001I I did that was no good evening the July 11th 2024 regular meeting of the mentor Exempted Village board of education is called to order this meeting is being held in accordance with section 33131 15 of the Ohio revised code please keep your mobile phones on silent mode for the meeting Mr Wade please call the role M Appo here miss Jing present Miss maraza present Miss Payne here miss cook here thank you please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge Al to of the United States of America America and to the repblic for which it stands one nation God indivisible with liy and justice for [Music] all I would like to welcome everyone to the July 11th 2024 regular meeting of the mentor Exempted Village Board of Education prior to this evening each
002board member has received for their review and consideration the agenda and materials associated with each agenda item for the board's approval via the district's paperless Board of Education agenda system board docs the public can access the agenda through the school district's website and the agenda is available through the district's website for public viewing on Tuesday prior to the Thursday board meeting board members have the opportunity to call the superintendent and Chief Financial Officer for information concerning agenda items and to request if needed additional information there are two places on the agenda where the board entertains comments from the community the first hearing of the public is dedicated to those who wish to address the board on agenda items only the second hearing of the public is dedicated to those who wish to address the board
003on any subject whether it be an item on the agenda or another topic to participate in the hearing of the public section interested speakers must sign up prior to the start of the meeting signups are available online through the school district's website or on site prior to 7:00 p.m. you will be called to the microphone when it is your turn to speak and at that time we ask that you please state your name and address and address questions to the board president each person may speak only once per segment and comments are limited to 3 minutes the purpose of the hearing of the public is for our community members to address the board the board continues to welcome feedback from the community as an important component to conducting business this this is an information gathering
004opportunity for the board and administration so that we can work to best serve our community if at the end of the public participation we do not make a statement please know this does not demonstrate a lack of care for comments shared by our community rather we want to be thoughtful in our approach and we will provide a response in a timely manner when appropriate in an effort to maintain an orderly meeting based on the Ohio Revised Code 29712 and board policy polic 01691 any persons doing any act which obstructs or interferes with the conduct or orderly progress of the board meeting will be warned and or removed from the meeting this meeting is being shown live and can be viewed On Demand on our YouTube channel Cardinal TV Menor Ohio thank you we do not
005have District highlights and recognitions this evening so we will move on to approval of the minutes so moved do I have a second second any discussion um I just wanted to make sure I had talked to Mr Wade and he had mentioned that um he wasn't comfortable changing the actual minutes but I can you know myself bring it up at the table here I just want the minutes to reflect that last week Mr Heath statement that I thought was very important that the makeup of our with the makeup of our current board donated books at lean left will be approved and any that our lean W would not be approved so do you have an issue with the minutes I just wanted to state that for the record you don't need to change the minutes
006for that so you don't want the minutes they'll be reflected in tonight's minutes you don't want the minutes amended though no okay thank you Mr Wade please call the role one second Sorry Miss gesling yes Miss maraza yes Miss Appo yes Miss Payne yes Miss Cook yes motion carries 5 Z next we have hearing of the public on agenda items only our first speaker is John Sanford be before we start um all speakers must meet our policy to speak publicly and our policy does state that speakers must either reside within the district own a business in the district are a guardian of a student in Menor Public Schools or are an elected official within the Menor School District boundaries um we have added additional measures to attempt to verify the addresses after some issues that
007we've had in the past and when you come to the podium we ask that you state your name and your address can you hear me we're having a heck of a Time hearing you out here just just just share that with everyone that unless you want to do this very soov voce uh we won't be able to participate in thing so please speak up on that note I will tell you my name is John Sanford I live on Parker Drive here in men uh and I would just wanted to speak briefly to the encourage the passage of the of the policy changes that are in question today on the agenda simply stated they do what we needed to do a long time ago and that's take control of these issues and put it back in
008the hands of the parents uh as stated for example on the policies of the men Library the library does not F function in local parentice likewise the school board should not function in local parus about sorry point of order it's really there's a really bad Echo and I can't I can't hear Mr Sanford yeah can please stop the time there we're getting some feedback is what I heing test test we good not yet okay uh anyway now where was I basically oh it's still not good it's still yeah echoey would it be better if we were up there can we make sure we pause the time too please you should be at 2:18 yeah test test sound better sounds better do our microphones sound better to everyone out there now okay is anyone an objection
009to having Mr Sanford just restart no that's fine I don't need that much time I'm sorry anyway so the point is that the board should not be trying to make those decisions for parents uh it's kind of the same thing to give you a an example how would you feel as parents if the school board decided that they were going to make mandatory sex education for every student of their own choosing uh that would probably get people Stander up a bit uh and um the same thing is true if we did try to decide what books are going to be accessible to the kids instead the parents should be making that decision so I wanted to just say I support the changes that were discussed at the special meeting and and encourage you to follow
010through on that and pass them hopefully unanimously thank you thank you our next speaker is McKenzie McAllister thank you our next speaker is Lindsay wall good evening president cook members of the board superintendent Heath and Mr Wade I would like to express my support for the wellth thought outout tiered book notification system policy that is on the agenda tonight actions speak louder than words and the actions by the majority of this board and our superintendent have proven that they are in fact willing to listen compromise and do what is best for everyone in this school district I am a parent of two Elementary School students in this District Two boys who seem to have less in common by the day what I as their mother may find appropriate or necessary for one of my boys
011will almost certainly not be the same for the other one while my younger son might actually be able to handle more mature content or feel less afraid after a certain topic is discussed I have to be a bit more careful with my older son every child is different every student is unique we all have our own triggers I struggle with finding common ground in my own home so I cannot imagine how difficult it is to meet all needs in a very large Public School District but the tiered book notification system really does cover all the bases not only does this policy protect parental rights it also promotes parental responsibility president cook I was shocked and very disappointed to hear Annie and Rose give such a misleading interpretation of this policy earlier today on a radio
012show the far-right radio host who interviewed them was actually under the impression that the new policy would take away a parents right to know what their kids are reading when in fact the policy does the exact opposite not only does this tiered policy let parents know exactly what their children are reading it also gives complete control over what books their children can and cannot read to those few parents who want it I also want to express my support for the decision to end book donations and I suggest return in all of the books which had been recently donated while Annie and Rose along with their group of vocal complainers found issue with Mr Heath's comments last week about the makeup of this board I respected his words because he was not wrong elections do have
013consequence have consequences and I believe that if the board was made up differently Mr Heath would have said the exact same thing and made the same choice however I also believe that the two who found issue with his comments they would not be complaining if Gil had won but he did not Gil lost continuously making false claims about certain board members belonging to a certain political party makes no difference when we can see month after month that you president cook along with a few others up on that stage do not let their political affiliation get in the way of making pro-public School choices politics and religion have no space in a board member's decision-making I strongly urge a yes vote on the policy changes tonight thank you thank you our next speaker is Shannon Barnhill
014hi my name is Shannon Barnhill uh 8099 har Road I have three sons the oldest of which just completed first grade at Ridge Elementary uh when he was in kindergarten a new friend came over to play and as we discussed being enrolled in Mentor the mother told me that her older daughter will be leaving Memorial at the end of the year because she was quote exhausted from trying to fly under the radar and I was very confused because I'd never heard of a pre-teen who didn't want to be seen or acknowledged fast forward to this year and now I understand because I too am exhausted from trying to navigate the current academic climate of this school system as a family we are usually not the type or we are usually the type to let those
015around us live their lives as they see fit unless it is forced upon us I do not look for fights or causes anymore I'm not trying to storm any castles I left that in my youth um I just want to set a good example and let my children enjoy every moment they can of their childhood before they are forced to understand the intricacies of the Adult World unfortunately the chaotic Discord of this board is negatively impacting even good moderate families like our own when it came to our time at Ridge we were always willing to volunteer or donate items and I've accepted every single opportunity to be involved in my child's education but the ability to monitor my child's access to items within the classroom and to take home that I don't believe align with
016our family's desire to protect their innocence is being taken from our control your vote tonight will either further that damage or protect our children for example my 5-year-old son brought home historically accurate books about World War II because he loved airplanes he didn't need to see the graphic photos of the war and full chapters on Hitler at 5 years old he would have been just is content with a book showing basic pictures of airplanes and I wouldn't have had to carefully turn each page of the book he so excitedly brought me home to show me ultimately giving him two tiny little pictures of planes and then sending it back there are plenty of items we could show our kids but why should we show our kids what is the rush why are we providing in-class
017materials to complex issues that could be easily misconstrued at such a young age without notifying parents of what is available to their child while I never expected this to be our path due to policies passed by this board and the overall feeling that the board's primary interest is in providing academic experiences based on social issues instead of academics we as a family have decided to pull our children from ENT schools and homeschool them with help from the local growing Community like us I understand you receive a lot of feedback I do as well in my position with a nonprofit but let me be clear you are so aggressive in your push to to include that you are losing the moderates at this rate you will have nothing left but ashes from this District burnt to
018the ground please find a way to come together for the good of the children instead of the good of yourselves you can start by continuing to allow greater parental access or greater parental accessibility to our own children's reading materials thank [Applause] you our next our next spe speaker is Susan snik good evening my name is Susan snck I'm at 7539 Little Mountain Road in manter um I would like to reference the agenda items uh related to the policy changes and stuff um I just want to express my disappointment with the decision not only that we retained sexually explicit materials in our schools but now we're making the decision to do away with the parental notification of sexual content in those books it's very obvious that the policy that you swore in just several months ago
019was never meant to last since Mrs Payne proposed it and because she's not one of the left extremists it was inevitable that this was doomed just more evidence that this board cares neither for the students nor the parents as for book donations it was also inevitable that this would end far be it for for patriotic family loving community members to try and provide wholesome books for young minds but of course there will never be room for anything other than extreme leftist material for the students as that is all that Maggie Jenny and Lauren will permit the board tells us that they need money but whenever folks offer to help purchase some books to help balance out the selections that are currently in the library suddenly they don't need that kind of money and as our
020superintendent said there's never going to be conservative material being allowed in because the board is so far left um we're never going to have a fair and balanced plan from our schools because the board is led by extreme leftist who want to see the destruction of our families destruction of traditional moral values and our American way of life whatever the conservative side proposes or recommends it's never going to go through just because the leftist board members like to have control and want to push the liberal agenda this is typical bullying behavior and it's no wonder there is a bullying problem in our schools because our Administration is Rife with it and that's fine with me I'm still going to be part of that unimportant 25% who keeps who's going to keep speaking up for what's
021right I'm going to keep recommending books to you and I will also be contributing to all that wasted time rehashing those same old things I know everybody's really tired of listening to us but going to keep coming anyway I hope you know I hope you don't cut out public speaking time but that's you know if you do you do but it's just more evidence that you're corrupt thanks thank you [Applause] Larry Morgan hi I'm Larry Morgan from 7975 Bridford Road in 2001 following the attack by terrorists you couldn't go down most any Road in this country without seeing signs that said God Bless America and In God We Trust well fellow Americans we're under attack again only this time largely from within many of our own school board members have been infecting our children with
022curriculum trying to promote and normalize homosexual Behavior grooming vulnerable and impressionable children with insane lies to believe that they can change the gender that God made them content that subtly and purposely stirs racial tension it's inappropriate and encourages activism of only left leaning causes politically there's a book entitled The Bluest Eye For example and it has detailed description of a father repeatedly raping his own daughter this book includes beastiality and vivid sexual situations another book called transphobia deal with it promotes sex change and is not actually subtle at all finally I know of a book called right now for and it's it's called right now for kindergarden through fifth grade children and it tells kids that doctors can make a mistake at Birth and assign the wrong gender this evil is being promoted in spite
023of God's laws that forbid adultery and make it clear that sodomy is one of the sins that cry to heaven for vengeance the Enemy Within tries to pose as righteous by pretending to be compassionate to someone that is Afflicted with what only a few years ago was known as a disorder true compassion would be to advise someone with mental health issues to seek psychiatric help from someone that could explain the truth a man cannot become a woman logic and science confirm this a child cannot become an animal called a furry it's long past time that we the people defend our precious children by removing any employee of ours in the education field that seeks to indoctrinate these lies it's so obvious that is wrong and evil why do you think they hope to keep it
024secret from the parents some Educators have become so arrogant as to believe they know better than us what is right for our own children I have multiple properties in Manor and good schools are important to me but this isn't just about Manor this is about our country I beg you fellow American Americans to object to this absurdity and purposeful confusion that is likely part of the cause of increased mental problems linked to school shootings drug use and sexual promiscuity demand that these books be removed along with this insane Doctrine altogether and if any board member under our employee refuses they must be removed too thank you [Applause] M mjus good evening Melanie mikas I live on Birdie Lane um and I am speaking tonight I think probably for at least the fifth or sixth time
025um in the past couple of years when we've been talking about books uh tonight speaking in favor of the policy changes that are being proposed I think it's unfortunate uh that there was so much misinformation that was disseminated about the changes that are being made tonight I don't think that was helped really with the materials that were available to the public to review for tonight I think um clearer materials might have given people a clearer sense of what we are talking about tonight because some of the situations that have been mentioned here tonight would actually be resolved um with this policy and all this policy does is give power to the parents to determine what books their children should see and that's not a decision that a teacher or a librarian should make because every
026child is different every parent is different and it should be squarely on the shoulders of parents to make those decisions for their own children I'm fully in favor of the policy as it is being changed tonight um this s this conversation has really gone on for far too long 75% of people in the community survey indicated that they had no concern with the materials we have in our libraries and the schools and a strong majority in the levy survey indicated that they are tired of these divisive C culture War topics board members who like to bring up statistics only when they think the results are favorable to them should pay attention to that I also want to take the opportunity tonight to comment on the hypocrisy of Mrs Payne and Mrs ao's very public and
027enthusiastic support of people in the community who make and sell pornography for a living online where it is accessible to minors I worked for several years at a nonprofit organization that helped children and adults who had been sexually abused I can assure you that the people who perpetrated the abuse of the clients that we serve there we're not spending their time going to the library to read excerpts from The Bluest Eye before committing their crimes on their victims but numerous Studies have demonstrated the link between men with sexually aggressive behavior and their use of visual pornography it is the height of hypocrisy that you would so warmly Embrace those who participate in these activities that are linked to sexual assault of children and it's absolutely shameful and clearly demonstrates your lack of real interest in
028protecting children um in our schools from sexual assault and serves only as a political talking point for you thank you thank you I would I would like to I would like to clarify something um I'm always for people's freedom of speech but I do consider a lot of those comments slanderous I never have and never will support pornography um I I never have supported pornography and and uh I find that very offensive that somebody would say that I support pornography when I'm fighting for children to not see sexually explicit materials in order point of order is this public comment I think it's there's no rule against not speaking thank you I think we should turn it over to the public I Echo I Echo Annie statements can you guys hear me I can't hear he's
029on I don't can you hear me I Echo Annie's statements and and and Miss Marza we certainly offer um the public their First Amendment right but we don't lose ours sitting up here I know but this is really for the public to speak that's okay and we don't we usually don't comment but if somebody's going to make um defamatory comments about us we have every right to defend ourselves absolutely Mr Wayne do we have any other speakers uh yes we have four more our next speaker is Lyn Mazika Madam now broken Madame President members of the board Mr Wade Mr Heath thank you for the opportunity to speak this evening evening I am in support of the proposed changes to board policy on Library materials and the addition of option A to the administrative guidelines
030this would be a great Pro parental rights system that puts parents in full control of the books their kids select there may be many reasons why a parent would not want their child to read a particular book and these guidelines respect and enable a parents wishes to be followed without causing a child to leave with the Library without a book with these guidelines in place there is no longer a need for 25.0 3 that section is too vague too cumbersome to implement and unnecessary if option A is added to the administrative guidelines the community has made it clear in a recent survey that the book issue needs to be resolved the board Mr Heath and his team have created a tiered system that all board members have supported at one point or another let's approve
031these changes and get on to some of the issues that our community finds to be more important thank you for the entire board and administration for your efforts to adopt a reasonable workable system these are the same comments I emailed to the board but in case you've been busy and haven't had a chance to read your email I wanted to add U my comments here tonight thank you very much thank you Jennifer lad Tina Perkins good evening president cook board members Mr Wade and Mr Heath my name is Tina Perkins and I'm a parent in the [Music] district everybody sorry I have a 2019 Menor graduate and two younger kids in elementary school here in Menor I am speaking also in support of the new proposed book policy option A this new tiered system gives
032Parents full control over what their parents are reading should they choose the previous sexual content policy did not include all books it only included new additions to the media center and challenged books leaving a big loophole for parents to have a false sense of security Mr Heath said Menor did not add any books for this past school year so there's less than 20 books that have been challenged so unless I am incorrect there are less than 20 books that are flagged for sexual content right now I applaud president cook and Mr Heath meeting the needs of the community and coming up with a solution that all parents can get behind this encompasses parents from all spectrums including cluding the small portion of parents who are concerned with reading materials in our schools this is a
033much more comprehensive way to protect individual children because who know them who knows them better than their parents also as far as I'm aware it will cost the district nothing to implement this also frees up hours that Mr Heath was spending on the book challenges and time is money that's what defending District dollars looks like this policy also does not infringe on any other students rights to read what their parents allow recently Miss iopo said on her Facebook page that protecting the minds of our youth should be the top priority of all four five board members actually that's not the job of a board member that is my job as a parent I want to see the board working together to put differences aside and work on issues that can unite us all such as
034increasing our academic and literacy scores seeking Solutions to our bullying and disciplinary issues and making Menor schools a safe and welcoming learning environment for all students thank [Applause] you our last speaker is Jacqueline McCormack I'm Jac McCormack live on RW Trail and Menor Mrs cook Mrs gesling and Mrs maraza continue to hide important information from the public not only have they violated the open meetings act several times they continue to take away the voice of the public in order to further their agenda at the last special meeting they argued against the request to place another bonus and raise for Mr Heath on the agenda of the regular board meeting where PE where the public can speak just one week later I assure you fighting against the taxpayer's right to speak is not going to farewell
035for you when you go to ask for a levy remember it's our money your you keep spending there continues to be NE negative rhetoric from board members about people who don't have kids in the system but speak up I've got news for you the majority of the tax dollars that support this school are from people who don't have kids in the system we make up 70% of your Revenue there is no taxation without representation and until you quit taking our money you will continue to hear from us you you three talk about safety like it's a real priority but you want to take away a policy that protects children from sexually explicit materials you're admitting to everyone that we have no standard and that we do possess graphic sexually explicit harmful materials available to minor
