Mentor Board of Education - November 2022 Meeting

001good evening the November 8 2022 regular meeting of the men are Exempted Village board of education has called to order this meeting is being held in accordance with section 3313.15 of the Ohio Revised Code Mr Wade please call the roll Miss brighter here miss cook here miss justly present Miss Payne here Mr Tuttle here please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance goodbye the United States foreign good evening Madam president members of the board and Mr Wade at this time I would like to invite Carolyn Fisher to join me at the podium please I'm very excited to recognize Carolyn who was recently selected for the 2022 Ohio Council of teachers of mathematics Buck Martin High School award this is awarded for excellence in mathematics teaching at the high school level the buck Martin award is

002presented for exemplary mathematics teaching to up to three teachers in the state of Ohio each year we are very proud that Carolyn was recognized as one of the best teachers in the state of Ohio in regards to mathematics at this time we would like to recognize her and and congratulate her on winning this award [Applause] [Music] foreign [Applause] president members of the board Mr Wade before we move to the approval of minutes I would like to mention that the October 11 2022 regular meeting minutes that were originally posted to board docs have been revised under the hearing of the public section so just wanted to make mention of that before we got to the approval of minutes this evening and with that we'll move into approval of minutes we have special board meetings for October

00311th October 13th October 27th and November 1st 2022 and our regular board meeting on October 11th so moved second any questions or comments please call the roll Miss Cook yes Miss jessalyn yes Miss Payne yes Mr Tuttle yes Miss brighter yes motion carries 5-0 all right now do you want to mention the board welcomes public participation during our meeting the first opportunity to speak is on agenda items only and then we have a second opportunity to speak on any topic later in the meeting each person may only speak once per segment and comments are limited to three minutes beakers need to announce their name address and where their children attend school if applicable the purpose of hearing of the public is for community members to address the board we must insist you direct your comments

004to the board and not to other audience members it is equally important that everyone has a chance to speak uninterrupted so please do not call out or interrupt when someone else has the floor while we may not all agree on various topics let's demonstrate how to be respectful to one another during our school board meetings as board president it is my job to enforce the rules of the meeting so that the board can conduct its business we kindly ask everyone to respect the expectations of this evening's meeting the hearing of the public portion of our meetings is information gathering for the board and administration so we can work to best serve our community if at the end of the public participation we do not make a statement please know this in no way demonstrates a

005lack of care for comments shared by our community rather we want to be thoughtful in our approach and we will provide a sponsor in a timely manner when appropriate thank you next we have hearing of the public on agenda items only hi Madam president board members Mr Heath and Mr Wade I'm Lynn mazzicka a resident of pinegate mentor and I have a grandson in Middle School I'm here in support of the resolution regarding the license agreement with Neola Inc it is my understanding that a complete review of board policies has not been done in quite some time and that also there is no codified administrative guide presently with as many constant changes in laws both on the federal and state level I agree it is time for the board to contract with an agency that

006is able to keep our policies and administrative guidelines up to date I know it will be a formidable task for the board to review and revise policies and Implement an administrative guide and I applaud your willingness to take on this project and urge you to pass this resolution I'm also in complete support with the changes to the public participation in board meetings again I appreciate the board's willingness to implement rules to allow decorum and orderliness to Prevail at the board meetings these rules need to be strictly enforced to not only the speaker but to the audience again thank you for all you do for our district thank you good hello uh Anna purik 8651 Mentor Road good evening board members um in respect to Neola I strongly object to Contracting um basically you are consigning

007or relegating your duty and responsibility to independently create policy unique to the minor School District I would say Contracting with Neola would be like the Supreme Court of the United States hiring and out Outsourcing their responsibility to adjudicate cases so I strongly object um and further suggest to update your policy what about holding um a battery of meetings where the board members are paid per meeting to deliberate and create policy for this District in respect to um the updates to the public speaking policy Neola I believe currently has a Court a case in the federal district court in respect to their guidance on public participation um the First Amendment to the United States to the constitution for the United States of America guarantees taxpayers voters Americans the right to free speech unabridged and that first

008amendment also gives Americans taxpayers voters uh depending on what Constitution you're looking at whether it's the organic or the corporate the um the right to redress their government for grievances I think that what we've experienced with the chaos as Mr Heath expressed at one of the work sessions is due directly to the board in your policies I'm not going to get into all of them but the main one um where all of this commenced was your policy to you sir parents rights and individual rights with the face mask mandate thank you thank you anyone else on agenda items only [Applause] will move on to superintendent's report and recommendations Mr Heat Madam president members of the board and Mr Wade I have the following recommendations listed under the consent agenda and I'm recommending approval of item

009six a one through six a five so the second any discussion please call the roll Miss Justin yes Miss Payne yes Miss Cook yes Mr Tuttle yes Miss prior yes coaching security five zero Madam president members of the board Mr Wade have the following Board of Education policies on the agenda for second reading and approval and I'm recommending approval of all policies if we could bring up the slide Paul um one thing that I wanted to share with our group I know we've had conversations um during our board work sessions but just wanted to make sure that we were able to share in this in this setting as well um yeah after our last board meeting I recommended that there need needed to be an immediate action taken to change our public participation policy the

010three main components of that policy are that individuals wishing to speak during the public participation must register prior to the start of the meeting individuals will be called to the microphone to speak and then the following individuals are permitted to speak District residents District employees parent or guardians of a student in the district business owner in the district or an elected official whose jurisdiction includes the school district up on the screen we have the form that we had started to talk about and we've tried to finalize here just so that everybody has an idea of what this will look like with this form we're going to have it done electronically for individuals to register ahead of time and in a hard copy format here at the meetings but those people wishing to participate in public

011participation would need to fill that out prior to the meeting um while not written in policy we also have the following administrative guidelines that we had talked about as well in regards to the public participation basically if a question is asked the presiding officer may ask for clarification of that question um and we will get answers to those questions at a subsequent meeting with that in mind as well the question from the last meeting all buildings do say the Pledge and all classrooms to have flags as we've checked I know we made mention of that in our board work sessions as well but wanted to make sure that we kind of started to model that practice here tonight uh the other things there if an individual does sign up and then decides that they do

012not wish to speak they can pass and then if there is a change in topic we will allow that at this time um the other thing that I would want to mention with this policy our board members spend a considerable amount of time discussing the decorum of our meetings and and making sure that we're going to be holding each other accountable to stopping the obscene aggressive threatening and or disruptive behavior uh our presiding officer will be able to interrupt warn or terminate a participant speaking session of these types of comments are made we may request the assistance of our Law Enforcement Officers if the behavior continues to interfere with the orderly progress of the meeting final part that I'll say is that this is Mentor Public Schools and I think we're better than this we

013need to be the ones that are setting the example we expect some of this Behavior to improve we have so many good things going on in this District academically artistically athletically and what we want to be able to do is start to celebrate our students accomplishments create educational opportunities for them that are of interest to them and focus on finding ways to support every single student in our district every single day our hope is that this policy will allow us to get to that point here within our public participation portions of our meetings thank you I'd like to expand a little bit I've had considerable thoughts on it just today I've had it previously as well but there was one a particular situation that happened most recently where we had a retaliation the speaker was

014somewhat aggressive but she was excited but the speaker who I'm not going to name the individual but we have failed in our those guidelines regarding what they do in one word I didn't think of when we had our work session was inflammatory comments even as calm as some people can be calm is it like Stover Lake and smooth articulate but they can be inflammatory and hidden inside of that is I'm not going to say you know I can't interpret what was in the speaker's mind but they're inflammatory and there was a result of that we got a reaction um and she may have said some things and said this speaker expressed some things that were racist but she was very excited and I think she got missed interpreted because she reacted from a very inflammatory

015insightful presentation and I think other people did as well but none of them had the nerve to go up there and speak afterwards and so we need to expand that definition of what makes what is not to be done when they speak even though it's eloquent some people can be if I stood up here and I said things like blacklash and I'm a white person and I've listened to someone say white lash and backlash and whatever it but when it's of the other it can be said and becomes inflammatory and it's just like I feel we need to address that because it's up to the presiding officer to uh be in charge of that and can we add that can we add that word or a word similar to it that expresses and describes inflammatory

016language I mean it solicits a rebuttal first for point of order do we need a motion and then a second to bring it to discussion so we can look into what he's saying oh I apologize no it's okay I'm just trying to follow in my mind Robert's Rules the border is that if we're going to suggest a addendum to the policy that's up for reading we would need probably to it would be best to do a motion to add that then a second and then vote and see if that would be added to the if we're changing it in the policy I'm not sure if you're referring to policy or administrative guidelines though well where was it in what we're Distributing I think it's probably in the policy is what you're referring to Mr mythology

017um so it says uh the presiding officer has the right and power to control the meeting and may take the following actions to ensure an orderly meeting one interrupt warn or terminate or participant session uh request the microphone to be turned off if they made comments that are obscene aggressive and or comments that constitute a threat is what we currently have and your suggestion is including the word inflammatory in there as well is that what you're saying okay I do like that term I think it's something that covers a lot of you know it's inciting a reaction purposefully um so I would I would agree with that I I think we all have to do a better job of holding people accountable to you know the words that they're saying and ensure that on all

018sides they're not you know targeting somebody for race gender sexuality all of those things um and I would agree with what Tom had said inciting or inflammatory whichever is applicable or both words inflammatory and inciting inciting means it's a list you know there was a reaction that was spoken inflammatory may not require that but so both words would do it inflammatory and inciting yeah I guess I still I agree with with Tom I think I certainly think that there are things that we can do such as this that would this form you know and setting some additional guidelines that would help us um but I think it also comes down to us really ensuring that we're all on the same page again as to what is going to be deemed appropriate and inappropriate so that

019we're all on the same page and that might go to Mr Heath to your point where you said you know we all need to work together on that um and do a better job you know as a whole on that I also want to just say too I do you know I'm for the First Amendment rights and I think this is a collaboration um and it's working towards hopefully more peaceful meetings I'm glad that we're not I want to make it clear too that we are not taking away the two sections of public speaking so people can still speak in the beginning on agenda items for the full three minutes and then at the end on anything else for the full three minutes um so had that have not been the case I wouldn't be

020supporting this but that's not the case we are we are still allowing anybody there's no cap no time limit nothing of that sort just just a form to you know pre-register one more question sorry will The Forum we had mentioned possibly an electronic form as well is that something we are still working on just in case somebody's like yeah I'm going to be late everybody knows you know if it's at the end it might be a while so yeah we'll we'll have that available electronically for registration ahead of time and we'll have the hard copies here so uh both we would close that opportunity to pre-register at the beginning of the meeting yeah because one of the things was yeah back and forth back and forth [Music] did you say we needed a motion to

021make that change correct Mrs Payne was correct and her question is say that we would need a motion if we're going to amend what we have currently before us we can still do that we can amend it with a motion and a second and then a vote on the amendment and then once if that passes then you would vote again for the motion a second to approve the policies I'll make that motion I'll second it so could you could you yeah for me to re-read the emotions the motion would be to add after the word obscene inflammatory comma aggressive so we're just adding the word inflammatory after it's obscene in between aggressive correct yes if I heard I just want to make sure so that we would so the motion is to add after the

022word obscene uh in number one on page three inflammatory comma aggressive do you think that the words are really synonymous and inflammatory would be a good substitute then for aggressive because it's followed by come as a constitutive threat which that's how I would describe aggressive so to replace the word aggressive with inflammatory aggressive is conversation somebody dominating a conversation by speaking loud and so you're talking about man or not content isn't that what that is aggressive well so it ends with comments that constitute a threat that's how I would describe aggressive but I don't know I mean we could certainly just add the word leave it in either way so I guess Tom your question is trying to address the situation that you were talking about like how would that have been prevented we would

