Mentor Board of Education - September 12, 2023

001Sprinter Markham Miss Cook here is Justin president hey here oh 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 which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you welcome everyone to the September 12 2023 regular meeting of the mentor Exempted 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 the district's paperless Board of Education agenda system board Dax the public can access the agenda through the school district's website the agenda is available through the district's website for public viewing the Sunday prior to the board meeting board

002members have the opportunity to call the superintendent and Chief Financial Officer for information concerning agenda items and to request if needed additional information there are two places on the agenda when the board entertains comments for 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 is an item on the agenda or another issue to participate in the hearing of the public session excuse me interested speakers must sign up prior to the start of the meeting sign ups are available online through the school district's website or on-site prior to 7 PM when it is your turn to speak you'll be called to the

003microphone when addressing the board please state your name and address 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 continues to welcome feedback from the community as an important component to conduct business this is an information gathering opportunity for the board and administration so we can work to the best service our community if at the end of the public participation we do not make a statement please know this is no demonstration of a lack of care for comments shared by our community rather we want to be thoughtful in our approach and we will provide a response in a timely manner when appropriate this meeting is being televised

004live and on a delayed basis and will be shown on Spectrum cable channel 1026 in Mentor and channel zero one zero two five 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 moment we have District highlights and recommendations recognitions Mr Heath good evening Mr President members of the board Mr Wade I would like to start this evening by recognizing the mentor Board of Education scholarship recipient Abigail Mino don't believe she is here because she's probably in school now but um just wanted to let everybody know that she was our award winner this year she is from the class of 2023 and was actively involved in numerous activities what during her time at Mentor High School so we

005just wanted to congratulate Abigail on receiving that scholarship at this time I would like to invite Dr glaven to the podium for the Career Technical education presentation please I guess I just lower that a little bit all right let me turn this on real quick okay so uh good evening everybody uh Mr President uh members of the board Mr Heath and Mr Wade thank you so much for allowing me to come here tonight and talk to you guys a little bit just about some of the great things that we have going on with Career Technical education and Mentor Schools uh this is part of a presentation I did over a summer at a conference just kind of going over some of the new initiatives that we've been implementing and how it's led to an increase

006in students in Career Technical education and I've updated some of those numbers for some of our more recent data that we just got recently that we're really excited about this is going to be a two-part meeting because I am trying I'm going to keep it limited to uh five minutes at most they were gonna start the clock for me and so I'm gonna start the presentation today and then hopefully next month if I do a good job you guys will invite me back to finish that meeting so that's where we are so one of the things that we're going to look at is just kind of talking about um this presentation is going to be a review of how Mentor Public Schools in Lakeshore compact has dramatically increased CTE participation through Innovative approaches in a

007variety of ways and some of those ways we're going to talk about is through career exploration electives two-year traditional Career Tech education programming senior only programming job training coordination programs and work based learning courses as well well well I'm clicking again Mr okay right there so when we talk about it the first thing is just kind of go over a little bit with what is Lakeshore compact or Mentor Schools careertech education so Mentor Schools we participate we're members of the Lakeshore compact which is a Career Technical planning district Consortium that serves Mentor Euclid and Wycliffe schools within those we offer 21 Career Technical education programs for people that are in the area is very comparable to an Auburn career center as opposed to an Auburn where taxpayers are paying additional millage our Career Technical education

008is a part of the traditional millage that is with the schooling so there's no additional fee that is to the taxpayer with this really excited just in terms so if you guys have heard any of my speeches or would listen to me speak because I would gladly do it I would talk about how we had over 800 students that were in Career Technical education in some form just writing our numbers over this past weekend I'm excited to say that we are now over 900 students are participating in some form of Career Technical education and that is a tremendous number those are obviously record numbers for us and part of that is a lot of our initiatives so go to the you want to go to the next slide Mr Lynch will collaborate on this so

009the big question is like it's great I'm talking about Career Tech but the question is why does it matter why does it matter when I talk about getting kids in Career Technical education why are we trying to get so many in there and what are the benefits of it and so there's a couple numbers that I want to talk about that I think really demonstrate why it's important and the first number is right here which is our four-year graduation rate so one of the things we do is we track and we analyze data of students that participate in Career Technical education programs and what we actually do is we follow up with those students post graduation as well six months after graduation to see what they're doing this has been our track record for a

010number of years it's something in the state of Ohio we do and one of the things is is that we know that students that participate in a Career Technical education program students that complete one there's a 98.3 percent for your graduation rate which is awesome and then we go and we look at another data and this I think is one of the most important ones obviously graduation is really important we know at men are we're in the high 90s anyway but it's still very exciting to see those numbers but this number is something that I think is really important and what this number is is this is our post program placement and that's like a really fancy way of saying this six months after graduation what percentage of your students are employed enlisted or enrolled

011in college those are the three criteria we look at and for students that complete a mentor Career Technical education program through Lakeshore compact 98.2 percent of our students are either employed enlisted or enrolled which is cool that would be nice to say why don't we dig a little bit more into it what are the numbers specifically well when we look at employed now and just so you know in terms of where this data is coming from this is from our report cards that are reported through the state of Ohio they basically pull our data through like something called emis and then they report it to the state and they analyze it uh these this these this is the data that's going to be getting released I think some point this month those report cards and

012so the first number to look at is in terms of employed so 64.7 percent of students who complete a program are employed six months after graduation if we look at the next one we have 3.6 percent of our students are enlisted in the military now when you see that 3.6 while that may seem like potentially a low number that is actually three times the national average which is around one percent and then when you go to the next number in terms of enrolled in a two-year or four-year University 70.9 of our students that participate in career tactical education are enrolled in a two-year or four-year University now the question becomes when you look at this all right Joe I'm doing some quick math here in my head and you're saying 70 and 60 that adds

013up to like 130 something percent how's that possible and the question is because in with the new Norm what we're seeing now is there's a majority of students that are working full-time and enrolled in a two-year or four year so that's why we're seeing that they're doing both that's why you can see a 60 at 70 percent so looking that at that overall number of that Mr Lynch if you want to click one more so looking at that 98.2 percent that are employed enrolled or enlisted why is that number important to us it means that 98.2 percent of these students are not living in their parents basements hopefully that's the idea right that is not that is not my own basement but that is somebody's basement so going forward to it uh go the next

014slide so the idea is hey talking about these numbers we should have like everybody doing this right we should try getting as many people as we can get involved and that's what we're trying to do so when we look at our data go to the next slide Mr Lynch we are actually so if anybody's heard me talk over the past year the numbers that I would say is 36 percent of men are Juniors and seniors are enrolled as some of some form of Career Technical education I'm pretty pumped that now for this year we have a new record we are now at 38 of our Juniors and seniors are enrolled in some form of Career Technical education so we are continuing to Trend in an upward uh trajectory students that are participating now when we

015talk about that that's great and those are all really good things but that's not to say that there's not still problems that we have to address and there's really two main problems that we're trying to address so problem number one is the fact that looking at this in 2022 we had 6.8 percent of our men are Juniors were wait listed for their CTE programs so what that means is we're at capacity we can only there's only so many seats in a construction class or a welding class and we had 6.8 percent of our men are sophomores were wait listed so that's problem number one this is problem number two that number jumped to 17 last year so when we talk about do kids want to go into these professions do they want to go to

016these industries we're seeing the demand they want to go into it we have to continue to expand how are we getting them there right so that number jumped to 17 of Juniors wait listed for CTE programs from last spring now what we're doing is is we say how do we take these problems of having capacity issues and how do we create solutions to address those gaps now that's going to be part two but I'm going to have another like minute here before you guys kick me out so the first one is is the main goal what we're doing is how do we build capacity and there's a combination of focusing on three things throughout my sweet Venn diagram now okay so this is my fancy three-way Venn diagram that is uh the three things we're

017going to focus on is looking at how are we collaborating with Community Partners how are we creating innovative solutions and how are we communicating with our stakeholders and those and through those three things we can demonstrate how some of these initiatives that we're doing are dramatically already increasing in an increase that's how the way we've gone from 36 percent to 38 percent is one of the things we're going to talk about and I won't get into it now but we're creating new Career Technical education electives and by doing that something that we discussed last year we implemented it through the board we enrolled in the spring we have over 50 students that are scheduled to be enrolled in the intro to it careers intro to health careers young professionals Academy so the things that we

018talk about that they're not lip service we're doing it and we're seeing results instantaneously so that's where we are um next month I'd like to come if possible to the meeting and I would like to just kind of go over some of those strategies of how are we creating new programs how are we collaborating with Community Partners and how are we doing a better job of communicating to our stakeholders the opportunities that exist for our students so I don't know the time on that I just I was so excited nine minutes and 43 seconds was it was it okay that's all right I apologize but uh I appreciate you guys giving me some time to do this and if you guys have any questions please let me know I would be happy more than willing

019and happy to to talk with anybody hear any ideas talk to anyone I've had some community members reach out with some really good ideas that we're kind of vetting them and hopefully they're going to lead some opportunities for some kids so thank you so much I appreciate it thanks doctor thank you [Applause] I get pumped just listening to him he is an Energizer not the bunny he's an Energizer thank you Dr glavin next on the agenda approval of the minutes do we have a motion so moved second please call the roll Mr Wade Miss jessley yes Miss Cook yes Miss Payne yes Mr Tuttle yes motion carries 4-0 next on the agenda hearing of the public is that right I'm in sequence yes our first speaker is Sage McMillan scene Sage uh Miss bazan good

020evening members of the board this month we'll be voting on removing the book The Bluest Eye from the 10th grade honors reading list as well as the 11th grade English English class which are both a guided setting or in a guided setting because it's not appropriate for their age yet you are still keeping it in the library allowing for it to be available to ninth graders and that is a nine non-guided setting so for the 11th graders and the English class and then with the honors class it's guided uh please just explain to me how it's not acceptable in one place but acceptable in the other it's just one of my questions also I noticed that you'll be voting on the osba capital conference attendance last year Mary Jenny and Maggie voted down on the

021parental rights platform because they didn't feel parents had a right to know all aspects um of the children's education this is reflected in the meeting minutes in the special board meeting if you want to refer back to that since over ten thousand of our tax dollars are used to support osba it's appalling to me to see you push against parental rights with our own money this isn't the first time you haven't supported parents rights you should be supportive of all parental rights let me remind you of all the things on the list of things that you shouldn't hide from the parents it's nothing zilch zero nada that's your list thank you thank you [Applause] Miss setonic hi Mr Tuttle hello everybody I'm Susan sednick I live on Little Mountain in Mentor um I just I

022wanted to start off by um saying thank you Mr Tuttle and Annie for always um it seems like when it comes to the debate about appropriate books I feel like Mr Tuttle and Annie really listened to the community when we had concerns about pornography in schools um and I just I want to recognize that you both tried very hard to address the parents issues you tried to come up with guidelines and a policy to protect school children I just find it extremely disappointing that Jenny Maggie and Mary have sabotaged your efforts and so that now we have a watered-down policy that's pretty much useless at the end of the day sexually explicit material will still be available in our school and this is a place where we should be absolutely relaxed and certain that when

