that are sitting there stagnant. Why can't we sell those properties? It would bring revenue into our district and maybe create new businesses that would be paying into taxes. Also, I don't ever remember where, and don't take this the wrong way because this is just my opinion. I have never been involved with

134a district who has a superintendent and three assistant superintendent. To me, that is wasteful spending. And that's just my opinion. Also, I recently found out that you hired another person in another department making a very sizable salary. If we don't have money to save teachers, secretaries, nurses, interpreters, paras, why would you go and hire more people when we don't have any money? And finally, a while ago, we purchased a dilapitated building, which we should never have bought. We could have used one of those sites that I said that are standing stagnant and we could build a brand new building which would be cheaper than what you paid for the health department. So we need justification as to why there is misappropriation of spending. And until you all get this, God bless you if our our

135levy passes, but we need to start making bigger cuts and think about selling those properties. Thank you, >> please. Yeah, because we don't own all of those. >> What's that? >> Because we don't own all of those properties. >> Yeah, bits and pieces. First of all, uh most of those properties we don't own. They're city-owned. We do own South View, that property. Uh we did buy the old health department. It was valued at over $800,000. We got it for $200,000 back when we thought we had money. And the goal was to expand uh where our current admin offices are to CTE programming. Uh but again, that's when we thought we had money and candidly, we didn't expect this to happen, but it did. Um the we have two assistant superintendents. We have I've been here

136for 10 years. We have always had that and it comes down to skill sets and depth. What we did uh at the beginning of my second tour uh when I was here the first time um I think that Tom Tucker everybody was an assistant superintendent. Uh then when I was here it was assistant superintendent, executive director, director. Then when David Hardy was here, everybody was chiefs and assistant chiefs. So, we had uh Ross, Carol Gotchling, and I want to say either T or Julie, but kind of went through all the job descriptions and aligned them with the OD's title of what those things are to make sure that we reporting things properly, and that's what the titles are. >> Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead. >> Hi, I'm Emily Sherius. Um, I work at Palm Elementary.

137If you heard me crying wobbly, it's probably from me in the back. Um, Palm is a very special school. I think everyone here would say that we stay here because of our babies. They're not don't not even they're kids. They're our babies. These kids don't all have families that love them. And I mean, I can't tell you like Dr. Am, you've seen me like at every school. You say, "Oh my gosh, I see you everywhere. Everything I do is for these babies. I do girls in their run. I go like I'm making social media posts. I do our social media at home." Um, I'm doing that like at 11:00 p.m. because it makes a kid smile. I I go around and pick up shoes and socks and clothes and food. I'm getting donations. This is

138all on weekends at nights. This is my time I spend away from my family and my friends so that I can give these kids the proper life they deserve. And I mean, I'm I'm also, I said, I'm a speech pathologist, so I I deal with some students with really intensive needs. And um I've sat in IEP meetings where they don't want to go to a different school. They their their home school might be somewhere else, but they've sat in there said they're so used to you. I want them to be with you guys. They they don't want to go back to home schools. They are very aware where their home school is and they don't want to go there. They want palm. If you would choose a sister school, like I get it. This is

139a very hard decision to make, but those numbers in the end run, they're saving like what was the couple year one was like $500,000 and you're splitting up our our families just to make a $500,000 difference in the end run. And just something to consider is we all know Lorraine, we're all here because it's high trauma and we can have the biggest impact with these kids that we love so much. And in a high trauma district where these kids often come from broken families, how can we take away their family from them? How can you split up these kids from their families that they've made? It's just I can't imagine, you know, not being a part of home anymore and half my kids being taken from me in the school. And who will take care

140of them, you know, who will who will go get their shoes for them? I just I can't fathom it. Thank you so much. >> Good evening. My name is Brandy Simplicin. This is my fourth year at Lorraine. I teach math here at the high school. I took some notes during the presentation and I have some questions for some clarity. One of the proposals was to eliminate the executive director of operations. First question, is there an associate director of operations who will be minding the store when it >> is eliminated? >> Director. >> Okay, makes sense. And did you decide that the executive director was that position was more expendable because it was a more expensive position? >> No. >> What was the thought behind it? We need to cut money. So we instead of having

141the two people as we always have. It was Jeff Hawks and uh I forget his name. >> Kevin Hop. We've always had two people there and we can't afford two people. So I have one person. >> I understand. I also saw you have the intention of getting rid of the associate director of communications. Didn't we recently hire an executive director of communications? >> We have a director of communications. That's correct. >> Okay. Um, wasn't our associate director of communications taking care of business >> in the earlier part of the year? >> We we can't talk personnel in public session. >> I'm not talking about personnel. I'm talking about duties. >> Understand? My observation as an employee here is that Lisa Robersonson has been doing the job of whatever you want to call the top position.