023need another word to describe that to make us all on the same page for those kind of situations is that kind of what I'm gathering yeah well aggressive is already in there aggressive can stay in just a further definition uh this eliciting inflammatory so is it that you just want it you have the word inflammatory that's all my suggestions so the motion is to add inflammatory after obscene and uh before aggressive and I just did a quick Google search just so everybody knows what inflammatory is because there are different ideas that people may have and it does say especially of speech or writing arousing or intended to arouse angry or violent feelings um so I do think that would cover on all spectrums like it would be a good word to use that's fine so

024the motion is to add inflammatory after I've seen and before aggressive I would support it second is that where you want that's fine second yeah would you motion Tommy yeah did we but did we motion to bring it to discussion yet I don't think we did a we haven't had discussion yet we have the motion and then this pain is the second so now the discussion okay discussion oh no discussion so we'll vote copper roll are we voting on them individually no we're voting we're currently what we're doing is we're voting on The the motion to amend and add the word inflammatory okay so that's all we're voting on right now okay Mr Tuttle yes Miss Payne yes Miss Cook yes Miss jesling yes and Miss Briner yes is it really testimony so not the

025rule skills here that has been added to it and now we're voting on the lot as a whole unless someone wants to do something otherwise so it's the cluster of the policy correct can we I know we had discussed in our special meeting can actually come I think brought it up a couple times about going back to Paradigm is that a discussion that we can or like I don't know where we're at with that so I know I've heard from people on both ends that they think that it might be better suited for our meetings to be held at paradigm I'm in support of it but I don't know where we all landed on that do we need a resolution for that it's just we just I've been in favor of moving back to Paradigm

026for several months I think I'd I'd like to be able to look at the people who attend recognize them place a face with a name all the way over there I can't do that would that would this discussion be better suited for new business public participation not at this point it's not no so I don't think we have a motion or a second for voting on these approvals but I think we can have the discussion about moving to Paradigm underneath the business yeah that's fine so for the approval policies correct make a motion thank you Miss Justin second any discussion please call the roll Miss Justin yes Ms cook yes Miss Payne yes Mr Tuttle yes Miss Reiner yes motions carry with the addendum that we approved in the public participation to a food inflammatory

027thank you Madam president members of the board Mr Wade I'm recommending approval of agenda item C1 related to certified personnel and C2 through C6 with the exception of agenda item C5 C5 is an mou that was actually not voted upon last night by our MCE Union so we're going to need to pull that off at this time that it was in reference to the material handler job description so move second any discussion please call the roll there's pain yes Miss jessalyn yes Miss Cook yes Mr Tuttle yes Miss bryder yes motion carries 5-0 with the removal of memorandum understanding Madam president members of the board Mr Wade I would also like to know to change to item number one under the Board of Education report and recommendations business The Mentor Public Library trustee appointment uh

028the effective uh January 1st 2023 through December 31st of 2029 not December 31st of 2028 as listed on the agenda holy cow that's a long time so just wanted to make note of that please and then this concludes my portion of tonight's agenda thank you certain recommendations so it is recommended the approval of the following Mentor Public School library trustee appointed January 1st 2023 through December 31st 2029 Lori pasanovic so moved second any discussion I just had a procedural question for that are we included in that process or is this like somebody who was appointed how does that process look so the process looks as uh it's the responsibility of the president to appoint two members to the board to go through that also there are some trustee members from the library who sit on

029that as a voting member and then um myself the superintendent and uh Cheryl cunonen from the library executive is also a city member but we are not voting of that and then we go through that we post that and interview the candidates and select the final candidate Lori was one of the finalists in the previous most recent candid pool that we had so she was unanimously selected by the group as a replacement for the person who just resigned from their position so who was involved I know I think it was Mrs cook was involved both times because there were two right there were two we just did it one time so we just used the interviews that we had from before so uh in the original interviews it was Mrs cook Mrs jessling it was

030the uh Miss Henninger and it was myself I don't think Mr Porter was there I'd have to go back to like my notes and then um Miss Snyder who is the treasurer for the library was also involved okay so when you guys spoke about the original person then you just kind of went with the next runner-up for this yep okay we talked about it at the time as I recall because the two finalists candidates were we really had a wonderful slate of candidates it was not easy to make a selection but the two finalists were equally qualified and so we anticipated that there was going to be a vacancy probably before the end of the year and that that would be you know we would ask that candidate if she would be willing to be

031considered if there was a res or a future vacancy that came up and she said yes and accepted when it was offered so thank you foreign yes Miss Cook yes Miss Payne yes Mr Turtle yes Miss Pryor yes motion carries 5-0 Madam president members of the boards recommended the approval of the agreement to provide services between the shared resource center and Mentor Public Schools second a discussion please call the roll Miss dressling yes Dirk Tuttle yes Miss Cook yes Miss Payne yes Miss printer yes motion carries 5-0 Madam president members of the board it's recommended approval for the contractual group between the mentor Exempted Village School District and the City of mentor so moved second discussion I'm just excited excited that on there again you know to have that opportunity for our students to work

032with the city that that partnership to you know make it so that our students have all of the training of our fire department and of our city EMTs to be able to use that equipment it's a really unique experience um just excited that they're willing to to partner with us on that I agree 100 this is such a wonderful addition to our Career Technical education program that you know it's not a version of what students will do it's actually participating and we have such a wonderful fire department that it makes an outstanding educational opportunity for students interested in in the program to get quality training and my understanding is the city uses it as a recruitment tool too so it's valuable to everyone on both sides so it's great to hear please call Miss jessalyn

033yes Miss Payne yes Miss Cook yes Mr Tuttle yes Miss Pryor yes motion carries 5-0 Madam president members of boards recommended for the approval of the license agreement in the Yola Inc so moved second destination please all right can we have discussion on that discussion yes um regarding the existing policies that we have generated that Neola won't secure with legal guidance and their review so I have concern over those are we just going to not keep them are we going to keep them review them restate them yeah I think our process would be that we would look at all of those policies that we currently have that are not part of the Neola policy manual have some conversations as a group figure out what we want to keep those items we would probably still want

034to go through a revision process with our legal counsel because they would be the ones that would be defending us on those policies as opposed to the Neola representation because they would not have that specific policy but those are things that we would continue to look at as we're kind of doing that crosswalk for each of the chapters of the the policy management so then what you're speaking and when you say we all board members will be updated and discuss have a chance to review those yeah before they're deleted yeah there are a couple of uh well there are a total of 10 chapters in both uh both policy manuals so a lot of it is going to be overlap um I've actually sat down kind of went through the contract a little bit more

035to kind of see their step-by-step process which is something that we would obviously try and follow as closely as possible I think that's on uh Pages 13 to 17 of the contract and then I started to map out like who do we need involved in each of those conversations so for example in the Neola policy manual like the the zero zero zero zero section which are the bylaws that would probably be Mr Wade and I and then probably two board members would need to be actively involved in going through that entire chapter because it's all about the bylaws of the board um when we get into the second chapter on Administration it would probably be Mr Wade myself a couple of our board members uh Mr Hammond and Miss uh Burnett because we're talking about

036Administration and what those relationships and those structures would be with the administrative team and as we go down through their things with the programming we would involve our curriculum Department our technology department student services but with each of those chapters anything that's going to be something that maybe we didn't have uh excuse me let me flip that it's something that we currently have that is not in the Neola policy that would go back to whatever uh two board members we would want to include in that conversation to make sure that we get the input and then if there's a revision of that policy needed that we want to continue to add back in that we would go through our legal counsel to take a close look at that and get that policy implemented there yeah

037as you went down you said zero zero zero two two are you talking about then every section the 10 sections having two board members involved in one of those are just we probably wouldn't need two board members for every single section but if there are some policies that we have within the academic program section for example that are things that we currently have in our board policy manual that don't uh exist in the Neola policy manual we would probably want to bring the those two board members together to say okay here's here's the one or two policies that we currently have that are not listed in Neola right now do we need these if we don't need them we can just eliminate them or if we do need them for whatever reason from the historical

038perspective okay let's let's get a revision put together let's put that in front of our our legal council so that we can get that approved thank you I know we kind of talked about this earlier so I'm just going to hit on some points that we discussed the policy changes from the old policy manual to the new Neola policies every single one of those changes would still come to the board for a vote right yeah so it will actually give us some I'm just going to lay out kind of pros and cons here so sure because there are some kinds that I see but I also understand the pros and I do think um some of the pros really outweigh some of the cons so you know one of them is the administrative guidelines which

039we don't currently have sometimes we have our policies and then they're kind of in alignment with orc but they don't really spell out what that means to put it into practice right and I do like that the administrative guidelines with Neola will be available for everybody to view so it's I think it's great for parents to be able to kind of drill down and say okay if it's this policy what does that actually look like in practice and be able to see the administrative guideline on that so I think it adds to the goal of being transparent to a certain degree right um and then the so we would still have the opportunity to see the old policy and what we're switching it to via like a voting process so I like that as well

040because I feel like it's going to take a while to do this but it will be more eyes on everything so if we do find something that we oppose or that I think is you know that I disapprove of then it would give all of us the opportunity to to raise that question so the other thing that we had discussed was that um they do have different options that they recommend so with their policy templates or whatnot they would recommend a certain option and then give you other options that might fit your school you know more appropriately and my question was if you go with those other options not the recommended option will they still legally cover us as long as it's one of their options correct and you said yes okay correct and then

041if we do decide that hey none of these policies fit what we want it to read we can still defer to our lawyers and use them to come up with custom policies okay correct um and I know Kirtland Chardon Madison are just a few of the other districts that utilize them let me just see now the one thing that did just kind of make me question it is we did have that a speaker who just said there's a case in federal court about against Neola I don't I've never heard of that before now so I don't know if that's something that we should look into before we go I wrote that down too so that's something that we'll definitely take a look into and I hadn't heard of that before because I I don't want

042to vote on it and then have it come back that there's this huge case and now we look negligent because we all approved of it you know if it approves and then we didn't do our due diligence um so I don't know if that's something we can do and look into that first I know we want to jump on this and I understand that I can appreciate it but at the same time I think that that scares me a little bit and I would like to at least just run it you know by our lawyers or at least look into it before I would support this I don't know if anybody else feels the same no that's a good point because when she said that my my radar went up on that and so yeah

043and again the other thing I'll mention with that too and there's so much variation on the public participation policies that are out there um you know when I did the research to to bring the recommendations to our group for for our public participation policy um there are some very very very very very restrictive public participation policies out there around the state and ours right now the way we we've just Rewritten it and passed it is still pretty open in comparison and again as we jump into this Neola policy revision you know obviously public participation will be one of those policies that will be that we will need to review and approve again as well um so so there are some tweaks obviously that we can do there I'm wondering if that that court case is

044one of those districts that is really locked everything down with the way they do public participation in their districts I know there's one out there that you know it's the three minutes it's 30 minutes total it's only District residents that's the only people that can participate and it can only be on things on the agenda so you talk and they only participate one time during the the public board meeting so and it's pretty uh it's pretty tight so I'm wondering if maybe that's where maybe some of that's coming from too and I understand that I think my concern is that if it's one of their policies that they were recommending you know I would have some hesitancy without knowing without knowing the details I don't want to I don't want to vote Yes or No

045without knowing because I don't want to be found negligent of not doing due diligence and looking into it um postpone [Music] briefly so that that question could be answered that's a good question and then we could even have a very quick meeting to approve it if the time sensitivity is you know wanting to to advance the contract or we could vote at the December meeting one way or the other but if if time would be important to not wait until the December meeting I think we'd all be happy to to meet briefly to make that consideration would it be possible to even take a recess and how to to contact our lawyer and see I mean this could be you know I I don't know but it could be where a case where a district