023our kids go to school that we they don't have to worry about that that they don't have we don't have to worry about them looking at pornography or anything um explicit but it seems like Mary and Maggie and Jenny continue to ignore parents concerns and they're even advocating for inappropriate material that contains pedophilia and child molestation to be available to minors and to me that sounds like grooming so my question is is it any wonder that parents are suspicious of teachers and Educators and administrators these days these folks are supposed to be supporting parents and families and helping to keep our community safe and healthy but instead there's so many that we're seeing that are advocating to have children keep secrets from their parents um that they want to have pornography at the kids fingertips

024and a lot of people in education just they want to play along with kids who are confused with gender dysphoria and I find that very Troublesome because you folks up here are supposed to be some of the Gatekeepers that that keep away the harmful and negative things for children that are minors that are not adults and when you send them to school they should be somewhere safe and they're not and I just feel like parents keep speaking up and we're being ignored and I think that that's wrong um I I just I want to also say that that fight that happened yesterday at Mentor High School that's appalling and I think if that guy would have been doing that to the girl in the bathroom that girl would have been toast I I just he

025should be expelled I hope he is thank you Miss McCormick I would like to address the pornography in our schools according to the agenda Mr Heath you are recommending removing The Bluest Eye from the supplemental materials list for the 10th grade honors in the 11th grade English class this is good news but I do hope you'll explain why you're making this recommendation I implore you to explain your reasoning tonight you also promised you would address its Library status at this month's meeting but I don't see that on the agenda why not Mrs Payne and Mr Tuttle proposed a policy pertaining to setting standards for our schools in regards to sexually explicit materials in spite of compromise they agreed to add the parental notification for sexual content and now tonight somehow their original submission has been

026completely deleted and the gratuitous offering of Parental notification has totally replaced it and Mentor Schools by majority vote will shoot we'll shout to everyone listening that we have no standards Ohio law defines obscene material as depicting sexual content with no purpose other than sexual interest I like to read an excerpt from another book currently in your Mentor High School library you tell me if there is any purpose to this excerpt other than to titillate and encourage the reader's sexual excitement Rowan's smile was nothing short of wicked as he pulled away to run a broad hand from her throat down to the juncture of her thighs she shuddered at the sheer possession in his touch her breath coming in tight pants as she as he gripped her either thigh and spread her legs bearing her fully

027for him Rowan kissed her navel and her hip aylin couldn't take her eyes from his silver hair shining with salt water and Moonlight from the hands holding her wide for him as his head dipped between her legs she moved hips undulating begging him to go go so Rowan did slid a finger into her as his tongue flicked at that one spot oh Gods she was going to explode into Starfire he leaned in claiming her mouth as he began to move and they let go entirely and as his thrusts turned deeper she dug her fingernails dragging her nails across his back claiming him marking him his hips slammed home at the blood she Drew and she arched bearing her throat to him released blasting through her life like wildfire and though she could not remember her

028name she remembered Rowan's as she cried it while he kept moving writhing every last ounce of pleasure from her fire searing the sand around them to Glass Rowan's own release barreled through him at the sight of it and he groaned her name so that she remembered at last lightning joining wind and ice over the water on and on he spilled himself into her this is an excerpt from Empire of the storms by Sarah J moss she is no Pulitzer Prize winner and this is no classic piece of literature as long as you continue to ignore the community and decent moral standards we will continue to challenge this smut in our schools these books are not age appropriate you are giving pornographic material to minor children and that will not be tolerated even with parental notification

029of sexual content your job is to protect and teach our children not to sexualize them thank you thank you Miss Perry foreign good evening president Tuttle it's nice to see you again I was not planning on speaking tonight so I will be brief The Bluest Eye Is Not pornography pornography by its definition and I want everyone to listen closely to this pornography is made with the sole intention to elicit a positive sexual response books like The Bluest Eye are describing a crime incest is a crime children cannot have sex any any description of sex involving a child is a crime it's not porn and I think it's very important because words matter that is the definition of pornography so I will stand up here and I'm going to refute anyone that says that it's pornography

030because it's not because Mrs Morrison did not have the intention of titillating her off her audience sorry I'm gonna pause she did not write that book with the intention of titillating her audience she was a survivor of incest and she was raped by her own father I also do not appreciate being called things like groomer or pedophile when I come here to sit in these meetings you all know and many of you sitting in this room have probably read my resume I worked for 10 years at a shelter at our shared home president Tuttle in Athens Ohio I worked for a domestic violence shelter that served victims and their children of domestic violence and that includes sexual assault and that includes several children and I am talking in the hundreds that have told me sometimes

031from the very first time about the abuse that they have they have suffered but yes sometimes their own parents and guess what they're all not little girls so when people come up here and say oh well if we have to think about the little girls little boys too all children are victims that incest and I will not stand up here I'm trying to be as respectful as I can you cannot call this pornography it's a book by Toni Morrison if you want to talk about pornography we could talk about books like 50 Shades of Gray that's pornography and it's poorly written pornography by the way I only got like six pages in it was terrible anyway I believe in the power of books and and by reading them as a whole understanding them as a

032whole and not just a passage so I brought my copy of Robert's Rules I will leave it with you president Tuttle please let anyone um salted as they like I'll get it back from you at the end of the meeting at the at the end of the meeting thank you thank you Mr Lima David Lima see David oh no uh Deborah stetler staler hello well thank you for the Forum I'm addressing my I'm Deb Statler I live on Case Avenue and I've been there since 1980. the materials agenda item 2520.03 materials containing sexual content is the general thrust of my comments I'm old school and I write stuff down I'm in favor of parents having the right to redirect their child's reading lists there are always options especially in an advanced class where there are

033a variety I saw the list of books available so no one is forcing any child to read something the family feels is inappropriate I appreciate that there's a process to review a title it's a measured response to people's concerns so I appreciate you all having this intact to have a committee or the superintendent look at things and decide about them in a measured and calm fashion I appreciate that the world is a frightening Place scary and challenging and through literature ideas can be explored discussed under teachers guidance a world view is expanded therefore with more empathy and understanding is gained and this is what I've been gaining through Reading The Bluest Eye it's a very difficult and painful book but um my black friends uh somehow by osmosis are benefiting for me knowing more about

034their grandparents and their parents lives and I appreciate Mrs Morrison having written it MHS strong teaching environment I thank you for that it is very inspiring my daughter is a beneficiary and I appreciate that there's English departments to review material study curricula and help students reach their Highest Potential so I urge calm and deliberate consideration and resist a fear-based action and so thank you for your attention thank you thank you our last speaker is Andrea Bliss good evening president Tuttle vice president cook members of the board superintendent Heath Mr Wade looking back through history it should be easy to agree that no one has ever banned books for good reason no one has removed books for library from libraries or burned books for a good reason Banning removing and burning books is not an act

035of protection it is an act of control it is a way to silence voices a way to erase history and to limit access to his to educational materials in these meetings we've been seeing a divide people who want to remove books from the schools under the guise of protecting the children and people who want to keep books in schools this divide is so focused on sexual content that some may have you believe that the individuals opposed to removing books are just that eager to expose kids to sex and media this is simply not the case rather we don't want books to be removed because of the precedent this sets because we can look back at history and see where that leads that being said since the surface argument is whether or not books with explicit

036sexual content can hold a value that outweighs the ugliness of the graphic depictions that is the argument to be addressed The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison was written by and about a young black woman living through racism in Lorraine Ohio Ms Morrison wanted to give a voice to that experience to make sure that the abuse and bigotry that she witnessed did not succeed in silencing people who had been silenced for so long there are scenes depicting horrific abuse yes but not only are these scenes limited a limited portion of the story they are also not included as a way to sexually excite and arouse readers the scenes of abuse are meant to depict a very real and very terrible situation that did and unfortunately does happen to real people and that's important that shows victims

037that they are not alone and in some cases can teach victims that what they are experiencing is abuse and is not their fault the story as a whole is an as an important look at the racism and abuse that are part of our history Not Just As Americans but as Ohioans Mrs Payne mentioned last month that a friend of hers has read The Bluest Eye and could not get the graphic images from her mind that is the point that is what makes this book so important a book A book like this gets a reader's attention it makes you feel something It's upsetting because it's supposed to be because that's how you get people to pay attention that's how you get people to learn to remember and that is how you break cycles of abuse it

038is how you stop history from repeating itself and it is how we can all move forward together thank you thank you that concludes the first portion of purchase station this on the agenda Mr Heath superintendent's report and recommendations thank you president Tuttle first I want to take a moment to express our concerns with those that have been impacted by the tornado that we had the first week of school while we feel fortunate that our school facilities made it through the storm relatively unscathed we know others in our community we're not as fortunate and our thoughts remain with them as they continue to clean up trees and repair their homes I also want to take this opportunity to thank Chief Searles from our Fire Department chief gunch from our Police Department and Ken philippiac our city

039manager for their hard work and communication throughout that weekend the tornadoes came through our town we're thankful for their ongoing Partnerships that we have with those City officials also want to take this opportunity to thank our teachers support staff maintenance department bus drivers and principals for an incredible start to the school year while we were technically back to normal last year it was still very much a transition year for our students staff and parents the atmosphere in our buildings at the beginning of this year just feels different there are Positive Vibes and excitement in every building I visit and I can't wait to see all the fun learning activities and experiences that our students have throughout this school year we started our year with all of our employees in the Fine Arts Center on August

04021st where we celebrated our certified and classified Award winners from last year and welcomed our new teachers to the district I shared areas that we hope to focus on as a district this year in regards to strategic planning and walked everyone through some of the changes in board policies that we made in our transition to our new Neola manual which I'm sure that was the best part of the speech our principles will continue to have conversations with their buildings and how these policies and the administrative guidelines that we're currently reviewing are implemented throughout the school year the most pressing issue we are working through right now is transportation we know that there have been some long delays in our afternoon routes specifically at Morton Ridge Shore and Memorial obviously Staffing continues to be a challenge

041we are fortunate to have all of our full-time bus driver positions filled at this time however when I provided the update on Transportation at our August meeting we had four substitute drivers ready to go with shifts in Staffing within the transportation department over the last month we are now down to two substitute drivers and those two are covering routes every day due to two long-term absences that we have in our staffing one of those two subs will be leaving in January luckily we now have three people in the CDL training program two of those will be done by mid-october and one will be available in January we've had several meetings in the last two weeks to discuss the transportation issues we continue to face we've thrown a ton of ideas against the wall to see

