Mentor Board of Education - July 11, 2023

001good evening the July 11 2023 regular meeting of the mentor Exempted Village Board of education's call to order this meeting is being held in accordance with section 3313.15 of the Ohio revised code please place your mobile phones on silent mode for the meeting Mr Wade please call the roll miss breiner here miss cook here miss jessalyn here Ms Payne here Mr Tuttle here thank you please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance aye political agents to the flag of the United States of America indivisible with liberty I would like to welcome everyone to the July 11 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 item for the board's approval via

002District's paperless Board of Education agenda system board Docs the public can access the agenda through the school district's website the agenda is available through the district's website for public viewing this Sunday prior to the board meeting board members have the opportunity to call the superintendent and Chief Financial Officer for information concerning agenda items and to request if needed additional information there are two places on the agenda when the board entertains comments from the community the first hearing of the public is dedicated to those who wish to address the board on agenda items only the second hearing of the public is dedicated to those who wish to address the board on any subject whether it be an item on the agenda or another issue to participate in hearing of the public interest public section interested speakers

003must 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 the 7 PM meeting in this case the fight PM meaning when it's your turn to speak you'll be called to the microphone when addressing the board please state your name and address questions to the board present each person may speak only once per segment and comments are limited to three minutes the purpose of the hearing of the public is for our community members to address the board the board continues to welcome feedback from the community as an important component to the conducting of business this is the information gathering opportunity for the board an Administration so we can work to best serve our community if at the end of the public participation

004we did not make a statement please know this is no demonstration 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 live and on delayed basis and will be shown on Spectrum cable channel 1026 in Mentor and channel 1025 in Mentor on a lake this meeting is also being recorded and can be found on our YouTube channel Cardinal TV Mentor Ohio thank you at this time we have District highlights and recognitions good evening Mr President members of the board Mr Wade tonight I would like to begin by recognizing one of our administrators I would like to ask Dr Joe Cleveland to please join me at the podium as many

005of you may already know Dr glaven was recently announced as the CTE administrator of the Year by the Ohio Association of Career Technical education he is the director of the Lakeshore Compact and the Director of Business Partnerships and Career Technical education for us here in Mentor Public Schools in his role with that compact he has taken on the responsibility of helping provide CTE experiences for students in the mentor Wycliffe and Euclid school districts but he is also advocated for all CTE students and stakeholders across the state Dr glavin is a model for fellow CTE administrators of what is possible when they collaborate to encourage alignment of business education and government for the betterment of the community and all stakeholders personally I've leaned on Joe for many of the initiatives I'm hoping to expand not only

006within our CTE programs but with industry credentials career pathway development and the K-12 space and connections to our trade unions around Lake County and Northeast Ohio the connections he has established and continues to build on a daily basis are nothing short of amazing and we are extremely lucky to have him here in our district I would like to congratulate the Ohio CTE administrator of the Year Dr Joe glavin one additional item that I wanted to mention before we got started with the rest of the meeting is I have received a couple of questions regarding the nearpod contract that is on our agenda this evening so I wanted to clarify a few things with that product so everyone knows how we use it we originally started using near pod when we first went one-to-one with devices

007back in the 2014 or 2015 school year the tool is for teachers to be able to use interactive presentations with their classrooms for example if a teacher is teaching about the parts of a cell and wants to check if their students are understanding the concept within the presentation slides they have created for their class they can include a slide asking each student to draw their version of a cell and label the parts the teacher can then see each student's drawing in quickly know whether students are understanding that concept the other part of nearpod that we use is their digital citizenship curriculum students do not have access to any content in nearpod the teacher actually provides an access code to the students in their class that links them to their specific presentation slides because we only

008use their digital citizenship curriculum the racial Justice in lgbtq plus presentations that were linked to those blog posts that were shared with us do not apply to our subscription uh Mr Lynch even went so far as to separate out the SEL curriculum that nearpod had packaged with the digital citizenship curriculum a couple of years ago so that we are only using the curriculum we want our teachers to use the contract we have on the agenda today will allow us to use nearpod and the same exact manner we have the last eight or nine years it does not add any curriculum to our subscription it just maintains that digital citizenship component that we find valuable for our students thank you Mr Heath next on the agenda approval of the minutes we have a motion so moved

009second please call the roll Mr Wade Miss Cook yes Miss Briner yes Miss dressling yes Miss Payne yes Mr Tuttle yes it carries 5-0 thank you next on the agenda hearing of the public on agenda items only our first speaker is Jamie Sandy that's going to be his decision good evening everyone my name is Jamie Sandy thank you for calling me forward Mr Lynch time oh thank you one second sir three minutes I appreciate you thank you thank you Mr Sandy yes sir absolutely thank you um so I'm I I live neighboring to a mentor I'm from Kirtland and a resident and I follow Mentor a lot because we do business and Mentor we do sales in residential and I had an opportunity very briefly today to to look at the minutes for the mental

010school and the board and with reviewing some of the notes and not being fully aware of everything that's going on because I just have young children and I started getting involved in our local schools recently I guess when you have children you kind of look at the education and I just wanted to encourage everybody um today and in our schools and our local communities because it's so important and imperative is that education is for teaching and in Mentor you have some of the best facilities and Community I always like to say the parents and families in the community and I I believe that education is meant to educate these children and never to indoctrinate for any particular reasons for any Flags or anything other than the American flag and what it stands for I'm a

011proud American I love our country dearly and I think that there is a lot at stake in our children right now and their education and I think that it's important for parents to always have the role in their children's life for disciplining and to be in addition to education but not some form of indoctrination on any level so today I just wanted to commend everybody that's obviously here that works so hard for Mentor because um your city is renowned in the area and I just wanted to show my support um with Debbie and many of her colleagues obviously as well as please help keep education to education and not indoctrination and uh that's why I just came here today for my small children and I appreciate the opportunity to have these three minutes all right

012thank you very much thank you [Applause] before our next speaker I'd like to remind you that on agenda items only is this first section so thank you very much next our next speaker is Rachel there was no last name given oh yes Rachel Perry oh you did have that one she did it online oh okay good evening president Tuttle it is nice to see you again um I'll be brief I promised the board to take a pledge that I will always vote in favor of a school levy I take voting very seriously I understand that our ancestors died and the Revolutionary War so I would have a say in how my government is ran I also understand that had I been born only 60 years earlier I would not have been born with the right

013to vote so I take it seriously um I vote for school levies because I think it is in the best interest of the children and teenagers of this community that vote of mine is not for sale no offense president Tuttle but your vote on any political policy stunt is not going to influence the way I vote on such an important issue such as funding there may be people here Mr President that choose to weaponize their school-levy vote in that way that is their right and that is their cross to bear but I promise to never use my vote in a way that will be disadvantageous to the important funding and budget issues that are a huge factor in providing the best public education to kids I understand fully that responsible budgeting and funding is a

014huge factor in providing the best and safest educational institutions for our community it is in the best economic interest for all of us that this Levy be put on the ballot and passes with a majority in favor vote thank you president Tuttle thank you very much Debbie Bofill hi I asked how did I reset how did our decent Community ever get to this point for clarification I have always voted yes on levies for the past 40 years in Mentor I'm only going to discuss my top nine reasons tonight for voting no on this new Levy I could probably go on for an hour but I won't number one this school board constantly Rejects and ignores the will input and priorities of the parents in our community number two this school board misused one hundred and

