Medina City Schools Board of Education Meeting 6/17/25

001I'd like to call I'd like to call Is it on? All right. Uh, I'd like to call this June 17th regular board meeting of the Madina City School Board of Education to order. Uh, this is a meeting of the board of education in public for the purpose of conducting the school district's business and is not to be considered a public community meeting. There is a time for public comment during the meeting as indicated in the agenda. Would everybody please rise for the pledge of allegiance? I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Mr. Chambers, when you're ready, roll call, please. Mr. Nichols. Miss Parkers. Here. Miss Pritchard here. Miss Sme here. Mr. West

002here. Thank you. First up is the uh I would entertain a motion for the approval of the regular meeting minutes from the May 20th regular uh board meeting. I'll make a motion to approve the minutes of the May board meeting. Do I hear a second? I'll second. Thank you both of you. Uh any questions or comments on the May 20th uh meeting minutes hearing? None. Mr. Chambers. Miss I. Miss Parker. I Miss Perkard. I Mr. West. Yes. Thank you. Uh are there any additions, removals, modifications to the agenda? Anybody? I'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda. Do I hear a second? I'll second. Thank you. Any questions or comments? Anybody? Mr. Chambers. Miss Per. I. Miss Moore. I. Miss. Parker. I. Mr. West. Yes. Thank you. Uh, next up we have items for

003information and discussion. Mr. Sable, you're up first. Just waiting for us to load here. We're moving a little slow. Uh first up tonight, uh we'd like to present our past strategic plan to the board of education. Uh we just begun our new strategic planning process for the next three to five years. uh that strategic planning uh process is coming to a close which is why we wanted to provide an update on all of our past goals. The new strategic plan process began with our uh district administrators at last week's uh administrator retreat uh where we work collaboratively to not only review the current plan but also uh gain ideas for the new plan moving forward. Uh we have a board retreat coming up on July 30th. Uh we're going to be spending half the day

004on July 30th uh with the board working on our new strategic plan led by uh the impact group. Going into next school year into the fall, we're going to be engaging all of our staff uh as well as our students and our community in uh helping us to develop uh our new strategic plan for the future. I do anticipate with our current or with our new strategic plan that it will not only be a direct reflection of our portrait of a bee. Uh but in addition to that uh it's going to be expanding upon uh goals and initiatives that we already have in place. Uh so as a district we're not looking at completely new directions. We have the same goal. Uh the point of the strategic plan is looking at our pathway in continuing

005to reach and exceed the goals uh that we have in place. So Ryan, I'm going to ask you at this time if you could broadcast uh the slideshow and I'll go up to the podium to kick things off. So our strategic plan contains uh several different parts that reflect uh the various areas within our school district. Uh obviously academic uh achievement technology uh reigns tops uh on that plan. The whole purpose uh why we exist as a public school district is to provide an education for our students. So one of the main goals within our strategic planning process is the education of our students. Um we all know that academics uh and the work of education goes way beyond uh just the core curriculum areas. Um, and that's reflected in our portrait of a bee,

006uh, which we'll be taking a look at, uh, through this process as well. Again, not looking to make any major changes, but maybe some polishing, uh, to our portrait of a bee. But our portrait of a bee reflects competencies uh, even beyond the core curriculum. Uh we want well-rounded students uh that are uh learning in a good culture and is developing student wellness as well as preparation uh for post-secary whether it's jobs, military uh or uh some other sort of education uh that includes the soft skills. In addition, it's important that we take a look at our uh facilities as well as safety security. Um what we want from our facilities uh moving forward uh whether it's maintaining what we currently have or making adjustments and moving in new directions. And of course finances uh

007which has been a big topic of conversation uh at our board meetings recently as our state legislators work through the state budget. But having adequate finances and financial plans in place to ensure that we can meet the goals uh that we're going to set within our new strategic plan. Uh communications plays a key role. uh you'll see that in our past plan and I anticipate moving forward this will be a key component uh having that collaborative relationship uh with our community uh with our neighboring communities and school districts uh with professional organizations and at the state level as well uh to make sure that it's a collaborative process as we're moving through and working with students in Madina City Schools uh and staffing and human resources is a vital piece uh we're only as good

008as the people uh that are working with us and our children. Uh so making sure that we have a strategy in place to get uh the best individuals working with our students has to be a priority and then ensuring that we're meeting the needs uh to make all students successful uh as well. Another piece that we're going to be taking a look at as part of the strategic planning process is revisiting our mission statement uh as well as our vision statement. Uh we have not uh reexplored uh these two things uh at least in the last uh 10 years that I've been part of the school district yet. We've had a lot of change in direction and growth with the deeper learning and a portrait of a bee. So, it's vitally important that we revisit

009the mission and vision statements, make sure that those align to our current goals uh and our student and district needs uh for the future. Uh so, I think some modernization of these two statements and making sure they align with the other work that we do uh is important. Uh the other piece that we've talked about in some of our preliminary meetings is making sure we have a mission vision statement in place that people can connect to, they know, and they understand. And to be quite frank with you, I don't know that we could go out to uh any of our employees uh or our students and have them really be able to say what our mission vision statement is. I think most of them would point to our portrait of of a bee or our

010motto that we've used for the last uh many years of every student every day. Uh so creating a mission and vision statement that people can actually connect through and connects with the work we're doing uh is going to be a key part of this process. At this time, I'd like to invite Tina Cassidy, our director uh of instruction, so she can review these are our past goals of our previous plan and updates as to how we've met those goals. Okay, thanks. Okay, so our um academic goals really uh built on our last strategic plan as well. So we have been moving in this direction now for um for around eight years and it's really exciting that the the growth that we have made. Our academic achievement goal one was to create and offer students essential

011life skills opportunities through daily curriculum to partner with local and regional businesses organizations and nonprofits to create student internship and mentorship programming and to utilize community resources to impact students learning. So we have tried to add in um life skill opportunities so that students can learn essential life skills through our elective coursework. We have we added middle school 101. We added a cooking class. We have financial literacy which is actually um not an elective anymore but it was an elective originally and that because that was something that our community said that they wanted. They wanted students to um learn about financial literacy. And we have a home maintenance class which I know that you guys know about. We also started an elective fair. Lisa started an elective fair for all u Madina High School students

012so they could learn about these opportunities and they and they would know that they were available for them. We created a day shadowing program for students in grades 6 through 12 and that was to complement our CEO program. Our CEO program is a intensive um uh internship program where students spend 40 hours in the field. We wanted a less intensive uh program so that uh students could kind of go out and just for a day visit and see if they were interested in a career. So we started a a day shadowing program. Um our CEO program has doubled since we started it. So we started with one teacher and I think about maybe 15 kids or 11 kids. Uh we're now over 40 kids and we have two teachers teaching the class. And we have

013expanded our use of community resources to give students real world problem solving opportunities all the from preschool all the way through grade 12. And I know that I've put in my board reports um the numbers from Spark Madina and how they have been working with our with our students um and also the Ohio um University Extension Office has been here and they actually came to a board meeting and presented on how they worked with some of our kindergarteners. So they have done a lot with us and they've given our kids lots of great learning experiences. And then our second goal was to advance curriculum instruction and assessment practices so that we would engage learners in problembased 21st century learning experiences uh to ensure consistent delivery of curriculum from classroom classroom and building to building and

014explore and expand service learning opportunities. And one of the ways that we um did that was we started capstones um in fifth, 8th and 12th grades. So uh through our capstone we're able to assess how students are doing on the portrait of a B competencies and they expanded service learning opportunities uh for students and also career awareness. Uh we also have and I don't have this up here but um we had we started a service learning class at the high school um so that students who are interested in doing service learning uh could do that as part of their high school experience. Um in order to ensure um consistent delivery of curriculum from classroom to classroom and building to building, we expanded our curriculum coach positions and they have been instrumental in helping us and

