Mentor Board of Education Meeting October 10, 2023

001School for Girls used to have that shade which is a very pretty I never buy anything that's like not black or gray so once we get done with theed do something different than black or gray I'm like how about this shirt okay right after the pledge wear something different easy thing with black and gray it goes with everything else in closet after the wel long of yes we don't have the clock ticking down on the wall we're 659 right now yep for good evening the October 10th 2023 regular meeting of the Menor Exempted Village board of education is called to order this meeting is being held in accordance with section 333.15 of the Ohio revised code please place your mobile phones on silent mode for the meeting Mr wed please call the rooll Miss Brer

002here miss cook here miss Jing present Miss Payne here Mr Tuttle here thank you please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for it stands one nation under God indiv with li J for all I would like to welcome everyone to the October 10th 2023 regular meeting of the men accepted village board of education prior to this evening each board member has received for their review and consideration the agenda and materials associated with each agenda items for the board's approval via District's paperless Board of Education agenda system boardex 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

003have the opportunity to call a superintendent and a 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 to 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 another issue to participate in the hearing of the public section interested speakers must sign up prior to the start of the meeting sign ups are available online through the school district's website or onsite prior to the 7:00 p.m. when it is your turn to speak you will be called to the

004microphone when addressing the board please state your name and address questions to the board president address the 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 component to conducting business this is an information gathering opportunity for the board and administration so we can work to best serve our community if at the end of the public participation we do not we do not make a statement please no this is no demonstration of a lack of care for your comments shared by the community rather we want to be thoughtful in our approach and we will provide a

005response in a timely manner when appropriate this meeting is being televised live on a delayed basis and will be shown on Spectrum cable channel 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 Cardinal TV Mentor Ohio thank you at this time we have District highlights and recognition Mr Heath good evening Mr President members of the board and Mr Wade at this time I would like to recognize our PTA and PTSA presidents we all know the importance of Al involvement in our schools um and for many years the PTA has given endless hours of service to our students staff and Community we are very thankful to them for their many projects and their tireless dedication so at this time I

006would like to call them forward uh belflower Elementary PTA president Bridget Soco Hopkins Elementary PTA Megan [Applause] showning Lake Elementary PTA president Lisa [Applause] Saka Orchard hello Elementary PTA president Susan [Applause] [Music] Bean Ridge Elementary PTA president Heather hyim Sterling Morton Elementary PTA President Aaron [Applause] Phelps Memorial Middle School PTA president Christine [Applause] heninger that was great perfect timing Shore Middle School PTSA President John Morris Menor High School PTSA president April [Applause] helberger and our Lake County Council president Kristen Frederick again we just want to thank all of our PTA presidents for all of their work and dedication to our students in our schools here in Menor at this time I would like to invite Dr glaven to the podium for the Career Technical education presentation all right good evening everybody uh Mr President members

007of the board Mr Heath Mr Wade thank you so much for this opportunity to come back for part two of my presentation um I was worried after part one I didn't know if I was coming back but I'm excited that you guys allowed me to I'm excited to do it Mr Lynch asked me what slide number out of the 44 slides that I have to start with I said one so it doesn't really provide a lot of context if I don't at least talk a little bit about what we talked about last time so if you weren't at the board meeting or you didn't hear the board meeting following on YouTube as I do sometimes um we basically were talking about some of the things that we're doing at Menor schools to rapidly expand our

008Career Technical education offerings for our students let's see if this works hang on did it work wait wait give me one second Mr Lynch it's not working okay that's a tough one okay so basically I went ahead and I I started talking about how essentially what is Lakeshore Compact and that's one of the ways that we deliver our Career Technical education for our students it's a Consortium of uid wickliff and Menor schools highlighting that we had over 900 students right now that are participating in some form of Career Tech education so the concept that students are not interested in this is incorrect we have a tremendous demand for students that are looking to go into these career fields and then we went ahead and we said well what's the whole point of this why are

009we trying to get students into these programs and when and we say why does it matter and we have to understand that and the things we looked at is the results that we're having from students that go through these programs and so some of the numbers that we talked about at our last meeting was that students that participate in a Career Technical education program we have a 98.3% graduation rate Which is higher than anybody in the area it's higher than the district's individually it's one of the highest rates um there so we talked about that importance and then also we looked at postprogram placement so one of the things that we do in Career Technical education that I discussed is that it's not just they get their diploma it's like guys good luck little kick

010on the door you know right on the way out what we do is we actually follow up and we analyze the data to see what's happening with these students after they leave these Halls right so we go ahead and we look six months after graduation and we do what what you should do we call them we say hey what are you guys doing now are you enrolled are you employed are you enlisted what are you currently doing and we're very proud of the fact that 98.2% of our students who participate in a Career Technical education program are either employed enrolled or enlisted and that's really exciting and that's where I inserted the funny joke about not being in the basement man it was we we all giggled so 64% are employed uh who participate in

011the program 3.6% are enlisted which as I mentioned last time is three times the national average and then 70% of our students are enrolled in a two-year or four-year University and the thing I pointed out then was that well how's that 130 something percent it's that the new Norm is that we have many people that are working jobs and going to school at the same time that's why we see those percentages so high so ultimately we have that outcome and then we go ahead and we go to that slide the basement and we say Okay so let's get everybody to join us and we talked about one of the highlights that we're seeing is we continue to see year over year over year over year of record growth so right now currently we have 38%

012of our Juniors and seniors at Menor High School are currently participating in some form of Career Tech education so that can be either a two-year program it could be a one-year program there's a variety of Career Technical offerings that we offer and then this is where I started kind of getting to where I talked about the problems a little bit and then I said hey part two I'll address them so we mainly have two problems that we're trying to address right now with our Career Technical education problem number one was that in 6.8% of our high school juniors at men are high were weight listed for their Career Tech education program so that means they made the decision to want to be in a career program but we did not have the opportunity for them

013to be in it and then it goes which leads into our second bigger issue that 6.8% jumped to 177% last year so 177% of our Juniors wanted to be in a Career Technical education program and we are maxed out the seats are filled and that's an issue and that and that falls that's that's part of what our role is right um we're not alone in this I would say that at ukland and wickliff they were averaging around 16 to 177% as well um the districts throughout Northeast Ohio Auburn has similar issues where you know we're seeing record growth across the board um what this does for us is it tells us that the demand is there and so when we see this what we're tasked with and what I'm tasked with on a daily basis

014is that we have employers that have real needs that they have they need employees for these positions and we have students that want to learn those skills and go into those positions so the fact that there's a weit list that's what I'm tasked with how can we figure it out as a school district how can we together working with the community address this so we don't have 177% of a weight list and this is where part two comes in so how do we take problems and turn them into Solutions right and the big thing is how how do we build capacity and quickly this is not something that I don't look at this and say well in 3 years we're going to try doing X Y and Z and we're going to try getting some

015programs there for the students that are currently at Menor High School this is a problem now and they want to get these skills now and we have to be able to find a way and that's what we're working on so I want to show you some of the things we're doing one of the things that we look at in order to solve this issue is that we're kind of focusing on these three different areas of how are we creating collaborating and communicating to ensure that we address this and fill those needs so the first one is creating and this is where we're really excited and we're creating in a variety of ways now some of these are we're just not randomly picking things and putting them in part one of the really great things that

016we're doing at Menor is we're listening to the community and the business members and saying what do you need what are some of the things and we also look at what are gaps that we have that exist and how can we meet them one of good one of the good examples of that was our Cardinal Works program analyzing our data we realized that there was a gap of students in special education participating in Career Technical education programs so what we what we did was we went ahead we applied for a grant through the state of Ohio and through the uh equity for each Grant we received a $200,000 Grant which was the Catalyst for us to ramp up our Cardinal Works program that is a job training program that is specifically designed for students uh

017special education students and we're going into year two of our program right now I would say that this is probably personally this is one of my my greatest Prides of of what I've been able to accomplish in some of the years here at Menor um we recently had uh the first graduating class was in May and we already had two students that were employed at habco Industries and then we had a couple over there employed in other places so again having that belief that everybody has the ability to bring value and everybody deserves that right to know that feeling of having that position having that job and having that sense of accomplishment um when I kind of think of that Cardinal Works program I don't want to get too far off task but I often

018think you know listening to Governor dwine one of the things that he talks about is is that we're not getting more people in the state of Ohio you know this is where we are and what we need to do is make sure that we are maximizing the resources we have and making sure that all of us are able to contribute and this is a prime example of that one of the other things that we're doing to create is looking at some of our new classes so what we did is we're we're reimagining what can Career Technical education look like in a classroom so for many of us in here if if you think back to what Career Tech was say like in the 70s or the 80s or the 90s it was kind of like

019half of the day right half the day you'd go do this program and the other half you do math and English well well I'm going to tell you the truth not a lot of that has changed in many ways and I'm not saying that that's a I'm not saying it's a bad thing but what I'm saying is it's an opportunity for us to reimagine it and take and based on the feedback from our employers so if someone spends half a day in a Career Technical education program that's over 900 hours in a two-year period now I can tell you anybody in business right now I I don't know if 900 hours is required before somebody would start a position with you right depending on where that is what we're hearing from employers is there saying

020what we need is for you to instill the passion to instill the basics and then we need to help you connect us with them and we will take it from there that's the lead that we're being provided so what we're looking at doing is how can we possibly redesign so what we did is we shortened some of our Career Tech programs and what it allows us to do is offer a new CTE elective in between those two periods so we have the same instructor who was previously teaching these two classes now they're teaching those two Career Tech and now a CTE elective in the middle and what that's allowed us to do this isn't like we're thinking about it and we're going to try it we talked with our business advisory last year we proposed

021it got it board approved you know added the additional courses and now we have over 53 additional students that are participating in Career Tech this fall scheduled for this year so that's a tangible result not perfect we're not solving everything but we're starting um some of the other things that we're looking at doing is just kind of looking at uh so some of those new electives just to talk about those those 53 students we added uh intro to it careers intro to health careers and then young Professional Academy the other thing that we're doing is we're thinking outside the box and we're really reimagining what does that High School experience look like because ultimately we see and we believe that students benefit from that Real World experience and having the ability to T High what

022they're learning in the classroom to how it's going to apply to their passion and their future careers and so what we're doing is we're looking at some of these current classes that we have right when I was I was privileged enough to to go to Menor schools uh you know 20-some years ago and and now I get to work here and I love it and some of these classes were there I International Foods Gourmet Foods great options they are great options what we're kind of looking at is saying how can we have these to be more industry driven in the skills that we're providing again allowing business to provide us the lead of this is what we think would be a focus so and the reason I say this is no matter how good of