042what sticks we've broken down those into a couple different categories with some short-term Solutions and some long-term Solutions as well our short-term short-term Solutions are as follows number one shifting funding that we would be spending on the sub positions that are increasingly difficult to fill and creating two bus driver positions to make them more attractive to people with a CDL license number two pushing back high school and middle school athletic departure times to 4 pm when we do not have drivers available to complete our elementary and middle school routes to avoid doubled up and combined routes in the afternoon number three looking at our current bus capacities to see if there are additional areas to combine routes that will have a positive impact on the afternoon drop times number four looking at our current end

043times and dismissal procedures at our elementary schools to make afternoon Transportation more efficient and number five researching the substitute bus driver rates of other area school districts to make sure we are competitive with our compensation packages our long-term Solutions are number one researching routing software to replace our current program that can incorporate routing parameters and GPS systems to make routes more efficient we started this process last spring but could not find a tool that was cost effective that combined routing GPS and communication Tools in one software program now that we have a new communication tool called Loop for our district Communications that includes the ability to send text messages we can focus on the routing and GPS components moving forward looking at the starting oh number two looking at the starting and ending times for

044our elementary schools to potentially shift a couple of buildings 20 to 30 minutes earlier to allow for extra time between the afternoon elementary and middle school routes number three evaluating our current Staffing models and contract language to identify ways to make our extracurricular activity trips easier to cover in future years and number four having conversations with area and League athletic directors to reevaluate the start times of some of our Sports first future Sports Seasons we understand that there's still going to be some Growing Pains as we go through this process of implementing these short-term Solutions but we are confident that we've resolved some of these things already and are looking forward to implementing a couple more things that will have the positive impact that we need especially in our afternoon routes moving forward I want

045to provide everyone with a couple of updates regarding the state legislation that we have discussed that applies to some of the conversations we have had in our board meetings in the past several months House Bill 8 the enact parents rights has passed through the house and has been introduced in the Senate this is the bill that has language very similar to policy 25 2003 regarding sexual content that our board will be considering this evening House Bill 68 the save women's sports act has passed the house and has been introduced in the Senate until this moves forward we are still following all of the ohsaa guidelines and all of our athletic programs here in the district and House Bill 183 the bathroom bill is still sitting in the house education higher education committee until this moves

046forward we're still following the guidelines within Title IX and the court rulings out of the six secret sixth circuit court that have upheld transgender student rights while all of the cultural and political issues are playing out in Columbus at the State House I want to let everyone know what my focus will be moving forward our top priority in this District Remains the safety of our students and staff we have now completed the purchase of our new security cameras and radio system using the one million dollars and Grant funds that we secured for the district in February these purchases met one of the glaring needs identified in our school safety audit conducted by the Ohio schools Council last fall I'm can excuse me I'm continuing to push the expansion of our school resource officers in our

047district I met with Chief gunch from the mentor Police Department late last week to discuss how to move my expansion plan forward while taking into consideration the staffing issues that they currently face in the police department our plan is to post for two additional off-duty officer positions on a daily basis to have a police presence at two more of our elementary schools each day Mr Hammond and I will be meeting on Thursday to finalize the days of the week and the times of the day that we will have these officers in the district and we will also prioritize the locations for this increased police presence so that we can have some coverage across all of our buildings at various times throughout the school year as you will see a little later in Mr Wade's report

048we are continuing to look closely at our Capital Improvement plan to identify ways to increase safety and the physical structure of our buildings our newest building Bellflower Elementary School just turned 50 years old our oldest building Memorial Middle School was originally built over a hundred years ago school safety was not even on the radar 50 years ago so our buildings have some concerns that were identified in the safety audit that we are hoping to bring to the Forefront of our Capital Improvement plans this year we are currently currently looking at floor plans for safety vestibules door sensors and Ballistic film for Windows and Doors just to name a few items that we are considering and hardening the physical structure of our buildings our sole purpose as a public school district is the education of our

049students as an instructional leader this is where the majority of my time needs to be spent I have prioritized my time to make sure I'm in classrooms every single week that I have been in this District I spent a lot of time over the last year in professional development sessions and curricular discussions specifically focused on math instruction and resources in our middle schools and elementary schools we've made substantial growth in those areas and I continue to be impressed with the conversations even our youngest Learners are having about number sense and their mathematical thinking my shift with math must now turn to the high school I need to spend time in those classrooms to observe more of their teaching and learning I need to work with the students to identify what their needs are and then

050determine the practices and tools our teachers need to deliver that type of instruction we heard from Dr glavin a little bit earlier this morning or this evening this morning too it's been a long day Mr Clavin I'm extremely proud of the CTE programs we have in this District my background has been in developing career pathway programs that meet the interests of the students the Workforce Development needs of the community and the livable wage requirements of the geographical region this is where my passion in education lies I want to take our CTE programs and identify ways to connect them to college credit plus opportunities for our students and Families sorry if I'm stealing some of your October Thunder there Dr Glenn I want to look at the programs like Advanced manufacturing Allied Health technology data analytics

051construction management welding and cyber security and create career create career Pathways and real-world learning experiences for our students we need to tap into our higher education resources in Northeast Ohio to do that we are currently having conversations with Lakeland Community College Kent State University and Lake Erie College to see if we can develop partnership agreements to achieve these goals one final item I will mention in regards to education that needs to have my attention is the rapid development of artificial intelligence I've spent a majority of the last two days learning from State and National experts in the field about how artificial intelligence is being integrated into our businesses Industries and our daily lives while this new technology has many unknowns we do know that is not going away and we will continue and it will

052continue to impact everything we do many people in the education world see the Cons with artificial intelligence and how students can use it for cheating purposes we are approaching it from a different lens we need to embrace the technology and work on the skills ethical considerations and opportunities AI can have for our students the analogy that struck me over the last couple of days is that computers are like bikes and AI is like a sports car our job is to figure out how to teach students to drive this new AI sports car so that they are not simply pedaling on a bike and watching others who have those skills fly right by them we have amazing Educators in this District to handle this work and we will be leading the way as AI continues to

053develop over the coming years Mr President members of the board and Mr Wade I have the following recommendations listed under the consent agenda and recommend approval of item six a one through six a two so moved second we have discussed questions I just had a quick discussion um I noticed that and this might be completely normal but I just noticed uh we have for the u n um overnight out of state field trip there's 30 kids and there's only one chaperone is that typical it's in Chicago it just sounds like that's with this group that's pretty typical um if there's a need for additional chaperones um I may go we can look at additional chaperones if if that number increases indicated that the teacher was going but I thought there was also like a parent

054or an additional with a question there was a question mark under um I just wasn't sure if that's well and then including the staff member so it would be two two yeah um but that's pretty typical for them yeah okay that's all I had called the roll please call the roll Mr White Miss Cook yes Miss jessley yes Miss Payne yes Mr Tuttle yes motions carry 4-0 Mr President members of the board and Mr Wade I am recommending approval of the Aquatic use agreement Colorado Mr Wade Miss Payne yeah Ms dressling yes Miss Cook yes Mr Tuttle yes motion carries 4-0 Mr President members of the board and Mr Wade I am recommending approval of the city of Mentor Ice Arena contract agreement so moved second please call the roll Mr Wade Miss Payne yes

055Miss jesling yes Miss Cook yes Mr Tuttle yes motion carries 4-0 Mr President members of the board and Mr Wade I am recommending approval of the shared Resource Center agreement to provide payroll Support Services any questions please call the roll Mr Wade Mr Jesse yes Miss Payne yes Miss Cook yes Mr Tuttle yes motion carries 4-0 Mr President members of the board Mr Wade I am recommending approval of the shared resource agreement to provide project management and extended Support Services so moved second discussion please call the parole Mr Wade Ms cook yes Mr dressling yes Miss Payne yes Mr Tuttle yes motion carries 4-0 Mr President members of the board and Mr Wade the following Board of Education policy is on the agenda for a second reading and I am recommending approval of policy 2520.03

056so moved second discussion a quick question um Mr Heath you may be able to answer this so we had a couple emails come in today and I just want to make sure we're clear that the passage of this policy if it was to pass doesn't prevent future book challenges it just allows another layer for parents to be notified if we say with that challenge we're still going to retain the book then we would have to follow the process of if it has sexual content notifying parents from that point forward that's correct okay um I had a couple things I just wanted to touch base on it because there has been several emails and different you know views and people have different opinions on the policy versus and there's a lot of confusion as to where

057it began and where we are now so um I just kind of wanted to highlight some of the changes that were from the original intent of the policy I'm not gonna sit here and talk for a million minutes because I feel like we've done this for this is now the fourth meeting we've had on this policy but it is a little confusing for some people because it has changed primarily the the main difference is that at the last special board meeting there was a vote from three board members to remove the sexually explicit portion of the policy that in my opinion would have set a standard for us to not have certain materials in our schools that were sexually graphically explicit so that has been removed from this policy um so I I am dismayed

058by that however I think we've done a lot of work on this policy and I I think there's still some really good parts to it and things that I can support certainly parental notification is along the lines of parental rights it's certainly not a perfect policy in my mind but it is certainly is definitely a step in the right direction so with that said you know I think the remainder of the policy does add another another layer of parental rights and is a step in the right direction this policy does provide additional notification to parents in regards to anything that may be deemed sexual content parents would have the option to opt out of their children viewing any items that include sexual content I'd like to also make it clear as we heard you know

059this evening that this policy does not prevent us from deciding to remove a book per our challenge process and policy this should not be used as an excuse to retain sexually explicit books that are not age-appropriate the policy only applies to futile future purchases and materials so it is possible that miners would still be exposed to sexual content without parental consent so out of transparency I just want to make sure that that is said however if something was to be challenged and we were to decide to retain it we would at least then Mark that book as it having or the material as it having sexual content and therefore then going forward parents would be notified um with an opt-out option so although I'm just disappointed about the lack of standard in writing for sexually

060explicit materials I am you know happy to support the policy that will hopefully help with transparency and support parental rights further discussion Mr President please I I have to you know agree with Mrs Payne on several points there we've had four meetings on this we've had a lot of important discussions around the board table and and I think it is an important topic we have made a compromise where we've heard concerns of from many perspectives we've heard from many community members that felt extremes on both sides this is the strongest policy for parental rights and to provide parental control and involvement in the state of Ohio so I think that that's really something important to note that we have the the strongest policy right now if if we pass this in the state of Ohio

061to protect students we would be putting into place right now we have the opt-in part that we've added in where parents could be involved with any material that their child checks out in the library to be notified and they can opt out of it and in addition with this we would have parental control and involvement which is creating a standard that parents can be involved with whatever their children read and decide what is appropriate for their own child so we're looking at are we comfortable with what my own children can read um depending on their age or their maturity level or what you feel is appropriate for your own individual child it is a compromise it allows it also allows materials as Mrs Payne said to continue to be reviewed and and a book may