046is using Neola however they didn't follow neola's suggestion and they created their own you know their own policy that wasn't advised by Neola and and got him into trouble you know I just I'd hate to hold us up without really kind of looking into it a little bit but quickly yeah I think um I would be surprised I guess if it was that only because they made it very clear to us that they if we do a customized policy they will not support it they will not legally support that policy so I would assume that it wouldn't be bad obviously I don't know that Neil has supported it in that court case is what I'm saying as we we don't know what the court case is so it could yeah yeah we need to find

047out we need to find out if you like before we make it a solid decision um and I don't know if I know we talked about a little bit of at the end for new business but I don't know if that what we talked about at the end might constitute for a special meeting and if that would be something that we can you know move to that special meeting I'm fine with that too because it would be specifically to consider the contract approval just the one item on that on that special meeting yeah because we could we could very quickly find that out here tomorrow and pull something together here fairly quickly with the group [Music] you know even a I don't think I'd want to wait until December I think I'd want to do

048something quicker than that just so that we can get this jump started and go I know typically it's a 10 to 12 month process I think we're going to Fast Track it to maybe eight to ten so that we get it in place before next school year but yeah that's something I think we can uh we can probably get a pretty quick answer and then maybe we can compare calendars here before we leave this evening that we take a quick reset to find that I can make a call and find out I don't know if we'll find it out that quickly I don't know if I would do that because I just don't know if we get in touch with not our legal theme yeah there's no you know there's no guarantee that they're available

049and then what if we have questions I feel like I would prefer to have a little bit more time well according to Robert's Rules we can table it and come back to it at a different time okay so if someone would like to table it you could make a motion to table it and we just need the majority to then table and delay it for for their time yeah I'll make I'll make the motion to table it with the obviously with the thought of presuming it in the near future second I'm sorry um so we've got a motion and a second table all right please call the roll Miss Payne yes Miss jessalyn yes Miss Cook yes Mr Tuttle yes Miss Pryor yes motion carries the table the approval of the license agreement with Neola

0505-0 Mr Heath you're going to look into that yes so maybe under new business then we could set a date yeah Madam president members of the boards recommended the approval of the excuse me approval of the resolution adopting the Miranda of understanding with the coding I don't organization regarding the prescription and protocol for stock epinephrine so second any discussion please call the rule Miss jesslyn yes Miss Payne yes Miss Cook yes Mr Tuttle yes Miss bryder yes motion carries five zero thank you uh legislative report Mr Tuttle thank you uh before I read it I'd like to explain last this is the third month now the timing of my receipt of the update from osbase legal counsel so I apologize I don't know if I sh I should be the one apologizing for so tardiness

051on this but I just distributed it yesterday um I wish I would have had it last week something has happened in the last 12 months that were consistently missing our schedule for us to sit and wait for them but I don't we're not waiting they have a schedule she has a schedule and she misses our schedule which leads me to suggest once again that we move our date our board meeting date at least one week and also to accommodate us to have a weekend of Saturday and Sunday to have the agenda sooner than when we receive it you know if we have a timing that says we get it five days in advance so that we can all have discussion on those agenda items which will help us have conversations on such things as Neola

052and the legislative report here I am late and I'm not the one who's late but I'm going to read it so I think we should have serious conversation to change the date of the month that we issue the board agenda meeting agenda and when the meeting is held give us a little bigger window there move it is I think it'll also give Mr Wade additional time so he and his staff is not crunched to get that out in such short amount of time from the closing of the month even though he has been meeting that I know from my financial experience sometimes it's really difficult to always meet those deadlines without working longer hours so open for discussion anyone can we bring that up under new business as well continue with my legislative report now

053that sounds good I hope it's not boring so the State Board committee discussed Title IX resolution the State Board of education's executive committee discussed the proposed resolution which would do the following declare the state board's unequivocal opposition to the proposed regulatory changes released by the U.S Department of Education on June 23rd 2022. number two support the lawsuit filed by the attorney general and 21 other state attorneys seeking to invalidate the newly enacted Department of Agriculture rules that Tai continued receipt of federal nutritional assistance and other funding rules that tie continued receipt of federal nadush I'm sorry I just read that over I have a small print rules that I continue to receive a federal nutrition assistance and other funding subject to Title IX to the adoption of gender identity policy policies editorialize on that comment

054there's a I don't think that's blackmail or what it certainly squeezing leverage for something that some school districts are not doing and so are they going to change their funding because of that that's so number three direct the Acting Superintendent of Public Instruction to issue a letter to school districts that outlined the State Board of position to the proposed regulatory changes released by usdoe and the rule promulgated by USDA number four require the letter to include the state board's position that the applicable usdoe guidance documents as without legal force and effect and therefore non-binding and unenforceable at this time and urges districts not to offend local policies or procedures based on these guidance documents among other action items in it further the resolution was first introduced in the September state board meeting by board member

055Brendan Shea the State Board heard from numerous organizations and individuals that testified in advance of the proposed resolution being introduced the State Board continued public testimony at the October state board meeting and ultimately voted 12-7 to refer the resolution to the executive committee for further debate and potential amendments some of the members who opposed the resolution being referred to Committee of prep expressed concerns that the committee would fail to act on the resolution state board president Charlotte Maguire scheduled an executive committee meeting on October 31st to discuss the resolution ahead of the November state board meeting the October 31st executive committee meeting provided not only the committee members but the entire state board an opportunity to discuss the resolution State Board member Mike toll offered amendment that modified portions of the initial resolution while keeping

056the sponsor's intent additionally McGuire offered a separate resolution that would do the following reaffirm the state board's unwavering commitment to Excellence in education for all and that education empowers each student to reach his or her full potential as a member of the next great generation of Ohioans to in urge the general assembly to oppose and take appropriate policy action to address Title IX regulatory changes in addition protect and uphold student and parental rights as well as local control of schools and districts as defined in the Ohio Revised Code chapter 3313. [Music] the committee members I'm sorry I'm going to jump ahead here recently introduced legislation House Bill 722 introduced by reps Swearingen and Carruthers to enact the parents Bill of Rights to require public schools to adopt a prescribed policy on Parental notification on student

057health and well-being including allowing a parent to review instructional materials with sexual explicit content prohibit School District Personnel from discouraging or prohibiting parent notification or involvement in critical decisions affecting a student's mental emotional or physical well-being and require schools to create with a parent a health care plan for each student that is approved by the student's parent House Bill 723 introduced by Seitz and Kelly to change the state Teachers Retirement Board membership to allow superannuates to seek election as a contributing or retired member of the board and changes requirements of a contributing board member who retires or leaves employment and later seeks election as a retired board member to understand all that sure House Bill 726 introduced by Thomas Patton to allow a county with the population over 1 million to authorize the property tax

058freeze for owner occupant occupied home for an owner who is at least 60 years of age and whose total income is not over fifty thousand dollars I'll pause for a minute did everybody digest that makes good sense Hospital 733 introduced by reps Edwards and Wilkin I'm going to skip that one about classroom facility and things like that let's move forward to House Bill 739 introduced by Scott lips to prohibit a public or chartered non-public school from discriminating against an individual based on covid-19 vaccination status makes sense Senate Bill 361 introduced by Frank Hoagland to allow school districts to employ Veterans of the U.S armed forces that have met certain requirements to be employed as teachers without licenses that may help feed their at least contribute to solving the problem of shortage of teachers again based

059upon meeting certain requirements Senate Bill 365 introduced by Senator Wilson to require the State Board of the board to update the standards and model curriculum for financial literacy and Entrepreneurship in grades 9 through 12 to include free market capitalism content it's an interesting one this this month there is also part of October in there because they did receive that sometime late in October so that's it thank you uh student achievement report Mrs cook yes the last month has has really been action-packed with learning opportunities family events and Community Partnerships our students and staff completed the first grading period of learning and parents can access student report cards by logging into their Infinite Campus accounts at Ridge Elementary the teachers will choose one student that demonstrates the core value responsibility to the quarterly Awards recognition this

060year Ridge is excited to welcome parents to their recognition program Fairfax Sterling Morton Lake and Orchard Hollow Elementary schools held successful walk to school days with the partnership of the manor fire and police departments at Hopkins our students and staff gathered on the playground by class and were greeted by many members of The MENTOR Police Department the day began by saying the Pledge of Allegiance and the choose to be nice promise before walking around the playground on the path and entering the building at Fairfax there were two meeting points for students and their families to join in to walk to school students each received a pencil and a sticker for participating and Mr Heath Mr Hammond and the mentor Police Department joined in to take part of the fun on October 18th through the 19th

061our third graders throughout the district were tested in the English language arts as part of Ohio's third grade reading guarantee this test represents end of third grade skills and our students will have three opportunities to meet The Benchmark on the state tests and three opportunities to meet the benchmarks on approved alternative reading assessments two of the six opportunities will take place after the school year ends results of this assessment will be available in the winter I believe is that correct with December December Red Ribbon Week takes place October 23rd through October 31st each year the Red Ribbon campaign is the oldest and largest drug prevention program in the nation and it reaches millions of young people each year our students participated by taking a drug-free pledge and participated in spirit days such as red day

062hat day College day and tie-dye day we recently had books Book Fairs held at Hopkins Fairfax Bellflower Sterling Morton Lake and Ridge Elementary Schools the Scholastic Book Fair is typically an annual or biannual event for students and it is led by the PTA and volunteers who have been cleared with background checks students can shop at specific times throughout the week with their classmates and the profits earned at Hopkins are used to help purchase books for each family for a one school one book project the prophets at Lake Elementary and ridge Elementary's book fair were used to purchase books to fill the book vending machine thank you to the amazing PTA and volunteers for these events many of our children enjoy Halloween and there were several family events to enjoy around this holiday the Hopkins PTA

063sponsored an evening event at Memorial with trick-or-treat stations hosted by staff members PTA members and officer Bell 590 people pre-registered for this event the Fairfax PTA planned an event for families and staff that included the book fair concessions a raffle and an opportunity to trick-or-treat at the Trunk or Treat event there was a huge turnout on a gorgeous fall evening the lake PTA also had an excellent turnout for their trunk or treat event for Lake families men around the lake mayor Ava and community members volunteered their time to judge the trunk and costume contests the ridge learning committee planned a family event with the support of the PTA our grade level teachers hosted math games in the cafeteria and the students played games and trick-or-treated at the Trunk or Treat event in the parking lot

064on October 13th The Manor Fine Arts Center hosted our kindness rally this rally brings together high school and middle school students from across Lake giaga and Ashtabula counties the kindness rally is hosted by Mentor High School cards card stands for caring and respect determines success and the values in action foundation and it inspires and motivates students to make a difference and feel United in making kindness caring and respect a priority at their schools the high energy event encourages students passion for Change and encourages them to go back to school and create the meaningful change we encourage schools to bring a group of 25 to 50 students to attend the fun and inspiring program the purpose is to encourage students to be a part of the kindland movement that is bringing together Northeast Ohio communities and

065schools by recognizing and sharing the acts of kindness around us with an emphasis on kindness compassion empathy and understanding students will inevitably create create a Groundswell of positivity that can change School culture at Bellflower our staff and students demonstrated kindness by collecting targeted items to donate to the Lake Humane Society over a two-week period Bellflower is also working with the council for the Aging to make cards for their Valentine's Day meals on wheels delivery the recipients of the cards look forward to this each year and it is a great opportunity to bring joy to people who are otherwise shut in Steve Thomas Sally reached out to Hopkins Fairfax and Bellflower to coordinate sending cards to Sailors who will be deployed for the holidays our students in these buildings will create cards that will be sent