036children there's no harm in retaining the policy but potential harm in removing it there's also a future legal liability that you may face due to pending House Bill 556 in seven states bills have passed that could cause possible criminal P prosecution of school and Library personnel and thousands of dollars in fines for providing sexually explicit obscene or harmful books to Children Ohio's House Bill 556 would allow this current law in Ohio exempts school Personnel from prosecution for pandering obscenities to miners since school boards continue to vote to retain sexually explicit books for students the state is now going to step in and help you do your job of protecting children if you truly want a safe environment for all children sexually explicit material should not be allowed in our schools especially given to children by
037trusted adults you three keep bringing up the 75% of survey respondents who were not concerned about the books in schools did you give examples of the books that we have in our schools that are controversial or contain graphically sexual explicit scenes of rape and molestation when you ask the question in the survey no you didn't you know you know people would be appalled first at the recommendation of superintendent Heath the board majority voted to retain sexually explicit books about molestation and pedophilia then you voted down the policy proposal to prevent having sex SE explicit materials in school and setting a standard now you are voting to remove the simple notification process to flag books and make parents aware that some books may have sexually content or be harmful to Children you continue to show the
038public that this is an unsafe environment you admit we have harmful materials and when parents complain you tell them that it's now your job to keep these harmful materials from the school's library out of your children's hands continue to retain this harmful material and the next Levy will fail we will have an effort to ensure that it does was thank you thank [Applause] you next we have our superintendent's report and recommendations good evening everyone uh for my comments this evening i' like to uh provide everyone with a high level overview of the community survey that we conducted as part of our strategic planning process this is step one of uh two which uh next month we will uh have our strategic plan uh presented to our community as well uh we selected Triad research an
039outside independent research firm to develop deploy and analyze the survey for us you can find the survey report from Triad to research on our website to view in detail including demographic breakdowns like parents or non-parents but today I will share a few slides and let everyone know how we are moving forward with this valuable input from our community to start off we ran the survey for about 3 weeks in late April and early may we are fortunate enough to receive 2,66 responses to the survey which is 2 and a half times more responses than we received on the last Community survey the experts at Triad told us that they are happy when surveys they deploy have a margin of error of plus or minus 5% with the number of responses we received the margin of
040error was plus or minus 2.2% so this was a very valid survey jumping into the results now the first question on the survey was how would you rate the quality of Education provided by men are schools we are pleased that this received a favor favorable response with 81% saying good or excellent while 177% said fair or poor and 2% were unsure a big part of what we believe contributes to providing the highquality education that children in our community need is to offer an array of opportunities so that we are ensuring a well-rounded educational experience so we asked how would you rate Menor schools when it comes to offering a well-rounded and balanced curriculum including relevant electives extracurricular activities academic and Social Clubs Etc again there was a favor favorable response here as 78% said excellent
041or good with 17% saying Fair poor and 6% unsure in regards to school safety we ask the question how would you rate men schools when it comes to providing a safe learning environment 63 3% of respondents said good or excellent 34% said fair or poor and 3% are not sure more specifically we asked everyone to please indicate the extent to which you favor or oppose men or public schools investing in each of the following some of those things that uh we uncovered here were that 86% favor installing security vestibules where needed 83% favor hiring additional security or school resource officer uh which again we are very hopeful that this will be happening in the next couple of weeks uh as we continue our conversations with the city on the contract that we discussed with our
042School Safety Committee uh board Representatives here in early June we also had 64% say they were in favor of creating single stall restrooms for student privacy one area of school safety in which we see significant room for improvement ment is in our approach to student discipline only 35% responded favorably while 52% indicated a fair or poor rating and 12% were not sure this is something that uh we are committed to continue working on as a team I met with our Middle School and High School administrators right after school let out in early June to start discussing the data surrounding our school our student discipline incidents for this school year we're looking closely at how we can improve many of the mean Behavior incidents we see in our schools and are creating plans to do the
043following number one how do we code each of the incidents in our system to accurately capture whether it is a major or minor incident does it fit the state definitions of bullying harassment and intimidation or does it need to be classified as a different type of mean Behavior by completing this work we will will be able to clear up some of the confusion around the bullying incidents that get reported to the state and that are posted on our website as a reminder we have started to not just post the required bullying data on our website but we are now sharing data on all of the mean behaviors we see in the district during the school year second thing that we're looking closely at is what conse consequences we have been giving in past uh in
044the past for different incident types and we are seeing improvements and where we are seeing improvements in future behaviors as I've said before we cannot suspend or expel our way out of this problem but we need to make sure that our consequences fit the type of incident and have plans in place to help the student modify their behavior we are also looking closely at what programs and supports we currently have in place to learn about and promote positive behaviors we need to look at our advisory periods our transition programs from fifth to sixth grade and 8th to 9th grade and the resources we bring in from our Educational Service Centers Crossroads and Signature Health to make sure that they are addressing our students needs and finally we need to look at what programs do we
045need to develop to help address some of the student discipline one of the argu arguments that I often hear is that a student may have had a major incident and got suspended for a couple of days but then they are right back in the school building and in the classrooms and it does not seem like they were disciplined appropriately people also say that by suspending a student out of school for a couple of days we're just giving them some time off and that's really what they wanted anyway what I would like to see is the creation of some programs that might be an addition to the suspension where we could bring them into an alternative setting immediately following a suspension to make sure that they stay current with their coursework but then to also have
046some of the mental health behavior and counseling support that they need before they re-enter the large comprehensive middle school or high school buildings that we have here in Menor our building administrative teams will continue working on this over the next several weeks as we get ready to start the 24 25 school year I will also continue to provide updates on our work around student discipline over the next couple of months of board meetings another topic covered in the survey related to the controversy surrounding Media Center materials asking how would you describe your level of concern regarding the appropriateness of books and materials available in the library media center 25 uh% Express they are concerned or very concerned concerned while 75% expressed no concern low concern or were unsure with the policies being voted upon this
047evening and the corresponding administrative guidelines parents will have complete control over the library media center materials that our students will be able to access additionally any future book challenges that have not already been reviewed will'll run through a committee that would be selected from our superintendent our director of curriculum one of whom would be serving as a chairperson for the committee our curriculum specialist the building principal the media specialist teachers from that particular grade band and any others deemed necessary by the chairperson of that committee another set of questions asked respondents to rate the importance they would place on various topics and then to rate how well the district is performing in those areas what we saw in the responses are very levels of agreement that these topics are important but also that we have
048room for growth in our performance around these topics here are some of those data points 91% of respondents said it's important for men are schools to quote help students become good Global Citizens end quote 88% said it's important that we quote develop and Implement programs that address the social and emotional needs of students 86% said it's important that we prepare students to navigate a culturally diverse world and 91% said it's important to balance the use of digital media or screen time in the classroom versus more traditional paper and pencil type instruction as I mentioned the ratings for our performance in addressing these topics were lower kind of in the mid to Upper 40% ranges so we will be looking at ways to improve in these areas throughout the year 76% of those who took the
049survey responded favorably that the district is doing a good job keeping you informed however only 58% of people said that they were aware that the Ohio Department of Education awarded Menor public schools and overall rating of 4.5 out of five stars on our latest state report card and only 47% of respondents were aware that men are residents pay the third lowest property taxes in Lake County those are definitely two facts worth sharing more because Menor schools is a good return on your investment and one of the top three academic performing districts in Lake County with the third lowest property taxes the survey showed agreement there as well 70% of respondents said that Menor Public Schools provides a good return on your investment while only 16% disagreed and 14% weren't sure there are many other questions
050on the survey that I have not gone over here and again all of that information is posted on our website for you to view in detail and I would encourage you to do so I do want to take this opportunity to thank everyone who took the time to offer their feedback it's been a valuable piece of information for us administratively as we've moved through the strategic planning process we will present our updated strategic plan to the community at our August meeting you will see that many of the ideas and areas of improvement coming out of the community survey will be included included in some of the big moves of our strategic plan as always we will focus on working together to provide the best educational experience possible for our students Mr Heath can I ask
051a question sure about the survey uh how did Triad research verify the res of the respondents to the survey they do a lot of that through IP address okay okay thank [Music] you Madame President members of the board and Mr Wade I have the following recommendation listed under the consent agenda and recommend approval of item 6 A1 so moved second second any discussion Mr Wade please call the role Miss jessing yes Miss Payne yes Miss AO yes Miss maraza yes Miss Cook yes motion carries 5- Z Adam president members of the board Mr Wade I recommending approval of the resolution adopting the 2024 2025 Calamity day alternative makeup plan so move second any discussion please call the role Miss say Appo yes m wling yes Miss maraza yes Miss pay yes Miss Cook yes motion
052carries 5- Z Madame President members of the board and Mr Wade I am recommending approval of agenda item C1 related to certified personnel and C2 through C4 all related to human resource matters so move second any discussion Mr Wade please call the role Miss JN yes Miss Cook yes Miss AO yes Miss maraza yes Miss Payne yes motion to carry 5 Z this concludes my part of tonight's agenda thank you next we have the Board of Education report and recommendations and the first item under board business is the approval of our Mentor Public Library trustee do I have a motion so moved second any discussion just want to say thank you to the folk who did apply uh we had some fantastic candidates and I enjoyed talking with them very much we have some clearly
053devoted folks to our library and it was a really tough choice um ultimately I'm very excited about Mr meum joining the the board there and thank you to Mrs maraza and Miss Appo who did volunteer to interview our candidates thank you very much any more discussion Mr Wade please call the role miss a Appo yes Miss maraza yes Miss Jing yes Miss Payne yes Miss Cook yes motion carries 5- Z the second item under board business is the second reading and approval of the Menor Board of Education Neola policies do I have a motion so moved second any discussion I have a a couple questions and then um some comments as well the first question um I had is normally when we are removing a a policy it'll show as like struck through with red
054and I didn't see that in here for the sexual content policy it was only the complaints that was struck through is there a reason why we didn't put the sexual content policy on here as struck through to show that it was being removed that was in all the Google Docs that we shared with the board over the last couple of months and I do believe it was in the uh agenda on board Ducks it doesn't show on the agenda um it just says like if you go to unless I'm missing it which is possible um yeah so page okay so page five um it's only speaking to complaints regarding sexually explicit content the um special meeting that we had the had the the layout typically when we do vote to remove something it shows that
055red struck through the entire policy so that you know the public as well can see that we're getting rid of that policy this is only stating we're getting rid of the complaints regarding sexually explicit content not the actual policy I thought our discussion talked about reverting to option A and that was the the comprehensive look at how this policy would change back to the basic Neola framework yeah that that was the discussion I'm just saying it's not in it's not in here as being like struck through like we wouldn't typically see it when we get rid of a policy it normally is all red with struck through so that this this appears to me like it's we're just getting rid of the complaints regarding library media materials complaints regarding supplement uh instructional materials and complaints
056regarding sexually explicit content and it was listed in the first reading yeah that's why it's on it's odd that it's not on here at first I did think the same thing that oh okay we're getting rid of it through there which obviously I have an opinion on that but um it I compared it with option A at the special meeting and option A did list that whole policy as being struck through MH yeah those were those were pulled off entirely um again we we probably could have put those on there um I didn't realize that 25201 02 and 03 were not included in there we're getting a big Echo what was posted though is the policy that we're going to vote on so what is what is because those are not going to be voted
057on because they're completely gone at this point now coming out of the first reading that we had last gone um it only takes one vote to remove a policy historically speaking we have always had first reading and then especially if there's other changes and then you know a second reading where there's a vote and that's the final vote to actually remove them so right so this is the second reading but but it's not in what I'm saying is like it's not in there so it's just not is that how we're going to go forward then if we remove a policy it's just one vote as a first reading and that's it then then it's out because again we're voting on policy 2520 that entire series eliminated everything from 0102 and 03 similar to what we
058had put right that's how I understood it too and that's what we saw last week but it's just I'm just saying for Technic technical reasons shouldn't we have something that shows that just so that we're all making sure we're voting everyone's clear what we're voting on I think what Mrs Payne is asking is is 65202 out C at as we stand right now and I would say no 220.03 is still our current policy now that might be different at the end of this meeting but it is current policy right now what we are looking at right now is policy 2520 would it look like this at the end of this meeting so the 25201 220.03 and 220.03 the way it appears it looks like we're just getting rid of the complaints regarding those items uh
059I don't have a problem voting on it tonight um to remove because I came here prepared for that I'm just stating that I think that maybe in the meeting minutes we can notate at least that that is exactly what we're voting on is to remove the sexual content policy yeah we are we are voting to replace our current 2520 selection in its entirety with this new 2520 so including 0.01 02 and 03 okay it just it doesn't appear the same as it did at the Mee chist pull it up real quick too yeah that actually that would be great if you could just I don't mind voting on it I just I just sent you the Google Doc that we were looking at thank you Mr he just for transparency purposes should we continue discussion
060while we wait that would be great do we want to do discussion on each policy separately just to be clear so we're policy 2520 right now so let's limit our discussion to policy 2520 um we have a motion in the second so we're looking for discussion on 2520 Mrs Payne has asked questions anyone with discussion um I I had uh questions about the library books um so it appears like what we're doing is taking any Library challenges and placing them in administrative guidelines is that am I understanding that correctly yeah so the entire challenge process goes to 9130 where it lives in niola and then in the administrative guidelines for 2520 and 9130 you'll see the process laid out so there is policy it's just under 913 is now 9130 and that's where it typically
061lives in niola mhm it doesn't live in administrative guidelines so there are still the opportunity for challenges under 9130 is that correct even for can I just be clear the um for Library materials because it says instructional materials and I just want to make sure that that is that includes library books and media center materials and that's why we've got the clarification and the administrative guidelines in both places now too okay so it's just where it's just living in a different place people can still make challenge okay and and the committee process is a little whoa a little different um there's a committee now that's going to which I'm I support I've said it over the last year that I don't like you having to have to make all those decisions yourself um okay I
062had you scroll down a little bit there Kristen yeah so there's policy [Music] 2520 and you can see what is red highlight and stricken from that polic as a starting point then go ahead and keep going so that's the part that's actually posted on board docs right now then there's 25201 which is completely stricken and again that one's focused on supplementary materials and then there's 25202 which is the library media center materials and then 25203 which was the sexual content policy so to be clear Mr Heath you you just reduced these policies in this cleaner version to make it cleaner right and easier to read okay just so we all understand thank you so any of the policies that are being completely stricken through were not included in the clean version correct um okay um
063Mr Heath I I was just wondering if you could explain because I know you did um before when this was option A are you guys this is still giving me an echo um you supported option A can you can you explain why you support the removal of the sexual comp content policy because with the new library media center material checkout process that is included in the administrative guidelines that takes everything away and allows the parents the complete control do you um think that there's any harm in keeping it do you do you foresee any harm in in removing it and possibly a parent that you know looks at the title looks up a review and is like oh okay it looks looks fine and then their child reads it and it it this child may
064have you know been sexually abused and now that child's damaged like there's harm there right like that can you understand that that might happen I understand both sides of the argument but again the the new policy the new administrative guidelines that new procedure that we have in place is going to take care of all of that for us now so I I think that um two things so the the two-tiered system is actually we're not voting on that tonight that's not a policy change it's going to live in administrative guidelines correct correct okay so there was a lot of emails that we had received stating that was a policy change and actually in the survey that we sent out it stated that we were going to produce a policy so I'm wondering if there would
065be board support to put that into the policy that way you know administrative guidelines we don't approve of we don't review I mean unless Mr Heath provides them to us which he does um but they can be taken in and out and if we don't have a policy on it then it can be removed at any point so I didn't know if there would be board support because I think we're all on the same page that we do support that system and that it is a really good added layer of parental rights that we can offer I I don't understand why we wouldn't put it in a policy so I'm hoping that we can all support that going we did talk about this last time and or at least I know I did because I
066thought about that too and what would be the advantages to having in policy versus administrative guidelines and I think what we reme I remember us kind of discussing was that it does give um the administrative team a little more uh flexibility uh when imple implementing a new system um you know you might need to tweak it as you go and and kind of change things and improve the system as you find you know sort of um trial by error you find maybe some ways to improve the program um before after you implement it so I think you know doesn't doesn't it require uh to change policy that uh you know we'd have to come back to a board discussion and a vote and I think there's an entire protocol around that that would make things
067a little more difficult um to do and a little less seamless and so having something like this livein administrative guidelines correct me if I'm wrong Mr Heath but I think it gives you a little more flexibility to change it on the Fly Right correct y i I understand what you're saying I'm just not quite sure what flexibility is needed at this point it's just a two- tiered system to provide parental simp yeah it does and to um you know allow parents to approve of books prior to them being checked out I think it's really it's a great thing but I think in order to show the public we should have it in policy like it so that it matches our survey that we sent out stating that that's what we were going to do I
068think in this case um leaving it in the administrative guidelines because it's clear that we're in agreement that that is the system that we would like implemented one of the things that I I've looked at is I pondered um the logistics you know for example let's say you need to allow two weeks or 3 days for this pickup of materials if you have it in policy it's laid out quite specifically which would make it maybe impossible to make that minor adjustment we have 34,600 73 books across the district in our buildings we have one media specialist we have six Library clerks and there's been a fair amount of turnover in that position so how that training will occur and how clearly and and uh efficiently that's going to be possible you know we maybe need
069to buy some extra shelving or containers or whatever it's going to be to make it a practical way to implement this so by using the original Neola policy what I like about that is it gets to the essence of what's needed we certainly have made very clear our expectation that the two-tiered system will be implemented as of this school year and we leave it then to Mr Heath to work with his team to make that happen um you know just in general I think we all agree that nobody knows their children better than their parents or Guardians and substituting our judgment or trying to pre-screen books or try to have some kind of a list is impossible to do in a way that is better than having the parent simply make that choice for their