062be taken out of circulation um but what it changes and and Mrs Payne is right we did ask and it was voted on by the board to take out that piece about sexually explicit materials because the difference with adding that is that those materials would be taken out without reading the material in their entirety and without deliberate and thoughtful dialogue it would be if there was a piece in there at all a passage the book could would be removed this would allow books could be removed going through the full process looking at the entirety of the book and looking with deliberate and thoughtful dialogue with a committee or with a superintendent's recommendation and then a board vote so I'm very comfortable with this policy I'm happy that we have these strong parental controls and involvement

063in our district and it is the strongest policy in the state of Ohio so thank you thank you Mrs cook Jenny you know I I agree with the comments made and I'm comfortable with this as a policy and the um the state legislatures policy would if that was passed course by the time it's um reconciled through the Senate and the house versions would that change our policy in any way or it would just support it uh at this point there's so much alignment with that I want to put this here can you say say it again yeah you got it you're gonna predict it let's go when will it pass let's go November 13th put me down um I'm not sure when they're when their vote's going to take place the the thing that I

064do like about the policy is this is directly in line with house bill 8. um with the language that's in there so I think if that house bill were to pass we'd probably be the only District in the state that wouldn't have to update anything but with all our policies I guess the joke that I was making to Mr Heath is that when it passes if it does any law could lead to an adjustment of any policy right that's why we do our updates we're working on some right now yes um and then we'll have some again in January so uh I think it was just it's just hard to predict what the final process would be and then how that would impact any policy we have but I mean the point that you make

065about the only District in the state that has this policy is Testament to the work that the board has done Mr Heath the the board the house bill House Bill eight right yeah that's correct House Bill 8 is is actually even weaker than this policy isn't it this this actually encompasses more yeah I think we've got more specific language in ours in regards to what constitutes sexual content um and this also covers the library media materials yeah this this covers everything I do a little bit stronger than the house bill 8 because of the library at the last special meeting I know we landed with keeping the verbiage in there for it to actually affect any future purchases for the library which you know I think is a good thing for parents um so and

066the if the house bill 8 does pass one of the other perks with Nila is that we do get those updates twice a year so regardless we would be notified and we would update our policies accordingly yeah if there's anything different we would be notified yeah just as an example and we passed the Neola manual and in our August meeting and like two weeks later we got the updates for uh for this this half of the the school year so um we'll be having some discussions with our with our board members about those here in the next month or so actually you know there was some questions in the community about why we wouldn't craft our own policies or use an attorney as we had and this speaks to that that Neola gives us a

067coordinated comprehensive and better applicable enforceable with the administrative guidelines that go along with it so there's benefit in having our manual so for all those hundreds of hours invested there was a lot of good it comes for our community well worth it yeah I mean they're just providing a template for the board to make the decision in the best interest of them I mean this 25 20.03 is a classic example of that please call the roll Mr Wade Miss Payne yes Miss jessalyn yes Miss Cook yes Mr Tuttle yes motion carries 4-0 Mr President members of the board Mr Wade I am recommending approval of the revised English 10 honors and English 11 reading lists second please call the role conversation yeah you have conversation sure a couple things before we we jump into that

068just so that I can uh address some of the things that Miss McCormick brought up as well I've had conversations with our curriculum Department our administrative team our high school principal our English Department facilitator at the high school our media specialist uh regarding the book challenge for The Bluest Eye I've made a decision to revise our honor our English 10 honors and English 11 supplemental reading lists to remove The Bluest Eye from those two courses my reasoning actually aligns with what is mentioned in House Bill 8 that is being considered in the state house right now when I look at materials I want them to be age and developmentally appropriate for the student The Bluest Eye may still appear in the AP English course resources in the future based on what the College Board chooses

069as they review their curriculum I have no problem with that being included in those courses because of the age and developmental level of the students that are taking those classes our teachers teaching those classes also have to go through significant training by the College Board to be able to navigate the topics discussed in the materials required for those AP courses based on the outcome of this evening's vote on the sexual content policy I will now be reviewing all of our current procedures outlined in all of our policies and the development of administrative guidelines now that we have policy 25 20.03 in place to determine the next steps with the library book component of these challenges for both The Bluest Eye and the Empire of storms those decisions will be shared in our October meeting thank

070you comment any other no call the roll please Mr Wayne Danny verify so we'll be getting the recommendation for the library book next month does that mean that then we would have a vote whatever your recommendation is we will the board will have to vote on that next month that's why I want to look through all of our policies now that we've got this final one voted upon and make sure that we're following our policy correctly with all of this too okay um and then the AP course just because I know there was some confusion a lot of people thought it was currently in the AP course for The Bluest Eye it is not currently in any AP course right now right yeah we've been digging through those AP English Lit and AP English Lang

071language courses and we don't see it currently in the required or supplemental materials where we have seen it appear and I think I may have mentioned this last meeting is excerpts of The Bluest Eye have been utilized in the AP Lit exam um in the past and and that's where some references are made to it um I haven't seen it on one of the College Board lists that are current right now okay okay and if it was I know well we'll address the library next month so I'm not going to bring that up this month because we'll we'll dive into that because there will be some consideration around that topic as well in regards to that decision and then um just the reasoning for it just to reiterate to the reasoning to remove it from

072English 10 honors and English 11 reading list is because we feel that it's not age appropriate for 10th or 11th grade that's my decision yes okay entire book hearing none Mr Wade call the roll it's just like yes it's Payne yes Miss Cook yes Mr Tuttle yes motion carries 4-0 Mr President members of the board Mr Wade I am recommending approval of agenda item C1 related to certified personnel and C2 through C4 all related to human resource matters second [Music] discussion done please call the roll Mr Wade it's Payne yes Ms jostling yes Ms cook yes Mr Tuttle yes motion carries 4-0 I'm also recommending approval of agenda item D related to administrative staff so moved please call the roll Mr Wade I think I need a second that Miss Payne yep thank you please

073call the roll now Mr Wade it's just like yes Miss Payne yes Miss Cook yes Mr Tuttle yes motion carries 4-0 this concludes my portion of tonight's agenda thank you next on the agenda Board of Education report recommendations Jenny did you do the you did the interview process correct and Annie oh yes yes for the library trustee would you like to speak to it or sure sure yes um what was very uh citing was that there were excellent candidates who reached out we had an interview with four of those candidates along with the director of the library a couple of board members including the president of the trustees Mr Heath Mr Wade Mrs Payne and myself and uh Mrs Payne and myself and the president of the trustees are the only voting members but we

074had a wonderful discussion and I was just impressed by the terrific quality of the folks who offered to take on this responsibility and we made a final decision it wasn't easy because of the high quality of the candidates so um Michael scipione was the finalist that we selected and that proffer was made and he accepted that responsibility and will be joining the trustees at their next meeting very good thank you do we have a motion please call the roll Mr Wade uh Miss Payne yes it was dressling yes Miss Cook yes Mr Tuttle yes A1 is approved for zero uh you want me to do this one though go ahead it is recommended that the board member in-service attendance for the 2023 osba Capital conference and trade show be approved so moved second discussion and

075a couple points that I just wanted to discuss because they have in the past um not voted for osba for membership however I do support any board member's right to go to any training that they see fit and I actually went last year and there were some there was definitely some political ideology that I disagreed with in several of the classes but there was some stuff that also was very beneficial to me there was some classes that were put on by different lawyers and board attorneys so that was helpful as well so while I might not see eye to eye on the things that they are promoting I do feel like it is the right of a board member to go to any training that they see fit so I would support the OSB Capital

076conference I hear there's going to be a really good presentation by whom Oh by me [Laughter] and for that reason [Laughter] s oh boy okay no further comments no no please call the roll Mr Wade Miss jessling yes Miss Cook yes Miss Payne yes Mr Tuttle yes motion carries 4-0 it is recommended that a delegate and Alternate uh be appointed to the annual business meeting of the Ohio school boards Association on November 13 2023. I have a question about that um the whoever we have because we know we have two board members that will be new as of January we don't know who yet but we will whoever is elected in November both of those individuals would be able to attend even though we're they're not correct obviously not historically okay um and then last

077year what we did for the delegate assembly in the in the platform we had a special meeting to discuss the different platforms as a board so that whoever is the delegate should be voting on behalf of the board you know the majority of the board whatever that may be on those platforms so I was wondering if we could do that again and just so the community is aware what happens is osba has a platform that they use for their legislative efforts and so every District that sends a delegate to the delegate assembly has a vote on behalf of the district so for instance last year there was and you heard it in the beginning with the public commentary last year there was a a parental rights platform so different districts were able to go and

078vote for the platform or against it I attended last year and I was not the Delegate for us but I did watch and that platform for instance did fail there was about if I had a guess 80 percent of the school districts that were there did not support the parental rights platform so therefore they will not go in and do any legislative efforts for that so out of transparency whoever the delegate is I feel like we we owe it to the community to discuss I don't know what's on their platform this year but to discuss it as a group so that hopefully we can yeah platform yet so um yeah I think once we get that we can certainly do that if that's agreeable to everybody I was just wondering if if we would be

079able to do it in regular session would we have time before or timeline wise just just so we wouldn't be paid for another meeting I'm recalling that discussion we had it's pretty late it was well over an hour but there were some pretty big hitters on that I don't know that this year they would have those same things up for the platform because I haven't seen it yet and then whoever the delegate is would be tied to whatever our decision is the majority of the they would vote as we voted I think that's fair enough I mean I like the discussion at the table and if if it's more appropriate in a special meeting I'm fine with that but we can always make that decision at the October regular meeting okay okay um let's hold

080on let me see the timing yeah it would be pretty yeah because we would still have time to have a special meeting between our October meeting and the osba so we can get that uh that platform and and get it out to everybody as soon as it yeah I would assume so and we all received a copy of that didn't we already for this year no no last year yeah you were the delegate last year yeah but it's all online it's all available so anybody can see online so it'll be yeah yeah so as soon as we as soon as it's available I will we'll make sure everybody on on the board knows that and you guys can start reviewing that and then we can have a conversation at the October meeting to decide if

081we're going to do a special meeting to to discuss that entire platform how about that everybody attending ospa yeah mine would be pending my school approvals I plan on attending I do I'll be there yeah the presentation dude we know if Mrs Briner is planning to go I have not heard from uh from her in that regard Mr Tuttle I'd love to go okay so maybe what we could do is when we meet to discuss the legislative platform we could pick our delegate then based on who's going do we want to wait until then to so I think we have to notify osba though oh because this was supposed to be done in August wasn't it we I well I'm not going to say that but I would say I think we need to notify

082osba so can we vote on a delegate in an alternate and then yeah I'm happy with being either or I'm happy with anybody being it I mean if they're gonna really vote based on whatever the majority of the board is I don't think that's sure it's not my opinion if I'd be voting it would be the board's will I'd like to motion to appoint Mrs jesling do we have to vote on those separate Mr Wade or can we do both of those at once it's our slate of candidates where's the Robertsons oh is there so we only have one nomination for uh delegate and then one nomination for alternative right alternate excuse me correct provides what I'm hearing correctly yeah you can vote on it once do we need to second nominations and then second