015ten thousand dollars to purchase K through five collaborative classroom book collection that is not age appropriate into our elementary school libraries number three this school board puts their agenda of boys are allowed in the girls bathrooms over the privacy and safety of our female children number four the school board administered secret pronoun surveys to our minor students without parental consent and did not disclose the answers that were given number five the school board advocates for pornographic and obscene reading material under the guise of statements regarding oh the authors award-winning status or the false book Banning label number six this school board just spent in fiscal 2023 4 million 650 000 on Sports improvements which included football and baseball fields plus weight room updates number seven some members of the school board approved two hundred and

016ninety thousand dollars on a better lesson program that trained Educators on successfully implementing CRT and racist ideology to our students the program was pulled but still a perfect example of wasteful spending of our tax dollars number eight the school board paid our former superintendent a salary of a hundred and eighty thousand now they're advocating for a raise for this current woke superintendent this employee will not stop the sale of pronoun buttons in the lunchroom and he won't even make eye contact or respond to any emails that the men are community members write to him and we are the ones he represents and number nine this school board has forgotten the value of two quality education they are more concerned with pandering to an ideology that has brought down the test scores and caused parents to

017homeschool to gain back excellence in education and to gain back faithful morals for their children we are awake and we will not allow you to implode our school system with our hard-earned tax dollars as you continue to destruct our property values my neighbors and I will be voting no until mayner corrects this mess I ask again how did our decent Community ever get to this point [Applause] thank you Kimberly Ann I am Kimberly Ann and I live on Quail Point Lane and I had questions about the nearpod software that you answered in your opening statement for so thank you for that how did you come to that decision no continue There how did you come to the decision question how did you come to the decision to not include the lgbtq portions of the software

018and thank you for not including them my questions tonight were about that specific portion well that was done at the time back when we started that program well what year was that 2014 2014. so I don't know how they came to that conclusion but we're certainly not going to go somewhere we haven't been before with that program it's functioning as we designed or agreed for that process I appreciate that everything this lady said I second I will not be voting to support the levy for all of the reasons that she stated and thank you for stating those reasons thank you [Applause] Lauren Breslin good afternoon all my name is Lauren Breslin and I live on Galloway Court in Mentor tonight I will be addressing the issues of levies it is my understanding that this school

019board may have been irresponsible in their funding of leftist ideologies political agendas and academic activism this must stop I'm what's called a social media influencer I have several personal professional and political accounts across multiple platforms and I can assure you that voters across the country are now fully awake they are paying close attention to the actions of their Community leaders and representatives most are not able to attend or speak at these school board meetings due to work schedules family activities or fear of Retribution I know this to be true even in our Mentor community for example when I attend birthday parties or fire pit Hangouts in my neighborhood my neighbors recognize me and they thank me they watch our school board meetings online they are amazed that even though I homeschool my four children and

020I've only been in Mentor a short while I make the effort to build relationships learn about the issues and then speak up about my research and opinions I'm able to do this because there is no one in the city that I fear or who can retaliate against my family and what are the issues at the core of this potential retaliation for my neighbors first the failure to set and Achieve academic expectations and standards second safety privacy and fairness for all children but especially girls who are currently still subjected to bathroom and locker room altercations and third the fiscal irresponsibility of funding social justice services and lgbtq plus activism these three issues alone are being broadcasted all over social media and momentum is gaining an opposition to any proposed levies finally in doing my research for

021these talking points I learned that a failed Levy would enter the district into a fiscal distress process with the Ohio Department of Education this process has three phases fiscal caution fiscal watch and fiscal emergency an NPR article from March of 2023 which focused on Ohio tax levies stated I quote if a school district is projected to operate it at a deficit the state will require the school to submit a plan to address its budget concerns at this stage if voters do not pass a levy within the fiscal year the district will be under fiscal watch which leads to a fiscal emergency a fiscal emergency puts the finances of the district under the control of a commission created by the state tasked with developing a recovery plan for the school system once a district is in

022a fiscal emergency it could take years to dig itself out and change its status end quote this school board should not be asking for additional money from taxpayers until they get back to academic Basics and provide a quality education within a safe environment men are voters are paying attention they are participating in online discussion forums and they are leaning towards not passing any levies thank you thank you [Applause] Roger Jewell foreign good evening here we are again in another uh board meeting talking about the same subjects uh yeah I would I would love to know what you're writing down on the paper because we've been talking for three years and uh are we playing Tic-Tac-Toe or are we taking notes and listening to people because you can't look people in the eye I don't understand

023that Mr Heath at all but I would appreciate your time and your respect uh until a long list of stuff that somebody else mentioned earlier that you just haven't given us uh the due respect uh absolutely positively opposed to any more woke books and woke programs that this school system this board and this superintendent and the Teachers Association whatever whomever is calling these shots it's got to stop gotta stop and we are absolutely positively going to be doing everything we can between now and November or whenever this goes on for election to vote down any and all School levies they're going to continue to promote political activism politically charged subjects that don't need to be in school these are children that come here for an education we move to Manor to give our kids an

024education in one of what used to be one of the best school systems in the nation in the country now our school system is written about internationally on a national level and internationally for everything that's going wrong in our school system we should be embarrassed this room should be filled with people that are absolutely irate about this you guys have decisions to make there's going to be voting in November there's going to be some changes Swift changes are coming Swift changes are coming the levees are going to go down and they're going to go down hard I predict this I declare this you guys need to start listening no more of this woke stuff stick to educating our kids enough of this stuff our kids need to be taught basic education and how to live

025in society and not have all this stuff pushed on them sex education does not start in kindergarten sex education starts when the parent of the child determines that it's time for sex education to start and you have no right no Authority whatsoever these kids do not belong to you or the school system you guys work for us and it's getting time that we start flying right or we need to resign to positions and get out and go become the political activists that you want to become we don't need it here we need people that are concerned about children's well-being and about their education and about the parents and about this community a realtor stood up and said they can't even sell houses anymore because our education system is in such bad shape thanks for listening

026thank you Lynn Mazika foreign board members Mr Heath Mr Wade thank you for the opportunity to address you this evening the strength of our schools depends on its financial support to provide a safer environment for our students we need to upgrade physical structures significantly we've all talked about this without additional funding this will either be left undone or the funds will have to come from the general fund at the expense of the meat of the school system its academics we all know the cost involved in keeping our properties in good shape we need the permanent Improvement Levy to provide the funds to keep all of our school buildings in good repair again without dedicated funds for this the money comes from the general fund or our facility facilities buses and equipment with a lifespan of

027over five years are not replaced or repaired in a timely method the renewal of the general operating Levy is a no-brainer since this is a renewal there will be no increase in our property taxes I have attended board meetings for almost two years and during that time I have been impressed with Mr Wade's Financial presentations they are complete and transparent they have proven how well the board uses our tax dollars and why they are now asking for the renewal and the permanent Improvement levies and our property values depend on the quality of our school I will vote Yes on those two levies and I will urge others to do the same thank you very much thank you thank you Carol Ashton thank you Kathy McAdams for having me this evening um I guess I could

028be considered a social media influencer too I'm I'm asked by family and friends about issues and candidates uh they know they re that I research everything and that I don't make my decisions lightly so and and I'm always asked for this information um you'll be voting today about two levees that will increase the tax burden of homeowners and renters for the owner of a home valued at 248 000 which I believe maybe it's 284 000 which I believe is the median price of a home um in Mentor will increase at least 248 dollars a year now if those levies pass they will likely cause citizens to lose their homes or apartments possibly causing homelessness will the parents need to decide between food utilities or a tax bill how many families are one patch one paycheck