023a job we do no matter no matter how many Automotive programs or any of these things I'm never personally going to hire any of these students to be an automotive I'm never going to hire them to be a welder right but our employers will so our job and what we're doing is we're listening to them and saying what skills do they need and then if we provide those skills they'll hire them it's it's it's a pretty easy concept actually it's fantastic and we're very lucky and Menor that we have tremendous business partners and community members that are willing to assist us on multiple level points uh on a regular basis so what we're looking at is saying how can we take these old these these electives that we currently have but turn them into you

024know CTE industry credential electives so what we're doing is we're taking some of the courses that we're looking at right now like possibly say like a a Home Maintenance or or a Woodworking and tying that to a pre-apprenticeship right tying that some industry recognized credentials in construction taking like say a gourmet now you got to go back don't lose that good slide or think of like Gourmet Foods and turning that into a culinary you know restaurant Management program so what we're and then the other one we're looking at is Digital Arts and Design we're looking at turning that into a graphic media having like Adobe credentials your familiar people in design whether it's Photoshop illustrator in design things that I don't know these but they do and people will get hired who have those credentials

025um the best thing that I like about all of this is that the options that we just talked about whether it's those classes whether it's talking about the new electives whether it's talking about um you know reimagining what the day looks like is that slide now you can pull it Mike is the fact that that right there represents what the increased cost is for the school district to do all of the options we just mentioned there is not a single increas in cost in order us to do all the things that we just said which is expanding options infusing industry credentials in those programs and allowing more students to participate and to ensure that they're able to have these opportunities so that's exciting yes see that was a good slide okay the other thing we're

026looking at doing is collaboration and this is something that I feel again we're very blessed to have some amazing partners I mean Northeast Ohio is just a fantastic to be uh place to be and some of our partners go to the next slide Mike looking at one of them that we have to acknowledge uclid schools has been phenomenal over the last five years so when we talk about our unprecedented demand we're seeing it within our compact so it's within uclid schools Menor schools and um uclid wickliff and Menor and in the last five years alone uclid schools has added the following programs so in just the Last 5 Years they've added exercise science Urban agriculture Robotics and automation teaching professions multiple job training coordination programs construction management career-based interventions and educational options Center which is

027something that has a variety of things now when you look at that you may say and if you're familiar with the high school like I've seen these before we have some of these at Menor why are they also offering them in order to acknowledge that you know the increase in demand we have we are duplicating Pro programs so like our construction there's a uclid construction there's a Menor construction for career-based intervention there's a Menor CBI there's a uclid CBI it allows us by them offering more students you know opportunities for their students we're also able to offer more opportunities for our students so there's multiple benefits for that one of our other partners is Auburn career center again Auburn I think uh provides a fantastic service and while we are not a member of the

028Auburn career center so often a question that we get asked is is you know are we a part of Auburn and we're not the main difference is Auburn career center is actually funded by an additional millage on top of the traditional schooling millage that schools pay so all of our Career Tech programs that I've been talking about through the Lakeshore compact those are those are included in our school millage that we already have there's no additional cost so that's something to keep in mind so while we can't why we're not one of the main districts for Auburn we do collaborate very well because ultimately we want to to do what's best for students and if there's an if there's an opening there and that one of our students wants to go into it then we're

029going to do our best to get them in there so we have multiple students every year that'll participate in programs that maybe we don't offer or if they have openings so programs like plant Turf and Landscape uh dental assistant technology um if they have openings in them we make them available to our students and that's a great partnership obviously Auburn is equally having similar uh demand uh capacity limitations that we're having as well and we're all working together on that so I've kind of talked a little bit about the that's okay don't worry about so so we were talking about the uh she's smiling now was smiling so we were talking about our educational um Partners uid talking about Auburn but we also got to look at our business partners because those are probably some

030of the things that are really more of our Innovative approaches and they're programs that we wouldn't be able to have if not for the support of our business community and so the first one is is the Classic Automotive Training Center so three years ago um our compact the automotive program was closed and we were left with the decision to make were we going to add an automotive program did we believe that students at Menor schools should have the opportunity to learn autom automotive technology right and I think we can all agree and we did at Menor so I'm very happy that this happened that regardless of what how cars are driving in the future whether it's gas or electric someone's going to need to work on those cars and we believe that that is you

031know students at Menor should have that opportunity so then it came to the next question how do we do it fiscally responsibly you know to build a automotive lab would cost several hundred, and that just right now it it didn't wasn't fiscally responsible to put that much money into something but what we were able to do was we were able to speak with Jim Brown who is fantastic and he graciously offered us the opportunity to partner with them and they provide us space on the Auto Classic the auto uh Classic Auto Group campus so we are actually on one of their campus locations we are uh we have our training location there and we've have programs there it's now we're now going into I believe our third or fourth year and the best part about

032that one is so currently 60% of our students in that program are in the automotive industry working somewhere right now while they're still in school and 50% of all students in the program are at Classic Automotive working and I think that's fantastic I think Classic Auto Group is a fantastic business it's a it's a great place to have a career and to help you raise a family other one I just came from a presentation at this one I if you guys know Roger sustar he is fantastic um Roger sustar helped create awt and awt is one of our strongest Partners at Menor schools so part of uh we had the awt Transformation Center that opened last last year our Advanced manufacturing program is actually located at that training center right now and the awt transformation

033Training Center is a really good example of how we can collaborate to share resources to be fiscally responsible because ultimately that's that's our main job we have to be able to accomplish this but in a fiscally responsible Manner and you know when you think of advanced manufacturing I don't know if it would ever make sense for us to be able to buy $125,000 SE N C Machine when we're not actually producing Parts but collaborating with awt and also receiving a grant last year from Ohio Department of Education the Innovative Workforce uh training Grant we we received $292,000 men our schools did and with those Grant funds we were able to purchase the manual milling and lay machines uh at the training center so what happened was is through this collaboration we're able to provide the

034manual Milling the Mills and the Lays and then with aw providing the cnc's we collaborate together in a way that works so I just came from a meeting there I was at the partners in science Excellence um giving a speech and it was really cool to see the uh current group of apprentices actually working on those manual machines and then obviously another one we're really proud of is our Menor fire EMT Academy so this is something that came from you know talking with the community there is currently a deficit with Public Safety employees it's just if you talk to any they'll tell you it's harder finding firemen and police officers uh so looking at that we said how can we do our part to help prepare and Inspire that next Generation now no matter how

035much we want to inspire that next Generation I don't think it would ever be responsible for a school district to ever probably purchase a $500,000 uh fire truck right or maybe purchase a $300,000 ambulance like I just don't know in what context that would make makes sense but because we have amazing Partners in the city of Menor and Menor fire our program is now located at the regional response facility which is right behind fire station 4 at at 306 and we have access to all of those resources at no additional cost like the taxpayers have already paid it once they don't need to pay it twice so what's awesome for us is we're able to access those resources and maximize that benefit and if say when we're looking at some of these things there's a

036call and it has to go out on the call I'm going to be honest it's like super cool and the kids dig it so it's like fine so if if that ends up happening it makes it more exciting and then you know one of the things that we're continuing to strengthen now as we look to how can we rapidly expand our opportunities is with Lakeland Community College so one of the things is that we're trying to continue to provide the concept that it is not college or career I believe that every student and we believe that every student has the opportunity that they can be career ready and college ready at the same time and they have that choice that they can make and one of the ways we're doing that is by looking to

037embed college credit plus into our CTE programs because ultimately what that does is that's the best way for our students to gain exposure to college with zero cost for their families and that's a pivotal time when there's zero cost to show them that they can be successful that they can do it and then if they choose to move forward they can or if they choose to go in the workforce they can but we're providing that opportunity and that's what our role is so right now this past fall we rolled out our EMT Academy we partnered with Lakeland our EMT Academy is now a eight college credit course our profess our our instructor Professor kraic now as I call him because he is a professor he's an adjunct faculty at Lakeland Community College our students have

038that opportunity and we're looking in the very new future hopefully in the spring to offer an additional five Career Technical education programs that'll have those college credit plus embedded in them and we're looking at the courses like Business Administration health care manufacturing construction the things that we know in Northeast Ohio is in need and then lastly just to wrap up I know I think I'm real close on my time limit here I mean I'm not talking as much as Mr Wade does I think we so looking at communication what what one of the one of the big things is is that half of what you know really important what we're doing but the other thing is how are we communicating it to the community because if people don't understand number one what we're doing but

039number two the opportunities that exist for their families and for the community members then we're not doing our job so we've really ramped up what we've been doing the last several years one of those is focusing on some real world initiatives making sure that we are taking curriculum K through 12 and tying it to Real World Learning how does it tie to potential careers in future areas of focus and the other thing is then making sure that we're bringing those Employers in to help share that experience with those students so the biggest thing that we did was last year we really re we revamped our business advisory Council and it was fantastic under Mr Wades and Mr Crow's tutelage uh they they allowed me the opportunity to kind of take the rein of it and

040what we able to do is in a very short order rapidly expand it because when we talk about well who should be on our business advisory Council people that have businesses in Manor and who are looking to hire people because they can advise us there's not a limit I you know when I think of Manor we're we're born and bred on small small family-owned businesses so I want big businesses to be a part of it but we also want those small shops and you think Tyler Boulevard 90% of those businesses are small familyowned and we want them on on that BAC because they're the ones that are going to hire these students so we rapidly expanded it going from you know maybe under 10 members to now 30 to 40 members we have a plan

041this year to to look to expand that um so that's what we're looking at doing and then some of the other things that we're looking at was we tried to streamline what we're doing so when we talk about communicating is the idea that everybody's busy it's not just us it's not just them everyone is busy and we need to be concise if we need partners and we're looking for partners and we need assistance we need to be able to accurately explain it and concisely explain it so working with our BAC we we created The Business Partnership guide which basically says why partner with us and then you go to the next slide and it says how can you partner with us here are the opportunities and this is all feedback from our partners they said

042don't give me a whole Spiel Joe tell us what are the opportunities how do we do it and when can we do it so that's what we provided and this was the result of our BAC so came out with those opportunities you go to that next slide it has some more of the opportunities you go to the next one it has a code that you can scan it basically lets you click and we let the businesses pick what do they want to do they any of those options we do an alakar because ultimately as long as you're participating with what we're doing we're we're excited for that because that's what's going to benefit the community so in a very quick presentation I believe uh those are some of the things that we're looking to address

043we're really proud you know very proud of the things that we're doing at Menor schools and I appreciate uh the support Northeast Ohio is is a very special place and it allows us to do things that this is not common to see these type of collaborations that we're seeing so I'm very appreciative for it and and I appreciate you guys giving me the time to talk right now so thank you so much Dr Le I have a quick question oh and if you have any questions you ask just because it said questions um you had 98.2 po post placement program um do you know what ours is like without CTE what is the the rate well so so without CTE so the the issue is so career Tech's kind of been ahead of the curve