083yeah so Maggie did you make the motion yes I'm I motion for Mrs Jacqueline to serve as our delegate and for Mrs Payne to serve as our alternate delegate we'll hope it wasn't quite as long a meeting last year Tom is dinner yeah I know five hours long it was because the delegate assembly meeting yeah yeah it was very long there was if you want to talk about Robert's Rules of Order they had a parliamentarian there because I watched it and they had the parliamentarian there who serves on the State Board as their parliamentarian and their emotions being flown all over it was it was a really intense intense uh well on the one issue primarily the parent rights it was yeah interesting to watch yeah it was five hours I sat there five glorious

084hours do I have a second on my motion second any further discussion call the roll Mr Wade you got it Miss Cook yes Miss dressling yes Miss Payne yes Mr Tuttle yes Miss jesling is our delegate and Miss Payne is our alternate pass is 4-0 I believe I already gave the legislative report okay you updated it parts that apply to us yeah I think that's fine student achievement report Mrs cook all right Mentor High School's extracurricular activities are off to a great start with hundreds of students coming together outside the classroom to engage in these various activities it is great seeing our students be able to follow their passions be that on the athletic field or in club activities Mentor High School has welcomed five foreign exchange students this school year students coming from Germany

085Denmark and Italy having exchanged students at the high school allows our students to increase their Global Perspective cultural cultural diversity and much more the high school will share guidelines for families regarding dates for applying to host a foreign exchange student next year in the coming months Shore and Memorial's sixth graders are heading to Camp Fitch YMCA this week Shore is currently there now as we speak and these are pictures from yesterday and today so a little sneak peek if your child is there sixth grade teachers parents and chaperones and MHS students are participating in the fun for three days and two nights some activities include canoeing horsemanship rock climbing candle making archery nature hikes and team building the final campfire is always a huge hit this trip is a great time for all and the

086views of Lake Erie are one of a kind thank you to our camp facilitators Gina Koski Carol's I hope I'm not messing this up stresskovic Ben maisel and Adam Beck who started the planning of this trip back in early June I was short today see I'll take your extra time yes I heard you might Mr President members of the board Mr Heath uh present our monthly financials as well as our annual appropriation I'm quickly going through our monthly financials we are trending about 200 or 300 000 Less on Revenue collections than we had projected in the May forecast as I explained last month this is primarily because of the fact that we had to reclassify some restricted funds back to cares that we had originally put into our fund based on some updates that we

087found expense wise were three thousand seven hundred eighteen dollars worse than forecasted which is pretty impressive it won't stay that way um I did want to point out on the next slide our Revenue at this same time last year we're down 3.2 million dollars this is because a tip payment that we received from the city didn't come in in August like it did last year it actually came in on September 1st so it will be recorded in September so that will take care of itself it's really just a timing issue and then if you look at our expenses to May forecast and again this will change once we do our November forecast just a reminder because we compare our expenses versus our approved forecast at the time which is May um we're three thousand dollars

088higher or four thousand dollars higher than we expected and this does include if you remember the carryover for the buses that didn't come last fiscal year so I mean we're actually below spending uh for the actual year uh to date but with the fact that we have to we will pay for those buses if they arrive this year in this year we're because we're Cash basis we have to account for the expense when it occurs so we're trending pretty good which means we're sticking to our budget so I just wanted to point that out um obviously when you look at Appropriations the easiest way to explain to the community is it's creating our budget for the year we do that with a lot of discussion that process starts back in January when we approve uh

089the tax budget for the year and we have a follow-up in March and then we start working with our superintendent and his administrative team and our principals to develop those budgets which we then provide a temporary Appropriations in June which over the last few years this is the um second year I believe that we've done it to where we basically budget at near 100 which was a change in uh Appropriations that we had done under uh Mr Wilson's uh leadership uh to just kind of set the budget when the fiscal year starts because our fiscal year starts in July and it seemed silly that we were only to me my personal belief is that we were budgeting the final budget in September but we are obligated by law to do a final Appropriations by the

090end of September hence the reason why we approve it now it has changed a little bit since our June Appropriations because things have uh become clearer with regards to Staffing because we run our first payroll in September on the fifth so we're able to get more accurate numbers from a standpoint of salaries and benefits which we'll see here makes up the majority of our budget when we look at it from our strategic plan obviously what guides us is the fact that our job is to maintain and enhance physical stability by focusing on short-term and long-term planning this is the first step in that process we're looking at our Appropriations that then will guide our November five-year forecast update that we will present to the board I believe it's in November 21st we're a little bit

091later this year because of osba and we'll present that in that week of the third week of November we're always looking to explore options for alternative Revenue to maximize our existing Personnel facilities and resources and lastly we ensure a continued balance approach to our budgeting to make sure that our resources are balanced to maximize opportunities across the district for all students our budgeting principles are that every decision that we make should be made within the context of our five-year forecast because we know that it's not just a one-time decision that decision has a trickle on effect and really impacts everything that we're going to do in the out years secondly there's management dollars attached to every dollar that we management options excuse me attached every dollar that we spend and we look at that that

092every dollar that we spend should add value to teaching and learning and we aggressively focus on our most expensive areas of our budget which are salary benefits special education and our facilities so as we develop our budget and we have those discussions we always look at those areas and we know that you know in the in the long term quality is always cheaper because if we don't purchase quality materials or you know invest in Quality Roofing materials for example and we take the cheaper route we're gonna have to replace that roof sooner or whatever aspect that we're looking at so we do that it drives our uh our budget process we have a lots of discussion at the level this is not my budget I'm just the one blessed to present it it is the

093budget of the leadership team and at the helm of our superintendent and his leadership team to make sure that our students and staff and Community have the resources that they need to be as productive as possible that being said I like to break this down Mr Lynch is really trying to move me um in you didn't do that to Dr glaven I would expect you not to do that to me the our revenue is broken down into you know main areas it the main source of revenue for us in our district is is our local taxpayers they account for 73.5 percent uh the state government is about uh you know 22 percent in the form of state aid as a well as Homestead and rollback reimbursements that we receive from the state and we have

094some intermediate sources and then again this is just for the general fund so we do have a small portion of federal money that goes into the general fund that does not represent as I know we've had this discussion a number of times I think it's worthwhile to point out here the seven million dollars in federal aid that we get that does not go into the general fund those funds are separate from the general fund they don't go into the general fund um so they aren't represented in this graphic that is much different than the graph that you see on the pie chart on the next stage that says that the average for the state is 42 percent of the local taxpayer is you know accounts for excuse me the tax local taxpayer costs 42 of

095that revenue and the state accounts for 43 that's because mentors deemed a wealthy District based on our property valuation and our median income and federally adjusted to gross income and because we're considered to be wealthy we receive less state aid and then that burden falls back to the local taxpayer foreign if you're looking at this chart I have it in place for the board in the community just to kind of see our Trends in in Revenue last year as I explained we received 110 million dollars that was primarily because of increased investment earnings that we had as the market has destabilized and you we cannot invest in the typical stock market we have to invest in specific very safe liquid Investments so as Things become more volatile in the stock market and those interest rates

096shoot up on treasuries and yields and various forms that we invest in we've seen increase on that invested income and we're seeing now rates anywhere between four to five percent returns where two two years ago we were seeing less than 0.1 percent 0.2 percent so we saw a big spike in investment income which benefits the district as well as we saw people paying their taxes earlier and the first half tax collection which is the second half of our fiscal year so we expect the local sources to to adjust accordingly on that but we're still expecting High investment returns and with the new state budget being approved in June we are expecting some increase Revenue in state funding which will account for us to be at we're expecting to be about 109 million dollars so we're

097expecting that to be relatively close to that number moving forward this graph just kind of shows that over time our revenues don't really change much we all went through a reappraisal in fiscal year 21. our house values went up anywhere from 16 to 18 when you got your uh appraisal from the Lake County auditor just as a reminder we don't see that growth on local tax revenue as a school district because of House Bill 920 that gets adjusted down in the effective military actually decreases the district only sees a small increase on inside millage um so it's it doesn't generate a lot of additional revenue for the district we do see some it's anywhere from 500 to 800 000 depending upon uh our calculations as we look at when we start to transition to expenses

098for us the primary driver of our expenses is salary and benefits so we have to look at student enrollment when we look at creating our budget and if we look over the last uh six years you can see that our enrollment has dropped from about 7 500 to about 6 800 students so we've seen about 700 students decline enrollment that trend is consistent not only with the the county it's also consistent with the state of Ohio that we're seeing enrollment Trend changes just because enrollment is dropped over that same period and we saw that coming with regards to our enrollment study that we did back in February we like to break this out or I like to break this out into grade bands to kind of see is it going to level off as we

099are expecting it to with our enrollment study that we did again back in February in the key indicator to me is looking at that blue Trend which represents our kindergarten numbers because obviously our kindergarten Garden numbers Drive everything and as those numbers start to level off and you can see that they are leveling off they're starting to stay consistent we would expect our enrollment to kind of level off at that that range of I'd say 6 700 or 6 800 kids that's what we would expect and that's kind of the trend that we're seeing with regards to our enrollment study on the low end um we will see you know a slight decrease because our senior classes are still obviously bigger than our kindergarten class but one of the things I will point out to

100people is if you look at Trend data as Mr Heath and I do with enrollment your kindergarten numbers are always small and they classes get larger as they continue the cohort continues to go up so you'll see kids start to come in because they either move in or they get enrolled in school or as they switch from elementary school to middle school and maybe they went to a a Catholic school for example and then they they will come back in middle school or they went to Catholic School k through eight then they come back in high school and you see your freshman numbers jump up a little bit so the trend is actually that the the cohorts increase over time not actually decrease just as a point of reference so the most important area with

101that is is our staffing numbers so we we have started to track and we've done a lot of work on this in my office along with HR and it's we've adjusted and switched from payroll systems to clean up our payroll numbers uh Mr or excuse me Dr glavin referenced emis earlier which is the state reporting system that we have to categorize our our staff whether they're a teacher whether they're a professional other which means they're a school psychologist or a therapist or are they working as a tech person or an opposite there's codes that get assigned to everybody we've worked a lot to clean those up so this chart kind of looks at everybody who works in the district whether the paid out of the general fund or not because not all of our staff

102is paid off our general funds some of our staff is paid out of federal funds this chart here is looks at totality of everybody who works in the district who gets paid by the district whether regardless of the fund so this is not general fund staff only um I think this is for me it was the way I could get the most Reliable Staffing data to be the most consistent was just to look at all the funds and as we've cleaned it up you will notice some fluctuations from 23 to 24 and I would say that's not because necessarily we in for example in or 22 to 23 and I'll just point out transportation we didn't actually didn't go down five Transportation Drivers there was people who were previously classified under transportation that have been