142And if there's going to be a top position, it should be her that holds it. But it looks like she's on the chopping block. And that's just wrong. You need to think through that. Second, collectively, especially you, you Dr. Graham, you need to stop being conflict avoidant. You've had two months approximately to consider all this. Nobody had any questions because you've had two months to think about this and you only have about two weeks left before it has to be submitted to the state. If you haven't made your decisions yet, I'm surprised. It's okay. You have tough decisions to make, but go ahead and own them. >> I have no problem owning my recommendations. >> Okay. >> Again, the keep in mind, as we've said several times, what the board votes on next week is

143not necessarily what we have to implement. We still have time to come up with something better. Uh but if we don't come up with something better, OD will force us to implement that. So, we don't have to make a decision in a week. And candidly, we've had many conversations with the board. They've had many questions. what you saw were the answers to the questions they've been asking. >> Well, what I meant is that you've pretty well got it figured out. And so I think you should just go ahead and say if somebody comes up with a better idea that we'll listen to it and maybe we'll adopt it. It's just not productive to backpedal and say, "Well, nothing's set in stone." >> Nothing is. Okay. Thank you. >> Thank you. Good evening, members of the

144board and community. My name is Mary Septchek. Uh Clover's mom. I'm not as nice as her. Um I have some concerns with maybe a disconnect with who's sitting up there in our actual neighborhoods. Um we have uh you're considering collabing uh the west side with the south side. We actually have safety issues that I'm concerned about with um parents um uh gun safety. Um there's just a lot of turf wars. Um are you all aware of that situation? >> We we are aware of our community at that. Yes. >> Okay. I just I just I'm uh a graduate of South View and I came from Lorraine High. So the transition I'm just very um involved and I know how how it went down with the students and just how uh much anxiety it caused with

145the students and how hard it is. So I was just wondering if you have like a plan of action or a safety plan for that >> separate from our current safety plan. No, we do not. >> Okay. Um, and I guess the other, uh, you know, I hear we have three superintendent. Um, Clover and I are pretty active in the community, and the first time I met you was when I came to the, uh, uh, open door meeting the other day. So, um, and I've never met the other two superintendent. So, >> that's all. Thank you guys. Oh, Ros. It's right there. >> Okay. >> Assistant Superintendent. >> I'm just I'm just saying I've never met any of y'all, but thank you. Have a good evening. >> Hi. Um I'm Sonia Rodriguez. I teach um

146preschool at Helensteiner Rice. And I actually jotted some stuff down because I know I talk really fast. Um, but you stated um that there were some positions that you may eliminate, but you didn't want to let them know yet on a slideshow, but you let all of us know today. So to us, that's kind of a slap in the face. I know I used that word before. Um, so that which means that many of us are going in the pool. We didn't know. Um, I teach preschool. I knew nothing about preschool. Um, and it also looks like on the slideshow that you're cutting preschool. Um, but you're only keeping nine positions. Um, but those nine positions are for duallicicensed teachers. Um, unfortunately, I'm not a dual- licensed teacher, so I can't apply for one of

147those positions. So, I'm going in the pool. Um, and it's sad. It's sad to find this out this way. We talk a lot in preschool about transparency, and nothing has been transparent to us. um even asking questions. We'll get back to you. No one knows. And then we find out this way that there's going to be nine classes and again they're dual licensed. Um you know, I would love for you guys to walk into my preschool classroom. I have three-year-olds writing their names, know how to spell their names. I mean, they can tell you their rhyming words. I love what I do. And unfortunately, you're telling me that I won't be able to do this anymore. And you're telling those kids that I can't walk back into the classroom and teach them anymore because I'm

148not dual licensed. And then you're going to a half-day program. I did the half day program last year. And let me tell you, many of those kids would have definitely benefited for all day. I had parents saying,"Wh is this? Why are you doing half day?" And we're like, I said, "I don't know." Because nobody has ever spoken to us. Nobody has ever come to my classroom and say, "How's it going? I love what you're doing." No one has ever done that. And I would love for you guys to do that. Come and talk to my kids. Come in my classroom on a daily basis. I have my admin come in my classroom. They're dancing with the kids. They're talking to the kids. The kids can tell you what we're doing, what unit we're on, tell