029away from being evicted or foreclosed on there's a lot of them trust me think of the children this will affect children who may already only have one parent children already um are already hungry children will suffer the most think of the family members and neighbors who are senior citizens barely squeaking by financially will that cause them to lose their home they've lived in for 40 or 50 years how will they afford to the tax increase my as I told an email to the board last week my cost of living increase in my Social Security wasn't 248 dollars a year um should they choose between their prescriptions their food their utilities or their tax bill why should they have to choose that are you willing to have any of that on your conscious I pray to

030God that you do what's right by everyone instead of continuing on a political agenda from with out of control and outrageous spending and not cutting expenses at all you haven't proven that you can make meaningful Cuts in spending thank you that was our last speaker next on the agenda superintendent's report recommendations couple of quick updates uh before we jump into the consent agenda this evening first of all um with the media center checkout process we're continuing to work through that suggestion that was made by Mrs cook at a previous meeting regarding parent notifications of the book students are checking out at the media center Mr Lynch our director of innovation and technology has been working with our media specialist and the software vendor we use for our library materials to get a process in place

031to allow parents to receive those email notifications to the books and materials that their children are checking out of our any of our school libraries this will be an opt-in process where families will that want to receive the email notifications will be able to sign up for this service we will have an email and a form going out to all families to explain the process here in the next few days families will also be able to do this through the annual update process through Infinite Campus as well so we're making some progress on that on that project um we had a book challenge at the last meeting as well I'm continuing to look through both our current board policies and our new board policies through Neola that we hope to have approved at the August

0328th board meeting to determine what steps I will take to resolve the issue as I mentioned to the detective from the mentor Police Department who called the day after the book challenge was issued to let me know that our district had a criminal charge filed against it because the book The Bluest Eye is a supplemental book in our high school curriculum there's a process that we have to follow to remove books from our libraries from our curriculum typically that process is for me to send the book through a committee to review and make uh a report for me to make a recommendation to the board members who would serve on that Review Committee would not be back until middle of August at the earliest so it would take several weeks for the committee to complete

033that review and provide me with that report with our Neola policy manual work just about complete I should be able to make a decision on what direction I will be heading with this book challenge here very soon uh we had a food market uh last week last week the week before um and it was our first food market uh it was on Thursday June 29th it was a huge success uh in collaboration with the United Way of Lake County the city of Mentor Heinen's and the Greater Cleveland food bank we were able to distribute all 6 400 pounds of fresh produce to families in need from our community we provided food to 245 individual households representing over 1 000 people that were served we'll host our next Food Market on Thursday July 27th from 2

034or 12 to 2 p.m just outside the football stadium so that was a very good event Mrs cook will be sharing more information in her update uh here in just a second on academic achievement but I wanted to give everyone a quick overview of our state test scores for the 22-23 school year happy to report that we had increases in 14 of the 20 tested areas this year and saw some significant increases [Applause] and we saw some significant increases in our math scores which is one of my personal goals here for this year we spent about four hours at our district leadership team meeting in June pouring over these numbers to identify the areas of strength and where we still need to improve so that we can put our resources and intervention programs exactly where

035we need them we are looking forward to getting more details about our state report card here in mid-september to see how these scores impact the new star rating system that ode put out last year and finally I want to thank all of our board members here publicly for their hard work and dedication to the creation of our new Neola policy manual we have been working uh we will be having a work session here next week to review the manual and any individual policies that they would like to discuss more in depth prior to final approval of the manual in August there are nearly 500 individual policies that have been edited read reviewed and Wordsmith to get the language exactly the way our board members want it to be as we have discussed previously this is

036the primary function of the Board of Education to set policy that gives our district Direction with this comprehensive policy in place we'll have the most up-to-date policies that follow the state laws federal guidelines and most recent court cases to move our district forward so again I want to thank each of you for all of the work that you've done to complete this project [Applause] Mr President members of the board and Mr wave I wait I have the following recommendations listed under the consent agenda and recommend approval of item six a one through six A2 second please call the roll Mr Wade Miss jesling yes Miss Payne yes Miss Cook yes Miss Brier yes Mr Tuttle yes motion carries 5-0 Mr President members of the board and Mr Wade I'm recommending approval of the agreement between

037Crossroads Health so moved second discussion please call the roll Mr Wade Miss Cook yes Miss dressling yes Miss Brier yes Miss Payne yes Mr Tuttle yes motion carries 5-0 Mr President members of the board Mr Wade I am recommending approval of the memorandum of understanding with Lakeland Community College so moved second discussion call the roll Mr Wade Miss Payne yes Miss dressling yes Miss brighter yes Miss Cook yes Mr Tuttle yes motion carries 5-0 Mr President members of the board and Mr Wade I am recommending approval of the nearpod district license so moved second discussion I do have a little bit of discussion I know we were kind of exchanging back and forth in reference to this organization I know we've been using it for a while and I don't believe that you know any

038of our teachers would go and use those courses the email that you had sent states that the um the two links that were lgbtq with the whole how you can include Pride stuff in your classroom and then also there was a racial Justice piece you stated that that was only sent out to their subscribers of nearpod are our teachers subscribers if we agree to this contract we get the district license so our teachers will get some of those updates yes so they would get that information but again it's not that's outside of the scope of what our subscription is so they wouldn't get those emails they would get the emails but they wouldn't have access specifically to all of that curriculum that's there because we're focusing on the digital citizenship curriculum okay so if they

039got if they received the email they wouldn't be able to actually like click on those links and open them up they'd be able to open those up but it's not it's not part of it you can see what's there but it's not part of the people contract correct okay um is it similar to I'm sorry is it similar to like that advertisement you know the email that they're getting that's like this is the content that we have is that yeah so what what nearpod does is they send out like very regular updates daily weekly updates on hey here's how to use this tool within your pod here's how to use this curriculum within earpod and and those updates are sent out on a pretty regular basis those two I believe were probably sent out during

040February and June which would be black history month for the racial Justice component and then June for pride month with the with the pride resource so my only concern was like the better lessons organization we had an issue with them you know we're not currently using the slideshows anymore that they that were an issue that were divisive but I personally wouldn't support their organization going forward even if they didn't include that stuff only because I feel like it is going to be divisive and there's not a lot of buy-in from all the parents that this is you know something that they would agree with having that kind of political ideology platform so I just don't agree with I understand how we use it and I'm glad that we're not using that portion but because we

041don't have a policy that states you know that those things shouldn't be accessed the fact that they are sending them out to their subscribers and they have access to it makes me a little hesitant especially given the better lesson situation so I understand the explanation I appreciate it but I I personally can't support it with tax dollars because it is a little bit divisive and politically charged with some of their materials and and what I would would share with everyone too I'm obviously our teachers our curriculum Department maybe Mr Wade very very cognizant of the politically charged environment we have here in Mentor every every decision that we're making now there are hours and hours of conversation that go into those things we are at the point with uh I know someone brought up the

042better lessons pieces to the puzzle um and and we're using that that contract in a different way now we are actually in the practice of now requesting all of the professional development slides from every person that presents to our staff and our directors are coming through each of those to make sure that any divisive content is being removed and we're using the resources that we have purchased here for the district in the way that they are intended for us to be using them that's why our focus with this particular item is on that digital citizenship curriculum which is some of the best that's out there appreciate that I think that's that's that provides a little bit more insight I just personally from my standby point I have consistently voted no when it comes to things

043that do have any kind of platform with a political ideology push which could be you know objectionable to a certain you know number of parents or community members so since it's not completely neutral I can't support it but I understand and I appreciate your points okay further discussion please call the roll Mr Wade Miss Dressler yes Miss Cook yes Mr brighter yes Miss Payne no Mr Tuttle yes motion carries 4-1 Mr President members of the board and Mr Wade I am recommending approval of agenda item C1 related to certified personnel and C2 through C4 all related to human resource matters so moved second discussion please call the world Mr Wade Miss dressling yes Miss Payne yes Miss brighter yes Miss Cook yes Mr Tuttle yes oceans carry 5-0 I'm also recommending approval of agenda item