070their student the other thing that I worry about is I've listened to lots of the back and forth in some of the discussion on social media is we've had these five book challenges two of them were books that had sexual content concerns about that the other books were other issues and so out of 34,653 books I think it's misleading to imply that there's a lot of concerning titles um but from one person's point of view even classic literature like we've talked about before whether it's a Steinbeck novel or other works that those have some sexual content and for some parents that may be enough to say I don't want my child to have access to that book and as my understanding from the curriculum standpoint anything that is being taught taught in the classroom will
071still have that parental notification system in place so if I'm a teacher and I'm presenting a unit with this particular book let's say tequilla Mockingbird I'm going to make my students parents and Guardians aware this title is going to be studied there is some sexual content and should the parent have a preference for a substitution then I will honor that and so Mr he correct me if I'm mistaken that is still our plan for curricular materials is that correct correct so that's the one area where there is a much higher level of scrutiny and every student in that class is being invited to read that book and so that's very different and maybe a substitute would be um a good choice for a particular student and that matter can be also handled through our administrative
072guidelines and that takes care of the needs of our students in a thoughtful prudent way and that that comforts me as far as the other um aspects of the secondary pieces of the policy identifying materials we've talked already about some of the pitfalls that fall into place with that where if we go to the Neola policy um that house bill 556 that that should move through the legislative process and be enacted then Neola will give us updates so that we modify whatever we need to so we're not incurring additional legal expenses to verify the um tweaking that a policy may need and we are in comp with the current Ohio law which is very important to all of us we all take that oath when we're sworn in as board members that we are going
073to uphold the Ohio Constitution as well as the US Constitution let me make it suggestion kind of taking Annie what you're talking about as well um So within the the administrative guideline the the the main the main part of that policy or that guideline says library media center material checkout procedures and then it says these guidelines will be followed in the library media center material checkout process a in the annual update parents select the library media center access for their student one Open Access student may check out any material from the library media center two reserved access parent must approve any material prior to the checkout uh from the library media center if we took that section out of the administrative guideline 2520 and included that in the policy itself and and then to Lauren's
074point the the remainder where we've got the elementary school library and we've got those procedures spelled out which potentially could change then we've got the middle school high school library uh procedures and again those things depending on how things go the next couple of years and with new technology pieces those things could change if we could leave that in the guideline that we can tweak on the run but we still capture that we've got this two-tiered process in the in the policy itself so again when when my time here is done the next superintendent will will still be referring back to that policy knowing okay open access reserved access are part of what we do the the administrative guideline may be tweaked um I would suggest maybe if if we're looking at a kind of
075a collaborative approach to this if if we can pull that piece out so it would be literally be on that administrative guideline letter A numbers one and two which are open access and reserved access that that language be included in the in the policy 2520 and then let's leave the elementary school process and the middle school high school process in the administrative guidelines because that's where the technical things may change considerably over time based on the technology could we could we motion to amend in the policy in our in the proposed policy 2520 in the third paragraph down it says the guidelines shall include a plan for the review of instructional materials by staff and parents and then a statement then include that section on library media center material checkout procedures right there will be
076a two-tiered library media center um checkout procedure and then I'm not sure what else you wanted to include in there if we could maybe look at that online I have a a quick question too there there's a lot of changes with this one vote I was wondering if we could do a motion to divide the question and much like we were kind of going through each one and vote on all of them separately because there's so many different pieces and parts um I have no objection to that is everyone okay with dividing those so we're talking about policy 2520 right now and I just made a motion to add the piece the tiered system into the policy that will refer to the administrative guidelines seconds any discussion on that and just so I'm clear that's
077going to appear after paragraph materials by staff and parents before in addition is what I was thinking as I I don't whatever is easiest to include it in there whatever makes sense um for fluidity is fine with me I just want to make sure that it is mentioned in in there and it's part of our policy not just part of um administrative guidelines the only other thing that I would mention about that is the CL the um classroom book collections I would like to see it in policy as well but I understand there's some more research that needs to be done on that um but I just want to State my position that I do think that needs to be included I think from what I understand that stumbling block is all of those thousands
078of media center materials are cataloged and in a database so that's a different you know their their are coded and and so forth where the library collections in the classroom are leveled books like a browsing collection and they're not meant to leave the building necessarily um but there is not a mechanism to check those out so not that there couldn't be to the future but at this point my understanding is it was not something that's sorted out yet yeah I I understand that I just wanted to state that because I know like as you had just mentioned they're they're for silent reading time and I know there have been issues in the past with um some controversial topics that are in that siling reading uh collection I'm hopeful that we can work it in there
079eventually um since the time you know there looks like there needs to be some additional I know we' spoke about adding some i' made some suggestions about administrative guidelines and I know it's not our job to write administrative guidelines but just some ways to but you can guide us that that I was guiding to add um some Protections in place for those classroom libraries and I don't know if you've had a chance to yeah a lot of it's going to depend on what the what the teachers are able to do in the classrooms themselves um the the one step we've taken since the uh the meeting last Wednesday was to talk to our it Department a little bit and just kind of put that bug in their ear a little bit to figure out okay
080how might this work electronically um there there's a lot that would go into that um right now but again we haven't had a real opportunity to sit down and really kind of craft what that might look like just yet I know there are some other ideas you know do do we do again another question the annual update to opt uh opt out of the classroom Library liaries that that's an option can the student bring their own book from home for silent reading that might be an option but really what I want to make sure that we do first before we make any of those selections is to really look at the logistics of the checkout process to see if there's any possible way to do it similar to what we do at the school library
081systems um it it seems a little cumbersome at first glance but again as we start to dig into things sometimes things become a little bit easier so um if we get another month month and a half or so here uh I think that'll allow us to get a little bit more clarity on that because then we can also engage our literacy committee and and especially those elementary teachers on that literacy committee to kind of talk through how this might potentially work in the classrooms themselves um what what I can do at this point um is make sure within our ad administrative guidelines that we have um everything spelled out that we need right now with some placeholder uh language for the classroom libraries also so we'll have uh we'll have some of those conversations here
082in August and those administrative guidelines those will be made available to the public right yeah that that manual we hope to have public start we want to have it done before school starts so um we've been talking uh through with our directors on a weekly basis where we're at with some of that um I think we're close to getting a couple more chapters really these policies tonight impact three different chapters of the administrative guidelines too so once we have those things kind of hammered out this evening we'll be able to finalize those administrative guidelines and get those chapters to you guys and then uh get the whole thing published here shortly and again those will appear um so when when you guys start looking at this from the public as well you know where you
083can go and and look at policy itself um there's just going to be a little drop down box where instead of the policy manual you can click over and see the administrative guidelines it's the same exact setup just a different manual and again those administrative guidelines are just to try and spell out specifically how we're going to be going through and and and implementing the policies that are put in place um so it's it it'll be a nice uh a nice system when it's all done so hope hopefully soon definitely before school starts though Mr Heath could I see your note so we can get the wording exactly on that motion so I can repeat it I I have a couple comments um I'm glad to hear that we are able to do that that
084that I think because in our in that survey we did mention would you to the to the community would you be interested or would you be will you know happy about if we had a policy so that concerned me a little bit so I'm I'm happy to see that we're able to do that um in the spirit of that you know I I really do feel that that keeping our sexual content policy is really important and it adds an extra layer and I think it's interesting to to consider that when our we put that survey out at the time we did have as Mrs Payne said we had a sexual content policy so I feel like that influenced a lot of answers you know knowing that you'll be notified if your kid is reading or
085taking home a book that's got explicit material or sexual content in it you're going to be no yeah I feel lot I feel I'm not that concerned because I'm going to be notified so and now for us to then pull the rug out from under I feel like we can't it just doesn't seem right so if we could you know it doesn't cost us anything to keep it we've already gone through it because it's a current policy it is an added layer I know there's only a few books any new books that come up um you know will will obviously it would add to that list if we have them um and as long and I in addition to that I think doing what we do for CCP which you know complies with state law
086having some sort of permission slip ahead of time um I don't know if everybody's familiar but if your child's going to take a CCP class they um the the postsecondary school that they're doing it with has to um that parent has to sign something saying that your child may come in contact with mature be material because it is a college class so and that's state law so something along those lines if we have some sort of disclaimer that says you know our sexual content policy is not fullprof but it is an extra layer um your child still may come into contact with some mature material we we encourage you to consider that when making your decision on our two-tiered policy on whether you're going to give full access or part partial access I think that's
087something I can live with and that we can all make everybody happy thought although in terms of the two-tiered system there's abundant resources that a parent can use to make a decision about any particular title I think it the same problem that we ran into before with why the sexual content issue because it did not include materials in the thousands that had already been on the shelves it was it was not ever feasible that you could go through each and every one trying to create a list I I think your idea of a disclaimer that remember we're vetting our books our our media specialist is using lamc to make selections there are reviews of books available and it's a relatively small collection and a very low number of circulation uh for students as at the
088secondary level so I don't don't I don't see that as being necessary when we have the parental approval in place I think it's it's important to remember that most of us who are this is a hot topic for us we are going to make sure that we check and we research and we do our best to make sure that every title we get because it just offers the title um is is something that we want our kids looking at but we have to be realistic that's not the majority um a lot of people don't have time they're not they're a lot of people think that they trust the school that the that certain things aren't going to be made accessible to their students and so I feel like this is just us saying to our
089parents it's it's a level of respect really to say you know it's not foolproof um we're not going to let you know like every every single topic because there is a large array of topics that are considered you know mature content to some but not to others but it's just another lay again it's a small thing that we can do it doesn't cost us anything and you know it it it just gives Peace of Mind although there is a cost anytime you're creating lists or going through additional books remember with the new administrative guidelines for all purchases and there's nothing purchased this year but for all future purchases the list will go to the curriculum committee it'll go to individual building principles for a second look so that there is going to be multiple people
090in the uh District looking at all purchases before they're approved so where is the cost and and I mean we I think we have a total of 17 books right now it's not just time it's it's having to go through the books and I mean time is money I think ask to go through books but let me let me just finish because um I'm going to have to repeat a lot of the points that I made at the last meeting because it sounds like they bear repeating um so the fact that the sexual content policy um is is a weak policy that's just it's inconsistent unevenly applied um it it only applies to some materials and not others some are grandfathered in others are not it can't apply to state-mandated materials it's we do have
091a list we have a list of books um that we've essentially blacklisted and that does indeed open us up to litigation and in fact I'll take my notes from the March meeting in which I cited a few lawsuits that are still moving forward even though it's been a few months um let's see penguin random house and authors John Green and jod Pico are suing Iowa for a new law that bans Public School libraries and classrooms from having practically any book that depicts sexual activity uh the lawsuit argues that the bands are unconstitutional and violate the first amendment in Pensacola the writer group pen America publisher penguin randomhouse and other authors and parents are suing a scambia County School District over its removal of books um and then that one's moving forward as well the um
092judge said that they do have standing to pursue their claims under the First Amendment and then another one of the other lawsuit that I mentioned back in March is um one in last fall from last fall in Michigan where a judge dismissed a lawsuit against Rockford Public Schools brought by a community group that sought to ban 14 sexually explicit books from the school district's Library the judge ruled that quote plaintiffs cannot establish that a reasonable person would not find Value in the identified works as a whole so there is precedent and this would be a cost this is this is going to open us up to Legal scr to Legal scrutiny and liability so while we can't see the dollars in sensed right now these are real risks and real costs what what about the
093lawsuits for parents suing for my because their child do you can you show me some did you look up any I actually I have a point of clarification as well so um I know of those lawsuits that you're speaking of and those are because we they had completely censored them we're not censoring anything we're not blacklisting anything we're simply notifying parents sorry I'm still talking of um books that contain sexually explicit graphic materials and let me read um the definition in the sexual content policy just so everybody's on the same page there are some children in here so I just want to give a minute in case any children want to leave because it is um a very specific definition in the policy so our sexual um content policy states for the purposes of this
094policy and those policy C policies cross referenced herein sexual content shall be defined as any written language or images pictures photographs drawings movies or other visual depictions that includes but are not limited to sexual intercourse masturbation sadism masochism beastiality uh falatio cingus pedophilia molestation rape or incest I beg to differ that the majority of parents and community members support not being notified of those things in materials that their children are going to read also um our our attorney did look over this and it was a unanimous vote to pass it so but time I'm still speaking I'm sorry I'm still speaking I let you speak it's my turn now um so our attorney wouldn't have approved of this policy that we worked very hard on to ensure that our public is aware and it shows
095transparency and and and it creates trust we had a survey done prior to removal of this policy it's simply an added layer I don't think it should be this hard to to retain something that could potentially protect students and create trust for their parents against sexually explicit graphic materials these lawsuits were filed and are moving forward after that policy was written that's all I want to say those are censorships though this is this is not censor literally the the same situation it's the same situ I just we're not saying nobody can read it saying just a notification that this content is in there okay I I have some comments on this too um you know I voted for the sexual content policy and I fully supported it I did and we have used it for
096a year and we really have not come any closer to resolving the issue it it hasn't helped it simply hasn't helped um in that time I've had increasing concerns about the policy things that didn't occur to me at the time we had we talked a lot about when we were creating the policy we talked a lot about how books would end up on this list and then if they're on the list and a child goes to take out the book then the parent is notified and it is so um restrictive it it it's not useful it's it's not feasible to expand and to shut down the library and have someone reading every single book to see if they fit any sexual content it is not it's not practical to use one definition because my definition
097of sexual content may be very different from Miss pay's definition of sexual content and I know we have words in there but we also have some General statements after that so and I would even say that sexual content is different based on your age you know what you would determine as sexual content for a high school student versus an elementary student very different things so we are creating a list of books which we know could put us at legal risk we have seen lawsuits where that is happening but right now I asked Mr Heath um tell me about this list there are 18 books on the list 18 so in a year we've identified 18 books if I'm a parent and I believe that you are notifying me when sexual content when my child checks
098out sexual content and we only have 18 books on that list that's ridiculous it's a false sense of security and we all know that sexual content can be in in many books that I wouldn't think most people think are harmful Grapes of Wrath To Kill a Mocking Bird of M men Scarlet Letter Good Earth to whom the belt HS The Sun Also Rises none of these books are on the list they have sexual content it is not feasible for us to create a list it's a false sense of security and it's really so much better for us to say you know what we are going to tell you whatever book your child chooses if your child's checking out a book we're notifying you we want parents to partner with us please be involved please your
099child is checking out a book if you are concerned if you feel that your child is sensitive please look up the book be sensitive and to what your child is sensitive to and partner with us to just research the book put in the work so I just have one other comment I I want to clarify wait I keep hearing that that's weak policy but I just want to verify and kind of just revisit the only reason it's weak policy is because it was voted down to remove sexually explicit um books from our our libraries um that wasn't board supported by Mrs cook or Mrs gesling and we had kind of all came to a compromise that okay we're not going to get rid of any books we're just going to go ahead and flag books
100if they include sexually explicit materials um so it's only weak because of that there's there was that's what we came up with because nobody agreed to set a harsher policy um also having a policy is what's worse than a weak policy is having no policy and I think that this policy just is an added layer I don't understand the fight to remove an added layer for parents it all it's going to show is the community that we don't have a standard for sexually explicit materials and it's a it's a poor decision I think it's unwise and I think it sends the wrong message to the community this pain I did vote [Music] [Applause] down I did vote down removing books because it would set us up for a lawsuit as as we just heard it
101would not give parental rights and a lot of these books that you're talking about are books that are tested for for curriculum they're tested in AP and your definition of explicit you couldn't give one you couldn't give a definition um that we could be legally defensible on what would draw the line between explicit or obscene we danced around it for a long time the reason that we didn't settle with that is because we couldn't Define it so we didn't have a barometer of what was explicit or obscene and we didn't want to set our district up for lawsuits so I stood behind this policy but now we have something better we are protecting people because they will know what their child is checking out we all know this this isn't taking something away this is
102giving them something so much more and it's on every single book so if there are any concerns if your child is sensitive to an issue you can be aware of what they are reading and you can even say no no they cannot leave the they cannot leave the building with that book until my signature is on a page it it's so strong and it's so much better than what we have to put ourselves up to possible lawsuits and to have incomplete lists having 18 books on a list it's not doing anything let's not ended is and on top of it we have a survey that says that 75% of people have no concern or low concern about the books and we are putting ourselves at risk for for being not transparent to parents because our
103list isn't complete okay I I'd like to say something a couple things one we keep talking about lawsuits but I I don't think our attorney would have given us blessing uh we've had it since August so that argument just doesn't just doesn't um sorry just the public keeps speaking can we gavl when they speak over please maybe when they clap too um so so we just have to clarify that we wouldn't have it as a policy if it was putting us at liability for a lawsuit so number one um and and number when we talk about the survey you can you if you're going to mention the survey results you have to mention the fact that when people took it we they were taking it knowing we have a sexual content policy in place so
104you know remove that and ask the question you're going to get a different answer another thing is you talk about false sense of security our district just went through what is every parents nightmare in having an elementary teacher um arrested for soliciting a minor so I think that any extra added layer of of security for our parents is worth it and finally um with Ed Choice around and we see I just heard alarming numbers of a local private school in Menor um who it's they're they're busting at the scene now we have competition and we we it's not fair somebody a public speaker mentioned that Pro Public School choices why is it that public school kids don't get to have go to a school where there's a nice moral com Compass why it's not a
105private school thing it should be a nonpartisan thing so you know we have to compete with private schools and with homeschooling and again this is just silly that we're going back and forth if if you're going to insist on on not doing that we have to at least notify parents parents that their child yes here's all the titles if you choose to you know opt into this but there is a possibility that you're going to your child's you may miss something you may drop the ball you may not see the you know the permission slip your child might see something um that's with mature content so that's where I draw the line on that we can keep going back and forth um but again it's it's a simple thing that we can do to to
