001you good evening the august 9th 2022 regular meeting of the banner exempted village board of education is called to order this meeting is being held in accordance with section 3313.15 of the ohio revised code mr wade will you please call the roll miss breiter here ms cook here miss joslin present miss payne here mr tuttle here please join me in the pledge of allegiance [Music] i pledge allegiance [Music] thank you i would like to welcome everyone to the august 9 2022 regular meeting of the mentor exempted village board of education prior to this evening each board member has received for their review and consideration the agenda and materials associated with each agenda item for the board's approval via the district's paperless board of education agenda system for docs the public can access the agenda through
002the school district's website the agenda is available through the district's website for public viewing the sunday prior to the board meeting board members have the opportunity to call the superintendent and chief financial officer for information concerning agenda items and to request if needed additional information this meeting is being televised on a delayed basis and will be shown on spectrum cable channel 1026 in manor and channel 1025 in men are on the lake this meeting is also being videotaped and will be shown on our youtube channel cardinal tv mentor ohio please place your mobile telephones on silent mode during the meeting mr wade in his role as cfo and secretary of the board minutes we'll now share some protocols regarding our public participation policy mr heath you want me to talk public participation no i thought
003you were gonna do that i thought you were writing it with justin okay why don't you go first then i can chime in as far as the recognition's gonna be yes good evening madam president and members of the board this evening we are pleased to recognize several staff members who are being honored for their commitment to their schools and their students we will begin with our excellence in teaching award winners mrs burnett would you please join me at the podium this award recognizes certified staff members who demonstrate exemplary qualities in their profession and are involved in activities which reflect professional commitment this evening's recipient represents the best at mentor schools it is our pleasure to honor the winner of the 2022 excellence in teaching award carrie banks seventh grade at memorial middle school mrs banks
004created and implemented a vocational curriculum to expose memorial students in the units to life skills mrs banks is an inspiration to the memorial staff her kind and caring personality is infectious mrs banks is all inclusive and works hard to provide educational opportunities to special education students her creative lessons are collaborative in nature and provide real world experiences for our students congratulations mrs banks [Applause] madam president and members of the board at this time we'll be recognizing a very important group for their excellence in team collaboration to be selected for this award the team must the team members must demonstrate enthusiasm for their responsibilities and a strong commitment to the school system the team must also represent be be respected by colleagues parents and students and demonstrate strong collaborative skills our excellence in team collaboration is
005the shore guidance department charity khalil kelly dolinsky and jenna herzog the guidance team at shore explodes with zeal and enthusiasm on a daily basis their outgoing personalities can be seen each morning in the hallways greeting students as they head to their advisory classes their work to help support the social and emotional needs of students allows kids to turn around and succeed in the classroom the short guidance team are some of the most committed individuals in the district they are always striving to learn and be as up-to-date as possible with state and district policies when it comes to working with students congratulations to the entire team so madam president and members of the board nominations are also collected every year for the outstanding service award to be selected for this award a nominee must demonstrate enthusiasm
006for his or her responsibilities a commitment to mentor schools and have the respect of their colleagues parents and students the winners selected this year fit that criteria perfectly it is our pleasure to honor the winners of the 2022 outstanding service award our first award goes to robin arn classroom assistant sterling morton elementary robin has created unity amongst assistants and formed a very strong bond with the classroom teachers she works with robin is very humble in her work but does understand that she is essential to the kindergarten classrooms she is often the first face a child sees in the morning and she always knows how to start their day on a positive note she is always the go-to person when we need help with anything other assistants often come to her looking for recommendations on work-related
007topics robin is a leader in the group of classroom assistants congratulations robin [Applause] our second recipient of the outstanding service award goes to julie norman server satellite mentor high school [Applause] julie is a take charge type of individual and she does it with a quiet gentleness that makes everyone around her trust in her policies and just enjoy being in the lunchroom she is a team player and is always willing to lighten the load for others that tend to do a lot julie goes above and beyond in taking care of the students at sterling morton but you're really at mentor high school and sterling morton no only sterling okay so we gotta i'm reading the wrong script at sterling morton she is very professional and takes pride in her work she is kind compassionate and goes
008out of a way to make every student feel like they belong her positive gentle demeanor rubs off on all of us to create a great experience for all so congratulations julie from sterling morton elementary school congratulations thank you so much and our final recipient of the outstanding service award goes to yvonne walker classroom assistant hopkins elementary [Applause] mrs walker puts everything she has into her job even as she worked through personal hardships mrs walker never let that happen her passion at commitment to her job she prides herself on punctuality and as she walks through the door her smile lights up any room most days she burst into the door singing and laughing eager to take on the tasks and challenges of the day she is empathetic to both students and staff having taken time to
009make genuine connections with everyone in the building mrs walker takes any challenge and exhibits a strong commitment to her position supporting teachers in the building and she is a leader on the team of classroom assistants in our district congratulations miss walker congratulations to all of our award winners at this time i'd like to invite mrs burnett to the podium to recognize our newly designated master teachers good evening madam president members of the board mr heath and mr wade this evening i am honored to recognize two of our educators who have met the criteria and qualifications set forth by the ohio department of education as a master teacher miss nagy could not be with us this evening who is a health physical education teacher at ridge elementary but i would like to call up mrs jasmine
010benson to the stage to join me if you don't mind jasmine the ohio department of education defines a master teacher as an educator who demonstrates excellence inside and outside of the classroom through consistent leadership and focused collaboration to maximize student learning teachers understand student learning and development and respect the individuality of the students they teach teachers know and understand the content area for which they have instructional responsibility teachers understand and use varied assessments to inform instruction evaluate and ensure student learning teachers plan and deliver effective instruction that advances the learning of each individual student in their classroom teachers create learning environments that promote high levels of learning and achievement of all students teachers collaborate and communicate with students parents and other educators administrators and the community to support student learning and teachers assume responsibility for
011their own professional growth performance and involvement as an individual as a member of a learning community congratulations to jasmine and valerie and we admire your growth mindset as an educator congratulations thank you mrs burnett for your help this evening and again congratulations to all of our staff for a job well done it is my honor to announce the mentor board of education scholarship for this year i want to congratulate this year's recipient elliott miller who will receive a 500 scholarship on behalf of the minor school board unfortunately he could not be not be here with us tonight elliott is a mentor grad for the class of 2022 and attended mentor schools first through 12th grade he plans to attend the college of wooster where he will study the stem fields he is interested in physics
012chemistry biology astronomy and plans to pursue some engineering opportunities the mentor board of education scholarship is funded by our school board members and is based on financial need character leadership and community service i would like to thank our school board members mrs annie payne and mrs maggie cook for your assistance this year elliot we wish you a lot of luck and success and i thank you [Applause] uh we're going to take a little break right now anyone that would like to disburse me do so or you're welcome to stay for the remainder of the meeting thank you okay we're going to go ahead and get back started at our meeting thank you next we have approval of minutes we have our july 12 2022 special board meeting july 12 22 regular board meeting and our
013july 26 special board meeting do we have a motion so moved second second any comments please call the roll miss joslin yes mr tuttle yes miss cook yes miss payne yes mrs bryner yes ocean carries 5-0 now we will hear from mr wade about our meeting protocols thanks madam president the board welcomes public participation at our meeting in two opportunities the first opportunity to speak is on agenda items only which will happen here shortly there's a second opportunity to speak on any topic at the agenda each person may only speak once per hearing a public segment on or excuse me per topic the comments are limited to three minutes speakers need to announce their name address and where their children attend school if applicable the purpose of the hearing of the public is for the
014community members to speak to the board we must insist you direct your comments to the board and not to other audience members it is equally important everyone has a chance to speak uninterrupted so please do not call out or interrupt when someone else has been on the floor please allow the president to address the speaker if you don't agree with the following procedures and people should not be speaking out from the crowd while we may not agree on various topics let's demonstrate how to be respectful of one another during the school board meetings we need to be better at this so please know anyone who fails to comply with the expectations of appropriate decorum or deters the board from being able to conduct business will be warned and then told to leave the meeting mr
015heath would like to take a moment to share a few comments as our new superintendent thank you mr wade good evening everyone and thank you for attending tonight's board of education meeting before we get started with the remainder of our agenda tonight i just wanted to take a couple of minutes and share some comments to give everyone a sense of who i am and and hopefully what i hope to accomplish here in the near future i've been fortunate enough to work in three very large high-performing districts in central ohio over the course of my 30-year career what drew me to apply for this superintendent position and mentor are the similarities i see in the innovative mindset and the incredible community resources that we have here i've had the opportunity to create programs in hillyard dublin
016and delaware city schools that combine the talent and expertise of our respective teaching staffs with the business and industry partners to create amazing experiences for students in those districts over the last several days i've been able to learn some of the academic programming that we have available here in our schools i've been very impressed by the passion our administrative team has to create this type of programming and manner and i can't wait to see these programs in action on august 23rd i look forward to building additional innovative programming here that meets the needs of every single student in order to move forward with these academic initiatives i'm going to need help from everyone on our staff everyone in this room and everyone in this community we can only accompl accomplish great things when we do
017it together we have a great opportunity here to start that work together this school year we will be returning to school with some semblance of normalcy for the first time in three years i am brand new to the district so i'm bringing a completely fresh set of eyes to the table and we'll spend as much time as possible listening to everyone i need to hear about the concerns the ideas and the dreams people have for public education from across our school district and across this entire community i've already had meetings over the last week with some individual community members to start gathering some of these ideas i have several more scheduled in the next two weeks as well i will work with our board members and our community leaders to identify additional groups of people
018that need to have their voices heard this is going to take time but i am committed to listening to all perspectives represented in our community my core belief in education is every single student has a gift our job is to identify what that gift is figure out how to tap into that gift in the classroom and then build a personalized education program that will allow that student to maximize that gift to its fullest potential as i jump into this work here in manor i ask for three things your patience your honesty and your empathy together we will build trust and unity within our school district and within our community thank you and i look forward to serving manor public schools thank you all right we will start with hearing the public on agenda items only
019hello my name is chuck laughlin i reside at one zero zero nine zero weathersfield drive in concord i have four school-aged grandchildren who also reside in the school district i would like to address the issue of teacher-initiated pronoun surveys and the related policy change which has been proposed and will receive its first reading tonight first there is no compelling community interest to be served by conducting such surveys second there is no compelling educational purpose for conducting these surveys the surveys have nothing to do with educating children the sole purpose for these surveys is to begin or further the indoctrination of the students into matters of sexualization another potential word for this is grooming there is no place for this in our schools it is the role of the parents to handle these matters with their
020children the policy would prohibit teachers from conducting the pronoun surveys in the kindergarten through eighth grades teachers in these grades especially in the lower grades are viewed as authority figures by the students and rightly so the students will generally seek the affirmation of their teachers the students however lack the mental maturity to fully evaluate and understand these matters as a result they are easily influenced by their teachers therefore it is totally inappropriate for the teachers to ask them to make such decisions if the teachers are permitted to use their positional authority to predispose their students to these sexual matters then the teachers have usurped the authority of the parents and breached their trust this cannot be permitted in the ninth through twelfth grades this is still an issue the teachers can still have a strong
021influence on their students nevertheless the policy would permit such surveys but only with the critical component of prior parental notification this notification should provide an option for the parents to opt their children out of any such surveys breiner i respectfully urge you and the rest of the board members to approve this policy including an opt-out clause for the safety and well-being of the children who attend school in this district thank you thank you thank you please state your name and address children in the district thank you hi my name is ann anderson and i live at 5951 center street and i understand there's questions about why pronouns are important and why it's important to keep them at least at the high school level i should myself think they should be at the middle school level