066to Sailors on five different ships and two chaplets Mentor High School theater held their fall play leading ladies it was an absolute hit our theater program put on three amazing performances for close to 700 people we're very proud of the 70 cast and crew students and our advisors who worked on the fall play I know that many of us were able to see that and it was very it was very funny I know Mr Tuttle Mrs Briner were there on the night that I was there so very fun play our fighting Cardinal marching band not only performs weekly at our football games but they also perform at special events and the Ohio state music Education Association competitions on Saturday October 23rd our marching band traveled to the Ohio State University and performed at the football

067stadium for the Buckeye Invitational this past Saturday the band competed at the state finals marching band um competition where they earned an excellent rating we are fortunate at Mentor Schools to have close access to our National Alliance on Mental Health Lake County partner the National Alliance on Mental Health Lake County provides advocacy education support and raises public awareness so that all individuals and families affected by mental health conditions can build Better Lives we utilize this outstanding service for their ending the silence presentations with our students in grades 7 through 12. these presentations share the warning signs of mental health concerns what to look for and how to get help each spring for the past four years we have met with nami representatives to plan for the following school year they are presented to our high

068school and both to both our high school and middle school staff members and in Fall of 2020 they presented virtually to our students in grades 7 9 and 11. in addition they presented virtually on two separate evenings to our parents families can always opt their teenagers out of the presentations our presentations this year took place the weeks of October 17th and 24th for our 9th through 12th graders and they are taking place this week and next week for our seventh and 8th graders in the district Veterans Day is this Friday November 11th and Mentor Schools honors our brave veterans in many ways at Bellflower our students are creating cards for the mail call that takes place on the bus trip that is a part of the Honor Flight Network the Honor Flight Network is a

069national network of independent hubs working together to honor our nation's veterans with an all-expenses paid trip to the memorials in Washington D.C a trip many of our veterans would not otherwise be able to take participation in an honor flight trip gives veterans a chance to share this momentous trip with other veterans to remember friends and comrades lost and share their stories and experiences with others Hopkins Sterling Morton and ridge are honored to welcome our 96 year old World War II veteran Mr zanville Mr zanville is the step-grandfather of two Hopkins Elementary students and he volunteers every year to speak to students of all ages he has been speaking in Mentor Schools for many students over the years and this year he will be speaking to our fourth and fifth graders Orchard Hollow will be honoring

070and celebrating our veterans and service members with a musical tribute on November 11th and a school-wide assembly the musical performance will be videotaped and shared on our school website and in addition our students worked with their buddy classes this month to create thank you letters excuse me they will be sent to service members and Community veterans Fairfax will also host a breakfast to honor veterans invited by our fifth grade students immediately following the breakfast the entire school will take part in an assembly with songs poems and recognition today through November 11th our fourth grade students are participating in the Iowa Test team these tests are used for gifted identification and Reading Writing math science and social studies this satisfies a state requirement for gifted identification in these subjects another up one couple upcoming events um

071at Orchard Hollow um the student council will be holding a food drive for The Helping Hands food pantry and the food drive will go from November 14th through the 18th and finally our Mentor High School football team will play Medina this Friday in Twinsburg so let's go cards good luck thank you lots of good things happening it's a lot thank you for hanging in with me I had a lot to share today love to hear it thank you good good report all right we have Chief Financial officers reporting recommendations Mr Wade thank you madam president members of the board Mr Heath every year we're obligated by law to present a five-year forecast by the end of November so tonight I will present a abbreviated version of this forecast for the board in the community and

072happy to answer any questions that may relate to it plus a kind of reiterate some of the discussions that we had last Tuesday on the first to a larger audience who's here tonight again to kind of share what we're thinking with regards to revenue and reductions into the future with that just a reminder that the majority of our Revenue comes from our local taxpayers 74 almost and about 15 percent comes from the state in the form of State uh restricted unrestricted Aid as well as Homestead and rollback taxes um I will mention at this time if you haven't received yet your copy of our new annual Financial reports we did our mailing this out to every home it is available on our website it does give a good overview of our finances for last fiscal

073year in a format that kind of similar to the way I do my presentation so I encourage you to look through that that is the conclusion it's a kind of a summary of what happened last fiscal year and set the stage for this budget as well as this forecast but I wanted to mention that to the board that we did get that completed and it was uh in the process of being mailed out if you haven't received it you should receive it soon so the remainder of our funds coming from property tax reimbursements and intermediate other sources and in the general fund we receive very little Federal funding so that purple sliver that doesn't even have a percentage would represent our federal funding overall our Revenue as you can see at the top remains relatively

074flat we don't see much growth or change here the previous five years we saw about a point six three percent growth over that five-year period I have projected in our out years that we're going to do substantially better at a 0.66 percent growth over the next five years so three hundredths of a percent growth based on that and what we notice here and I point this out every year this kind of goes back to the fact that in 2024 our emergency Levy our 10-year emergency Levy is expiring that will need to be passed by 2024 and per guidance and requirements for the forecast we can't assume that it's going to pass so in our graph that tan region represents the first collection in 2025 which is the second collection of fiscal year 25. it's counterintuitive

075because our fiscal year starts in July 1st and not on January 1st and then the full collections in 26 and 27. with the majority of our income coming from our local property tax general property tax from Real Estate I wanted to point out a few things on this slide again I just pointed out the emergency Levy coming off I if you do recall back last year I classify things as slightly different than Mr Wilson used to I pull out our Tiff payments and our pop payments that we received for public utility personal property and separate line items as they are able to do so in the forecast so while it looks like we had a little bit of a dip here it's not really a dip it's just you'll see on different slides that I've

076reclassified those revenues so that we can try I can track them more clearly for myself um a couple things I'll point out here again uh we saw last year as a result of the triennial update a increase in our evaluation uh to 2 billion uh 2.1 billion dollars we're assuming about a 175 million dollar change for that same thing to occur in 2024 when we have our other reevaluation so we will see an increase there we're assuming that year over year our real estate property tax will go up about 750 000 as it has historically and we're assuming new construction is going to come in at 8.5 million dollars annually as it has historically as well so that all those assumptions are included in here as well as a 99.9 collection rate on our property

077taxes which we have had historically here in metro schools our public utility personal property as I just said I did break that out in 2019 so again it looks like we didn't have any event in 18 that's just because Mr Wilson classified it in the previous uh line item I have again broke that out and we assumed to remain relatively constant with a growth change of about 1.5 million dollars a year again anywhere you see the tan is because there are emergency Levy implications that could be if it doesn't pass we would be reduced by the appropriate amount of revenue from that emergency Levy we've shared this a number of times with regards to previous presentations both at our forecast updates as well as our Appropriations this is just a look of 10 years obviously

078a look back of actual figures from 17 through 22 and kind of what we're projecting out based on where we're at what we saw and I've said this a number of times is that after covid we saw a decline in that first year back after being shut down in March of 20 we saw a decrease of about 225 kids uh we expected some of those kids and this is generally not just here at Mentor across the state for those kids to return but they have not um you know whether they're being educated at home school or they've gone to non-charter parochials or other Charter Schools or online schools um you know they have not come back to the general public education that we've been seeing so it's something we have to continue to monitor because

079this year our enrollment is down to roughly it's almost 7 000 kids if that Trend continues there's some implications on state funding which is why I have this slide in here so we have to keep a close eye on this what I will say is that we are going to do a enrollment study Mr Heath and I have had this discussion and discussion with the board because the postcovid you know this is based on the analytic information that I have with the program that I use but there are more reliable data sources that we can use through an enrollment study to see if that trend is going to continue or is this us kind of plateauing out here right around the 7000 student range which very well could be as well so it's something we

080do need to keep a close eye on so it's worth pointing out because when we look at the new Fair school funding plan it incorporates four components that they've identified of uh it's a cost-based model and it based the cost of educating a student on Direct classroom instructional student support building leadership and operations and District leadership and accountability and what it does is it uses a for a per pupil funding model and its calculations based on the financial planning software that we have to determine what we've are projecting kind of going forward and they base the cost is currently calculated for two years using Statewide averages from historical actual data and actually the salary data for example goes back to 2018. so it's deflated right because if you you know the salaries that we see

081in 2018 are much different than we're seeing in 2022 2023. so um there's some deflation in these costs built in just based on the the numbers they're using to make those calculations what's important here for us is last year we were receiving about 330 dollars more excuse me in state share than we are this year and that is a result of the fact that our enrollment has decreased but also the fact that we had that triangle update and our property evaluation has increased um State your local capacity is based on a combination of the wealth of the district based on the property evaluation and two income factors for the make up the other 40 percent and because we're considered a high wealth District based on those areas more of the burden falls on our local

082taxpayers I've shown before and with the result we received last state funding per pupil than other comparable districts with that being said though we have seen that decreased enrollment that reduction in state share our state funding actually went up slightly by about point three two percent it should have went we were projecting a little bit more in previous last year when the new model came out but because of that the change in the revaluation as well as the enrollment it's not as large as we think but we are still projecting this to kind of go up in an upward Trend I also then did assume in this that the current funding model would be going in the same direction that it is now however we won't know that until they do the new biennium budget

083every two years the state approves a budget they have to do that by the end of the current fiscal year which is June 30th so once that's determined that could impact our out years we may have more information on where that's leaning closer as we get back to our May update or it may not be clearer until we start to do the budget or forecast for the next physical year as we expected because we're on the guarantee which means that we're guaranteed to not be less than we had back in 2021 uh we had an increase in restricted funding to kind of get us there each year because our unrestricted funding is going up we're seeing a corresponding decrease in our restricted Aid so there's no surprises there for us our property tax allocation which

084basically makes up our Homestead and rollback again is going to remain relatively flat as we project out not seeing a lot of growth there and again the tan area represents the fact of what portion of that was relates to that emergency Levy that expires in 2024. I have this slide on here because this is one of the areas that we've seen probably the most growth as the actual stock market has been very um [Music] I don't even know what the word I want to use I can't think of an appropriate word so I won't say one um so it's because the stock market is not performing as well as it has historically and it's going into a bare mode as they say that's not good for most of us in the room but for school

085districts who are not able to invest in a stock market we can only invest in things that have that are secure that allow us to have access to our cash and that we're going to be safe and they're you know less than five years typically we've seen a huge influx in projected earnings on our investments last year at this time we were actually at .08 percent interest earning that we have and some of our investments are over three percent close to four percent so with that we're seeing about a million dollars a year in investment interest that we weren't projecting even in May of last year so we've seen some growth in these areas here because of just that the way that the interest rates have changed for the Investments that we have in Securities

086and bonds and Commercial paper so key takeaways uh we're forecasting our annual revenue and 23 to actually be up a little bit from what I was uh budgeting back in our Appropriations that we did back in June for July 1st uh to be about 107 million dollars which is up from 106.3 and we'll be using this to track the budgeting moving forward so when I do my monthly presentations when I talk about where our revenue is trending whether it's up or down it's going to be versus this number here now moving forward our Revenue continues to remain relatively fat flat not fat flat in all our out years of the forecast that's just the way that we fund schools in Ohio and with the increase in property valuations from the Lake County auditor is trying

087to update and the fact that our enrollment's declining we have to keep an eye on our state aid because we're projecting about a 330 dollar reduction over the next five years we need to pass our expiring emergency renewal Levy prior to the end of the calendar year 2024 because it generates about 15 million dollars of revenue for us and the district will need to uh consider new Revenue dollars in the near future as part of a strategy to address the revenue shortfalls that we have in comparison to our expenses but that won't be the only thing that we need to do our expenses are made up primarily as we know because we're a service industry we provide education to students and we need support to do that in the form of a variety of support

088staff bus drivers secretaries maintenance custodians and the like so 73 74 percent of our budget is made up of salary and benefits this area right here is a little bit inflated because as we've discussed we've transferred out 14 million dollars this year from the general fund to our 070 capital reserve fund to help us fund our Capital Improvements that we have going on across the district with the other major area being our supply or excuse me purchase services and supplies but because this is inflated because of the one-time larger transfer than usual here it compresses everything else so we're looking for our growth in our expenses over the next five years to look something like we're seeing here on the chart again this one's exaggerated or inflated because of the transfer out into the capital