015helping our our staff um deliver our curriculum in a more consistent manner. We brought part project-based learning training to staff to encourage enhanced deeper learning experiences for students. Our curriculum adoptions are all guided by our portrait of a bee. We want to make sure that um any curriculum that we bring into our district uh is deeper learning ready and so our students get those experiences and we have partnered with Battel and the Ohio personalized learning network to stay a be a breast of best practices. And next um Mina Pazika will come and talk about our third goal. All right, goal number three is about academic achievement. This one is related to supporting our academically at risk students and supporting them through enhancing our resources and programming for them. Um we did this by purchasing the

016branching minds platform um for grades 6 through 12. This helped us assist them in aligning evidence-based interventions um aligned to those students specific needs and then systematically monitoring those students. We also hired three MTSS coaches. MTSS is multi-tered systems of support. Those coaches help us at elementary, middle, and high school. They help facilitate those meetings um and they also help us streamline our um interventions and also meeting with those teams to specifically moni monitor those students at tiers two and three. All right. The technology had one goal. It was to design and implement the district's technology integration plan which focuses on the utilization of technology as a transitive transitive creation advancement and connection tool. So we finished finish and maintain the onetoone learning model to the district technology for all students grades K through 12.

017We updated district classrooms with interactive touch panels to create a more interactive learning experience for students. Um 408 in total. And we provide and maintain equipment for all levels of learning ranging from iPad touchcreens devices for our students with special needs to more robust equipment for high school labs and classrooms. Um, we provide staff level PD for the new software and devices individually or in group format. Instruction um is really important, but so is uh climate culture and student wellness for both our students and our staff. Um, so this goal looked at making sure we provided ongoing professional development for our staff related to students and their mental health and wellness, but also our staff's mental health and wellness. Um, so we provided a number of different professional development trainings for our staff, uh, including

018trauma-informed care, question, persuade, and refer, which I would encourage everyone to look into. Um, I always do a little sidebar here that we learned CPR for heart health, but we also should be learning QPR for mental health help. Um, hope squad, mental health first aid, reframing behavior. And again, we probably could have filled the page with the different trainings we've provided. Again, on the other side, we also want to make sure our staff are well taken care of. And so, our HR department has done an exceptional job of adding an EAP program for staff so that we can take care of them as well. and also a summer wellness book study for staff to make sure we're taking care of their mental health as well. In addition to that, um Mina runs a wellness task

019force that looks at the wellness um of our students and staff. And in addition to that, this goal was looking at creating a task force that looked at our um services across the district because what we hear from a lot of people is I didn't know you did that or do you have that? Uh so towards this goal we did a recent podcast thanks to Amy uh which included staff administration and most importantly our students uh that shared what services we offer in the mental health realm to students um including our hope squad services and also um what those services are and are not uh what mental health services you can access at a school level and what mental health services are more appropriate to get at a community level. We also expanded our mental

020health services without adding cost by moving and shifting some of those services from the high school level to the elementary level. And we expanded our collaboration at no cost from outside mental health providers into the school setting. Um again, we this is a very important area for us in our strategic plan that I'm sure will continue as well once we listen to input. Uh then we'll have Ryan come back and talk about facilities. Thank you. All right. Facilities. We had uh one goal in the facilities and it was to address the applicable facilities and the infrastructure deficiencies via the comprehensive masters facility planning process including redistricting, engaging community stakeholders in determining priorities for potential new construction andor the renovation uh opportunities. provide facilities that maximize comfort, student interaction, and learning. So, this was uh this

021was carried out with the redistricting we did last uh school year where we changed uh repurposed two of our elementary buildings. One became the dedicated preschool. The other one is the facility that we're currently in now. We use it as the uh board of education meeting room, professional development center across the hall and then technology uh uses the lower level of this facility. Uh another project that we did within this goal was uh the HVAC building automation control that we did district uh throughout seven of the district buildings. So, it's not completely districtwide, but it's uh through all the modernized buildings that we were able to uh incorporate into that new um control system. So um then the next goal was a facility goal number two was uh review all aspects of the physical and

022the cyber security throughout the district. Recommend changes to policy and applications of best practices strategies ensure consistent applications of security protocols procedures for the district building and events. And uh this is an ongoing we do this every year with the security and safety team. We do uh threat assessments. Um this was very important when we wrote the grant that provided the cameras for the district is being proactive in doing these threat assessments. So we do it every year. Then we evaluate and uh we present that in executive session to the board and uh make a make uh items on the list prioritize and address them as as uh we we can. And then uh this is Dave. Yeah. Our first goal for finances was to create a financial assessment of future facility needs that coincide

023with the master facility plan. So we take cost savings consideration uh throughout or consolidation throughout the district and redistricting uh and this uh uh was because of the decreased enrollment itself. Uh we worked with the administrative team to redistrict resulting in the uh repurposing of the two buildings Ryan has spoken about. Uh we continued utilizing ESSER funds uh towards facilities. We we used the ESSER funds uh for technology purposes. Uh we were going to be going to onetoone uh ESSER basically kicked that forward. So we use those ESSER funds to move to onetoone much more quickly. I believe it was within three-month time per time span instead of the three-year time span. Uh we also worked with uh used the SSR funds for the HVAC that Ryan was talking about. We we worked with the

024Ohio Facility Construction Commission. Um and when we did work with them, uh we asked them to determine uh our needs with the construction commission. And basically they were going to put students uh from the seventh grade into the high school because they were looking at square footage as opposed to this is a hallway and you don't use the hallway to conduct classes per se. But uh so we decided that uh that using the construction commission was not a benefit to the community or to the school district. Our goal number two was to identify key financial metrics to create a district performance report card and measure this to like districts. And uh the district uses the state district uh report uh file and formerly known as the cup report. Um, we use this to compare our

025uh on average our financials and whether we're with below or like uh other districts that are uh in our county or like districts itself. Uh we also use this uh to review cost per pupil uh administrative cost per pupil, staff cost per pupil um and uh see the district's wealth valuation. uh it also provides the district's medium income. So it gives us a lot of information. Uh also we uh on a yearly basis uh we provide uh enrollment data to the different county uh school districts and using this enrollment data we develop a percentage that we present to the community improvement board and the county commissioners for the sales tax distribution. So uh that um that is uh on a yearly basis uh the the uh community or the county schools get together and uh

026present their enrollment to each other and then it's presented. And finally we have uh uh our third goal was to create educational opportunities for citizens and uh to further understand district budgets and outside factors. Um the finance committee is always a a joyous committee for everybody. Uh we have added three new individuals. Uh we do have one individual here from the finance committee uh that's in our in our audience. Um so it's it's been working for us. We'd like to add uh another administrator if we can. Uh we also participate in virtual lunches with the superintendent. Um Aaron has uh given out financial information to the participants uh and so that's that's uh getting information out there that they did not have before. Uh we have also placed all of our um board information onto

027our website. This includes the financial information con includes the tax budget, includes the five-year forecast, includes the the finance committee information, and that's out there dating back to 2014. So, if uh anybody has any questions about what you guys see, then it's out there for them. And finally, um, on a monthly basis, uh, we put the district's financial information in easy to understand terms and make it available to the entire community on the district website. And now Amy's going to be talking about communication. As Mr. Sable mentioned, uh, communications is really a collaborative effort. Um it really takes everyone in our school district to tell the story of Madina City Schools and like many of the other goals uh the goals for internal and external communication is a continuing process. So we really worked hard

028to try to meet people where they're at. So the first goal is communicate effectively with community members who have no direct connection or affiliation to the district. utilize stakeholder data to determine the most effective channel for community uh engagement and develop strategies to protect against oversaturation of key audiences. So one thing we did is that we continued to encourage community members who do not have students in the district to sign up to receive our district communications and that um includes our our newsletters which is probably the biggest provider of information about the district. And so over the past three years, we've increased our um our our um communication that in that way uh by approximately 200 signups. Uh we've increased social media use um to tell the story of Madina City Schools through Facebook. We