022as well considering that we know there's trans students that are also in middle school there's no shame in asking what someone's preferred pronouns are and we shouldn't be acting like it's a bad thing because when we all know better we do better and knowing that we already have trans students in the district and it's not just a few there's a good number we know there's a need if we knew students needed help for any other reason it would be fine but not when it comes to respecting someone's gender trans and non-binary students definitely exist so there shouldn't really be a problem are we not allowed to talk about them and why not it's not a lifestyle choice or a way of life you're born this way and to deny someone their humanity seems especially cruel
023so asking a teenager what their preferred pronouns are is just a way of respecting all students most students don't have a problem with it the parents do kids for the most part seem to be open and accepting and are used to asking pronouns to all of their friends that train has already left the station so to not acknowledge that that we are diverse group and it's okay to ask pronouns seems like it's wrong to do parents having to be informed i i would love to say that that's a great idea all around but that's just not the case um most a lot of parents that i've seen um don't react well to their children coming out as trans or gender non-conforming so i've seen children in abusive situations that their family because their family do
024not accept them and outing a child to their parent essentially if a teacher did know can put that child in an unsafe space at home they could be thrown out they could cause self-harm because of non-acceptance i've seen it all happen so allowing a teacher to just respect someone's pronouns that might be the only person this child has in their life that is able to do that for them so taking it away seems seems especially cruel and i feel like a lot of this comes from fear people are afraid of what they don't understand so if we could bring in more education on this topic i would really appreciate it thank you thank you hi my name is jessica i live on willowbrook drive here in manor i'm here to excuse me can you state
025your last name oh jessica paska sorry pesca pascal yes thank you i'm here to speak for students who cannot speak for themselves many lgbtq people don't survive their youth and many like me barely survive i'm here to speak for people like ray a trans man and dear friend who lost his battle to depression after experiencing years of bullying and harassment i won't let youth like him be forgotten in discussions such as these some perspective for those who don't have lgbtq children or think they don't this is bigger than pronouns it's life or death that is not hyperbole lgbtq youth are more than four times as likely to attempt suicide than their peers at least one attempts it every 45 seconds in the u.s that's four kids just while i speak acceptance from at least one
026adult can decrease this risk by 40 percent many of these kids cannot talk to their parents perhaps parents in this room arguing against their own children there is losing their homes or worse transness is not the issue it's the lack of acceptance and the isolation studies show kids are more eager to participate get called on and engage in school when they are not misgendered every time they raise their hand for those concerned about their children being exposed to chosen pronouns and issues surrounding gender non-conforming this is about the right to parent their children it's about morality that's what the board has been told for trans children this is about survival requiring teachers to ignore chosen pronouns is institutionalized hatred whether you agree with it or not it puts children already at risk i'm sorry it
027puts already at risk youth at a greater risk of harm bullying and violence there is zero damage done to your children because they hear a child a teacher use a child's chosen pronoun and literally another child's life is at risk by demanding this be ignored i ask the board to consider the risk here children learning not everyone is the same not everyone has the same beliefs life experience or feelings or the other risk the worst happening to a child who who wasn't i'm sorry the death of a child because they experience hatred or harassment perpetuated because of the decision to remove these pronoun references is that worth the risk the death of a child just because your child had to hear a chosen pronoun it's not about sex it's about accepting a whole person and
028i beg you parents also and board members to protect all children even the lives of those struggles you who have struggles you don't understand thank you thank you next speaker um hi my name is brady anderson and i live in manor at 5951 center street when i heard about pronounced sheets i knew it would be important to speak up being that i'm a trans student in the district i heard about the objection to preferred pronoun sheets going out at the high school level i was disappointed because for trans students school is hard enough without being singled out other students are allowed to use whatever nickname they prefer and using pronouns and chosen names is no different until it becomes a problem for people that don't understand for the people that don't understand know that we
029aren't trying to do anything other than live our lives in peace being transgender isn't wrong or a lifestyle or something to be embarrassed about so let's stop acting like it and respect all students thank you thank you michael paul um 7665 325 minnow avenue um i'm also uh a parent of the child of uh uh i'm sorry memorial middle school here's here's the thing i would like to say tonight okay i detest that that an individual another group had stated that pointing to you know uh including myself that we don't like homosexuals that we don't like alternative lifestyles and making general assumptions stereotyping all of us very disrespectful very very uncalled for that's first thing i would like to say secondly i don't care what people do in their own bedrooms as adults i don't
030care you know if a boy wants to wear his mom skirt to school that's not my lifestyle it's not our families okay if that's your child fine everybody deserves to be treated with respect the same i have no issue with that what i do have issue is when uh some people are calling for my child to do things behind my back that i do not approve of or i've taught her because at the end of the day parents are responsible excuse me could you please address your comments to the boys thank you i appreciate that parents are responsible for their kids when our when our children do things we're financially we're criminally and we're morally responsible so for somebody to say well you should let teachers do things behind a teacher's backs that's preposterous it's
031crazy that's a communist system i know because my family ran from it okay and some were called yugoslavia why don't we just stick to the basics in elementary and middle school everybody treated respect nobody discriminated and let's leave the topic out of these kids heads and learn again because the last i look the rankings in the world people our country's not going doing good in the schools as a nation we'll almost last on everything look at japan they don't talk about this nonsense to later in high school in college look at germany look at the rest of the world why are we so below average and behind thank you have a good evening thank you hi my name is mary best i live at 6328 carolyn drive i am an alum of mentor high school
032class of 2021 so i have been through this whole school system and a year of college and i came back this summer to help with mentors band camp and honestly it's a much better place than where i left it why because people are more comfortable with who they are when i came into mentor high school it there was a lot more bullying happen than when i left and the reason is because the staff and the students work so tirelessly to make everybody feel included and i love it here for that reason and why i hope to come back here as a teacher one day when substitute teachers come in to a classroom they do attendance and they ask everybody for their names some students have nicknames and they feel very comfortable saying oh i prefer
033to be called nick instead of nicholas i prefer to be called john instead of jonathan it's something just as simple as that is something that you can do as an adult that says i hear you and i will call you what makes you comfortable that's all it is it's not about grooming it's not about here it's not about oh sorry um it's not about making other students feel uncomfortable it's about taking people who need to be seen and let them be seen when teachers do pronoun when teachers ask students about their pronouns they're not making a student choose what gender they are they're not making a student be sexualized they're not making a student feel uncomfortable they don't have to participate if they don't want to but it gives students who are uncomfortable sharing who
034they are publicly a chance to just tell their teacher who they are and what makes them comfortable and that's not something that should be taken away trans people exist non-non-binary people exist and giving them a place a safe place to be who they are should be something that we want as a school district that is inclusive to all thanks thank you thank you good evening amanda alafey 5428 marshfield i have a child in shore middle school i want to express again talking about the gender pronoun surveys i want to express very very clearly to the board and the superintendent that for me this this is not an issue of judgment on our students or our families but one of parental rights and month after month we have listened to both sides as we're doing again
035today on this issue and i have even stood up here and stated that we are we're just simply not being heard for what our true intent is and it's it's happening again tonight so i speak for myself and i know for many other people here tonight when i say that we are not here to deny the rights of certain subsets of students or families we just aren't um we i i don't hate i i certainly don't teach my my kids to hate in fact if you knew my son you would know that he's probably one of the kindest uh most accepting kids in his school so we're not saying that other students don't have the right to be addressed by their desired pronouns we are not saying that what we are saying though is that
036we also have the right to raise our children the way we want to raise them and issues of sexuality do fall within the boundaries of the family not the school so if you say as a board it's okay for a survey to be placed in front of my child who's very very minor child essentially telling him it's okay to choose his gender you are violating my right to teach my child about these issues and i'm not okay with that so you know the school again we've said this before the school is not the parent we are the parents issues of gender identity in my opinion need to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis as they are and i've talked with other people other teachers other administrators in surrounding school districts as they are in
037other school districts so i think we've also heard other parents stand up here and offer the solution to us that private school and homeschooling is the issue and and yes i will admit that i have already taken one taken one of my children out of this district and placed them in a private school however i still am required to pay my taxes in this district am i not okay the public schools are for all they are for those that follow a religion they are for those that don't follow a religion therefore everyone's rights need to be taken into account and i i also have to say that if mentor schools cannot recognize this my family cannot support a levy in the future of the school district thank you for your time thank you hi my
038name is betty jacobs i do not live in this district but i am the only lgbtq leader in lake county i founded lgbtq plus allies lake county in 2019. the things i'm hearing here today are appalling i don't understand i i don't understand how i can see the uneducation first of all um and it is very sad the first thing you need to understand is gender identity and sexual orientation are separate concepts yes please i would remind you to please address the board yes and please audience let the speaker speak uninterrupted thank you gender identity and sexual orientation are separate concepts um so asking somebody the pronoun has zero to do with their sexuality at all and on we we are born with pronouns so if you were one of those people who um happen
039to have the privilege of being born with your pronoun wonderful and that's great and when a paper is put in front of your child i don't understand where the choice is um they know what their pronoun is obviously if you've used that at their home if they've used it with their friends they're sure of who they are male or female they're going to write that down it's not going to be a choice but if they do fall within the um gender non-conforming or trans individual or non-binary or wherever they fall in that spectrum they will have the chance to then let people know but there is no choice about a gender but it is definitely has no sexual connotation attached to it unless you put it there yourself within your family or within your beliefs
040um and i would love to to speak to the board more myself i would love to to have to give you some education to continue this conversation i think it's this has gotten out of control i've been to a couple of these board meetings and i think everybody is either so far against it or so far for it that you've lost the gray area stop the arguing because in the meantime kids are dying like the the number one killer of 11 to 14 year olds currently right now in the state of ohio the leading cause is suicide and that's across the board no lgbtq connected that's across the board now let's raise that four to eight percent for lgbtq kids there's no time to talk about it if if exposing somebody to asking them what
041their pronoun is going to totally disrupt somebody's family i think there's bigger problems in that family than pronouns there's more talk that needs to be done there's kids that need to be saved and if yours if if somebody's in here is not that child that needs to be saved great but i can tell you that i talk to families weekly that are have either lost their child or going to lose their child laura would i mean seriously like this is way bigger issue than you guys can can handle thank you for your time thank you thank you [Music] hello my name is mike williams i live at 6064 walden court in mentor my wife and i have put four children through the mentor school system dear mr heath mr wade and school board members i
042would like to address tonight's agenda item dealing with gender pronoun survey surveys being considered by this board for the mentor school students i believe this is an incredibly bad idea and it's been said before but this not only usurps parental rights but is also would promote anxiety and confusion among our minor children what gives this school board teachers or staff the right to question our children's our children about their gender or sexuality this is none of your business and is an invasion of privacy this should be way off limits to anyone except parents to do this by anyone is tantamount to grooming of these children let's face it to put for forward in these pronoun surveys that someone can be any gender they want and adopt a pronoun to fit that gender is an egregious
043lie science says there are two genders male and female anything else is made up to promote these gender pronoun surveys is to lead our students away from reality away from science and away from truth you're creating a pretend world that sooner or later will come crashing down i wholeheartedly support miss annie payne in her efforts to put forth a written policy to prohibit surveys of this kind being sent out to mentor school students of any age but especially to elementary and middle school children efforts like this by ms payne are the reasons she won a statewide award last week for protecting ohio's children this policy would do just that protect our children from destructive unrealistic and confusing gender ideology being forced being foisted on all of us i strongly urge this board to support annie
044payne's written policy to eliminate such gender pronoun surveys and to support the elimination of gender and sexuality teaching in our schools to do so on your part shows that you really have our students best interest at heart and that you respect their parents rights and that you wish to get back to public education as we all knew it to be thank you for your time thank you thank you [Music] hello i'm bill henrich i live at 7391 raccoon hill in kirtland and you might wonder why i'm here i'm here as a teacher a proud teacher a proud retiree of the mentor schools i served 30 years here i'm about to start my 40th year this week in willard east lake schools this gen this pronoun thing is new last year when teaching some students i