089reserve fund because we won't be doing that in years 24 and 25 you see a drop and then you see a steady incline what I will say is the way that we check this is we look back at our five-year spend growth over the previous five years and we were at 3.52 percent growth the assumptions that I've made on our expenses puts us at a 3.27 percent growth so we're lower than what we had been historically in our actuals and our projections and it is less but we'll talk about in a minute here it's not going to be less enough we need to do more in our Personnel Services which is our salaries you can see that there's a study incline here that's a because we have an assumptions in here of 2.75 raises for

090all of our employees and 23 24 and 25 I did assume in 26 and 27 that we'd have a 1.5 percent range of increases for employees based on the current economic Outlook that we're seeing with inflation I think those are reasonable assumptions to to make this as accurate as possible it does not assume any change in Staffing so it assumes our staffing levels will remain constant and the other assumption that it does not make is the board approved the early incentive uh for employees retirement incentive it does not include any benefit from that program because it hasn't been finalized yet so remember staff has through December 9th to be able to submit their letter to participate in that program they can pull it back by December 16th if they so choose and then the district's

091going to evaluate to make sure it's economically to our benefit to do so and once that does that we could look at that and see the benefit it's going to have to this area when it comes to employee benefits I'm proud to announce that our increased this year is going to be four percent uh back in may we were projecting I believe 6.25 so we actually did better than we projected um and I can say that's a result of collaboration with the both unions and the board and the administration to make some concessions in health care to plan design which was a part of that savings Medical Mutual told us that if we wouldn't have changed our plan designs we were probably looking at an increase of anywhere from 15 to 18 percent this year

092which would have been a big hit for us two other things that we did as well to to slow that growth down and actually cause it to shrink was we went out for requests for proposals for medical and pharmaceuticals and we were able to get those prices reduced so between the plan designs the requests for proposals for medical as well as the pharmaceutical requests for proposals we were to keep that at four percent this year so that you know not only saved us based on our projections but it saved us on what we could have been if we would have done nothing and just that business as usual uh we are assuming a 6.75 increase in health care in our out years which is well in line with with the national average in health care

093costs increases your year are uh for trendwise for purchase Services I did some research on what the economy looks like right now as we know that the the Federal Reserve is continuing to raise interest rates to subside uh the growth of inflation The Economist that the research that I was looking at they're expecting inflation going into 24 to be about 3.5 percent and then in our out years to be about 2.5 percent so with our budgeting model we challenge our department heads to do a zero-based budgeting model so that we don't just add money to the budget that they had the previous year so we start at zero dollars and they have to justify their spend on what they're spending through the superintendent with the support of the treasurer's office and to make sure it

094aligns to our strategic plan but also is meeting our goals and aligning to our forecast and our budgeting process a five-year forecast and a budget is a very collaborative process it's not my process it's something that we spend a lot of time on as a collective group there's lots of meetings that going on I spent a lot of time working with our department heads presenting in our administrative team meetings and having those discussions they provide me a budget I show them what they told me it was going to be last year we compared to where they're at now we compare it to where it's going to put us in the forecast and we have a lot of those discussions so with that in all of our out years where we have the ability to project

095what we intend to spend and I'll just use technology for example Mr Lynch has a five-year technology plan so he knows which devices he's going to replace and what how much that's going to account for we plug those numbers in in this case where we didn't know or didn't have a good idea of what would be a reasonable cost we did a three and a half percent increase in 24 and then we used two and a half percent for all the out years so when we look at our purchase Services it's our currently our fourth largest area and typically our third largest area of expenses you know we need to continue to Monitor and track that and we see the decrease here in 22 because of the way that we funded schools we no longer

096had to expense some of the tuition funds that we used to previously because the state would give us the money and then deduct it because those students were being educated elsewhere whether they were by choice or because of Court placement or because of their students with special needs and they had to be educated that was reduced from our funding now it's based on where we educate the students so we don't see those expenses so we we saw a reduction of about 1.4 million dollars we are projecting that to you know to almost be back to what it was in 2021 so this is an area that we have to continue to Monitor and probably work to control and subside is I'll show in a little bit later our supplies which is we refer to as

097our 500 accounts you see a large Spike here that wasn't because we were purchasing more in supplies per se it's because we had a policy change that shifted what qualified for a supply versus a capital outlay we raised the threshold from 500 to 5 000 in November 22 so more items are being classified in the supply region than they would have previously which you'll see a decrease on the next slide in capital outlays that corresponds we do see some variances year over year and again that majority of that falls into technology because where technology was coming out of maybe 600s in the you know our capital outlay in the past is now in a supply Mr Lynch and his team have a strong plan for that they present to the board with the capital Improvement

098plan that we do in June so we know what those costs are going to be so those those costs typically relate to a larger technology purchases that we would have in those specific years as I said we changed the policy from 21 to 22 and because it's going to be a fourth fiscal year we're seeing less expenses here in capital outlay and again where we weren't able to zero-based budget we assumed three and a half percent for 24 and a two and a half percent increase in 25 26 and 27. that large green area was represented by this line here that's the 14 million dollars that we transferred from the uh general fund to the capital reserve fund to fund our maintenance and repair and improvements to the district based on our five-year Capital plan

099we do not need that in 24 and 25 because we did it here so we don't see that here and then if we don't change anything and we continue with our Five-Year Plan we're going to need to transfer out 4.2 and 4.8 million dollars respectively in 26 and 27. so key takeaways you know we need to continue to manage our key expenses which we know is our salaries and benefits we have contracts locked in for the next three years that we were able to do so by some of the concessions that we had and benefits to offset those increases in salaries we need to continue to make sure that we're meeting the needs of our students with special needs but also doing so in an economic factor and looking for ways to continue to to

100do that creatively and whether it be through new educational opportunities here or finding the ability to educate our students that meets their needs as well as maintaining our facilities we need to continue to monitor our enrollment to ensure our staffing numbers are in line with historical Trends while not sacrificing educational Excellence or safety and we need to find ways to slow the growth and flatten our expense curve you know this isn't just about needing additional Revenue it's about us needing to continue to tighten our belt and control our expense growth as well it's not we need this and can't do this we can do both we you know we're going to need to look at additional Revenue we're going to need to find ways to cut costs so from a summary standpoint the black represents

101our Revenue the gray area represents our expenses we know that we are currently deficit spending and as a result because we are deficit spending the yellow line represents our cash balance it's going down and if we continue on the trend that we're at we don't do anything differently which we know we're not going to do but we have to provide a forecast and we know that as soon as we provide this forecast variances are going to occur however this is the point of a forecast right one of our fiscal management beliefs is we live within our five-year forecast and we're always trying to do better than our forecast is projecting well if we don't do anything we'll have a negative 7.5 million dollar balance in 2027. and legally that's not acceptable practically it's not acceptable

102so we need to do some things uh differently to continue to make that better um last November I presented a graph uh that I'm accustomed to where the Blue Line represents Revenue the red line represents our expenses and the yellow line here still represents our actual cash balance I like to compare things that's just my nature so when I overlay this year's forecast with where we were at last year the green line is our new expense curve and the red line is our new Revenue curve and you can see that we're projecting revenues to be just a hair higher and our expenses outside of this one-time blip which we again we know is the transfer to the capital reserve fund are trending lower than they were last November so we are flattening the curve we

103just need to continue to flatten that curve even further and as a result our cash balance is more is improved by the difference here in this area I've shown these graphs a number of times uh in a variety of different settings this is what we looked like in fiscal year 22 based on some of the things that we've were able to do last year some of the ways that we're budgeting excluding this area here because of the capital reserve transfer you know we were looking at it ten percent uh roughly in uh 23 last year in this time we're closer to 20 10 in 2025 so we've we've moved we've shifted the you know shifted the need to at least two years based on our current spending practice and what we're able to save last

104year I think that's important to point out because that means that we're not just spending the money that we've budgeted or we're not just continue to spend money previously that we we don't need but again we need to continue to slow that spending down uh because it's the right thing to do we look a lot of times in uh our our world the treasures World CFO world of calendar days of cash on hand the standard is 60 90 is probably the preference with a little bit of a buffer we're at 149 this year 140 next year we dropped down to almost 101 in 2025 and by 2026 if everything remains constant we'd be at 43 and again we know that this isn't possible we can't have less cash than we need to pay our bills

105so something would need to change key things here that I'll just point out were deficit spending each year so we're spending down that cash balance and if we don't do anything different we're at 7.5 million dollars in the whole approximately 78 of our budget salary benefits so if we're going to really kind of control cost it goes back to my comment about the fact that we need to make sure that our staffing aligns to our enrollment and our needs without sacrificing academic success as well as safety we have to pass the renewal that's going to expire in 2024 again it generates 15 million dollars of Revenue annually for us that we need to consider seeking additional funding to support the general fund with the life of the forecast we need to consider additional permanent Improvement

106dollars to finance our five-year Capital plan and not have that money be spent out of the general fund and we need to also strongly consider additional general fund operating dollars to support the life of the forecast and there's two things that I added to this slide we need to to reduce our expenses and this forecast was presented last night to the citizens Financial advisory committee and they approved uh the recommendation to the board for approval for tonight um so again we did we had to shift that from Thursday of last week and I joked with him last night because it was 75 and Sunny last Thursday and it was 5 30 and dark yesterday so everyone came because we had some attendance uh conflicts that we couldn't be there but I understand and I was

107just happy that we could present this to them and we had some good discussion and they were in agreement with the assumptions that we've made here so before I move on is there any specific questions from any of the board members on the projections or the the current forecast that we have presented special kudos to you Mr Wade for managing that Health Care piece that's such a substantial benefit without losing quality care for employees but also avoiding that 18 percent bump that could have potentially happened if you hadn't had your eye on Dad so that we could do both things and and maintain our cash longer well it truly is a team effort you know it was a collaboration with both unions we have a great support system with our consultant that we use through

108Gallagher uh in helping educate our staff education our Administration you know we're that's a cost that we can't control right you know that you don't know what's going to happen to your employees from a health standpoint so there's there's that uncontrollable Factor you don't know how the Market's going to fluctuate so you know you can't continue to do business as usual you have to you know make sure you're you're doing the request for proposals not just assuming that you're getting the bus rates you know testing the market because that was very beneficial for us because Medical Mutual and United Healthcare battled with each other because they both wanted our business and they they were able to drive the cost down for us to our benefit um and you know and that the next stage because

109we can't renegotiate medical we can't renegotiate pharmaceutical product for another two to three years and we're not sitting in front of our teachers unions to look at plan design and anything else so now we just need to continue to educate our employees and adjust our wellness program to make sure that we're we're controlling those costs the best that we can with best practices so that that is important bill I had um just wanted to touch on one thing the enrollment I know we had some questions enrollment is going down but our staffing has actually gone up is that one area that we're going to kind of look into to yeah I'm gonna I have that same slide from our meeting from Nova uh the first yeah yep I'm going to touch it because I would

110just also want to know I know we have some areas where the Staffing is not as much as what we would like to see I know we have mentioned Hopkins before has a high you know student ratio for the teacher so I didn't know if we could kind of touch base on that but obviously you have it coming up yes I do yeah because again because it's not just about asking for new Revenue right it is we can't just say we're going to solve the issue with Revenue we've got to solve the issue with controlling expenses at the same time um so before I move on is there any other questions about assumptions made or where we're looking financially okay so if we were again to not do anything this slide here shows that we