044for a long time now so we've been doing this for years the post program followup has just been starting I believe the past like it may have been the last year like we're now so the state of Ohio saw what everybody was doing in Career Tech and they're like yeah we should probably see like what the bang for our buck is doing so now they're requiring all students have that followup but I'm not familar if we've had a year of those results yet but I know it is newer okay thanks it was just interesting I know you've had a wonderful partnership with Lake Tran to give kids access especially if they were heading up to Lakeland is that also flexible enough to give kids some transport between let's say here and the automotive center or

045here in Auburn do we have any options opened up there yet yeah absolutely so the great thing about our partnership with Lake Tran which I don't know if you guys have had a chance it's it's dark now so you can't see it but we did just open our uh they just put the new shelter right over by the stadium so again one of our processes one of the things that we implemented uh I believe it was two or three years ago now was our Cardinal go program and that idea was is that how do we remove barriers for our students to have access to a variety of things yes do I have the mindset of I looking at work-based learning opportunities 100% I want to be able to find ways that so kids can get

046to these jobs that they want to have but does it also work to allow them access to go to the grocery store and to go to Lakeland Community College or to go to the Classic Automotive Training Center that's also getting the same shelter built right there absolutely so students that uh at Menor High School grades 9 through 12 they all have they are all provided free access to all routes of Lake Tran so they can ride that any time grades 9 through 12 and again one of the things that I think was really exciting about that is we started that two or three years ago and so far what what's happened is that's actually expanded now to now there is Willoughby East Lake go there is Paynesville City go there is Lake yieo there is

047Lake Tran go so everybody and again this isn't a zero sum game we can all win we can all benefit and that's often what we talk about is take these ideas use them run with them idea of giving that transportation for kids that been that's not a Menor thing that's an every kid thing that's an kid with barriers thing cool and mentioned R the bus I always like to throw that in R well I mean we do keep winning that w at the bus so that is exciting any other questions oh in the back all right cool thank you yeah you know that was first of all awesome Timmy heninger is awesome so that's great um you know one of the great things that we did again thinking differently about how we do things was

048that as we continue to have kids that wanted to expand into Career Tech education no matter what in any business or programs or anything I don't want to get too much in the woods but you'll basically see a churn you'll see an attrition okay there's kids that they'll do something their junior year and then ultimately for every kid who says that they love this there may also be a kid that's like hey thank you very much I realize that 100% I do not want to be an early childhood education and that's okay what it does is it allows for an opening a seat that senior year so what we do for our Advanced manufacturing program is if there's an open seat we provide that and we allow seniors to apply for a one-year program we

049differentiate the instruction within there because we use some electron IC materials uh the curriculum and it allows us to maximize the resources we have so yeah super good example no question just a comment at one point we had an automotive shop here that was early on in my election Mary as well and it got dissolved gone away classic I know spoke to me at least once or twice saying why did you do that Mr Tuttle why did you close it we need your students to come to us after that program so happy and proud that this is moved along let me relate a story to you also Joe something I probably never told you but in 1986 I bought a small business woodworking furniture repair spray finish finishes and now that takes some skills but

050I had to teach them and they all learned that eventually my son who graduated from men took over managing two shops and doing the work as well but he now is doing something else he works for Steris but that's why all along this program and the programs I was aware of in Wickliffe I'm was such an advocate for it because for years they were the Forgotten group of students who had the skills and the ability to understand mechanical jobs hand skills being able to pound a nail run a sander now it's come back and it's so excited and a great opportunity the results are fantastic Joe and they're only going to get better so well that was a great that's a Full Circle story right there thank you very much Mr Tuttle that was awesome

051I like it I it's it's exciting to me this part of Education now obviously the students who go to college all that it's fantastic too doctors lawyers you know cler but the Forgotten class of students that we had when I was in the 60s they're not forgotten anymore and I was not one of those but I recognized those kids who worked in shop class you know went to shop class so doing much much better this this will be a nice precursor to something we'll talk about here shortly correct yeah you know the one thing that I would clar you know exactly just to touch base and then I'll close out of here is just whether people are looking to go into whether it's be a lawyer a doctor any you know an engineer any of

052those having those skill sets of knowing how to do some of these you know industry recognized skills understanding craftsmanship work you know woodworking those are not bad things that's part of you know that's part of what we're trying to do is really instill those so thank you very much I appreciate it guys thank you anymore we're good all right thank you you can you can clap you can clap you can clap don't encourage no we need to encourage her next on the agenda approval minutes Mr Wade please call roll approval of the minutes do we have a motion so moved second Mr White M jley yes Miss Brer yes Miss Cook yes Miss pay yes Mr Tuttle yes motion carries 5- Z superintendent's reports and recommendations hearing of the public first yeah oh gosh sorry

053I didn't mean to forget you our only person just walked out so there's no hearing public she just walk yeah she signed up for the second session though so she can hit us on the flip side okay oh so then it is me um I I uh on September 15th uh we received official word from the state that our district has earned 4.5 out of five stars for our 2023 local report card I want to briefly share some of the data that we uh are reviewing now uh to determine where we have shown improvements over the last year and areas that we will continue to work on moving forward overall we received four stars in achievement four stars and progress five stars in gap closing four stars in graduation rate and four stars in early

054literacy the nice thing that uh we're looking forward to here for next year is we'll get into the College and Career Readiness components a little bit more which ties in directly to a lot of the stuff that Joe was just uh sharing with us so we're looking forward to that being added to our report card ratings for next year as well because we know we're going to blow those out of the water just very briefly uh to touch on each of the components um uh as we previously shared uh we increased our Ohio state test scores in 15 of the 20 tested areas this past year uh we showed some significant in increases in math achievement uh especially at the middle school and high school levels uh we're excited about our new openup math uh

055resources that we were implementing in our middle school last year and are currently being implemented in all of our elementary schools here this year we're going to continue to focus on our fifth grade classrooms this year as we saw some slight decreases in ela Math and Science scores at that grade level last year from the progress component the progress component looks at how much growth our students have demonstrated year over-year based on our data we showed significant growth in fourth grade seventh grade and in our math and Ela courses at the high school level we did not show growth in fifth and uh eighth grade science however so we're going to be looking closely at those scores and the content standards um to make sure that in our professional development meetings this year with our

056staff we're able to address some of those issues Mrs cook is going to be sharing some of the data regarding the Gap closing measure a little bit later here uh with us so I'm going to skip to the graduation rate component next uh the graduation rate component is looking at a Comin of both our four-year graduation rate and our five-year graduation rate to determine the number of stars that we earn we are a couple of percentage points away I believe it's 1.9% away from being five stars in this area as well so we're hopeful uh with the increase in our career Pathways that Dr gland uh discussed here a little bit earlier that we can improve this component in the very near future the early literacy component looks at our diagnostic assessment data in grades

057K through three and rates our performance on the ability to move students from being off track in Reading to being on grade level by the end of their third grade year our data shows that we are doing great work across the board in this area in order to improve to five stars in this component we're going to look closely at our third grade diagnostic data in the fall um and provide interventions to our students who are off track to prepare them for the spring third grade reading o Ohio State tests here for the coming school year having been here for over a year now I know how much our community likes to compare us to other districts around the county and around the state um with our 4.5 star rating overall and looking at how

058many stars we have earned on each IND individual component we rank third in Lake County behind only Kirtland and Perry when looking at the state cohort data we are tied for fourth out of the 21 districts the state has identified as the districts most like ours from a demographic standpoint each year we are right behind Brunswick masselin jacksson and green and have scored higher than districts like Wadsworth Stow Cincinnati Oak Hills and North Olstead we're very excited about the data associated with our local report card this year and looking forward to the work ahead uh as we continuously improve everything we do academically in the district couple of other quick uh items here uh we're excited to invite families and staff to our upcoming Community movie night and resource Fair next Monday October 16th at

059the Jerome T Osborne senior Stadium starting at 6 pm. we will have a resource Fair where we will have Community Partners sharing information on educational opportunities health and wellness Services job placement and much more we'll then settle in at 6:30 p.m. to watch the game plan of family friendly a familyfriendly film starring Dwayne The Rock Johnson um on the stadium field on the big screen if it rains we will move it to uh the Fine Arts Center just in case we have to to punt get it another football pun there uh we will we will be in the fine artart Center uh everyone is welcome uh admission is free uh we will have free popcorn and water uh that will be provided uh courtesy of the United Way of Lake County and additional snacks and

060drinks will be available for purchase this is a night for the whole family um but I will caution you it is not just a drop off event so parents and caretakers will need to stay with their children um but don't forget your blankets uh lawn chairs uh so that you guys can uh kick back on the field and enjoy the movie so that'll be fun for us here next week at the September meeting uh the board passed my recommendation to remove The Bluest Eye from our honors English 10 and English 11 sub supplemental reading lists in response to the request for review of instructional materials that we received this summer over the last month I spent my spare evening and weekend moments reading The Bluest Eye in its entirety I literally finished the book this

061morning while the uh with the passage of our Neola manual in August and the new materials with sexual content policy that we passed in September I now have additional policy requirements to consider for a request to remove content from the high school media center uh unfortunately I do not have that decision ready for this evening but I promise I will have my response ready for the board and the concerned Party by the end of this week I attended the Bassa State superintendent conference last week in Columbus and spent my time in breakout sessions focused on legislative updates internal communication strategies and human resource management the most relevant session that I um attended was given by a law firm out of Cleveland regarding the federal Title 9 updates originally scheduled to be released last spring the

062updated guidelines for Title 9 are now expected to be available later this month the attorney shared that the major updates will be the expansion of transgender rights within educational facility usage and athletic participation during that session I asked specifically about how these expand how the expansion of these rights would be impacted by the current bills in the Ohio state house with the bathroom bill and the save women sports act the attorneys said both of those bills will be in direct conflict with the new federal guidelines so there will inevitably be lawsuits filed should those bills pass through both the house and the Senate and our state we'll need to continue to follow the guidance of our legal counsel as the guidelines are released just to give everyone the updates on those bills that we've been

063following for a few months now uh House Bill 8 the enact parents rights uh bill has passed through the house has been introduced in the Senate and is now in the Senate education committee that is the bill that has language very similar to the policy that we passed regarding sexual content uh here last month by our board House Bill 68 is the save women's sports act that has passed the house has been introduced in the Senate and is now in the Senate government oversight committee House Bill 183 the bathroom bill is still sitting in the house higher education committee and it's been there for a few months now again we will keep everyone updated on all of the legislative bills and federal guidelines as they happen here in the coming months couple of quick updates