106please everybody it doesn't hurt anybody by by keeping it is there any more discussion on the motion that's on the table and our motion that's on the table is to it's up on the screen it's up behind me on the screen so it is to add um to policy 2520 that the library the library media center checkout procedures the procedures will be followed in the library media center material checkout process and then listing the Open Access and the reserved access so in the annual update parents would select the library media center access for their student so because we have this motion on the table I'm not shutting down discussion for the rest of the policy but we have a motion and we have a second on the table to add this to the policy um
107is there any more discussion on just this piece here okay Mr raid could you call the role I motion Mrs P second so miss cook yes Miss Payne yes misso yes Miss jesley yes Miss maraza yes so the motion to amend as shown behind me has been approved 5 z Mr Heath if you could send that to me so I can get in the minutes correctly I got it thank you okay so any more continued discussion about policy 2520 before we call the rooll on this so I would like to see if we I know we had mentioned this earlier but divide the question to I want to vote on the sexual content policy separately the removal of that I that's really important to me I don't want to be um voting for the removal
108of that but I fully support this so are we able to divide that question into two parts we don't have that on our agenda we're not voting on removing the sexual content policy we're voting on on our new policy 2520 and at the last meeting you asked to amend and we voted that down so we just for clarification we only need then one vote to remove a policy is that true because we only voted once to to remove that no we voted once to amend it is currently our current policy so if we are voting we're voting today to replace the motion on the floor last week was to move it up yeah to vote on it today right yeah it was a motion to move to a second reading of option A which includes
109the removal of the sexual content policy and didn't you also move to to amend to add the sexual content policy M and we voted I voted to retain to retain it mm and so we've already voted on that so so now we're moved we're forward on this 2520 for the second the second reading as it stands so but so to remove a policy you only need one one vote no I'm very this doesn't make sense to me it'll be removed with the vote today right that's why I'm saying that I would like to separate that I don't want to vote Yes to remove the sexual content policy and I think Miss Zopo is with me but I would like to support this this change the specific change you could get that noted the comments because
110you're not I mean cuz by correct me if I'm wrong is that the by voting yes on this policy you're inherently voting to remove the other one however based on the minutes that I have up from last meeting we voted on a motion to retain sexual content and retain book donations which failed two to three but what was the other motion that she miss maresa brought up the vote to bring it to to bring option A to this meeting right and in option A showed um the sexual content the 012 and 03 but it was crossed out it was it was eliminated which we have minutes now as we showed on the screen that all of those policies in the new 2520 are eliminated as a result right this this is exactly why we shouldn't
111have so much business at a special meeting without having um exactly what we're going to be voting out voting on at a special meeting but I'll save that for later so for clarification then what we're going to be voting on does include the removal of the sexual content policy what we are voting remove it is a new policy 2520 and it does not include the sexual content policy it never did it never did right so that's so we didn't remove it it never it never included it we are voting to substitute this policy for what our current is essentially removing the sexual content policy it will remove it if so would I just for the purpose of this meeting today if I motion to retain the sexual content policy and it seconded that would be
112on the record then that but didn't we already do this that was already done I don't like how it's plumped in because I don't want to vote on I don't want to vote to remove the sexual content policy but I support this change so you you'd have to vote no I mean as much I mean I understand what you're saying I mean I think we need full clarification that the vote today is removing the sexual content policy the policy that's being voted on today does not include the sexual content policy so inherently by voting in support of this you would be voting for removing the sexual content policy so if you do not want to vote for the sexual content policy to be removed I would not vote Yes for this policy and the vote
113that we just did to amend it would reflect that we support that piece but not the rest of the changes yes okay um I just want to um touch on what Rose had mentioned about the survey results I Echo what she had stated also um in the survey 15% was very concerned 10% were concerned and 8% were unsure um we don't know what that 8% % is you know because the other questions were the other respondents said they were not at all concerned or not very concerned 49% said not at all 18 said not very concerned so while we keep saying 25% I don't know where those you know other 10% lies if you add them in that makes you know that a larger concern the good thing though is there will be the two-tier
114policy which has been formalized so that essentially every parent or Guardian makes the choice for their student whatever their belief system is whatever their the needs of their youngster might be they're able to honor that and you know the magic of the internet will give you tons of information about any title so I don't think it would be something that would be burdensome to look up a book or two once a week I I have to Echo both comments I think that we should be concerned about everyone's Comfort level everyone I I am concerned about the 25% that are concerned that is why I was creating policy and and when I first wrote this it was for policy so I'm glad it's policy this is this is a comfort level this is full parent control
115so I I'm very happy that we're doing this today if the intention was for it to be in policy how come it wasn't included prior to me announcing it today well I've had many discussions with Mr Heath about it and when we first wrote it it was written as policy it remember we had old meetings where we were talking about it as policy and then we decided to save it for these special meetings and talk about everything together but it was initial written as policy and I didn't like how specific It Was Written When It Was Written because I didn't feel like it allowed for flexibility and the specific flexibility that I'm talking about here is if we were to have say um an app or a different Communication System other than this paper system
116um it would have to be a change in policy to change how we are communicating with the parents um right now we don't have any that would be an an easy yes you're allowed to bring this book home um and so it's written as a paper system but hopefully that would change and that was a reason that um Mr Heath suggested hey let's put this in administrative guidelines so that if this um flexibility happened we would be able to easily pivot on that and at this point because of the survey with the tiered system and the results of how people felt about the tiered system I thought well we could do it in administrative guidelines an administrative guideline is something that means it will happen um and we can always bolster it into policy when
117we've solidified processes um but I have no problem with having in policy it was always my intention it's how I presented it when I presented the stoplight system so um I I'm happy to to move forward with this and I'm glad we have that um added layer I think it's a a good addition I know Rose and I had met with Mr Heath prior to you proposing the stoplight um situation and this is similar to what we were kind of talking about as well so I I do support that I do not support the removal of the sexual content policy I think we need a standard I've reiterated that a million times so um and I do think it's legally defensible because I did consult our attorney many times when we were going through that
118process to come up with a definition and um it wouldn't have been proposed if we couldn't defend it so I understand what you're saying but but it is defensible um otherwise we wouldn't have had it so I just think it's an added layer of protection I think it's unwise to remove that added layer and I think it sends a negative message but the rest of it I do support the um two-tiered system I Echo your comments um M Mr Heath is it something that you can consider to have this permission slip similar to the CCP permission slip that we can have parents sign upon making their decision on how they're going to which tier they're going to sign their parents their kids up for could you Rose do you have something written up that you
119could possibly could we propose it in the policy or would it be more um I just have what like what lake lake Lakeland has um it just it just lets parents know that if you're if your child before they can actually enroll in the CCP they have to sign acknowledging that the CCP program may include mature subject matters or materials including those of a graphic explicit violent or sexual nature that will not be modified based upon you know that's the CCP enrollment um regardless of where the course instruction occurs so it's some something along those lines saying that I mean that might be that's geared toward college level but something of those just just I mean that's for that release us of a little bit of liability too because we're not P going through every
120book but it also like alerts cuz I'm telling you a lot of parents are not aware that it's even allowed that we even would have some of these things so but Mrs I Alo that statement that you just read um is really informing parents that they don't have a right to um say their child can't read it and it also is saying that the parent doesn't have a right because you're enrolling in a college class well that an example CU that obviously that's for college that's what you're using as well we we can we can tweak it to and then it's also stating that they couldn't ask for an alternate material but that isn't true because in in our district you could ask for an alternate material and you can ask to review it and
121you could even say no my child can't take it home with them so I don't understand if you're if you are given the notification that says you are going to be told your child's taking no book and you can opt into restricted access like I will give permission aren't you inherently like you know that you are reviewing is that when the statement you're reading that we're going to be providing for that tier two tiered system are you giving examples to what or just in general saying when when your kid takes out a book we'll give you the titles and that might be a place to put it something like so you're talking about before they um during like the pick this one or this one it would say just you know uh it is your
122responsibility that materials may contain um controversial topics or be sexually explicit aren't we getting into the administrative guidelines content at this point I'm fine if it's an administrative yeah she's I think what just I just want to caution us because we just said you know having sort of this loose framework up here um to it built into policy was wise but that we should leave the details to the administration guidelines which we're not responsible for creating I think what she's saying is a disclaimer which makes sense to have it in policy so that um you know it just it basically says hey there may be sexual content there may be controversial topics or something might be sexually explicit so that parents who may not know that we may have books like that um I hear
123what you're saying and I understand what what a disclaimer is what I'm saying is it doesn't belong in policy and policy is our job I I beg to differ I think it definitely belongs in policy I disagree okay couldn't that my question my question was the language you're proposing would be on the the the approval slip that is going to be sent no no it would be you're you're going to because the idea of the two-tiered system is that every parent is going to choose either full access or approval correct so somewhere there so prior to them you know on the same form that they're going to pick so prior to them actually making that selection just a disclaimer in the annual update um that you're doing digitally where you're going to choose Open Access
124and Reserve access would that be a place that in the administrative guidelines it would say we're adding a disclaimer to let parents know that in our media center collections there could be some mature content just that would be accurate for an elementary student not Elementary I mean I'm sure it isn't accurate for an elementary student we're talking about we have 18 books right now that we have blacklisted and they are all in the high school that's right but this this would cover that but it would also cover any anything that might be considered a trigger for a kid again I think this is if it's talk we're talking about administrative guidelines here and that is Mr Heath's domain not ours well that's why I'm asking him if he would consider that if you can send
125me the language we'll look at it when we're developing what uh because again just to be clear in this first this first year because the annual update is already done um we'll we'll have to figure out a different procedure to follow here so I know we just put that in policy that it's around the annual update but it's going to look a little different this first year um probably more of a Google form or you know email response type system um but we'll uh we'll figure that piece out um the the the language for that in the annual update has not been identified yet so you know obviously we can consider some of the the suggestions that you guys share with us as well so again miss Io if you'd like to share that with
126me um that can be something that we can take a look at as we're developing those guidelines okay thanks okay we now have a motion and a second on the table to approve um 2520 with the amendment that is behind me no we don't we do not have a motion on do I have a motion I'll motion yeah because the motion we have on the yeah the motion that we have on the table just to be clear because we didn't have the amendment yet yeah was to approve the all the policies but then there is another motion that we never finished to be clear Annie made a motion to vote on them to divide to divide them oh which you had stated you support the division of the question um but we never we just
127kind of asked so we have a motion to I thought we could I thought we couldn't after we explained but let's vote on that we we have a motion to divide the to divide separately if we are eliminating the sexual content no that wasn't we discussed that one yeah that one which one are we this is to divide 25 20 912 the motion to divide the question is is to divide all the different policies that we're voting on separately so that we can vote on them separately oh but um at this point if if the sexual content is already lumped in and there's no way to divide that I'm okay with voting on everything and just keep going down and let's talk about the rest just go back take like to a motion to divide
1282520 7230 and 9130 separately so we can move forward here do need we're not we're not doing that M pay said she doesn't need that withdrawing it my concern was mainly the sexual content policy but if we're if there's no way to remove that okay no need to divide it so then we do have a motion on the table go back to your original Point all right the motion is to approve all of the policies and that was motioned by Miss maraza seconded by Mrs gesling we've had a ton of discussion and other motions in between and at some point we need to vote so we need to go over the gift grants and and well wait so we have a motion on the table to approve policy 2520 with the amendment policy 7230 and
129policy 9130 and we have a second for Mr Jing so now we have discussion on everything and more discussion well just on the um 7230 are we done with policy 2520 discussion can we close that discussion all right so is there any discussion on policy 7230 I have a question actually it's just for for my own purposes uh because I wasn't sure the addition says no gifts or donations of library media materials shall be accepted but in the other other areas of I think it's 2520 or maybe maybe later we refer to instructional materials so should we replace Library medium materials with instructional materials I know it's a semantics thing but does that make sense we in 7230 now yeah in 7230 that uh second paragraph just the addition oh we had that uh that
130question and again what we've tried to do is clarify that in the administrative guideline um so the the one addition that we've played around with in the administrative guideline then is that um it says in addition a gift or donation must not and then it lists like seven different things oh okay and the last one on there says be a book or material to be included in the classroom or library media center collections so it clarifies that there okay so that's in the AGS somewhere then yes okay thank you I had one I think it might have been in the administrative guidelines um where it just looks like something was left out but I can't I I have to check if it was the givs and grants but 70 yeah 7230 it had like letter
131G but it was blank it's updated now so if you take a look at it again it's it's included in there and that's the language that I just read so be a book or material to be included in the classroom or library media center collections okay so um this is just for clarification for everybody this is um saying no gifts or donations of Library medium material shall be accepted it gets rid of the book donations um which I'll just Echo what I said at the special meeting I think a lot of us are having to do that but um I don't I don't think we should get rid of donations I think right now until we fix and our policy and we come become compliant with balancing our book collection I think it's essential that
132we do we've had several people from all different political spectrums donate books and I have no no problem voting on those books looks like our policy says um I think it would just help balance I think it would help show that we are not you know leaning only one way I think it would really be a statement to the community and I have no problem in the future revisiting this and adding that language in there once it is balanced but I think it's it's again not wise to make that decision right now until we have a balanced election I agree um I think allowing donation opportunities creates accountability transparency and trust with the community which we desperately need um to build on and removing this tells the taxpayers that we don't value their input and
133that's not true and again it's just a it's just an opportunity to put to donate books it doesn't mean it's going to get in so I think it's ill advised and the reason is the following that curating a collection for a media center it means creating a thoughtful balance of materials that offer the best use of space meet the curricular needs and student interest in each building our media specialist orders through the the Library Consortium LEC she's following the administrative guidelines outlined by Mr Heath and those are those new ones that he's put together requests for items on the list she compiles are made by the six Library clerks working throughout the district all items have a final approval process by the curriculum department and each building administrator book donations are not accepted by public
134libraries because of the complexities they present to my knowledge our district has never accepted donations to our media centers when materials are ordered a wholesale vendor like Baker and tailor is used materials are purchased at a discount are labeled for circulation and the mark records are uploaded to the library database there is no other central processing of materials at the district level there once was but that's been gone for some 20 years as far as balancing viewpoints for student research student students have had access to six database Services which resulted in retrieval of database U retrieval of more than 35,000 articles just in the 2324 school year those include the virtual reference library the literature Resource Center opposing viewpoints high schooling context Global issues and the points of view reference Center the last of which
135is part of info Ohio and is used at both high school and the middle school level so I think continuing our practice of not including donations is the sensible choice in this case because there have been for a long time the that opposing Viewpoint series now that's at least 40 or 50 years back that I can remember and the public library so that that's a a staple of research that gives timely and multifaceted views on any topic that might be research whether it's social issues government issues and the whole gamut so I think our robust use of those databases is an excellent resource and shows how well embedded that is in the resources that our students have at their fingertips you had mentioned Baker and Taylor database I just pulled it up online just to
136see um cuz some of these things do lean one way and Baker and Taylor have a diversity and inclusion catalog for librarians to choose from so just I do think you know people have bias even organizations have bias and I think that with our new process we surely will be doing a better job of of balancing them but because some of the challenges that we've experienced are not um the collections that we have do not currently I haven't been given at least a title that shows the opposing Viewpoint in some of those challenged books I just think that we should retain it for the time being look over some of the materials we've received from both ends of the perspective uh the um both persp perspectives um and and make that decision as a board
137I have no problem voting on on book books I think it's another distraction from the work that the the woman is already doing I I think you'll end up with a big back and forth what's the point of that I'm I'm satisfied that in terms of research opportunities that we offer a robust complement of good highquality databases and that's generally what students are using whether they're at the high school level Middle School level or certainly at the college or university level so their familiarity with that is is perfect and it also doesn't solve the issue of processing and space and the other piece that the librarian mentioned to me which is we've always worked hard to balance resources across the district we have various uh aspects of our community there are some differences in socioeconomic
138levels you can't have one building has this one one building doesn't get anything so I think utilizing our own own District resources if somebody has you know a suggestion they're they're welcome to offer that to their their child's principal um for a suggestion of something but the book ordering process is well established we get through Baker and Taylor they're a wholesaler like Ingram so like Amazon but it's designed for libraries and they offer a deep discount we have a a an Institutional account so it might be 20 30 40% off so you're getting books at a a discount if there are Library editions available for things that are used more um strenuously like a state book for example The Binding is going to be different than it would be for a trade paperback or something
139that's good for one or two uses and starts to fall apart so I just think the whole donations thing there there's a reason why the public libraries don't do it we never have I don't see a reason to make a change Mr Heath could you just speak to um what is your plan to even out the book collection with some of those specific challenges that we've received especially for elementary school um what is your concrete plan to address that and make sure that there's balance and do you feel like there is Need for balance yeah I we still haven't had an opportunity to sit down and go through the entire collection so that's going to be probably process number one uh as Jenny mentioned we've got about 34,000 books that we would have to re
140review which may take some time but um I think the big piece is uh and again I think that's why um uh we asked for some of those key topics that that we were looking for balance from um at our last meeting those would be some of those topics that we would be looking at specifically first and foremost as we review um our Literacy Council which is made up of our curriculum directors media Specialists principles uh and and our teaching staff um will will be tasked with working through that process and and and generating a report for us um obviously anything that we would be adding to the collection to to balance things out would be running through that Council as well um that's the really the sole purpose for those uh for those councils
141uh just to make sure that we we have alignment across the board that we're following our policies and that we uh that we're making sure that we're doing what's in the best interest of the kids so um once that uh committee comes back together that Council comes back together here in the fall that'll be topic number one on the the first agenda for that com this year and will that also include cuz I know the the main I I know we had the one book challenge for K through 5 that was part of the actual library but I know several of the other challenges we've received in the past like the Colin Kaepernick book um those are part of the library the in classroom Library classroom Library would that review include those as well that
142one's a it's a little bit more of a challenge because that's already been board approved that entire classroom Library collection um you know could it go go through the review process and that we now have in place with that review process committee sure um because I believe that's that Colin Kaepernick book actually went through committee um when we when we did the review for that one so that's probably where that would live at this point okay I think the committee is helpful I know with the Colin Kaepernick book um it was not a unanimous decision to retain the book I think it was a six to4 um decision wherefore teachers or staff members um administrative staff members voted to thinking it would it should be removed so I do like the committee idea you know