111you know we obviously are deficit spending so we're going to need additional revenue for to fund things as is General operating Revenue if we were to have a levy this year we'd almost need 7.3 Mills on the upper end to cover our uh increasing expenses not only for this year but the out years if we wait one year obviously you're delaying the additional Revenue so the collection is longer we've spent down our reserves we will need more at 9.23 and if you wait till 2025 you're up over almost 10 mils nobody in this room wants 10 mils nobody at this table wants 10 mils no one in this Administration thinks that that's a good idea I just show it as a point of reference for discussion um and that's kind of where we're at if

112everything stays the same that's interesting um so one of the things that I would point out is that one area that we have expenses that we generate additional Revenue that's separate from the general fund in its own set fund it's the 003 fund it's the permanent Improvement fund it's a tax that was passed back in 1988 it collects approximately a million dollars a year and if we were to adjust that for inflation since 1988 that's less than half of what it could buy in 88 you know if we if you were to pass a one mil Levy today and Mentor that one mill Levy would generate 2.2 million dollars we've talked about the fact that the uh Carnegie mellon's done a research paper where they have stated that if you want to effectively address your

113inadequate investment in school facility maintenance that you should have a two percent replacement value of your buildings uh in grounds I've talked about the fact that you know I simply just used the 250 million dollars as the replacement value because that's our total insured value we've had discussions that that's probably deflated to be quite honest because we couldn't replace every building in this District probably for that amount but from a simplicity's sake if we're looking at two percent and 250 million dollars we would need about at least five million dollars annually just to maintain our buildings well if you look at the fact that we only have a million dollars and if you look at our five-year Capital plan which averages about 3.7 million annually we're actually spending about 4.5 million dollars a year on

114our are just our buildings maintenance improvements and repairs I know this is hard to read but I'll just get to the gist of it what this shows is how much we collect and revenue each of the next five years from the permanent Improvement Levy we do set aside a hundred thousand dollars of that fund annually to support our continued um initiative with regards to our straight a grant which was part of that grant that we were required to do the board has approved and gets an update on our Capital plan every five years we have facility plan we have some expenses that we send to our construction manager at risk who kind of oversees those projects so here's what we spent in total each year on average it comes out to be about 4.5 million

115dollars but there are other things that we buy in our district that can be considered to be permanent improvements a permanent Improvement allowable expense is anything that has a useful life of five years so any vehicle that we purchase and we have a vehicle replacement cycle because we have lots of different vehicles that we have in the district for example the vans that our maintenance team drives the trucks that are material handlers drive so on and so forth the trucks that are grounds crew drives to plows we have buses we have 78 buses in this District every year we replace five that makes every bus have a useful life of about 15.2 years the average life expectancy of a bus is 12 to 15 years so our replacement plan puts us on the higher end

116of that so that we're not delaying the repair and we're not spending large sums of money at one time on buses and we're avoiding the extra costs of replacing and repairing buses going forward our Tech plan that we have our furniture plan that we have is all part of this Capital plan that we present annually uh one of the things that I've instituted since I've been back in the district is business operations as well as the the new Treasurer with the help of Mr Kolar and Mr vaccarello is that we have a roof plan that we instituted we also need to have a Paving and cement plan because you know we don't want to get to the point where we had here at the high school if we can avoid it where the parking lot's

117so damaged that it's almost undrivable we also don't want to have sidewalks that have cracks that become tripping hazards that put students and staff at risk you know we don't want students getting hurt we don't want visitors getting hurt and we don't want staff getting hurt and then having workers comp claims that could lead to increased costs that that we can control by having a plan to control the safety of the sidewalks and the paving so we've added that to this line the reason why it's important is because if you add up all these areas and then get an average that's another two million dollars so which this says is that on average if we were to take our Capital plan as well as our other expenses that we currently spend on the general fund

118we're spending about 6.5 million dollars a year out of the general fund that could be spent out of the permanent Improvement fund because those are expenses that all have a useful life of five years and those are just the big ones there's other things that we do day to day that are plumbers or other maintenance or Mr colar approves through business operation and things that we need to get done that we do you know that we have in our budget for our general fund but I just wanted to kind of keep things relatively um tangible for everybody to be able to conceptualize if we pass a 2.5 mil Levy permanent Improvement Levy by the end of calendar year 23 so it starts collecting in the spring of 24 which is our end of the fiscal

119year we get about 2.7 million dollars there and then in all the out years we get about another 5.6 million bringing the annual collection of about to 6.5 million dollars a couple things can happen where you can take 8.4 million of that 14 million dollars that we transferred this year and put it back in the general fund so we'll get a one-time Revenue stream of money going back into the general fund from the 070 Capital Improvement fund we would also have enough money to cover all of our Capital Improvement plans in the out years as well as reduce the expenses in the general fund in all of these areas from 25 down putting that money back into the general fund because we've reduced the expense because those are all purchases that can be made out

120of an 003 General permanent Improvement expense and not out of the general fund it also leaves us a little bit of a cushion in the event that we have a roof or a project that goes sooner than we expected so that we can actually you know be in a good sound fiscals place and make sure that we're not taking away from the instructional needs of the students so if we were to take every assumption that I just presented 15 20 minutes ago and now add in at 2.5 mil permanent Improvement Levy and again reduce all these expenses here out of the general fund as a result in 2024 we actually have a positive balance we're not deficit spending we quickly start to Def suspend again in the out years however that negative 7.5 million dollars

121is now a positive 14 million dollars so we've flipped the script by 21 million dollars by passing that 2.5 mil permanent Improvement Levy and again permanent Improvement Levy funds can only be spent on things that have a useful life of five years they cannot be spent on salaries or benefits or other operating costs so they're restricted well if you take the forecast that I just had up here and you compare it to the update with the 2.5 mil Pi Levy you can see that that 10 percent which was in 2025 is now pushed out to 2026. so we're in a much better situation by pushing that out even further and we're you know we're in the we're in the green and the yellow a little bit longer so it puts us in a better financial

122position what I showed on Tuesday last week was multiple scenarios I showed a here the blue line is what I've presented and I will be seeking for approval tonight I also showed the board what a 1.5 mil Pi Levy would look like a two mil Levy would look like and this is the 2.5 and the reason why I'm recommending the 2.5 is because it covers all the cost of those areas that I had up on the screen which are truly permanent Improvement costs that should be paid for out of restricted permanent proven funds and not out of the general fund and it also puts us in a much better economic position the estimated cost of the taxpayer because I know this is always an important cost to all of us because it does have a

123cost if we have a 2.5 mil Levy and the market value of your house is a hundred thousand dollars which means it could sell for a hundred thousand dollars you would pay 87.50 for the year and the reason why we use a hundred thousand dollars because homes cost anywhere from a hundred to seven hundred thousand dollars so what you would do is just multiply the market value of your home by the appropriate number so if you have a 350 000 house multiply this 87.5 by three and a half and that would tell you how much your taxes would increase for a given year because many people pay monthly and they pay into their escrow I also broke it out as what it would cost you monthly per hundred thousand dollars it's seven dollars and twenty

124nine cents so if I live in a three hundred thousand dollar house it's gonna be 21 90 87 2187 a month but the thing that we need to realize is as I said in the last slide is that alone doesn't solve the issue and the other thing that I shared with the board is that we will need General operating dollars and this scenario here shows we passed the 2.5 mil Levy in calendar year 23. and then we asked for five Mills in 2024 for General operating dollars and the reason why I show this is because that will start collecting in a half collection of 25 of about 5.5 and it will generate 11 million dollars every year after that uh for the term of the the levy so if we did it for five years

125it'd be for five years then we'd have to renew it um but you can see again we have that positive here that we had because of the the permanent Improvement Levy for reducing those expenses the amount that we're deficit spending in the 2025 is you know 5.5 million dollars left but we're still deficit spending but when we do the full collection we're still deficit spending well the reason why I chose five Mills is because I think five mils would be the ceiling of what we would want to recommend to the board from ours perspective uh to ask the community for additional Revenue because of just the way that we've seen statistically that communities in general respond to levies over five Mills and ideally we wouldn't want to ask for five mils at all or we'd

126want to be able to push this off a little bit later and have a similar scenario but the reason why I show this is because this this demonstrates that we can't continue on the expense trajectory that we're on we have to tighten our belts we have to reduce our spending by next year by at least two million dollars in some of these out years so we can't continue the business as usual because if if we can couple things could potentially happen we can ask for less than five mils or we can push it out to 2025 and ask for a little bit less than five mils but then continue our Levy cycle the last Levy was in 2004 lasted 12 years to get us to 2016. and if we're going on for a new Levy

127for General operating funds in 24-25 now we're looking at eight or nine years so our life cycle of levees in this District's 10 years that's twice as good as the average across the state which is five years and I wouldn't want to ask for five mils if it's only going to last me you know am I going to 28 because it's not on here I'd probably need to ask for money again right if I continue the spending trajectory which is why I don't think it's I'm not recommending that I'm recommending that we make cuts and we you know we start to tighten our belt a little bit to get things and put us in a much better position moving forward Mrs Payne this is the graph you were referring to so this graph here shows

128a lot of good information it's actually very positive you know this this here doesn't look that positive but maybe you don't even know what that means X I haven't explained it but what this shows is our enrollment is declining our staffing has actually declined at a greater rate so we've done a great job controlling the reduction in enrollment with our reduction in staff a lot of this is done through attrition we've reduced a number of buildings in the district over time we've done things to restructure which is great but we all know what happened in 2020 going into 2021 we had covid the district made the decision to add additional staff so that we could have Elementary School in session four days a week for those who wanted it as well as keep smaller class

129sizes so we could spread kids out so we see an increase in staff here while we saw that dip in student enrollment here my data ends at this point right here because we're still waiting for the state to publish the 2022 data and I'll share that with the board in the community when it comes through because this line will flatten out a little bit because we did reduce staff going into 2022 but this just shows you know we got to continue to monitor this and I added my Appropriations staffing chart for everybody because this shows that in 2020 we had about 987.85 total staff in all of our funds because we pay for some of our staff out of Esser funds for you know during Covey we pay for some of our special education staff

130out of federal grants so we pay for all of our cares employees out of their own special account because they generate their own Revenue to cover their costs but when you look at this in totality so this is not just general fund alone you can see here's that spike in 2021 I'm going up we dropped a little bit in 2022 we've dropped again in 2023 but we're still not at the numbers that we were in 2020 and we have less students so we're still a little bit chunky is the running joke that I have with our administrative team with regards to Staffing and that's something we need to continue to right size um so and that could happen through the retirement incentive right if more people are taking this up we can you know instead

131of having to necessarily Rift people we're looking at doing that through attrition which is another benefit of the incentive that we're having as we look forward um and we kind of continue to do that so I mean the numbers don't lie we have a declining enrollment we're still trying to right size from pre-covered we're making progress but if we're going to try to flatten that curve the sooner we can make that progress and right size the more savings that we have and the better it is each year in the out year because if you save money early you save more of it in the long term the other area that we have to continue to monitor is our 500s and 600s and the reason why I combined both of these here on this column stack

132chart is because it is difficult to analyze because of the policy change what was qualified as a you know a supply versus what qualified as the capital outlay in the past so it's just easier to combine the two and look at them in their totality and we can see that in 2020 we're at about I think that says five and a half million dollars if I remember correctly um but you can see we went up drastically in 21 and 22 but that was because of covet we had increased expenses we had purchases that we weren't typically having to make that we were having to make during that time we had an increase in costs for cleaning supplies and so on and so forth but what we need to do is then okay these need to

133be reduced so we can see here based on what we did previous to covid and where we're at we can right size our supplies and our capital outlay a little bit by maybe restricting some of the things that we're doing and maybe save 400 500 000 here by digging into it and getting deeper and challenging ourselves and challenging our department heads to find ways to cut costs there not on budgets this is on actual spends so you know you know not you know not when we do our budget next year or not looking at what we did in budgeting last year let's look at our actual spend and figure out what we're going to be doing same thing's true in our purchase services again we saw that 1.4 million dollar drop here because of a