045had a girl get extremely angry with me because i i have a hard time with names anymore much less the pronouns so it's it's very difficult um but she got very mad at me right in the beginning so i talked with her i said i support i support you i said i just got to get the names and i get the pronouns um i want to say i do agree with the gentleman that said let's not assume that um because we feel one way about the pronoun issue that we we either love or hate gay people i agree with that i don't think that's something we want to say but i also want to make it clear that equally we should not accuse teachers of trying to indoctrinate kids teaching has become extremely difficult and
046i admire every person that goes into this career it's really really tough and it was tough when i was here it's even tougher now you're trying to please everybody i know that i would not do a survey i really wouldn't but if a student asked me would you please use they instead of she absolutely yes so i think we might my easy solution and i hope it's good for both sides would you be upset that i guess i gotta address the board i hope they wouldn't be upset if a child wanted to be uh addressed as they instead of she or he i hope they wouldn't be upset with that but i don't think i'd go with the survey but let's not accuse teachers teachers work hard enough for way too little in this world
047they don't need to be accused and i hear it a lot i heard it tonight they're not trying to indoctrinate your kids they're not in this business to do that they are in this business because they love kids they want to be the best teachers they can possibly be and their survey idea is just another way of trying to make those kids comfortable thank you thank you thank you hi my name is sarah pacrashi i live at 9619 troy court i have a son who's at the high school and i've had two other children that have just completed their time here at mentor high i have a i actually have some questions that i would like the board to consider well while addressing this issue which is if the um if the idea is to
048pass uh abolition of a survey in k-8 is this even an issue in k through eight of a survey being offered do i i'm uneducated in this area i don't know if currently that is even happening it is my understanding that it's not um and having a child having children that have just gone through the matter school district and one that's already in the minority school district i have to tell you it's been my experience and the experience of discussing this issue with their friends they have no issue there is no issue with it and um i think that you are going to be challenged to get a kindergartner to understand what a pronoun is so i doubt they're going to be asked how they identify themselves and what pronoun so if it's not an
049issue and it's not happening do we need any kind of rule banning it if it doesn't happen why are we banning it because this rule is for k through eight this does not address the nine through if if i understand correctly and if it's not an issue making a rule before it becomes an issue is problematic because that creates other issues as someone who works in the law reads contracts works with legislation on a regular basis legislators do not create rules prior to the issue there's an issue and then that issue is addressed if there is no issue on the table about k-8 children being served in a survey why are we addressing it tonight that's my only question thank you thank you thank you [Applause] hi my name is lauren marchazza i live at
0507816 oakridge drive i've got i'm an alumna and i've got two young children going through the schools one at hopkins and one at memorial i'm here to comment on the policy that we're all discussing tonight quite simply i think as our last speaker pointed out this is to borrow a phrase a solution in search of a problem it's a problem that doesn't seem to exist and yet even if it did let's just say even if it did i wouldn't even call it a problem as a parent of two children who actually attend these schools [Music] i have no problem whatsoever with teachers asking my children what their pronouns are this is a question they eventually are going to hear outside of the classroom indeed many of us do already at our workplaces at events and
051elsewhere and we suffer no trauma because of it neither will our children if we teach them right it's worth pointing out that miriam webster reported recently that the word they has been used as a singular pronoun since at least the middle ages the change of course is that some people those who identify as non-binary in terms of their gender choose to use it as a singular pronoun [Music] four years ago the university of pennsylvania graduate school of education published best practices for pronouns in the classroom in their educators playbook kids understand themselves better and in a much younger age than adults assume they said this includes their gender identity so to the board i ask what do we do when we deny our children the chance to assert themselves and their identities let me just
052rephrase that though what will you be doing to my children when you deny them the chance to assert their own identities you'll restrict their development you'll lose their trust you'll scare them you'll inhibit them you'll shame them again as their parents who a parent of children who actually attend these schools i send my children into your buildings every day of the school year and i won't allow that to happen thank you good evening i'm bambi vargo i live in mentor pronouns are important in a study by the gay lesbian and straight educational network they shared recommended practices for creating safe classrooms and one of the most critical steps is the use of inclusive language which can help students feel first accepted and second can help other students become more accepting of others gender identities miriam
053webster added the following non-gender definition of they in 2018 quote used to refer to a single person whose gender is intentionally not revealed unquote so it should be no surprise therefore that searches for they in 2019 increased by 313 percent over the previous year demonstrating that people are just more curious about gender neutral pronouns and pronouns in general i have a lot of questions about this policy first and foremost is it going to encourage or discourage teachers from creating a more inclusive classroom was there any discussion with school mental health professionals who are experts in working with trans and non-binary youth prior to considering this policy is there a state policy regarding the use of pronouns when was the last staff in service to prepare teachers and support staff in the use of pronouns i
054believe that these and other questions need to be answered first before the next hearing on this proposed policy in the website learning for justice i found the quote quote supporting trans and gender fluid students requires the courage to try and get it right unquote this is an opportunity for all the people of mentor and the school board to work together to get this important work right in the best interest of justice for our students thank you thank you [Applause] good evening board my name is kimberly bazon i attend well my children attend homeschool but i am i reside in mentor and i'm here just after coming through quite a few of these meetings i'm honestly very emotional after everything i'm hearing every time i come here i feel that i'm hated by individuals because of
055my beliefs because of even just homeschooling my children based off of what's happening in our district and i just feel compelled to express based off of everything we've learned in these last meetings and things that weren't voted on and that are happening in our district that yes i am against but not for the reasons that i'm being told from another side and i just want to state what it is that i feel and want you to be compelled for the heart that i have for what's going on we need to keep our children's innocence leave schools to teach the traditional education and basics to prepare them for the future and not groom them into something that takes away their pride and changes their thoughts and perception for fear of what may happen if they don't
056conform to what the government or even school districts are asking of the definition of grooming is the action of developing a relationship with a young person and gaining their trust to manipulate them at any age someone can be a groomer i'm not saying that's what's happening but in my opinion it is what's happening if you don't think or feel this is what's happening to mentor school district isn't that or isn't that then you truly need to research and educate yourselves right now these books this is from my last meeting these books that we have in these schools are now showing any they're not showing anything positive but providing more of a divide and causing manipulation to happen to our children books that express hate to police acceptance of and not having an acceptance to sexual
057choices i'm sorry the majority do not agree upon we don't hate the individual but we do agree that their choices should not be at the hands of the children or even teenagers within the school itself leave those choices to the public library where they are not often advertised as i can assume they wouldn't be but living in the world that we live in today you can't really assume anything anymore that deals with the greater good of the community i am baffled at how we even come to this existence of gender pronoun surveys and how one identifies themselves i don't mean for those to come out wrong but the last time i checked you're either born or male or female and i love everybody just because i believe that you're born and male female does not
058make me a negative individual or that i don't agree with how you're born outside of the school in the homes is your privy to do and feel whatever floats your boat but please leave our innocent of our children to what they think is appropriate and our parents think are appropriate for them to be acknowledged as it is not our children's fault for the way others feel need to be accepted as long as our children are showcasing love kindness and compassion for one another that should remain traditional and kept as is what's not broke do not fix it if it is still an issue then you better not withhold this information from any men or taxpayers me being a mom thank you i will bring this back thank you [Applause] anyone else does anyone else wish
059to speak hi i have a question just because i'm having a hard time finding the agenda um is the topic of as that mother mentioned censoring books and the content that we teach to our students or uh commonly known as critical race theory part of this agenda today so we allow one speaker per session i understand i wouldn't mind to just reserve that for our next session okay speaking thank you all right i don't see another other speaker so we will move on on our agenda thank you superintendents report recommendations mr heath thank you madam president members of the board i have the following recommendations listed under the consent agenda and recommend approval of item 7a1 any discussion please call the roll miss dressling yes miss cook yes miss payne yes mr tuttle yes miss
060breiner yes motion carries 5-0 madam president and members of the board i am recommending approval of the resolution adopting a 2022-2023 calamity day alternative makeup plan so moved second any discussion please call the wrong mr tuttle yes miss joslin yes miss cook yes miss payne yes miss breiner yes motion carries 5-0 madam president members of the board i have the following board of education policies on the agenda for a first reading because this is a first reading no vote is necessary any discussion yes i just wanted to address some things i've been hearing some things and i was emailed a lot of questions about the pronoun policy that um i was proposing and i think mr tuttle from the last meeting was on the same page with me but i wanted to um kind of
061go over some things and ensure that everybody understands what is really being proposed here and i want everybody to know i've been listening i've been reading the emails that have been sent to me and i really am trying to have empathy and understanding and i will be the first to admit i don't understand 100 percent of everybody's perspective but i do do my best job to to understand it so i want to discuss the proposed pronoun policy i've been hearing from many in the community and i want to address some of their concerns over this proposal first i want to ensure that parents are aware that this does not prevent you from allowing your child to go by a different name or pronoun if you wish there's nothing in this policy that would state that
062a parent will not be allowed to have their child go by a different name or pronoun than their biological name or pronoun that decision will still be accepted in the schools and respected if that is the parents and students desire together that is a parent's right to make that choice for their child and their children do still deserve to have an education in a safe environment what this policy essentially does is prevent unwanted questioning of minor children without parental notification of or consent it prevents kindergarten through eighth grade students from being surveyed and asked what gender they would like to be and prevents our schools from potential risks of violating parents rights i was actually quite surprised to see an article in the ohio school board association school management newsletter from august that stated reviewing
063parental rights with board members and teachers is important because it's a sign to parents that the school administration is not trying to undermine them and can encourage a mutual respect between the school and parents additionally it said that we should acknowledge the critical and irreplaceable role that parents have in raising their children while demonstrating to parents that teachers and staff are the experts in education who can be trusted with their children we have some awesome teachers many from which i have heard from on this particular topic and they are the education experts but are not qualified to give professional advice on gender identity talking about this with our students is something that is certainly outside of the scope of the responsibility of our schools when children are asked what gender they would like to be
064without parental consent we are usurping their parents rights additionally the second part of the issue that i think a lot of people don't understand is that we do not notify parents of the results of these surveys so by prohibiting them at the k through eighth grade eighth grade levels we are avoiding potential risks of violating parents rights by not sharing the data that we received with their parents i think parents deserve to know if their children are transgendered especially given the 30 risk of suicide however at the high school level we are simply asking for teachers to notify parents if they will be questioning their minor child's gender via a pronoun survey i think this leads to an additional question i have been receiving which is if parents can opt their children out of this
065survey at the high school level so that's something that i believe we will have to discuss i do acknowledge that this policy is not perfect and that it does not speak to teachers verbally asking children pronoun questions i have heard that people would like this policy to speak to the verbal questioning of our children's gender as well however if we can't get enough support for a policy that references both verbal and written questioning of students genders then i believe this would still be a step in the right direction to show parents that they retain their rights to their children i think it would really behoove us to be mindful of how not passing a policy like this could negatively affect our enrollment i pulled the data on homeschooling and private school students who reside in
066mentor for particular years over the last two years we've seen an increase of 5.5 percent in private schooling in mentor with one school in particular mentor christian school almost doubling their amount of men or students in a single year from 2019 until now we have seen a 52 percent increase in homeschooling students and mentor these numbers increased while our public schooling enrollment numbers decrease we need to be cognizant of parents rights and we need to be welcoming to all parents and all students we do not want to see more people unenrolling from our district due to feeling like their rights are being diminished as parents we know that there is a perception out there that our schools are pushing political agendas and we have the ability to curb that perception by showing parents that we
067do hear them and we can pass a policy which places the responsibility back where i believe it belongs which is with the parents of or the guardians of our students [Applause] i had had some discussions with one of our staff psychologists and one of our guidance counselors talking about just kind of the overview of this particular issue and did some reading from the american association of school psychologists and also did some reading regarding the current state of the law in title ix so as i read over the policy because i agree with you mrs payne it's very important to be respectful of parents rights to guide their children's lives and as i read over the policy that addresses surveys analysis or evaluation it specifically outlines some of those same issues so from my perspective we