029now have about 8 8,000 followers. Instagram is a new path that we've decided to take um that reaches our younger audience. Um we have about 800 followers um and growing. and our YouTube channel has about 2800. I'm trying to read from far away. 2,600. Um then um we did decide to discontinue the use of uh X formerly known as Twitter. From the district perspective, athletics finds that that is still a useful tool for them. So they do continue to use that. Um so we've collaborated also with Madina, the city of Madina and their social media. So they um share our posts and vice versa we share theirs um just as an extension of trying to reach more people. We of have contributed weekly or bi-weekly to the Madina weekly uh publication that hits everybody's mailbox

030every Thursday. So that's a really good opportunity for us to share stories about our school district. We've also been invited to contribute to the monthly uh editions of Montville Living. So that goes to all Montville residents in their mailbox as well. We've connected with our senior community through Silver Sneakers program at the Madina uh community recreation center. So I'm always offering information of events that we have going on in the district. Um and we also try to attend at least one of their meetings um in person so that we can kind of provide them with the state of the schools. Uh we've changed the format of our district newsletter. We used to publish a newsletter once a month called formerly called the be informed. Um found that it was um very long and the readership

031was not that great. So we reduced that to a weekly bi-weekly sometimes maybe a little longer um but just shorter snippets of information and the readership seems to have increased because of that. We started a monthly podcast that Chris mentioned um called the hive be in the know stories from a dynasty schools. Um to date we have recorded six um editions of that. Um we've released four of them. So I'm getting ready to release the next one. Um so we'll continue to do that through the summer and then as we start the school year we'll begin that process again. We worked um with the department of instruction to bring the portrait of of be to life through the portraiture practice. Um this is our second year in doing that and it was just as successful

032as the first. Several staff members have had the opportunity to present at conferences and other events um locally at the state and national levels as well. Um the idea is to share what we are doing instructionally as well as share stories of Madina City Schools and we continue to have a presence out in the community. Um one prime example is uh we are at the farmers market every summer. Um greeting the community, greeting our parents back to the new school year. So that's always a fun time. People like to see their principles and their teachers out and about. Our second goal was to perform a comprehensive website audit to determine functionality and ease of information retrieval. Um, ensure all components of the district website are up to date and consistently monitored. Um, that is a

033daunting task, but we really do work hard to make sure that information is up to date on our websites. Um, people do um go there and they rely on that information to be current. So, we've worked to review the website information um to re ensure that it's relevant, up to date, and make changes where necessary. Um we took a deeper dive this past year as we're building a new website. So, we wanted to make sure what made sense to transfer over. So, we're currently continue to work on that um with completion currently set for the end of August. Um so, somewhere around uh Labor Day. Um, we're also preparing for an update to our notification system by the end of June. That is the current date that I have. Um, we've kind of been working

034with Final Site to to get that to happen, but really nothing will change. So, communication as you receive it today, you won't notice any difference. Goal number three is foster grow and promote community relationships and collaborative community partnerships while serving as c as a central community hub effectively link to district um support organizations, civic service organizations, local businesses and other stakeholder groups. Um so the for the past several years we've had the opportunity to deliver the state of the schools in a unique way to our chamber of commerce um where we actually have student presentations and this past year we um invited them to come to our high school um for the same purpose. So they were able to enjoy their lunch um in our gym and also visit with several students and staff and

035hear about their project and their learning experiences. We've worked in collaboration with the city of Madina. Um in particular, uh we're working right now on their America 250 committee. Um and we've been involved in in numerous committees, uh with the city, um as support for their programming. Uh we work with local businesses in support of the community pancake breakfast and spotlight on students and the Madina County Art Show, which is a collaborative effort between Main Street Madina and the district. um and also includes a collaboration with a number of our county schools as well. We've collaborated with Madina Kuanas Club, the city of Madina, Eddie's Bike Shop, and other sponsors. Uh we used to do bike to school week, but since we've redistricted, we still wanted to bring the opportunity for students to learn about

036bicycle safety and and the joy and fun of riding bikes. So this year we um introduced the annual uh Madina bike safety rodeo and the event um this year was held at Melt Park. Um and it was uh really to be able to serve our entire community by hosting it there. Um so we had well over 200 people attend which we weren't sure exactly what was going to happen but certainly look forward to offering this to our community um year after year. Um many of the schools um did end up doing bike to school week. So it was kind of a collaboration and making sure that um students had the chance to ride if they wanted to. We've network with the different area organizations. Um the women's networking group. I'm a Main Street Madina board

037member. So we have an opportunity to um serve on committees there. So I serve on their promotions committee. So these opportunities give us an opport a chance to share our story but also talk about events. um that are happening in our school district. And finally, our fourth goal is to develop clear expectations for internal communication regardless of building or department, enhanced protocol and workflow to establish consistent delivery of critical information. So, we've created a process um working with our building principles and secretaries to centralize requests from the community to share information. and we get a lot of requests to do that. So, by providing a central hub in the communications office, I've been able to vet those requests and make sure that they fit um our best practice on that. So, we'll be able to

038make that information available on our digital bulletin board, flyer central. Um we've basically uh done away with the practice of sending paper home with students for a number of reasons. We work with central office administration to create a protocol when communicating important information to parents, guardians, students, staff, and board of education as well as community members. Um, we kind of have a it's kind of like a snow day phone call. So, we kind of go down the list of who receives that information and when. Um, so we found that following that process has ensured that everyone is informed in a timely manner. We've used multiple outlets to share critical information through our websites um up to and including the use of alerts. So that's the first thing that pops up when someone visits our website.

039So that seems to be working. So snow days if there's uh something going on in a building uh an event that people need to know about. So it's just a great way to continue to share information. And now I'll turn it over to Jim. Thank you, Amy. So, staffing and human resource goal number one was implement a system of teacher support staff, teacher subs and teacher support or support staff subs as well to a recruitment of the highest quality diverse professional staff. We did this in several ways. We started with participating in the soore human capital project. We spent uh almost a year meeting with other districts across the state as well as some national districts where we talked about what characteristics in this current age are we looking for with with educators. And I

040always want to stress when I say educators, we mean support staff, every support staff position, everybody who interacts with our students because it's just as important to us, the custodians, bus drivers, food service staff, as well as the teachers, pair professionals, everyone who interacts with our students. We want the highest quality, best people working here. As Aaron said, it all starts we're only as good as the people that work here and take care of our students. So, we participate in the source human capital, came up with a portrait of educator, tried to implement that with um every hiring that we do in every one of our classifications. We tried to look for unique partnerships. Tina and I worked with the university, Ashlin University, to develop a program for student teachers that if we could get

041them to commit to coming here and doing their student teaching that we would guarantee them some kind of employment for the next school year. A lot of times that only would we can't guarantee a real job, but we could guarantee them a job where they could interview or an interview for a real job. But at the minimum, we could use them as a sub or a year-long long-term sub or a building sub. We it really we set ourselves apart from other districts by offering that as a incentive just for students to come here because we figured that if we could have them for part of the school year and see them in action and work with them. We met with them monthly to communicate with them, talk about our district that it was almost like

042a year-long job interview for them. We uh a theme that you hear a lot with our strategic plan, we partner with the city of Madina and city of Madina is also looking for a lot of the same type of employees that we are looking for. So we partnered with them to attend job fairs. We attended uh Akran Urban League several times. We went to the career center. We went to the library. Anywhere where there's a job share. Um including sometimes we did many job shares here in our buildings where we tried to recruit parents as they came into our buildings and talk to them about what are you doing the rest of your day? Would you be interested in working here? Um and we were able to obtain some pair professionals, teacher aids through that

