Mentor Board of Education - Regular Meeting - May 10th, 2022

001good evening the may 10 2022 regular meeting of the manor 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 breiner here miss cook here miss joslin present miss payne here mr tuttle here please join me in the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the ring of the heart for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberties thank you i would like to welcome everyone to the may 10 2022 regular meeting of the men are exempted village board of education prior to this evening each board member has received for their reviewing consideration the agenda and materials associated with each

002agenda item for the board's approval via the district's paperless board of education agenda system board docs the public can access the agenda through the school district's website the agenda is available through the district's website for public viewing 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 one zero two six in menort and channel one zero two five and 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

003as cfo and secretary of the board minutes will now share some protocols regarding our public participation policy thank you madam president the board invites and welcomes public participation our board meeting at two times during the meeting the first opportunity to speak is typically after the approval of the minutes and is on agenda items only there is a second opportunity to speak on any item one wishes near the end of the agenda participants wishing to speak are welcome to either the microphones located at either entrance on the left and right side of the fine arts center our policy 1.12 public participation at board meetings requires those wishing to speak to announce their name address and school or schools where their children attend if applicable each statement made by a participant shall be limited to three minutes

004duration and any questions must be addressed to the presiding officer no particular excuse me no participant may speak more than once on the same topic unless all others who wish to be speak on that topic have been heard we will welcome you to the microphone and ask you to state your name and address and if your children are in the district for the policy so we can appropriately record this information for our minutes once we have that information we will welcome you to share your comments and your three minutes will begin at the end of your three minutes i will let you share your last statement and thank you for sharing your thoughts we will move on to the next speaker at this time during hearing of the public we ask that speakers exercise appropriate

005decorum for the board and to conduct its business specifically in the case of public participation all members of the community including but not limited to participants board members and district personnel need to be treated with respect members of the audience should not interrupt or speak out during any portion of the meeting as each person can and should have the right to speak uninterrupted if they so choose if you have something to say we invite you to the microphone when it is your turn we also ask that you have something to say you follow these guidelines that we can complete our meetings in an orderly and productive manner as well as ensure we're able to hear comments and concerns shared please know anyone who repeatedly fails to comply with the expectations outlined above or deters the

006board from being able to conduct their business will be told to leave the meeting again the intent of our public participation is for us to hear our stakeholders so the board and administration may use the feedback to best serve our community it is our hope that by clearly establishing protocols and expectations that we can align with the mission and vision of the strategic plan of the schools as well as model for our students the appropriate way to engage in meaningful discourse at this time i'd like to take a moment of silence and remembrance of coach mike phillips thank you now i'd like to take the opportunity to share some thoughts after reflecting on our recent board meetings first i want to start by apologizing to you mrs payne for how i spoke to you during

007the last board meeting i am sorry i rushed to judgment during a misunderstanding when i should have paused to listen to what you were saying i was wrong and i'm sorry thank you i think it is so important that our school board works collaboratively and i'm committed to working hard and working together for our community i would also like to comment as we all know across the country we are living in a time where people have varying opinions about a number of important topics including schools and education and mentor is no exception but one thing i'm sure we all do agree on is that we want what is best for the children of our community we might not agree on what that means for our public schools there are different ideas on how we accomplish

008that goal and that's okay our different beliefs and opinions can lead to meaningful discussions and help create positive outcomes the past two years have been challenging as we've worked to navigate our differences a global pandemic and politically charged environment while keeping our focus on the classroom and our top priority of providing a safe learning environment where students can grow academically socially and emotionally in a fiscally responsible manner boards of education do their best to work collaboratively to support everyone they represent in the community including students teachers staff taxpayers and community members your input is welcome and is an important part of how the board conducts business we will continue to listen and thoughtfully consider what is shared with us i respect all of my fellow board colleagues here all chosen by the community to represent

009the community we are all invested in mentor schools and care deeply about our students and staff we are all committed to working hard for our community schools thank you to our students parents and guardians teachers and staff for your understanding patience and resilience as we work through these challenges and try to find a sense of normalcy again by working together things will get better we have an opportunity to listen and learn from one another to find our common ground build our students and staff and each other up and celebrate our successes together there is much to be grateful for in our minor schools community each and every day thank you next we'll move on to district highlights and recognition thank you good evening madam president members of the board tonight we are recognizing several groups

010of students for their outstanding achievements i would like to invite mr hammond to the podium to begin the presentation good evening madam president members of the board mr porter and mr wade this evening it's my great pleasure to recognize our middle school science olympiad students and advisors that qualified for the state competition before i go further i would like to have the advisors for shore middle school science olympiad team come down to the bottom of the steps and the shore team if you could line up alphabetically down here we're going to recognize you up on the stage and give you certificates and have you come along to shake our board members hands in the middle school division of science olympia the state tournament was held virtually in april the middle school division ended up with