068already have an established policy that requires written consent of parents when students are being surveyed and i trust mr heath to be responsible for enforcing this policy and communicating the spirit of it to all of our administrators administrative team and our building administrators so that they can guide the teachers in their buildings to consider those guidelines so until we have final litigation completed on the title ix questions i think what we have is speaking to the very concerns that you have which i understand and it also respects the ability of our building administrators to help and guide our staff to be the best teachers they can be in meeting their students needs going forward so when you brought up this particular issue how many surveys had there been given at the high school that requested
069a gender pronoun preference so when mr porter was superintendent i've been speaking with him about this particular issue since i think when i was a a candidate actually because i brought it up to him and bill wade but he could not get me the data he did not you know ask how many teachers were doing it now we heard from parents who said you know it was about 50 50 some were 60 40. there's really no solid data because we didn't ask the teachers did you give out a pronoun survey but it was you know something that was on a case-by-case basis for the teachers so there wasn't to my knowledge there was no introduction of that concept at the k-8 level so with my discussions with mr porter from the last meeting which is
070why it kind of led me in this direction because he had said he could see it happening at the middle school level so now that the spirit of the concerns been expressed i think it could be a simple matter of mr heath sharing with the administrative team what the board's preference is it's really just following what's already established in the policy i don't think that additional wording is needed to really comply with what you've brought forward as a concern because the other issue are the legal issues and i don't know you had a discussion we did yeah we talked about with eric yep and i spoke with him on two occasions one was with mr heath and then the other one was just me and him speaking as well and we did bring up the
071sex behaviors and attitudes what's in policy 7.30 and he was actually like well this could possibly already fall under that which leads to the other question of how are we going to tell our administrators our teachers whatnot that this sex behaviors and attitudes is also including a pronoun survey and i think that's just a matter of administrative clarification i mean correct me if i'm wrong mr heath what are and i know you haven't had this particular um issue to deal with here in mentor but i'm confident that there have been some experiences you've had that might help guide you in this matter yes and there are administrative guidelines in other uh school districts that that kind of lend itself to to this type of conversation um you know obviously our policies are a little bit
072different here in menor and we don't have specific administrative guidelines so there would have to be some discussion amongst the board as to how we would clarify this with our administrative team but it could be as simple as as creating a set of practices that we would follow at the different uh the different levels because in my discussions with both the psychologist and the guidance counselor they shared that the complexity of meeting the needs and it's a small number of students but transgender students or non-binary students or whatever label you might apply it's complicated it's difficult and my bigger concern is not that you know we we certainly can enforce this policy and it could speak to that specific concern about not even introducing the topic of gender pronouns during that latent period when children
073are little i don't think anybody would want to see that change but targeting or adding very strong language may not be the best course of action and we because we don't want to send a message of intolerance we just want to protect the well-being of all students so my my suggestion for us as a board at this point would be can we table this policy change sure for the i believe by the end of september the title ix litigation process will at least what the filings will have been will be done by the end of september and that will help us to kind of see what the rules are that prescribe all districts that accept federal funding so that we can do right by what that legal requirement is and and still i think express
074our concerns that we would safeguard our children from unnecessarily intrusive questioning and that it could be handled in the way it's always been on an individual basis with parents perhaps students with their guidance counselors or or however that would best address the needs of the individual so that all students feel welcome accepted and safe in our district so the the question also becomes um what do we do this year then for the beginning of school year because you said it wasn't you know an issue that it was an individual case by case that's not what happened with this survey going out because it was by classes so many children saw it in the classes and that's where the parents were like number one there's two two facets of this the actual survey asking the actual
075question the second part is what do we do with that data so if you ask a child you know what gender pronoun do they want to go by and the child says something different than what they were born with then what do we do with that the does the we don't notify parents and that's the very concerning part to me i i believe that we cannot usurp the parents right that they have to have a say in their child's you know everything the way they you know are raising their children we cannot usurp that right and we cannot hide information from parents i don't think that's wise of us um i do know we spoke with our attorney on this and he also kind of made a statement to mr heath and i that that
076is not a wise decision either there's no easy easy answer here because on both sides there's risk right you know risk from parents if they find out that we're hiding information from them there's a risk there there's a risk from somebody who you know has a child and that child does want to go by a different pronoun and name and they feel like that's their right as a student or as a you know minor child so there's risk on that and as well there's risk that the civil rights commission could you know see what we're doing as a big no no a big risk so there's different ways we have to calculate what what is important to us to me parents are who we go to for levies parents and and community members are who
077we ask to support us they are the majority of the funding if if i'm correct they fund the majority of our schools through the tax taxes our residential taxpayer does yes correct so to me that outweighs the risk of the federal which i think is 25 i don't does it 25 not quite sure phil i'm gonna even need some help there i'll look it up i don't want to give you bad info okay so you know i think they're and i'm certainly not trying to hurt anybody's feelings i'm not trying to make it place judgment on people i feel like every parent has a right to raise their children as they see fit that should be the same thing for the person who has sincerely held religious beliefs that see that question for their child
078as going directly against their religious beliefs so on both ends there's we need to start making accommodations for people who have these values and people who have these values and i find that this policy does that i find that just asking for notification at the high school level is okay and i find that k through eight those are really i mean we're talking under 14 here i feel like parents really deserve to know if their child's gonna be asked that question and this does not prevent parents who already know that their child wants to go by a different name or pronoun from doing that they just have to be involved so now i i agree with you that but i think the existing policy accomplishes that that's that was my point is that it says
079any surveys analysis or evaluation that delves into these issues without prior written consent of the parents so that's an in so now we're saying that at nine through 12 we're actually going to make it an opt in process instead of just notification which if that's what it says and we want to go by that policy that's fine this is i i would be fine with the policy as it stands at this point because i think and i don't know when this was written i don't know if it has it are you saying you're asking for more clarification on title ix i would like to know what the outcome of the title nine because is it the proposed title ix would probably preclude us from making this change that's my concern yeah i mean i would
080like some clarification on that and in the discussion with our legal counsel was that discussed mr peace we had a lot of different conversations um part of our legal counsel's advice at this point is that there would be some legal and financial considerations that potentially could arise as in lawsuits with potential lawsuits foreign [Music] and again i'm not a lawyer so we would we would need to have additional conversations with our legal counsel that we know what legal counsel is advising us i just want to make sure that we're mitigating our risk to the district as well again i would prefer that we let the court cases kind of work their work themselves out before we do an actual policy adjustment but we could certainly look at the practice here before the beginning of the
081school year if need be so if we i'm totally fine with you know including the eric johnson on everything but i would like him to then for sure clarify if sex behaviors and attitudes would include pronoun surveys even if we don't write it have it in writing i would like to know that because then it actually makes it even more strict than what i'm proposing because from 9th to 12th grade it would be opt in not just notification so per the 7.30 policy can you can you i want to make sure you get that in the notes correctly can you restate what you would like uh yeah so i would like for an opinion from our legal counsel a written opinion on if the sex behaviors and attitudes in policy 7.30 i don't have it
082in front of me so i'm just doing off the head but i think i'm accurate so it would also include pronoun policies in there even if it we didn't state that um and then under that section that is an opt-in section if i remember correctly it would be an opt-in not just notification i'm wondering if because we know we have a policy now i'm wondering if that policy would suffice for parents that are concerned if they just notified the school that they want to opt out for any of those surveys is that a possibility so is that discussed so on the policy right now as it is i believe it's an opt-in it requires prior written consent from the parent that's what it says yeah which is different than what i'm proposing i'm proposing 9th
083or 12th grade notification only but i would be okay with that if that's if we can get clarity that that would then cover a pronoun policy i would be okay with that so just to clarify what i was trying to say if we just leave the policy as it is if parents that are concerned just notify the school that they want to opt their kids out of these surveys no that's not so that's not going to cover it no i don't i think miss payne is saying that that doesn't cut that's not how i think ginny confirmed that's not how the policy is right the way the policy and if you're go we would have to like in other situations my understanding is we'd have to present that survey and parents would have to choose
084to allow their student to take that survey because it wouldn't as as annie suggested or said where a student has established a preference maybe their parents this may be something long-standing it may be a change there isn't anything that that would alter how the interaction between the student and his or her guidance counselor or teachers you know if if i have a class when i was teaching i would ask my students you know if you have a nickname you go by do you play sports do do you like you know what do you do on the weekends for fun or whatever it might be to help me build a more effective rapport with my students and to help maybe tap in things that are of interest to them so that when i'm adapting my lessons
085i can be a better teacher for that student and and that informal exchange could always go on you know say oh like do you have stop by after class and let me know if you know there's something that you need or whatever it might be and i think we've always done that as educators to try to meet the needs of our students sometimes we get information that perhaps a student for example is hard of hearing or has difficulty with vision you're moving that student closer to you unobtrusively to make sure that you're meeting that student's needs i don't see this as as different from that but putting it into a formal survey for everyone to fill out is probably not necessary so that's why i think the policy as it's stated is adequate you know
086and if it's possible that whomever the stude the teachers were that gave a policy or i'm sorry a survey out last year may not have been aware of the specifics of this policy and that's something that mr t heath and our administrative team can share and strengthen their understanding i'm sure it wasn't meant to be in violation of a policy it was meant to establish a positive or poor with students but i can understand where it has created this secondary concern and i think by just sharing this policy clarifying and we can go forward and should we need to have other language at some future time based on the title ix litigation as it works its way through the courts we can address that then with our attorneys so the the policy as is if
087the our lawyer could come back and give a written you know opinion that it would also apply to pronoun surveys then that would be i don't have a problem with that if it's going to require parental prior parental written consent i don't see an issue with that because we've made it clear as well at that point that from these meetings at least that you know we don't what we do with that data is we're not giving it to the parents necessarily so they would be opting into the survey instead of you know parents who are unaware of that opting in because in the statement there was an excellent article from the national association of school psychologists that talks about ethical management of that kind of information you know those that's a whole different situation and
088as you pointed out classroom teachers are striving to achieve a positive rapport with their students they're not qualified to do counseling or other kinds of activities that's far out of our scope and we don't we don't try to do that but what a psychologist or guidance counselor may have in terms of conferences with their students at their um meeting with that's a whole different situation yeah i would never want to my goal of this policy would would not be to not allow those parents who have children who are transgender to go by the name that they want or the pronoun that they want i'm not saying we should not allow that that should be allowed the parents are included they know that's their right i'm just saying let's not violate other parents rights in the
089process um so i would be you know i guess we have some questions to follow up with ericon and then the only other part of that is i also wouldn't want to see a teacher standing in front of let's say sixth graders saying let me know what preferred pronouns you want to go by here are the lists of pronouns i don't think that's acceptable either i think from the verbal standpoint pardon the verbal standpoint yeah the verbal standpoint i would like to get clarification on and does our current policy address that as well um you know i think at that level k-8 especially i just see parents being so involved and aware of that those kind of situations that they should have those conversations with the school and possibly guidance counselors things like that so
090my goal my intention of this is not to tell people you can't have the right to your child to let the school know what pronoun or what you know name they want to go by well i you know i think we had a speaker that brought up why do we need a policy if it's not an issue i would like more information on these surveys and i think that that's got to be possible you know how many surveys went out how many students were affected what grade levels do we know is this a rumor did it happen has anyone seen the survey i've seen it okay yeah so as bill porter has seen it i've sent it to him so i would like to know what grade level sure and how many students were expecting
091and could you also follow that up with um the middle schools to see absolutely if they were planning on sending out or if they know of any teachers or if they would feel comfortable letting teachers know not to do that um so we want to know if it was done at what grade levels how many students were affected and if there's plans to do it in the future but on the other side of that i think it's a smart approach to not be reactive and be proactive you know if we're reactive and a child is asked this question behind parents behind closed doors and their parent doesn't know that they picked a different pronoun or gender and they're using different bathrooms or whatnot and we don't tell the parent because of title ix issues then
