001e e e like to call the regular scheduled meeting for Monday February 24th of Lorraine Board of Education to order call the role Please Mr Ferguson here Mrs Washington here Dr Balor here Mrs Nazario here Mrs Sturgill here I'd like to invite Mr Scott to introduce our pledge folks thank you president um at this time I have the honor of introducing uh Miss desik and Miss Stewart from Steven toas uh they're they're going to introduce their students that are here tonight um to lead us in the pledge followed by a presentation uh that is pretty awesome I see all the smiles in the audience already can't wait to hear um all the good things that are going on at Steven Dan so so at this time uh Miss desik please take it away good afternoon
002thank you for having us here good afternoon just remember pledge first just like we do every day at school let come on ladies everyone please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance alce to the flag of the United States of America and to be public for which it stands one nation under God and indivisible with liberty and justice for all good evening I'm Mar principal St [Music] okay in our because weome we have our social work we brought in because our girls we thought needed a voice so they are have started a group called wonderfully me with hi my name is Bella and my favorite part about group is making new friends and building self-esteem hello everyone I hope everyone's having a blessed day my name is Le angelise I'm excited to have fun and learn
003about feelings and getting along with each other hi my name is leise my favorite about the group is learning how to call count my feelings and it's coming the Fe okay so you guys sound great online it's awesome when do you go home hi my exced looks like we have a few girls who did not make it so each one of us is going to pick one atanta said I love horses my favorite thing in girls group is learning how to solve problems and get along with others cool then we have another student evangelene she said that she's excited to get to know the people in her group and learn how to feel good about herself all right and Desiree says my favorite part of group is having friends to talk with about my feelings
004and knowing that I will be safe okay can we talk about your poster so can I have a few friends [Music] hold okay so we are the wonderfully me fourth grade girls group okay uh so we are a really cool group I'm sorry to say but we are the coolest group in in the District but um our group is designed we follow the wonderfully me curriculum which is a great 8we curriculum um that focus on social emotional learning um but what we focus on in our group is that we already take the strength the strengths that the girls already have and we build on it so we look at the whole student and see how can we build on what they're already good at so we build on their emotional strength their mental strength um
005their academic strength um their relationships with others and we just build on that so each week we have a different theme so we work on friendships we work on communication we work on understanding our feelings and sharing those feelings with others um so it's a very active group um the unique thing about this group is that we want the girls to make it their own okay so it's not Miss Megan and I from guidestone running the group this is theirs this this is the rules that they came up with okay so they all signed it there their John Hancock is on there that they agreed to follow these rules that they developed okay so we're also working on a group name um we're working on a handshake for the group um we're going to design
006some T-shirts for our group um so they can take ownership of it and also encour encouraging leadership skills okay so I have a few pictures that we can pass around just to show what uh what one of our groups look like um and we also with wonderfully me they give us a journal so every girl has a journal that they write in every week um again focused on whatever that week's topic is um and this journal is for them it is private it is locked up when they're not with us and they write in and when they're done they take it home with them but this is their group okay Miss Megan and I are just there to support but we want them to know that these skills are skills they can take with them
007for the rest of their lives in every setting they go into so thank you ladies and let's not forget the attendance so again this is another activity that we do to try to continue to bring up our attendance give the students something else to look forward to I have to throw that in because it's all about you can't do wonderfully me if you're not in school so amen great job well don't go too far uh because I think this is a time where we all like to get together with the board members and take a picture so family students let's come on up man that's a shame they're having a good time too this is for to be here [Applause] [Music] families if Dr Graham were here he would tell you that the fun part
008is over do not you will not offend anyone if you uh resume your normal day especi recognition of visitors I recognize that visitor shearing public oh yeah you're you're a hearing of the public but go ahead visitors go ahead julcia UC Association president um just giving you a couple updates of what we're doing we are uh continue to have our Lea scholarships we will have two for lurine high seniors and we also have one for an Lea members child specifically um Mrs Ferguson at lurine high will have um more information when the scholarships are available for the students to begin applying for the other thing is the Lea is the spotlighted organization for the Lorraine International Festival we will have a booth in giving away Lea branded items we will also be participating in the
