Board Of Education Meeting Nov 21, 2023

001[Music] you yeah was I'd have to listen I don't even remember but I want to listen find out [Music] for C you at half [Music] second us [Music] they [Music] speak [Music] I [Music] you coming huh I felt you coming I know [Music] [Applause] I think maybe it was happy happy [Music] yeah would say I'm pict [Music] it I [Music] know B [Music] okay oh yeah that's that's how I know the enough [Music] I it's old home [Music] day hey everybody we're just waiting for Mr tle to show up right around the corner it's [Music] you're the one so when you have these Mee I know yeah I will see you yay [Applause] is it my outfit or what I apologize for being late I left the house without my jacket almost got here I

002got my coat I thought you got stuck in a snowstorm want to be half thank you this is not a intentional run up to my last meeting next so don't expect this to happen again I love that good evening November 21st 2023 regular meeting of the mened Board of Education it's called to order this meeting is being held in accordance with Section 313.15 the Cod your mobile on silent Mr W please call Bri M cook here m j b thank you please join me for the fledge Allegiance IED Al of the United States of America for it stands na indivisible andice for all I would like to welcome everyone to the November 21st 2023 regular meeting of the Board of Education prior to this evening each board member has received for their review and consideration

003the agenda and materials associated with each agenda items for the board's approval via the district's paperless Board of Education agenda system board dos the public can access the agenda through the school district's website the agenda is available through the district's website for public viewing this Sunday prior to the 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 when the board entertains comments from the community the first hearing of the public is dedicated to those who wish address the board on agenda items only the second hearing of the public is dedicated to those who wish to address the board on any subject whether it be an item on the agenda or

004another issue 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 website or onsite prior to 7 p.m. when it is your turn to speak you'll be called to the microphone when addressing the board please state your name and address question address your questions to the board president each person may speak only once per segment and comments are limited to three 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 compon onent to conducting business this is an information gathering opportunity for the board and the administration so we can work to best serve our committee if

005at the end of the public participation we do not make a statement please know this is no way demonstrates a lack of care for comments scared by our commune rather we want to be thoughtful in our approach and we provide a response in a timely manner when appropriate this meeting is being televised live and on a delayed basis and will be shown on Spectrum cable 1026 in Mentor and channel 1025 in Mentor on the lake this meeting is also being recorded and can be found on our YouTube channel caral K Mentor Ohio thank you at this time we have District highlights and recommendations good evening Mr President members of the board Mr Wade at this time I would like to invite state representative Daniel Troy to the podium to present an accommodation to Joe gladon

006for being named Ohio Career Tech administrator the year okay is Joe here thank Mr superintendent and the board members uh happy to be here I'm state representative Daniel Troy and I represent the 23rd Ohio house district which includes uh the city of men around the lake and pretty much all of w twos and w three in men until next year when they move things around a little bit I'm going to have parts of all four WS so uh but still have part of manner but uh this is just this is not a commodation Joe this is a formal resolution adopted on the floor of the house uh it's house resolution number 229 and honors Dr Joe glavin on the 2023 oact administrator of the Year whereas the members of the House of Representatives of the

007135th general assembly of Ohio are pleased to congratulate Dr Joe Lavin on being selected as the 2023 administrator of the Year by the Ohio Association for Career and Technical education and whereas this distinguish honor is a fitting tribute to Joe glavin in recognition of the outstanding efforts he has displayed as a proponent of Career Technical education the director of The Lakes Shore Compact and the Director of Business Partnerships and Career Technical education for men Public Schools he has helped increased CTE experience and Senior only IND stre credentialing programs for students in three school districts develop new community events to help address the workforce Gap in Northeast Ohio and advocated for CTE programs throughout the state indeed he has been tireless in his efforts to ensure that students are prepared for a career in life after

008high school and he has brought vision and wisdom to his important work and where as motivated by a deep concern for young people Joe glavin is to be commended for his exceptional commitment to education and he is one of Ohio's finest educational administrators and I'm proud that Joe's one of my constituents so and uh yeah it's just so important the work that he does because uh you know Ohio Ohio needs uh Ohio's economy needs workers uh businesses need those workers and people like Joe going out of their way to prepare our students Futures is the obviously the best interest of those students but is the best interest of all the citizens of the state of Ohio so thank you Jill [Applause] for agend library card that we our students ACC SCH liaries correct so I

009just wanted to see we change that to just verify that our library cards are more rest students so I can change that by getting rid of then public libraries and put to restrict so even Library CS provided to high school students restricts access than M yes M cook yes M BR yes m p yes Mr [Music] yes agenda first speaker um I just wanted to say I know I'm supposed to speak on agenda items to my congratulations to Dr for all the work he done Jo and I other we in Seven Grade and we were R back in the dinosaur ages you know now it's elementary school so I just wanted to say how much I appreciate I've seen Joe at work and I appreciate all he done he was um just as stand up

010of a student when he was in seventh grade as he is today so I just wanted to extend my congratulations to thank you good evening everybody um I know that tonight on the agenda approval for the for our substitute teachers and substitute bus drivers is wanted to thank all of you so much uh for once again showing that you do listen to the community concerns and the suggestions that are brought forward the board continues to demonstrate what listening looks like and how actions do speak louder than words um I think that is important that we're attracting applicants for those positions and to do that we need those competitive wages I know we have had several conversations and um different community members get up and speak on the importance of having those competitive wages that you

011guys are acting on those Su while the L passed and the pi unfortunately did not I hope this is not the last that we hear of this topic and I hope that you're not discouraged about bringing forward this ly personally I believe the voters clearly show that they support their schools by voting for the renal I believe it also shows the financial state of our community and how talk a small increase kep some from voting on a l that would need of safety improvements for our schools the messaging behind any future efforts to C py should be loud and hopefully supported by all school board members the safety of our students is and will continue to be a priority I'm sure I hope that if or when the pi Levy is brought forward again our

012community sees how important it is to pass this ly and it is not just for our schools but our community as a whole what happens in our schools does affect our community L on bot again soon in the near future and I hope that we have a unified school board that supports it good evening everyone the board so my topic tonight that I'm going to discuss on is about the ne policies as I was reading through the policies I noticed a common theme that was coming up is poisoning our country today and the minds of our children when we make changes to the truth the reality to conform to leing ideologies a change such as he she to the board to being the board member or the student seems to me that you think it's

013a nice thing to do but in reality and in my opinion it's just unnecessary and you are literally changing what is reality to a false pretense ESS try to change what's right to something that is wrong we are born male or female that is it when one wants to say they identify as whatever they feel like on a given day that becomes known as gender dorio to what they were born as who describes gender gender dysphoria as an intense emotional state that can be a symptom of many mental health diagnosis and this trust me I have people that I know that go by these different changes in their Liv and I have no problem being friends with them I love them I love everybody but it's still my opinion I'm right from wrong um these

014symptoms manifest themselves in depression anxiety IR irritability difficulty concentrating my question is why are we changing the truth because of how someone feels about themselves from what they are born as so now we have to make changes to documents that have been longstanding to the correct pronoun to what someone else wants Bas on a small minority what is going on here I will tell you what's going on we are confusing the minds of our miners by changing what is true raise a child up in the way that he she should be and stop indoctrinating them because you're nervous to tell the truth than to tell a lie what you're doing to the m school district is attaching the spirit of confusion and conditioning our children to be comfortable with lives we are literally living in

015a maid generation when you make changes such as noted you once creating an anti-christian culture you wonder why your lby didn't pass on a certain side it's because you're only appealing to one side of the community and that's from truths and values of a traditional family if you continue to make these types of decision you're going to continue to lose enrollment and not [Applause] pass sorry great trying to keep it moving make up some Hello I also wanted to speak to the policy where the masculine and feminine PRS were removed and it kind of created this gender neutral language in the policy um I have a real problem with that I I feel like it's um playing well I think it's playing into the problems that we're having as a society um there's nothing wrong

016with using he or she in the policy I think that when niola presented their policy that they didn't have to change that they didn't have to take out he she him her and all that stuff um what I'm asking you guys to do is to say look fine these are the recommendations that's great do we need to change the pronoun language in there no because I think by accepting that you're encouraging the fact that or the delusion that there's more than two genders there's male or female and when you're doing a gender neutral policy you're acknowledging that there's more than two which is false um and I also think that if if you don't speak up against that it's really showing um the community the the true colors of of the Met public school education

017uh folks I I just think it's it's showing them that yeah you've got an agenda a lot of people do they think this is indoctrination camps and there's an agenda and I think if you go along with this nonsense then it just it it convinces people even more that oh yeah there's something going on here um so I would just ask that you please you know do what you want with the policy but like the basic the pronoun stuff I would ask that you please just um have them fix that um erasing male and female uh is scientifically false it's morally wrong it's dangerous I think if you can decide to be whatever you feel like there's realistically going to come a day where there's going to be people outside the school that are going

018to come in and say I identify as a student today and they're going to go Gra grab the free lunch they're going to go take a shower where they want to and then they might hop in for some arithmetic or something because they get to identify however they want and that's not reality I'm sorry that people are confused but it's not a loving kind inclusive thing to to ackn to encourage the delusion and so what I would just say is please with this policy I would ask that you just have it go back to normal which is he and she thank you thank you thank you Mr cherry and you our last speaker for the first session okay the Neola policy to eliminate personal pronouns she he her him and to use only them they

019there or a noun to represent a person going forward in order to be more inclusive is an admission that this District supports and will continue to promote gender gender ideology and the political agenda of fluid gender against the beliefs of the majority of this community is the district also going to eliminate teaching elementary students to use she he her him pronouns in order to be more inclusive of all genders is the district going to teach elementary students that they them and their can be used for a singular individual and no longer represents as a plural pronoun this policy is absolutely based in a political agenda and should not be adopted in this District Also regarding the teacher at Orchard Hollow Mr Tim tatco that was recently arrested in sting operation of a police officer posing

020as a minor it has come to my attention that he was a principal at one of our elementary schools and was demoted to a classroom teacher years ago the community deserves to know why he was demoted rumor has it that it was due to inappropriate sexual Behavior if this is true why was he allowed to remain in our district only to be arrested on charges of inappropriate sexual conduct involving what he supposed was a minor the community deserves full transparency from the superintendent regarding this disturbing situation thank you thank [Applause] you good evening Mr President members of the board Mr Heath Mr Wade I wanted to comment on agenda item 7A number one regarding approval of the updated Neola policies in discussing the these updates board members have stated that they have received questions as

021to why niola is making recommendations to change gender specific pronouns to gender neutral pronouns it was asked why niola is going away from gendered pronoun usage and it was commented that some nearby School boards have rejected the change in pronoun usage because it was political in nature when I listened to that discussion at last month's board meeting something just didn't feel right but I couldn't put my finger on it it was when I was driving home it hit me why is being inclusive political in nature why is developing a warm welcoming environment for all people political I say this not just in terms of pronouns but the general culture and climate that we've been building here at the board meetings these past two years how do the word diversity or being black or lesbian or

022gay or trans become political these are not political words or issues these are human beings and human issues as a friend recently told me about being black in this school district it's like we have to constantly justify our very existence every time diversity equity and inclusion is challenged here in this community is as if we have to constantly justify our existence every time a book dealing with diverse issues causes an uproar in this town it's as if we have to justify our existence every time a racist incident is swept under the rug every time a trans student is called the biological male or female every time educators are told that they can't teach the truth about our hard history it's as if we have to justify our very existence constantly justifying why we belong here

023why we are entitled to the same rights and privileges to be understood is exhausting and it takes a toll on our kids and us this is what the public sees and the perception is more and more that men are schools are not welcoming to people who look or identify differently than the majority and I sincerely have to believe that that is not true because I have experienced very very much in many ways opposite things of that but that is what it comes across when all the public sees is discussion about pronouns books and bathrooms if this perception is going to change I really believe it starts from up top to with leadership and the message needs to come from upfront loud and clear and consistently in spaces like this it needs to be in no