092we're putting ourselves at risk as well so i think that is the other part of the issue is not ensuring that you know we're not doing that because at those grade levels i think that would be that would definitely put us at risk as well so we need to know if that's an issue well i don't know if we need to know if that's an issue so much as to i wouldn't want to be reactive i like a proactive approach because i don't want to wait for you know a risk to happen we've seen that it's happening around the country recently there was a teacher who asked her second grade class this question and her second grade class almost all had different pronouns and were all using different bathrooms x y and z and the
093parents didn't know so now that there's litigation there and i don't want that to happen to us either so and i do think that policy that jenny mrs jesseling has brought up if it does fit um you know under sex behaviors and attitudes then that would apply k through 12. yeah so yeah i guess we just need some clarification and and i'm open to a work session as well if we need a work session i know i've said work session many times but i i'm so open to that uh because this is not like i mentioned this may not be a perfect policy but um we can work on it and we can look with legal and see if if our current policy would address pronoun policies and then we could uh pronounce surveys rather
094and then we could disperse that information via mr heath another thing that you know one of our speakers i wrote down a quote said you know will this policy encourage or discourage an inclusive classroom and i think that something maybe a work session is is a great idea mrs payne to just talking about whatever policy we have are we thinking you know we we want to protect our parental rights we want to be transparent we also want to make sure that kids needs are met and that the teachers really understand the policy there's a lot of gray area in our discussions even here i i could imagine as a teacher you're not sure can you okay if i'm going to give them a written policy right now if this policy currently sits with with this
095and someone has to opt in for a written policy but can i stand in front of the class and say if anyone has a different name or a different pronoun that you'd like to come you know please let me know is that okay is that not okay you know we're creating a lot of difficult situations because we're not being very clear and i think that we just need to discuss and and really be open about what we want you know what what we see as appropriate and look at it from all angles you know really thinking about is it in is this being inclusive um you know who is being harmed what are the risks and what are the legalities i agree and i also think that we all have a duty to do research
096on this topic i know i reached out to some of our guidance counselors who work with these kids particularly at the high school we heard from some students here on their personal experiences i think we had a young lady who represents the pride group at the high school it can't hurt to reach out to crossroads naomi adams board lgbt uh i believe betty jacobs was here and spoke with us tonight i just want to make sure we are getting a full well-rounded look at all aspects i think that's i respect the parents concerns as well but i want to make sure that we're considering students and everything i think that's reasonable um i think that we always do have to remember though those people are not the people who are supporting our schools it's it's
097the parents and the community members and so in my mind i do want to we can go to them but do we need to do surveys for everybody when it may only affect a couple people and when we're not telling them they can't go by their name or they can't go by their pronoun that they wish they can still do that and at the k-8 levels in my mind as long as the parents are okay with it that's that's great they can still do that we're not um we're not disallowing that uh so in my mind i want i just i really want to ensure that parents retain the right to their children that we're not usurping their right while also ensuring that those students who are transgendered are you know feeling comfortable in our
098schools that my goal is not to i think that yeah so i think if if we can get some of those questions answered um and just to make sure that we're following our board policy as well if you can allow us from the administrative team to reach out to our staff members um we'll take care of that that aspect if there are some people out in the community that you guys want to reach out to by all means you can do that we just want to make sure that we are the ones that are communicating with our staff so we will definitely be doing that we'll get we'll try and get some answers to some of these questions that have been raised and then we'll talk to legal counsel as well uh regarding the the
099sex behaviors and attitudes section of the current policy and and get an opinion on on that component of the of the policy right now um it also sounds like one of the tasks at hand would be to set up a work session of some sort here in the near future to uh to discuss board policy around this topic and and quite honestly i wouldn't mind opening it up about all of our board policies because again if we were to get into administrative guidelines um in addition to board policy i think there are a lot of things that we could probably resolve in a pretty easy fashion that would not cause us to continuously change policy language based on new litigation because of the fact that um companies who are designed to write school policy neola
100osba are the two predominant ones and having experienced neola in the past that's that's what they do they ensure that the policies that we have are up to date they make sure the policies that we have are legally compliant based on changes in state and federal law and best practice um and that's that's their focus that's that's what they do and they have administrative guidelines go to that um the only thing i would add to the discussion is is you know we have to be careful that we don't create policy that creates financial burden on a legal perspective so you know i think the discussion here today is very good discussion i think the discussion that's being had between the board members is appropriate um and you know just as a as the fiscal agent
101and the person who has to go out and get us insurance yearly you know court cases lawsuits all impact that right it goes against our deductible and it becomes harder for us to ensure so we the discussion is just the beginning of that to make sure that we're doing our due diligence to protect the rights of our students to protect the rights of our community to protect the rights of our parents while also protecting taxpayer dollars at the same time thank you mr wade thank you anything else all right thank you please next i have the following board of education policies on the agenda for a second reading and approval and i'm recommending approval of all policies second any discussion please call the rule oh sorry i had a couple questions um the complaints about
102fellow employees i just wanted to touch base with mr heath because i know i asked you a couple questions about this because i said you know i don't want to prevent people from being able to come to the board and looking at the verbiage in this it kind of sounds like that but you clarified some things for me would you be able to touch on that tonight yeah this policy was uh was provided to us from legal counsel as a response to some recent recent updates in in litigation so that's the reason for that policy and also to make sure that it aligns to some of our previous board policies as well as far as um who's contacting who with uh with complaints okay just to clarify the legal counsel that we use for policy
103is not the same legal counsel that we use for general counsel so we use peppa wagner is the legal counsel that does our current policies could you say that name again wagner p-e-p-b-l-e and then the second name is wagner that one i think a little bit easier yeah and our general legal counsel is walter haverfield and the lead attorney is eric johnson before that so i just like since we're throwing out a lot of legal just for the community and for the board and it's mr heath new just making sure we're all on the same page same page um i had another question this is about the staff conduct can i ask now about those as well the staff conduct revision i believe that's one that was in response to house bill 99 and i'm
104okay with that but i wanted to just mention because we talked about at the last meeting the retired police officers and kind of where we left off with that because it was kind of in the middle of the transition between mr porter and mr heath and are you able to speak on that mr heath do you have the update on that or as far as the which part of that again the the school resource officers possibly um hiring retired police officers officers for our buildings yeah and that's going to be something that we're continuing that conversation to try and get student resource officers in every building we actually had some conversation with with our city government officials here last week and they also have that commitment obviously our biggest challenge right now is having the
105individuals trained and ready to go so we'll uh be talking to our our our local uh police force to to see and our police chiefs to make sure so there are some people available that were able to bring them in so in one of our updates i believe from mr porter and maybe we didn't get this to you yet so i apologize if i'm jumping but i want to ensure because we did talk about at the last meeting that we did have some discussions bill porter did reach out to our local police chief and had discussions about possibly getting a retired police officer unit so that we can use those retired police officers at our schools and i think the cost bill wade was it around three hundred thousand is that what i know we
106talked about it and i didn't and i apologize i didn't write it down but um yeah i wanted i think there were he kind of left it off as this is where we're at we can possibly do this but it's gonna require further discussions okay so i i would like those discussions to be had and maybe that's something we can add to a work session to talk about absolutely yeah i've been brought up to speed on that so thank you okay great yeah i think it was like 350 some thousand for eight hours a day 180 days at seven additional elementaries which i think at 35 an hour which is the the off duty rate currently yeah sounds like a big ask but i know our community had really big concerns about our safety especially
107after the school the recent school shooting so if we can kind of talk through that and give that the due diligence that it needs absolutely and sorry one more the student dress code looked like it's kind of going to be left up to the building administrators or principals to decide what works for that building and i know mr heath i had emailed you some questions about that because i had some concerns about how are we going to enforce something here and then not enforce the same thing here if they're both middle schools or for elementary schools and we don't have a whole lot of language in that that revised policy that would allow expectations on our parents side and on our uh you know student side so i guess the other question is with the
108student dress code revision will building principles then still send out a list of what is to be expected that's different than what we're approving tonight if we approve it there are going to be there's going to be some language in school student handbooks is my understanding at this point and mr crow at the high school and miss blackburn at memorial and mr dwyer at shore have had some collaborative conversations around that to make sure that they've got consistent enforcement across the secondary level because predominantly this is a secondary issue um and that was the reason for some of the changes part of it was a little bit more specific some of it they were leaving it a little bit more general so that they could be specific to the high school versus the middle school
109piece so we would see then in a future agenda the um student handbooks being for up for approval if there's language in there that's going to change and that would be changed most likely prior to the school beginning i'm just wondering how are people going to know what to expect outside of this policy if it's going to be different based on the principles i thought we approved the handbooks last meeting was that with this dress code verbiage in there i think what they were my understanding was there was a simplification of the dress code because of the enforceability was difficult you always run into problems when let's say students go shopping for clothing these are the kinds of outfits that are available at target or wherever the student's family is shopping they purchased clothes you
110know and then there were it was always an enforceability issue and i think that was one of the reasons why it was streamlined to the essentials that shouldn't be distracting that it should you know promote a good learning environment it wouldn't provide a safety issue like certain kinds of flip-flops on stairwells at that sort of thing and that it wouldn't promote drug and alcohol abuse or violent behavior so you know t-shirts that might have some kind of written whatever on them and so when i read over the policy that was you know that changes it it comes down to those essentials and still if if something is distracting or unsafe that's something that the administrators can certainly address in their buildings and that's how it was written in the handbooks that we approved last month
111so that right so that would match up with this but from my understanding the building principles would be issuing something different say to each building saying these are what we're going to go by is that not correct do you know mr heath they would have to follow the handbook so we won't so we wouldn't have another revision of the handbook i can't say we wouldn't have another revision of a hammer based on this particular item correct if the board has approved a handbook the administration is obligated to enforce the handbook as approved and do we know for sure that this revision is uniform with what we passed last month for all the handbooks because there were like eight of them i think there's a lot of them since i've resigned as a superintendent at kirtland
112i refuse to look at him so i can't speak to that i'm not necessarily asking you i'm just i don't think it's fair to ask mr heath says he's living on the job for seven days i'll stick up for him on this one thanks no i i in again annie or mrs payne i think the policy just states that the school principals are authorized to develop their own dress code guidelines to suit the the building's needs and those would be communicated through the handbooks so if the handbooks were approved last month that's what the what's going to be followed here for this school year unless there's a revision which i don't believe there would be but the policy that we would be approving tonight would align with with what that practice is i have received
113from both of my i have a student memorial and a student at the high school and i've received from both principals like this is our these are our requirements they are more detailed okay than this so and so that that's that was my question because i was hearing from parents that they already received what to be expected and then they looked at this and they're like this is not what i was given so is that going to be changed or is that set we're just saying the principals have the right to come up with those guidelines and they've already been communicated okay thank you if that makes sense thank you mrs code for clarifying that that's all i had anything else sorry i got notes everywhere miss jeslin that's me yes uh miss payne yes
114miss cook yes mr tuttle yes miss breiner yes motion carries 5-0 madam president members of the board i am recommending approval of agenda item c1 related to certified personnel and 2 through c 4 all related to human resource matters i'm also recommending approval of item of agenda item d related to administrative staff so moved second questions comments please call the roll miss justly yes miss cook yes miss payne yes mr tuttle yes miss breiner yes motions carry 5-0 this concludes my portion of tonight's agenda thank you thank you board of education report and recommendations okay uh we have recommendation that the resolution authorizing an addendum to the contract of employment at the treasurer be approved do we have a motion second any discussion please call the role ms payne yes mr tuttle yes miss cook