044D related to administrative staff second discussion please call the roll Mr Wade Miss jessling yes Miss Cook yes Miss Pryor yes Miss Payne yes Mr Tuttle yes motions carry 5-0 this concludes my portion of tonight's agenda thank you did you do the board seems not if I were to do my contract let me read it I mean I can I don't want any conflict with that though Board of Education report and recommendations it's recommended that resolution reappointment of Bill Wade is Treasurer Chief Financial Officer and authorizing an employment contract for the treasurer Chief Financial Officer be approved so moved second discussion I just want to say Kudos I think Mr Wade has done a fine job I think he is always bringing light not only to our board meetings he's he's done a really good

045job with his slideshows and um I appreciate everything that you have done I think you've done a very good job thank you further I think we all agree you're very transparent with the community you're able to explain everything and you really take the time to explain any questions that anyone has and appreciate that thank you yes I'd like to say thank you very much Miss Mrs McAdams no I'm sorry you spoke up right don't it get your name right Kathy pardon me you said it you said it all about Mr Wade thank you I appreciate that I'm gonna need to take you guys home for Thanksgiving I just wanted to add that double double that strength show my mom this video please call the roll Mr Wade uh Miss Payne yes yes Miss jessalyn yes

046Miss Briner yes Miss Cook yes Mr Tuttle yes motions carry 5-0 [Applause] so now I get to read the next resolution with his name on it it's recommended to resolution authorizing an addendum to the treasurer's employment contract be approved discussion I don't mean to say more let's please don't call the roll Mr Wade Miss Payne yes Miss jesling yes Miss bryder yes Miss Cook yes Mr Tuttle yes motion carries 5-0 okay you can read three and four correct Mr President members of the board Mr Heath I ask for the approval of the resolution submitting to the electors of the mentor exemptive Village School District the uh the question of renewal of an existing tax levy to avoid an operating deficit be approved discussion I just um comments only because heard a lot from our community

047but I think the vote truly belongs in the hands of the community members and at the recommendation of Mr Wade I do respect his recommendation to go ahead and I will vote for both levies going on the ballot for a vote I think it's important that the community does have a voice in this and that it gets to the ballot so I just wanted to explain my vote on that thank you further discussion please call the roll Mr Wade Miss Cook yes Miss dressling yes Miss breiner yes Miss Payne yes Mr Tuttle yes motion carries 5-0 Mr President members of the board Mr Heath uh the ask for the approval the resolution submitting to the electors of the mentor exemptive Village School District the question of approving an additional 2.5 mil permanent permanent Improvement tax

048levy be approved so moved second discussion please call the role of Mr Wade Miss jessling yes Miss Briner yes Miss Cook yes Miss Payne yes Mr Tuttle yes motion carries 5-0 next on the agenda legislative report that's the way I feel about the legislative report but it's not as long as usual [Laughter] all right the state's two-year operating budget was signed by Governor Mike dewine on July 4th this came after the house in the Senate conference committee members settled many of their differences on the deadline day though the budget changed numerous times along the way one thing stayed the same though supportive of public education are a little disappointed due to this some of the policy changes Ed Choice voucher expansion was kept in the final form of the budget and is set to cost

049Ohio taxpayers an additional 825 million dollars compared to what it is currently spending on vouchers no additional assessment measures report cards financial reporting or audit stipulations have been tied to Ed Choice voucher expansion leaving Ohio taxpayers in the dark if this increased public spending is beneficial to all or only non-public schools and their private interests changes to the State Board of Education were also kept in the final version of the budget signed by governor dewine partially elected sboe is to be stripped of all but its regulatory powers and will no longer be acting in any significant way on behalf of the citizens they represent across Ohio now the major major policy making Powers previously held by the svoe will be given to a cabinet level agency the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce though there

050is much to be disappointed about with HB 33 there are still some wins for public education some notable portions of House Bill 33 are as follows reduces the number of personal income tax brackets to just two with rates of 2.75 and 3.5 percent uses fiscal year 2022 data for base cost inputs maintains the capacity calculation as designed based upon 60 property value and 40 percent income of the residents twenty percent based on the district's federal adjusted gross income per pupil and 20 percent adjusted median per pupil increases the minimum State share percentage for districts from 5 to 10 percent and each of fiscal year 24 and fiscal year 25 and includes the funding for a comprehensive study on the needs of economically disadvantaged students amends the mandatory student retention under the law known as the

051third grade reading guarantee to permit a student to be promoted to the fourth grade if the student's parent or Guardian consults with the student's reading teacher and principal and they agree to the student's promotion regardless of whether the student is at reading level and requires the student to continue receiving reading intervention services until the student reads at grade level requires Ode to provide reimbursements to make School breakfast and lunch free for all students eligible for reduced price meals increases the new teacher-based salary to 35 000 and adjust the step teacher salary schedule requires all sports Gaming revenue revenue to be used to support public and non-public education for students K-12 requires each School District provide free feminine hygiene products to girls enrolled in grades 6 through 12. requires schools to accept cash at athletic and

052school events with a limited exemption for an event at a public facility that is leased by a professional sports team or a privately owned facility Governor dewine spoke on the victories in this budget including the inclusion of the science of reading during a press conference on July 5th dewine said spreading the science of reading to every school in the state so that every child is taught what we now know is the best way to learn to read will be our first and number one priority dewine briefly touched on his expanded responsibilities and cabinet with the creation of the Department of Education and Workforce again only speaking on expanding the science of reading across the state and leaving out that the budget removes nearly all the partially elected sboe's educational responsibilities and gives it to a

053Governor's appointee who will be named in the near future the state board will now be responsible only for Teacher licensure and territory transfers we have some recent recently's legislation household 206 sponsored by reps Gary click and Monica Rob Blaisdell relates to the expulsion of a student from a public school for actions that endanger the health and safety of other students or School Employees this bill has had one Hearing in the house primary and secondary education committee House Bill 211 spent sponsored by rep Jennifer gross which would require a public body to permit members of the public to comment or testify about matters of public concern before the public body at its public meeting and name the sack the free to speak act this bill has been referred to the house state and local government committee

054House Bill 214 sponsored by rep Adam Holmes which would require each public school to adopt a policy regarding certain expectations related to the performance of staff member professional duties this bill has had one Hearing in the house primary and secondary education committee House Bill 216 sponsored by reps Mary lightbody and Josh Williams requires the Department of Education to develop a process for requesting an investigation of a school's compliance with its policy prohibiting harassment intimidation or bullying this bill has been referred to the house primary and secondary education committee House Bill 219 sponsored by reps Adam Byrd and Sean Brennan regards the college credit plus program this bill has been referred to the house higher education committee and House Bill 235 sponsored by rep Sarah Fowler Arthur would make changes regarding membership and election of the

055sboe members and the state board's public meetings this bill is awaiting committee referral Class B last one is SB 128 sponsored by Senator Catherine Ingram requires disclosure of the for-profit status of community community school operators and post-secondary educational institutions on various promotional materials and contracts for employment this bill has been referred to the Senate education committee I had a question about that Mr way you had sent us an update about specifically I think how it was House Bill 33 affected us we actually received more money was is that yeah we're projected uh right now based on the the most recent um estimates to receive about over the next two years a total of 933 thousand dollars okay thank you yep Mrs Brown was it 211 that you said was regarding the bullying and the administration