024uncertain words in explicit policy and actions that diversity is welcome here that it is not a political thing it's about being human thank you thank [Music] you that concludes the first hearing of the public Mr superintendent's report and recommendations good evening everyone uh I just want to start tonight by thanking our entire Community for coming together to support Jack Sawyer and his family throughout his Brave battle with cancer we were honored to be asked to provide the facilities for his visitation and services and we were thankful for the outpouring of love and support demonstrated by the people of Menor I especially want to thank Adam Landry and our Menor High School choir for their participation in Jack's funeral Jack had a special connection with that group and I'm so proud of the way they stepped

025up and performed a couple of weeks weeks ago I also want to thank Christen Estus Jason Crow Paul gaty and our custodial teams here at Paradigm and at the high school for all of their hard work in planning the logistics with Bruner sandon and Dietrich for the services here on our campus Jack had a tremendous impact on the students and staff in Menor schools his motto pace positive attitude changes everything will continue to guide us in our work every day and his legacy will live on in our school district for years to come we'll be starting our strategic planning process here in uh mid December to early January time frame with uh Community survey focused on on our current strategic plan goals we will then be forming stakeholder groups of students staff parents Business Leaders

026and community members to further develop our goals and action steps as we create a direction for our school district moving forward I very excited about this work and hope to engage our entire School community in developing this plan with the failure of the 2.5 mil permanent Improvement Levy a couple of weeks ago we are reviewing and revising our Capital Improvement plan to honor the wishes of our community I met with Mr Wade and our District Administrative team the morning following the election to start this process and Then followed up with a meeting with our business operations Department to adjust our plan as Mr Wade will show here in his financial report a little later we have already cut $5 million from the plan over the next 5 years we are considering additional cuts to the

027plan as we look further into the cost of some of the school safety projects and the shifting of some of the necessary maintenance projects our operations department is currently evaluating we will continue to focus on the roofs doors windows and Paving projects that are needed in our aging buildings we are prioritizing our list of the school safety improvements we need to harden the shell of our buildings to address the specific areas of our buildings that were shared in our safety audit that was conducted last year we are pushing off the high school gymnasium upgrades with the hope that with a couple more layers of wax we can keep our floor safe before it needs to be entirely replaced we will also continue to pursue grant funding for school safety and Career Technical education facilities and

028equipment to offset the impact to our general fund for these projects as well with the recent increase in unkind and violent Behavior we are seeing in our schools and in our community I have asked our administrative team to review our practices and resources to identify ways we as a school district can begin to make a positive impact to curb this trend we are looking at our discipline data to see what trends we are truly facing and identifying what consequences have been levied against students demonstrating unkind and violent Behavior we know we cannot simply suspend and expel our way out of this problem so we are brainstorming ways to increase the counseling services the educational programming and the alternative academic placements we have at our disposal to get students in the learning environments they need to

029be successful both academically and behaviorally I've met with our team on this topic twice already once last week and once this week and we have another meeting scheduled for next week to get both short-term and long-term Solutions in place to share with the board we started our start with hello program this year in all of our buildings and all of our employees are wearing our shirts today as a reminder to students and staff of our work this year I encouraged every staff member between now and winter break to make at least one new meaningful connection with a student in their building start with hello and then take an additional step to make sure that that student knows that they care are an advocate for them and can support them with whatever they might need at

030school we all can make a difference one student at a time Mr President members of the board and Mr Wade I have the following recommendations listed under the consent agenda and recommend approval of items six A1 through 6 A3 so moved second any comments please call the RO Mr Wade oh sorry oh did you say yes I was just gonna it's a positive comment I was just going to um whenever I see top 25 on there I have to have to say something about it so I'm excited I see they're going to Pigeon Forge uh and in Tennessee and that's going to be like a lot of fun and I'm a little bit jealous that that didn't happen when I was in in school but many years ago but I'm excited for them I'm very

031happy to to approve of that so they do a great job they're they're really good and it's 100% funded by the students raising funds and also parents yes under Ming and our transportation system is not involved it's 100% funded by the participants and their families as a former top 25 parent during Mrs pay's tenure I remember well the car washes and the assortment of fundraising activities and and then just a plain old check that gets written at the end so but it was a great experience for our students definitely very good thank you please call the roll Mr Wade Miss Payne yes Miss Cook yes Miss Brer yes Miss Jing yes Mr Tuttle yes otion carries 5 z Mr President members of the board and Mr Wade I am recommending approval of the resolution to

032approve board member expense reimbursement I will call these out separately as each board member requesting reimbursement must abstain from their voting on their own resolution everybody got that I don't have enough lines hold on you ready Mr Wade yeah I'll make it work all right uh it is recommended approval of the resolution to appr approve board member expense reimbursement for each of the following board members the resolution to approve reimbursement for Maggy cook second that was in stere impressive Roo let's go Mr way uh hold on Mr Tuttle uh Miss Payne yes Miss Brian yes Miss Cook abstain M Jing yes Mr Tuttle yes resolution to approve reimbursement for Virginia Jing second please call the road Mr Wade uh Miss Payne yes Miss Cook yes Miss Brer yes Miss Jing abstain Mr Tuttle yes resolution

033to approve reimbursement for Annie Payne so moved second please call the roll Mr Wade uh hold on who was that the that was for Annie this is gonna s ed we didn't put enough lines in you didn't I'm trying to organize real quick so that was uh who moved you move Miss Cook thank you second all right and then we'll go Miss Cook yes yes uh Miss Jing yes Miss Payne abstain Mr Tuttle yes Mrs Brer Miss Brer I don't see I don't have the name so I can't do that Miss Brer got it ready for the last one no but I'll just make it up when I watch the video maybe chat GP fix it for you yeah God willing uh the resolution to approve reimbursement for Thomas Tuttle some moved second please call

034the r Mr Wade uh Miss gesling yes Miss Payne yes Miss Brer yes Miss Cook yes Mr Tuttle abstain got well done us okay I think I think we got that part done the rest should be easy you ready let keep going all right okay Mr President me no I lost my place Mr President members of the board Mr Wade I am recommending approval of agenda item C1 related to certified personnel and C2 through C6 all related to human resource matters so moved second discussion hearing none Mr Wade please call aoll Miss Jing yes Miss Cook yes Miss Brer yes Miss pay yes Mr Tuttle yes motion carries 5 I'm also recommending approval of agenda item D related to administrative staff so moved second discussion actually I I don't know if I'm ahead of it

035um the employee separation agreement that we just that was just voted on right correct I thought there was a statement Mr Heath that you were going to read um I did we get that I can read something if you would like I think yeah I think the public needs a little bit extra information if we can sure um on Friday November 3rd Tim TCO a fourth grade teacher at Orchard Hollow Elementary School was arrested as part of a sting operation by the Ohio internet crimes against children task force where undercover officers were posing as minors we are in the process of gathering information related to specific details of the situation however at this time the district has not received any information indicating that any Menor student was involved in the circumstances leading to the arrest

036the district immediately placed Mr tacco on administrative leave and instructed him not to have any contact with anyone in our school Community pending the results of the district's investigation as of Tuesday November 14th Mr TCO is no longer employed by Menor schools after the Board of Education meeting here this evening a report will be filed with the Ohio Department of education's office for professional conduct with all of the information we have regarding Mr Taco's case we will continue to fully cooperate with law enforcement officials working on this case should they need any information from the school district keeping our students safe is our number one priority and we will do everything we can to make sure we provide a safe learning environment for them to learn and to grow thank you I know that there

037was a little extra information in there that wasn't originally in the email so I'm glad that we were able to um get that out to the public that there there will be um something filed with the state for code of conduct so thank you thank you did we get a motion on the on agenda item D yes we did we got a motion and a second okay call a roll Mr Wade you got it Miss Jing yes Miss Cook yes Miss Brer yes Miss pay yes Mr Tuttle yes motion carries 5 Z this concludes my portion of tonight's agenda thank you next on the agenda of Education report and recommendations business oh hold on that might be me too yeah it is uh Mr President members of the board and Mr Wade this evening we

038have the following m board of education Neola policies on the agenda for a second reading and I'm recommending approval of all policies so moved second discussion yeah just a couple of quick things um for everyone first of all um uh we we did update policy 7440 in board docs uh to keep letter J and that uh that letter was the monitoring devices including smoke and vape aerosol monitoring devices in appropriate public areas in and around the schools and other District facilities um this was not initially updated when we posted the materials we did get that up dat made um so thank you to uh Mrs foring for helping us out with that um and also in uh in the August 2023 Neola updates there were several policies that were being updated by Shifting the pronouns

039to be more inclusive as we were reviewing those changes between our first reading and tonight's second reading we have noticed that there are policies throughout the entire manual that will inevitably be included in future updates just to shift those pronouns instead of making all of those changes and having to reapproved I'm planning to review all of them and make the pronoun changes to actually use the noun instead of the pronoun to keep everything as neutral as possible in our policy language based on board policy 0171 I can just bring those non-substantive changes to our board policy liaison committee meetings near the beginning of each semester until we have that entire manual updated appropriately um I think we will announce at our operational meeting organization in the organizational meeting in uh January who our board policy

040Lea son are going to be um and the thought is we will just bring those directly to that group um and have those conversations about those policies um since it's not changing the the overall meaning of the policy or the content of the policy um those things can just be changed without board approval but uh we want to make sure that the board is aware of all of those the way that policy reads it says the the superintendent is further directed to identifi excuse me to identify and undertake the correction of technical or format errors found in the policy and regulations manuals such Corrections shall be limited to non-substantive matters that do not affect the intent meaning and or operation of the policy or regulation um those things um can then just be brought to

041to the attention of the board for their review but they don't have to be voted on uh as part of a reapprovals hopefully that'll streamline our our board policy updates with niola in the future so that those things aren't even going to be included um we'll just do the ones that are updated based off of the um OCR uh changes and uh any federal law changes that we make you know um vintage folks like myself and Mr Tuttle remember when there was not a he or she included in right it was everybody represented as you would mankind that he stood for all persons and it was something that would have evolved in the last 30 to 40 years where you had he or she added so it always seemed like kind of a clumsy thing

042if you were writing a narrative to to go through that so in some ways it seems simpler and more straightforward to use the noun in in the text any further discussion I had a question um on page 14 of the updates it talks about vaccinations and it says that the board believes that imun immunization is the primary responsibility of the parents for those students who do not have ready access to private or public health services IM izations shall be provided at public expense and the board shall apply to the Board of Health for funding thereof and then it says any um immunization program conducted by this District requires prior approval of the board and can only extend to those immunizations provided for by Statute or and the guidelines of this board I'm wondering if we

043could add parents in there as well um because I I think it should read any immunization program conducted by this District requires prior approval of the board and their parent like the child's parent needs to be you know we need consent from the child's parent so I didn't know if we could what policy number is that uh that is let's see page 14 it's 5320 immunization 53 it's on 13 page 13 did you say thank you I think it's 13 is2 um but the part that I'm referring to is for me it's on 14 on the top of the page thank you in the third paragraph so I don't know if we need to I just thought it was odd that the parent wasn't in there unless it's somewhere else in a different policy I'm

044not sure I I see your point I mean we certainly wouldn't immuniz immunize a child without their parental consent and if that's what that's referring to I'm fine with that change I read it as and I could be wrong I read it as if we were creating an immunization program that it would be the board that would be approving the pro the program is and and I'm not sure because we because parents wouldn't be creating an immunization program but they would be giving cons to have their child immunized yeah I just think odd yeah yes so I guess it's like if it's just the program I'm okay with that but I don't think it's I don't think it clarifies in here which I think it's too broad I don't know what they're talking about right

045like could we clarify the language to make it either way I'm fine with but right same maybe that could clarify from Neil I can't imagine that we would be the only ones who would ask about that right mhm do we want to pull 5320 and bring that back in December and then I can get the clarification put it in the board uh update here next week yeah okay yes I think it's just saying that you can't create a program without approval yeah all of those layers I was I was thinking like maybe like a vaccination clinic if we were to hold it is how I was reading it but I see your point so yeah find either way some clarification will be and then um Craig did you get all that all right and then