064on Transportation um we have identified a new routing system that we will be using in the district for next school year as soon as we get the invoice processed we will start building the maps necessary to improve our bus routes here in the future last board meeting I discussed the possibility of adding a couple of bus uh full-time bus operators to help alleviate some of our afternoon issues I'm pleased to announce announced that we have hired those two drivers and are seeing better drop drop off times now while it's still far from perfect it has gotten substantially better in the past two or three weeks and finally we have scheduled a series of weekly meetings now to address Transportation concerns our supervisor our drivers and our administrative team will now be able to make quick

065changes to procedures when needed in a very structured way and finally uh we are now posting 4our shifts for our Menor Police Department off-duty officers at our elementary schools at various times during the week while we know not every shift we are requesting will get covered due to the lack of available officers we at least have some of them filled for the next couple of weeks so we are hoping you will notice the increased police presence in all of our buildings moving forward I want to take this opportunity to thank Chief gunch and all of the officers for their willingness to try and expand our SRO program in our schools Mr President members of the board and Mr Wade I have the following recommendations listed under the consent agenda and recommend approval of items 6

066A1 through 6 A3 so moved second discussion anyone hearing none Mr Wade please call the roll M Jing yes Miss Cook yes Miss Brer yes Miss Payne yes Mr Tuttle yes motion carries 5- z Mr President members of the board and Mr Wade I am recommending approval of the resolution adoption and and immediately implementing substitute House Bill 33 of the 135th general assembly of Ohio as it pertains to certain changes to educational requirements for substitute teachers so move second discussion questions hearing none Mr Wade Miss Brer yes Miss Payne yes Miss Cook yes M Jing yes Mr tutle yes motion carries 5 Mr President members of the board and Mr Wade I am recommending approval of the interim agreement for shared Workforce Development administrator services with Lakeland Community College so move second second discussion anyone

067I think just a couple of things that I'll mention um and then feel free to comment um this agreement uh would be to have Dr Joe glaven provide services as the Director of work Workforce Development for both Menor schools and Lakeland Community College pending the passage uh by our board here this evening and the official ratification by the Lakeland board in November this partnership would create a commitment to enriching educational and Workforce opportunities for our students and residents together we would address Workforce training gaps through the expansion of college credit plus programs ensuring our students are well prepared for both higher education and the workforce the primary benefit of this partnership would be our ability to enhance educational opportunities for our students with zero cost to our Menor schools taxpayers instead through the shared service

068agreement it would serve as an additional source of revenue for our district while increasing the resources available to our students and community Through Lakeland Community College our goal goal is to increase career pathway opportunities through a combination of college credit plus and our Career Technical education programs for our students to become College and Career ready we're very excited it's been a long time coming and um this is uh this is a really big step uh in a in a very good direction for our district you know it always seems like such an obvious thing that we would work as a community to bring together those who need employ employees those who need training and and coordinating all of that but it's anything but simple it's it's a complex Enterprise and I'm so pleased that it's

069come together great for our students our community and I'm glad that lakeland's our partner in this makes sense and we don't lose Joe yeah that's a concern but he's full speed all the time I felt that way until about 23 minutes into tonight Dr GL I could I could listen to Dr glaven on that every day at lunch at lunch Joe well if this passes you might have to that's excellent so we have a motion yes in a second ready to vote please call the rooll Mr Wade Miss Brer yes Miss Payne yes Miss Cook yes M Jing yes Mr Tuttle yes motion carries 5- Mr President members of the board Mr Wade I'm recommending approval of agenda item C1 related to certified personnel and C2 through C4 all related to human resource matters so

070moved second discussion please call the rooll Mr Wade Miss Payne yes Miss jesley yes Miss Brer yes Miss Cook yes Mr toal yes motions carry 5 Z I'm also recommending approval of agenda items D and e related to administrative staff so moved second questions comments please call the rooll Mr Wade uh Miss Payne yes Miss Cook yes Miss Brer yes M Jing yes Mr Tuttle yes uh motion's pass 5 Zer this concludes my portion of tonight's agenda thank you I'm sorry did you do six D yeah we did D and E together six and D okay sorry next on the agenda 7A I've got it good uh Mr President members of the board and Mr Wade this evening we have the following Menor Board of Education Neola policies on the agenda for a first reading

071because this is a first reading no vote is necessary um and just as a reminder this is the first of our uh two updates each year um with the new Neola policy so uh we passed those policies in August um about a week later we got the first updates so uh we've gone through those with our um administrative team and uh have made those appropriate updates and they're here for your first reading this evening I'd like to add thank you very much Mr Heath Mr Wade and the rest of the board members that was a tremendous task I don't know how you all did it but you did thank you I think it'll be worth it oh definitely is going to make our life a lot easier yes can we have discussion on one of

072the even though it's a first reading yeah sure yeah okay I didn't know if we needed a motion it what not no so we don't need a motion right yeah I just had um a couple questions the the first one was I know this is our first update that we've received from niola we get two a year and just to verify we can either accept the recommendations did we accept all of the recommendations that they put forth to us or were there any that we were because we could either accept or reject right right so what they're what they're doing with these updates is as new laws are pass as during the course of the year they're rewriting policies to to kind of tie into those um into those uh new bills that are passed

073by the state house um so that's where a lot of the language is coming from some of it's uh optional language some of it's not um it's kind of a an expected type thing um but uh again I think moving forward what we'll uh I think what we had decided is we will have uh two members of our board that will also be part of that uh that board policy review the ason committee so we'll have one for curriculum one for uh school safety which Maggie and Mary will be attending here in a couple weeks um we've got our citizens financial and then uh we'll have this board policy piece so um that'll be part of our our procedure here when we get those in January correct Mr Wade it clear when they come yeah

074so I just had a couple other questions um looking through the changes I did see that a lot of them did tie to different you know house bills that were passed and things like that I was wondering the optional language um I noticed that we were removing he- she where it is in totality like he- she both genders and we are removing that and so basically essentially getting rid of personal pronouns and I didn't see any update from Neola as to why um it didn't look like there was any kind of house bill or any kind of legislative piece that associated with that so I guess can you explain because I was obviously receiving some questions about this as well can you explain why um they are making that recommendation and then also why are

075we accepting that recommendation that's a good question I don't know why those changes are being made and we can ask that and get that information to you though because that's optional language for the policy update that I looked at it wasn't it wasn't required and I because I do know that like Riverside um North Royalton Brooklyn City Schools none of them accepted that change they accepted the other you know a lot of the other changes but they didn't change their use of personal pronouns um so I guess I'm just wondering why and one of the other things that I think we know that's not true in all policies though because there's some of mine that say his her yeah we Ed I mean just so for to say blanket it was all of them well

076this update wasn't all of them but I do know that Neola is trying to go away from the personal pronoun usage and so I'm just wondering why you know why and I can ask the the question why and get get an answer from our our representative there I know one of the things that they've been doing instead of using any pronoun is they've actually gone to like whatever the he SL she was referring back to so like if it's the superintendent they're just using the word the superintendent again um but yeah I can ask the the reason behind that and yeah if we could just get the reasoning because I know some some people were asking the question and um I do know like some other school boards have rejected that change because they thought

077it was kind of more political in nature to to get rid of the he- she and so if we could just get some clarity on that and then I just had a couple other questions about um I think actually just one the uh page 43 policy 9211 District support organization it said that we can't have a member on our board that would be a v voting member and I didn't know if the Menor schools Foundation would fall under that because I know Mrs Jing is on that board and I didn't know know if V though you don't vote so I don't know if that would be we actually had that conversation at the Menor schools Foundation meeting actually last night um and uh we're getting some some legal advice on that one right now because

078we do have um teachers that are represented in on that board um again they can be there but not as a voting member or an officer so there there may be some shifts that need to take place in order to to be in compliance with that policy but that was brought to our attention actually yesterday morning okay and uh we had the conversation uh last night uh as a Menor schools Foundation group and then uh we're getting some some legal advice on that right now okay we're always looking for good people to join us absolutely so it's really a matter of scarcity as much as anything else that we don't have and it's a wonderful organization we do great things and I always enjoy that but yeah we're not voting members we're just I wasn't

079sure observers and we can also offer Insight sometimes you know if there's a question about other things that are going on we would have that information available to us that we could help further a discussion but we can't vote and then are there are there other organizations like that that were part of that we need to consider with that policy as well boosters any your booster groups music boosters athletic boosters that's a good point and the reason being is because there's ethic complications potentially I saw that and again down at the bottom of each policy you'll see what that yeah why that's been updated that way um so that's the the one thing that we're looking at right now from a legal standpoint is what ethics uh commission report that was tied to so that

080we can get that specific language and just make sure that we're we're doing things in the proper way okay and then I just had a couple other sure probably quick ones um the one is more of a comment the page 16 the uh policy 5330 use of medications I see that we added that we can um give Narcan if necessary and that was something due to a house bill 558 in 2023 that passed and I was just along those lines I know that there has been a lot about o the op oid crisis and um I didn't know if we could have some kind of safety night for parents um to kind of talk about different things that they can do different things that they may see you know to bring awareness to that um

081I know you and I had actually somebody wrote in about that months ago you know so kind of when I saw that I was like oh yeah that's right maybe we could do something about that and then um I was going to just say quickly this this facility as soon as this was built and opened we had a couple of wonderful Community engagement evenings where we had um many groups speakers on various topics from law enforcement health and and so forth addiction and recovery and I think did your group also participate in that wasn't that with Adams it was with the Adams board but I didn't your group were involved did it as well and they had a lot of great information and it was pretty well attended I want to say at least a

082couple hundred people were here and it was I thought very valuable but with Co and all we haven't done anything like that since I'm going to say that was 18 yeah maybe and and maybe mix into to some of the um I know sex trafficking has been Ohio has been up there on that too so maybe you know a booth for that or something as well um I know I I lost you know some students when I graduated from Menor due to the opioid crisis so I think we all have everybody has so anything that we can can do to help avoid that um and then the last one I had was policy 7440 uh facility security I just was wondering I saw that Jay was crossed out because um we didn't want to include

083that we may have kind of monitoring devices for smoke or vaping and I know we've talked about that before because I know some schools do have those monitors now and they're not as touchy as they used to be where like Hairspray used to you know put them off but I know a lot of parents say hey there's a lot of vaping going on in the bathroom I don't know if you could speak on that I don't know if that's true or not well and one of the things uh we literally just had this conversation yesterday as a team uh in our administrative team meeting about um Those sensors um looking at uh other devices that we might be able to to help curb the use of of vaping in our in our schools um that

084wasn't initially um included in our policy based on our conversation yesterday we may make a change to that and include that language um for second reading uh for consideration I'll put that down here um and probably get some input from uh from all of you on the board um I will actually include a couple of things about that conversation that we had yesterday in my board update um because I think there are some some key components to that so when I do that this week Annie I'll make sure I put that um kind of that reference to that policy in there too if everybody's comfortable with that we can still consider those as well perfect yeah thank you that's all I had y thank you any other comments before we do the next one uh