056of reporting that proposed I didn't get the number recently 216. what was it 260 216. thank you it's data um Mr Heath that I I know every year I've been asking to pull we pull the private schooling and the homeschooling from mentor only Mentor students to see kind of the where that is going so that'll be interesting we can pull that for this year right because the the Ed Choice Voucher Program expansion that's effective for this upcoming school year I believe I believe so it's my understanding as well for 23 24. okay so we'll be able to pull numbers again like we have done before and and one other thing I'll just mention with the bullying piece to the puzzle too because I know that's that's been brought up on a couple of occasions uh

057been working very closely with uh our director of Communications on how we post that information because again we post that and the numbers look really low and then it it's just not a transparent process at all and it it meets the letter of the law but um one of uh Miss estes's goals this year was to to try and be a little bit more open and transparent with that so we're hoping that I actually wrote down a note to to get with her tomorrow to see where we're at with that I know we've got some preliminary information and explanation on that that will not only list just the bullying pieces but getting into the harassment the other kind of the second tier uh uh I can't even remember the name that we call it but

058like mean Behavior type of of activity that goes on um so that we're very clear with that as well so um we hope to have that um out to the community here very soon and is there a way um because I know a lot of parents will say you know my kid was bullied but they didn't necessarily maybe meet the requirement of what the Ohio Revised quote is of bullying but it you know I know we can't disclose if a child is bullied what that other person you know what kind of consequence they're going to receive is there any way that we can include that in the handbook like even if it doesn't meet bullying but if it's X Y and Z so parents do know if it is this then that child will at

059least have this kind of consequence just yeah and and one of the things that we're looking at uh even as we're reporting those bullying activities and the the harassment and mean Behavior activities is the the types of consequences that potentially could be there you know whether it's uh you know a restorative practice was it a detention was it a suspension was it an expulsion we can show some of that overall data as well so we're looking at how that might be reported here in the future too just to make sure we're again we we want to be as open and transparent as we can with some of that and that that's not unique to Mentor at all I would in my previous districts that we've gotten questioned all the time hold on I I know

060there's a lot more stuff going on than that and and there is it just doesn't meet that level of that that technical definition so um so we're going to be a little bit more open with that here moving forward thank you for doing that yeah in the so the discussions we've had about policy we talked at some length about how students will be better acquainted with expectations other than just in the handbook you know sometimes that may not be read closely enough just so that everyone's clear what those behavioral expectations are that how we treat one another and so forth so I know that that's something you have in mind you know that'll be good conversation for us for next week as well when we have that first reading of the policy so that we

061can be clear on some of that too because that might trickle into the administrative guidelines then too and how we how we report how we educate how we share that with students and families moving forward and that's the nice part of having administrative guidelines um is that we we do have access for the public and parents to see even though it might not be in exactly in a policy they can drill down to the administrative guideline and see how we administer you know that policy so I think that's helpful too and good points Miss jesling thank you student achievement student achievement Mrs cook thank you we do have um our state assessment data back now and so tonight I chose because we're not in session we're having a less things going on to just focus

062on the math and the English language arts state test assessment data so what you're seeing on the screens and I'll try to kind of walk through everything here you're going to see two chunks of bar graphs and and the ones on the left are our district scores and I've reported them I've color coded them 2019 2021 2022 2023 and then to the right are the state scores so the state average the state average score is on the right and on the left are our district scores so what you're looking at with the number the percentage there is the percentage of of our students on that particular assessment that scored within the proficient range so met the proficient expectation and there's a few things as we look through I'll try to kind of just highlight some

063things we've definitely you know identified where we need to work where we're making progress but as you're looking at it I think it's informative to see do our Trends follow the same Trends as the state um where we were pre-covered with the 2019 numbers pre-covid 2020 is not included because there was not testing in 2020. and then 2021 is that first year post covid and you'll notice just throughout all of the slides that all of the numbers go down there with both throughout the state and with our district so I hope that that is a good preemptive will talk about grade 3 English language arts and go through and I might call on Mr Heath please jump in if if I'm not explaining it correctly so um for grade 3 English language arts you'll you'll

064notice that um we we made that dip our trend is very similar with the state we are exceeding the state average all four years we have not met pre-pandemic numbers yet we are um working towards it and we had a slight decline from last year to this year for grade 3 English language arts if we look at grade four English language arts we are doing better than the state on all four years our trend is actually also better than the state as well we've made consistent progress there we are not at pre-pandemic numbers yet however we are making more growth than the state average grade five English language arts we are struggling with grade five this is something that we have been talking about as a team as well our grade five is something we

065need to dig into a little bit our numbers are consistently above the state for all four years we are approaching pre-pandemic numbers we're not there yet but we saw a dip from the last year grade six English language arts they are doing fantastic well above the state average for all four years and we are above pre-pandemic numbers for the last two years for grade six so doing well there grades seven English language arts we are almost at pre-pandemic numbers consistently significantly higher than the state average numbers for all four years and um and and varies significantly so on that so grade seven English language arts is doing very nicely and grade eight English language arts has also exceeded pre-pandemic numbers is significantly higher than the state average all four years and then finally we are

066at high school language arts high school language arts is only tested this would be like a sophomore class that's the only time that the state does test language arts so it's language arts too that is correct okay and you can see we are well above all four years well above we are almost at pre-pandemic numbers here and while the state has a trend and this is all of the schools in the state of declining numbers we are not declining at all we are rising and it just shows what an excellent program we have there is there anything you want to add before we move on or clarify um okay great results all right we're going to dive into math now as everyone knows if you've been following along math is the area that we saw

067the greatest need in we were really struggling in math as a district and we initiated a pilot program with the open up math resources we added extra supports in place and educational coaches so we had um oh I don't remember the last time I reported on it but we were looking at our district numbers for math and we saw great gains and that's where as a board we adopted that open up curriculum that we had piloted this year to to go on for the next year because we were really appreciating those results so this is the first Peak that we have had at our Ohio State assessment data so let's look at that right now on the screen you have grade three math um it's it was so shocking to me as I was creating

068these graphs how much the trend line is the same with the state now our numbers are consistently over the state average but you'll notice you know where everyone else in the state dipped we did too and then we build up so you can see us coming back not at pre-pandemic numbers yet but moving towards making growth grade 4 math excellent here we are not at pre-pandemic but approaching pre-pandemic 84.4 percent of our students met the proficient level for grade 4 math compared to 67 percent with the State numbers we made great growth between this year and last year grade 5 math this is our our fifth grade that we um I know our our leadership teams have been working on seeing what where a gap is with this last year we do have a dip

069between 2022 and this year's numbers with the 62.1 percent so we are not we were not increasing we are over the State numbers we are you know consistently over the state average numbers but not where we want to be with that grade level grades six Math is making growth um over the state again over the State numbers our numbers are higher than the state average consistently overall four years for grade six Math however we are and we are making growth but we are not at pre-pandemic numbers yet grades seven math we are approaching pre-pandemic numbers some really nice growth between last year and this year and significantly over the state average at with the state average being at 48 proficiency grade eight math we have this one is a little bit this one has a

070little bit of an asterisk next to it it is our lowest number and I want to explain um some reasoning behind that this is not the numbers that we want of course we're reaching pre-pandemic and we are considerably higher than the state um for three well for for this last year and initially however one thing that is different with our district that not every District does is our eighth graders are highest math students in eighth grade they do not take eighth grade math they take algebra one so 35 percent yes 35 percent of our eighth graders were not included in this math test 35 of our students work you'll see in the algebra 1 number so our highest 35 percent of our math students don't take this test so this does skew our results um