046the other thing that uh I wanted to talk about um and I don't know if any of you guys feel the same way I know we've had some discussion with public comments about it tonight as well and we got the update from NOOA as to why they were making the change um away from gendered pronouns I think uh the the question needs to be asked you know why is Neola recommending this change we did ask that and they came back and I believe they said it was to be more inclusive um which is what we received in an update my question is you know why are we also recommending the change to go away from he- she or his- her I think we just need to be clear and transparent on that um I know

047Mr Heath you said that we could use the noun instead of the pronoun but I I still do have some concerns because we are a education educational facility and I think it's important to note that even you know the first grade state standard um one of the first grade State Standards says that students should demonstrate command of the conventions of Standard English grammar and usage when writing or speaking including and this is in you know higher Revis code under D use personal possessive and INF indefinite pronouns example I me my they them there Etc so I guess I'm having a a hard time reconciling this because on one hand I understand we want to be inclusive but on the other hand I think we're sending we don't we've never made a statement before about gender

048like this and that we you know are making a statement with this policy I feel like we are making a statement that we haven't made before in regards to this kind of language um and gendered pronoun so I believe like if we do approve of this I see it as we're setting a precedent and I don't know if that would be a slippery slope or where that might head um when we get rid of you know gendered pronouns I think it is a statement where we are saying that we do believe there are more than two genders and I don't believe that to be a widely accepted um ideology so I I feel like that is an issue um and I might be the only one on the board that feels that way and that's

049okay but it wouldn't it wouldn't sit well with me if I didn't voice that concern I've been hearing it I also agree with it and so I I do not agree with that portion of the policy um but the rest of it other than what we just pulled out I do agree with so is there a way that we can vote on that separately because I know Mr Heath you said going forward it'll just be in the policy liaison committee but is that are we able to pull just that out tonight and vote on that separately or I'm not quite sure I don't want to vote no on everything but I think it needs to be noted that I don't believe that that is something we should one of the things I would think that

050is a consideration is that by using the noun it avoids politicization if you had he she they them which would be you know a politically charged approach we're not doing that we're just keeping the noun so that there isn't any any statement of preference it's just the noun to me that's cleaner simpler and like I mentioned before it used to always be just he because to add the other would seem clumsy or redundant and so this way you keep the noun and it's neutral so that would be how I would look at it and I understand I understand what you're saying with that I think that Mr Heath is trying to come up with you know a compromise for this and I appreciate that I I just can't I I can't ethically morally agree to

051remove because the way the policy is written now is he- she so if we replace that with a noun then I'm agreeing to remove he- she and from what I'm hearing from people in the community and from my own beliefs as well um I don't I don't feel comfortable doing that um I don't believe it's also Standard English I feel like the Standard English and in a couple of the examples in the policy um tonight like it says a board member and then it says there th which a board member is singular there is plural and the plural pronoun is referring back to the anent of a board member so it doesn't it's to me that's not Standard English and you're right because that's something just in common usage a lot of people use their

052Inc common usage with a sing item and it has nothing to do with gender but it's it's pervasive I see it in the newspaper I see it in magazines and in common conversation so I understand exactly what you're saying as far as the that it's not agreeing but I would look to pluralize the first one so it would agree but there are so many instances here when when I'm looking at the changes proposed I mean just to kind of give an example for everyone that might not be seeing this instead of saying she he we say the student for example used as in a student retained under the provisions of the third grade reading guarantee and this policy shall be considered for midyear promotion if that student demonstrates that the student is reading at or

053above grade level instead of saying if that student demonstrates that he she is reading at or above grade level to me it sounds um more concise it it sounds like something that would be more in line with a professional writing or um a journalism standard so I I don't see that it is more confusing and and to your point about pronouns I mean I work in an elementary school and of course we teach pronouns and we we hold our students here at Manor schools also to those standards we teach pronouns we teach pronouns not just in first grade but but you know all the way through the elementary years pronouns are part of the standard but I think that we are politicizing something that's not really political here it's it's for ease of language it's

054to be it's to provide Clarity to provide professionalism um which is really kind of a journalistic standard right now and um I I feel like this would make our policy in line with it I have a question I don't know how does changing this relate to the academic performance for our students how does this I'm not connecting the dots like how does this change relate to the academic per performance for a students I don't think it's to do that I'm thinking it's more like Mrs cook was saying it's just Tiding things up so there isn't that awkwardness yeah it's just concise clear language if if you had a misspelling you would go back and change it if you had a a name change you know it doesn't necessarily we instead of OD now we have

055DW that doesn't improve our students ability to achieve it's it's just housekeeping which I I I understand what you guys are saying and I respect your you know the difference of opinion um you guys are certainly entitled to that I just when I look at it I see a lot of he she being removed his her being removed and to me that is indicative of we are acknowledging by removing that that that we believe there's more than two genders and I'm just not I'm that doesn't sit well with me and it's it's something that is I can't agree to um so I I respect your guys's opinion I think you are certainly entitled to it and you guys also you know stand up for other people in the community whereas I I do as well

056so I don't I can I'd be okay with voting on the rest of it as long as it was noted in the minutes that I disagree with that that particular change if that's something we could do um but I just doesn't morally I can't agree to it further discussion none hearing none Mr Wade please call a roll m cook yes Miss Brer yes M Jing yes Miss Payne yes Mr Tuttle yes motion carries 5 Z next on the agenda legislative report Mrs Brer okay well previously reported last month the lawsuit objecting to the powers of the newly created Department of Education and Workforce also known as do reached a clarifying point near the end of October magistrate Jennifer hunt ruled that the state could proceed with the education governance changes that were included in House

057Bill 33 this includes the transition of power and many responsibilities from the Ohio Department of Education or OD and State Board of Education SBO to do magistrate hunt States in her decision that the legislature has complete authority to Grant or remove the respective powers and duties of the sboe and the superintendent and the sboe has no constitutional right to retain all the powers transferred under the challenge Provisions this decision came after many argued the state did not have such power since the sboe gained its power through a constitutional amendment passed by by Ohio voters in 1953 Governor Mike D dwine waited little time after the decision to announce Jessica volini as the interim director of do while he searches for a director and two Deputy directors now legislature to study property taxes the Ohio state

058hous has had a far quieter fall session than originally expected the Senate and House only have three sessions scheduled for the remainder of the year with a few if needed sessions to boot this slowdown has come as a bit of a surprise after many expected property tax legislation to be quickly passed in the wake of many receiving their trienal home valuations in October House Bill 187 sponsored by rep's Thomas Hall of Madison Township and Adam bird of New Richmond did pass the house in mid October by a vote of 58 to 26 but has yet to be assigned to a committee in the Senate the Senate's version of property valuation legislation Senate Bill 153 has also been stagnant since mid- October this pause and action could be related to the November election since officials were

059waiting to see how the issues would unfold Tuesday night it is rumored that Senate President Matt Huffman of Lima will now move both property tax valuation bills before winter break ideally both chambers of the State House would wait until the joint committee on property tax review and reform members are announced and convene before they move forward on tax and Levy legislation pending in both Chambers this would be a positive step since it allows the joint committee to study and fully understand the impact to our schools and our communities before making changes to laws governing property tax and local levies the committee to be made up of five house and five senate members is required to submit their report with with recommendations on reforms to Ohio property tax law to the general assem assembly by December

06031st 2024 depending on the timing of their report changes to Ohio's property tax law could be seen in the next biannual budget in the spring of 2025 some hope the Joint Committee will work expeditiously since some school districts did not pursue levies this fall because they wish to wait until the property tax legislation is properly reviewed and ironed out the Senate has named its members for The Joint Committee while the house members have yet to be confirmed some recently introduced legislation House Bill 310 sponsored by rep Don Jones of Freeport would make changes regarding purchases of military service credit by State teachers retirement system members House Bill 311 sponsored by reps J Edwards of Nelsonville and Justin pulli sayota County would prohibit differing ticket prices for online and cash school affiliated events and requires a

061student ticket to be less than an adult price ticket House Bill 312 sponsored by robs Angela White of ketering and Tom young of Washington Township would establish the regional part Partnerships program and makes an appropriation Senate Bill 179 sponsored by Senator Stephany Coons of Hillyard would establish the Hillyard Davids and Wildcats license plate Senate Bill 180 sponsored by sen Senator Paula Hicks Hudson from Toledo would provide unemployment benefits to St striking workers and to declare an emergency Senate Bill 181 sponsored by Senator Shane Wilkins of Hillsboro would prohibit differing ticket prices for online and cash school affiliated events and requires a student ticket to be less than an adult price ticket and finally Senate Bill 182 sponsored by Senator Michelle Reynolds Canal Winchester would establish the Foster to college scholarship program requireed the Department of

062Education and Workforce to hire a full-time School Foster K liaison and make an appropriation for the Foster to college scholarship program thank you Mrs Bri any comments discussion I think uh when we were at osba several of us a lot of us went to the uh legislative update I think Mr Tuttle you were in there with me as well and that was interesting there's just so many pieces and parts that are always moving and to see them all I mean it's much as I've said things about osba that I disagree with I found some of their classes like that to be very helpful um and it's it's really good to know about some of those pieces and parts because they do affect us so definitely and the time how long it takes to make those

063changes yes next on the agenda Mrs cook student achievement report thank you yes all right um Menor theater opened its 100th season with the gripping Thriller night Must Fall Junior James Goodman and Senior Emily Burns headed the cast of eight students as they told the story of wealthy Widow Mrs Bramson who summons her maid's boyfriend for a conversation when Dany arrives he ingratiates himself with her while her while her niece Olivia is suspicious of the newcomer and comes to believe that he may have been involved in The Disappearance of a local woman the tension continued to build to a shocking climax the play introduced five newcomers to the Menor theater stage including Cecilia cooch Ben Mogan Bower Jolie fiser Maggie cochan and non art along with returning senior Pac and Chapman lending support do not

064miss the winter play wait until dark in February the Menor high school fighting Cardinal marching band finished their competition season with a superior rating at the Oma State marching band finals their performance put an exclamation point on their flight 2023 show and was a great way to cap off another amazing year our veterans were honored across the district in several ways on Veterans Day bear with me because I want to include all of the different things that um our district did at Orchard Hollow an annual Veterans Day musical performance in breakfast um was had for approximately 40 veterans World War II veteran Mr ziville led the pledge and students sent Veterans Day thank you cards and letters and they were hand delivered to local veterans at the Elks Lodge in Paynesville at Sterling Morton the

065annual Veterans Day breakfast and assembly with over had over 40 veterans in attendance our guests of honor included some of our students parents grandparents and other relatives and several guests related to a number of the staff this Veterans Day recognition is one of Sterling Morton's most important events each year it allows our students to understand the significance of the veterans in our lives and in our community students begin to understand the service and sacrifice that the veterans have given for our country the event also gives us a chance to show our appreciation featured during the assembly where our second graders performing music the color guard made up of boys and girl scouts began and ended the ceremony with their caretaking of the flag and our fourth and fifth graders provided a patriotic clap in as

066the veterans proceeded to the gym and they shared notes of appreciation our featured speaker was Mr Chad Russo unit principal at Menor High School he was a veteran of the United States Army prior to his career in education besides showing appreciation to the other veterans who were present he shared examples of how his time in the military taught him valuable lessons about teamwork which he still uses today overall this was a very good event and we are also so appreciative to the many adults in our building who helped to make this annual event possible at Bellflower the second grade performed a School Musical performance for for all students to attend and at Menor High School the student government choir and Orchestra was involved in the school's Veterans Day ceremony the ceremony was highlighted by their

067keynote speaker staff sergeant Howard and the plane of TAPS to honor all graduates who have lost their lives defending our country at Fairfax there was a breakfast and assembly to recognize 19 veterans that were invited by the fifth graders each grade level took part in helping to prepare the assembly that included Ed poems recognition and beautiful songs lak Ridge elementaries both hosted classroom and grade level speakers and at Hopkins they hosted guest speaker Mr Bob zanville World War World War II veteran and 98-year-old Resident he spoke to two groups both the fourth and the fifth graders and the students prepared questions for Him in Advance on November 1st Menor High School hosted their annual career Expo the event was designed to assist students in exploring various career Pathways our Expo provides the opportunity for over