085Mr President members of the board and Mr Wade it is recommended approval of the resolution authorizing the sale of used Surplus equipment by public auction so moved second questions hearing none Mr way please call all M Jing yes Miss pay yes Miss Brer yes M yes Mr cuddle yes motion carries 5- Z thank you Mr Heath next on the agenda legislative report Mrs Brer well we finally got one before me yeah I saw that and it's not 10 pages long so is stated in the state's B anual budget House Bill 33 the Department of Education and Workforce deew du would be established as a cabinet level department with a director who would report directly to the governor du was set to be partially phased in beginning October 3rd once operational do would absorb much of

086the power and responsibilities that were previously held by the State Board of Education or sboe this was a major concern when the idea to create do was considered since the sboe is establish ablished and deemed necessary in the Ohio Constitution once due is operational the sboe would only be responsible for Teacher lure and territory transfers this transition is now in limbo after most of us know a lawsuit was filed by seven members of the State Board of Education and a Franklin County Court of Common Police judge issued a temporary restraining order blocking portions of House Bill 33 from becoming law this temporary order was issued so that the court May review the legality of some Provisions in House Bill 33 the three Provisions that the plaintiffs argue violate the Ohio Constitution are adding education policy

087to the budget violated the single subject rule that says laws can't be about more than one topic the education takeover Provisions in House Bill 33 didn't get three considerations as required and Ohioans voted to create the board in 1953 giving it certain core powers that the legislature can't take away Governor Mike dwine held a press conference to clear up some confusion on the lawsuit and clarify the future of du under his administration he spoke on how the Ohio Department of Education goes away and is replaced by due regardless of the lawsuits because of the law that was passed by the general assembly he claims due is legally allowed to be established handle day-to-day Statewide business regarding K through2 education this includes sending checks to Ohio's public schools and making determinations on eligibility for the state's

088expanded vouchers Governor dwine argued that the temporary order only means he cannot appoint a due director or transfer the S spo's powers to do in the absence of a governor appointed director the current interim superintendent of Public Instruction Dr J Christopher Ward will over oversee due for the time being state report carts just before the lawsuit on the future of sboe and du kicked off OD released the highly anticipated state report carts for the 2222 school year those student proficiency levels have not yet returned to pre-pandemic levels they continue to rise increased proficiency was seen among all subgroups of students in English language arts and math but there are still large disparities between some subgroups the lowest achievement levels were seen for students with disabilities Hispanic students and black students with the disparities for the

089subgroups grow growing wider than they were pre pandemic in addition to improving proficiency among every group of students the state saw improvements and decreasing chronic absenteeism chronic absenteeism is still a concern at 26.8% but there is optimism with the rate decreasing by 3.4% since last year legislation the State House is also looking more accurately looking more accurately reflecting The Chronic absenteeism rate through legislation Senate Bill 49 originally passed by the Senate to mandate each K through2 public school to adopt policy providing students with religious expression days has been a ended by the house primary and secondary education committee The Substitute version of sb49 adds the following changes the definition of chronic absenteeism to no longer include excused absences does not count excused absences toward habitual truancy or excessive absenteeism until a student has more than

09060 hours of excused absences provides a list of what must be considered a legitimate excuse for absences and updates the State's graduation rate formula so schools and districts are not penalized when students on individualized educational plans defer graduation if passed in its amended form sb49 could help the state report card and district report cards improve even further but student engagement is still key to a student's long-term academic success this was emphasized by Dr woard when address ing the state report card ratings in front of the Senate education Committee in late September some recently introduced legislation s SP 162 sponsored by Senator Andrew o' brener of Delaware requires public schools to provide certain academic intervention services to each student who demonstrates a limited level in math and English language arts SB 168 sponsored by Senator Michelle

091Reynolds Canal Winchester regards educ ation regulation reform and amend certain sections of the revised code that are scheduled to take effect January 1st 2025 to continue the changes on and after that effective date HB 274 sponsored by reps Adam Matthews of Lebanon and Richard Delila of Seven Hills authorizes an enhanced property tax homestead exemption for certain long-term homeowners hb27 9 sponsored by rep Bernard Willis of Springfield requires occupant restraining devices to be installed on all school buses within five years all I you is that it thank you Mrs Brer student achievement report Mrs thank you thank you well as as Mr Heath promised um I'm going to be talking a little bit starting out with our state report card and I'm focusing in on the specific area of the state report C card called Gap

092closing my purpose for discussing this is to report on the progress that we have made and also to highlight the areas that we need to improve because we are striving for the best for all of our students um this also helps us make informed decisions for the growth of all of our students so the Gap closing component is is a little confusing there's a lot to look at and I'll try to explain some areas it shows how well that schools are meeting the performance expectation for students in English language arts in math and in graduation it measures how schools are doing in supporting English learners to increase their language proficiency reducing The Chronic absenteeism for all students and identifying gifted students and how um the schools provide gifted services so goals are established in six

093areas and the performance of specific specific student subgroups are measured against annual or long-term goals for each area goals are established for English language arts academic achievement and growth math academic achieve and growth graduation rates English language learner English language learner proficiency chronic absenteeism and gifted performance we earned a total of 44 points out of a possible 68 points um and that gave us a final percentage rate of 64.7% we did earn five stars in this area which is the maximum amount of stars that we can earn and to earn five stars you needed to have at least 60% so we had 64.7 earning our five stars we earned five out of five stars in this area because of the progress that we did make in math and in English language arts scores on the

094state tests across all of our demographic subgroups so our academic success here really helped us with our Gap closing score um one of the ways that we achieve this excuse me is by utilizing our Esser funds to place teachers in our buildings to help close achievement gaps we were able to Target our reading and math interventions with students at specific grade levels that positively impacted the data in the component of the report card now there are specific areas that we are looking at to improve and one of the areas that the board should be um aware of that we need to look at is our gifted performance index scores these can be higher and the service that we provide that our students in that are identified as gifted um can increase so one of the

095ways that we're focusing on this is training additional teachers and gifted intervention strategies this school year this will allow us to serve more students particularly in our middle school and high school and to improve the data in this category moving forward there any questions with that okay all right s Menor High School seniors have qualified for our National Merit recognition as semifinalists and commended students semi-finalists score in the top 1% of the PSAT scores nationally that is very impressive top 1% and our semifinalists include Lauren Bangerter Abby Horvath Harry Krishna Patel and Michael suar the commended students scored in the top 2 to 3% of students nationally and our commended students included Ben Gola Drew Parker and Olivia Sachs so congratulations to Lauren Abby Harry chrishna Michael Bend Drew and Olivia th that is amazing

096accomplishment to have as many [Applause] [Music] students Manor High School celebrated its homecoming the week of September 25th the week's activities included a Spirit Week a pep assembly on Friday the crowning of a king Hayden herac and queen Angela dearia um a parade where every school in our district was represented and we saw hundreds of community members come out to show their support our homecoming football um theme was neon for the students and our team was Victorious 44 to 29 over Shaker Heights the week concluded with an amazing dance at our high school with over, 1500 students in attendance and a special thank you to our Menor High School PTSA for putting on the dance this year financial literacy we are in the third year of our partnership with our Cardinal Credit Union to provide

097additional financial literacy education to our students in the financial literacy and economics courses Cardinal Credit Union has developed an 8we course that teaches practical money management skills to students our students have the opportunity to open a free student account with Cardinal Credit Union and in addition to the increased financial literacy skills that our students have the opportunity to earn scholarships each spring through the Mad City money competition Cardinal Credit Union sponsors we're fortunate at men are Exempted Village Schools to have close access to our non Nami Lake County partner Lami Nami Lake County Ohio provides advocacy education support and raises public awareness so that all individuals and families affected by mental health conditions can build Better Lives we utilize this outstanding service for their ending the silence presentations with our students in grades 7 through

09812 these 40-minute presentations share the warning signs of mental health concerns what to look for and how to get help each spring for the past four years we have met with nami representatives to plan for the following school year Nami presented to all of our high school students the past two weeks and they will present at both middle schools this week and finally we have our start with hello program recently um enacted House Bill 123 as well as analysis with our whole child bright bites District survey results has brought increas increased attention for the needs to address the emotional health and well-being of our students start with hello is the Ohio Department of education's approved list of social inclusion programs it was created by the Sandy Hook promise Foundation 9 years ago start with hello

099teaches Children and Youth how to minimize social isolation empathize with others and create a more inclusive and connected School culture for the 23 24 school year we wanted to start slowly and encourage daily activities at all levels during the week of September 18th through the 21st all Menor schools participated in start with hello week and each of the schools held theme days to celebrate social inclusion themes such as meet and greet Monday stick up for others no one eats Al lone day thankful Thursday and random act of kindness day just to name a few thank you thank you Mrs cook next on the agenda Mr White Mr President members of the board Mr Heath thank you Mr Lynch catch up looking at our monthly financials um current year to date Revenue collections indicates we're about

1001.3 million million unfavorable um the majority of that we'll talk about as we've already discussed a number of times because it actually led to a savings down the road um so Mr Lynch if you can go to the next slide please so we are looking at a $2.2 million Revenue a year to date at this point and we're looking at um September collections versus last September but if you remember we were down in August because of waiting on a tiff payment uh it actually came in the the day after uh the the board meeting or the day of the board meeting excuse me so that payment now clocks into September so it's a timing uh uh basically a timing issue and we're looking at about $969,000 more Revenue this year um lower this year than

101we were last year at this time and again most likely due to timing issues uh from a split on our collection from the prior year overall uh $1.3 million uh to the positive which is what we would have expected based on our Appropriations last month when I gave the presentation I said we're probably expecting close to $109 million in Revenue uh this is showing that projection that we are up to about $109 million in Revenue uh primarily as I said last month because of increased Returns on our interest on our uh Investments that we have looking at our expenses our actual expenses for the month were up $3.1 million uh the majority of that coming from uh transfers that we transferred out uh last month uh as a result to fund our uh incentive that

102we had for our retirements and again that transfer out doing it in one year instead of over three years helped us save uh almost $300,000 in the life of that in our for forecast year-to date that causes us to be Mr Lynch uh $2.6 million uh above expenditures but again if you look at the the total number of expenditures on the bottom right hand we're looking at a $14 million 14.7 million expenditure which is about what we had last month in our Appropriations so we're trending to that so as I update my November forecast to our new Appropriations based on our revenue and our expense projections we'll see that those will uh come to uh be more closely aligned in the future so one of the things that's been there's been a lot of talk