043program. And then we constantly were looking at new communication sources of how we could attract people to our district and let them know about our needs. This included a billboard on um Interstate 71 that you might remember that was focused on recruiting bus drivers, a need that we always have. We also took one of our vans and wrapped it in um an auto wrap that advertised, you know, our starting wages, our positions that we have available. We're still using that today. We have um used community job boards, our our message boards out in front of our buildings. We are are advertising that. You'll see if you drive by any of those right now. We're in desperate need of pair of professionals, teacher aids. So, we just constantly look for new ways. We we took every

044city water bill and put a a flyer in there letting everybody in the community know that we're looking for substitutes in the following areas. So, anything that we could think of to get the word out there that we're looking for highquality staff. And then our second goal is create an implemented audit audit cycle to gauge operations and personnel capacity and food service, transportation, and the custodial maintenance. Um, we had a great opportunity in the sense that we were changing over two buildings. We were changing Heritage to Helping Hands Preschool and then changing this building over to our professional development center. That left a lot of district staff in the food service and custodial maintenance area that we um used that to kind of rightsize to see our square footage, our needs and we were able

045to absorb everybody through either attrition or uh moving them to district buildings. So uh the redistricting process of a district of moving our students is how we did an internal audit of our hiring in those areas and our staffing in those areas. And then the second thing that we besides the pair of professionals being in demand right now. Our transportation department has tried to undertake all kinds of proactive recruiting measures. We had a drive the bus event. We're looking to schedule that again. We uh also did advertising in different ways throughout the community on the district channels. uh you know, anywhere you could think of. Again, the city has a job board, too. We partnered a lot with the city and this is just our way to show the public that we're doing everything we

046can because we know it's hard when a student comes home and says, "I had a sub or I didn't have anybody to cover this class." We understand that. We we know that's not ideal and optical optimal for learning. So, we're constantly trying to think about ways that we can continue to recruit so that we're fully staffed. And not just fully staffed, we never want to settle. We want to still have the highest quality professional staff possible. And then our last goal looks at success for all students. So we were looking at creating a council to assist in developing a committee that makes sure that all of our students are um respected, listened to, and heard. And so we did meet with a group of parents, staff, and community members um to focus on success for

047all students um again with the goal of making sure that all students regardless of where they come from or what house they live in or where they originate from have um have their needs met in our district. And so uh we had some good outcomes from that meeting. And again, uh with the idea of making sure everyone, as Mr. Sable said that our mission is that making sure we address the needs of all students and I think that was the last goal. So I had to say thank you. Do you guys have any questions? We're here and the timeline for the strategic planning process is to wrap it up before we go on winter break. Uh so my hope is that we have a finalized plan uh after going through our process in the fall

048to present to the board for approval either at our December or January regular meeting. Uh I also want to provide the board with an state budget update. I don't have a formal presentation for you this month uh because there's a lot of moving parts right now with the state budget. Uh the Senate uh did pass their version of the budget. Uh some major changes that uh they made was increasing the 30% cap from the house to a 50% cap. Um this change in the budget uh in the present time and I'm careful to say that uh would allow us to proceed uh financially uh without the loss of any local funds. The reason why I say it hesitantly is because that is good news for us uh in the short term, but the concern is

049uh the long term. Uh we're always trying to especially financially look at the long game. Uh we have uh in the past at times had a carryover above a 50%. It's that carryover that has allowed us to go an extended period of time without going out to the community for additional dollars. Uh in addition uh when we're looking at our facilities and we do have neighboring districts that are currently in this situation uh where uh we may need or want the ability to save funds uh to put those towards facilities whether it's doing facility upgrades or looking at new facilities which would allow us to save the community money uh if we were in need of going out uh for a bond. So that loss of flexibility um and the short-term savings I think loses

050sight of the long-term benefits and savings uh that could come out of a higher carryover cap. So we are still advocating at the state level for an increased cap. We do anticipate and expect that there will be a cap in place. Uh but something uh above a 50% cap uh a 75 to 100% cap I think would be more appropriate for school districts across Ohio especially when addressing their individual uh needs. The other portion of the state budget uh and another reason why uh this Senate plan uh in the short term benefits us uh is there is a portion that provides more funding for high achieving districts that's based off of the state report card star system. uh since we are a high-erforming district uh that would provide more state funding to us and put

051us uh in a better situation. Uh that is uh not a large amount of funding, but it is additional funding and we're not going to turn dollars away that can benefit our students. Uh in working with our state organizations, however, there is a lot of concern. Uh and this is where it we're kind of in a difficult position because this is something that helps us. Uh but statewide it does put many districts uh that are really at need uh that tend to be lower income communities uh in need additional dollars in order to improve uh academics uh that wouldn't have those uh funds available under this system. Um some other pieces of legislation that are out there as either part of the state budget or House Bill 355. Uh, and this is when it's really

052concerning for our district in terms of long-term potential impacts, but limitations on the kinds of levies that districts would be able to put on the ballot or have in place. Uh, the elimination of emergency levies, which we just passed uh in November and levy renewals would no longer uh be permitted. Uh, there is also language in there to eliminate inside millillage. inside millillage is guaranteed funds that we receive through property taxes. Uh Dave has estimated that would be somewhere between an 8 and a half to 8.7 million reduction if we were to lose uh that inside millillage uh which would have severe consequences for our district and programming we can offer. Uh House Bill 355 uh was also introduced a week or two ago uh which there's been a lot of conversation whether that would

053be rolled into the budget plan. I received information actually just this afternoon that that is losing traction in terms of rolling it into the state budget. So I hope that that loss of traction continues. uh because what that that bill would do is require a 60% passage rate in order for property tax levies to go into place. And that would not just implement uh public schools. That also uh would impact uh cities, fire services, uh police, um libraries, any entity uh that has a property tax levy would be held to that 60% standard. Uh in terms of just to give you an example of how that would impact us, uh Dave looked up the last time we as a district passed new money uh with a 60% rate and it was in the 80s. Um

054so the ability to pass a levy at that rate uh is not very very realistic. That Senate version uh went to the House last week and the House voted it down. Uh so since the house voted the Senate version down uh the House and the Senate have formed a committee and they are meeting meeting in a committee to hash out what components of the Senate version, what components of the House version or adjustments to those are going to be be put into a final version to eventually be voted on and then go back uh to the governor. So, we're really in a waiting game right now in terms of what we're going to be seeing. Uh, the timeline is June 30th, which I checked the calendar today, and that is two weeks away. Um, so

055we should within the next two weeks uh have a a better understanding of what the financial picture looks like moving into uh the future. Uh it is still important uh that our our community, our staff uh continues to advocate uh for our school district uh because uh no decisions are final in terms of the state budget. This time I'd like to invite Ryan back up if you're not tired of seeing him up there. Uh annually uh we have to present on nutritional standards. uh for our food services and child uh nutrition. Uh and that is that annual presentation is required for uh our funding purposes. We did that uh last month. I think it got left on the agenda. Oh, did we? Does that ring a bell with anybody else? No. Dave says no. I

056thought we did it as well. I remember. Okay, we're going to cancel you then. Okay, I'm going to take this opportunity to sing the praises of our food services programming though since we have it on the agenda. Um, I think I've say it all the time, but I've had the privilege to be able to work in four different districts as well as grow up in the public schools, and I have never seen a food service program that puts out the quality of products and food uh that our food service program does. And then on top of that, uh they operate or they're fully uh self-sufficient. So they don't require uh support uh from the uh general fund uh which is just unheard of in other places that I've been. So last but not least, Dr.