0682,000 students to interact with over 60 employers and we do have a quick video um there's a link there and this you may have had a chance to see this but if we could click on that link thank you maybe commercial the audio might be hard to hear here but we can see how well attended it was should we move on and just yes okay all right um our seventh and eighth grade Fine Arts students at Shore teamed up with the men around the lake service department to paint two snow plows these will be displayed on the trucks throughout the winter season and will be able to be seen throughout men around the lake so I I'm looking forward to seeing that and our next our next slide is for the um the is from

069Osa and we were all able to see the our student groups it's always an honor when we have student groups selected to highlight their outstanding work or unique programs at the annual student achievement fair at the Ohio school boards Association conference again this year we had two groups represented um making us very proud we had students at the Menor High School fly fishing club led by um teacher Leslie gar they were demonstrating how to make their own fishing lures um so we got to see them making the Flies you could see that in the picture and they explained how much they learn throughout throughout this club and I know U Mrs jine and I saw several pictures of of of their catches they very serious big fish and I've also offered if there's any kind

070of a a meal that's going to follow these delicious fish I would be very happy to attend we did offer to attend the fish fry so we have to do a shout out to men schools Foundation who was the grant who made those pieces of equipment possible absolutely both of these programs were funded by yes M school's foundation so so the second one um is is Ridge Elementary students there and they were showcasing the district's new story walk concept and they shared how this great literacy project brings both the school and Greater Community together for the joy of reading and um I think maybe there'll be a little video of that I know we um they were very excited to show us their favorite parts of the page and how much fun that they said

071it was to read a book as they walked through an area and got to see the parts of the book and the and the stories will change out over time so um while speaking about the osba conference I'd like to take a moment to offer our sincere condolences and support for tusar rarus Valley School District they experienced a terrible tragic accident on the way to the conference our thoughts and prayers are with their community and the families and friends touched by the devastating loss of loved ones and our hearts are hoping for healing for the many injured we're so sorry and we are here for you um the next slide is just um a link and a um just if you wanted to donate to the Trojan Foundation um for for these people that were

072in this accident um this is your way to do that so thank you thank you Mrs cook wonderful report gosh Mr Wade Chief Financial Officer report and recommendations totle thank you very much um looking at our financials for uh the month end of October as we close out the the month we are [Applause] trending trending uh pretty close to the May forecast um so right now we're we're projecting about a $2 million higher in collections for revenue and we're spending about 1.2 more than we had projected so overall we're about $800,000 uh to the better than we were projecting last May um which is good means we're treading pretty close again because we're on $114 million budget that's less than uh 1% when you look at it from a revenue standpoint um our local tax

073reimbursements are coming in higher than we projected Ed and uh with regards to investment earnings to be about $717,000 so that accounts for most of that $2 million looking at our expenses um we've talked about this a number of times uh because of the money that we're able to save by paying for the uh Upfront for the cost for the early retirement incentive uh we transferred more money out than we had projected and that equated for about 1.9 of that um so we're actually under spending in other areas uh to offset that currently where we're at so you know overall I think we're trending pretty well and again that's towards our May forecast um as the board and the community know we're required by law twice a year to update our community on our fiveyear

074forecast um those are you tenants you're this is your lucky day you get to be here with us for the next 45 minutes hearing about our finances so um buckle up so as we know our strategic plan uh is driven by our from a resource standpoint the fact that we have to look at our shortterm and our long-term planning and with that comes our Appropriations that we do uh that process starts in the spring as early as February um and then we passed that in September and those of you who are here for that I'm glad you showed up back for November that means I'm not too terrible at this and then we use that to drive our fiveyear forecast and that fiveyear forecast is very important for us because it dictates everything that we

075do from a larger scale perspective um also with that we are always trying to find uh options for alternative Revenue um you know Mr Heath touched on that today when we talk about the um passage of the renewal and the failure of the pi Levy that some of the projects that we're going to make them happen will have to be funded by grants that uh we weren't initially seeking to do um we offset some of our projects by the revenue that we generate now with the scoreboard thanks to Dr glaven uh in the work that he's doing or shared uh services that our offices does for for uh other districts in the form of payroll so we're always looking for ways to kind of creatively bring in revenue and reduce costs that way and lastly

076to make sure that we're being equable with the distribution of those resources across the district um through the various levels buildings and different programs that we have since 2004 we've had five fiscal management beliefs that drive everything that we do um we believe that all fiscal decisions should be made in the context of our 5year forecast we know that there's management uh options attached to every dollar that we spend we believe that every dollar spent must add value to teaching and learning and we have to aggressively uh focus on our largest expense which are salary benefits facilities and special education and that we know quality is always cheaper in the long run if we're looking at the 100,000 foot view on the 5year forecast that's easily shown on this slide we're projecting Revenue um going

077from about 9.7 million this year up to 114.5 by 2028 um we see our expenditures increasing from about 1145 this year to 132.5 uh we will be deficit spending anywhere from almost 5 million to $18 million if if our assumptions are correct which would then bring our cash balance down from about 52 M uh$ 51.1 million to about $3.6 million it's important to remind the board in the community again where majority of our Revenue comes from uh because we are considered a wealthy District we get very little funding in the uh form of state or federal funding um in regards to the general fund so 73.4% of our funding comes from the local taxpayer uh which we're very appreciative of and take that responsibility very serious we receive about 15.6% in the form of State

078funding um and we receive another 6.72% back from the state in the form of reimbursements so right around you know 22% in state funding in totality uh Homestead and roll back exemptions which we've talked about a lot lately um with regards to the state reimbursing us for those incentives that they give or breaks that they give the local taxpayer when you look at our Revenue in the big picture this probably looks familiar because I've shown this graph a number of times the only thing that's different is because of the passage of the renewal Levy if you remember in the out years we used to see how it would decline because we couldn't assume in this point that that renewal Levy was going to pass um with the passage of that renewal that we don't see

079that Trend we see the fact that that money is there because it's guaranteed for the next 10 years uh which puts us in a in a really good spot from the fact that we don't have to worry about cutting $15 million from our budget um so that slide is representative the other thing that I wanted to point out in the assumptions that I made I think is important um you know it was touched on by Miss Brer briefly uh this coming year is our reappraisal year uh so in 2024 the auditor Lake County auditor will be doing the reappraisal for Lake County I assumed a 30% increase on property valuation um in our current uh forecast there is legislation you know representative Troy is here um tonight we know that there's legislation in the house

080and the Senate to potentially look look at adjusting the property valuations increases um that hasn't gone through so I have to go on what I know to be the current state of reality that we have talking to Lake County auditor uh and seeing that giaga county is a realistic increase that we'll see as I shared last month though the only inside only increase that we would see from a revenue standpoint for the district is on the inside millage because the taxpayer is protected by House Bill 920 so all of our outside millage outside of the inside millage is reduced the effective rates brought down so that we don't collect more Revenue so we will see some Revenue increase but we are not going to see a 30% increase in our Revenue here at the district

081because we're not at the floor nor will you see your tax bill go up by 30% um as again as a consequence uh of protection that has been instituted in house 920 since the early 70s so again I shared that uh you know if you're looking for the numbers want that detail you know it's it's up on the screen it'll be in the actual forecast um but we're looking at a you know a revenue change from about 109 to about 114 based on the assumptions that we're making one of the things that we I always do and and I like to show this graph to the community and to the board as well is that you can see the Rel you know the revenue is relatively flat but what it also does is it breaks

082it up into our different areas that we shared on that first donut slide uh by a color code because because one of the things that obviously I have to make sure that my assumptions are correct or the numbers that I'm plugging in to to present to the board and the community make sense and this graph really shows to us or shows to me in particular from a quick you know ey check that things are pretty consistent there's nothing that stands out that seems abnormal um and how we can do that is by looking at the different various colors from the prior years and in the out years you know there's a pretty relatively equal comparison each of those areas so we can see that the assumptions that we're making are probably pretty realistic so key

083takeaways from a revenue standpoint um I'm actually forecasting about $900,000 more than I had budgeted in the September forecast based on the way that uh the update for the fair school funding plan has come through we're actually seeing a little bit more Revenue than we had first initially assumed that we were going to see um that wasn't learned until the October payments so you know that was after we had already done our Appropriations for the for the year on some of those assumptions again less than a million dollar on 110 I think we're still pretty close on that so it's not material but we are going to increase that um as we continue to be challenged by the Citizen's Financial advisory to make sure that we're as accurate in our assumptions as possible um so

084that's one of the assumptions that we increased um we assume that you know revenue is going to remain relatively flat it does not grow at the rate of uh inflation um so again it's not keeping up with inflation with that uh so our deficit spending will continue to increase based on just inflationary increase as well as other assumptions we've made I did assume a 30% property value increase in the 202 2024 reappraisal the tral update is in 2027 and I did incre I did assume a 10% increase then which is more in line with historical Norms uh so we would expect that to kind of return to normal as the FED continues to increase rates and try to give us that soft Landing that we had um that they're projecting whether they can do that

085or not will be told here here in the next year and a half I'm sure um we did take into consideration the passage of the renewal Le Levy and the failure of the permanent Improvement Levy and these have been included in our assumptions we did assume that the fair school funding plan will continue to be implemented in all out years at the current uh funding uh in the current in the plan for the increases uh in proportion year-over-year and the you know we will need additional Revenue dollars one way or another in the near future what makes up our expenses we know that we're service industry I feel like I've said this a 100,000 times particularly because it's all my same friends that are here every month which I appreciate uh 80% of our budget

086is salary and benefits um the one thing I would point out is typically we have seen in the past the purple section of this graph be a little bit larger because we have been transferring out money um to supplement our Capital Improvement plans um actually because we did that last year and we did it for the next four years it's back to more of a traditional value of that then you see our purchase Services the green area represents about 10% with our supplies being about another 4 and a half% so we're kind of getting more into what would be a more realistic view of that so because our job is to educ educate students that's our primary focus here in Menor schools um we have to look at our district enrollment Trends to make sure

087that we have the appropriate Staffing to continue to meet the needs of our kids um with that you can see since 2014 our enrollments went from 7,800 uh2 students to this year it's currently at 600 or not 600 6,673 and we actually see it's going to level off and maybe see a slight crease in going through Mr way yes ask a question yeah is that um the difference between last year and this year do you do we anticipate that that is because of Ed choice at all the expansion uh we have not seen that yet but that we have not been able to see any data that would share one thing or the other okay so um one of the things I did want to touch on too is because I I kind of figured

088there would be questions with regards to why kids kids are leaving or allegedly leaving or you know changes in enrollment one of the things that we talked about the citizens Financial advisory it was a good point made up uh by Mr Heath um is because of the fact that we had a larger outgoing senior class than we did uh kindergart is coming in and if Mr Lynch you just go back to the other slide one of the things too that happened this year which was atypical um and one of the things that our comparative analytics system does and its real-time data is and it's almost better than any sort of uh enrollment study that we can do is we can I can get from our analytics system how many kids were born five years ago

089and we could Project based on that live birth rate for our area how many students should be enrolling and typically we're at about a 97 to 98% of those students coming to school this year we only saw 79% of those students come to school so is it because parents are keeping them out because of just continued kind of covid postco kind of changes in the way that people are doing things or not so it's one of the things we have to keep a close eye on is because our kindergarten class was actually smaller than we had projected so we need to kind of continue to Trend to see where that's at um I know Mr Heath keeps a close eye on private school enrollment as well as um increases in homeschooling and for my understanding

090and correct me if I'm wrong those numbers are pretty consistent with where they've been historically yeah th those have stayed just about the same I know is that incoming kindergarten class was a lot a lot smaller priv doing the athletic red shirts early the private schooling numbers though I did because I got them at the beginning of the school year those did increase um yeah not significantly but it yeah it was a little 40 extra kids or 50 extra kids which we weren't sure I know I had that conversation with you we weren't sure if that was from Ed choice or not um yeah and homeschooling kind of is staying at the same just around the same right now so there were children born that are not accounted for they didn't show up to school