009parade so we are inviting retired teachers to participate in the parade with us they can either get their own vehicle convertible if they're able they can walk we're going to try to work on getting a float so if anybody out there in the community knows how to build a f please reach out to me my email is President Lorraine ea.com we'd like to have a float for the um retired teachers who would like to participate a to walk we our theme is going to be past present and future alorian city schools and those retired teachers will participate again in the prey the present teachers we um think we're going to beg and ask we can borrow a bus to put our present teachers on school bus participate in the parade and then our future will
010be our young teachers and their children riding bicycles in the parade and they can decorate their own Bic so we have a presence for um everybody to participate in the LA International um Festival parade and I think the parade is June 29 but more information will be coming and I will be sending out emails and announcements on social media of any kind of meetings that we have to organize um those who want to participate in the festival that's it for us thank you thank you any other public [Music] good evening my name is Randy simp I'm Randy third year teacher at Marine High School yes you are reason I wanted to speak tonight was to offer some input unsolicited about uh future years school calendar this past Memorial Day I was at a graduation party
011and I was talking with my cousin who teaches in a district in rural Ohio and I was just making conversation and I said so when are you uh getting out of school she looked at me kind of funny and she said we've been out for two weeks and I said what and she said yeah there's no point to going to school after the testing is done and that started me thinking um I think I agree with that and the way we do things in rine I think there's room for improvement as far as that goes um I teach semester classes and so this this year the semester was over third week in January but the testing window started in the beginning of December so I counted it out and that was six weeks from the
012start of testing and at the time was teaching algebra one so there was six weeks from the time of their test till the end of the semester and we can't catch lightning in a bottle and given the width of the testing window we're not going to maximize that to to the last day but I think there's room for perhaps three weeks that we could catch in the bottle so to speak and that's what I like to see uh the district do the board do in adopting it its next calendar how can we do that well one way to do that is to not end the semester in January but ended at what feels like more natural break at uh at Christmas break or winter break well so that picks up two or perhaps three weeks
013but at the same time I'm sure you want to keep the sizes of the semesters pretty close to equal as as do I and how do we accomplish that well that's a hard enough to crack um and I'm going to offer you an opinion statement I would like us to not have teacher professional development the first four or five days of school and here's why I why that would work for me whether I want to or not I'm thinking over the summer about how I'm going to do things differently the next year thinking about what works and thinking about what could be better and so over the course of the summer I'm coming up with my game plan there's a lot of great ideas shared with me in the first week in August before the
014teachers come back or before the students come back but I'm I've already got my plan in place and so a better time for me to to get that information would be right before the summer starts so my suggestion would be move as many professional days as possible from the beginning of the year to the end of the year students can get out closer the end of the testing window in May and then teachers could have professional development and wrap up their year there there's a lot of moving parts that would have to be worked out have to be figured out um I can I can give you input in detail if you're interested or ideas but that's something I'd like you to consider because the semester classes that I teach that's six weeks that my
015students missed out of instruction are getting instruction before they took the test semester classes that's like 12 weeks that's that's 30% of year and um I think I think our students are going to do better just having more instructional time I think our district is going to do better as result thanks thank you thank you thank you I'm going to suggest that you slide down two seats and talk to the lady who's part of the calendar committee as well ladies okay uh I'd like the board to consider approval of the minutes of the February 10th regular meeting we do reserve the right not to read those minutes aloud second roll call Dr Ballard yes Mrs Nazario yes Mr Ferguson yes Mrs Washington yes Mr Sturgill yes any old business besides bill and I reports and
016recommendations of the treasurer I have items 8.01 through 8.03 for approval any discussion entertain a motion some moov roll call Dr ballor yes Mr seril yes Mr Ferguson yes Mrs Washington no Mrs Nazario yes uh reports and recommendations of the superintendent Personnel matters all right on uh behalf of Dr Graham let the board to consider items 9.01 through 9.04 Personnel matters move I support any discussion roll call please Mrs Washington yes Dr Ballard yes Mr Ferguson yes Mrs nazaria yes Mr sturg yes reports and recommendations to the superintendent operations matters thank you on behalf of Dr Graham I like the board to consider approval of items 10.01 through 10.05 in operation matters so move support discussion roll call please Dr Ballard yes Mrs nzar yes Mr Ferguson yes Mrs Washington yes Mr sergel yes anything
017else for Dr Grim okay any new business to come before us committee reports and requests from board members second hearing of the public uh next board meeting will be March 10th at 5:00 p.m. right here be there and I would entertain a motion for adjournment support roll call please Mr Sturgill yes Mrs Washington yes Mr Fergus yes Dr ballor yes Mrs Nazario yes