057Quallock, uh the the we did have a policy committee meeting uh this past month uh to discuss a few policies as well as have a second reading on the board. Yep. So, we met a policy committee met I can't it's June I think that's what month it is. Um and we met on a couple new policies that we'll um have for first reading at our August meeting uh if we don't have a July one to talk about. Um and then we'll have a huge first reading probably later in the fall. So, um we'll talk more about those the next meeting. But, um again, policies will continue to come out as you see a lot of legislative changes. So, you'll probably hear from me a lot. But I really appreciate the time from the policy committee.

058We didn't used to meet as often. So now we're meeting quite frequently. So mainly because all the new legislation that's coming through Ohio, which is causing changes, forced changes to school policy. But I I do want to thank Dr. Qualic and our policy committee for keeping up uh to date on all of our policies as well because that is a lot of work. Thank you. Mr. Chambers, uh, information and discussion items. Yes. I'd like to change up a little bit here because I have a guest that's been that drove from Cleveland and it took him over an hour and a half for some reason. I think he said it was raining. And uh, I'd like to introduce Ryan Nelson from Red Tree Investment Group. Uh, Ryan's our uh, portfolio manager and uh, we usually have

059him here in December. uh but uh we couldn't we couldn't uh get him in at that point so he was gracious enough to move it to the end of the fiscal year. Thank you Dave. Um and good evening. My name is Ryan Nelson and I'm co-founder of Red Tree Investment Group and it's great to be here. It's been a bit since we've have given an update to the board. So thank you for having me here. Um I have um a packet of information that we're going to go through here uh this evening. Um just a quick about who uh Redry is. We are a firm that's dedicated to investing public funds across the state of Ohio. We manage a little over uh $10 billion in public funds and give or take that's makes up about

060250 of schools, career centers, ESC's etc. um that we work with across the state of Ohio. Uh myself and Jennifer Trobridge there in the blue are the co-owners of of the firm and our global headquarters are down in Cincinnati. uh how we came to be here with Madagina way back in 2014. Um we started a relationship here with the district and and working with um Dave and his team on um investing a portion of the district's funds and from there we are at the at uh the service of of Dave and what he needs here uh for communication and reporting and etc etc. Uh we um manage a portion of the district's funds and we'll get into that in a moment. Um, and one thing I do want to add here is that we serve

061as the investment adviser and US Bank serves as a third-party custodian. So when securities are purchased on behalf of the school district, US Bank holds them. So there's a third party um that is involved that is an extra layer of security. As it relates to the permitted investments of the school district, the district has an investment policy statement and it follows the Ohio Revised Code, chapter 13514 to a T. Uh, the last time the policy was updated was in May of 2021 and that was the last time there was any changes in the Ohio Revised Code um as it relates to um investments for school districts. What you see here on the page is what uh Dave has to his um disposal when investing um funds of the school district. It ranges from bank products

062to CDs. Star Ohio is the state-run money market program out of the state treasur's office. And then from there, the district can own marketable securities such as treasuries, agencies, municipal bonds, and commercial paper. U commercial paper was a new investment um allocation that we began here for the school district a couple of years ago and um we hold that to a small percentage of the portfolio but it has come in extremely handy over the past couple of years as the district has needed some liquidity out of the account um later in the year. So that has been uh has come in handy. Generally, the maximum maturity on any one investment is going to be five years, but uh you can own a municipal bond out to 10 years. Additionally, I should add that Dave is

063required, I know he doesn't like it, but he's required to get six hours of investment training annually on a calendar year basis. Um he has uh always completed that. Um I know that because he attends many of my sessions that are CPM approved. So, um thank you Dave for always being in the audience. whether you like it or not. Um, just real quick on an economic update. It is not easy giving an economic update these days because what happened about an hour ago, it's probably it's probably stale news by now. Um, but we uh try to keep to the important items u of growth, inflation, and jobs. Just a couple points on that. uh the first uh quarter of of GDP um and for the uh United States was uh negative and there was a

064lot talk about that about why that was negative i.e. the tariffs and there was just a large buying of of um foreign goods before those went into effect. We do pay a close attention to GDP because consumers like you all out here make up twothirds of GDP. So, if you consumers are not feeling all that great about what's going on and stop spending, that's not going to help um the numbers there in GDP. The job markets have uh seen um relatively a stable growth, but it has been on a declining um trend. Inflation is lower. I know it doesn't feel that way when you're out shopping, but it is not growing like it was a few years back. And the economic calendar, we do have a Fed meeting here this week. It is a weird

065week in the markets with Junth on um Thursday. The markets um are closed. I don't know if you are closed here or not. Um but banks, don't forget your banks closed on on Thursday if you need to make any movements. Just a couple points on those economic indicators that I spoke on. We do follow the non-farm payroll numbers each month. It's an indicator of just what's going on with with the overall economy. We do continue to add new jobs into the into the economy, but it has not been at the higher pace that we saw last year. Unemployment does remain at 4.2% which is still a historic low. Uh all eyes are on this with all of the u layoffs that uh we've have seen, the federal layoffs that really will take effect later this

066year um and how the market will digest that. So all eyes are on the labor markets. Same thing on inflation. inflation um has been trending much lower than it was a few years back and um the most recent numbers even showed that the inflation does remain tame despite all of the noise that we're hearing from the tariffs. The um the Federal Reserve wants to see inflation running at 2%. And we're around 2.4%. So we're getting pretty close. Um it's better than 9% that we saw a few years back. So it's it's we're getting there. But again, um just some concerns on where we head here in the future with the changing policies on on tariffs and and how that could potentially lead to higher prices here um in the coming year and years. Um I

067did like to add one interesting chart when we're talking about um the economy and this is an interesting chart that we have been um um following and it it relates to who is um actually out there spending. I mentioned earlier that consumers make up twothirds of our growth. Who's doing that? And so this chart here um actually is a little concerning when you think about it. So the chart here is is showing who actually is outspending. So they Moody's here has um put together some information and they say that the top 10% of households which they equate that to being um households that make $250,000 or more they make up for 50% of all consumer spending. So a small portion of our population is controlling a large portion of our spending. That's concerning when you

068have uh it grouped into into that. And if you really follow that down the rabbit hole, um, and why it could be concerning is is for those top uh 10% out there, they probably own stocks, right? They probably have 401ks and etc., etc., etc. What has happened here in 20 and 25 so far? It's been nothing but a big roller coaster um in the markets. We're back to where we kind of were before. But if they start feeling not as happy and and great about the economy and have some shaky confidence and they pull back their spending, it's going to have a much greater impact on on GDP. So that is um that is concerning um that um and it makes sense. If they're making more, they're going to sp spend more, but um if

069if it does create a financial risk for our economy when it's um it's segregated like that. Couple of other points here just looking ahead. There's a lot again um this will probably change but before I get back to the office but interest rates have um seen a lot of volatility as well. We have really paying close attention to the Fed uh messaging. I mentioned consumer confidence is a little shaky. Uh labor markets have are benefiting employers more. You aren't seeing these people like jump and ship and and making moves like you used to here a few years back. um inflation um is expected to rise if the tariffs all go through. And the last point there is a geopolitical risk remain. I you could in insert whatever term you want there. You know, the latest

070with going on in the Middle East is certainly on the minds of of investors and and policy makers. So that's just something to to keep you up at night. Um some benchmark interest rates. uh we um uh the interest rates have again they have seen a great deal of of volatility as well. The Federal Reserve so far has left interest rates unchanged um but that is expected to change um here 2025. The Fed does meet um tomorrow actually and they are not expected to make any changes um with the with the Fed funds rate. But just to keep in mind here, we follow the two-year Treasury when we're making um and looking at public fund investing. And the two-year Treasury has seen a quite a bit of volatility. It is less than 4% right now