143my opinion on the book donations for what it's worth is um we've had books donated recently from with both liberal values and conservative values and we haven't accepted any of them they have theyve sat on Mr Heath's desk um we haven't brought them forward we're we're not just accepting one-sided donations we are not accepting any donations we hadn't been accepting any donations even though our policy had room for it and and this is why we're coming together now after looking at what the public library does they don't accept donations for for just this reason they have Librarians that curate their collection they only accept donations that would go into to the little local library um the little mini libraries or they would accept donations to be able to sell at a book um sale but
144to raise money but not to shelf on their books and they do that because their Librarians are the experts to curate The Collection I don't believe a board of education needs to curate a library collection and if we're accepting donations in the sense of to balance a collection we don't have that overarching view of what the collection is we're seeing like little Snippets this is the job of the Librarians we need to stay out of the politics of which books are coming in and which books aren't and we need to give that to the professionals I don't think that we should be curating a collection so I am in favor of this um adjustment to this policy completely agree and that is more or what I said at our last meeting that you know if
145there are concerns about political leanings then why not leave it to the experts it makes complete sense to me um I know that those experts are going to give equal weight to positions that are you know supported by facts supported by empirical evidence supported uh by data and you know truly that's the same thing we teach our students to do in their own work uh when we ask them to create research papers or or projects so I I know that um that is what they'll do I trust them to do it and I'm good with um with the the policy as it's written right we've all had a chance to speak about policy 7230 I just have one more comment and then we can we can vote I just find it interesting that we keep
146going to the to to emulate men are Public Library standards but then we don't copy their standards when it comes to sexual content good point I actually think that's inaccurate I'm sorry I said I think that that isn't accurate No it is because when The Bluest eyy was challenged you can't take our card for the Menor public library and go and check that book out you have to have a specific card that the Menor public library has your your adult parent signed for you saying you can have access to any materials we don't do that but yet we had The Bluest Eye here in our library for Access but yet you couldn't take our library card and go to the Menor public library and check it out to be clear that's only the library card
147that are the men or School library cards but if my child has their own library card not a men or School's library card they indeed can go check out no right at the at the Menor Public Library if you walk if your minor child walks in they can't check they get a different type of um card unless a parent or Guardian comes in and signs it off that is not what I understood um to be the case but I no nobody here works at the library so I don't think that we should maybe I did sign off I know that my child don't have don't have restrictions they don't have the restricted access must have signed then must there's a disclaimer it's it's the normal library card but you have to sign off that you're
148okay with your child much like the disclaimer that Miss Appo was stating for the policy you sign off on that when you get a library card um I had spoken of this when we did The Bluest Eye challenge because I reached out to the men are public library for a bunch of different titles that would accomplish the same task but not have the sexually explicit materials in it and that was one of the questions that I had uh written to the library director um for for verification so you are correct like you can go get a card but you do have to sign off for your kids so to your point though that's exactly what we're doing because with the two tiered access with the two-tiered access I'm saying I'm deciding my child can check
149out whatever you're going to tell me what they're checking out just like the public library does or no my child has restricted access so we're doing the exact same thing that the public library is doing but they have a disclaimer I think that's to your point that's what they were stating yeah okay okay um any more comments for 7230 which is book donation all right comments for policy 0 this is our public complaints to be clear this is the challenge process right yes thank you and so this brings all of our challenges under one policy so this would be challenges for professional staff members administrators superintendent Treasurer classified staff District service operations um educational program and instructional materials and as we talked about earlier instructional materials is all encompassing any comments on that just want
150to clarify that the major change with this one um is not just the location I mean if so if somebody were to um want to challenge a material the process from their end would look essentially the same right correct because we still have that one form that would be used for any challenge the only difference too then would be you would not be invol this is up to the committee to handle right right so in the in the past we've had different uh procedures for instructional M material challenges supplementary material challenges and library media center material challenges this would take everything to committee great thank you Mr Heath do you know what's on the form because I know the last person who challenged um said that the form didn't really match what her challenge was
151for for the library book is what's on that actual form or at least can you just take a look at it and make sure it matches this one yeah because anytime we make an adjustment to policy if there's a related form to it that's one of the things that we'll have to make sure shifts as well so if there's some clarifying language that we need to include in there we certainly will okay any more discussion so we have a motion and a second on the floor to approve policy 2520 with the amendment um policy 7230 and policy 9130 please call the role Miss maraza yes Miss Jing yes Miss aapo no Miss Payne no Miss Cook yes motion carries 32 all right next we have the legislative report Miss Mara thank you I've got a
152present uh oh some slides I'll just go ahead and get started while you're oh there we go so before we get to the slides um uh just to give some quick updates from the Ohio Department of Education and WorkForce One they've got some proposed rules open for public comment um so you're welcome to go there check out their site and log your public comments there on those rules there are around standards for a couple of SP uh scholarship programs and um whether they should be accessed by virtual means um now I wanted to talk about this program and actually have for some time because I get a lot of questions about it I get a lot of um you know how does this affect minor schools public schools and particular and of course there's a
153lot of news going around about this topic so I figured it was a good time um sort of sleepy summer and it would be a good time to to touch base on it especially because the Ohio Department education Workforce just released a lot of data um on on the program and so for context the Ed Choice uh voucher program was created in the 1990s uh for in Cleveland as a way to support families with lower incomes um who wanted to send their students to better performing schools but um last year the Ohio legislature expanded the program program by removing income limits and opening the program program up to families with higher incomes and they removed some other restrictions as well um and that really and that's um House Bill 33 it was part of the
154Ohio Budget bill in 2023 and so that expanded the program substantially and really we saw an explosion of vouchers um over the last year um the explosion itself resulted in an enormous increase in the number of vouchers for students attending non-public um usually private schools and the numbers were just released um by the Ohio Department of Education and work Force um Ohio awarded about 130,000 vouchers um just last year just this past year which is more than double the previous year's number we can go to the next slide thank you very much um so you nope sorry one one back there you go thank you um so this is from the State House news Bureau you can see this obvious explosion that occurred uh just last year um with the expansion of the program um
155so of the 15 northe Ohio school districts that saw the biggest surge we'll go to that next slide now no I'm I'm sorry back up one more for me to the there it is thank you um so here's um this isn't not all of the schools that received vouchers this is actually just one page of the report but it shows the um the growth uh by by amount so this is a lot of data I see but um you can see in this third column from the left the growth by percentage of vouchers that were that were distributed so at the top of the list you see you know Avon Local 6,150 increase in vouchers Kenston Bay Village Independence Hudson and so on Menor is kind of in the uh middle of this list here
156which I've highlighted for you but essentially what you should remember is that um you know about 46,000 of these vouchers went to families in Northeast Ohio um and about half went to districts that are coded Suburban or wealthy Suburban schools Menor is one of those schools as Mr Wade has told us before that is considered to be quote unquote wealthy according to the state um so all of the out of the 15 Northeast Ohio school districts that saw the biggest surge of voucher voucher use this year um all but three have five star ratings on Ohio Ohio's annual report card rating shardan Olstead Falls and Columbia local school districts each have 4.5 star District ratings um and so this all of this is coming from the again the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce and
157um so this data was just released at the end of the school year so last month in June now um Mentor you can see here we've had a 789 per increase in voucher use so you can see in FY fiscal year 23 we were at 73 and just this past year it was 649 and this report I think was pulled a couple weeks ago that it actually might be a little bit higher than what you see here all right keep going forward if you could all right so in Mentor in particular this just sort of lays it out visually I know folks love their visuals I am I am one of those folks um so again 789 increase um and it's really interesting when you start to break down the numbers which you can do
158on the website anyone can go there and check out this data of those 649 families 80 have low incomes 569 do not have low incomes and a lot of people are concerned about this because um that was the the whole point of the program when it was created in the 9s the Ed Choice Voucher Program just no longer serves its original purpose um so that is definitely a concern for a lot of folks um let's move forward another slide so the other interesting thing this is another big concern a lot of folks have um is that while we're seeing this explosion in vouchers these are our numbers um men are specific numbers for the change in um you know disenrollment from public to private homeschool so you can see we've remained relatively flat um folks
159who chose to homeschool their children um in just this past year were 174 were identified and for private school 669 so you can see that 669 is very similar to the number of vouchers that have been distributed in menure now um what does this mean you know what does this mean for us what does it mean for Menor Public Schools I think you know when we compare these side by side um we can see why a lot of folks do have concerns about it um but basically to summarize the majority of students receiving Ed Choice vouchers already have been attending private schools right so we're not seeing a big influx of folks leaving our district taking those vouches and enrolling in private schools so that kind of was I think the philosophy part in part
160behind that program but that's not actually what's happening the state is this is very important for us the state is on average spending more on private school students than on public school students so that's a big concern for us men are public schools we receive and buil please correct me if I'm wrong but it's about $1,500 from the state uh per student each year is that roughly correct between ,000 and 1500 uh yeah I'd say that's pretty accurate I think it's in between there somewhere actually but close enough right so the per the per pupil cost um in other words what it should cost to teach a student as defined by the fair school funding plan is about a little over $8,000 but the average voucher value is actually 5500 so in other words kids
161who are attending private schools are getting more funding from the state than we are getting here in public schools but so just just to sort of summarize um and and by the way it's even higher for kids in high school the voucher um expenditure per student is about $8,400 so it's not really easy to see how the hits our bottom line today in terms of you know dollars and cents but it is clear that it eventually will and as public school board members it's really important that we know that and that we share that information with our taxpayers um especially because the less funding we get from the state of course uh that's the that's more funding that we're going to have to find um from local sources that is to say property taxes so
162um really important for us to be aware of this development keep an eye on it and understand what it means for us as a public school district so that's that's it for my slides thank you very much and I'll turn to um our state house updates because there are a lot of them uh the general assembly met at the end of June uh right before they recessed for the uh summer they sent 29 bills to governor dwine and several of those were education related um he only signed one of the 29 so far that were sent to him um many of these bills they were um for lack of a better way of saying it they're sort of Frankenstein bills so a lot of the um what the legislature passed uh were you know taken
163from other bills and tacked on to others and then and then sent off to dwine so it was an interesting mix um they're not expected to return to session until after the November election because a lot of folks are out there campaigning um but they'll return in no after the election in November for uh what is known as lame duck when we expect to see a lot more um legislation passed specifically because this is the end of the general assembly um two-year process so um I'm going to just go over the ones that were passed uh there I won't go over all of them I'm just going to go over sort of the highlights so again Mike dwine only signed one of the 29 bills and that was the banial state capital budget um it
164had a lot of stuff in it but the highlights are essentially that it directs 4 .2 billion to building construction and Community projects over the next two years and of that 600 million will go to the Ohio facilities construction commission for K through2 School building construction um lower incomes lower income districts are more likely to get State assistance uh for new school construction it also includes this is more local local information which was really cool uh it includes about 4.6 million for Lakeland Community College um engineering program building Renovations mechanical and electrical infrastructure replacement and for the alliance for working together Northeast Ohio transformation Training Center which is right here in Manor um Lake Gary College also is expected to receive about a half a million dollars to renovate um some uh spaces in their
165Health Sciences Center so that was signed um on June 28th but there's a stack of bills also on the governor's desk uh we don't really have a timeline for when they need to be sign but what we do know is he's got about 10 days um it's just that we don't know exactly when they hit his desk so we don't know when that time clock will be up but I'm sure we'll hear soon so House Bill 47 is on his dust this would require the placement of automated defibrillators in each public and chartered non-public school house bill 147 would make changes regarding teacher license lure revocation there are a lot of other um bits and pieces to House Bill 147 I do invite you to take a look at it um this bill was another
166one of those Frankenstein bills that was amended to include Senate Bill 18 1 um that prohibits schools um from charging different game ticket prices based on whether the attendee pays with a card or cash um and this bill would also require students to be charged less than adults um Senate Bill 168 this is known as the education deregulation Bill several changes to teacher and administration lure evaluation and rating systems um but also to other sort of unrelated areas it changes the teaching grade bands from 6 to 12 to 7 to2 and allows the odw to establish alternative Pathways for bachelor's degree holders to obtain an educator license to work as an administrator superintendent so again changing those qualifications a lot of this was I think done to help um alleviate the teacher and administrator's uh
167shortage um also you know similar approaches when it comes to uh addressing the bus driver shortage so kind of playing with pickup times um it also had some language regarding um sex education in there so it was really like a a big pot of a big mix of things education related um House Bill 214 um asks that each Public School adopt a policy regarding certain expectations related to the performance or of Staff members professional duties um and it would prohibit anyone from having to commit to a belief political movement or ideology but I believe we already have policies in place to um for to address such things correct yeah um so that one wouldn't affect us too much uh but there are other amendments in here in this bill it also added in Senate Bill
16849 um which requires public school districts to adopt a policy to reasonably accommodate students sincerely held religious beliefs and practices including three excused absences for religious expression days Senate Bill 112 um is about safety getting inspections on certain protective doors that's something probably we're going to want to pay attention to to make sure our facilities are up to code Senate Bill 29 is um strengthening student privacy laws um with regard to um Student Records um and monitoring School issued devices um so again um that this is just some of the the legislation that's on dwi's desk for him to sign if he doesn't sign it within that 10day period it automatically becomes law none of them would go into effect until January 1 um there is one pending uh bill that I think we should
169just be aware of Senate Bill 104 these are changes the college credit plus program mostly around assessing and Reporting student performance but um so it was all about the CCC program CCP program excuse me but then house lawmakers amended that bill and added in House Bill 183 which would prohibit transgender students in K through 12 and colleges to use bathrooms and locker rooms of the gender with which they identify so um again just mashing together a lot of this legislation we'll see what happens as we move forward um that is it for the legislative report I just had one one question about the um enrollment numbers that you had given for homeschool CU I follow that very closely and in February I had asked um Mr Heath for the numbers and it was 190 it
170was 174 go back to that slide that she's referring to for us CU it was 174 in the beginning of the year but it jumped up in febru febru the total as of February 20th was 190 so just as an added note it's the um home school home school side it was 174 in the beginning but as of February 20th it was 190 I think it's back I mean this is yes that's perfect thank you those are the numbers that um that Mr Heath gave me yeah the email I have from February 20th says total as of 220 2024 is 190 so a little bit of a discrepancy just wanted to note that because I follow that very closely that's it thank you very much um next we have the student achievement report Mrs dley
171I do Mrs Estus is getting everything all set up for us there we go so with summer in full swing and students and families enjoying vacation Adventures the Menor school's administrative team has been hard at work while looking back at last year's achievements and challenges the team is immersed in planning for the upcoming school year the student centered work ongoing during the past month has included data analysis of the standardized test results from the Ohio Department of educ ation and Workforce Development and the advanced placement test results from the College Board Menor 2024 State scores have been closely examined by the team while standardized testing is just one aspect of assessment it offers insights that inform planning the results are scrutinized Statewide and become part of the state report card it's significant to note that
172private and charter schools are not required to use these State tests to me measure the performance and growth of their pupils starting in third grade Ohio's public school students take State tests each fall to establish a new Baseline and again in Spring to assess growth the spring results come back in June too late to offer timely feedback that can inform teaching strategies for individual students however the broader measure of overall learning in tested areas offers every District a chance to look at longitudinal Trends the impact of curricular changes alignment of content and implementation strategies in the classroom our elementary students in grades three four and five are tested in English language arts and math fifth graders also take a science exam overall there have been improvements over the past 3 years with notable growth in
173fourth grade math and all three areas of fifth grade testing while third grade math is lagging at just under 71% the other area show students averaging 74.3% or higher on all exams the administrative team will look at variables within individual buildings to further refine the story the data reveals when measured against Statewide averages Menor scores for all tests in grades three four and five exceed the State numbers by 12.8% when more data becomes available we'll also measure progress compared to other local and cohort districts this can reveal opportunities for targeted change and continued Improvement our students in grade six seven and 8 are tested in English language arts and math eth graders also take a science exam for middle schoolers it's easy to see the impact of Developmental changes and the adjustment to the demands
174of the secondary level sixth grade scores are languishing below Proficiency in both Ela and math seventh grade scores are showing positive improvement with seventh grade ELA at over 80% eighth grade math has had a 23% boost over the past 3 years while eighth grade ELA persists as an area of concern while the scores for sixth 7th and eighth are largely disappointing a look at State averages are revealing men are outperformed those State scores by 15.2% showing the middle school grades as being especially challenging again the administrative team looks closely at multiple factors in search of solutions and strategies to support student growth and success in order to follow one of the four Ohio approved Pathways to graduation Menor high students must earn a minimum of 20 total credits in specified subjects and take the required
175end of course assessments these include English language arts 2 Algebra 1 or integrated math 1 geometry or integrated math 2 biology American history and American government the result of this year's end of course exams are positive all scores have reached the proficient level with the exception of Algebra 1 and geometry which remains an area of close scrutiny while that is a disappointingly weak spot the strides made over the past 3 years show a 16% Improvement and Algebra 1 has has risen by 7.8% a particularly strong score in US history at 87.7% is notable when measured against Statewide averages Mentor scores for all end of course exams exceed the State numbers by 22% as mentioned before when more data becomes available the team will also examine progress compared to other local and cohort districts to identify
176further opportunities for improvement advanced placement exams are standardized tests designed by the College Board to measure how well a student has mastered the content and skills of a specific advanced placement course most of these have an endof year exam but a few courses have different ways to assess learning for example AP Art and Design students submit a portfolio work for scoring many colleges offer credit advanced placement or both for a scores of three four or five the array of AP math exams included pre-calculus statistics Calculus AB Calculus BC computer science principles and computer science a 232 students took the tests and 205 scored a three or higher the AP social studies exams included US History US government and politics macroeconomics microeconomics European history and Human Geography 193 students took the tests and 154 earned a
177score of three or higher in the area of science the AP exams covered the following subjects biology psychology chemistry physics 1 physics 2 environmental science physics C electricity and magnetism and physics C mechanics of the 120 students who attempted the exams 97 earned a score of three or higher of the 150 students who sat for the AP exams for English language and composition Andor English literature and composition 132 earned a score of three or higher for the Fine Arts AP exams 29 students attempted drawing 2D art and design 3d art and design and mus music theory 28 earned a score of three or higher of the 21 students who sat for World languages AP exams in Spanish language and culture French language and culture and Spanish Literature and culture nine earned a score of three