071not to say that we don't need to make sure that all of our students succeed though if we're looking at Algebra 1 this is where remember we have a big chunk we have a third a little over a third of our eighth graders also taking this algebra test we are significantly over the state average and made tremendous growth um the state average being 46 percent of students passing Algebra 1 and us being at almost 75 percent passage proficient rate our pre-pandemic numbers are 81 percent we are not at pre-pandemic numbers yet but making great growth where the rest of the state is in a declining pattern and our final slide is geometry and in Geometry you'll see that we are also over the state average and made great growth between the last year but not

072yet at pre-pandemic numbers is there anything you would add for math no I will have science and social studies uh for the next meeting as well we're digging through a couple more things with that just to make sure that we have everything accurate we spent a lot of time as a district leadership team pouring through these numbers and um that we'll continue to dig into them to figure out what we need to do to uh to get these things to increase we don't just want to get to the pre-pandemic numbers again because again quite honestly there you know for the last 10 to 15 years our numbers especially in in math especially at Middle School have been pretty low and and we want those things to be much higher than they are but we're starting

073to take some steps in the right direction I think with that and that's that's our hope as we move forward thank you Mrs cook you're welcome wonderful Mr Wade thank you Mr Tuttle Mr President members of the board Mr Heath uh present the financial update for uh June that was the last month of our fiscal year so we have closed out our fiscal year we did that on the June 29th meeting when we approved the final Appropriations and then opened up and I will share some of that data with the community and the board again here just to make sure everybody was aware because I don't think anybody was with us that day there are very few people somebody a few people were with us so with that um ultimately the the main thing is

074we came down uh about 535 000 more than we expected in Revenue based on the May forecast we were below our expenditure forecast by just under a million dollars so in comparison to where I thought we'd be in may we were about 1.5 million dollars to the better which means that we deficit spent for the year uh 12.8 million dollars approximately this slide always shows uh kind of where we're at in comparison for June last year to this year our revenues this month were up about 655 thousand dollars again this is just it comes down to unrestricted funding that we got from the state and our investment earnings coming in higher than we expected which is both good you know we continue to get adjustments from the state and interest rates as though they keep

075the go up for us that helps the types of conservative Investments that were required by law to do so we see higher interest rates on those uh safe liquid Investments that we have to make so we continue to have higher than expected interest income overall compared to the same period last year we're about four million dollars better and again like I said the 535 thousand dollars comes down to about 110 from the unrestricted state aid and about 315 000 in uh higher interest earned on our investments so Mr Lynch you can go to the next slide our expenses uh for the month were down about eight hundred fifteen thousand dollars and overall for the year we're up nine million dollars with the majority of that as we've talked about coming in the form of the

076transfer that we made to the Capitol Reserve to fund not only this year for the next few years um I think it's worthwhile to point out with the levy now being approved to be on the ballot if that Levy did pass the money that we did not use that we transferred from the general fund to the Catapult Improvement fund 070 would be transferred back that portion will be transferred back so we would see it one time Revenue surge if in the event that the levy did pass which has been shared multiple times in all the scenarios that I've shared with the board throughout as well going to the next slide uh we're a million dollars less spending um the the main reason 75 percent of that comes down to two purchases that did not hit

077the books we are Cash basis so our entire accounting is not based that if you're an accountant and you're familiar with accrual based accounting we're not an accrual based accounting we only do that one time a year when we close our books and then we have our annual report that's done by the auditor's office otherwise it's all cash based and we did not have we had purchases for buses as I've stated a number of times we purchased five buses a year we put that in the beginning of the year supply chain issues they haven't been delivered yet so we don't release obviously the cash to the company until we receive those buses so those buses were not paid for even though the money is encumbered which means that that bills carries over to the next

078fiscal year so that will show up when those buses come in so we'll have a see us the corresponding Spike the next year so we're down this year that Spike will come back next year the other portion of that large chunk goes to a truck that we had purchased for the same same type of issue supply chain issues truck hasn't been delivered yet once it gets here we'll pay the bill and then that will see a spike in the following year so where it's a savings this year it'll be a hit so to speak in the future so that money is there it'll transfer over but it wasn't budgeted in the next year's budget but the money's there because we've already budgeted this year so it gets kind of confusing because we're Cash basis and

079we don't we don't have accounts receivable accounts payable if you're more familiar with that type of vernacular the annual report card this is this is big amongst the administrative team grading the treasurer here uh on the assumptions that I make uh at the beginning of September based on the budgets they give me so really it's a grading of all of us we share in this grade so up there I have uh the revenue that we projected in September 106 million 351 000 we expected our budget uh in September to be 126.3 million ultimately we finished at revenue of 110 million in expenses that just under 123 million so we were all I had you know 96.65 accuracy on revenue and a 97.13 on expenses that would get me something on my fridge at home if

080I was still in high school myself that being said I digress because ultimately what matters the most is that we were projecting almost a 20 million dollar deficit this year and we reduced that deficit to just under 13 million to 12.759 million um so we undersent our budget and had Revenue that came in um the revenue one threw me for a loop in two major areas that you know we're not going to be 110 next year I wouldn't expect um just based on what happened if you remember back in the spring when we got our tax payment I said we got about an extra million dollars um that people probably paid early because when if you pay your tax if you don't do it through your escrow account which a lot of us do pay

081our taxes to our escrow account but there are people who go into the treasurer's office in Lake County or send them a check and they pay it themselves and sometimes they pay for the full year rather than just the half year so some we don't always know how that's going to work out I'm thinking that we you know my my guess is the reason why we were higher than expected was about a million of that became for people paying early which varies from year to year so next year we'll see a corresponding decrease by a million dollars because again if you pay them early you're not going to pay them twice if you want to feel free to I will take your checks um but I wouldn't and I wouldn't recommend that you do either

082so you know we'll see kind of some of those things that just kind of happen with the way because again it's cash basis so cash comes in cash comes out it all kind of depends on when we get timing of things so things can fluctuate particularly at the end of the year or started of a fiscal year which we are now in here in July um what happens is is now we're dot we've had a cash balance of 68.7 million to start the year we're down to a cash balance of 55.98 so we're still healthy but the the the key here is the fact that we're deficit spending and we're spending down that balance and that's how funding Works in Ohio you know you have flat Revenue because all of our revenues voted in by

083the taxpayers um the only Revenue that we see that's not from the tax basis and again almost 70 percent of our money comes from our local tax base we get State funding and we get a little bit of federal funding into the general fund most of our general fund most of our federal funding comes in the form as we've talked about a number of times outside of the general fund so we get a significant portion of about eight million dollars that sits outside the general fund but we do receive some general fund dollars from the form of Federal Aid as well so as we've talked about a number of times everyone's experienced inflation everyone's experiencing increased costs as are we again like I've shared before the price of buses have gone up drastically you know

084we've seen hundreds of thousand dollars you know a bus that was just below a hundred thousand dollars now is 140 000. you know so that's a 40 increase in two years I mean we're so we're feeling those same same stresses that you are so we're cognizant of the comments that were made tonight about the people who are on fixed incomes because in reality we're on a fixed income you know we owe it to our taxpayers to to make sure that we're spending our dollars as appropriately as possible and making those cuts I would argue that we have made cuts and particularly we've made substantial Cuts over the last two years and I shared in the May update about 11 million dollars worth of cuts that we were able to to Garner through continued reduction of