071on on the 2-year Treasury. And and Dave, the uh Star Ohio, which is a money market program, is around a 440, for example. So, a short very short-term investment is yielding much higher than a than a longer term investment. So that means something is just not right in the world. Um and that means that the Federal Reserve has just been uh too slow to to potentially make some changes with with interest rates. So we are anticipating interest rates to fall here um throughout 2025 uh for that. Doesn't sound like the district is looking at any type of of of borrowing on the very very short term right now. Um but uh keep in mind the 10ear treasury is what you all would be focusing on. um if you are ever issuing debt and we've seen

072a rise in in the tenure. So that's enough on the economy and interest rates. What's going on here with the school district? Uh these numbers are as of April 30th because I was a little slow in asking Dave for the numbers uh to get them. So I used the April numbers, but they didn't change too much for May. This is a big overview of of how the uh funds are invested for the school district. And this is all funds. This is not just the general funds. This is all funds of the school district. Uh we uh manage a portion of the funds uh with a wide variety of of of assets. Dave also works with Fifth Third and Multi- Bank Securities to diversify the funds even more. Star Ohio um has a lot of the

073cash in it. Um and Westfield Bank is the main depository. The one we do not have listed here is of the small amount that you're carrying at at Huntington. Um a bank what's going on with the portfolio that we manage. And um I should add that we this is all that we do is manage public funds. So we're fairly in tune what's going on with the um the day-to-day changes it seems like with the with um with the budget bill and would be prepared to make changes here as we need to. We filled have fielded a lot of phone calls over the past month uh um about all of that. But right now where we're at, this is as of May, uh the portfolio that we assist on is just a little over 19 million

074um with the average yield pushing 4%. The weighted average maturity is um pushing two years. And why is that important? That means we've locked in higher rates uh for the coming years. Um we have the estimated income there um as well. And I'm there on the bottom left hand side does show that um the maturity distribution. We do have about half of the portfolio invested in securities uh in 28 and beyond. Uh in order to to lock in interest rates now that the levy did pass, we do feel a little bit more comfortable uh be being able to do that. Again, we know that there are a lot of unknowns with the budget bill and we'd be prepared for that. It is well diversified. I mentioned commercial paper is about 15% of the portfolio right

075now. um but is very well diversified across all of the different asset classes that uh we have at our disposal. Any questions on that? Um lastly is uh closing thoughts is um going forward. Communication is key uh to investing the district's funds and we do have an open communication with Dave and his team um speaking quite often not only to me or someone in the in our office um about um the needs of the school district and you know right now uh yes we're waiting on June 30th um just like you all are uh to make some you know where we're headed with uh other investments here. It's kind of a a quiet period u as we as we approach that, but just know that we are prepared for that to make changes if there

076was, you know, some drastic changes that would have to be have to be made. Any questions, thoughts. Well, I appreciate it. Um and good luck here to the school district as we see what happens. Have a have a great night. Thanks, Ryan. Well, I want to thank Ryan for coming up from Cincinnati to uh talk to you guys here today. Uh again, we should have him in here in December so that he can, you know, enjoy our December parties. June is a bunch better time. I thought I thought you would like to go through all the snow and hail and all that. So take here. Okay, for the financials, uh these are now these are the May financials. Um we uh wanted to give this to you before we talk about June. So with our

077beginning balance didn't change from Jan uh July of last year. So it's was at 33 million. It's still at 33 million. Our revenue is 94 million for the month of uh May or through the month of May and our expenditure is 81 million through the month of May. Our ending balance right now is well our ending balance for May 31st is 43 million $800,000. Uh this is a decrease of 2 million since April and uh um we are uh looking that this includes April's incumbrances. So, our revenue, our revenue is made up of uh the 94 million. Uh this is 100.1% of what we anticipated for the year on our five-year forecast. Um and you'll see when we talk about investments why it's at 100.1. Um our real property, it's still at 61 million. We

078didn't get anything in the month of May at all. Our state foundation is uh at $16.6 million. Uh this is 3% over last year at this time. And again uh we received $400,000 from the casino revenue. Um and uh that hasn't changed since I believe it was March. So we go on to our expenditures. Our expenditures total expenditures are at 85.8 8 58% uh based on the five-year forecast. Um so you could see our expenditures are running low compared to the forecast. Our personnel services are $50 million. Uh this is 1.4% above last year at this time and 2.4% above the last time we had 26 pays in the uh in the period. and uh uh that was back in 2223. Benefits are $18.6 million. This is down 3.9% uh compared to last year. And

079then finally, we have our other expenditures at 13.1 million and this is down 4% from our previous year. And that's a major reason why we're uh where we are with our our u expenditures being down. However, on the revenue side, our investment income, we're almost at $2 million in investment income. Ryan was talking about how uh our rates have gone up and yes, we've experienced that with our investments. Uh if we're looking at $2 million in investments, that's over 1 mil of property taxes. So, House Bill 96, which is now in uh caucus with the Senate, um they're talking about limiting us to 30% or 50% or 40% if you want to, you know, uh take the difference of the two. This would mean we wouldn't get $2 million to offset property taxes. and extend

080the the um levies that we have. So what would happen is we would be looking at limiting our investments to six months, eight months at a time. Um and so the short-term investments aren't as good as uh keeping them out there two years, three years at a time. So I I just wanted to bring that up. Uh also in May, uh this is $442,000 over last May. So our forecasted true days cash, uh you could see the um I want to call it a yellow line there in May. We are up from last year, which is reflection of the levy that was passed in November and we started collecting actually in February. Um so you could see the levy has helped improve our bottom line. Uh what we are anticipating for June is that it'll

081be below two years ago but it will be above last year at this time. And as I always end this where could you find information? You could go right to our website here with madinabes.org. You could find all our documents uh going back. So any questions on the financials? Thank you. All right. As soon as uh Mr. Chambers gets sits down, we've got uh we're at that board communication spot. Would you like to go first, uh Miss Miss Pritchard? Okay. Um, I'd like to congratulate the boys rugby team for winning the state championship. Um, the boys baseball team lost a two day game regional final due to the weather, but they did have an amazing season and coach Kelly was named the state coach of the year in division one. Um, the just right state

082tournament at Ashland. Uh we had Elizabeth Clling was fifth in the 1112 division and the 910 division. Caitlyn Finn earned director's choice award award. Saturday I attended the Junth celebration on the square. I was there in the morning. Um even though it rained, they still had a nice crowd and there was a lot of uh dancing and uh music going on. Um, I would like to remind everyone that, um, now is the time since we're probably not going to have a July board meeting, um, if you need a physical, the free clinic at the hospital offers free physicals. So, if you need one, you just have to call, make an appointment, and everything is free. Um, I'd just like to mention the passing of two former Madina teachers, Barb Kavalc and Pete Frasier, who both

083worked at Sydney Fen. That must be the place to work because both of them live to be 97. So, that's a good sign for any teacher that works there. Um, and I'd also like to mention, um, I'm starting a scholarship program that will start, um, uh, in the 2526 school year. Um, it will be it's not going to be your typical scholarship program. It's going to be for kids anywhere with a grade point average of two to 3.2 um that who need money to go to college or need uh tools to continue to work for a job and the applications will come out. Um it will it's in uh conjunction with the Madina Community Foundation and also in there will be an award for an outstanding teacher and an outstanding support staff. So um it's

084going to have a good name. It's just going to be called the Gene Fitcher Scholarship Fund. So anyways, it's just easier to remember that way. So I just wanted to make that announcement also so the kids would know next year to apply. That's all. Thank you. Mrs. Parker, do you would you like to go next? Oh, you'd like to go last. Okay, Mrs. Smooyer, then. Fine. Um, I wanted to thank the career center for uh inviting the board members to come to the graduation who are not on the career center board. Um, I was one of the fortunate ones to go sit out in the rain. That was kind of fun, but hey, you got to make make do with what you have. Um, and they were very gracious. They gave all of the students