091yet but that's red shirt of kindergarteners is what we call oh next so that do you think well I may it be speculation are people more anxious about sending them to school at all yet until they're a little bit older is that kind of the the takeaway you have a little bit right now that's we saw some of that when I was down in central Ohio oh as well I just a a a lot of people um just wanting to their kids to start a little bit later and keeping them home an extra year you know some of those that may be on the border they're not sending them just holding off do we have any numbers for preschools in the area it's a good question I can look into that like are they there

092instead or not at school at all yet it's hard to quantify though because there's so many and there's so many different options right because you can go to religious preschools you can go to just a daycare center you could be going to anywhere else I mean so for us to get into the Weeds on that would be quite frankly a waste of an opportunity cost in my opinion the fact that we should just keep an eye on the fact what is our Trend going to be moving forward on live birth rates versus actually enrolling in kindergarten because if we see that it's going to stay that or is it inconsistent we can kind of track that over time and make better hypothesis I guess would be my recommendation I I could probably get a quick

093answer maybe not totally scientific or data driven but one of the guys that uh is on the uh United Way Campaign Committee with me in the education committee um uh is one of the leaders of the preschool so I can ask him just you know what his thoughts are on that and what they're saying with their numbers right now Mr L you go to the next slide I think the more Universal look is what's going on in Lake County um you can't probably read this but you know only two districts in Lake County that saw a growth over the last 5 years are Riverside and wickliff um they've gone up by about 4% every other District in the county has seen a decrease in student enrollment um which lines up with the fact that lake

094countyy is an aging community and you know it's just people aren't moving in um so as you see that you see declining enrollment and you see areas like Cincinnati and Columbus area that are growing and in cities like or counties like Lake County are decreasing uh with regards to the number of people who live here so while if you're trying to figure out which one we are we're the second lowest loss to Kirtland kirtland's at a negative 6.2% we're at a negative 6.54% um so we're not abnormal we don't we're not seeing trends that are atypical with the other districts in the county um and it kind of just I mean from that perspective why is that go ahead well if it was um from an aging Community wouldn't we also see at the same

095time then decreases in homeschooling and decreases in private schooling whereas we are seeing an increase in private schooling for Menor students specifically are we seeing an increase in private schooling because I sit on the board at Lake Catholic and their enrollment hasn't gone out yeah I have all the numbers for all of our students in Menor who are going to private schools that would be Menor students and it did go up um I want to I want to say like 4% last year I I could pull it up I have it in the email but okay well I mean that I mean either way just wondering you know because the Aging Community I don't know that I can't understand if it would be an aging Community because then you would think we would see also

096decreases in the other two areas as well it could be a combination of both but when you look at it across from a macro scale and you see the trends across the county that they're all decreasing except for two districts I would tend to argue that my assumption is a fair assumption to make as well I'm sure that adds to it I'm not dismissing that it doesn't but 4% isn't significant when you're looking at 7,000 kids when we're looking at raise you know it's not insignificant but it's not the major root cause of why we're seeing an enrollment decrease across the county so there's 670 resident students attending private school for this year um so if you add that plus the homeschooling I mean that's almost at 900 or so versus 7,000 yeah so just

097something to but is that in comparison to the fact of what you look at from a trend standpoint what has it been historically year-over-year yeah we have 670 this year I think it was 640 last year 6 uh 44 last year okay so it did go up so just something to keep you know an eye on because I know even tonight we approved of the payouts for people who go to um let's say corner so that that's also another cost that we have when people do that you know and go elsewhere correct but we what we don't lose now is we don't lose um tuition enrollment to that because of the way the new Fair school funding plan is so obviously enrollment is something we have to keep a close eye on because it makes

098up 80% of our salaries and benefits is tied to our student enrollment so um as I sit in the CFO seat I just want to know where our numbers are going and how we project them to be and you know what we think from a staffing standpoint so when you look at at the big picture standpoint of where we're at and we're looking at everything um from where we look at from a visual perspective Mr Lynch you go to the next slide uh you know we're looking at our expenses to increase over the next uh five years at about $18 million from about 114.5 to 132.5 uh again just doing the visual check and see if there's any abnormalities uh from the assumptions that we're making it seems to be relatively consistent in uh we

099can explain it the the difference in the the purple size uh at the top of 23 to the 24 we've touched on again because it goes back to the change and the transfers out and we're not doing that any longer so overall um we look at our in the bottom part of that graph uh we see that we saw a six and point uh we decreased our budget our expenses by almost 7% at it's netive 6.7 75% and we're seeing a growth increase over the life of that um that is below the average of the previous uh four years which means we're continue to tighten our belt and stretch our dollar um in our Personnel Services which is our salaries we assumed in this year and next year that there would be a 2.75% increase

100in wages uh for all groups and we assumed a 1 and a half% increase in all out years for employee benefits um we increased our assumption on the cost of healthcare um we were right around 6 and a qu previously now we're up to 7% so we're seeing some increased cost with that so we wanted to make that assumption and looking at the national Trends uh those it's a little bit even the assumption is a little bit lower than the national Trends where I still think that we could be within that 7% range if you look at uh our purchase services and supplies and materials the average increase uh varies you know we do zero based budgeting so we we put that into consideration when we built out the out years based on the 5year

101plans that we have uh for all of our areas which would be purchase Services supplies materials as well as capital outlay and then other assumptions were based on a 2 to 4 and a half% increase based on what it was you know we went higher with um energy increases and out years um because right now again we're locked in at a very low rate for electric and gas and we know that those increases are upwards of 30% people are paying 30% more than we're paying now so we took those things into consideration we know the price of the vehicles have gone up at a higher rate so when it comes to maintenance of our vehicles we're assuming larger increases uh in some other areas we're assuming you know typical inflationary increases and kind of going

102through and kind of going to the next slide after this Mr Lynch what you'll see is uh our total other financing uses and this kind of goes back out to our districts transferring out Monies to support our Capital plan with the failure of the permanent Improvement Levy as Mr Heath uh spoke to we did meet and have started to make decisions on reducing of costs um we'll start seeing those on the next slide uh so we've updated our 5-year Capital plan uh to to adjust to the wish of the community with the failure of the pi Levy um we had initially been budgeting about $500,000 in safety in every year um moving forward however Mr Heath has uh reduced that uh a little bit in the first year um and we we'll see a reduction

103in all the out years and there's been further discussion even at the citizens Financial advisory whether that if any safety upgrade should be made unless there an absolute necessity and should we be removing that completely based on the vote of the community um we did leave uh we did make some adjustments on our Roofing plan as well based on some uh updated assessments of our roofs um so we moved the lake roof up um and that will account for almost 1.5 million we have Paving and concrete that needs to be replaced at $400,000 and we are going to start the upgrade to the windows and doors um those windows and doors are over 50 years old um they're starting to deteriorate they're not efficient um and we need we need those are things that we

104have to do just to maintain our abilities and we'll actually see savings from a from an energy standpoint once that's done as well obviously not to the tune of $1.2 million uh over a three-year period however um we feel that those are projects that are necessary and and must be done so if we look at the next year again that $300,000 is budgeted for safety um that's still being discussed we have rooftop that's what rtu stands for rooftop units that have to be replaced because they're coming to end of life again additional roof Replacements uh just to remind everybody we only get a million dollars in our current permanent Improvement that roof takes up all that plus sum so we have to subsidize that uh with additional dollars from the general fund Paving in concrete

105at 300,000 in Windows and Doors uh at that so what you can see below that um is what the total uh was reduced and you can see on FY 25 for example that section of facility improvements actually went up because of some switches in what we were budgeting uh based on needs of the roof Replacements but you can see there's a corresponding decrease of about 965 th000 so net decrease for the year of just under uh $900,000 when you look at again won't install everybody's intelligence you can read what's on the screen again back to the fact that there's two things on there that you know we have to they have to be replaced we have to replace the elevators at the shore in the high school because we have students who have disabilities that

106that need to be able to get up and down and those elevators are at their life expectancy we've already stretched those out so those are things that we didn't feel that we could cut and again finishing the window and door project net changes of about in minus $700,000 in reductions for that that year we look at 27 uh you start to see more significant savings uh in in 27 and 28 uh we did push the gym floor uh 227 uh along with the bleachers again bleach Fe would be something I think that would more further discussion the only reason it's still on there is because that you know if you're going to put a new gym floor in to put a you know $600,000 gym floor on and then scratch it up years later when

107you're doing the bleachers doesn't necessarily make sense um so it's from a logistic standpoint but it'll be something that will have to be further evaluated as we get closer to 27 and and what where we're at from a financial perspective um and you start to see the turf Replacements uh come in in 27 just to those don't have any net impact on our Capital plan because we budget every year for those Turf Replacements we set aside money so that money has already been saved uh and is offset by some of the revenue we generate from the scoreboard as well in the 28 um you will see just over $1.7 million in savings uh we have kept the consumer science renovation on there in the hopes that we can at some point remove it by then

108because of some grant funding that um Dr gaven and Mr Heath are working on getting to secure to offset that cost um so that we can upgrade those classrooms uh to increase Career Tech uh what's not liary Arts yeah what did they get was Dr glaven still here did he leave after he got his award he left wait till I talk to him tomorrow um credentials you can get some career credentials that would also earn the kids those cred cral would be Pathways to graduation if we we tweak it but to do that we have to update the facilities so um we're looking at that but that also could be potentially removed ultimately what we did is we removed all the things that are on the the screen um which total almost $4.9 million or

109$5 million in savings have been reduced from that um when we came down to the fact that we didn't have the approval of the permanent Improvement Levy uh we you know we couldn't move we still going to be paying for our school buses our technology and our vehicles uh out of the general fund as well as offsetting anything beyond $1 million in all those years that we just showed um those would be things that we do need but uh when it came down to really need or you know when you have to prioritize what your needs are further based on um the will of the community we removed those totaling $5 million so we reduced our Capital plan by $5 million so when we look at our expense takeaway we need continue to monitor enrollments

110uh and ensure Staffing numbers are proportional without sacrificing safety and education uh of our students we need to continue to make sure we monitor our benefit plans so that we have high quality affordable health care uh that is in line with the industry Trends I'm continue to make sure that we're meeting the needs of our special education students uh in the most economical way possible and we reduced our Capital Improvement plan by $5 million as a result of the pi Levy failure uh we need to continue to find additional ways to SL our spending growth and flatten our expense curve um because we can't just rely on future increases in uh Revenue to always solve our issues we have to continue to kind of slow down our expense growth so kind of foreshadowing that there

111would be discussion or questions about now that the levy has failed are we going to put it back on in March are we going to put it back on in November are we going to put it back on at all what do we do when do we do it how do we do it I added some slides uh to remind everybody first and foremost here that we have a policy that dictates that um our general fund cash balance has to be at least 15% of our total fund expenses so we can't have a cash balance by policy that falls below currently $17.1 million and we also have set aside $5.5 million or a little bit less than that in a budget Reserve just as a good practice in the event that we have unexpected unexpected

112budgetary things that would come up that we would need quick cash for and that was done out of a recommendation of be best practices for the gfoa as well as the Ohio Association of school business officials and we look at where we're at from a budget surplus or shortfall and it's a shortfall in our case because we are deficit spending versus our um cash balance in 20 you know we're in we're in the kind of the yellow zone in 20 4 25 and 26 and we steeply fall off in 27 28 based on the assumptions that we're making the other factor that we often use is to determine when you know when are we going to need additional Revenue based on our assumptions that we're making is the number of days of cash that we

113have on hand the industry standard is 90 days so anytime that you fall below 90 days you're your def is spending Beyond uh where you can sustain and you need to start looking for additional revenues so we see after 2026 at the latest that would be when we' really want to you know make sure that we have made uh significant cuts and or sought additional Revenue to make sure that we could sustain our budget into the future so the forecast goes through 28 the the the schematic on the screen shows to 30 and you can see that that deficit you know we at the end of the U forecast we are still in the black we still have cash on hand we have a balance of about $3.6 million but if we continue out we