103lately uh around the state and it's coming up in Ohio in physical year in calendar year 24 with the reappraisal and everybody asks and and because we have two levies on the docket it's also been coming up um with regards to how do changes in property values affect property taxes and School District Revenue you know uh we've heard across the state I heard Franklin County seeing appraisal values increases upwards of 40% you know is the district going to receive a 40% increase in their property tax revenue from the taxpayer because of that and the simple answer is no so I think it's worthwhile for us to spend some time kind of reviewing uh educating each other on you know how we calculate our property taxes in Ohio first and foremost they don't use your market

104value it's not they don't take the value that your home would be assessed at they actually take or excuse me apprais that you would actually get the assess value which is 35% of that so you're taxed on 35% of your market value you take that number and then you multiply it by the effective tax rate and that gives you your initial tax bill and then you get some rollbacks and Homestead deductions off of that depending upon who your qualifications are so you get your less your state paid reimbursements they take that off and then we get that money from the state later on um from that and that gives you your current tax bill there are three types of millages in our district uh every District across the state of Ohio you have an inside

105millage there's an unvote get from the district so the district gets of that 10 ms we get 4.8 the rest of it goes to other local municipalities in the city in the county so on and so forth and then there's two types of levies you have fixed rate levies the majority of our levies are fixed rate levies those are levies that are voter approved at a specific rate they don't have much growth they're very limited in their growth uh they're protected by what's called House Bill 920 so as your property value goes up house n House Bill 920 adjusts that millage rate down and its effective rate by class and the rate can decrease but it can't increase past its voted amount so if the bottom was to fall the economy and all of our

106home values dropped drastically let's say by 100% that effective rate would never go past the initial voted rate that it had so if it was voted in let's say the pi Levy 2.5 Ms which is actually not a good example so let's use a different Levy a 7. mil Levy that we have um voted in that is a fixed rate Levy it would never go above 7 Ms so if the economy fell out and the the everyone's house values dropped and it would push that above s Ms it wouldn't do it it wouldn't be allowed it's stuck at that rate our voted fixed rate levies total 67.8 Ms because of House Bill 920 and the increase in the property values in our area from property value increases because our houses have went up because of

107inflationary costs or because of new construction which also plays in through this a little bit that M rate has been reduced down to 21.9 Ms so again as the property values of the entire Community go up the assess valuation goes up the effective rate goes down that we see on our fixed rate levies fixed some levies are a little bit different those would be your Pi levies and your emergency Lev levies actually those are levies that are voted in for a specific amount we know that the emergency renewal that is on the ballot right now is for $15 million it will always be for $15 million so what happens is is it has no growth it can never go above $50 million because when new people move into the district or we have new construction

108ruction or the valuation goes up what happens is that Mill rates dropped so that it always collects $15 million back when we had the recession in the mid2 uh 208 through 2013 and we saw price values of homes dropping you actually see the effective mill rate go up because it has to go up to make sure it collects that specific dollar amount um so it's adjusted annually for voter approval rate and it's not included in the floor which is the minimum level that we have to have uh by law so there's a there's a law in the state of Ohio says that at a minimum districts will always have 20 Mills for educational purposes so what's included in that is your inside millage and your voted fixed rate levies fixed sum levies are not included

109in that calculation so we have two fixed uh sum levies we have our emergency Levy what's up and then we have our 1 mil Pi Levy that uh we have voted in back in 1988 and that was continuous in 2013 um those two levies together total 7.1 Mills when they're adjusted uh for their effective rate which gives us a total voted millage rate of 80.3 three but again because of the assess valuation has changed in the district over time the effective millage rate is down to 3310 Ms so if I haven't lost you yet thank you if I have just continue to do what my students used to do in chemistry class just have the glazed look over your eyes and keep nodding at me so I don't call on you um the big thing

110is here property values and tax rates right because this is what we're all expecting we saw this back in 2021 when you got your triangle update we saw about an 18 19% increase in our uh property tax valuations the district did not see an equal corresponding rate on tax increases because as Lo local property tax goes up our school districts again real estate property tax remains relatively flat what happens happens is our voted fixed rate tax revies levies excuse me decrease until we reach to the 20 mil floor and then they can't decrease anymore and there are interestingly now right now I just heard this number today almost 400 of the 61 districts in the state of Ohio are at the floor which means every time that there's an increase in property value those districts

111are seeing a corresponding increase almost to not exactly but very high in those rates which is why you're starting to see Senate Bill 153 pop up you're starting to see House Bill 187 pop up to figure out ways to adjust potentially that and what impact that would have on local districts um because property taxes are the main way that we generate Revenue in the state of Ohio based on how we collect uh revenue for districts in Ohio what happens is also those the fix some tax rates continue to decrease they'll always go down smaller and smaller and smaller that's why our 1 mil Pi Levy is now 38 Ms because over the last 35 years right they do that math right in my head uh we've seen it decrease because the property values contined to

112go up the assess values Contin to go up so what happens is that effective rate on that fixed sum Levy continues to go down so this was this graph shows us so if you don't like numbers and you just like graphs stay with me here follow the arrows so in 2021 we saw 19.6 19.6% increase in historical class one because we we are residents so we're class one because we have we're Property Owners but if you look hit the slide again Mr Lynch in 2021 the effective tax rate actually decreased by 13.23% so your actual rate that you had that you would multiply your assess value at down by 13.23% so in actuality your taxes went down down that you paid to the district what happened in 2016 who remembers why did we have a

11313.7% increase in our property taxes that that is a day that we cannot forget that was in June couple months before that in March though we passed our first new money operating Levy since 2004 2016 so we saw an increase in our property tax rates of 13.6% so that's why you see that blip on the red side that you don't see anything on the left side that corresponds to it so I like to explain differences Mr Lynch if you go on next slide please so what I'm doing as I do my November forecast is I'm trying to predict what our increases are going to be for the county in 2024 and what will that result in is an effective property tax change in that corresponding year and then the trial update again Falls in this

1145year forecast so now I got to predict four more years out in 2027 in a housing market that I have really no idea realistically what's going to happen um so right now and this is just my draft forecast I'm not done I don't have to have it done till the end of November and I will present it to the ciance financial advisory and then to the board in November I just have a placeholder of about 15.6% because I have a meeting coming up where we're going to talk to the county auditor so I want to speak to him to see what he's thinking we're going to be more realistically at but that 15.65% is corresponding to a 10.84% decrease in the effective mill rate and that's important to consider because we're not at the 20

115mil floor but it's going to continue to push us closer to that 20 mil floor Mr Lynch on the next slide you've already got there no go back let's no there you go they look the same but they're different let's just say I'm completely off and let's say that our rate increase for 2024 for all of our property taxes is actually G to be 30% let's say it's double does anybody think after the discussion we just had with show of hands are your property tax is going to double in the amount that you're going to pay and the amount of Revenue that the district is going to receive you should all be shaking your head no no you should not be shaking your head yes you will be in detention later um so what actually

116is going to happen if you go to the next slide we see very so even if I'm wrong it doubles the black line in that graph shows the difference in Revenue that we would in see less than 1% increase in revenue for the district so the district will see a very inconsequential increase when you're looking at a forecast and you're looking at the amount of Revenue that that we bring in even if I'm wrong by 15% which is you know it doubled the valuation again because that's because the house bill 920 on our fixed rate levies they're all adjusted down because of 920 and we only see that growth on our inside millage which is the 4.8 Ms so that's the only increase that we'll see from a revenue standpoint predominantly and again all those

117fixed sum levies that any district has and we don't have many of them they'll just be dialed back down because they still got to collect the same amount of money Mr Lynch another graph to show the black line represents if I'm wrong and it's at 30% and the red is the the draft that I have currently in my no forecast that says it's at 15% uh we're broke in 2028 and we're near broke in 2028 either way you look at it a $4 million difference doesn't allow us to be able to function and be able to do the things that we need to do to educate educate our students so again relatively flat revenues Mr Lynch so what happens is you have a couple graphs on here the top line where the arrow is is

118the fixed rates that's our 80 you know 80 Ms that we showed on that first slide that's constant it doesn't change unless we add something to it like we did in 2016 that's why you see a little bit of a slope up there I got to go back I got to stand up so this is because of the levy increase in 16 so we saw an increase in our total Vol of millage rate and you see that down here on our effective millage rates and as we see as our valuations have went up and we continue to project it they will go up and this red line is the floor that's the minimum our district is approaching that floor and then your fixed sum rate levies are outside of the floor and you can see

119that just constantly go down down and down as valuation goes up Mr Lynch next slide so what you see here is our total revenue on the top versus our property tax revenue which is that gold line and you can see that there's not much change over time with those lines they they are have a relatively flat slope if you're into math and numbers that little giddy up that you see in 2018 is something that I changed when I became the CFO Mr Wilson used to classify his uh pup and Tiff payments in his property taxes um he was more of a big picture guy I like to see things in their own respective buckets so I going back to 2019 because that was was in my forecast we made some adjustments to our books so

120it looks like there was a decrease but it's just how we classified property taxes from that point moving forward just to again to explain the difference Mr Lynch I think these are powerful slides because you know I say this all the time but I'm sure it goes in one ear and out the other is if we did nothing if we didn't give another employee a raise they didn't get a step we would still be deficit spending at some point in the future and this is what this graph shows because it shows that our average annual growth in total revenue is about 1.2% where the annual inflation over the last 10 years has been 6.3% and we're projecting into the future our annual average and annual growth will be about a half% and average inflation is

121going to probably go back to normal because it's been a little bit wacky the last 3 to four years as we've all experienced and we're assuming it's going to be closer to 3.6% over the next 10 years so just based on the way that we fund schools if you have a flat Revenue source and you have increasing expenses it's set up to have a levy cycle is what I'm telling you so every District in the state of Ohio at some point and on average it's every three to five years has to go back to their voters to get a new tax revenue stream to be able to afford the increases that they're having for inflation and just cost of doing business Mr Lynch next slide so I'm a nerd so I went back to 2002

122because we often ex we often reference 20 uh 2004 here in this District as the know the fiscal crisis because it was and it and it's appropo because this is the levy that is up for renewal is the reason why we're here so you see the blue line is our Revenue the red line is our expenses and then what you have 2004 is when we passed the levy and you see this trough here it didn't automatically go up there's an explanation for that because if you were here 2004 we had to take out a loan from the state because we were in fiscal crisis of $17 million so those were the two years that we were actually paying that loan back so you don't see it really kick into its full boore till 2007 and

123then you see that Flat Line you see some changes here because what happened in this area this is the 10 11 12 13 what happened to the economy we had a recession right property values dropped property values dropped we lose Revenue we voted in a new Levy in 2016 so we saw that L Revenue start to increase so what you have here is when you see Revenue above the red line this is when we're building up our cash flow because at some point we know we're going to have deficit spending because this is the way it has to work and then when we see the expense curve cross the revenue curve we start to deficit spend so we bring that cash flow down until you have another increase in Revenue you can see we've made