103reclassified somewhere else because they were actually a better fit and it could have been they were a secretary but they because they were the Secretary of Transportation that they were just classified as Transportation so as we cleaned that data up to be more consistent more accurate you'll see some of those fluctuations from 22 to 23. the the key is is that we look at the numbers at the bottom for all funds and you can see that over the last three years we've continued to decrease our staff as we've adjusted to that enrollment changes as we kind of recalibrate from covid because you saw an increase in 21 when we had the first year back after the covid year and we were only in school a couple days a session at the middle school in the

104high school at that time if you remember correctly we're doing online the other times and we were K-5 we were in school four days a week but we added a whole bunch of extra teachers so that we had low class sizes to keep kids spread apart once we've moved past that we've really tried to right size the district what I you will see the carrots on 22 23 and 24 as a note because in those numbers are the teachers that have been hired to support students who have learning gaps as a result of covid those staff members are not paid out of the general fund this is the last year we will have those staff members in this projection and we have currently 25 staff members that are being paid for out of Esser funds

105and I'll show that on a separate slide but we will have an immediate reduction of 25 staff members next school year from 24 to 25. so when you come back next year it'll look like we have 25 less staff members that will have an immediate decline in Staffing net impact on the general fund is actually going to be zero dollars because they are not paid for out of the general fund but they are included in that 997. so that number is what I'm saying if you're listening is that's an inflated number because it doesn't relate to general fund so I don't know how else to say this if you don't hear me today there's not 25 extra teachers they're not paid for the general fund you're just choosing to say that they are they're not

106it's clearly denoted here that those 25 people are not people who are going to be here next year or they paid out of the general fund but they are represented in this number because they're included as part of our federal funding that we have I like graphs I think they explain things pretty quick easily to people the red and the blue is the most important areas on there because we're a service industry we provide education to students and everybody here provides a service to make sure that we can educate students 80 percent of our budget comes down to salary benefits the other major portion of our budget goes into purchase Services then supplies and then our third largest is transfers if you remember last year we had that big transfer we had four you know

107we transferred 14 million dollars out that piece of the pie was much larger it was like 14 percent so it squeezed everything else well this year like as I told you everybody it's now condensed so now we see the rest of the chart kind of normalized back to what we would expect as a normal trend if you want to know where our exact amounts are by object code which goes back to those areas that is showed because our 100s our salaries our 200s our benefits our 400s are purchase Services those actual dollar amounts are in this chart um the the thing that I think is most important is that if you look at the highlighted numbers in the line that says totals our total expenses that are budgeted currently are 114.3 million dollars which is

108a negative 6.8 percent increase or six point nine percent uh decrease excuse me from the prior year we knew that was going to happen though because as we've said a number of times we had a large transfer last year that we knew wasn't going to happen this year because we weren't going to transfer that out so um I think what's more important then is to take transfers out because you have to normalize your data because I could Pat myself on the back or you know sell it as the district hey we decreased the budget by almost seven percent congratulations and well that's we did I mean that's that's one way to look at it but when you want to look at actual Trends and be consistent and compare apples to apples you got to back

109the transfers out either to the capital Improvement fund or in this case our large transfer this year 3.2 is to pay for the severance and the incentive buyouts that we had for our employees that we spoke about a number of times that's going to save us upwards of ten and a half million dollars over the next five years you then can compare year-over-year spending to really look at that growth and I think what this slide shows is that our budget to actual spend last year is only growing at 2.09 or 2.1 percent we all know inflation's much higher than that so the fact that we've been able to control our budget growth just on actual spend from last year to at two percent I think is is a testament to the work that the district's

110doing to continue to be fiscally responsible um is because we all know historically because if you were here in July I shared where our budget started in last last couple fiscal years and where it ends in actual spending and we never no matter how hard we try to be as accurate as possible we never spend what we budget so we're probably going to actually grow less than that um but that's to be determined because we have to make the estimates based on what the data that we know today just a graphic representation of that so you can see just again from a you know year-over-year Trend if you're someone who likes to evaluate to make sure because I I like to use this graph to say okay here's what my budget is in 24 how

111does it compare to out years is anything stick out is there any area that seems to be larger than it should be smaller than it should be can I explain all the differences between the colors it's kind of a check that we do to make sure that our budget is our Appropriations are correct and this just confirms that we're in line and what I would say too if you were to draw a trendline on the first three years we're actually flattening that expense curve by controlling costs and keeping it less than it would be if you were just to look at a trend line that you put on the first three years again if you take the transfers out because that's that top light blue is part if you take those out and normalize everything

112again you can kind of see incremental growth which we know just because of inflation is going to exist so you see relatively flat revenue is increasing expenses so we can all see where that's going to end up here in a couple of slides spoke to this earlier uh the Esser subs or Sr teachers that we have that are not paid out of the general fund they're paid out of actual Federal funding that we received from the federal government in the form of our Esser funds we have one point seven nine eight six two nine so one million 798 629 of Esser funding left we're budgeting that for the 25 teachers in the elementary in the Middle School to continue to support those students in closing those achievement gaps that is not coming from the general

113fund those salaries and benefits are paid for out of this grant whatever money we don't use on those salaries and benefits will be used as it was last year offset costs associated with um Crossroads for social emotional support because there's only specific funds that we can so specific excuse me things we can use these funds for is defined by uh the ARP Esser Grant key Point here is if we're expected to spend 114.3 million dollars and we have 109 million dollars of Revenue we are projecting a deficit spend of a negative 5 million 346 366 dollars we never like to deficit spend obviously that's not where we want to be because it means we're spending down our cash reserves but in Ohio based on the way that we fund schools that's what we call the

114levy cycle you have revenues when you pass a levy that's when you can ratchet up your revenues and then you expenses will continue to creep up your you do your best to control them um we've only asked for new money for General operating money once since 2004 and that was in 2016 so in now almost 20 years we've had one new money Levy with regards to General operating dollars and at this point we're deficit spending by about 5.3 million dollars and I think what is impressive about that if there's anything impressive about it is the fact that we've been able to reduce our deficit spend from three years ago so we will control our costs to keep that down so it's going to help us stretch out and push off the next general operating Levy

115moving forward so in summary we expect to Def suspend like I said by about 5.3 million dollars which will reduce our general cash balance from 55.9 million to about 50.6 as everybody knows we have uh two levees on the ballot the first Levy being issue three issue three is a 2.5 mil additional Levy for General permanent improvements it's going to collect about 5.6 million dollars annually which will cost the homeowner 88 for every hundred thousand dollars and that is a five-year Levy that would commence in 2024 the goal of that the purpose of that Levy is to ensure safe and well-maintained schools which is going to fund our PI projects that I'll share for here just as a reminder our last permanent Improvement Levy was passed in 1988 it collects just under just over a

116million dollars a year if we were to adjust that value to this year in July we would need 2.8 million dollars to have the same spending power that we had in 1988 for that one million dollars obviously I think everybody in this room appreciates that you can't purchase and the dollar doesn't go as far as it did back in 1988 yet our costs associated with maintaining our facilities and upgrading our facilities continues to rise I've said this a number of times I like to make sure that we have a logical reason to justify any of the things that we do Carnegie Mellon did a study that says to address the inadequate investment in school facility maintenance and they said it's about two percent of your replacement value our total insured value now is over 300

117million dollars I think you could argue that it would cost us more than 300 million dollars to replace our buildings however I wanted to use a number that I could justify so I'll use the total insured value between 300 million dollars which means that we should spend about six million dollars annually on just maintaining our facilities to keep them in good working order you heard Mr Heath say that our youngest building is 50 years old I appreciate the fact that you said that that was Young by the way I remember I just turned 53 so yeah um you weren't even on that but the reality is we need to continue to maintain and upgrade those facilities and every and how we do that now is because obviously we know a million dollars does not take

118care of that so if you could go to the next slide Mr Lynch we use that million dollars and then we subsidize the remaining balance out of the general fund because general fund dollars can be used on anything there's with board approval so let me be clear on that I mean but we can there's no restriction on what you can spend at general fund Dollar on permanent Improvement Levy dollars can all be spent on uh anything that has a useful life of five years so when you think of that think of bricks buses balls books things that have an expectancy there um we have transferred last year 14 million dollars out of the general fund into a capital Improvement plan uh fund to help offset those costs with the capital Improvement plan that we have

119and then we've been working on for the last few years as well as communicating out every June um we also last year under Mr Heath's new leadership committed uh specific dollars for safety upgrades with the approval and the recommendation of the board as we continue to figure out ways to as Mr Heath alluded to in his not alluded stated in his update uh with regards to vestibules and door security and film and the like continued increase in cameras or replacement cameras and so on and so forth to earmark at least two million dollars for that we were able to offset that increase by savings from our workers compensation fund we've been funding that we're self-insured and workers compensation we have a nice Reserve that we've built up on that so we're able to not continue

120to pay into our own workers compensation fund because we've funded it to a safe Reserve to the point where we can give ourselves what we would refer to as a premium holiday over the next few years to offset that cost increase to to set money aside to that um which is attributed to the fact that Mr Wilson started that fund which was just a sound fiscal Management on his part to be able to do that and not have to pay into the general workers comp fund that many schools or businesses do because we are self-insured and that will allow us to offset those costs along with the classroom Innovation but we will need to to Ops continue to fund if the pi Levy does not pass we have to budget 4.2 million fiscal year 27

121and 3.3 million in fiscal year 28. to continue to meet the needs of the district on the facility maintenance and upgrades that we have planned we also generate some revenue from our scoreboard and advertising Revenue that we have started this past school year as well just to reiterate here is the plan for fiscal year 24. the highlighted yellow shows the addition of the safety upgrades for the vestibules again just the roof placement alone at Shore cost over a million dollars and that's not even the full roof that's just a portion of the roof we spend another four hundred thousand dollars on just maintaining Paving and concrete across the district again when you have you know 11 school buildings the service building and a board office uh there's those that pavement wears out from buses alone

122driving on those uh so we have to make sure probably a life cycle of a typical Paving jobs anywhere from six to eight years is what we try to get out of it along with uh maintaining the sidewalks that we have throughout the district um we have some flooring that we need to take care of we keep an emergency reserve the event something happens like a tornado where we have units that we may have to replace or things like that we're starting a three-year phase process of renovating all the windows and doors in the high school because they are the original windows and doors so they're just not efficient and as we continue to look at safety upgrades we need to address those that's a 1.2 million dollar project that will occur over the next

123three years we're finishing the ceiling in wall updates at Fairfax there we have on the books right now because our gym floor is the one of the original gym floors that the high school cannot be sanded down anymore so that is on there and it would be a behoove us at that time to consider replacing the bleachers because we're doing the floor so doing them at the same time is the most safe way to not damage the new floor that we later put in to do the bleachers plus we have some concerns with uh the longevity of those bleachers as they've uh We've experienced them issues recently and that we need to address um again fiscal year 25 continues safety upgrades rtu's rooftop unit Replacements again replacement at Shore and ridge over a million dollars