085ponchos, which was great. It was just unfortunately a bad rainy day. Um, otherwise, I wanted to thank um thank everybody for allowing us as board members to give uh the diplomas to the kids. I was fortunate to give my daughter her diploma as well as my Girl Scouts, my color girl guard girls and um so many of the Fen kids that uh I have grown to love. Uh they're just like my own kids. So it was wonderful to be able to give all of them their diplomas. Um and maybe volunteers can live as long working at Fen perhaps what you said. I hope so. Otherwise, um, yes, attended the policy committee. And then I did want to say a belated Father's Day, uh, to all these fathers that are up here and help so well

086with all of our schools. Appreciate it. All right, I'll go next and then we'll let Mrs. Parker go last. Um, I don't have a lot. I would like to say that it was enjoyable attending graduation again and passing out diplomas and um as when my son graduated called me judge dub judge dub. So that was interesting to dress up again. Um they have an interesting set of humor. That's all I'm going to say. Um, I just like to remind all of our uh citizens that we've got lots of kids out running around in the when it is nice. So, please be very very aware when you're driving around our city. Um, they are playing in the streets and just be careful. Slow down in the neighborhoods um because they will run out in front of

087you and we just don't want anybody to get hurt. So, just be be aware. And I did uh stop by the high school the other night just to look at the track how that's coming. And the paving's done. We're just waiting for the outgassing and the rain to wash the pavement off. And then that is going to be a really nice addition to Ken Dukes when that's all finished later this summer. And that's all I've got. So, Mrs. Parker, you're up. Thank you. Um, one last word about graduation. And I just wanted to thank all of our administrators and staff, everyone that works so hard to pull off graduation. It takes a long time to plan that. I know that there are people working on that practically all year round uh to to do that

088and this was a big year with the 150th anniversary and we were fortunate that we did have some nice weather. So I I do just want to thank everyone that was involved uh for putting that together. It was a really really nice day for all of us and for our our students especially who graduated as the class of 2025. I know Mr. Sable mentioned some things about the state budget plan. It is in reconciliation now although at this point in time it looks like our district will benefit from some of those changes. That is to be seen as part of this reconciliation process. So, I just also wanted to reiterate that adv advocating on behalf of our district and public schools cannot stop. I encourage all of our community members to continue advocating on our

089behalf. Our legislators um like to hear from all of us, especially the the voting community. I know just yesterday I think the the board members received information from from the Ohio School Boards Association asking us to really reach out within the next 48 hours which is now I think last next 24 hours. Um so if you haven't done that I encourage everyone to to do that and let them know our story and what it would mean to our district um to lose any funding or to not be able to have um emergency levies and all all of that. And if if you're not sure what to talk about or what talking point should be or how it would affect us, uh I encourage every one of you to contact Mr. Sable, Mr. Chambers, any of

090the board members. Um we'll be happy to have a conversation. I want to thank the administration for giving us the update on the five-year uh strategic plan, the last plan that we had. It's hard to believe it has been that long already. I believe I'm the only board member here that was on the board when we implemented that plan. So, I'm happy to see that come to fruition. Um, we've done some great things even when things in the world have not been great. Um, we we have done some great things for for our students and our community and staff and I'm very grateful and thankful to all of everyone here and all of our employees and everyone that helps make our schools successful. Dr. Qualic mentioned QPR training and I have taken that training and

091I encourage board members and anyone listening to participate in that. I took it. It was free. Uh there I I apologize. I can't recall the community organization that was offering it. Um but it was here in Madina and it was free and it was very very valuable. So I encourage everyone to to look into that. It is not a large time commitment and the benefits definitely outweigh any any cost. Um, again, it always is free, but any any time that you might incur to take that that course. And then, uh, lastly, I just wanted to mention on a personal note that I will not be running for school board this year. I think there's been some rumors out there. So, I thought that I would just publicly, uh, state that so that it it's out

092there. I have enjoyed my time on the board. When December and the end of my term come around, it will be 10 and a half years. I have learned a lot and met some great people and I am definitely better from my experience and honored to have served the community uh for any period of time, let alone um this this long. I never thought that would happen. So, I I do appreciate that and I encourage anyone who is interested in running for school board to please contact any of the current board members. We'll be happy to share our experience. I'm happy to tell you what it's like to be to be a board member. um something that you might not see on the Ohio School Board's website. So, I think petitions are due here in

093August. So, um what's that? August 7th. There you go. Um so, I just wanted to to get that out there as well. So, thank you so much, Mr. West. Anything else from anybody? Becky, do you have anything else? See if I go last. I get it all. Thank you, Mr. Chambers. Your action items, please. Oh, I'm sorry. Public comment. Do we have any? Uh, we have no public comment. So, Mr. Chambers, your action items. Okay. If it pleases the board. Uh, item number one, it is recommended the board of education approve the May 25 treasures financial report. Item number two, it's recommended that the board of education approve the following fundto fund transfers. I'd like to tell that I'd like to say this is a long list. Uh, a lot of it's for cleanup purposes.

094Um, you may recognize with the athletics. Uh, we're moving from their their revenue buckets into the main athletic account. Uh, because the main athletic account is the one where all the expenditures occur, their athletic buckets. all they all the buckets do is receive the monies and don't there's no expenditures out of those buckets at all. Uh we also have our uh annual movement from the sales tax fund to the permanent improvement for turf $50,000 and also we're zeroing out our cops fund because the cops fund uh paid the interest for the the cops uh uh here back in the end of May. So here in June we're zeroing it out. Uh we also have monies moving from the general fund to uh NHS graduation granus hope uh northfield field trip claget field trips uh DC

095I'm sorry root uh district supervisor activities and the OE safety grant. The reason we have monies moving back into the safety grant was last year monies were taken out of there uh inadvertently and uh so we have to make the transfer in there for the expenditures. Uh all of the OP safety grant was spent this year 27,000 some odd dollars. Uh what else? We have our emergency levies here. Um if you look you see the emergency levy which is now the substitute levy is um funding the guidance portion and the instruction portion. These are the same thing but in reverse of the athletics where monies are all coming out of the guidance and instruction portion but there's no revenues coming in. So we're we're zeroing those portions out as well. And you also have the

09624 emergency levy going to the general fund. This was I thought this was a good good idea when I I set this up. Um because when the original emergency levy was set up back in 2014, all these accounts were created and all these accounts were created which were almost duplicate of what was created in the general fund. So I thought, hey, this would be a good idea. So when we submitted our tax budget here in January, we said what we were going to do is just take the emergency levy, we were going to spend what the county takes from that emergency levy monies and we are just going to transfer everything into the general fund because all those accounts are already created. Why not? Well, guess what the state legislators are doing anyways? They're telling

097us there will be no more emergency levies and any levies that come into the emergency levy should be going right to the general fund anyway. So, I was a little before my time. Um, let's uh go down a little bit here. Uh, your uh title 3 LEP. Uh, these are just clearing up the uh 2024 uh leap fund because uh expenditures went out but uh revenues did not go in. Item number three, it's recommended the board of ed education approve the funding advance of funds. Uh this is our annual monies going to the title grants to zero them out because the title grants are um we have to spend the monies before we receive the monies from the state. Uh so you could see that roughly $150,000 is coming out of the general fund and

098uh going into the title grants last year. Uh if I recall, it was uh we were not able to get a final um project cash request in in May. So uh it was roughly $1.6 million that the general fund uh advanced to the title grants. So and then uh we have item number four. It's recommended that the board of education approve the 24 or it should say um final 2425 appropriations. Uh you did uh receive the appropriations but I want to hit highlights of that. Uh the general fund I want to I want to compare last year's final to this year's final. Uh the general fund uh final appropriations are down by $432,000. Um uh for the emergency levy because of the transfers that we did this year, uh the emergency levy is up $10.8