134change in the way that we were funding from the state and then we see it's you know reasonable assumptions based on the budgeting that we have but we can see that you know we're creeping up so where can we where can we find some some money there to control costs as well so again this isn't just about asking for additional Revenue this is about finding ways to continue to tighten our belt and reduce our expenses at the same time so Levy options and timelines again we have to pass the expiring emergency Levy in 2024 we need to discuss whether it's going to be an emergency Levy renewal which means we can put it up for five or ten years it is expiring now for 10-year so my recommendation if we do stick with an emergency

135Levy that we would do it for another 10 years if we have to go to a substitute Levy substitute Levy it has shows some growth in an emergency Levy doesn't and substitute Levy brings in additional Revenue with new construction That You Don't See with an emergency Levy um so that might be an option that we might want to look at to to build in some some increased Revenue growth that's voted the other thing that a substitute Levy does that an emergency Levy does is that you can put it up for a continuous amount and I think that's something we should consider we've shown the taxpayers for the last 18 years since it was passed in 2004 that we've used that money wisely we've been good stewards of their money we've like I said we're on

136an average life cycle right now of about 10 years based on what we're projecting out and I think it would be potentially something we should consider so that we don't have to continue to vote on the renewal of that Levy in the future because regardless we can't afford to lose 15 million dollars that would be a lot you know if you think about an average teacher's salary with benefits and Medicare and insurance and everything else is about a hundred thousand dollars it takes 10 to get you to a million multiply that by 15 we'd have class size issues everywhere right and I'm not suggesting we do that I'm just saying that's the cost right that's the cost of that emergency renewal not passing because when you have 15 million dollars and you don't even spend

137that in if you remember we don't even spend that much in our supplies and capital outlay it's only about six and a half million dollars so we could get rid of all of our supplies and all of our capital outlay and still not cover that so it's not again it's not those these aren't threats these are just numerical realities things that we need to be cognizant of things we need to be considerate of as we continue to move forward our recommendation and I I say ours that I speak for Mr Heath and myself on this I believe that we we've had a lot of discussion on that we would suggest that the the board puts a two and a half mil levy on in 2023 with the expiring emergency Levy as two issues so that

138we can start that collection as soon as calendar year 24 so the second half of 2024 so that those assumptions that I showed here tonight would come to fruition and then I think we need to continue to monitor the cuts that we're making and the impact that that's having on the forecast because I think we want to have the discussion of how little of a levy do we want to put on in 2024 you know can we get it down to three mils even you know or can we push it out to 25 and get it at four mils um but that's going to be based on continued monitoring of the budget monthly as we do here first to forecast as well as you know looking at the May and the next November forecast updates

139that we have if we're going to put something on the ballot next November you have to have two resolutions of passed prior to 90 days so our drop dead date is August 9th 2023 that the board would have to have passed that second resolution to put the emergency renewal on as well as the pi Levy which is gives us some time right we can finish out the budget cycle because we now budget in Spring and you know and almost have that at 100 by the end of the fiscal year in June that'll give us some pretty good data to determine where we're at with regards to this area right here because I think that has to be part of that discussion I don't think it's fair that we go to our community and say hey

140you know we're asking for 2.5 mils in permanent Improvement Levy and give the belief that we're not going to still need some sort of other General operating Levy relatively quickly so I think that has to be part of that that messaging that we do so if you hear anything from me tonight we are still in decent Financial shape we're in better Financial shape than we were last year at the same time we are deficit spending because of the way that we fund schools in Ohio because you have flat revenues and you always have increasing expenses regardless right even I said this last night this is financial if we never gave anybody another raise or another step our expenses would still go up because of inflation and because of Health Care and at some point our

141expenses would exceed our revenues so we would always need additional Revenue because we are a district that's considered wealthy and and we have to see use the approval of our taxpayers to seek additional Revenue we should consider strongly moving some expenses out of the general fund and into the permanent Improvement Levy where they are more restricted and those purchases qualify and to do that in an economical way that would be recommended at a 2.5 mil Levy and we have to continue to tighten our belt so that we can reduce and push off the need for a general operating Levy and this was just the calendar that I used so I'm happy to answer any questions from the board on this I'm glad this confirms what we talked about at our special meeting after you spoke

142with the citizens Financial committee that they saw in the same way that you presented it and that we saw so thank you very much in Kudos on that nice report I think it looks great thank you foreign president members of the board I asked for the approval of items B through I and addendums that maybe act upon in one motion so moved second any discussion please yes Miss Payne yes Miss Cook yes Mr Tuttle yes Miss brighter yes motions carry 5-0 do we have any unfinished business any new business so we need to pick a date for reconsideration of the policy contract after Mr Heath has a chance to talk about the Neola yes and then could we also until you've had time to research it yeah I will probably have an answer for you

143tomorrow okay so are you comfortable setting a date could we also um continue the conversation from earlier what that Tom had brought up about two things I guess one would be the possibility of moving to Paradigm for the regular meetings I don't know if that since we might need another meeting anyways for the Neola situation if these are things that maybe we can just put on that same agenda and then the other thing that Tom had mentioned which I have mentioned before as well that I support is changing our meetings for next year so that we can have more time so that we don't just get the agenda on Friday around you know late afternoon and then have the weekend and only Monday to ask questions and I know Mr Wayne had mentioned with the

144sometimes it's tight like with this report it was very quick turnaround very tight that you had to turn that around so also it's election night so maybe we should avoid having board meetings on Election night next year seeing that we are looking for you know possible renewal well renewal Levy and then also additional funds Levy and we may have board members that may need a campaign as well so yeah we already talked about it yeah so I don't know if we could just add that to the agenda for the Neola continuation that way we can just talk about it then whatever everybody prefers we just need that date yeah we'll just set it all in there yeah because we'll need to at least if we're going to switch the meeting dates by January's organizational meeting

145because we need to publish those for the year so it would be good have that discussion at some point prior to then okay so we that we go to January prepared all right so what I heard is we're going to schedule a date and we're gonna we're gonna discuss the follow-up on the Neola that you're going to check with our attorneys we're going to talk about moving to Paradigm and changing the date we get our board packet is that what you were talking about um yeah I think what we had mentioned is just either yeah changing the date so that we have an additional time um to review agenda items so it's not just Friday the week just wanted to make sure and then Monday all right so but can I clarify I think it's

146actually not changing the date to get the packet it was more so to change the actual meeting date to be later so then you could then change the packet date correct right Tuesday or Saturday instead of doing the what are we this the first so Tuesday of the the month you you were suggesting a later date correct yeah I mean I'm I'm open I just think that to Tom's point and I think it would be helpful if we had additional time seeing that you know Bill and Craig are not in the office on the weekends Friday we have Friday Monday when city council what what's their date do you know Maggie I do not I know they're on a Tuesday Tuesday or Thursday I think I think there are maybe every third Tuesday the Thursday

147first and third don't they meet twice a month every Tuesdays the first and third Tuesday of the month I think thank you and something to consider too I I think with menorax during the summer being on Tuesdays it might help to you know not have them on those days or do a different time or something because it gets so crazy so we're also looking at changing our date of our coordinating yes yeah because I think what I'm hearing and Mr tuttleman is paying crappy if I'm wrong is that let's just say you wanted to do the third Tuesday of the month that way you could say hey we want our packets on the Wednesday before that set of the Friday yeah that would be that'd be perfect yeah I would be okay with that just

148to give us additional time especially seeing that if we do go with Neola we may have a larger agenda and more items to review I don't I mean it's I struggle at times to get it on Friday then we have the weekend which a lot of people are busy on so then we really only have Monday in the meetings on Tuesday so if you want to you know do our due diligence really really you know get an additional time I think that would be helpful especially if we end up going with Neola where we're going to have to really get those policies changed over yeah that that allows us to respect everybody's calendar on Saturday and Sunday right can't expect every month that for everybody to give up or be available Saturday and Sunday [Music]

149or do we want to look at next week I know we've got the conference Monday Tuesday and do we want to look um Wednesday or Thursday of next week next week 16th or 17th both days are fine for me they work for me too Wednesday or Thursday the 16th and 17th I'm good on both 16th or 17. I put 16th 16th 16th yeah 5 30. 16th at 5 30. at the board office yeah we might as well just try it right there that's okay we might want to we might not want to do it at the board office we should do it at Paradigm apparently we can record and have space for the community boom recording is correct so 5 30 November 16th at paradigm good perfect okay and we don't need an executive session

150correct correct all right hearing of the public any items foreign gate sure and I wanted to speak on the resolution that is before the State Board of Education that is suggesting that we target our LBGTQ plus students and Advocates not following the guidelines of of Title IX and I think that the whole idea of that is just reprehensible that we would even think about going against federal guidelines in our board policies and I know some of the school districts for example Toledo is this Toledo school board has sent a letter in opposition of this to the State Board I would like for any of you to consider voicing negative or voicing their opposition to this and would hope that you would help in getting this defeated it is a nasty ugly piece of legislation thank

151you thank you anyone else good evening Veranda towns Marine Parkway two kids at Orchard Hollow I just want to speak to one of the some of the conversations tonight about uh inflammatory language and I'm all for protecting our community members at these meetings but I just had to ask are we doing that at the expense of protecting our students in schools and their families our Educators I'm called to think about the the walkout that was in direct relationship to racism and bullying in November of 21. uh or the fact that we had a mother and father stand here at these very Mikes with tears because of the the attacking that was going on uh to their daughter um and when it comes to an inflammatory I wanted to go back through some of the the

152comments that I've made in July of 2021 uh it was made to our board members that you were murderers for wearing masks um we sit there on the mass we're taking away students identities uh in November of 2021 uh LGBT families and people were considered to have alternative lifestyles in February of 2022 it was called absurd that transgender students would use the bathrooms uh of the gender that they identified with it was also stated that it was ridiculous or objection to the fact that there was a focus of black families for a discussion on the depression uh it was called it was said that LGBT centered books were promoting immoral behavior in March of 2022 the state was made we need more white books where was our objection or our consideration of inflammatory language then

153um in May of 2022 it was said that the promotion of LGBT was egregious and grooming in July of 2022 it was said that pronoun surveys transgender individuals and seeing gender families were also grooming it was stated that the opposition to the classroom books um there was opposition because it was not rooted in whiteness or any American culture uh in August of 2022 it was stated that our pronoun surveys were indoctrination and the statement was made that um boys wearing their mom's skirts these I didn't say these but people did where was our objection then are we really willing to protect those who attack us for protecting and supporting marginalized groups before we actually prevent the attacking itself thank you hi I gave my name earlier anaperick 8651 excuse me Mentor Road [Music] um right

154in town but my wife said something and I have to Echo it um if it's pushing an agenda to talk about two mothers that it must be posting an agenda to talk about a mother and a father we have to acknowledge that um the truth um and then I'll try to say this really quickly my sister works in healthcare and she talks about a moment when decide as a healthcare agency that a lot of the seasoned doctors were used to paper and of course coming into the 21st century doesn't cut it there were errors there's a huge cost um this organization that's involved with just managing all that paper they had to make a decision do we stay with paper well she know isn't beneficial or do we switch to electronic and acknowledge the fact

155they were going to lose some of the seasoned vets I think that we have to have that conversation here if you don't think we have to make do what's right even though we're going to lose some folks um I object to removing or season veteran teachers last month's comments by Mr Townes who was a member of the diversity Equity inclusion committee or Advisory Board which is an extension of the mentor School Board Illustrated and demonstrated clearly demonstrated racist and discriminatory comments towards one segment in one group of people white Christians 73 percent of the funding that this District receives is from 94 97 of the white population in this District 35 percent there's a minor comprises of the Catholics in this District comprised of 35 percent I ask that you remove Brandon towns from the