124Paving and concrete at 300 000 the reserve that we set aside our 1.2 million dollar Roofing or excuse me window and door replacement at the high school continues uh continued parking lot improvements on the campus of 682 thousand dollars because we didn't pave the entire parking lot when we did it two years ago because the prices were higher than we had anticipated so we need to finish that we have some miscellaneous projects throughout the district that we're going to continue to do in classrooms and we have to account for our contingency and soft costs from a budgeting standpoint same thing at 26 things I'll point out is we have two elevators in the district that need to be upgraded because they've reached their life and they're breaking down quite frequently so we need to you

125know fix and replace those to keep them functional and for our students safe uh Roofing at Lake is going to be 1.2 million dollars almost 1.3 you see Paving we have some additional concrete that we know is going to be needed at that time so we added 200 000 so that finished the last year of the window replacement at the high school and we have a MHS family consumer science renovation that we have on the books for almost eight hundred thousand dollars to renovate those spaces because those are what the one of the few spaces that we have not renovated at the high school yet um that's Now 50 plus years old that needs to be replaced I know Dr glaven has put in a grant for that from Career Tech so our hopes is

126that that Grant gets approved and we can take that off the books and spend that money someplace else in some other learning spaces throughout the district but until we get word that we have received that Grant which I believe Dr Cleveland could even be by October correct he gives me the thumbs up so um you know that would be something that we would adjust off uh into the future as we get into 27 and 28 um what I would say some of the areas on the right are areas things that you know that would be potentially areas that we would consider addressing but we you know they're not as high of a need as some of the areas on the left so those will continue to change because there are last two years and we

127don't know what's going to be needed in five years out um so those would be areas that would be flexible again you see the 500 000 for safety upgrades continue to occur we have a roof replacement at Fairfax that's almost 1.5 million six hundred thousand dollars in Paving and concrete more rooftop units we need to replace the football turf because it'll be 13 years old so we have that budgeted in we do set aside money each year for that and a replacement fund so that will be money that we've again we've budgeted for that we know that that expense is going to occur there's some Stadium garages that are becoming dilapidated if you drive by the stadium where we store a lot of our equipment for to maintain the facilities with regards to our tractors

128and things like that shingles have started to blow off they're starting to get holes into the woods so there's some you know if there's nothing else that supersedes that at that time those would be things that we would consider I would really like to consider a stadium LED lighting project as well as an LED lighting project across the district just from the electrical savings that we would occur on that um so we at some point we need to consider how to phase those in as well so we have that set aside as well um safety upgrades soccer Turf will be up for replacement 1.8 million at Orchard is the roofing estimate uh in fiscal year 28 and then some potential areas that we would look at at the stadium would be that I would expect

129that those would probably fall off because there's other things that we'll find that we need to spend that would supersede that but when we're looking at five years we're kind of rotating through that's what we tentatively have planned now the other thing that you've heard me mention is that we currently spend out of the general fund we have vehicles that we need for our maintenance people we have a maintenance crew that has Vehicles whether it be our plowing guys our grounds team whether it be our electricians and plumbers they all have vehicles that we have to maintain and upgrade we have them on basically 10 to 12 year Cycles as well so we have a plan for those for improved to be replaced because it becomes more cost effective to buy a new vehicle so

130that keeps our costs down on repair and maintenance so we have those on we have buses that we buy every year we have a fleet of almost 70 buses so we replaced five a year so that gives us a life expectancy of about 13 years per bus that exceeds the typical life expectancy of the bus but because we have such a strong transportation department and mechanics that work in our bus garage we feel that that's a reasonable replacement cycle for those you can see from fiscal year 23 to 24 buses have gone up astronomically we saw an inflationary increase of from 560 thousand dollars to almost 715 000 1716 thousand dollars just because uh costs have gone up uh in the last few years um Mr Lynch and his team do a great job making

131sure that our technology plan is uh cost effective and you know that we have one-to-one devices K through 12 along with our staff and all of our Network and our Hardware that goes along with that they map out a plan for that you can see that we're averaging about 880 000 a year in technology that comes out of the general fund that could be taken out of a pi fund and we're spending anywhere from and on average about 150 160 000 a year on furniture throughout the district with regards to continued upgrades if you think about the number of classrooms that we have and the grade levels that we have and just making sure that we continue to upgrade and make sure our furniture is in good work in order we're averaging on at uh

132each year then about 1.8 1.9 million dollars on purchases that could be spent out of a permanent Improvement again those exceed our current level of one million dollars so if the reason why we put the pi levy on is because if that was supported by the community we could remove those 1.8 million dollars of expenses out of the general fund which would then take that 114 million dollar number down to about 112. and we'd also be able to transfer back to the general fund some of the money that we transferred out to support the capital Improvement funds which would give us a one-year Spike back in Revenue as well as make sure that in the future we're not transferring money out of the general fund to support the improvements and upgrades that we have on

133the Slate which would be a net change of about 6.7 million dollars a year the key thing here to me is that last November we saw that we were looking that we would be uh in a negative cash balance in fiscal year 27. um based on the changes to Staffing in the early retirement incentive that we had along with some assumptions that we changed with regards to safety and workers compensation you see the gray and the black lines are relatively close I think it's important to point out to the community that the red line would be if the Pi Levy passed we'd be able to transfer again some of the money back to the general fund reduce those expenses and out year and it puts us in a much better physical position almost that a

134cash balance of 30 million dollars in 27 which would then push off the need for a general operating Levy away from right now we're looking at 25 maybe to at least 27 ideally again so that would be two new money levies that have been approved one specifically for permanent improvements and one for General operating in 2016 since 2004. that's a pretty decent life cycle of levees for 20 years 23 years which puts you at about 11 and a half which is atypical because I'd say the average is probably closer to five three to five years depending upon the district um Issue four is the renewal Levy from 2004 equates to about 15 million sixteen thousand dollars uh or 238 dollars for every hundred thousand dollars it is not a tax increase um we're putting it

135back up for 10 years um the one that is expiring now is a 10-year Levy so we're basically just trying to renew it for what it was These funds are used for safety Security direct classroom instruction student services in the form of nurses counselors media Specialists diverse and well-rounded extracurricular programs transportation and daily expenditures such as utilities supplies purchase services and Etc so basically everything that we talked about just a second ago it's not a tax increase it does equate to 13 percent of our annual revenue and I know I will get this question what happens if this doesn't pass and I'm not saying this is going to happen but I like to put things into perspective 15 million dollars is 13 of our budget that's a big chunk of Revenue if we assume that

13680.2 percent of our budget is salary and benefits which I showed you that graph probably about 15 minutes ago now so if you can think back if I take that because I like logic and I take 15 million dollars and take 80 of it it comes out to be about 12 million dollars so 12 million dollars would have to come out of Staffing realistically speaking if we look at our breakdown of the percentage of Staff that's admin certified and classified and I take the average salaries of those employees which you can get off the cup report which is what I did and I include their health care and benefits that comes out to be we would need to reduce 3.71 administrators 58 and a half or 58.55 certified staff teachers and 68.97 classified staff which

137is custodians bus drivers secretaries so on and so forth that would equate to a reduction of 131.23 full-time equivalent staff members and that would just reduce 12 million of the 15 million dollars you would still need to reduce an additional 2.9 Million Dollars to get to the 15 million dollars in Revenue that would not exist if this Levy doesn't pass by the end of uh 2024. that's saying that that's what the cuts would be but when you're like me and you like to grasp and understand and conceptualize what does 15 million dollars equate to for the district that's what it equates to and if you were here in 2004 which a lot of you were that's about the number of Staff members that were laid off at that time the difference was is our staffing

138numbers and our ratio to students was out of whack we were increasing staff members as our enrollment was going down we've we've definitely right-sized that over the history since 2004. Dr Hoynes did a fantastic job with that with Mr Wilson Mr Miller did a great job Mr Porter's done a great job with that and Mr Heath continues to do that work to make sure that we have that so I think it's important then to look at and this goes to what we've done to kind of control that expense increase the 5.5 million deficit spending which if we were to look at what we were projecting maybe just on an inflationary alone from when we first started after spending two years ago when we were at seven million dollars we've actually reduced that deficit spend and

139how have we done that or how we controlled the cost or how have we pushed off these levies from 2004 to 2000 you know now 23 with just one new Levy is we've done it by Consolidated buildings we've redistricted we've reduced staff proportionally with declining enrollment the last negotiations we had substantial concessions with Health Care changes for the staff that helped us control one of our largest increasing expenses we've actively pursued alternative Revenue sources we got the straight a grant back in 2014 which was about 13.8 million dollars which paid for this room that we're sitting in here at no cost of the taxpayer it helped us renovate the majority of the the core classes at the high school at no cost the taxpayer we received the safety grant that helped us purchase the one

140million dollars in safety equipment based on the need of the district from our evaluation that we received last year Mr Lynch and his team have secured over 1.3 million dollars in technology grants that have helped us reduce those costs if you're unaware we provide shared services to local districts districts excuse me in the form of payroll services and Grant Management that brings in a hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year and we provide other support services that bring in another 227 thousand dollars a year so each year we're generating an additional 377 thousand dollars in Revenue that many other districts aren't um over the last two years we've been able to secure over a hundred and seven thousand dollars in Revenue that's actually money in our pocket that we have it's not people owe us

141that we have we will have received that or will be receiving that this fiscal year based on the contracts that we have um and Mr Porter and Mr Heath have helped us reduce our budgets by ten and five percent respect for the last two years because you've heard me say if you've been showing up and I know that many of you have because I recognize the faces or we've had conversations this isn't just about asking for additional Revenue this is be we also need to reduce our budget to continue to control our costs to make the plan that I propose to the board and the community work so I think it's important to share that with you tonight in the context of what we're doing I think it's also important to share with you and

142this will be in our update that's coming out of my office that you should all be receiving in the mail as our comprehensive uh fiscal plan community plan that we would say with regard to our fiscal uh year 23 finalization it shows that in Lake County at for last fiscal year Mentor was at the bottom half and when you look at effective tax rates in the county versus all the other County districts and we're at the Top Hat you know top of the from an academic standpoint so I think we're getting a pretty you know I would say a good return on your investment for the students that we have for the tax dollars that you're spending we know we have areas of improvement that's why we show up every month that's why we have

143the discussions that we have um academic and financial right it's it's never the work's never done we're constantly looking for ways to improve I would point out this does not include the vocational millage that districts like Painesville City Riverside Madison Perry and Fairport Harbor pay they're actually paying an additional 1.5 Mills that is represented on this I didn't include it I'm actually going to start including into the future because that's a tax that they pay because they're involved in Auburn career center so all those communities pay 1.5 Mills additional for their Career Tech program we don't pay that because we are part of the compact with through the work that Dr glaven and his team and Mr Heath do to ensure that our students are being educated for that and he shared that with us