114couldn't open you know the school the next year because of the fact you can't legally run a school district in with a negative cash balance um we experienced that in 2024 that leads to State takeover um you're in4 yes not 2024 I was not foreshadowing I was not just incorrect you wer here scary yes 2004 uh um and we would have to obviously make Cuts or again to seek additional Revenue you could sense the theme so what the graph on the bottom left that you can barely read if you're sitting anywhere more than 5T away from it shows is if you were to put up a levy in 2024 what your low and high millage rate would be all the way through 2026 assuming that we bring in about 2.7 million per Mill of uh

115money levied and what's the cost to put on a levy Mr Wade uh it varies uh based on the number of issues and who we're splitting that with it could be 20 to 40 to $50,000 and that's not that's cost to the district yeah I mean that's just to put it on there correct not to that's what you have to pay the county to to get the put your put your levy on yeah gotta so the March election because it's a primary it's no it's not a May election it's a March election so if we were to put Levy consider putting a levy on the next election it would be in March 90 days from March 19th is December 20th the board would need to have two resolutions passed and filed with the auditor and

116the Lake County Board of Elections by December 20th we'd have to go through the same process that we did back in the summer to put it on the November one that's a very quick turnaround um I'll just leave it at that if you wanted to put something on in November you would have have uh 90 days would be uh August 7th again much like we did this year to do that and have that consideration and the cost would be lower because you're sharing the ballot with more entities it kind of goes down to the number of issues that are on yeah so like the state issues for example with State issue one and two on we paid less than we would have if they weren't on because that cost was shared with the state but

117a primary election would be a much higher cost I would assume but or is likely to be a I've already been contacted by other entities who are considering putting something on asking me if I'm going to put something on so I don't actually that will get you to come back next month um so because I like to hypothesize and share information and educate I ran through 50,000 scenarios just to keep uh Officer Walker here a little bit longer because I wanted the board to have the information that they felt that they needed to make a decision so if we were to put part of the issue that we had with the pi Levy that I will just remind everybody is I I shared that we were trying to thread the needle so to speak because

118we had to pass it before the end of this calendar year because then we would start collecting a first collection after January when we got our first calendar year collection of 24 but our second physical year collection remember because our fysical year goes from July to June which is always confusing which then meant we could reduce expenses almost immediately and then we'd see the next year the full collection of the 5 and a half Ms and then we'd be able to reduce all those expenses off and transfer money back which would allowed us to push off if we contined to make uh cuts to our budget that we had shared um putting a new money levy on probably till 2026 for General operating well the levy didn't pass uh so we we can't necessarily remove

119the those expenses from the general fund even though we have removed expenses into the out years so everything that you're seeing from a scenario analytics here assumes that all the reductions in the plan that I just shared based on the recommendation of Mr Heath and his team and and the conversations that him and I had and our departments had together are assumed in these assumptions so if we were to pass a levy whether it be in March or November it does not matter and you could reduce that Levy from a 2.5 mil Levy to a 2 mil Levy and again you would only be getting the things that we just shared you wouldn't be getting any of the other stuff that we had up there prior to this is all based on the information just

120shared today you could see that it would allow us to reduce our spending in 25 um because we would have money that we could put back in from the capital Improvement plan back into the general fund which would increase our general fund Revenue that year um by about $3 million and we would also be able to reduce our expenses and we would not be deficit spending in 25 but we'd still be deficit spending in all the out years so it doesn't solve the issue it provides us a little bit of relief and it provides us less relief than it would have if we would have passed the 2.5 in November so all right so we pass a 2 mil Pi Levy in 24 where do we then pass the general operating Levy and is it

121going to be in 25 then that we would pass that General operator rating Levy um and if we did a 4.9 mil Levy because that was the number I was using in all of our discussions previously that would put us in first year of getting new Revenue half of the collection in 26 again because it passes in 25 the first Collection comes in the second half of because we're in fisical year 26 and 25 so if it passes in November 25 we're in fysical year 26 because remember June's in 26 now we're going to see about $6.8 million of Revenue we would still be deficit spending on that first half collection we could easily erase that right $86,000 we could find to get that to you know balance it we would only not be def

122spending on our current spending path by one year and we would be on the ballot again probably right around fiscal year 30 um if everything stayed the same so now we're passing backto back levies with which doesn't sound like a lot of fun um one being in 24 when we're having a 30% valuation increase which people are going to not want to increase their taxes after they just got a 30% valuation increase because again most of the except for unless you're well even some of the people in this room wouldn't want to do that but those of you who know you're not going to see a 30% increase still would be hardpressed to do that right just from a political standpoint it makes sense so there's an issue there in 25 then we're coming back

123with 4.9 so now we're at a 6.9% there's a 6.9 million increase over two years if you wait to 26 to buy yourself a little bit of a buffer like we were trying to shoot for uh originally you now have to pass a 6.8 mil Levy in 26 no longer a 4.9 that you had in 25 because now you've waited a year and now you're going to need additional Revenue to make up the difference between between what we're bringing in and what we're we're sending out um and again when you do that you can see you then collect in 27 $9.4 million you're still deficit spending you're only not deficit spending for one more year so maybe you're looking at four or five years of a life cycle on that Levy as well but again

124you got to pass a 6.8 mil Levy instead of a 4.9 mil it's weit past The Sweet Spot it is past the proverbial Sweet Spot yes speaking of sweet spots that 4.9 mil Levy comes back um in this scenario is we do not put a pi levy on we continue to fund all of our Capital Improvements as we have historically in our district since 1988 when we've exceeded a $1 million Pi Levy through supplementing that with the um Revenue that we generate in the general fund and if we pass a 4.9 in 2024 again after in October next year when they you know tell us what our valuation increases are right before the election probably not the best time to put a new money levy on I would argue but what do I know well

125I guess enough to be in this position but um that would be a concern of mine but you can see you're only going to be not you are now not defit spending for for two years and that Lev is going to last even longer though because now you're looking at maybe six years before you have to go to new money so I think that's important to consider right because you're asking for less and then you get more stretch for it because you know you need less now to make up for it if you wait a year now you're at 5.9 Ms and we're not deficit spending for again only one year and we're probably looking in 2029 so four years later that you're going to need additional Revenue you could wait till 26 we still

126have cash in the bank we still have you know $37 million however you'd have to pass a 7.3 mil Levy now to be in a situation where you're not deficits spending for a year and you're looking at a levy probably in 31 or 32 so you're asking yourself why are you showing us all this great news and it's because I have a recommendation um my recommendation is is that we do not put a levy on in 24 uh we have a new board of education that's coming on um so we have two new members that will provide a new voice um for us to consider to do that uh we have the valuation increases coming in 24 which are you know I think should be something that we should consider um as we evaluate the

127you know what we're going to do because I think that's going to impact um the voter and their understanding of school which is a very convoluted uh very tough concept to really understand and grasp um we are in no you know we we did make reductions um to our plan um we can survive to do that but the other thing that I still will argue is that we need to continue to tighten our belt and I think um and as I Shar with the citizens Financial advisory rather than saying that we need to cut so many million dollars each year over the next few years I think our targets more realistic to be we need to be at $118 to $119 million in 26 as a kind of ceiling of where we are from an

128expense standpoint because if we get there and we're able to pass a uh 5.9 mil Levy we can be off the ballot again realistically through 2030 so that gives us five or 6 years which is again above the typical average before we'd have to get another increase um Mr Wayne could you repeat that 118 to 119 million in expenses would be your target for what year 26 thank you you know because we're shooting for 1145 now based on my current forecast um so if we can start to make some decisions that would help us not hit 1145 that puts us you know lower than that so that obviously shifts everything to the left so to speak or down um so we would would expect 2025 to be down we know that probably should shoot for1

129a half to $1 million depending on what happens at the end of the fiscal year and reductions for next year uh Mr uh Heath and I have already had those discussions um we did assume in our forecast we' be reducing the certified staff by two people um so that's in the calculation already so that would have to be additional uh reductions potentially made or finding ways to make savings to do that um and again we you'd have to you know if you're looking at it from a plan you'd have to reduce next year by 2 million and then reduce 26 by another 1 million but in reality it doesn't have to be that because you could reduce this year by 500,000 next year by a million and a half and then reduce a million in

130a year three to still be at about 119 million um because we're not going to you know the answer as I always share is not just this situation of asking for more it's making sure that we continue to be good stewards of our money and kind of budget it that way um which I think we have shown over the last 5 years we've reduced uh staff we have closed buildings we've redistricted we've made we've made decisions to help us do that to get to this point because we haven't asked for new money since 202 or excuse me not 2026 2016 so we're at 8 years and the average life expectancy of a typical Levy is about 3 to 5 years so we've been able to do that um we will continue to strive to do

131that so that would be my recommendation I will share with the board that wasn't the most popular recommendation at the citizens Financial advisory um there were members of the citizens Financial advisory who felt that we should go right back on and ask for additional Pi money because they don't feel that we should be spending any money out of the general fund on permanent improvements and that the levy didn't get blown away it was relatively close um so it shows that we have the community support which I don't disagree with any of those areas but it's they're not the ones that have to run the district and run you know assist with the levy you know making the decision to to do that um there's a lot of work that goes into putting a levy on

132getting a levy P educating your community um we have to continue to make those adjustments one of the biggest things that we heard uh when Mr Heath and I would go out and share factual information was concerns about the athletic upgrades that we made that's why you see very little to none on the updated um Capital plan the only reason the gym floors on there because at some point it's going to have to be replaced because it can't just to maintain it it's like a roof right it can't you can't have a roof that's leaking you can't have a floor that's going to have holes in it because we can't stand it down anymore um but we're going to f we had other areas that we felt were a higher priority so we made those

133adjustments uh and move that down on the list I think my recommendation is that we continue to to discuss this in the near future um does that preclude us that in sometime between 25 and 30 that we don't have another discussion about increasing a pi Levy I don't think it does but ultimately when our job is to educate our students and make sure that we have the revenue to do that and not sacrifice that I think to me the time and the energy should we spent in that area of seeking that Revenue rather than to go backtack levies within one or two years um to do that I respect highly the discussion that we had at the citizens Financial advisory it was very good discussion um I understand why they feel that they do but

134at the same time it's my job to make a recommendation to the board and what I believe is right and I take everything into consideration when I do that and my belief is and I'm very strong in this belief is that we should wait till 2025 to do anything and I think we should just do a general operating Levy and continue to fund schools the way we have because I'd say that the community also said that very loud and clear um on November election that they respect what we're doing they they approved our renewal very convincingly um they didn't want to increase their taxes for a pi Levy but they didn't blow it out of the water it wasn't like it was 3070 um so there's things that they expect us to do I think

135the plan that I presented here tonight shows that we respect that opinion um that that's we respect that opinion it's not me who respects that opinion it's Mr Heath and his team as well in the discussions that we're having to do that and we continue to prove the community that we're good stewards of their money so when we go back in 2025 for a respectable Levy amount of somewhere between 5 and 5.9 Ms um we can get the revenue that we need to continue to do what we do Mr Wade I know one of the concerns at citizen financial advisory um that was kind of driving the conversation was around safety and you know they they there was there were several people that spoke about just the concern concerns because we while we did make

136several budget cuts uh a lot of them were on the backs of our of our safety and it's one of the big items that we reduced every year so um one of the you know conversations was around if if you're not willing to go back to the voters and really put that out there with what safety improvements we're doing and that that you know it's it's a detriment they're concerned that that we're not making needed safety improvements so that was just I took it a little bit different I took it as the fact that that we shouldn't be making any safety improvements unless it's an absolute need so things like vegetables there was discussion that was had is that a need that we need to do or is that something that we would like to

137do to increase our safety um and based on the discussions that Mr Heath and his team have had and I've been a part of I think those are things that we need to further evaluate um I think from the perspective of where we're at I mean there was comments made as you were aware because you were there if we shouldn't do any Improvement improvements that exceed a million dollars right because that's what we're funded at right now which which doesn't even which doesn't align to our philosophy that quality is cheaper in the long run either right I mean and the reality is is if we wait that roof that needs to be replaced now is not going to cost the same as it is in three years I guess it's just it's not an easy