178or higher finally of the 132 students who have participated in AP seminar or AP research all but one earned a score of three or higher the rigor of these academic opportunities give students valuable learning experiences that help to prepare them to meet the challenges at the college level congratulations to them on their dedication and success assistant principal Mr Russo reports that 100% of the students who enrolled in summer school classes successfully concluded their work and will receive course Credit in some cases students had remedial work to complete in other cases students chose to get a head start on class requirements to open up their schedules making room for additional classes or time for extracurricular activities congratulations to all the students for meeting their personal goals the Menor High robotics team finished in the top seven
179at the national Bots IQ 2024 Berg bash Invitational held at Robert Morris University in Pennsylvania the Nory robots team included members Nick mag try Katie polands tan daily and Ben Nutter their success would not have been possible without the generous support of the alliance for working together and the mentor teens's longtime sponsor Libra Industries who back them for the 12th year Liber provides industry advisors including Kenneth K well done team finally our hometown Cardinal Mitch trabis is back for the Menor youth football camp this week the Menor High School football program is offering a three-day football camp for all elementary students entering grades 1- six each participant will be given offensive defensive and special teams instruction each attendee received a camp t-shirt a student passed to all home games and a signed picture with Mitch
180the camp is being coached by members of the high school football staff as well as current players from the Menor High team and thank you and Mr Heath did you have anything to add regarding insights and prog press with our state scor yeah just one thing that I'll I'll toss out to the group here real quick we we met as a district leadership team on uh uh June 2nd I believe it was to to really dig into some of the preliminary data that we that we received and obviously third and sixth grade are two of those areas that we're really trying to focus in on right now that just haven't seen the same level of growth over the last couple of years as some of the other grade levels and um couple of things that
181that group has uh has identified just to share um kind of the level and and the depth um that they really dig into this data um first of all from the from third grade one of the things is is maybe a structural piece that we need to take a look at obviously this is the those students first opportunity to take State Testing um so one of the things to look at is you know what how are we preparing those students with test taking skills um to to really be at their best with those results um the other thing is um the the state tests are done on computers and right now our third graders are still using iPads um so using computers and keyboards for the first time is one of those things that you
182we're trying to teach them fairly quickly with those skills before the before the test but could there be some other things that we would uh we would do differently from a technology standpoint to just embed those skill skills within their content during the course of the year um instead of just trying to cram it in last minute um the the third grade team really took a deep dive into their uh into the content standards a couple of things that they're looking at right now uh especially in ela uh looking at informational text and and foundational skills are the two main things that they've identified and that's actually going back into what they do in kindergarten first and second grade as well to make sure that those foundational skills are there that they can build upon
183then especially in that uh that content strand around informational text so that's one thing that they're going to focus on here this year um from from the math standpoint uh again probably more of a structural thing than an than an instructional thing um geometry typically is taught towards the end of the year and what they were noticing is those subscores on the third grade math test in Geometry were much lower so one of the things that they're looking at is that pacing guide to figure out can we shift some of those geometry standards a little bit earlier in the year to improve that subscore which ultimately would raise the overall scores then as well so so that's third grade from from the sixth grade standpoint that again I I I still want to take a
184really close look at our transition programs there um the we've heard on several occasions not just academically but socially behaviorally emotionally that that shift from fifth to sixth grade is a real challenge here in this District um and and our data is showing that so we want to take a close look at some of those transition pieces to try and make sure that we support our sixth grade students a little bit more maybe than we currently are from a from an an instructional standpoint from an academic standpoint Point their Focus right now as they took a look at some of those test results was uh really just vocabulary acquisition um so they're looking at some strategies around reading across the content areas a little bit more to to try and increase that vocabulary acquisition that
185will help them out on especially the ELA test moving forward uh the other thing obviously with uh our shift and the the the math resources to to using openup um we've seen some great success in seventh and eighth grade we've seen some great success in uh in algebra um we're looking a little bit more into geometry for next year as well and we've got uh some of our teachers at the high school level that will be implementing some of those resources next year for the first time um but there's something missing in sixth grade um so we're really going to look at okay how is this being implemented there uh utilizing our instructional coaches um to really focus focus in on Sixth Grade both Ela and math moving forward do you ever look at a
186group at whatever grade level that might have a struggle because it's if you're looking at sixth grade scores over time it's different kids every year so if you see a group that has a particularly complicated set of results it may not make a lot of sense do you sometimes see consistency with that same kind of a struggle May maybe over the earlier grades yeah so we look at the the data in two different ways we'll look at uh just year over-year you know sixth grade last year to sixth grade this year um and obviously those are some of the comparisons that are are are most obvious but the other thing that we will do is we'll follow Co cohort data all the way through as well um as you said different uh classes have different
187makeups and um they kind of feed off each other a little bit and some are lower academically some are lower athletically some are lower artistically it it's it's really it's interesting to watch a group of kids develop over time um so that's one of the other areas that we're seeing um this year sixth graders are one of those groups that hasn't performed quite as well in fourth and fifth grade on some of these tests so that's another area that we're going to look at too are are there some additional supports that we can put what will now be at the seventh grade level next year um and really focusing in on uh that teaming a aspect that we have uh at our middle schools in seventh grade still to make sure that uh they're getting
188that academic support that they need and now that the Esser funds have gone there's that Balancing Act to take a more limited set of resources and distribute them strategically correct that's the other thing and and the final thing I'll say is the the whole reason we really look at our state averages with with a the first comparison is because often times the the test itself will be harder or easier from one year to the next and and being able to look at those scores over time as well gives us an idea okay yeah there was something goofy this year because you know the the state test average went down you know 10 points you know why is that um so we have to look at those comparisons as a starting point but again we want
189to make sure that we're looking how do we compare with our County how do we compare with those those 20 similar districts with the methodology that the state uses so those cohort districts around the state how are we comparing with them and and again I think a lot of us on the administrative team know a lot of Administrators in some of those other districts as well so if we identify another uh District that's doing quite well in something we'll reach out to them and say hey what are you using how are you uh using professional development instructional coaches uh what's the instructional practice around this content area or grade level so that we can learn from them too thank you at this time we have the chief financial officers report and recommendations Madam president members
190of the board Mr Heath uh we closed out our fiscal year um as we all are aware after the June uh late June meeting um we do have our financials now completed uh as we look at those um when we look at our bottom line which is the bottom right box uh we we were in a deficit this year uh and we finished at uh 2183 uh deficit uh million do deficit for the year so our expenses exceeded our revenues by about $2.2 million uh we look at our revenues for the month um we were up this uh month comparison to last year um if you remember that goes to the fact that we were delayed in receiving our Homestead re uh roll back reimbursements uh from the state um so with that uh it
191did come in so it was a timing issue and everything kind of worked out it uh s by the end um when we look at our Revenue um at this same time of this year last year were $400,000 L if you remember last year at this time I said we had a collection split of about a million dollars so if you look at the the local reimbursements compared to last year we're down $1.5 million we're not really down it kind of goes to when we collected the revenues uh you know fiscal year and the way people PID their taxes um the the big thing this year that really helped us out is we're about $1.1 million higher in our interest Revenue um in comparison to last year on our our um Investments um and the
192reason why we ended up seeing our Revenue a little bit higher for the year uh where ended based where I thought it was going to be in May is the last two months of Interest Revenue was extremely high um we exceeded in our last two months by about $600,000 more than we had in any of the other two months kind of B so um we didn't uh see some losses that we had seen in some previous months with kind of some of our old interest uh bearing Investments kind of coming off um so we ended very very well which was great um and again so that led us to be about almost $700,000 higher in Revenue than we were expecting in May when you look at expenses um our expenses were up for the month
193uh comparison to last year again timing and when you look at expenses for compared to Prior Year we're down almost $1 million and again we know most of that's because of the fact that we were down we didn't make a large transfer as we have in the past um because that's one of the reasons why we made the large transfer last year because we'd be using that money to support our Capital Improvements kind of going out and we've talked about the adjustments that we made overall uh when we compare where we finished the year to where we were thinking we're going to be in may we were down about $900,000 um in comparison and the majority of that is actually because the buses that we had bought the last bus purchase that we had before
194we made the adjustment to our bus purchasing program much like last year they didn't come in yet so we are Cash basis so because those buses didn't come in we didn't spend the cash so the expense looks less it's a timing issue that money will be spent it's going to be spent next year it's been encumbered and you know we approve those encumbrances and they'll roll over um kind of going forward so overall again down the $900,000 and if we look at just kind of a quick summary of where we were um throughout the year uh you know this is kind of an ongoing thing that Mr Wilson had done and I kind of carry it out just to kind of close out the year um if you look at our September appropriation you know
195we are you guys know in in my world I get to talk more than anybody else three times a year and that's in September that's in November and that's in in May but I think you guys are trying to challenge me on those so we we'll see if that continues going into the next fiscal year um but when we look at our Appropriations and we look at our two forecasts and we look at where we thought we were going to be and kind of where we ended up in June and that should say fy2 24 I apologize um with our actuals we we brought in actually we know 109 .6 million and we spent $111.8 million and you can kind of see that our revenues and our expenses are relatively close um you know to
196where we actually where we were projecting in September November and May and where we ended up um you can see we we're very close in our Revenue um we've we've kind of dialed that in which was a request of our citizens Financial Advisory Group um they wanted us to be much closer in that um because when you're talking about $110 million and you talk 4% if you know you're still getting an a right you're still at 96 woohoo but that's $4 million so over a 5year forecast ends up being $20 million that you were understated in your Revenue that can have some significant impact on timing of when we're going to go for levies um so I don't show this to to to kind of Pat myself on the back I show this in the
197fact that when we're using our 5year forecast to make decisions it's important that we check and you hold me accountable to you know being close on those you know uh assumptions that we're making in in the budgeting that Mr Heath and I do together so that when we are using that forecast to make decisions we know that it's as reliable as it possibly can be the ultimate thing that ultimately matters is that we finished the year like I said in a negative 2.1 uh million deficit which brought our cash balance down to $53 million $797,000 which is still a healthy cash balance um but because we are deficit spending um we know that over the course of the next 5 years that's going to be depleted um and we did have an encumbrance balance of
1983.1 and just to remind the board and the community encumbrances means money that's spent but it hasn't been spent yet so it's it's accounted for so we have to we have to account for that so it's some if you know if you're an accountant or you're more familiar with Finance it's a liability so we have a liability of you know cash going down by another $3.1 million that's been uh authorized and requisition been put in and purchase order has been sent we just haven't received the goods or services yet so we can't say that it's been expensed so I'm happy to answer any questions uh for the board on our financials for the end of the fiscal year 24 I just had a a question um because we've been notified by the Concord trustees that
199they would like to move forward with an rid for a new development um and it would result in a financial loss for Menor schools can you explain um to the community what an rid is and the amount of money that we would lose if they went forward with that I I understand it's within their legal rights and um I was just wondering what communication we have had with the trustees and um if they were amicable to discussion on more schoolf friendly options um I know that they're making a decision is it in September yeah so we were notified in mid to late April um by requirement that the count or conquer Township trustees were considering a rid a rid is a tax abatement it's it's equivalent to a tiff which we're probably all more familiar
200with than things that we've talked about um but a rid is a residential Tiff for a lack of better ways to explain it um and it's on on the increase in property after the rid is approved so there's a development canterwood um off of h Road in concour Township close to Morley kind of between Little Mountain but Morley but closer to the Morley side yes um uh I think what is that button that kind of turn off yeah right okay all right um conquor Township resident um so when it comes down to it what they're trying to do is they're doing a tax AB bment then where they'll get the proceeds of the M Exempted Village voted millage uh that would be then applied to those new residences would then be not given to us
201um they'll take that increase uh 75% of it for 10 years because that's what they're legally allowed to do um they can do a rid for up to 10 years and 75% much like the city can do tiffs for 75% for 10 years without voter approval um and then we lose that growth on that new construction just as a reminder to the board the only time that we typically see growth on any of our levies um is when there's new construction um and the voters have approved for us to receive that millage however this would basically circumvent that and take that money uh to uh the Concor Township um and we would stand to lose based on my calculations I'll say approximately because it ends up being there was there was an issue um with
202their filing that's why they had to delay on July 3rd and they ended up not voting um on the canterwood uh legislation that they were proposing um because actually part of that neighborhood falls into Riverside so instead of it being 56 houses to Mentor Schools only 30 of them will fall in uh I think it's important to note um there is some differences between the uh other rid that was proposed for Riverside that was voted on in July 3rd and ours um the area that is proposed for Mentor is a um 55 year and older community um so it's deed restricted so the amount of students that we would likely see in those 30 houses is probably minimal um so the impact from an expense standpoint is not as high as it would have been
203in the other neighborhood where it is not D restricted and I think it's 140 some plus houses uh that was going to impact Riverside um so a little bit of a different situation so you know when we look at it from our perspective you know we're strictly going to be a loss of Revenue um expense side would be very minimal but we're talking Revenue loss of approximately $1.2 million is what would be my calculation um over the 10 years over the 10 years so you're looking at about $120,000 a year um and again that's that's my estimate um I have been in discussions and had some conversations with the uh administrator in conquor Township Mr Rose he's uh we've talked twice I I've asked uh to see if we can find some time between now
204and September to have a a discussion um to maybe explore other options um and you know I'll be meeting I think with miss iapo and miss maraz here uh next week to talk to them so that they can reach out to the trustees so that we can utilize the processes of collaboration um to to have discussions and have them understand where we're coming from and have them share with us where they're coming from because obviously they're very similar to us where we're all fighting for the same pool of money for property tax um and while $1.2 million doesn't seem like a lot but for us that's that's one teacher right um a year for 10 years that that that really kind of equates to so you look $123,000 that's that's a teacher salary with benefits
205plus a little bit of extra um so when we're trying to run lean um in the other piece of the the puzzle you baited me the other piece of the puzzle that I think we have to consider is if you don't live in Concor Township and you're a mentor resident that's $1.2 Million worth a revenue that you're basically subsidizing for Concor Township because that's Revenue that we're not receiving that the voters in our district approved um that they said would come to us and and granted those people didn't vote on it because they didn't live there but they didn't vote on the property taxes that they're paying for anything um you know it's kind of for the township either so so you know that's not really a good argument in my mind and then what
206happens is everybody who lives in Mentor Public Schools then has to make up that $1.2 million so when we talk about tax abatements rids tiffs and things like that I think for schools as you hear me say all the time our revenue is relatively flat we we we see very little growth even when we talk about the valuation increases for 30% um that we have shared with the community and how that's going to impact just the inside Village um you know so it's that's that's we'll see a little bit of growth 2.3% um not huge when you're again when you're talking about a budget that's $114 million going into the next fiscal year um we get I get very protective of the revenue that's that we project and you know we we assume that new
207construction is going to occur and we kind of project that into our forecasting so that loss of Revenue could have an impact again minimal when you look at it Year bye I mean I don't I don't argue with the fact that it's you know $23,000 on $110 million isn't a huge amount but when it when you're talking about the salary of a teacher and that teacher could be impacting kids M I think it's you know we need to have discussions to because if it's just canterwood today what if true you know conquor Township has a lot of area to grow and build you know what if it's a much larger neighborhood that has kids in coming in and now you have a neighborhood that's got 300 homes and there's 100 students that are coming in
208that we have to now educate and now we're losing the re that would have helped offset those costs I think it's a discussion that the Board needs to continue to have with the township so that we can work together much like we do with the city because many of times when the city does a tiff we have to give credit where credit's due they keep us whole yeah and they do school friendly tiffs the majority of the time and you know we don't have to bring those very often to the board and they use the income tax increase that they have to offset those things Mr we to your knowledge have we ever had a rid have we ever been involved where we've lost revenue from red is is this a new thing or has
209it been around a while and the only residential area that I know that has had a tax abatement is um new Creek okay but other than that I mean to the best of my knowledge and that was a court case that was I can't I can't speak to I just know in looking through Mr Wilson's okay paperwork that I saw that new Creek was an area that was um tax exempt for for whatever purpose it was did the folks that Riverside speak out to the trustees about the situation from their end yes Mr uh I know I've been in touch with your CFO Gary PLO who's um the CFO at Riverside also a mentor resident so him and I talked um and I know he sent in a letter um to the township trustees and
210I believe one of their board members may have as well will we be doing the same have you decided what our response would be uh I haven't formulated an actual response to this point because I'd like to sit down and have a discussion you know I I my my Approach is always collaboration um to work with them to see if they can you know and getting a better understanding because I mean I mean outside of listening to their hearing and you know reading what their trustees have posted on social media um I've not been able to talk to anybody except for you know Mr Rose and we're you know we're well aware that they're within their legal right yeah but again when you talk about residential issues it's it's a lot different than commercial property
211because um there's costs that could be Associated if this becomes a precedent I like the idea of collaborating with them trying to find some school friendly Alternatives but we do have to be cognizant of our taxpayers and and what that means for them and for our bottom line so maybe we could discuss this again next month and hopefully there's been some dialogue and and then we can discuss where we want to move because in August we we would still have time since they're voting in September MH thank [Music] you um do I have a motion for the report and recommendations of Mr Wade so moved second any discussion further discussion please call the role Miss pay yes Miss Jing yes Miss Appo yes Miss marazza yes Miss Cook yes motions carry 5- Z is there
212any unfinished business anyone would like to discuss the only um thing that I had and I didn't mention it um earlier but I was asked a question about this so I just wanted to bring it up the SRO update I know Mrs cook and I the last update we received was hey here's the contract looked pretty good we kind of talked through some little Minor Details and then it was was supposed to go to the city so could you just explain where we are are we still on track for like September to have that contract for two retired police officers that's the Hope um I sent them the contract right after we had our meeting um reached out to them um again when I got back from vacation last week because I hadn't heard I
213had suggested a couple of dates um they got when I sent a a follow-up email they got back and said well we can do this date but we can't do the rest of this week because I think Mr Philippi acts on vacation um so we are looking at either next Thursday or Friday I believe are the the two dates we've thrown out uh waiting to finalize uh those once we have those finalized we'll uh we'll hopefully have that contract ready to roll and um you know we'll cross our fingers for August you for a potential contract um approval here thank you I I just had one thing um as as it pertains to the last meeting in the future can we you know I I had inquired with um our president and with Mr Heath