085staff and through savings through our entire um as well other things that we've done and shared throughout but I think the reality is when you have increasing expenses in flat Revenue at some point you will need additional Revenue dollars I will so the passage of the Lefty will allow us to maintain our current Revenue stream that we have from the 2014 Levy the pi Levy has nothing to do with our general fund operating expenses though I just want to clarify again that's strictly for permanent improvements it will allow us to reduce our expenses in the general fund because we'll be able to take the buses the vehicles the technology and the furniture that we're purchasing out of that thus lowering our expenses year over year because we now have a set of money that we

086are placing on the bioxide I agree with Mrs Payne it's not it should be put up to the vote it's the voter's decision they control our schools in the sense that they've passed the tax revenue that we have and hopefully I've shared the re how we're using that money and what it's going to be used for and what it's going to be done for um and and the advantage that it has for us it'll lower those expenses and that's the impact of that I just want to touch on the fact that the comment was made that would be put into distress if we didn't pass the pi level yeah that's we're not at that point yet that's a little premature um good research um I I think it could you know that is that something

087that could happen down the line if levies don't pass multiple times absolutely if we continue to spend at the rate that we're at and we continue to flatten that expense curve right that's the goal each time we try to get it down a little bit closer you know year over year we'll show that in the Appropriations as well but at some point we regardless even if nobody got a raise and we laid off people at some point just I mean you all appreciate this I mean it's the same thing that Mr McAdams said inflation's higher than your Cola increase or cost of living increase you're going to at some point not have enough Revenue to support that and that's the same situation that we're in it's it's the job of Mr Heath and his team

088and me to explain the impact of the decisions that we make on what that does I often weigh into those discussions probably to the demise of my colleague to the left um because of my experience but the reality is we are a good team we're looking at those things to do that um and we're always trying to find ways to cut costs so that every year here when we do our annual closure out that the June final expenses are much less than what we projected back in September because things change and you know we live within our five-year forecast we make those updates and we try to be as close as we possibly can Mr Lynch can you go to the next slide and I know you can't read this because but what is ultimately

089most important on this sheet and it was uh I'll try to get it online for everybody is the fact that in the uh fiscal year 23 we were projected at or excuse me in 22 we were projected at 116 in our Appropriations and now we're down to 114 two years later so our Appropriations even for this year or less than they were two years ago even with the inflationary costs and that goes back to the reduction in Staffing it goes back to the retirements and replacing people for cheaper teachers and classified staff it goes back to the healthcare concessions that our staff has made it goes back to reductions in budgets by 10 two years ago Mr Heath uh decreed to with the teams to reduce budgets by getting another five percent in in trying

090to find ways to save costs and obviously if you looked at the last slide we're probably going to be below expenses of 114 ideally going into the end of the year because we're always off no matter how tight we tried to budget we usually have our Appropriations a little bit higher anywhere from two to three percent than we actually spend year over year so you know I just like to show that because I think and this is what was approved as the temporary Appropriations will approve the final Appropriations in September and I'll go into a lot more detail much to the demise to Sergeant uh in the back who tries to keep me honestly for every meeting thank you Sergeant Walker um but the reality is is you know this is what we are approving

091now and it will be pretty darn close to us to what we approve in September the thing that we're finalizing here the main thing that will change will be our our cost for staff salaries and benefits because Mrs Burnett though she's been running around like a maniac trying to hire and replace the people that we are replacing this year she doesn't have that finalized yet that won't be finalized probably till the August meeting is if she'd probably like to have it sooner I'm sure but and once we do that then we can run our first pay in September and then we have our first meeting so by the first week of September I know exactly what our about month over month our cost will be for salaries and I can obviously do some simple math

092to get that to refine that number and get it as close to what it's realistically supposed to be so once we come back in September the numbers though they'll be closer they're probably even a little bit lower because we'll know what our our salary costs are because that's that's the biggest estimate the rest of the the rest of the values on the sheet aren't going to change very much if any at all so um I'm happy to answer any questions on that Mr Wade just to clarify because I don't know if the general Community understands what Appropriations are what you're talking about here are how we've reduced expenses so great question the easiest way to explain Appropriations is what's the the authority of the board's given us to spend the money on in specific areas

093so you've given us an authority to spend that amount of money for each of those specific areas so that's our budget so to speak um and what that last slide showed is how the fact that we've tried to flatten that expense curve over the years so that we cannot hold off on asking for a general operating Levy into the future because again I always follow up the fact that we are still going to need that in the future because I don't want someone to say to me well hey we passed if that was so to happen this now you're asking for this well no I've always said it's it's Pi Levy reduction of spending and then a knee for General operating living into the future so just highlighting that trend also did you have a

094slide comparing other local districts I did an event that someone came up with it I shared it last month but no one asked about it because I think probably because I shared last month but we are at the bottom towards the bottom of the county it is good to see it again I love this slide I'm going to update it because it's gonna I need to update it for the current schedule that we have for because we're in tax year 23 collecting on 22 so I'll have that update and I got to update it now that we're doing our another Community financial report which will be sent out I know everyone's gonna be waiting by their mailboxes for that um hope to have that out in September uh with the help of Miss Estes so

095I'll share the most recent uh rankings of where we're at with our effective Village rate thank you any other questions and again I just remind everybody you know that that 12 million dollars that we deficit spent this year was including the transfer out that we had you know we transferred out 14 million dollars for this fiscal year the next three fiscal years so some level if you were to subtract that back out we didn't technically deficit spend because that money's still there we're just using it to spend it in the future president members of the board Mr Heath I asked for the approval of items B through F still moved second discussions we've added thank you please call the roll Mr Wade Miss Payne yes Miss dressling yes Miss breiner yes Miss Cook yes Mr

096Tuttle yes motions carry 5-0 next on the agenda on finish business do we have any none new business next on the agenda I just wanted to mention that we do have a fundraiser it's not a school sponsored fundraiser but there is a fundraiser for one of our men are high school students with cancer um and there is a motorcycle run that will take place if you want to take part it will be this Sunday they're meeting at 11 o'clock here at the high school and cake stands up at noon it is twenty dollars a bike I understand that they're collecting cash at the event or they have um a GoFundMe page so if you're looking looking for that and I believe that they're ending at All Aboard which is the old deekers thank you Mrs

097cook next on the agenda hearing of the public on any topic our first speaker is David Lima there he is David Lima Litchfield Drive we are the proud parents of three Mentor High School graduates who have gone on to have successful careers and our exemplary model citizens they attended Mentor I when their learning was based on the belief that they had the ability to take in information evaluated and come to their own conclusions it was a time when students were viewed by their parents as capable critical thinkers some of the ideas being proposed from some in the community are in my view restrictive in nature suggesting that students are unable to differentiate fact from fiction unable to differentiate truth from falsehood freedom to teach and freedom to learn demands just that freedom that's the American

098way it's the basis of a vibrant democracy not an authoritarian state to the Board of Education do not be pressured in restricting the rich educational experiences now afforded our students hold to the view that our students are capable human beings capable of critical thinking they hold the promise of becoming exemplary model citizens thank you our next speaker is Kimberly Ann [Music] do you want to fix the time he needs a little reminder every once in a while it's okay regarding your comments on the inappropriate books The Bluest Eye and George on your bookshelves you said there is a procedure to go through in order to remove the books but I ask if the building were on fire would you have to consult a bunch of people and be concerned about procedure or would you just

099call the fire department this book issue is just as terrible as a fire as so noted by many of us and that we are expressing that these material go against our religions against our morals and against our values and we have warned you that the books are sexually explicit and don't belong in front of our children here's the procedure walk over to the Bookshelf and remove the book and then do a better job at voting in books making sure they are appropriate regarding voting no on the levy Mr Bill Wade I think is mostly excellent with our money I'm an accountant and have loved his slideshows I don't agree though on spending money on CRT as it is divisive ideology that is definitely dividing men are citizens the point of voting no on the tax