144earlier so I'd be happy to answer any questions or share any other information that someone on the board may have could you mention why Perry's is as low as it is still Perry's is yeah I mean that's that's a great that's a great Point Perry has not had a has never passed a levy they never had to they receive money from the power plant which basically funds their schools from that so they have never passed in the last 60 years since you know 1970 I think it's 3 or 78 don't quote it's on one of those two numbers that when we kind of went from that standpoint forward they've not had to pass a new money Levy so they're at What's called the 20 mil floor because you can't in Ohio you can't fall below

14520 mils so in actuality as their property value goes up they see an increase in Revenue because that would actually drop their effective military right because this property value goes up effective mileage goes down so that the homeowner doesn't see an inflation or increase but because they're at the 20 mil floor they actually see that increase they actually benefit from hospital 920 because they've seen increase in Revenue because they're at the 20 Mill floor any other questions pretty impressive I think it's a testament to all the work Mr Heath and his team do not seeing any other questions I will at this time Mr President members of the board action ask for approval items B through f it may all be acted on in one motion so moved second please call the roll Mr Wade

146Miss Payne yes Miss dressling yes Miss Cook yes Mr Tuttle yes motions Carrie 4-0 next on the agenda public participation unfinished business oh unfinished business sorry I don't have that page how much I don't think we have any unfinished business no unfinished business new business yeah yeah new business yes I have a little plug for the fresh air challenge our wonderful Mentor Schools Foundation who funds lots of wonderful classroom grants and a big chunk of the story walks that have been installed at all of our elementary schools across the district has been sponsoring for the last two years a wonderful program for kids to get out and enjoy the outdoors they can win some prizes and they also it's a fundraising opportunity to help the Mentor Schools Foundation to continue their work so Adventure Subaru

147has been a presenting sponsor the last two years and we've switched it to fall because it's a lot easier for classrooms schools to manage the um the hubbub in the fall than it is in the spring so kids are going to have a chance to participate starting September 25th through October 16th it's all of our K-5 buildings as well as cares I believe and so we think Adventure Subaru and we thank all of the staff members and administrators who are helping to do that part it's been a wonderful fundraiser and helps us to make those classroom grants possible so thank you that's it appearing to the public hearing of the public yeah Miss Anderson I don't think I see no um Miss Perry thank you president Tuttle for letting me speak again I do want

148to apologize earlier I let the emotions get the best of me I was angry by what I heard earlier and I spoke with anger and fear in my heart and so I was speaking very quickly I stand by what I said I want to make that clear but I just want to go back and touch on what I spoke about about Robert's Rules of Order in the beginning now of course superintendents Heath's recommendation I don't agree with it but I would like it noted that I did not boo I did not laugh at him or try to belittle him and after he made his decision I'm not going to come back up here and just bring it up over and over and over again I accept his decision I'm sure I am not privy to

149all the information that went into making his decision I respect him as an educator so I respect his decision would I have maybe done the same thing maybe not but I'm not in his position how could I possibly know and I think that's true for every single one of you up here we're not we both live different lives but I can't say that coming these meetings which I have been since March I don't see the decorum that I expected when I first came to this meeting when I came it was for the Shea resolution and I saw a lot of people in my community acting in ways that I don't think the sort of decorum that a meeting that would require a parliamentarian book like Robert's Rules of Order I didn't think that my community

150we were acting in a way that reflected that I think even when I spoke earlier I should have maybe paused and let my checked my emotions a little bit I think that's human people make mistakes but I think that this is a fresh start this is a new school year we can all come here and agree that like we might at all agree with one another but we can at least try to come together and make decisions for the best of kids even when I don't agree with what you've maybe done I'm still going to respect your decisions and I think all of us and myself included I'm saying this up here so that I can be held accountable I want you to hold me accountable that I will always come here and speak in

151the spirit of community thank you thank you appreciate it thank you very much Miss McCullough hi Miss McCullough um thank you Tom Tuttle president Craig Heath um I have a student that's in a high school and last time I came up I was talking about how girls feel less than they are very emotional they feel like they don't have a place a lot a lot of places anymore so now I'm coming to a video that my son brought to my attention today not only my son but all of social media of a boy a very large boy picking on a girl during the lunch time in the high school where were the officers where were the teachers why was this allowed this is unacceptable for a boy to put their hands on a girl this

152is going through a Snapchat social media account for all the kids to watch they're seeing this so I just want to say this this is a part of a gender Theory when there are no boundaries or distinctions drawn boys become comfortable with the idea of putting their hands on girls one generation ago this was Unthinkable uncommon now boys punch and beat girls they invade their private space like bathrooms and locker rooms it will continue and it will get worse when are we going to stop this that is all I have to say please think about it I'm very disturbed by the video I watched anybody could see it on social media too it's there thank you thank you [Applause] Miss McCormick I just wanted to add um since you're still debating on keeping The Bluest

153Eye in the library that The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison is a fictional novel this story revolves around a young African-American girl living in Ohio after the Great Depression while Morrison based this setting of the book on her real hometown of Lorraine Ohio everything in the book is fiction so I do not understand and let me just uh reiterate here what fiction means the definition literature in the form of prose that describes imaginary events and people in case we didn't realize that um there are so many good books out there we don't need books that contain sexually explicit material to teach our children we just don't everything should be age-appropriate and I'd like to thank you Heath for saying that you are taking that into consideration because there's just absolutely no good reason to have

154sexually explicit material in our schools at all even with parental consent even if you tell them oh it's got sexual content and they say it's okay we shouldn't even have to this shouldn't even be a discussion we should trust you to know that you're not going to put sexually explicit material in front of a minor see we're not Banning books we're simply asking that they wait until they are of a mature age in order to read those books they can read those books in college that's fine we don't need them available to 14 year olds that's awesome thank you thank you thank you good evening ah Mr Heath Mr Wade members of the board thanks for the opportunity to speak tonight I was happy to hear you address bussing because that's what I'm here to

155talk about today which I did previously I was very happy to hear about your long and short-term solutions that you're exploring including taking a look at your pay packages is and I know that the protocol is I ask a question you answer it next time but if you wouldn't mind just curious are you looking at pay pay packages for substitutes as well as full-time or both or both thank you okay great that's fantastic to hear um I just feel like I needed to get up here to say a few things about what we're experiencing we parents which I'm I'm sure some of you have already heard about already my children take the bus every day generally they're getting home about a half hour late so it truly is a problem when you say it's a

156problem it really is and that of course especially for us working parents makes things really tough um I have actually picked my son up at Memorial Middle a few times because he's sitting at school still at about 408 PM when school lets out of course at about 3 30 and so I have to go and get him and I go and I pick him up and all the other kids are asking me to take them home too you know so it truly is it truly is a problem and I'm I'm glad to hear that we're exploring some options I am also wondering I heard you say that you're exploring um the GPS systems I'm kind of wondering what happened to the app because we were talking about that I think a meeting or two ago

157about the app that parents can download for tracking purposes I myself we went ahead and just bought an apple tracking device and popped it in my daughter's book bag just to get a sense of where she is but that's part of the I guess what I hope is going to be addressed in the short term that would help parents understand at least until we solve these problems where our kids are and and about what time they're getting home and what time we should head out to the bus stop to go get them I mean these are real issues and I want to add too that you know getting to school has become problematic as well especially for those kids with IEPs that really need to start on time for all sorts of academic reasons and

158learning reasons so I see my times running short again thank you for addressing this what is an incredibly burdensome issue for so many parents um looking forward to seeing what's next and um and that's it thank you thank you appreciate it thank you Mr martello good evening Mr Tuttle Mr Heath Mr Wade members of the board I'm going to be as respectful as I can be by making my point is forceful as possible there are a few there are fewer there are a few institutions in in a town with a greater influence than our schools our school system is a key pillar within our community it's influence and success touches everyone that said our community is very concerned many believe this school system is pursuing an agenda not in alignment with the community's values or

159standards many believe that influence is coming from outside of manner and attempt and attempt to change the social landscape of our city many believe as I do this influence is affecting the decisions that are being made by this board this board struggles to hear the pleas of this community so once again here are their needs we need restrooms that are safe for our daughters we need all inappropriate materials removed from the school libraries we need the focus of Education to be returned to that of the basics we need school resource officers in all our buildings it's tough to Fathom why a school district a few miles to the east to here with a Revenue way less than half of ours has seven our school resource officers school resource officers reduce bullying fights and drug use

160they support order and safety for all we need our school system to reflect the values of this community we need a school system that we can all be proud of we need a school system where money spent is respected and finally we need a school system that can supply local businesses with a needed Workforce that they can be confident in of investing in special special word of thanks to Dr glavin it's doing a phenomenal job so I have to say tonight thank you thank you [Applause] that was our last speaker you are our last speaker good evening Mr Tuttle Mr Heath and other board members first I want to say my daughter wanted me to come here and say that she loved The Bluest Eyes she said it was the best book that she has

161read in Mentor school so far she I made her stay home to do her homework but she she wanted to speak in support of that book she read it in 10th Grade honors last year second I want to say I fully support both levies uh three and four and I played to volunteer and nag my two adult sons to get their friends out to vote I'm not going to tell them how to vote but I tend to tell them how to vote they do whatever they want in the voting booth but um and I wanted to say that strong Community Support education by approving levies the data will show that the top public schools in Ohio which just came out I don't know if anybody saw that data Mentor wasn't in the top but if

162you look at the proportion we spend and blah blah blah you made some good points about you know for what we spend we do really well um but the top public schools in Ohio um those communities support the levees and they are also fiscal fiscally responsible just like Mentor has been since 2004. I moved here in 2001. because of the low taxes and good schools and boy was I shocked in 2004 so that was that was fun but we stayed and and we just love the schools um these top schools also are not wasting time with distractions from a vocal minority questioning the content of books that are celebrated and that demonstrate diversity uh to quote my favorite character bill heslop in my favorite movie Muriel's Wedding you can't stop progress the youth and Mentor

163school districts will have future challenges that we as adults in this room cannot perceive a strong education where students are challenged to think and write and to be part of a community with people who are different from them is an asset that will help them when they are beginning their careers so when a student brings home a book a parent finds objectionable this is when a parent can use this as a learning opportunity to discuss with a child and it's a chance to reinforce your family values and I was going to say something about Elon Musk and my kids talking about him and how that does not align with my values and I have another page and I'm not going to get to it but um I support the levy I think everyone here should

164support the levy and I don't think they should use any decision that the board makes regarding parental rights as a bargaining chip that they will withhold their vote for the levy because they don't like what the board's doing thank you thank you thank you that's it into the list nothing further do we have motion to adjourn second please call the roll Mr Wade it's Payne yes yes stressling yes yes cook yes total yes our next regularly scheduled meeting October 10th 7 pm 9 29.