156Dei committee his beliefs are opposed to equity and equality thank you thank you I need to ask the audience when you're speaking please do not use specific names of anyone thank you uh Linda O'Brien 5842 Tanager Court here in Mentor it's like a breath of fresh air I am so excited that after coming here for 15 months I see this board taking some real steps to create positive communication during these meetings and Mr Tuttle I commend you for addressing the fact that there are inflammatory comments that are made Mrs O'Brien we ask that you please not use any specific names thank you thank you so I commend the board for addressing the points to the extent of addressing inflammatory comments and that we really try to get back on what you propose at the beginning

157of every meeting which is respectful communication so I thank you for that and I hope that this will continue now relative to the lady that was just up here speaking about your diversity um Advisory Board I Echo her concerns and I do that for two reasons diversity goes beyond one skin color an inclusion should be including all those protected by the Civil Rights Act not just part of those people just a small segment of those people and the individual that was referenced does not reference or does not refer and represent either of those it's very narrow and micro managed in terms of his thought process and and that's unfortunate for everybody but in addition to that one of my biggest concerns is that his page on Facebook says that he speaks for you Mary Briner

158please Mrs O'Brien for the first time he speaks I ask that you do not name any specific names so he speaks for the president of this thank you and that cannot continue that is absolutely a justification for his immediate removal I hope that you will take those points under serious consideration and broaden that Advisory Board to truly represent diversity and equity and inclusion thank you thank you thank you go ahead hi good evening uh Andy Smith Amanda place in Concord the conversation about Dei is really timely I was going to come up here to speak about that um for the board if you look at the vast majority of Fortune 500 companies all of them have some sort of executive level or director level position and team and staff and resources invested in diversity equity

159and inclusion many of them if not most all will proudly tout their role and how they take care of their colleagues regarding diversity Equity inclusion we all know who corporations are they don't invest the money in things unless they know that there is a financial outcome for that investment so why do they invest that money they know that when you as an organization invest in diversity equity and inclusion it benefits the organization it makes the organization stronger it makes the organization more able to recruit people into it and make it a healthy thriving business it's the same reason for why this school district needs to remember and for those of you on the board who maybe have spoken against specific topics that are related to diversity equity and inclusion you are either victim to political

160forces beyond your own knowing and you're playing into someone else's uh you know hand or you're taking a cynical Ploy that your political gains are more important than the health and safety and well-being and growth of this district and I would ask you to really or think hard about that and I say that in a to me the perfect case study is of the fox corporation which is the parent company of Fox News Fox News is their Flagship will proudly tout their diversity equity and inclusion uh you know tenants and the people who run it and all of the different diverse very diverse groups they support and the reason they support them is because they know that it's healthy for that Corporation they do this all the while their actual Channel their Flagship station is

161talking Non-Stop about how Dei is destructive to America so which do you believe do you believe their marketing side the infotainment of Fox News or do you believe the corporation where they put their investment and I would ask you as a board to really double down on that investment it makes us a stronger Community the communities that Thrive and grow in this nation are ones that Embrace Dei and all of its tenants and I can promise you as a white man I never feel threatened by the escaler by the by the focus on Dei it never carries them down thank you thank you hello my name is Joe pacus I live at 4680 Homewood Drive Mentor Ohio good evening members of the board you seemed to run to school like a business it's not it's

162a public school we are the public the parents and concerned citizens that attend the meetings and the ones who don't but many feel the same way your job as a public school is to produce a safe environment for our children our future to teach them the basic fundamentals of Reading Writing and arithmetics personal responsibility and some socialization to give a nurturing environment to help them grow and learn actions that have been made directly impact our kids and in a negative manner which is on all levels unacceptable the gender gender identity crisis that seems to be going on needs to be dealt with there is not one reason acceptable that a male identifying is a female should be in the male bathroom or in the female bathroom there is no reason a female identifying as a

163male should be in a male bathroom as far as students confiding in the teacher about differing identity wants and the teacher keeping it from parents if you do not find that morally wrong you have some serious soul-searching to do you're a teacher and not a certified counselor it gives you no right to keep any information from the guardian and if Crossroads counselors were notified wouldn't the parents need to be notified as well due to the child being a minor that is a question I would like answered at some point in time if Crossroads is contacted are the parents contacted and when it was asked about Dei and if the board would be made up of members of different cultural backgrounds at the last meeting I would like to know if there's a checks and balance

164in place to appropriate the correct positive individuals to properly positively affect the outcome of the committee and to remove or deny any persons for any previous public negativity as it would be indirect conflict of what the program calls for diversion equity and inclusion and you cannot have that when you talk down or negative about any other people thank you very much thank you [Applause] wow I wish I had written my speech down he would get your name and address please my name is Robert Pruitt and I'm a recent member of the member the mentor community I have two children in the district one at Shore one at High School um and I'm not really sure exactly what I want to say so please work with me you guys I speak often but never in front

165of the community like this but I just want to say that when it comes to diversity it has to be emphasized and highlighted for a reason and we all know that diversity includes more than just black skin brown skin we know this but for some reason that segment of our student population is not emphasized or highlighted the way it should be so we have to acknowledge it we have to put it at the Forefront just for it to get just due when I hear certain comments true I don't know exactly how another person feels or where they're coming from all I know and can speak on is my personal experience and I just want to share with the community as as a new member of the community that there are some deficits in our district

166in our neighborhoods when it comes to race relations race relations is not a new conversation in this nation it is a very old one and we have tried many different ways to effectively communicate and it's not always well received so I I thank you for this opportunity and I thank you for this form to have a conversation but I would like to say that the diversity equity and inclusion committee has been has had an opportunity to share but the things that have been shared have not necessarily been implemented or not necessarily been done but there has been an opportunity to talk and during those forms I've had an opportunity to work alongside Mr Brandon towns and I've never seen my apologies thank you I've never I've never been a part of a conversation where I

167felt as though he was trying to hurt this Legacy here in Mentor Miner is a very connected family oriented Legacy Community I've never seen him trying to bring it down I've only seen him try to carve a path for his family his kids in it so I thank you guys very much thank you next hi Diane Papalis I've been going to quite a few board meetings in the last year or so and there's a lot of questions and concerns that I have I would first like to mention that I think it was extremely disappointing that three out of the five members on the board wanted to vote down the parents rights platform at osba although I wasn't really surprised sadly now many more in the community will know that some of our board members are

168against parents knowing all aspects of their children's education a few board members brought up how hard it would be for a teacher to provide that information let me remind you that teachers are not the majority of Voters in our district parents and taxpayers are you may want to weigh that heavily in your conversations going forward I suggest you also ensure that what you refer to as a vocal minority is not a silent majority also I wanted to let you all know I was totally disappointed and several what the several months of public speaking there you allowed someone to speak negatively about Christians Patriots and white people for those who don't know what I'm talking about not only here but in the community feel free to pull up the last few months meetings on YouTube and

169watch them yourself to find out that you have allowed a person who continues to make derogatory comments is directly connected with our schools and as part of the Dei committee is absolutely unacceptable a Community member was told by Mr Heath that the Dei larger committee would be disbanded and no longer be will be meeting I want to know if it's true can you confirm that statement as many community members would like to know the answer as well thank you [Applause] Mike Williams 6064 Walden Court in Mentor we put four children through the middle school systems Dear Mr Heath Mr Wade and school board members I would like to recommend that you disband the proposed Dei committee and abandon the hiring of an outside Dei consultant a Dei committee will add absolutely nothing to the proper

170education of our children some of our students it has nothing to math it adds nothing's to science it has nothing to technology it adds nothing to English it adds nothing to history to geography or the Arts having a Dei committee is another step in attempting to socially engineer and indoctrinate all students in leftist ideology will the committee include members with conservative traditional Christian values if not then it's not diverse will the committee be open to American values of patriotism Valor bravery morality Integrity or self-determination from what I've seen no as far as Equity goes I believe that most teachers staff and administrators already strive to treat students equitably why then do we need to spend more money on training them to do something that they are already doing we can start tightening our belts right

171there Dei companies openly admit that they are trying to manipulate thought and action from what I've observed the individuals you have proposed for this committee are all like-minded educators where's the diversity here I also take issue with the fact that you're proposing a person for the committee that has publicly and repeatedly made racist remarks how will this contribute anything but hatred divisiveness and mistrust in our schools again I believe this whole Dei initiative is a total waste of effort time talent and especially taxpayer money that should all be directed toward curriculum thank you thank you [Applause] hello my name is Jacqueline Mick I live on Ridgeview Trail I have three school age children in the district I attended the special meetings that discussed parental rights and future tax levies I was shocked when I heard

172that three board members wanted to send the board delegate to vote down a parental rights platform with osba at the conferences upcoming weekend thousands of dollars of our taxpayer money goes towards assisting State Legislative lobbying efforts by the Ohio School Board Association to which the board belongs the board members disagreed with parents knowing all aspects of what our children are being taught at school or being exposed to one board member asked another member what could parents possibly want that they're not getting well that list is long and if you had all been paying attention for the last two years you would know that answer parents want trust in the schools they want transparency they want to know that the schools can stay in a neutral position and leave the upbringing of their children's ethics beliefs

173morals and values to the parents not the schools they want to know if there are items in the classroom that expose their children to ideologies that don't align with their family beliefs they want wholesome books that don't depict one political side over the other or expose their young children to sexual ideologies that go against their family's beliefs they want to know their children are safe in their school and that they can preserve their innocence even with sending their kids to Public Schools they want to be the first to know if their child is struggling mentally they not only want to know these things they deserve to know them and if you continue to push ideologies that go against our rights as parents and our beliefs and keep us in the dark about them then we

174will ensure that the community is aware of exactly where their money is going to the board members who voted this parental rights platform down we see through your veiled attempts to explain your reasoning behind voting this down there should be no issue with supporting parents rights to know all aspects of their child's education the only way this should be an issue is if there's something the schools are hiding from parents which based on the last two years we know they are this sent a message to the community and it is truly telling of where our board members stand rest assured the taxpayers won't forget it come next year when you ask for a renewal Levy and a 2.5 mil additional funds Levy and the following year when you ask for another five mil additional funds

175Levy we won't forget how you used our tax dollars to go against parental rights we will make sure we support you the way you have supported us and we will vote down all future levies thank you go ahead my name is Maria Hutcherson I have one dog or a child in school district three alumni I live off of Dunbar Drive I wanted to kind of share some experiences and the importance of the Dei committee in some of the work that it has done for um kind of the voice and the support of the my children who are children of color of so I will just share the most detrimental experience was our was our youngest daughter um she she suffered the most and she is she's more than biracial so she is black Asian and

176white so you know she she went from I'll just give an overview she went from a 3.0 GPA to a 2.8 or a two point a I'm sorry a 3.5 to a 2.8 um she experienced so much racism so much hate um she was attacked by you know members on her sports team she was attacked publicly on social media she participated in a walkout you know to help represent and when I asked my daughter how she felt she felt like she said well I'm glad I did it but nothing's going to change she would actively participated and was the vice um president of the beauty of diversity um she said that you know they did some work but not enough a lot of children did not want to participate on the base of backlash and

177being excluded so you know that is just a fair amount but just a very small but she I can't even tell you the mental impact um that she had we we went through a long long period my whole family did um and now my youngest is experiencing it um you know I have another child who is per you know child of color who has a disability a learning disability we experience so much so the Dei committee is extremely important from children's experiences that I've lived up for most because they don't have a voice they don't have somebody looking and understanding what what they're going through and what they're experiencing and they don't experience it the same way other children do so the work that you know these other people do on this committee are extremely

178important to the children and I can tell you first and foremost thank you anyone else all right seeing none motion torture so moved second please call the roll this pain yes Justin yes Miss Cook yes what's your title yes Brian yes me adjourns at 9 47.