100levy is to impress upon you that you should never have allowed CRT in our classrooms or boys in our in our girls spaces you became political and you forgot your place and you hurt our community and you hurt our children that's not going to go without consequence we will vote no on the tax levies until you stop participating in divisive political issues just go back to teaching Core Curriculum and again Mr Wade your slide shows and explanations are indeed both thorough and transparent and I thank you for that we should let you know that what you're doing well when you're doing well so thank you for that but as I mentioned there are huge divisive things that this board are getting wrong I pray for all of you and you can straighten this out I

101know you can and I have faith in you and regarding the state averages versus The District in proficiency I appreciate your report but the state averages are in the gutter they're tanked they're horrible so for us to be just above that that's not something to go home and pat yourself on the back still 25 a full 25 of our students cannot read and cannot do math that means one in every four of our children should just go home because they're wasting our time you're wasting their time because you can't teach them that's not something we should go home and Pat ourselves on the back on and how do we solve that just stop playing politics stop doing things that are divisive stop introducing ideologies you're concentrating all of your energy on all of these things

102that have nothing to do with what you're supposed to be doing just go back to teaching the Core Curriculum and you will make this excellent again thank you thank you [Applause] gilmay Rose iopolo my Apple yeah I apologize I used to know an iapolo and Iowa yeah I'll get it right sorry Rose that's okay okay I'm speaking to you as an extremely frustrated parent and member of the community it is evident that Annie Payne is the only one sitting up there who's taking the concerns of the majority of taxpayers seriously it seems that most of you have forgotten who you work for so here I am once again up here to plead with you to start listening as you all know I found myself in a place where members of the community and parents in

103the district are reaching out and voicing their concerns they are not asking for much they want our district to start creating a culture where basic education and safety are a priority they want the board to do their job and create policy that removes any opportunities for staff to use their discretion when deciding what our kids are being exposed to they want to know that their school board will not give any more tax dollars to left-wing companies who offer material that indoctrinates rather than educates teachers have so much to carry on a daily basis expecting them to siphon through material to determine what is appropriate is not their job creating policy to allow teachers to teach without the red tape is your job this Board needs to create policy that guarantees there are no Blurred Lines

104when deciding what subject matter is appropriate Ms breiner miss joshling and miss cook last year I watched you vote no to reimburse Annie Payne a very small amount for board training that she received you felt it was too close to the right politically and you couldn't support the use of tax dollars for this well by your standards nearpod is too far left therefore tax dollars should not be given to this company or any company with with this and kind of agenda the recent passing of school choice means that parents no longer have to suffer with the district that continues to ignore them Mentor is a great place to live and to raise a family the time is now to put your own personal beliefs aside start doing your job or else parents will choose another

105school thank you thank you thank you Susan sednick hello or good evening I just I don't have anything prepared other than I'm I'm just a also a frustrated Citizen and and parent normally I would vote for a school levy because I believe that that is beneficial for the children in the community and I I always used to that was my hard and fast rule I I would not do it now I don't believe that um we are serving our students well I think that we allow boys into the girls bathrooms and locker rooms and pretend that that's not risky which it is that's an unsafe environment for the kids especially girls we allow pornography in school libraries and it's unacceptable that should be a no-brainer I thought about maybe doing some research to explain like

106well this is harmful and and this study says this and I I don't need to have studies we all know we know I don't care if the author is a celebrated author and she's got an awards smut is smut and it doesn't belong in our schools we need to do better for our kids they're not safe there's a bunch of garbage this near pod I didn't have a lot of time to research I what I could find it's garbage there's there's I know that that's something that you want to continue with but there's a time where you tell the company like you know what we would stay with you but you are so far to the left it's it's ridiculous and you just you switch it's I just don't think that anybody's listening and I

107you know for the the gentleman that spoke earlier he has young kids I I would advise him to keep your kids at home I think that's the best option here until people start listening you can do much better and keep your kids safe at home thank you thank you thank you [Applause] Roger Jewell Roger Jewel matter of residence since 1977. still playing Tic-Tac-Toe where are we listening to parents here tonight Mr Heath please I'd like your attention all of this is coming to a stop guys all this controversial stuff this 11th day of 2023 July 2023 all this political nonsense is coming to a stop I declare this and the power of the Lord Jesus Christ and I amen amen that's all right say what you want to say Jesus said to his disciples in

108Luke 17 1-2 things that cause people to stumble are bound to come but woe to anyone through whom they come Mr Heath your first year we've seen uh plummeting test scores again that's why we didn't bring them all here tonight open enrollment plummeting what was it 526 people in 2023 here kids that graduated bathrooms and locker rooms are still open to the opposite sex which by the way there's only two our libraries contain highly controversial books containing pornography and sexually explicit materials unsuitable for reading at our monthly board meetings but they're all right to be in libraries the wonderful wonderful thought there one such graphically booked glorifying a father molesting his daughter graphically graphically and almost proudly talking about this in the book is allowed in our high school library and one of our board

109members okayed this and thought it was all right Mr Heath I want to impose or I want to suggest that there are hardened criminals locked away in penitentiaries that have higher ethic and moral standards than what this board is displaying as a father and as a Christian and a God-fearing man I would not put that book in any Library it belongs in a rubbish pile somewhere and the person that wrote it needs to be locked up just my opinion pronouns surveys continue sex education is still being sought after for kindergarteners you've instructed an Administration and a staff to ignore parents and especially conservative parents you publicly stated that federal tax dollars are worth more to you than than our children this track record gives a whole new meaning to the term killing it on all

110eight cylinders it's just not her hitting it on I'll eat cylinders just not happening unfortunately you're here unfortunately we have to deal with this but I promise you this stuff is coming to a stop it's coming to a stop this day this marks the beginning to that end thank you thank you Tiffany Chandler hello everybody hello everyone my name is Tiffany I have a young daughter who attends Mentor Schools I'm a Lakeland College student I'm currently in the process of starting a club called students against trafficking my purpose of talking to you all today is to raise awareness of child sex trafficking and exploitation there are 40.3 million traffic persons globally today and 25 percent of them are children human trafficking has 150 billion per year business more than the NFL NBA MLB and NHL

111combined it has eclipsed the illegal arms trade in 2018 a survey of child sex traffic trafficking victims out of 55 percent of respondents of being in school while they were being trafficking now I know you've all heard about the movie sound of Freedom that just came out on July 4th in regards to child sex trafficking this movie was based on an incredible true story because of the mentor School District Vision includes safety I believe there should be more awareness of global slavery there are some things that can contribute to normalization of child exploitations in our school such as reading material that depicts molestation rape incest and pedophilia in minors these materials are given to and provided to students by Mentor School Board of Education parents and children trust the adults in our schools these trusted

112adults should not be providing sexual explicit content to minors giving these materials minors to minors it is grooming them into accepting this as a normal lifestyle I'm bringing awareness to our schools and to the communities about the dark reality of children being exploited I want to end on a positive note that God's children are not for sale and I encourage every single one of you here to go out and watch the sound of Freedom then maybe you'll have a true realization of potential harm you're creating for our students in suggestion I believe we should house a parent safety awareness night featuring things that can contribute to child sex trafficking and exploitation thank you thank you thank you no further speakers that's it another discussion got a motion to motion to adjourn so move please call

113the roll Mr Wade Ms breiner yes yes Miss Payne yes Miss Cook yes Miss jessalyn yes Mr Tuttle yes motion carries at 5-0 maybe you end at 6 48 pm thank you