149you what crafts we're doing because of that unit and what we're learning on a daily basis, but I have yet to ever see anyone come into my classroom. And then I'm finding out this way that I won't be in that classroom anymore. I have to go up to something else if there's an opening because now preschool is being eliminated. I know you're talking about preschool dollars, but they are sponges. They learn at that age. I'm sorry to tell you, but at 3 years old, if they can tell you how to, you know, spell their name and write their name at three years old and can tell you a rhyming word, that means a lot. If they can go to kindergarten finding their name and writing letters and writing numbers, yes, I know that doesn't seem

150big, but that is huge. I can definitely tell you that. I taught first grade, and first grade, there's many that couldn't tell you what a number looked like. I'm not kidding you. They couldn't tell you the difference between a number and a letter. And I have three-year-olds that can do that right now. So, I really, really want you guys to look at the preschool program. Talk to us if you need to talk to us. Come to my room. Come and talk to us. Come and talk to our kids and see what we're learning on a daily basis because like I'm telling you, they are sponges and that is when they're learning. So, that is all I have to say. Good evening, Jessica Dugan, principal at Washington. Um, could you please elaborate a little bit more

151on how you landed on Washington um as the choice to be repurposed for the autism building? >> Yeah, this was complex. Um when we looked at again the building use to capacity and two of our biggest buildings are next to each other and both have 450 capacity and both of the schools are um in the 70% use for capacity. Our population has shifted. The school for autism the class sizes are six and that's the max class size. So for us when we looked at um choosing a school we believed that one of our 450 schools person schools would make the most sense. Larkmore being the only school on the east side of Lorraine did not make any sense. So then that meant either Frankosinto or Washington. And so we ran a number of different simulations

152to look at the impact of repurposing Frankosinto, repurposing Washington. For Frankosinto there, um the proximity of the high school is really appealing and as students enter the program and go up into the high school, we really wanted to have connection to the high school. for um Washington. When we looked at it and ran all our transportation simulations, we had a really hard time balancing enrollment across our other schools. So, as we take schools out of circulation, that means that other schools have to pick up and we had a really hard time with Frankento just balancing enrollment across the other schools. Washington allowed us to better balance enrollment across our other schools. And so that's why Washington is the school that we'd be proposing to repurpose for that school. >> My name is Gina Tilton. I

153am a language arts teacher at South View. As somebody that is dealing with sixth grade rimps right now and what we know about education, the cuts to preschool are ridiculous. Our population of all populations needs teachers in preschools to so those kids get those foundations. They don't make those up. They they just I've got kids that cannot read a sentence. They can't recognize their name and they're in sixth grade and they need those foundations that the preschool teachers give our students. I thought we were moving in the right direction. This is this is devastating for those students. I don't think that they can recover from missing that education. Thank you. >> Anybody else? Again, thank you all for coming. >> I'm sorry, >> just real quick. I'm sorry. I didn't want to jump in front

154of her, but the Washington thing, I mean, not that I would want to throw any school under the bus, obviously, but specifically Washington and its proximity to General Johnny Wilson, I don't know if that's something that you considered, but the way that the siblings are able to maintain relationships as far as like picking their siblings, walking over there to Washington or, you know, vice versa or whatever. I don't know if you've considered that, but that is a big deal. They're both next to each other. There isn't another elementary school position that way if I'm not mistaken. >> Hi, I'm Beth McCall. I'm a speech language pathologist in the district. I'm also a resident of Lorraine, homeowner in Lorraine. My daughter is a graduate of Lorraine High. um very concerned that I did not see the

155speech language pathologist listed anywhere in any of those slides. And as a group of people that you're referring to that potentially could be cut, I'm very concerned. I wasn't concerned until today of what could happen to us as a group. We're already down one therapist. We're not even we don't have a therapist at Garfield currently and most of us are drowning right now in case loads and and trying to provide adequate services to our to our kids. Not superior services, adequate. Some of us barely are making an impact because of the how we're drowning. But I'm still concerned about my job now, which I wasn't until I walked into this room and saw these slides today. I'd really like to know if I'm going to have a job next year. Anyone else? Um, our next

156board meeting again will be on February 23rd at 5:00. Um and that is when we are going to be voting on plan with full transparency. Um if I could leave please have a motion to go into executive session for A2 and E employment and matters required to be kept confidential. So move >> second roll call. >> Dr. Ballard. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Rosario. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Nazario. >> Yes. >> Mr. Balor. >> Yes. >> Mr. Sturgil. >> Yes. We will not be taking any action when coming out of executive session.