115yes miss justin yes miss breiner yes motion carries 5-0 madam president members of the board mr heath recommendation for the approval of the resolution authorizing their vision of compliance officers for the calendar year 2022 motion so moved second please call the roll miss justly yes miss cook yes miss payne yes mr tuttle yes miss breiner yes motion carries 5-0 madam president members of the board approval of the resolution authorizing the sale of used surplus equipment by the public auction so moved second second please call the roll miss cook yes mr tuttle yes miss dressling yes miss payne yes miss breiner yes motion carries 5-0 madam president members of the board mr heath approval of the mentor civic arena ice arena contract agreement high school second please call the roll miss cook yes ms payne yes
116ms jesslyn yes mr tuttle yes miss breiner yes motion carries 5-0 madam president members of the board mr heath the approval of the excess workers compensation proposal so moved second please call the roll uh mr tuttle yes miss payne yes miss cook yes miss jeslin yes miss breiner yes motion carry spy zero thank you legislative report mr tuttle thank you mrs breiner the ohio department of education created a dedicated web page to provide continuing information on pandemic relief funding the site named future forward ohio which will provide school districts schools and the public with information on ohio strategic priorities for using federal funds those in the audience if you're interested go to that all you have to do is type in ode future forward ohio and you can research that by all the school districts
117and the different programs that were funded by that you can scroll down see matter and by the way mr wade yes sir we have a hundred percent on everyone with the exception of one and that application is in to get the remaining funds so we've all but claimed so as uh yes this is a reminder that we have an sr3 4.9 million dollars i believe we've allocated and spent 1.8 of that already on summer learning programs as well as esser tutors that we had last year in the district we will continue to spend that down over the next two years with additional tutoring for students that at the building levels k through 12 through the support of miss bonus and the work that the curriculum office with ms bowser and mr heath and mr hammond
118are doing and then we'll continue that until that those funds run out thank you great explanation of the use of those funds to make up for those students who need to come along and come back up to where they should be yes thank you so there are three strategies related with that and overcoming obstacles to learning accelerating learning preparing students for future success overcoming obstacles to learning will focus on obstacles that impact the student's ability to learn which includes attendance mental health and high-speed internet accelerating learning will provide students additional opportunities to learn including tutoring and after-school programs additionally this strategy will provide resources to help schools with high quality instructional materials create more professional development opportunities for literacy instruction finally the preparing students for future success strategies aims to connect and reconnect students and
119help them find a link between their current school and their post-secondary future the three strategies provide a list of programs that school districts can utilize as they address students needs additionally the future forward website provides a dashboard showing the various pandemic relief funding allocated school districts and provides deadlines for the availability of those funds and so once again go there if you'd like to visit that and very successful program lastly schools and districts are encouraged to share the way in which they have used their funding to implement promising practices a series of spotlights will future will feature many of these promising practices a school safety program governor mike dewine announced an expedited list of school districts and schools that will receive funding through second round of the k-12 school safety grant program the funding will
120help districts implement school safety measures in their buildings with each building able to receive up to one hundred thousand dollars the k-12 school safety grant program recently received 100 million dollars from house bill the capital appropriations bill the total amount allocated from dewine's expedited list is approximately 47 million and was awarded to the schools that applied last year but did not receive funding due to inefficient state funds the k-12 school safety grant program has 53 million dollars remaining to award and the ohio facilities construction commission recently announced the guidelines for the program ofcc will begin accepting applications for the funding in the very near future we have a meeting next week today or this week even mr heath don't wait and additionally a couple recent they're even on vacation but still recently introduced legislation house
121bill 705 introduced by reps adam c miller of columbus and joseph a miller of amherst to authorize the ohio high school athletics association to be the sole authority to establish the rules of play in athletic athlete eligibility regulations for interscholastic athletics for grades 7 to 12 amongst its members goals house bill 711 introduced by rep lisa sobesky of toledo to require the ohio tax commissioner to disclose to an employee upon request the employee's withheld state taxes and to require that the tax commissioner creates a request form information is always helpful senate bill 356 introduced by senator andrew brenner to increase the eligibility age from six to nine regarding the education of children experiencing developmental delays and state operating funding for districts and schools educating such children that's definitely a good move in the right direction
122expanding that from age six to nine and finally the consortium of state school boards association of which ospa is a founding member is hosting an hour-long federal advocacy webinar for school leaders on august 18th at 12 o'clock experts with boise public affairs will present on the proposed title ix regulations and their impact on education registration is complementary for members but space is limited so that falls right into what we were talking about earlier with title ix to learn more this consortium do we know if this is like taking the place of nsba do we have any information on this i'm just starting to hear about them yeah i don't know i can't answer that i'm sorry okay i was just curious well we we withdrew from nspa yes we did so this would be hopefully
123in the right direction and do we know if we will be or if we did get any of these safety grant funds we we did not yeah but we are looking to apply for this round okay and that's 47 million i think it's 50 53 right yeah time the uh consortium of state school boards associations of which osba is a founding member of this is a federal advocacy webinar for school leaders does that mean they are going to advocate for so you know for certain legislation because that's what it sounds like it sounds kind of like they're politically pulling people into one direction do you know what that federal advocacy you're advocating for something i just don't know if they're you know because it is on title nine so i don't know i'd be interested
124to see what they're advocating on we can i'll find out i'll participate in it yeah let us know yeah that'd be great i was planning to do that yeah thank you for the question it sounds like to me it's the title of the organization hour-long federal advocacy it's like like they're advocating for something yeah and it's not just stating what's going on so i'd be interested to see yeah be worthwhile after that participate and listen to him yeah i'll follow up with what i find out thanks anything else thank you i'll do that all right student achievement report mrs cook all right fellow board members um as a student achievement chair it's important to recognize student achievements and report how our district is doing academically to help us guide policy and allocate resources where they
125are most needed to help inform us how the district scored academically mr heath and i asked mrs bonus and mr luciano to provide data for our consideration and i'm proud to report that using our state air test data we can report that our overall district data was higher than the state average in all subjects in all grade levels overall our district trend data in reading and math show that we are making progress toward achieving our pre pandemic numbers in many areas and we still have areas that are in need of improvement i wanted to report a little bit tonight on our opportunities for growth so we can talk a little bit about that one of the opportunities for growth is i'm working on closing achievement gaps by providing math and reading interventions in all of
126our buildings and our esser funds are going to be used again as mr wade just discussed to hire 19 additional teachers to provide interventions for this coming school year this will be the second year we're providing this intensive support our middle school math scores again while we are over the the state scores that's a weaker area for us it's an area that we can have opportunity for growth and so our math steering committee reviewed data and recommended the adoption of a new math program called open up you may remember we adopted this last spring implementation of this new curriculum will begin in the fall the curriculum is directly aligned to state standards and teachers will participate in monthly professional development and have embedded instructional coaching to support them hopefully that will we will see the
127results that we want with that math another opportunity for growth is our geometry scores our geometry scores are higher than the state average again but with plenty of room for growth our geometry teachers will be provided targeted professional development and curriculum mapping support from our instructional coaches and finally our title one buildings which are lake and morton elementaries they continue to need more support their scores are a little lower than the other ones in order to prioritize needs in addition to title 1 teachers both buildings have been assigned to sr intervention teachers to help students close gaps and all of the other buildings have one i also want to report that this spring mentor high school students took a total of 829 ap exams so these advanced placement exams were given in 26 different subject
128areas which is really that's that's a lot i'm not sure that any schools in the area offer that many ap classes so that's that's excellent of these 76 scored a three or better which means they are eligible to to receive college credit for the work that they did in high school that saves them and their families time and money as the students head off to school later this month or in future years mentor high school also had a summer school program we had 178 students participate in credit recovery this summer these students earned a combined 337 semester credits they're now in a much better place to graduate with their respective classes on time there's also 36 students who earned new pe credit so they'll have space in their schedules to take an additional class should
129they choose and finally 11 students from the class of 20 22 were able to earn their high school diploma because they completed summer school so they're ready for life after high school with a mentor high school diploma in hand we recently wrapped up our extended school year program for students with special needs the programs were housed at ridge elementary and mentor high school and we had approximately 80 elementary age students participate in grades k through 5 and roughly 58 middle and high school students the students not only focused on their iep goals but they were able to enjoy activities that their teachers planned including space week with rockets fire safety animal farms water activities and an ending program picnic the entire program engaged students and we're thankful for all the staff who helped me to
130make it a success we recently learned that our mentor high school concert mixed choir was accepted to perform at the ohio music association professional development conference in columbus ohio in february this prestigious conference features performances from bands choirs and orchestras across ohio but also has nationally known presenters and exhibits this conference is one of the largest state conferences in the united states and in the high school mixed choir categorization generally only one to three groups are chosen in any given year so congratulations to mr landry and the mentor high school concert mixed choir thank you for representing mentor schools and we are proud to offer these opportunities in our school district thank you all right chief financial officers report recommendations mr way thank you madam president members of the board mr heath everyone's favorite part
131of our meeting is my financial report i appreciate everyone for sticking around thank you thank you um just try to add a little levity to the situation as usual um we are [Music] i think i broke it there we go we are in the first month of our fiscal year obviously so we just finished july so we have a pretty good report here it's pretty relatively close we were about 125 thousand dollars more on revenue than we expected based on the june forecast update as well as uh 120 000 favorable impact on the uh overall cash balance because we were about four thousand dollars unfavorable so in 116 million dollar well actually this year it's a little bit higher than that because of the transfer over to the 0.70 account 128 million dollar budget to
132be off by 4 000 in spending i think that's pretty darn good i'll pat myself on the back for that so i have nothing really to do with it because everyone else spends the money i just watch it um so when we look at revenue the big difference uh this year on actual revenue was up for the month compared to a year ago and that's predominantly because we received a larger advance we received 24.5 million dollars from the county auditor this past month as an advance on our taxes we get our tax revenue typically the second half collection which is our first half collection for the fiscal year so it's kind of confusing if you remember that we get that in july and august and then we get another advance in february march so that
133would be the second half collection comes in early spring late winter uh but that's actually the first collection of the next calendar year um so with that we saw higher than we received more than we had received in previous years so that accounted for about 500 000 of that the rest of it kind of comes down to timing um so overall i think we're we're trending about where we would expect um for what we expected based on the forecast again so that puts us up about 125 000 like i said uh predominantly due to timing and uh we also had if you remember i think mrs payne you asked this question um at the june meeting then the fiscal year we had the advance out of the budget for about 223 thousand dollars and i
134explained to the board at that time because it doesn't happen every year that we had advanced money from the general fund to our federal accounts because we can't end the fiscal year in a negative cash balance even though that the money's there we just haven't received it yet from the state because the state gives us our money for federal funds so with that the money came in in july so we return the money back to the general fund so that accounts for the majority actually of the the reason why we're over what we projected because in my forecast i did not project that we were going to advance out or advance in money either year but overall you know that money has been paid back now because the cash was received from the state for
135the federal funds when we look at our expenses for the year in comparison it looks like we've spent a lot in july it looks like we spent 14.7 million dollars which is a big number but again that's a reminder to the board of the communities i shared in june and again last month in the update we transferred 14.1 million dollars from the general fund to our capital reserve fund the 0.70 account which supports our permanent improvements because we made a decision at my recommendation to be completely transparent with that money and move it into the 0.70 account because that money has been earmarked for projects as you saw right now i'm sure you enjoyed the much smoother ride into the parking lot since we had more people coming to board meetings i wanted to make
136sure everybody had a nice entrance and exit out so we made sure that we updated the parking lot for everybody um no that wasn't really you're welcome thank you [Applause] wasn't really the reason i can't even take credit for that because that was part of the five year plan um but again we're spending and i'll take this moment again to reiterate to the the board in the community we're spending about four and a half million dollars a year on improvements to the district uh with a pi levy that only generates a little over a million dollars so that's something we need to continue to be cognizant of and again carnegie mellon's white paper stated that we should be at about two and a half percent of our total valuation so that would be about five