124some Cuts here too along the way and then again in 2021 because of Co our crost start to go up and then in 2020 or the peak there is because we made the decision to fund our out years and our Capital plan until we had the financial resources to be able to do that through a permanent Improvement Levy in the future Mr Lynch what I like to show is because the common question that we get is what have you done to tighten your belt well the green line was in 2014 the trajectory of our expenses growth increase the Orange Line shows what we've done over the last 4 years since we've gotten out of coid to flatten that expense curve and to reduce our expenses so I think it's important to have remind everybody that

125we have the renewal levy on which accounts for 13% of our budget which is $15 million annually we also have the pi Lev on which is to support our growth of our Capital plan which is to help us make sure that we can continue to do the same safety upgrades that we need to do and well as maintain our buildings but it also allows us to free up the expenses that we're currently purchasing right now out of our general fund to a fund that was only specifically designed for those purposes at the recommendation of a Citizens Financial advisory so the gray line that falls off the cliff in 2028 is our May forecast the reason why it falls off the line is because the 2028 numbers weren't there it wasn't part of the forecast because

126it stopped at 27 the black line represents our cash balance that I'm projecting with the assumptions that I've made now in my draft November forecast it's not finalized yet the red line is what happens to our cash balance if the pi Levy passes because again we can take some of the money Mr Lynch can you go back a slide from that peak in 2022 23 we can take some of that money we shifted out of the general fund into the capital fund to bring it back because we won't need it because we'll have the pi fund to support that plan go back Mr Lynch and we'll be able to reduce our expenses by almost $2 million a year of purchases that we're currently purchasing out of the uh general fund as well as reduce any

127necessary transfers in years 26 and 27 that are projected to help support our Capital Improvement plan Mr lch go the next slide because the question always goes to we always have talked about because I've never talked about the pi Levy without talking about the fact that we need to reduce costs because at some point again we are going to need a general operating Levy and people ask how do we know when that's going to be it's because we have a policy we have a policy that's been uh designed by Mr Wilson and the prior board that's recommended on best practices from the gfoa which is the government finance officer Association and the Ohio School Board excuse me Ohio Association of school business officials that says that we have to have a general fund cash balance

128of a minimum of 15% so 15% of 114 $ million is our our threshold that the board has said that we will not fall below $17 million we also in that have created a budget Reserve fund you know the state often refers to theirs as a rainy day fund uh that can't exceed 5% of the prior Year's uh Revenue by law and we get audited on this so 5% of 110 from last year means it should be about 5.5 we're a little bit short because we've been deficit spending so we're not putting money into it the only money that goes into that now is the interest on that count that it gets from the Investments that we make so we're about $5.3 million right now in that fund so when you think about it you

129know I'm always trying to think ahead so that we're not getting to a fiscal cliff like we did in 2004 and the rule of thumb in our industry is 90 days of cash on hand is kind of where you want to be if you're at 90 days cash cash on hand you're in a pretty good financial situation before you'd want to like look at having additional Revenue beyond what we're having So based on our November forecast which does not assume the passage of the pi Levy um and it could I mean obviously we'll know in a month where we're at so when I present that Pi Levy repercussions and where we're B when we have that we do the November meeting we'll be able to demonstrate where we're at we're actually you know looking at

130need a new money Levy no later probably than 2026 because we we really don't want to fall below 90 days so we don't want to get into 2027 looking for money because it'd almost be too late well if the levy passes the pi Levy passes now we're looking at 2027 and maybe we can push it off to 2028 if we were able to continue to dial back and make the cuts that we need to make so that would push a new money Levy to 2 2728 which would give us 11 years again on the last General operating Levy maybe 12 when the typical life cycle of a levy in the state of Ohio is about three to five years and regardless of what happens with the pi Levy we've only had one new money Levy

131in 19 years and that was in 2016 and we've done that by consolidating buildings redistricting keeping Staffing proportional to our student enrollment because 80% of our budget is Staffing I did so what's our daily cost and I think this is an interesting slide because I have four kids there's nowhere that you can send your kids for $92 a day there's no Camp there's no babysitter there's nothing so I think the fact that we can educate the students in Menor schools for $92 a day is pretty impressive and I'm going to leave you with this Mr Lynch couple other slides because I always hear that we we are highly taxed and mentor and I'm not disparaging anybody's personal belief on their own tax rate but I think it's you have to put it in con concept

132of where we are into the county we're the third lowest in the county and I usually show us as the fourth lowest but Mr Excuse me I apologize Dr glaven always reminds me that Auburn career center districts have to pay an additional 1.5 Mills which I've never included in my calculation and then there are districts that are in The Joint financing District which also pay another $2 million in the taxes that we don't pay so when you add the joint financing District tax rate and you add the Auburn tax rate we actually fall below Riverside side for the effective tax rates that our taxpayers are paying for education and we are in the third lowest as Mr Heath said we're in the third top third for education in the county so I think that's a

133pretty impressive return on your investment and then somebody asked me where do we fall you always talk about Lake County where do we fall in Lake giaga and Koga County so I asked myself this and I had some access some information and that's the 45 districts that reside in Lake giaga and kyoga County and I looked at their bonds and their permanent Improvement levies we're the one at the bottom in red that's us so when you take the effective tax rates for districts that have either a bond issue which is used primarily to fund new buildings or major Renovations or their permanent Improvement rate in all of kyoga giaga and Lake County men are schools is 42nd only districts below us are Perry and they have a power plant East Cleveland and kyoga Heights bill

134can I ask a question on that the um that's for Bond and Pi levies what about the like other levies for general fund we're uh in the we like I think it was 30th 20 30th out of the 45 thanks so bottom half okay and then if what happens if we pass which I think is a fair question where does that put us if we add 2.5 Ms to that number that we have currently we're still on the bottom 20th per and we move up to 36 so I share that with the board and the community the fact that when when you look at how we fund the maintenance of our buildings right now we are drastically underfunded the request to have a 2.5 mil Levy still puts us in a very respectable place for

135the maintenance and the funding of our buildings and it will allow us to have a set pool of money to specifically address the needs of safety and the maintenance of our buildings while also freeing up the expenditures on the general fund side to push off the need for a general fund Levy uh is we continue to make cost saving measures that Mr Heath and I have committed to uh at number of board meetings in the this coming fiscal year and the fiscal year after uh to push that off uh ideally to 27 or 28 with the passage of the pi Levy I'd be happy to answer any questions Bill do you know um the $92 per day do you know where that we are compared to like Willoughby East Lake or the other districts are

136they at around the same or well I would assume uh willby East Lake and Perry have I believe a higher per people expenditure okay so I would assume that they're higher um than ours but um we're our per pupil expenditure is a little bit higher than uh the rest of the districts in the county very impressive thanks Mr R thank you any other questions with that Mr President members of the board Mr Heath I ask for the approval items B through G and addendums may be acted upon one motion so moved second please call the rooll Mr wde Miss Jing yes Miss Brer yes Miss Cook yes Miss Payne yes Mr Tuttle yes motions carry 5- Z next on agenda do we have any new business from the board members to discuss do we need

137an osba special meeting yes okay um can we look at the week of October 23d as a possibility um and the reason we're asking that is uh our uh MTA Union has um anou that they're considering and their meetings on the 20th um and we want to see what the results of that meeting are um to potentially bring that uh to the board then 23rd so if we're looking the week of the 23rd at some point I can do any evening that week wed Thursday I shoot for Thursday I I can't do Wednesday can we do Thursday Thursday the 26 26 Thursday yep 5:30 5 o'clock what are you thinking like 5 5:30ish you want to do yours at the end or be the beginning because we can do mine at the end then yeah

138because the other piece would that would be my goal uh goal setting for the year okay so 10:26 at 5:30 I'm available at any I'm available earlier if if I know you always kind of do we want to say Five O can we go 5:00 500 P p.m. so 5:00 P p.m on the 26th y that's good for perfect do we need to bring a bag lunch for that evening a bag lunch we're watching what we spend yeah that'd be a good idea okay or else spring for pizza next on the agenda hearing of the public Mr [Music] Wade our first speaker is Mr cherion and then our speaker on Deck is Mr Le Mr who Mr Lima no you're up no you're up yeah I'm trying to be efficient and I'm causing confusion my

139apologies good evening Mr President members of the board Mr Heath and Mr Wade uh my name is James chion on my Google calendar at home I have a to-do list that I keep open next to my weekly schedule like a lot of you probably do it's mostly random household projects chores and it feels really good to finally cross them off one by one and of course as you probably know when you cross one off you add two more to that list uh for example a couple weeks ago I finally got around to cealing our driveway which my wonderful neighbor helped by loaning me uh some equipment to do that this past week I got most of our trees and shrubs pruned uh but I have one thing on that list that I keep getting knots

140in my stomach about when I think about doing it and that's sealing our Granite counters that's what the Builder told us we have to do we have to do once a year if anybody heard otherwise let me know so I don't have to worry about it um but to be honest it's been on my list for like six months now you see there's always something else I'd rather be doing or an emergency that pops up that keeps moving the counters to the bottom of my list and honestly our counters are probably going to keep moving to the bottom of the list because there's so many other things that I think need more attention but the thing is the more I ignore them the more that our counters are going to start deteriorating and chipping away

141being part of a community of family amilies with black students in our district that's what it feels like more and more for us we are another item on a to-do list that keeps getting pushed further and further down and maybe there's good reasons for that and I don't know but we want to be a part of that solution we want to work with the district for our children the gallery of Heroes on Black History Month was an amazing start but that was 8 months ago from my perspective from what I see at board board meetings black students are not a priority students of color are not a priority in our district our needs are not getting much Airtime from my experience especially from doing my own to-do list people tend to prioritize what they value

142or what they fear our board meetings are a perfect example of that we prioritize what we value or what we fear where are black students on that priority list where are other diverse students on that list do we value them do we at least fear that what may happen to them if we don't address their needs I've heard that the opposite of love is not necessarily hate it's apathy simply not caring enough to make someone a priority I'm reminded of the closing at the end of the movie The Breakfast Club um I've been actually singing it all day today don't you forget about me I will serenade you so I have 18 seconds don't you forget about me don't don't don't don't you forget about me as you walk on by will you call our

143name or will you walk away I say la la la thank you thank you thank you very much Miss McCormack you're on Deck good evening uh Dave Lima Lichfield Drive um I was uh not able to attend the September board meeting but did submit these comments through the public participation portal to ensure that my comments are part of the record I'm presenting them again this evening even the board's proposal and the policy that evolves parental notification and parental review of material containing sexual content in lie of removing such material from the school's collection makes sense the board's proposal acknowledges that the parent is the responsible party for any decision concerning their child 's exposure to material containing sexual content not the boards we are a diverse Community with diverse views based on the view of