138answer because there's so many things that we need to consider I'd like to you know kind of maybe move it to a work session or something where we could really lay some things down because you know we we have to listen to the community and and what they said but we also have to look at the needs of the district and how much can reduce how much can we reduce other ways what are true needs um versus wants you know eliminating wants is you know and prioritizing safety I'm fine with that but when we're eliminating funding for safety needs um um there's there's a point where it it might not be responsible you know and we want to make sure that that we have those serious conversations about not only where we can eliminate things

139in the B budget but maximizing all of our Revenue you coming in as well so you it's a difficult conversation Point Mr Wade to the fact that we have two board members joining us who will be responsible for helping to move forward the initiative and to speak on behalf of the levy with the community that support and that discussion will be a really important one so I I don't think we can make any decision other than I think it's prudent to postpone any plan to do something in March because we would have to make that decision before the end of this year so if we do have those a a work session and review everything we could make make a decision for something in November or subsequent to that I think lovey fatigue and having

140backto back asks for pi money and operating money that becomes so difficult and it's costly and you can't negate the impact of the Manpower you know the hours it takes from the administration team for those of us who are working on the levy commit are helping with any of that you there were the the generous folks who are from the community who donated their time to to try to speak on behalf of the uh need those are huge Investments and I'm grateful for those so as we make a decision I think calculating where we ask and when we ask and I can appreciate that the citizens Financial committee prefers that we have a pi fund and after 10 months of clear thoughtful graph Laden persuasion from you that word up it was graphing it was

141good in the best way but you know if if if the community didn't see the value in having a separate of money for those improvements they just looked at it as dollars what what they would be used for they would assume is all valid and important whether it's student services and salaries and all of that or the maintenance of our buildings it just it's part of what the district needs to do a good job to educate the children in our care so if we have to have operating dollars and we know that we do I think there's always that that kind of thought in the background like well if you needed that money why didn't you just ask for what you needed so I would be in favor of marrying the the two before we

142ask again and that was my argument or my I guess argument back in response to the the concerns that we weren't putting the pi L on is it's not that we're not going to be asking for money it's just it seems to me to be more efficient and a smarter ass to ask for one set of money that meets our bigger needs you know at this point because we didn't pass thepi Levy not that the ship has sailed but the reality is is the general operating Levy is going to be the more important one in in the in the future anyways because that's what we need to fund the educational environment um and I think we continue to be good fiscal stewards of the community's money and we continue to find ways to reduce without

143impacting safety and education to your point Miss Cook um and then we we look at you know we have to make tough decisions that's what you it's what youve hired us to do that's what you pay us to do um I have no problem doing that I know Mr Heath doesn't have any problem doing that and the reality is from the bigger picture my standpoint I stand I say it with conviction I think you know we do one Levy it could be in 24 I'm not saying it can't be in November but there's no reason to rush and do it in March because we're not going to collect on it again until after January of 201 five anyways so to be continue to be thoughtful as this board and this community and this Administration always

144been let's use the time that we have to make the decision because we may find that we want to do a 4.9 in November during a pres presidential election because statistically speaking you want as many voters out to vote as you can so presidential elure is a good time to put a levy on a lot of people think that it's not I'm a numbers guy it is and you know it's always better to ask for less than wait and do more that kind of what I was trying to show with the the slides of the fact if we wait till 26 it's going to now 7 Ms and I think the other piece in addition to having a a work session that includes the makeup of the board as of January we're going to be

145doing our new strategic plan that will involve and engage a lot of community members and I think that's a very important resource for us to get insight and direction from you know that collaborative approach in our key areas and given how um lean our Levy committee was you know we were really asking a tremendous amount from those kind folks who came forward to help they were doing it you know on their own shoulders and didn't have a lot of help perhap perhaps the strategic planning groups will yield some more willing hands who will help us to do well um in making the case for our community as well as to you know preserve the good education and a safe education for the children in our care I think too um to Mrs Cook's point and

146I brought it up months ago about the wants versus needs I think that was a an issue with the community you know so I do think this with the fields and everything the weit room you know that's all very visible and it was costly um so I think to Mrs Cook's Point like going forward I I would be I think it would be beneficial to do a work session because if that was a situation again I would prefer not a new weight room and prefer safety over a new weight room and so I think those kind of kind of conversations are important to have with the board so I would be in favor of that and also is there a way to do I know I kind of emailed you after the um Levy failed

147is there a way to do a a survey for the community to kind of gauge why we think that there wasn't support um I think that's a very delicate with the new auditor guidelines on what we can and can't do I think to Mrs uh Miss Jing's excuse me point of the Strategic plan is a way to you know because the whole goal of strategic plan is to get as much feedback and touch as many people as you can I think we can get a lot of feedback that way and utilize that to help us make sure that uh our fiscal and academic and permanent improvement capit improvement goals are in line with what the community wants perfect just uh as a point of clarification for the for a January work session probably after our

148regular work session we get everybody in first um talking Levy and and safety combination yeah that sounds even if we had to divide it into two pieces depending on yeah how long yeah okay and just to summize um we're deficit spending we need to continue to find ways to Monitor and control our costs um it is my recommendation that we reduce spending by to approximately 119 Million by 26 uh which is a reduction of at least $3 million um we continue to defit spend and our cash balance is depleting to about 3.6 by the end of the forecast and we should strongly consider operating dollars by 25 um this forecast was recommended for approval by the citizens Financial advisory and uh was approved on Thursday November 16 2023 that was 57 minutes and 31 seconds

149just as an FYI I was only over by 12 minutes then so I'm going to Pat myself on the back Sergeant Walker gave me a thumbs up so that's all I [Laughter] need Mr President members of the board uh ask for the approval of items B through H and the addendums they we acted on in one motion so moved second discussion well discuss that please call the RO Mr Wade M Payne yes M chling yes M Brer yes Miss Cook yes Mr Tuttle yes motions carry 5 Z that concludes my section unfinished businesses at this time do we have any new business items unfinished I was just going to mention what we learned at Capital conference if this was a good time to do that um I appreciate the opportunity um that we're given to

150attend because you get a variety of experiences you network with one another um in just general socialization but we also get to meet and greet local um board officials from our community but even more importantly are the works or the um learning sessions that are offered and I was able to enjoy and learn from um putting out wildfires of misinformation from airville schools and the frustrations of the issue of social media perpetuating rumors or erroneous Ino information um certainly something that's um an issue for many districts if not most um paying close attention to staff morale when there are those negative issues swirling was mentioned as being very important and my best takeaway was that scheduling small information post to engage the community weekly was very valuable we visited the student achievement Fair which was

151delightful as was mentioned by Mrs cook uh legislating affecting High School sports was offered by the Ohio I High School Athletic Association was is also very valuable they talked about those game ticket payments absenteeism and its impact on Sports uh Sports access for non-charter public school non chartered non-public schools um and uh use of aeds and availability in every District Mental Health Training for coaches and athletic eligibility and gender issu issues um the next one I attended was navigating the ups and downs of Parental conflict that was offered by Pepple and Wagner and talked about legal issues arise arising from incidents of harassment or bullying defining protected classes and conduct and what is protected speech in public participation at meetings and finally the board efficiency Workshop um offered by OS ba had a good framework

152for streamlining high quality meetings uh respecting time and the impact on Administration board and Community um uh recommending strongly that board members ask their questions ahead of time to allow the superintendent and Treasurer gather needed information to be shared at the board meeting rather than having to have those answers unnecessarily delayed so I appreciate it very much more than what while guess I'll go over some of the stuff too that uh I attended so um a couple of those I also attended the gender issues one was interesting just because there are so many pieces and parts that are moving at the federal level and at the state level um so that was always it's always interesting to hear all those different pieces and parts um the student achievement fair was probably one of my favorites

153because my family is a big fly fishing family so I was really excited to see them um and they're very talented and all of their pictures of their steel head were awesome um but they did say they didn't they didn't keep any they throw them back so they're not not cooking them yet I know I was I was so disappointed when I found that out so I might have to bring you some smoked steel head sounds delicious um and then a couple of the other things I went to I went to a school safety course which was interesting it was some of it was around House Bill 99 which we addressed years a couple gosh it's already been two years almost so um so there was a school that did use house build 99 to

154uh allow their staff certain staff to be armed so it was interesting uh to hear that but outside of that they they did some other safety updates that um were really beneficial so it wasn't all about that there was a lot of other stuff that was just in the whole bucket of school safety that I think we talked Mrs cook and I talked about some of those as well so that'll be interesting to see if we can take some pieces and parts from that um we did the legislative update and then the last one I went to was the science of Hope which was really interesting because I've never I Craig's shaking his head yes he's heard it before I have never heard anything um about that so it was really interesting it's uh it

155was put on by Batel for kids and so uh Strongsville apparently uses it and so they had a couple people come and speak about it so that was very interesting um something that I don't I've never heard being in this position for two years so um maybe something we can talk about down the road so that's all I enjoyed the conference as well I I love conferences so we had fun too we did we had a lot of fun and getting to know each other a little better too so um I the first session I went to was fostering Brave spaces for tough conversations and it was all about I'm creating spaces for dialogue which um specifically address criticism in a productive way so it was more like um instead of being like a safe

156space where you can just share your idea with no judgment it's more like a brave space to you know you're you know you're going to hit criticism and being respectful but still addressing those difficult conversations um I also attended disrupting absenteeism strategies from the field which um really kind of defined for me the state terms for absenteeism so you know one of the things that affects our behavior and our learning of students is you know chronic absenteeism so talking about preventative measures that we could put in place for that methods to track absenteeism um leadership changes and then home communication systems I also um attended putting out wildfires of disinformation that session um must have been such a Hot Topic because people were sitting on the floor it was all over the place and as

157Mrs Jen stated they um really recommended doing that small bite-sized information to kind of keep the um Communication open within the district with Public Communication being transparent um I also attended governance mindset leads to academic excellence and this really talked a lot about how boards operate and boards that are dysfunctional leading to turmoil in the district and they recommended how boards should develop guiding principles and Norms to build effective board governance this particular board had hired a board consultant and they talked about their data and how much their governance improved results in the district because they were working together better and their superintendent spoke their CFO spoke and the board members spoke and just really talking about board dysfunction and norming and guiding principles I attended the leadership challenge um discussing five practices of effective

158leadership and leaning in on vision statements and strategic plans as guides I attended are your Schoolboard meetings efficient and this was as I'm reading this sounds awful but it was the steps to take um between the meeting to plan effectively using annual plannings to create a calendar for our big deadlines like you know when we're going through these big things planning while setting agendas asking questions of your CFO and your superintendent before the meetings and then having them clarify it at the meeting and then the the last one I attended was essential policies for 2024 some of the big highlights that they mentioned were um the changes on reading the minutes at the board meetings um what what they mentioned is that changing is your minutes must be done at the succeeding minute meeting and

159it needs to be given notice to the public two days prior so if we have one meeting like an organizational meeting then we go right into another meeting we have to read our minutes out loud so look out for that inefficiency and they also talked about transportation non-compliance and um training for Naran so that is it those were all of them I know I packed the days in we should have gone to the science of Hope with Mrs pay was it's interesting I know we were talking about it at lunch so need it we have to start reading the minutes yes you have to write them very quickly and then read them so we might need to pause in between meetings next on the agenda hearing of the public our first Speaker Miss McCormick on

160October 26 there's a special meeting where the board voted to keep the pornographic book The Bluest Eye in the school library after superintendent Heath recommended removing it from the recommended reading list for 10th and 11th grade English students due to age inappropriateness how does it make sense to leave an age inappropriate book available in the library for 9th graders to check out if it was inappropriate for 10th and 11th grade English courses I applaud Mrs Payne and Mr Tuttle for trying to do the right thing and take pornography out of our children's libraries as for the other board members I do not understand how you can accept the possibility of this filth being contemplated by young innocent impressionable Minds when there are hundreds if not thousands of other age appropriate books for our children to