137million dollars if you remember me you've heard me say that so this money will help support the continuation of similar projects to the roofing projects that we're finishing up at ridge bellflower and hopkins as well as the pavement project that we did at the high school as well as some of the upgrades that we see out at the stadium i am happy to announce as well that mr glavin has already started to secure some additional revenue with the advertising that's going to be on the new scoreboard out there so that will again help us to offset expenses that we've already purchased but again in the future help us generate revenue to offset those expenses as we continue to move forward to find creative ways to bring in additional revenue so ultimately when it comes down
138to this is when you look at the bottom that 14.7 million dollars is mostly 14.1 million dollars because of the transfer to the 0.70 but the other predominant number there if you see salary benefits is up about 900 000 mainly because of benefits not because our benefits went up but if the board will remember last year we had we're finishing out the premium holidays that we had given the healthcare consumer committee had approved at the with the recommendation of the board because of the surplus and revenue that we had generated so that was in july of last year so we weren't paying that this year we are now paying all the full freight of that cost so it it's kind of distorted so it's not really that there's an increase it's just the fact that
139we didn't reduce the expense like we did last year with the premium holiday that being said as i said we're about 4 657 that seems like a weird number to use when i'm using larger numbers of hundreds and millions of dollars when i speak to the the board in the community so i think we're training pretty good uh it's really a timing issue it's very early in the fiscal year we'll approve the full budget next month in september um which will present to the citizens financial committee prior to the board meeting to get their recommendation um and then as we finish out that budget we will then be starting to work on the update to the four five year forecast which we have to have been finished excuse me by november so we'll work on
140that as we get past the finalizing the budget and we do that and then the district has transitioned to our new payroll software so i'm happy to publicly announce that to the board of the community and i'd like to thank my staff our team in the treasurer's office for the amount of work and effort that they put in to make that transition and they should be commended debbie walland and glendon epperson julie pepka tammy rudler and now debbie telep uh who work for payroll for us so they should be committed for all their work and effort in doing that and i would have to thank uh miss burnett in the hr department as well as mr lynch in the it department for their support in that transition as well because it's really been a true
141collaboration which has been nice so i'm happy to answer any questions otherwise we can get back to the rest of the league well done mr wade thank you [Music] with that madam president members of the board mr heath i ask that we approve action items or denim items agenda items excuse me b through g and addendums that may be acted upon in one motion second any comments please call the role ms payne yes mr tuttle yes miss cook yes miss jeslin yes miss breiter yes promotions carry 5-0 that concludes my section thank you do we have any unfinished business i do i just wanted to bring up um since last month the board passed the collaborative classrooms library collection for k-5 classrooms by a vote of 3-2 i'm not looking to rehash the entire experience
142but i want to know basically you know i've had parents reach out to me that said hey i'm concerned about some of these topics that are going to be in my children's classrooms that they'll have you know access to um such as you know certain certain sensitive topics we'll say that are in there for the first time and they want to know you know one can we do book challenges on them or two is there something else we can do to accommodate these parents can we give them a list of the books that will be in the classroom so they can there may be parents who find one thing sensitive where others may find a different thing sensitive you may have you know a police officer as a husband and a father and a family
143that doesn't want their child you know reading books about police brutality that are in some of those books that talk about blm you may have you know parents who just feel like they're some of these topics are inappropriate for the ages but it's already in there we already passed it it was it was a vote last meeting so what can we do to accommodate those parents is there something we can do to show them that they can still you know retain that right again their parental right to to not have their children read certain things because they don't deem it to be age appropriate and mr heath i don't know if you i know we had done some changes to that whole process but i don't remember what all we did did we not say
144we were going to send a list or something out i thought so we did at one point we did discuss having at meet the teacher night and mr porter and i believe our curriculum director as well was included in this conversation we had discussed at meet the teacher night giving a list of the books fullest not just that way a teacher doesn't have to look in the collection and say well this is what i think is sensitive this is what i think is sensitive just a full list of what those books are going to be for that particular classroom to be given at meet the teacher night and i think that would be a good compromise they're already in the classroom but then at least at the very least the parent has their eyes on
145it and they know if there's something in there that they want to talk to their kid about first that they you know still retain that right so this would be a list um just from the new books that we introduced into the classroom i think i think that's probably would suffice because i don't believe we've had some of these topics already enter that elementary school these are brand new topics that haven't been approached before that was my understanding was that parents that meet the teacher night would be invited to review the materials and if they had a concern there's a process in place i believe a form that's filled out and is submitted to the building principal classroom teacher mrs bonus could verify the details of that process but if a parent had an objection
146to a specific title for their child i also as i understood that mrs bonus was doing some type of us barcode reader so that they track the books anyway so that they can see how students are progressing and maybe what what books they're going to have for discussion with that individual child that the parent could opt out there so is there a concern over getting a list or do we feel like that would be a good you know because if parents stand there at meet the teacher night and goes through every single one of the book that's time consuming and i think a list would be better they can look through it and easily see x y and z okay i'm not okay with that you know i think that would be a good compromise
147seeing that now those books are in the classroom i would think they could place a list there in the classroom i think the one condition that we ran into was there was an objection because it's proprietary that list because the books are are drawn from a wide array of publishers and collected and leveled that process of the collecting and leveling is the product that that company sells so if you were to email the list that's giving away their proprietary ownership of that curating that was the reason why it couldn't as i under as i recall that it couldn't be just emailed but it would be present for the parent to review in the classroom i i was i i could be wrong about this mr heath maybe you could you could find this out for
148us because i thought that once we purchased it then we owned the list and it becomes a public record i i think it was only when we didn't own when we hadn't purchased it that we couldn't disseminate the list but i'm under the understanding that we now own it that could be verifying i don't know though yeah i don't i'll look into that yeah thank you very much yeah that was my understanding too mrs cook was the same thing i thought you know prior to but now that we purchased it we should be able to provide that to our parents and i think that would be a very good compromise for parents i think it would help the trust and tell me if i'm wrong but i was under the impression that this is an
149ongoing committee not just a one-time thing correct the liaison positions is that what you're doing you're part of that committee that you had four times is it four times four times four times a year four times a year three or four quid but i think that this is you know something that i know mrs jeschling and i when we discussed these things we were like how do we go about telling the rest of the board this and getting a feel for what the rest of the board thinks on certain things too so i think that discussion needs to be had at some point not i'm not saying tonight but also the concern is you know these books are going in there the beginning of the school year so what can we do now you know
150the next meeting i don't think is for until after the school year for me and mrs jeschling so we'll get some clarification on that and get that out to the group so we know exactly it sounds like we really didn't thoroughly come up with a plan in the last meeting correct well we we couldn't group we did couldn't do certain things because we didn't purchase it already okay so nor was it approved and now that it's approved yeah it's different so we were in the process of purchasing we went through the approval process and now here we are how do we notify parents okay is there another meeting schedule there's a meeting schedule but it's not going to be until after school starts so that's after meet the teacher night and it wouldn't be about
151this particular yeah right this is kind of like done and over with now it's up to us to because realistically you'd want an annotated list a list of titles is not practical an annotated list that gives you highlights a capsule review or a capsule summary i should say of the individual books would be the more useful for parents to review it i mean a couple hundred books could be very complicated you want to be looking them all up on amazon you know or running over to the library and at uh in mentor and looking up those as individual titles so but i think the clarification will come from mrs bonus because she was aware of what the constrictions were thank you all right we'll get that out to you as soon as possible anything else
152um yes and i wanted to talk about a workshop that i attended and what i learned so on july 27th i attended a safe ohio schools workshop which presented data about safe school practices and i was interested in attending this program because i wanted to hear evidence on best practices for school safety to help us with our discussions and i know that you know some of the questions mr tuttle you had asked well you know how will we protect this the students and and we all you know want that as our priority this workshop recommended that schools use a four-part approach to protect themselves and number one was to establish threat assessment programs to identify and manage potential threats this allows schools to understand and intervene when a student is a risk to themselves or
153to others the second part is to implement security upgrades to prevent unauthorized access three is to plan for emergencies including lockdown procedures communication with first responders and communication throughout the building and district and the fourth part is to establish safe and equitable schools by reviewing school discipline practices and promoting effective partnerships between students and adults the major emphasis of school safety plans unanimously recommended by school safety experts were threat assessment teams the fbi states that by far the most valuable prevention strategy identified was the threat assessment and management team the department of homeland security stated that preventing violence by detecting and addressing these behavioral red flags is more effective than any physical security measure and federal agencies under the bush and trump administrations including the federal commission on school safety report recommend that schools implement
154school threat assessment programs effective threat assessment programs identify and collect threats and have a means to anonymously report threats the u.s secret service recommends a tip line and social media monitoring software our district uses the securely tip line see something say something tool which is monitored twenty four seven another key component is to ensure that professionals are available to provide students with mental health services this includes the services of school psychologists school social workers school nurses and school counselors school mental health professionals guide students can serve as a key to intervention and can gather information for threat assessments they also have an important role to foster positive school climates and student wellness and these are essential to preventing violence finally school lockdown drills were discussed drills are important and help plan for emergencies however there
155is an increasing amount of research that suggests that children should not participate in active shooter drills now active shooter drills are a little bit different than lockdown drills but they talked a lot about just the anxiety levels and concerns with active shooter drills they also recommend that parents should be notified before all drills you know just being clear with parents so they can prep their child that is going to be a drill that it's you know you take it seriously but it is a drill and staff and students should also be notified before drills occur and notified when they are over drills should also be coupled with trauma-informed approaches and information about the efficacy and effect of the drills should be tracked by schools from this training i'm encouraged about many evidence-based approaches that our
156district implements i'm also extremely pleased that this board is united in our effort to continue to provide these approaches and work together to ensure that we are providing a safe environment we have implemented the use of law enforcement officers we are researching the use of retired officers we've had community members recently ask us if we've considered hiring veterans you know i just think it's important to continue the conversation as a board explore the pros and cons of these options and i'd like to continue to focus on working on alternate funding and ways to attract officers to employ officers in each building using the research from school safety experts i want to include in our discussion about school safety implementing security upgrades to facilities discussing the effectiveness of our threat assessment programs informing parents staff and
157students prior to drills and fostering positive school climate and student wellness by teaching appropriate emotional responses and continuing to employ mental health professionals for our students and monitoring school climate mrs cook i think that was really helpful and i too went to a training and i sat in for about an hour a little over an hour on a training on safety and security as well and it literally echoes what you just said so that's refreshing as well um and i i think that work session i think that could be you know a discussion i think all of us have the same goal there and and i think if we all come together on that we can really come up with not saying that we're not doing anything right now but i think we can always
158do better you know and think and there's so many things in this training i went to which is probably not exactly the same but i was like wow i never thought of it that way or you know wow i i don't know what we're doing compared to what they just showed me so a discussion for the board on that would be really helpful i think yeah i agree it's it's important conversations to have so and i know we're doing so many great things but you know i know our community really wants to make sure and they should that our schools are safe we want to make sure our schools are safe we want our students to be safe and you know it's it's a top priority mrs cook i was just curious i think i
159got an email on it was that the webinar who was the sponsor on that was there any cost involved on that it would there was no cost and it was a webinar so i didn't have to travel it was very um it was very convenient there there were many sponsors honesty for ohio education moms demand action children's defense fund ohio oea erase the space ohio federation of teachers the ohio pta and double aacp ohio and the league of women voters were sponsors so it was it was it was attended by people all throughout the state it was really nice to see and it's such a dynamic topic there are best practices that keep evolving especially when it comes to the drills you know we recognize now that there is some potential for negative outcome or