214about the the the meetings that we the meeting we're going to have the work session and you know asked about why didn't we list policies and and everything and I and the response I received um Mr Heath you had said we're not that's only if we're voting and then um your response Miss cook was that um you can't really speak to me because you've already because you don't want to violate open meetings act um but I think it was pretty obvious what I was that I was questioning what our intentions were going to be and so um I did do some inquiring in that and now we we do know that um the sunshine notice should have included more in its description so that we're all on the same page and so I ask that
215in the future that you know what what you could have said Mrs cook is there are one or two more members that are interested in bringing something forward but there were so many that you could have done that I would have felt more prepared and you know that wouldn't violate the open meetings act so in the future if we could make sure that we're on the same page because I came into that meeting with thinking we were going to be doing it was going to look a lot different than what it actually looked like so um Just for future I can appreciate your your comments on that and and um I can ask to I don't typically see the sunshine notices before they go out so I can ask to see the sunshine notices to
216see if they're you know as detailed as I want them to be and you know I didn't respond to you with more detail because I had responded to Mrs pain and that's why I said I've already talked to someone but please talk to Mr Wade because I thought the question went to him and so it wasn't certainly wasn't to not right discuss with you but I had already spoke with Mrs P about it and I couldn't violate the special meeting but I think we have to be careful because if you talked to Mrs Payne you KN I'm assuming you knew that this motion was coming up because you guys got legal clarification on if we needed to have policy numbers on it so we have to be you know be careful about I don't I
217don't know what you mean I think we're talking about a couple different things here I think just to clarify um because my email to Mrs cook was very specific and it was in reference to the um contract for Mr Heath and Mr way being on the agenda um last minute being put on that agenda instead of at a regular meeting I think you're talking about how they did a first reading on the fly right yeah and I have that discussion to under special board meetings to kind of talk actually mine mine yeah mine to to Mrs cook was just um asking asking of why we didn't why the uh was about the agenda and then what we what was going to happen at the meeting it was also about their contracts and I had already
218spoken to Mrs okay so you spoke to her about contracts not about the moving the voting at that meeting I spoke to her about con right okay okay I I misunderstood that but yes to answer your question I will um take a look at any of our Sunshine notices and and have a discussion so we can be really clear okay to and and I did consult with legal to make sure after you know those concerns came up were we within our legal right with our Sunshine notice and we were um so we were in compliance the sunshine notice was properly notified however um if you'd like more detail on that we can we can work on that so thank you for bringing that up I wrote that down as one of my notes too okay
219thank you um also I just a couple just if you have follow-ups on um the Noel Bell to Bell and I think you were looking at to see if data if there were drops and behavior issues yeah so two things with that um one we'll have more of the data conversation here in August because the administrative teams at each of the buildings has been have been kind of digging through that as part of the student discipline uh conversations and meetings that we've had um and then number two we'll have um probably the first reading of that updated policy with the um with those couple of things that we'll take out because we don't have pagers anymore um and then also making sure that the policy reflects what our student handbooks indicate because I think it's
220a little bit more stringent in the handbooks than it is in the policy so we'll make sure that the policy updates are included in that as well so I'll uh make sure and include that in the board update here between now in our August meeting okay along that same line Mr Heath I know that we've been talking a lot about about discipline and um disciplinary you know procedures and kind of making those more formalized um and I know one of the big issues that we were concerned about was vaping um vaping and drug use and we were talking about putting in some protections especially at the high school level and Middle School level where maybe um random um dogs coming in or searches or um things like that and I didn't know if you had
221had a chance to speak with so we haven't looked at the at the dog shet but one of the questions that we did ask and and we're kind of we're going to take a closer look at this because there were there were conflicting reports that we had like like vaping sensors in the restrooms too um and some people are like yeah I think so but maybe not I don't know maybe the batteries are not working I I don't know so we're looking into that component too um so looking up both the detectors and then um I think as we have more conversation around the finalizing that SRO contract we can also talk about uh bringing the dogs into yeah I mean just a general um what's our plan you know to keep our discipline tight
222I know that that's a focus that we all want to we were all unified behind um you know really just kind of focusing on those specific issues people lingering in the bathrooms and things like that so any help there would be great to have an update for next time absolutely speaking of the discipline piece I know um we've gotten some questions on this lately too and I think it's been something that's been um is going to be worked on and changed but the outward facing disciplined data can you just get give us an update because I know there's a lot of people look at it and it looks like we don't have bullying issues which we all know we do and we're trying to work on it but could you speak to um that data
223yeah and this is one of the challenging pieces for us because the state defines bullying and and has a very very strict definition of what that is so that's what we have to report um a lot of that has to do with something that is ongoing and pervasive and you know how how do you meet that threshold um so it was interesting because Mr Wade actually uh chimed in during our team meeting this week um referring back to some of his uh time here as uh principal at the high school and you know when we had when we would have an issue with you know one incident that took place early on in the year and then there there wasn't anything else well that's not a bullying piece but if something happens that initial incident
224may not be qualified as bullying but are there additional things that take place throughout the year that then constitutes all of that being bullying and how do we look at that from a data standpoint so we've actually brought that up with our administrative teams too and that's why we're looking closely at those definitions number one that the state provides us but then also looking at our definitions here what what's bullying what's harassment what's intimidation uh one of the things that I I think isn't quite accurate in our data yet is okay you got a couple of Middle School boys walking down the hallway that are friends and they're like pushing each other into the lockers and stuff just because that's what they do and and what what codes do we have available to us and
225what language do we have available to us to classify that as something um and often times it it falls into that you know bullying harassment and intimidation type language because that's all we had available to us so one of the things that the the middle school and high school administrative teams have done is they've started to dig into the the codes that they have available to them now and uh they're working with uh Mr Lynch and uh uh Mr vay out of our uh it Department to see if we might be able to create some additional codes the other thing that that will allow us to do too is it will allow us to classify different things as either major incidents or minor incidents because that that's one of the initial reporting pieces well often
226times things that are classified as bullying intimidation and harassment are classified as major incidents when okay again you had two friends walking down the hallway pushing each other into the lockers that ends up being recorded as a major incident under those definitions that we currently have but it's really a minor incident and maybe didn't get the suspendable consequence that typically we would have with a major incident so can we start to separate those things out a little bit and have some of those designations where we can identify something as major or something as minor within those categories moving forward to so it it what started off as what we thought would be a fairly simple conversation and It Up In The Weeds pretty quickly um but they they've had some great conversations there's some I
227always love a good spreadsheet and they've got some unbelievable spreadsheets right now that are um they're kind of working collaboratively um in each of the buildings but they're also looking at their own individual data to identify that so again we'll continue to to to post all of those mean behaviors that we have uh in our district um it may not actually represent what we're seeing out of the state data and that's where that confusion lies um but we'll try and make that a little bit more clear moving forward as well once we get these uh these codes settled here um before the beginning of the school year perfect thank you I appreciate the additional information are you seeing trends like these are areas or settings that we need to focus on they're looking at at
228some of that and I know I shared some of the data back in May or June as I call um and they're they're looking at some of those things again a little bit more clearly because they're you know they started explaining some of that to us and that's what kind of took us down the rabbit hole um I think once they they get to that point where we've got the new code set up I think we can kind of look at our our old data and start to identify okay where are those Trends now it is that that mean Behavior existing absolutely um and and we actually have a code at the elementary level that we just call it mean behavior um we don't have that that same type of coding at uh the middle
229school high school level so it lives somewhere else so we're trying to kind of disaggregate those those codes a little bit more to figure out okay what exactly are we talking about you know how what does the bullying data look like what does the harassment data look like what does the intimidation data look look like and then what does the mean Behavior look like that you know might just be okay we're joking around a little bit and pushing each other into the lockers um so that that may take a little bit more time to sort out but they're in that process right now thank you is there any more unfinished business okay um we're going to move on to new business and I've had a request um for a first item under new business [Music]
230um which is titled public participation and I understand Mrs aapo and Miss Payne would like to discuss this so I don't know who would like to start but I can start that's fine um they kind of go hand in hand so they're listed as two separate things but um we're kind of discussing about how the last special meetings that we have had the we felt like the original intention of it was for work sessions um which historically work sessions have been where we just kind of come together hash it out talk about different things and then maybe out of that comes excuse me comes a first reading at the next regular board meeting um it seems like now we're doing a lot of business in special meetings where those original items like you know contracts
231addendums for increases for both Mr raade and Mr Heath um would normally be at a regular meeting and now those are happening at special meetings along with other first readings and things like that so um I think if we're going to continue down that path that it would be advantageous for the public to have an opportunity to speak at a limited amount versus what how we do it right now for regular meetings um because our policy right now does not allow for public participation at special meetings so if we're going to start doing board business making you know bigger decisions and and votes during those meetings I think it would be advantageous to our public to have a limited ount of public participation but kind of add that into our policy um so that's kind
232of I don't know if Rose if you want to add additional yeah I Echo that but it's e to me it it's either has to be that we do allow that or we can make it an make an effort to not you know I again that this last meeting we had I I felt like the the reasoning behind it was kind of hijacked and we didn't get we really didn't get to some of the things that I was uh anticipating we're going to get to so maybe we either keep those special meetings focused on what they're designed for and and anything that can and should be kept for a regular meeting um should should be you know with the exception of an emergency but or I feel like we owe it to the public if
233we're going to that those special meetings are turning into what basically the format of what we do at a regular meeting they should have an opportunity and I don't mind having it at a limited amount I don't think three minutes is necessary but I think even just offering a minute for public participation would be important because we don't cover as as many um items as we do at our regular meeting but if we're going to start consistently voting on items that the public doesn't have a right doesn't have a opportunity to speak on I think it would be important to add that a question is it you know since I've only been on the job for a few months now what is it not typical to to vote during special meetings I mean how what
234has been the um what's been the history there she are you are you asking Mrs who are you asking who are you asking I guess we've in my experience both as a superintendent and as a CFO here at Menor it is not uncommon for certain times of the year to have items that you're voted on during special meetings correct have we had um contract addendums done at special meetings prior to this I can't speak with certainty on that okay not that I'm aware of but at least in my tenure and we do a lot well I guess that's yes we do I mean HR items get pulled all the time Mrs Bernett will get a lot of stuff to us this time of year because they're trying to hire people and people are resigning so
235yes I mean to answer your question there are contracts that are on for approval and resignations that are on for approval quite regularly yeah but not um I think the biggest concern was that this was you know a and it's not that I'm saying it one way or the other but the um you know addendums for both people that we review really should have had the opportunity to go to um the public first I don't believe in my tenure that we've ever had that happen at a special meeting and I think we have HR items but there they're things that we typically wouldn't have full control over anyways they're they're not big contracts or anything like that um so I just think if we're going to start doing a lot more business in special meetings
236we should add a limited amount of but give the opportunity to the public to speak on those before our final votes as I recall we've had a variety of different topics I'm trying to think over time that there were short meetings like for example when uh we might look at the end of the year financial report and add something else to that so I I think people certainly have a an open opportunity to contact us via email by phone regular mail even um we hear from a lot of people regularly some people occasionally I feel like our two hearings of the public at every regular board meeting each month is um more than adequate to cover agenda items and non-agenda item so I'm in favor of leaving it as it is not sure if that's
237working okay that's better um so for me yeah I I tend to agree with Miss jelling um there's always an open line of communication folks can always share their thoughts with us via email phone Etc um and you know for me as many folks here know in April I encouraged us to really take a close look at our public participation protocol because I do believe and I still do um that they're not very effective and uh back in April I called for more dialogue so you know and for years now I've sat in these meetings and I've watched these one-way conversations happen from the audience to the board and it it just doesn't seem to get us anywhere um it hasn't really helped to solve too many problems though there are a few exceptions to
238that I will say um and it it's it's just it's it's really not helped us improve and I am definitely wanting to help us improve um so I'm asking you know why would we do more of the same um when what we need is to reframe our thinking on this so I'm again calling for more dialogue less division can can I ask a question of the board of course so after the last meeting it was requested I don't want to say unanimously but I think it was so I'm wrong I apologize for us to do a better job of uh ensuring that people who speak in public participant are either residents Guardians uh business owners or elected officials so that task falls on Mr Heath and myself so we met to discuss how we could
239potentially do that and and in the way that we attempted to do that for this meeting just to share with the board and the community the procedure is you the only way that we can do that without asking for IDs from everybody is to go on the Auditor's website put in the addresses that we get on the forms uh online um and then that leads to some issues right because not everybody is the owner of the house that they live in some people rent so then all of a sudden I have to look I spent 45 minutes today on the the People speaking myself because I was out I had a doctor appointment came back the first 45 minutes of coming back was to do the research on if the people who were speaking tonight
240so you paid for 1/8 of my daily salary on for me to research whether the community members who are speaking are actually community members just to put that in perspective because when you look at it then I have to go on Infinite Campus because they may be a parent so then if they're a renter and the add the name doesn't align to the auditor that I can go infin campus and that's that and we know through enrollment there's a much more rigorous process so then I can confirm that you know Bill Wade is actually who he says even though he lives in Annie Payne's house because he's running it from Annie settle down I'm using examples of people up here um so we know that that's oh but he has kids in the school so
241that's their address he use so we know he had to provide a utility bill so on and so forth so that so but then there's still people on the list who I don't know or some that I know some of the names are familiar and they've been speaking so we I trust that they are because we've always been using the honor System for them to be able to speak so I asked you know and then the other issue that we have is that people can come up until 7:00 and hand me a green sheet so I just pose to you these dilemmas that will exist if this is your directive to me specifically and Mr Heath to be able to prove this I won't be able to do that and I'm definitely not going to
242be able to do that if you we continue to allow people to sign up with green sheets until the time this they come in because there's no way for me at 6:59 as I'm preparing to be prepared for the board meeting to make sure that I can get the comments and do the minutes and get the papers to the people that needed to get to that we're going to be able to do that so I just posed to you that you know we had a system that was based on the honor System we had someone who broke it we will continue to take that into it I think it's important that the community realizes and one of the things that I've always said about Mentor the reason why I came back to Mentor is because
243people are passionate about their schools and if we're passionate about our schools I would hope that the people who are signing up are people who abide by our policies but outside of looking at the Auditor's website in Infinite Campus unless I call the you know the school resource officer to run everybody's ID and I saying that tongue and cheek I don't mean that as a serious thing there's no way really to prove otherwise that the people who are signed up are are residents in the district or owners of the district or have kids in the district or are elected officials how does other districts such as like Willoughby East like I know they have very similar um registration needs to happen before the start of the meeting how do they verify of all the conversations
244I've had with Nick I've never had that conversation because I don't think we're the exception I think that that is um I remember when we made that change we made it and there was a spreadsheet of all the different schools and what they're all doing and the majority of them do require registration do require the same guidelines that we have so I would assume they're doing the same thing you know so I would wonder how how they're doing it um or if they're doing it the way we've always done it which is the honor System and then if we catch it then then I'm happy to reach out to Nick I can I can text them tomorrow and see what information he has but I mean I I just want the board to realize that
245no matter you know we haven't added added a layer of screw scrutiny it's not going to be foolproof and again we got to double check what what their policy is too and who's allowed to participate right in their hearing of the public too I'll have to pull up that spreadsheet again and and see what's there and are they allowed to sign up right up until the meeting begins you know maybe yeah what what's their process to do it yeah could we start by making an adjustment there and and and make the deadline to speak uh to sign up to speak earlier so that Mr Wade has at least some time to um you know to do that research that is needed uh but then alleviate that burden you know in the hours leading up to
246the meeting could we make that adjustment I I wouldn't be a proponent of that because I feel like people do should have the option to come until 7 p.m. and we just heard him say that there's no guaranteed way anyways he's got to check all these different things and without going to you know a police officer and saying hey can you look these up there's really no 100% sure fire way so I feel like that's just kind of Mr Wade what are your thoughts on that as long as you can't fire me for making a mistake on it I I mean I'll do whatever the board wants I do want to avoid mistakes that's what I'm trying to think I mean the reality is it's it it it's going to be near impossible to when
247I get a green sheet at 655 or 659 to be able to determine if the person lives in the district m so if we have a policy I would expect that you know I hear this quite regularly from all of you if we have a policy we might as well follow it so I mean if if the if the person's supposed to be doing that and we're going to have expect that the administrative team is going to be responsible for ensuring that the person is abided by the policy I need the ability to have time to do that yeah and the do I need a lot of time no I mean I I mean 5:00 it would give me 2 hours to be able to do that like I said I did the the the
248thing today in 45 minutes so it's not like I need a day I do I do need a time frame of at least I would say an hour and a half two hours because it's not like every day I I have the ability just to stop what I'm doing at 5:00 to research who's speaking at tonight's board meeting Mr Wade how many people on average each meeting are you unable to verify are we talking one or two or are we talking well I I I have no Lous test for that because today was the first time I've actually outside of checking who's coming in and looking at the address to make sure it seems reasonable I I find it interesting that we didn't we don't want to make a policy move um on 17 on
24917 um books because that's too much but we've got one issue one person broke the role and we're like let's let's change it I think it's not a problem yet yep it's just not a problem yet I I think down the line it's something that we are aware of but I mean right here that was a one time thing and then total and how many so the term I've been in here since we've changed it problem since we changed it yeah I I don't find that necessary I would like to add more public speaking not not take away a time frame but so just to make sure I've got this clear too then so the the two pieces under new business today one of two things either have public participation at special meetings if there
250will be votes on our contract because those are ones that you guys are approving or keep those contract addendums on the regular meetings I I would say for that yes but any major votes I think um outside of the normal HR items that we don't I mean we don't really have a whole lot of say in h so like normal HR items are still okay even yeah like major contract changes votes um so I guess we're getting into the special meetings the second part so I'll just jump right into that too if that's okay with everybody it's okay um so I think the special meeting to have an agenda so as a board member we should be able to be fully prepared before the meeting and the way that the last special meeting went we
251didn't get a heads up on the contract being on any the of the contract addendums or the bonuses um until 24 hours before that was the same time that the public gets that information it leaves us zero leeway for any kind of Corrections that may need to happen um I think I think we if we're going to do business in special board meetings it would be really helpful for us to at least have it the board have it 3 days before so we have a heads up if we see an issue before it goes to the public and that we are able to be fully prepared I agree yeah is that possible to get to get it ahead of time I sent it to you um before the public because I I know it it