099million and I believe 10.6 million of that is for those transfers. Uh we also have our district managed activity which is the 300 funds and that is down by nearly $500,000. And the reason this is down is because last year we made two transfers. One at the beginning of the year in July to uh from the buckets into the um into the athletic fund and then at the end of the year we made the transfers that we're making now. So that's why it's down uh roughly $400,000. Uh we did have our miscellaneous state grant up by 271,000. Um the main culprit behind that is I believe Ryan received 300,000 for a uh turf for a track replacement. Um we also are esser fund is down $1.2 million because we've spent the last of our esser

100funds. All the other uh title grants are down uh compared to the year before. Our permanent improvement is down. And this relates to the rec center expansion. We paid for the rec center expansion uh over the summer of uh 2425 and uh I'm sorry for 2324 24 summer of 2425. So we had to do the appropriations in by June of 24. Uh so that's not occurring. So that's why the uh permanent improvements are down. Our capital grants are up and this is because we had more projects this year including the heritage renovation. Our food service is down. I asked Angie about this and she said there were reduced number of student purchases this year uh for both uh breakfast and um lunch programs. Uh so it was down by $600,000. And then our employee benefits,

101it's up uh by $1.4 million. Uh this is, if you work the numbers, it's a 10.8% increase, but if you recall, our premium this year went up 12%. So you could see that there is that gap. Uh and that gap is uh due to reductions that were made in personnel this year. All right. I would entertain a motion to uh for treasures action items uh number one, number two, number three, and number four. I'll make the motion to approve the treasures action items one through four. Thank you, Mrs. Pritchard. I'll second. Thank you, Mrs. Parkhurst. Uh any questions or comments? Anybody? Mr. Chambers, um did you mention one time that the state is changing the accounts? So, do that. Is that correct? Am I recalling that correctly? Yes. The general the uh emergency levy funds

102are going to be placed into the general fund for operating purposes. Okay. Just just those account specifically. Okay. I was thinking there was going to be more and we'd have to There are other funds that they're getting rid of, but those are because the funds no longer exist. So, okay. Thank you. Any others from anybody hearing? None. Mr. Chambers, when you're ready. Yes, Miss Pritchard. I Miss Parker. Hi, Miss SM. Hi, and Miss West. Mr. West. Yes. Thank you. It was because Miss Meyer threw me off. I'm sorry. Mr. Sable, your action items, please. Number one is donations. Is recommended that the board of education accept the following donations. Uh thank you to our high school staff for their collection of almost $1,400 to donate to Collins uh cares uh cure cancer. Uh this is

103in honor of Liz Kiosis, our cafeteria manager at the high school who uh I think was on the last board agenda for retirement. uh that uh organization is in honor of her son uh who passed away from uh cancer and her retirement gig is going to be running that organization full-time. So, it's nice to see that support uh for our staff, for each other. Number two, let's make it official for our class of 2025. It is recommended that the board of education accept the list of seniors of the class of 25 who have fulfilled all the requirements for the state of Ohio in the Madina city schools for graduation. Number three, as was mentioned earlier, uh it is board docs is going really slow tonight. It is recommended that the board of education approve the

104second reading and adoption of the following policies, bylaws, forms, and rescended bylaws. Uh again, these were presented at the last board meeting for first reading and have been vetted through our policy committee as Dr. Quall shared. Service agreements slow. It is slow. [Laughter] Well, mine's not coming up, but I know what it is. It is recommended that the board of education approve the following service agreements as presented. Um, mine still isn't up, but I know the first ser There it goes. I know the first service agreement is There we go. is with the educational assert uh service center of Madina County. Um we hold an annual contract with the ESC and Madina County for uh services that they provide to our school district. Uh this is actually a minimal contract for the size of our

105district. The reason why is because of our size, we're able to provide many services internally more cost-effectively than contracting uh them out. uh but they do help us in many avenues especially within our technology department and special education department. The other contracts uh within this agreement uh are all for special education uh in preparation for the upcoming school year. These are all contracts that we have held in the past. Uh I do want to point out that this includes uh contract with the Madina County Juvenile Detention Center uh which we are the fiscal agents for uh and also uh provide all of the teachers and aids that work within that program. Uh number five is a memorandum of understanding with Ashlin University. It is recommended that the board of education approve the following uh partnership

106with Ashlin University. Uh this is to uh allow uh student teachers to be placed here in Madina City Schools and as Mr. Shields had shared earlier this evening, we have an extended relationship with Ashland to try and increase the amount of student teachers we have coming uh into our district through Ashland. Number six is it is recommended that the board of education approve the memorandum of understanding my things two things behind. is recommended that the board of education adopt the attached book list for the 2025 2026 school year. Uh these were presented at our first reading at our last meeting and have been vetted through our community curriculum committee. Uh we also have some stipen payments on the agenda. It is recommended that the board of education approve the following stipen payments to district teachers

107who have served as cooperating teachers for students attending universities. Uh we have several field trips on the agenda. It's recommended that the board of education approved the following overnight field trips in compliance with policy 2340. All of these field trips are for summer camps. Um and these are paid for through the parents and or support through our athletic boosters. And number nine is personnel. Uh it is recommended that the board of education approve all the following personnel recommendations pending completion and submission of all required paperwork uh to our human resources uh department. Uh there's an additional recommendation within here, a recommendation that the board of education approve the revised support staff substitute and temporary worker rates effective June 8th, 2025 as submitted. Uh these increases, uh as you all know, we have a substitute shortage

108in Ohio and education. Uh we have an educator shortage. Subs are uh I would argue even bigger challenge. So this is to keep us competitive with surrounding districts. Um, in addition, uh, I would like to wish Haley Mueller the best. Uh, she has accepted a head principal position at a, uh, Independence where she'll be a middle school principal. Um, when we're hiring people in uh associate type roles, we're always trying to find people that have that drive uh and growth mindset that they want to work in head principal positions. Uh the good part of that is we work on getting the best people in that positions. The challenge is unfortunately uh over the years we lose some of those when we don't have positions available for them. I have no doubt she's going to be

109successful. I know we were hoping that she would land a head position someday in our district, but it just didn't work out that way. Um, I would also uh like to point out that Karen McGenty is on our substitute list. So, I have no doubt that Jim's phone uh will have her on speed dial whenever we need her to come in here and assist in a substitute capacity in an administrative role. Thank you. I would entertain a motion to accept uh superintendent action items H. I'll make a motion. Thank you, Mrs. Parker's. Second. Second. Thank you, Mrs. Smooyer. Any questions or comments from anybody? Yeah, I have a question. Um, Mr. Shields, are are bus drivers leaving because they're getting uh better job offers or they're just quitting? Sometimes I do go to other districts.

110I just saw where Highland made an offer to any new driver of a $2,500 signing bonus. So, we're going to continue to look at different things that we need to do to try to maintain bus drivers. All right. Thank you. It's very competitive right now. Any other questions or comments from anybody? I do want to make a comment that uh I am glad that we are looking to do an increase for the substitutes because it is very much needed. Agreed. Anything else from anybody hearing? None. Mr. Chambers, whenever you're ready, please. Miss Parker. I. Miss Smeer. Hi. Miss Prard. I, Mr. West. Yes. Thank you. Um, we will uh need an executive session tonight. Um, and I would entertain it. Let me read this. Uh, executive session to consider the appointment, employment, dismissal, or discipline

111or compensation of a public employee or official. discussion with the board's legal council of disputes involving the board that are the subject of pending or imminent court action and preparation for conducting or reviewing negotiations or bargaining sessions with employees concerning their compensation or other terms and conditions of their employment. I would entertain a motion to move to executive. So moved. Thank you. Second. I'll second. Mrs. Smooyer, Mr. Chambers. Miss Perrick. Hi, Miss Smeyer. Hi, Miss Parker. I Mr. West. Yes. Thank you. At the conclusion, we will uh there will be no action at the end of the executive session. Thank you very much everybody.