161enjoy lastly I'd like to address the numerous physical fights in our hallways bathrooms and common areas that have occurred in our District since the beginning of school I'm aware of at least three at the high school and four at Shore Middle School in the last few months this last episode shared on social media at Shore Middle School was completely absent of any adult intervention where are the teachers where is the presence of authority over these minor children what measures are you taking to prevent these physical altercations from taking place for a superintendent and a school board that claims to have safety as of students as their number one concern and has vly denied any political agenda within the district these issues I've mentioned tonight do not bolster Trust of your oversight of this community's children

162we voted down your additional Levy and we will continue to vote no on future levies until you show that you can appropriately manage the funds to our children's safety and best interests thank you thank [Applause] you did Miss Bon leave yeah Miss Sams Mr Lima Dave Lima lfi Drive uh the recently held public public education Appreciation Week heralded the efforts of our teachers administrators and staff in providing the quality educational experience for students in the public sector and nowhere could this be more true than in our Mentor Schools especially with the dedication and hard work of this board thank you Nancy and I my wife appreciate the Ed education our three children received in Mentor that not only prepared them for college and find Paths of opportunity but prepared them for Democratic citizenship and social

163involvement as well public education has done much to ensure that schooling is not halfhazard that no matter how much income you have no matter race or ethnicity gender or geographic location you can have access to an education that has not always been true in this country where education was accessible to only a small segment of society those who could afford it public education has not only made education available to all it has strengthened our democracy by providing opport Unity for all public education is now faced with shrinking resources needed to continue this important work public education and other social institutions created for the common good require adequate funding if those same institutions are not adequately funded literally starved they cannot function they die our state legislators seem bent on starving public education by funding the

164private sector through the voucher system at the expense of the public sector a word to our legislators if funding of the private sector is the road you want to go down don't do it at the expense of the public sector a robust healthy public education system is needed for a healthy democracy thank [Applause] you thank you Lindsay wall the meaning of public education is an equal education provided to all children free of cost and education provided regardless of race religion ethnicity socioeconomic status or any other distinguishing feature with over 7,500 students and close to a thousand staff members I would hope that our district would look to find more ways to be inclusive to be inclusive we must practice kindness and respect to be accepting and non-judgmental our schools are not indoctrination camps moves made

165in an attempt to be more welcoming and more inclusive are not political but strategical thought out moves to create safe spaces for all students and also our teachers and our staff public schools are diverse in so many beautiful ways we should be celebrating this and working together not just as a school district but as a whole Community to highlight and appreciate the diversity that we have instead in said month after month we hear criticism and judgment about inclusivity and now even topics about basic policy updates not everything is political not everything should be made political since when is one person's belief the base for right and wrong that is not how this works I'm sure many would not agree with my witchy ways however I would never say my beliefs are the only right ones

166my spells in witchcraft are not the right or wrong way and you can make your own judgment we see and people claim that morality that morally they can't accept certain ideas people actually feel it is okay to claim people are delusional and they don't exist what happened to basic kindness and respect you can continue to try and hide the diversity our community is fortunate to have lies can go on and on you can believe what you wish but they are going nowhere we are going nowhere I am going nowhere even if someone may have actually convinced my landlord not to renew my lease I am going nowhere and I will keep coming here and I will keep advocating for the diversity that our beautiful Community has thank you Miss Perry thank you president tutle for

167allowing me to speak again I was actually going to bring something up that I learned at the um Willoughby East Lake um Board of Education meeting which I attended for the first time last night um board member shotsman on that board brought up the same um I think it was the same class that Mrs gesling and vice president cook brought up about kind of having people meet beforehand before the meeting to encourage a dialogue um instead of kind of this monologue that we're all performing up here I think that also works in great in tandem for um my good friend board member elect Mar chaza she very um early on in her campaign was um pushing for this to encourage a dialogue rather than just the same 15 people myself included just coming up here

168and speaking into the ether um I I think that um while these things are like very good for like my ego I guess it doesn't really um it doesn't really do anything in the um in the ways of like actually talking to one another and trying to get on the same page um one quick thing I I was very open about the fact that psychology is my field and one thing that I learned about psychology very early on in my studies is that correlation does not necessarily equal causation and people tend to apply personal feelings to numbers especially to elections um it truly was the honor of my my lifetime to volunteer for the committee supporting men are schools thank you Jenny for recognizing all the work that the volunteers did doing that myself included

169I donated a lot of my own time and sometimes sanity talking to people about these levies um I'm was also thrilled to see I think the majority of the people sitting up on this board come out and devote their time to that including um some of the candidates like um Mrs marazza came to our first meeting and Mrs came and um even though I don't even know how she found the time to do it was still coming to talk to people about the levies I am very um optimistic looking forward to when the new board takes on because um the new two new board members come on board member elect maraza and board member elect iopo I'm saying it right right okay um so um I look forward because they both indicated at the League

170of Women Voters Forum um that we all a lot of us went to that they were in support of the lovies um I would like to remind everyone that um one of the lovies did pass so I only have 15 seconds here um I if this was um um like a stick it to the school's moment then both of the lobbies would have failed but one passed and the other one only lost by less than 1,000 votes so job well done thank you thank you and fi good evening um I actually just wanted to kind of give you a public thank you for persisting and getting um some more police officers into the schools um full disclosure my husband is a lieutenant in um the Menor police and I think he's the only one who

171has signed up for bell flower so far but I just want wanted to share publicly that the response has been amazing teachers have been thanking him left and right um they put him to work last week reading to like five different classes eight different classes um so he loved it they loved it and everyone has been so appreciative of it but um I do Wonder um kind of with some of the dis the financial discussion from Mr Wade um and and also what Mrs cook brought up about the um safety dollars being spent um it was my understanding that to put an officer in every building does not come out of permanent Improvement money it comes out of the general fund um and I just wonder is there a way to research best practices you

172know hardening the shell of a building versus putting an officer in every school because maybe we can solve that problem by somehow prioritizing that getting an officer in every school and then not necessarily needing um as much money spent on the actual buildings um I don't know if there's case studies on that I don't know if there's organizations architectural organizations um that would do case studies on that but I I would be happy to you know volunteer a little bit bit of time looking into that if it would help um I think that's really it and then also um I know there's been talk about like applying ballistic film to Windows and you also have to budget for just window replacement is there a way to combine those two things and save some money in

173that respect um but mostly I just wanted to give you a thank you and you know keep at it um I hope we can find a better solution than what we have right now but it is an improvement and also I don't know that parents know um that officers are being put into the building and I think that would be a nice thing to communicate um I think it would put some parents you know Minds at ease a little bit and also just get it out there in the community so that more people can you know encourage the police department encourage Chief gunch um to keep it up so thank you thank you thanks Miss Mazika Mr Tuttle members of the board Mr Heath Mr long-winded Wade oh I'm sorry did I say that out

174loud I'm sorry wait till next mon out loud to step I'm pleased to see the changes in the uh neol laa policy were passed and I'd like to tell you my reasons for that language changes at always has and it always will would you like to go back to the old English of choser or Shakespeare would you like to return to the Geneva Bible instead of the King James version the language changing changes in the Neola policy reflect the current language used in formal documents as mentioned by one of the board members formal documents used to mention just he and then change to the he/ she which was always awkward now the standard is either they or now it has nothing to do with gender identity I repeat it has nothing to do with gender

175identity to make these changes anything else to say that those changes are for anything else but to formalize the docu the like language as is now being used is just wrong by the way when I was writing these and then I ran my word check when it came to the he/ she it immediately changed it to they thank [Applause] you representative Troy Mr Tuttle said you can have the floor sir thank you Mr President I I'd be very brief because I know it's been a long night but I just a couple of things that came up in the legislative report uh uh first of all yeah there's there's lawsuits flying back and forth as to this change in whether or not the State Board of Education is defunct and is now a cabinet level department

176under Governor dwine uh in terms of uh mentioned House Bill 187 and I know that the uh CFO did too uh yeah that did pass the house uh 32 no votes I was one of them uh I said it was wasn't ready for prime time and uh I did have a long talk with the Senate Ways and Means chairman uh Senator blessing from Cincinnati last week uh he's pretty cool on the measure too because it's it's kind of a Band-Aid approach we know that property values are extremely high uh they're going up and uh uh a lot of people say my property values are going up 30% or 35% that does not mean your taxes are going to go up 35% because as the uh CFO has said 920 takes care of some of that

177doesn't take care of all of it inside millage if you have Charter millage like my city of Willowick has uh and also sometimes emergency millage and uh uh also uh uh the the school districts that the 20 mil floor uh is is not adjusted there so uh and you you mentioned uh member Brer about the uh the the uh tax the property tax uh uh study and reform committee uh I wrote that language I got I tell people hey I got something in the budget uh and didn't give me any money but uh they gave me that language there so that thing is going to start to meet in January I am one of the five house members that's been appointed to that committee the whole idea is somehow we've got to look at property

178taxes because people aren't complaining about their state income taxes they're not complain about it they are complaining about their property taxes and what I said on the floor when we passed 187 I offer an amendment to add a couple hundred million dollars to upgrade the uh I said let's put some skin in the game here and let's upgrade the uh homestead exemption and and help out our senior citizens uh who are on fixed incomes who are really struggling with their taxes and all that instead of the Band-Aid approach that 187 was about saying well average taxes over the last three years rather than than the current valuation which technically you're supposed to go by whatever the most recent sale was uh and I think we learned that those of us that said in the board

179of revision of the county so uh uh I think what we need to do is some comprehensive first of all we have to educate the legislator as I've said there are only two people in Ohio that understand Ohio's property tax system and they disagree and so uh uh we we need to uh uh you know get an understanding of that but I think what we need to do we we want we want everybody's property values to go up but property value should not result in your taxes going up too so what we really need to do I think is take a long hard look at 920 and say maybe that's too tight of a lid maybe we need to allow a little bit of inflationary growth under 920 on the same hand we might need

180to extend something like 920 to inside Mill and stuff we want to make sure that there is inflationary growth for our our public entities that need those property tax dollarss uh but also I think we want want to make sure that you know we don't create windfall situations and also uh a huge property tax increase for so it's a lot of work I uh you know initially I heard that the Senate leadership would say well we'll probably have two meetings of this committee I two so now I think we're up to 10 meetings that we're possibly going to have but they're going to start in January so I'm just hoping that we can get some understanding and do that uh in terms of the fair school funding formula we did in the budget uh uh

181you know make the the next down payment on that still about four years to go on that uh and obviously the idea there is to lessen the dependence on property taxes and I've always said you know we we as a state we're we're in a situation now where and I was there before when we used to say uh uh we'd love to do this but we don't have the money gosh we'd love to do this we don't have the money we have the money now the revenues are coming in in a record fashion in the state of Ohio and it's time we start address some of these unmet needs so I certainly think that maybe we could could you know accelerate the fair funding School formula and also help out those folks uh that you

182know really need targeted tax release to help them with their property taxes so uh uh I think I just wanted to update you on that but you know we're on it and uh uh again um I wouldn't worry about 187 I think it's uh uh you know it's it's it's on life support right now so uh uh uh and and I don't think that's going to happen plus we're getting too late in the game too I mean there were actually people that wanted put this in effect for counties that already had done their reappraisals in 2023 uh and and that would have been a nightmare because if they had to redo that all again that would mean a lot of those counties that are in that cycle probably would would not get their tax payments

183uh at the early part of the year because of that happening so so that's it I'm sorry take your time but I just want to kind of give you an update as where we're at and uh and uh whoever is a legislative chairman of the board you know whenever you want to talk to me and you know uh well we'll we'll you know kind of fill you in you know sometimes these things look scary and sometimes uh you know uh I could tell you you know uh realistically this thing's DOA so okay thank [Applause] you thank you state representative Dan Troy very informative right on the money right on the mark thank you next adjournment do we have a motion so moved second wow that's quick third fourth fifth call Mr tutle Miss Jing yes

184Miss Payne yes Miss Brer yes Miss Cook yes Mr Tuttle yes me's ajour at 951 that was one ex