252wasn't in an agenda yet because I sent you those addendums as soon as I got them from the lawyer um immediately because remember I said hey I want you guys to have these was that the day before though it was still the day before yeah so that's still the date I mean on that but but my point is that I sent it to you as soon as possible and it was all things that we had discussed um and I had said as soon as the lawyer gets these two we may be doing this on this next meeting or the following meeting depending on how soon our legal team can draft the documentation and then I followed through with that sending that to you as soon as I received um so I I don't know it
253would be hard to say that I could do it sooner because I literally did it immediately which was our whole point I think as could have waited it could have waited they could have waited until today waited today um because 24 hours before is really not you know the day before is really not enough time to concerned that we're limiting what we can vote on in special board meetings because whenever we meet we should be doing board business we're not meeting to chitchat we're meeting to get business done we're being paid for the meeting we need to be um cognizant of that fact we are not only the only people meeting but we have staff that are here cleaning the place we have security we have we're paying police officers and we're paying police officers
254when we have special meetings as well so um to take that expense on and then not be able to move business forward and vote I don't think that that's um very very good practice for the board I don't think she's asking us to not do that but when it's when it's necessary we had a week you know well what I heard was can we not vote on this or can we not vote on this can we it can it the issue is for me is it was known that that was going to be a a vote and we W it wasn't communicated to everybody and and on top of that whenever possible even for regular meetings for me if we can get the I uh agenda I know it's it could be changed it's subject
255to change but as soon as possible that is appreciated I think that's the gist of of her point right yep I have one more thing for new business and it's just something if Mr Heath if you can um I'd like to look at our policy or and and if we have one if if it's just um the student handbook but on student discipline measures during summer and during out outside of school you and I have exchanged um some emails on that um we have students that are coming to camps they're coming to you know they're at the Menor rocks and hanging out in on school property and we it's my understanding that there's not much in the in the form of discipline we can do when a student is on our property so I think
256that that's something that we need I think to look at too because um you know we want to have high standards of our expectations of student Behavior outs you know during the summer months so if that's something that you can um we can look at thank you got ity any more discussion for new business I I wanted to just bring one thing up I know we've talked in the past about student representatives and I'm just wondering if we thought about um looking into having some student input for our meetings and having a student I love that idea I know that we need to ensure their safety so that's to me top priority um I know we've had some meetings that have been pretty chaotic and until we can ensure that safety you know I'm I'm
257not yet comfortable but definitely open to conversation about it because I think it's a great idea I would love to incorporate the student voice I I've brought in the past to um when I went to Menor schools I was part of the superintendent advisory Council and I'd like I talked to Mr Heath I've talked to you about it um a little bit previously Mr Porter and I do know Mr Porter did imp did implement it um at one time and then of course he went to the elementary school as a principal so I found when I was in that group many years ago um it to be really beneficial it was like a rotating a group it was under Dr hoins it was a ro rotating group of know what that is a rotating group
258of students um from all different you know perspectives and it was really kind of helpful when I was thrown in there um so did that group meet at the table no they met with just the and it just the superintendent because I know that like Mr Crow has a group that he does but it was just the superintendent and it was full like she was like tell me everything you know and it was very transparent so I think something like that that would be really beneficial with a rotating group of kids you know I like that student input I think that we're just missing that a bit um and I know some districts have actually students at the table oh they're people that are all year they're the student Representatives so I don't know it's
259just something for us to maybe explore and talk about in the but okay um I think next we have hearing of the public on any topic um again I would like to remind all speakers that for our policy to speak you must either reside in the Menor School District own a business in the district be a guardian of a Mentor Public School student or an elected official in the School boundaries um that's why we are asking you to state your name and address at the podium for the record and I know that my speech might have been lost a little bit last time when our microphones weren't working so um if we could call up our speakers jacqu McCormack hello again I don't have anything prepared this time I just want to go over this
260real quick with you uh I know that Mrs maraza thinks that this is all a big waste of time these harmful books in our schools can we it's really hard to hear her can we turn up the volume please I know that Mrs maraza thinks it's a big waste of time these harmful books that are in our schools and that Mrs Jing thinks well there's only 18 there's not that many but yet it's too cumbersome to actually look through all the ones we do have to find them and uh we want to make our school safe for everyone but we we really can't go through all these books and when the parents bring it to your attention you're like well we're going to retain it because we're afraid that Publishers might sue us if we
261take it out of the school system I mean it all just sounds absolutely ridiculous If there really is only 18 bucks we've brought them to your attention take them out you don't need to make a two-tier system or a three- tier system or whatever crap you're you're trying when you are so concerned about wasting time yet you're making all these elaborate plans and then you're also telling the parents hey we have this potentially harmful information in our school that your kids could get a hold of so if you don't want that then you need to start reviewing everything that they get from us I mean how ridiculous does that sound a school is supposed to be a safe place safe for their mental state safe physically and yet you're just like well it's going to
262be your job as a parent to make sure that we aren't giving them things that could be harmful to them instead of just simply removing the few harmful things that us parents bring to your attention I I I don't understand the logic behind any of this it it makes absolutely no sense so keep on telling the parents that we have harmful disturbing things that we have leftwing ideology in these books that we have in our curriculum we we can't really control it uh but we're going to give you the option for you to review everything that we're giving them this is a public school and and another thing that bothers me is Mr Heath had said at a prior meeting that there were 500 incidences and that we can't we can't uh we can't expel
263suspend and expel kids out of this but there were 500 nces that all were attributed to 26 students there are alternate schools if only 26 students are making 500 incidences of violence or behavioral problems you know used to be that you were suspended and then you were expelled and you had to go to an alternative school I don't know why all of the other kids are punished for the few that can't behave but they're giving they're still going to remain in the free public school none of this is making any sense I I implore you please do better you're supposed to make policies stop not making policies you you just keep saying nope we're not going to make that policy nope we're not going to do that policy thanks thank [Applause] you ly Mazika Madame
264President members of the board Mr Heath Mr Wade thank you for the opportunity to speak this evening Madame President I would like it if you could extend I'm sorry I'm sorry please please start that the time wasn't going on we' started it thank you okay Madame President I would like if you could extend my apologies to Mrs Payne when I called out from the audience earlier I was trying to point point out that one of the board members was not speaking into her microphone and we could not hear her I meant no disrespect I just wanted to be able to hear what she said uh when our group donated books we did not realize the problems it would cause I also didn't realize that Min Public Library does not accept donated books media I would
265be happy to pick up any books donated ated by our group and again I apologize for any turmoil that we may have caused with our donations I'd like to also point out that the Menor public library has a different method of parental control of a child's reading material the school's policy seems to be stronger than the libraries at the library a minor with an adult card has PR uh I'm sorry parental approval to check out any book that they want the school guidelines require each book to be approved by the parents and I think that our strong guidelines that were passed this or policy with the administrative guidelines that were passed tonight will do our school well and give parents the control that they need and students the ability to check books out that are
266appropriate for them and thank thank you very much for your time thank you Lindsay wall all right um I apologize I didn't give my address uh when I spoke before I'm on Midland Road in Mentor and I have two kids in the district at Ridge um I appreciate Mr Heath bringing up his plan to explore different solutions and ideas rounding discipline especially for students who are repeating incidents we are a public school and every child matters a lot of the time these issues are starting at home so I think the fact that he brought up that we need to explore counseling and different options for these students who are returning after a suspension um is is a great idea we can't just toss a child out because they're causing trouble we are a public school
267a free public school as was mentioned and I think it's very important that we remember There is No Child Left Behind that we give every child a chance I also want to mention that I find it extremely ironic that the board members who are asking for additional public participation public comments are the same board members who refuse to allow space in different platforms for free speech continuously I see board members make posts on social media with altered truths if you will and then immediately shut off their comments these people are for dialect I'm sorry no I mean dialogue they want the back and forth conversation they want the input from all constituents yet only the constituents that agree with them I think if they really truly cared about actual opinions of their constituents then they
268would allow that space everywhere but it's clear to me and I'm sure it's also clear to others that what you're asking for is actually space to bash our superintendent which is disgusting I think we get enough of that at our regular meetings in the 3 minutes that are allowed before a vote is taken but I can tell you this community supports our superintendent this community supports our teachers this community trusts our teachers the administration and the people that work in our schools we have seen that support and you will continue to see that support so go ahead and allow your extra time for for bashing of the employees in this District because the rest of the community will still show up and will still support these people who are dedicated to making the lives of
269our children [Music] better thank you our next speaker is Susan snik hello or good evening again um I just I wanted to first off I wanted to make a note just about um what was just said about the public speaking um to me again it it's amazing that we would consider having people not be able to sign up before the meeting just so they can be vetted we don't we're always talking about how valuable our superintendent time is only we're going to task him and Mr Wade with trying to vet who's going to talk and I think our honor system works um yeah there's going to be some people that get through that that shouldn't speak but we didn't have this issue last year when we had another woman um not from the conservative side
270but from the liberal side she also spoke and there wasn't a huge debate about it so I don't really think it's an issue and I think it's sort of an insult that we would try to get Mr W and Mr Heath to do some kind of menial task like that um I also want to say um in response to an earlier comment I want to say thank you to Annie and Rose um for all the work that you do for the community um we all know that you do not support uh pornography and I want to say a special thank you for not killing babies at Planned Parenthood okay and so I also want to make an effort to say that right now I'm only speaking to the board I am not in any way
271referencing anyone in particular in this District as I make my following points the specific names I'm going to mention are from past news articles that are going to highlight the concerns that I have um last year I spoke about uh the safety in our schools as it relates to boys being allowed in the girls restrooms and locker rooms and I think it's worth repeating in 2014 Christopher hambrook a Canadian man who calls himself Jessica assaulted several girls and women in a bathroom after going through the justice system he was allowed to reside in a women's homeless shelter where he committed more attacks on women in the '90s a florid a man named Patrick Hagen calling himself Patty punched five teeth out of a woman's head because she had asked why he was in the lady's
272room in 2014 Matthew harks who likes to be called meline was a repeat sexual offender who likes to to assault girls between the ages of 5 and 8 after going to a female prison he is now out and can still use the lady's room there's just a lot of examples of how when we let our feelings override Common Sense Things become dangerous I have seen on video um kids in our school lock uh lunchroom fighting I the last board meeting we had students confront people of the public I don't think that's showing that boys are safe in girls' rooms judging by what I can see for my for myself on video um I think I'm I'm going to challenge you to just stand to do what's right it's not easy you're going to be vilified
273and taken to court for no reason but you should stand for what's right and model good behavior so we can show our kids what that's about thanks thank you Adam Anderson good evening Mrs cook superintendent Heath Mr Wade and the board thank you for the time the community has shown in recent polling that we they were that we are not for Banning books and to continue the discussion is crazy if you're a parent that want to wants to restrict books and what your kids can read the opin system or the two-tiered system is very simple if you don't want your kids to read it you opt in leave everybody else alone I fully support the two-tier proposal as do several in the community two School B two of our school board members have been all
274over social media egging on a convicted felon to harass members of this board my daughter and others my family now requires a protection order to keep my 15-year-old daughter safe from an adult that was recruited and encouraged by these board members it figures an and Rose don't want to make changes to public comments it was just one incident right just one incident let it be your kid it won't be just one incident for you my daughter is a student at the high school and I thought it was a school board members job or at least in their best interest is keep the children in our school district safe these two school board members are fine with kids in our district being attacked by Outsiders coming into our district everyone can see the circus our school
275board meetings have become not only that it is now unsafe for students in the district to come to their own School without being harassed by adults some of which don't even have children enrolled in these School in this school system next year there will be seats on this board that are up for election I know the community will remember who is here to put on a show every month and make every meeting about themselves the people of Menor will vote for Schoolboard members that want to focus on doing their job in an ethical and productive way all kids in this District deserve to have board members that don't want to discriminate against any minority groups thank you Sarah [Applause] Everett my name is Sarah ett I live on on Washington Avenue I have a seventh
276grade daughter in Menor school systems she is the fourth generation between me and my husband to go to Menor schools I'm here today to speak to you all about Menor schools being more transparent about the physical violence and the bullying in our school district I did a public record request for the 2023 and 2024 school year for uh the harassment intimidation and bullying data after reviewing this data Menor schools listed 213 harassment incidences 151 threatening intimidation menacing and pushing incidences and 10 harassment intimidation and bullying incidents totaling over 374 incidents districtwide as a district you only reported six of these to the state I got three reports there's nothing just saying six total um the district is failing our children to keep them safe within the school system Mr Heath you keep saying we can't
277suspend our way out of this anymore I can't wait to see what the disciplinary actions that will be implemented next year what you choose to implement will need to be something Monumental and highly significant for the future of men schools especially with the world around us rapidly changing um as a school district we need to adapt to new standards as a community we need to be worried about our children's mental health uh will they end up being accountable children will they own up to their own mistakes or will they be rided with anxiety and failure as a board you are here to set forth the foundation for the future of our students what you implement now will be the standards for generations to come as a board you need to look towards the future for
278our children not bicker amongst each other uh it takes a village and we are men are Village School District as a board you have choices don't let history repeat itself men are schools need to hold the students and parents accountable for their actions maybe my daughter wouldn't have been assaulted at a football game last year if we had better consequences Ohio is a localized state that gives the school board the right to make new disciplinary actions and they need to be set forth real quick 988 is the total number of homeschooled in private educ which I just got today so your your numbers are not correct and they need to be aligned with what public records we are requesting so if your numbers you're showing us are not correct there's more that's not correct and
279there is a lot of stuff you are failing our students and our our community at all and you're lying so please stop lying and do better for our children I got public records I have copies if you'd like them thank [Applause] you can I just say something really quick first of all Mrs Everett thank you for speaking and I'm I just want to say on behalf of all of us I'm sorry for the experience that your daughter went through absolutely um and I think we disagree on a lot but I think we are all on the same page that we we need to fix this discipline [Music] we're hopeful there's no we're hopeful it has to be [Applause] done for every student in this [Music] District our next speaker is John Sanford McKenzie mallister then
280Mr Martell you are the last speaker real quick I want to Echo what Mrs Everett said you are amazing thank you parents are the primary decision maker regarding their child the role of the school is to Aid not replace it is the interest and beliefs of parents not the state not the board that guides the child's education you have the responsibility for supporting our roles as parents and which you are failing to do every time I come to these meetings the same three board members and the highly paid Mr Heath have issues of being trustworthy and transparent you're trying to manipulate the parents for your own selfish reasons and disgusting beliefs why would anyone in their right mind remove a layer of protection for sexually explicit and age inappropriate material taking away our decision again
281to protect our children Jenny says it is a false concern no ma'am it is a legitimate genuine concern from myself and many other parents but thank you for stating it comes from a small amount of people as if we don't matter Craig you were asked if you thought BLM and gender identity were controversial topics your answer and I quote was potentially yeah uh what kind of response is that if you want balance and refuse to take this garbage out of our libraries I suggest you find those books with the opposing view and enter them into your curated collection since you want to take the book donations away let me quote from our friend Rocky that you spent so much time on there was never an issue until you went after the kids you know that
282right if the members of the board continually refuse to work together the board itself is not going going to be successful in moving the district forward you are not going to get a levy you are going to you are part of the you are not part of the solution you have become part of the problem this includes you Craig this has become too chaotic to focused on political and cultural issues where our test scores have proven that our focus should be on the basics you brought this ridiculous Community survey to guide our curriculum how do we know people outside of the district didn't take the survey how do we know one person didn't take it more than once the wording of the survey was very vague and misleading for example how would you describe your
283level of concern regarding the appropriateness of books and materials available in the library of media center Why didn't it say how concerned are you that we have sexually explicit and age inappropriate books that contain rape in our library media center while you took a whole work meeting to discuss outside speakers you should have been taking the time to word survey to word the survey correctly so the answers weren't skewed to your point of view and beliefs and now our children have to sit through your Dei and scbs instead of learning the fundamentals have a good night thank you Gil martello 6880 South Camelot men Ohio good evening Mr Heath Mr Wade and members of the board I did submit my response to the district survey a few months ago and to be frank I found
284the exercise lacking the way the questions were posed and the inability to personalize a response prevented me from offering any useful information about my concerns moreover many of my peers who live in the city of Menor were upset that they were not afforded the opportunity to participate I believe a more accurate assessment of the people's sensibilities can be weighed by reviewing the results of last the last School Board election rather than a targeted sample of 2,000 respondents there were some 31,000 votes cast for five Schoolboard candidates two conservative candidates caed openly and proudly about their platform while two other opponents on the political left were very koi never forcefully conveying to the public their allegiance to many left leaning policies so what were the results well when you tally up the votes won by the
285four leading candidates it was a St statistical Dead Heat both the politically left politically right camps won 47% of the votes cast this unbiased fact brings into question the veracity of the recent survey results for a moment let's set the 5050 election split aside and go with the assumption that only 25% of the voters have concerns with the uh library book policy at the last board meeting a reference was made about the time spent on the library book issue was not justified since it only only 25% of the respondents were concerned I was stunned by the Cavalier nature of this statement if an officer of a publicly traded company had made a similar statement effectively disenfranchising 25% of its customer base a call for their immediate resignation would ensue in addition the appearance of using
286special board meetings to Bull an agenda circumventing the ability of the public to offer their input strikes me as very underhanded despite thousands of dollars spent promoting issue three last November and zero and a zero organized opposition against that proposed Levy failed so I ask you is it fiscally irresponsible to disenfranchise 25% of the electorate and in another manner attempt to silence public dissent given the apparent r ra or thin margins of possibly not passing another Levy Mr Heath I applaud your cander acknowledging the left Ling board members propensity to abuse the majority is refreshing this was one of the most intellectually honest statements I have heard at a board meeting the past 24 months ladies and gentlemen we need to do better thank you and have a good night thank you [Music] [Applause] um
287we do not have an executive session on the agenda do I have a motion to adjourn so moved second Mr Wade please call the RO M jusn yes Miss maraza yes Miss Alo yes Miss pay yes Miss Cook yes meeting is adjourned at 11:08 p.m.