160i shouldn't say negative impact for students participating in things you'd have to handle that very delicately and and thoughtfully so but i do appreciate you going and giving us that information i also wanted to talk about um on august 3rd we talked a little bit about how mrs breiner and i were really excited to introduce mr heath to manor city council president matt donovan vice president scott marn city manager ken flippiak and director of economic development and international trade kevin malecheck this meeting it was really an excellent opportunity to build relationships and and to discuss partnership opportunities with our city to continue to provide the safety services for our students and to provide work training opportunities that will benefit the students and the economic development of manor i really look forward to building those relationships
161in the future and and i want to thank the city officials for their willingness to have the conversations and i thought it was a really nice introductions absolutely it's great meeting can't wait to continue to build those relationships with them and again talking about the the safety pieces to the puzzle that they're right in lockstep with us right now in regards to trying to get those those trained officers in each of our buildings so that's a good thing that we've got alignment on yeah thank you any new business okay we'll move on to hearing of the public on any items anyone whoa good evening my name is lori godick and i live unders at the last meeting the july 12 meeting because they did not vote as certain people wanted them to on the k
162through 5 independent reading books from the microphone over there they were called cowards and disgusting and then some people even applauded that when they were done i just want mrs cook mrs jessling and mrs briner to know the mental schools community does not view you as cowards or disgusting and in fact they were disgusted themselves when they watched that part of the board meeting online it hurt my heart to watch you sit through these insults and not respond the three of you are a class act and you need to know how much you are appreciated throughout the mentor community also please do not consider resigning as the bully suggested on behalf of the children and staff of the meadow public schools we need your values and your experience on the board thank you for allowing
163me to speak this evening thank you thank you [Applause] michael paul seven six six five minute revenue uh um uh uh memorial middle school um i'm kind of confused with the board and this is where my confusion is maybe somebody can answer me not all on the board but most who voted for these books one thing i don't understand is if we talk about being tolerant being respectable and being friendly to everybody and i agree with that what i don't agree with this without an author's book that comes into our school that is not tolerant and respectable to you know everybody such as the one by mr kapur okay this gentleman their individual authored a book not only calling certain people in a party racist but also is advocated for the abolishment of the police
164departments how can you allow a book from an author that wants to abolish the police but you call them to work for you and protect you doesn't make sense to me maybe i'm too logical i don't know my wife says i am but i don't think so um and also he wears uh clothing does it decepts police officers or excuse me pigs and police uniforms and by verbally stating that police officers are pigs that is insulting our police officers our men and women in uniform but you guys call the police here to protect you aren't you ashamed for allowing that author in that book and on top of it he's under investigation of david county for raping a woman good job god bless thank you thank you hi i'm tyler moss and i live at
1657505 bar harbor lake and i'm also an incoming junior at mentor high school to begin in my two years at mentor high school i have never once been surveyed on my pronouns and additionally after questioning multiple other mentor high school students not a single one has been questioned regarding pronouns under normal circumstances when a problem presents itself people come up with a solution however these pronoun surveys are the exact opposite a solution to a non-existent problem as such this debate is unnecessary and useless to continue this leads me to another issue i'd like to discuss that being the classification of pronouns under sex behaviors and attitudes one of the first things that we learn as young children are pronouns namely he and her these basic ideas are vital to our individual identities and are in
166no way considered sexual the pronouns they and them are in no way different pronouns are a core part of everybody's identity and contain no sexual connotation with their use thank you for your time thank you thank you my name is kevin fobbs and i'm state director of blexit and i'm here because i'm really honored to be able i've been in education for a long time almost four decades or more and i see a pattern of behavior in almost every place that i've been and that is that parents keep losing rights i think that's important for us to understand i've listened to people talk today parents uh who are very interested in what happens for their children but i'm also interested when i listen to people talk about the loss of the right of parents and
167i think that's essential and i i really respect you with board members but i have to tell you that when i listen to board members who talk about people who are parents as if they're just part of something they are the whole part of everything that involves this school system and i want to honor annie payne especially because when i look at what annie's doing what ms payne is doing for mentor i see what other parents who want to see that happen in their school systems in their districts and we talk about pronouns we talk about the things that are gender related or we talk about library books and what library books mean and what parents should know and i think it's important to understand that if a parent does not have access to information
168be it a pronoun be it a survey be it a book for a kindergarten or even a 12th grader that is a denial of that parent's right to know what that child their child is going through and as a parent myself but more importantly as a christian i think is essential it's essential that all parents have that same right and that when we deny that right for parents we deny their own right to be parents in their home as well and i think that's essential as all of us we respect you as board members but you also i believe have to begin that really important step each and every moment to respect their parents too and so i am glad to be here i plan to be back because my focus as a journalist also
169is to help the nation to understand what's happening here in mentor is also a question that other parents around the country are addressing and i want to thank you miss payne for what you're doing because i think the nation is going to be paying attention and more attention to what you're doing here in mentor thank you good evening i'm linda o'brien excuse me i reside at 5842 tanninger court in mentor as we've talked about these books that you have purchased and spent a lot of taxpayer money on i thought i would do some investigating myself because this is the 12th meeting that i have attended of yours on most meetings i remind you over and over that you need to stop looking at things like propaganda and indoctrination and focus on reading writing arithmetic science
170history the basics and i encourage you once again to go back to the basics and focus on that i went to the library and i asked for this book it's entitled the librarian of basra and then it says a true story from iraq it's it's talking about iraq's battle in 2003. the story in essence is about a librarian and her precious library books on page three during the war she talks about the fact that she's afraid of losing her library books so she loads up her car and drives them in her car home to keep them safe night after night how is that possible to be a true story because if a woman were driving in iraq in 2003 night after night in her own car she would have been incarcerated at best and probably
171killed more likely so i questioned the authenticity of this statement it's a true story it goes on i was having my granddaughter read this to me it's very simple reading some pages don't have more than six words on them and that's supposed to be a fourth grade level but it goes on to the point that my granddaughter said this is really scary she's 11 and this is for fourth grade why are we instilling fear into our children and talking about war to this degree lastly it doesn't only take the question who are these soldiers to fully portray that the bad guy is the american soldier this is a heinous statement and i'm sure there are people here on that stage or in this audience that are veterans that deserve better respect i have looked at
172your state requirements or your state performance and it's been sliding downwards since 2018 your performance needs to go back to the basics reading writing arithmetic science and history and get off these other platforms that you're so distracted by give our kids a quality education please and get junk like this off your reading list linda o'brien and you may call me he i rather she or her or mrs whichever you prefer thank you hello i'm uh my name is matthew moss with 7505 bar harbor lane i have two students in the minor school district uh one of high school one memorial and uh it's come to my attention that there's a book available in our schools it's highly offensive i mean it's crazy it's full of rape murder child sacrifice i mean even worse and uh
173it's the christian bible so don't pray my schools and i won't think in your church thank you anyone else good evening kim baizon i am a member of the mentor district reside here and i obviously am offended by that last comment and i will pray for all that feel that way to go off of the gal that tried to call me out where i was going through my discussion and how i felt with previous meetings that i've been through in in going on today's i just want to conclude that it's not our children's fault for the way that others feel they need to be accepted as long as our children are showcasing love kindness and compassion for one another then it should then our school should remain traditional and be kept as is meaning the
174school curriculum should be kept as language arts reading math any electives that the children are interested in going back to the basics not including things that our children might not feel are appropriate for themselves and they're still developmentally challenged in their own case trying to understand just how to have fun if this is still an issue then you better not withhold any information from the men or taxpayers myself being one of those that has homeschooled children's children is it is their right our right to know even if the child is home schooled private school or in a private school setting that we all need to know what's going on and you as board members need to be transparent which we know there is one who showcases transparent transparency often in these meetings if not always
175i say god bless to all i will continue saying my prayers for the greater good of this school district i will continue to pray for those who think that we are standing up for what we believe in is wrong and they and to finally open their eyes and take note that we are protecting our children for being taken advantage of not preparing our children in the traditional way by focusing on language arts math the science the curriculums that i had also or had just explained but focusing on what pronoun one should go by the books that showcase more negative over positive in my opinion and withholding information from our taxpayers in this community it's just baffling that we're doing this or seeing this and the divide is still continuing we need to do better as
176a community and it starts here right now let's just do better and stop this bickering thank you roger jewell 7418 heart street mentor have a daughter in a mentorship mr heath welcome look forward to working with you thanks for your email earlier i think it was last week appreciate your response look forward to working with you we've said it before and i'm going to say it again uh well you know what i would really like to meet with this administrative group that's voting on this stuff and bringing this stuff into our schools it'd be great to have a meeting with them and to sit down and talk with them that would be awesome i appreciate talking with the men or school board here but it really comes down to this and it's been said repeatedly
177in every meeting we're here to educate our kids i trust the mentors schools to educate my kids in reading writing arithmetic they can teach them in gym they can teach them a little health they can teach them some history depending on what history they're teaching when it comes to raising our children and let me say this as boldly as i can say this hands off i'll raise my daughter how i see fit i don't need your help with that but i do need your help protecting our children from things that are going to harm them and starting sex education in kindergarten is absolutely positively disgusting to borrow a word and it can't be tolerated little children are not meant to be prayed upon and that's the idea i get from what's going on in this
178school system i've raised six kids we're trying to get the sixth one through better and out of better as quickly as we can hopefully we want to keep her with her friends we want to keep her in the environment that she's grown up in i would really like to think that you guys are wanting to provide a safe environment that's free from watching her go over and grab a book that she shouldn't read that would never be found in our house i trust you guys more than this and i value your opinions and quite frankly i feel like we're being dissed i feel like we're being failed and as a tax paying parent it's not we can't accept this we just can't accept this so we need to decide are we educators education administrators or
179are we political activists and if you want to be political activists go do that on your own time we don't need it here and there's no room for it thank you [Applause] good evening uh brandon towns uh marine parkway kids at uh orchard hollow so thank you uh board uh superintendent uh mr wade um i just want to implore you to keep doing the work that you're doing uh the decision that you made last month uh was the right one to protect our students and i just implore you that we are always going to hit opposition when we stand up for justice and i want to encourage you to continue doing that as experts and i keep going back there uh asking someone who as someone who has done the work and done their research
180that is an educator is a parent we know what's in the best interest of students and and because we know and we've done the studying and we're sitting with kids every day who cry because of the situation they're in at home it's interesting that what i hear sometimes is a parent or right is being lost because their kid feels safer in school than they do at home i think that that is something for us to really consider and i encourage us to get ahead of some of these things so that we're not playing catch-up that we're stating um why we do what we do and i appreciate us kind of getting ahead of that i also want to say that and this is and i'm really conflicted saying this but i don't believe that we
181should be encouraging anyone to leave our our values at the door wherever those values come from uh but what i do believe is very disingenuous um is for us to [Music] allow permit and to not recognize when values that are claimed to be backed by faith are actually backed by racism misogyny patriarchy um homophobia and xenophobia i think we have to recognize that and and continue to recognize that and without calling anyone out say that these behaviors are racist homophobic xenophobic uh rooted in patriarchy i think that we would benefit by getting ahead of that and really being clear with who we are what we stand for and what we will not allow in our district um because i think that's that's what we need um as as we continue to have these conversations and
182the last thing is that i sent everyone an email and i just encourage you to keep both sides um to keep doing the work we do appreciate you this is work that must continue so all that can and will next next meeting six o'clock we are going to do a flower dedication to you for all the work you're doing that we do appreciate thank you thank you thank you anyone else uh linda o'brien i'm sorry manager court manager i just we allow speakers to speak once in each session and you spoke i'm sorry you've already spoke thank you i understand that but i thought i was allowed to speak on a second topic no the new policy that was approved a few months ago allows the speaker to speak one time per session my apologies
183thank you any other speakers tonight all right thank you do we have a motion to adjourn second please call the role uh miss payne yes mr tuttle yes ms cook yes it's justly yes mr pryder yes mean he's adjourned