144some of the unsuitability of a material and the Banning of that material for all flies in the face of what we are again a diverse Community with diverse views the decision to ban a book suspected of containing sexual content is fraught with so many complexities as to make it an unworkable task our constitutional First Amendment right prevents government from censorship of speech and press however our First Amendment right uh that prevents government from censorship does not apply to a parent a parent has the right to restrict their child's access to material parents consider objectionable but that parent does not have the right to restrict access of that same material to other children who are not their own that's what the Banning of material for all would do give the right of one parent to decide

145for all parents I support the parent notification plan as does this board I do want to comment uh that the board uh for the board or commend the board for the civility demonstrated during the deliberations uh concerning this controversial issue and for this the need to continue Public Funding provide additional funds to to ensure health and safety and for all that Mr Wade said I will be supporting and urging others to support issues three and four thank you thank you very much Miss McAdams you're on deck tonight I'd like to take a walk down memory lane and review how we have arrived here tonight it was the summer of 2021 when a large group of men are Community came came to a a school board meeting as a whole we were upset with mask mandates

146and our first glimpse of what was being taught to our children we began speaking out and demanding mask exemptions for our children we began to question what our kids are learning and reading in Menor schools and then we learned about better lessons teacher in service our teachers were being indoctrinated to become co-conspirators using a curriculum rooted in whiteness it also stated that standard English was oppressive we the taxpayers were funding that indoctrination to the tune of $290,000 during online learning we saw pronoun surveys being given to Children art teachers encouraging self-portraits using BLM and lgbtq as samples board member Mary Brer posted an article on her Facebook page claiming sex ed should begin in kindergarten Maggie Mary and Jenny have now endorsed two liberal activist candidates thinking it would help them but with their voting

147track record it should damage all chance at winning an election let's remember what these uh board members voted for they voted to keep the book transphobia deal with it in middle school this non-fiction book tells its readers that if you believe there are only two genders you are transphobic this was followed by $190,000 purchase for they voted for K through five reading books from a company called collaborative classrooms books that included BLM police brutality gender identity lgbtq themes and political activism for our elementary students the one job our board had creating policy is now being outsourced to a thirdparty company whose policy tonight includes removing personal pronouns of him and her because they believe there's more than two genders an email was sent out to middle and high school teachers by our assistant superintendent advising

148them not to tell parents of their child's newly chosen gender pronouns that's when Menor schools hit the national news this led to library books that contained sexually explicit materials identical in The Bluest Eye both books contained explicit descriptions of fathers molesting and raping their minor daughters so you superintendent Heath recommended removal of the bluest ey from the 10th and 11th grade curriculum because of age inappropriateness but has not yet decided about its appropriateness in the library make that make sense and now having just spent $5 million of taxpayer money on state-of-the-art athletic fields concession stands and wait rooms you are coming to us the taxpayer demanding more money after spending ours on luxuries you allow biological boys in the girls bathrooms and locker rooms but now you need money for security cameras and batteries your

149enrollment has dropped immensely and you have closed down schools but yet we still have more staff now than we did years ago and you want more money from us for these and a multitude of other reasons we will vote no on issues number three and four no to the renewal because you don't spend wisely no to the new Levy because you have your priorities upside down thank you thank you Miss heninger you're on Deck good evening here's a recipe to blow something up a Pyrex Bowl potassium chloride found at health food stores as a salt substitute a hydrometer bleach take the bleach and pour it into Pyrex put it in this onto a stove burner meanwhile weigh out your potassium chloride and add to the bleach check it with the hydrometer and boil until you

150get a reading of 1.3 cool to room temperature and filter out the crystals that form this is what you will save this is a book in the library called My Sister's Keeper the following three pages finish the recipe I've had the those passages evaluated by BYO chemist by a nuclear engineer and by a mun Munitions expert from the army they say that they're accurate this isn't the kind of book we need in the library wories for children we have enough problems in the schools all right so I am formally ask asking how to do a a book challenge you all have my email please send me the information I don't need it right now I'll take care of it all right then I have something else that I would like to bring up um in

151your Neola manual it calls out conflicts of interest and I understand that Mr Wade and Mr Heath have approved the text for review of the updates by the board now can someone tell me I'm I'm can someone tell me how a board voting on a contract that affects her daughter-in-law isn't conflict of interest can somebody tell me how a city official being in a board member with his wife is isn't a conflict of interest as part of a negotiation now I have friends in City Hall I know this from my friends at City Hall I'm not going to name names but it's all conflict of interest the administrators the president you should have whoever the president was at the time of the contract negotiation and at the time of this super secret meeting uh should

152have called it out and said that certain people should not have been permitted in that meeting that is conflict of interest that is the legal definition you cannot vote when somebody in your family is going to benefit on a contract you cannot I want answers on that and I don't want this well we'll answer you next month because I will be here next month and I expect answers unlike other people when they have questions they don't get the answers thank you thank you Miss Paris gave us thank you Mr Martell you'll be in the hole you did but I it's in here I I but M hener you're up hi uh I'm Christine heninger I came from conferences just everybody knows at Memorial that's why I was late I was running late and when I

153was sitting with the teachers they meet as a group so now at Memorial they do it by teams so my daughter's team was all there when we went in and I was so impressed at how thoughtful the conferences were so they started out talking about you know how Riley is kind how Riley's a leader how Riley listens to others perspective IV and actually encourages them to speak up and I love to hear that of course I'm her mom but what else I loved to hear is when our Ela teacher said that my daughter listens to understand and that's something I feel a lot of us here need to really start to do because we don't we listen to respond and we listen to get our point across and I think that's why we're actually where

154we are right now and while why our board can't work together and this whole meeting the beginning of the meeting tonight was for the PTA presidents because we spend a lot of time in the district hours thousands of hours a year matter of fact right now I'm juggling BTA at Memorial as the president PTA at Hopkins being on the library board and I work a full-time job do you think the PTA presidents that you honor tonight are champions of the district I'd actually like a response yep yep thank you because when you don't acknowledge it but you acknowledge other people who do nothing compared to what we do it's hurtful just to let you know I was I was actually hurt by a few things but it doesn't matter but I appreciate what you did

155tonight for everybody and at least saying we are champions of the district because we work really hard for our families for our students most importantly for me it's my students they're not even in mind but I act like they are because I care very much about them and for our teachers and the last thing I want to talk about because I see I have 50 seconds I think it's hypocritical to tell our teachers and threaten their jobs and not let them endorse or have yard signs on who they're supporting but a few of you on the board you can do it it's wrong it's not right you have not got the ability to tell them what to do on their own free time on their own social media I think you need to really think

156about that because this I've been doing it for 10 years not just since September and so have they so the more that you appreciate them the more that they're going to be dedicated to the district thank you thank you thank you Miss wall and then Miss Perry all right so um October 10th is World mental health day so I wanted to just uh briefly share something that is on the World Health Health Organization website uh World mental health day is an opportunity for people and communities to unite behind the theme mental health is a universal human right to improve knowledge raise awareness and drive actions that promote and protect everyone's mental health and a universal as a universal human right mental health is critically important for everyone everywhere and goes beyond the mere absence of

157a mental health condition is integral to well-being enabling people to realize their full potential show resilience ad ad adiss adversity tongue twister uh be productive across the various settings of daily life form meaningful relationships and contribute to their communities and I want to just address how our district um handles mental health and how I know we have so many wonderful support systems and resources put in place um we just witnessed uh Mrs cook she went through her report and talked about um Nami and the start with hello program which was incredible um also recognize uh Crossroads in our schools um the counselors that we have that work with our students not not just in our schools but with our families and in all of our community which I really believe um is beneficial as a

158whole um after hearing Dr gaven's stats on Student Success uh Mrs Cook's report and then Mr Heath's breakdown of our 4.5 Stars it's clear to see we have incredibly smart and unique students in our district students who are more than capable of doing basic math reading well and filling out job applications I hope that we can continue to uh expand the resources we provide our students but also create and expand the support for our teachers I think right now there's a lot of people that are really focused on numbers they don't like stars I love the 4.5 out of five stars that we got congratulations um but the numbers are not um when we look at that it's it's not as a whole you know we need to make sure that we're looking at everything

159that goes into every day for our students for our teachers and all of the staff that are there with them um until we address the mental health issue and we make safer environments in our classrooms um physically and emotionally we can't expect more from our students and we certainly cannot expect more from our teachers um and I just want to again thank our teachers for everything that they're doing because they are wearers of uh many hats so thank you very much thank you appreciate that thanks Miss Perry you are our last speaker thank you Mr Wade um good evening president tutle it's nice to see you again I enjoy seeing you at homecoming um I want to start off by saying you got to start my time I want to be fair I want to

160start off by congratulating each and every one of you I know I'm supposed to talk directly to you president tutle I hope you humor me when I say Mrs Payne Mrs gesling Mr Wade president tutle Mr Heath Mrs Brer and vice president cook congratulations on Menor School District earning 4.5 stars and it's an amazing feat it's a testament to how well our board works together sure maybe there's discussions and arguments but something that I've seen over the past since March by coming to these meetings is I've seen an attempt at dialogue and I've seen some compromises made I think that's a positive thing I'm eternally an optimist um and I wanted to talk about one more thing tonight and I'm trying to be brief and if anyone in this room has ever read one of

161my emails they know that BTY is not one of my strong suits so I would like to encourage everyone to vote Yes on issue three and four um I don't think it's any surprised that I came up here today to say that I took a pledge right here at this Podium a few short months ago I pledged to you president Tuttle that I would always vote and support ol ly and I think that not only my actions starting this week when early voting starts and I get to vote Yes on those things and I always early vote but my past actions over the past couple months have proven that I am a woman of my word I'm trying to tell everybody I can about how important it is to pass these lovees because we're not

162talking about Athletics or our state-of-the-art Theater which I was very proud to perform on that stage as I'm sure Mrs Payne was um we're talking about building safety okay we're not talking about anything controversial here we're talking about having safe buildings for our kids it's not controversial if you have any questions about it I refer you to Mr Wade's very indepth presentations that he gives so graciously thank you president thank you appreciate it thanks that was last yes well that's the end of the meeting we don't need to gav to we have to a motion to adjourn to Executive session so we're going to break into executive session we need a motion so move second can we get someone to read why we're going to Executive session please to discuss confidential information related to an

163applicant for economic development Assistance or negotiations with other political subdivisions respecting such request for economic development assistance who second is so M Mrs P we will be returning back here to reer and then close off and there will be no vote when we come back so you care to stay around after your certainly can but uh we'll conduct no business but when we return we just to adjourn from regular session