01137 competing teams shore finished and 21st place overall they were state champions in meteorology silver medalists in mousetrap vehicle and bronze medalists in solar system their advisors are mrs michelle pugh and mrs elizabeth murray and i'll just introduce them here in just a moment memorial finished in seventh place overall they were state champions in code busters silver medalists in solar system and bronze medalists in disease detective and their advisors are mrs kim driscoll and mrs lena malik it's important to point out what a huge accomplishment this was for all these students and to see what a bright future this holds for all of them especially for all these great minds at this time i'd like to share the names of the team members at each middle school starting with shore if i could have mrs

012pugh and mrs murray come up on stage students when i introduce you if you would come up and get your certificate and come right across the front here with the board members and shake each of their hands and then you can exit the stage i'll read the names that i have alphabetically biagio di chaccio aiden durani seth eskins parker geiger duganzik zachary gibson nolan gibson emily gerard parker husted caitlyn morris anak narayanan ria reyna gavin rick tiana rick tevin struna kendall sykes mali tihan and frankie valli by the way he's not cutting a new record [Applause] at this time i would ask mrs driscoll and mrs malek to come up to the stage to help me and if i could also have the memorial science olympiad team line up alphabetically down here thank you okay

013all right students i'm going to call your names please come up up to the stage get your certificate and shake board members hands team members jake armstrong aisha farooqi izzy grabowski michael hardy elwell payton hoenbrink nate lowe leah meckler owen medved ryan oliver mark pastore emily zweigert alex tamura ben yoke and anushari zimmerman congratulations to these team members at this time before i start with a high school if i could have the high school advisors for science olympiad and the teammates over here to the side to get ready to come up on stage and in fact if i could have maura murray and nathan masarek did i say that correctly missouri thank you also along with the advisors you're going to be helping with the shaking of hands up here you're the captains you guys

014can come on up here good evening madam president members of the board mr porter and mr wade this evening it's my great pleasure to recognize the mentor high school science olympiad students and advisors that qualified for the state competition theirs also was virtual held in april there were 38 teams that competed at the state level men are high finished in 13th place overall they had seven top ten finishes they were state champions in the category of right stuff that's in as the wright brothers uh fourth place in code busters fifth place in gravity vehicle sixth place finishes in ping pong parachute and bridge and eighth place finishes in rocks and minerals and environmental chemistry and of course the advisors are mrs michelle pugh and mrs leslie gare at this time i'm going to read students

015your names off like you to come up get your certificate and shake our board member's hands please team members are maddie bender ben billings kaylee burns claire english andrew freeman abby horvath dan katis robbie land braden lowry manav malik emily meckler tony pastore emily parrish rick sophia sherman afghan taha jack webster mack wheeler and amelia wong congratulations [Music] to all these students who worked incredibly hard in preparing for the state competition and showing great results especially under virtual conditions great season thank you to our coaches who are teachers or parents and give up their time each and every week to prepare students for their event these coaches are a huge factor in the success of our state science olympiad teams in addition a special shout out to our parents for your support throughout the season

016thank you all of you contribute in some way and it most definitely makes a difference speaking on behalf of the advisors and all the coaches and team members they were very thankful for the opportunity to continue science olympiad virtual competitions during this most uncertain and challenging year they would like to thank the members of the board for all your support thank you mr hammond madam president members of the board at this time i would like to invite dr glavin to the podium for the careertech recognitions uh let me just lower that sorry good evening madam president members of the board mr porter and mr wade tonight i am here to help recognize our students who participate in our career technical education programs and qualified to the state competition and in some cases finished among the

017highest in the state now while it is true through their participation students are able to gain work-based learning and knowledge about careers and industries that will guide their decisions post high school i would add they also learn much much more through my own personal interaction with many of these students we will recognize tonight their participation in career technical education has revealed an inner drive and commitment to reach their maximum potential and i could not be more proud of them i am honored to say that tonight we have over 75 of our students who at minimum qualified for their state competition in their ctso which is careertech student organization not only did our students participate but they excelled i would like to provide a few of our stats for this year for our career technical education

018students we had over 550 students that were members of a careertech student organization that's an extremely large number we had over 75 state qualifiers we had seven state champions four state runner-ups and four third place finishes this is a true testament to the type of quality instruction and programming being provided by our instructors now before announcing all the qualifiers and i'm going to have all of you guys stand across the stage even if you don't like it i would like to acknowledge our seven students who achieve the highest pinnacle in their ctso and were awarded the gold medal as state champion i think this works there we go these students have demonstrated that their hard work and dedication has paid off and preparing them for their bright future in addition we would like to wish

019them luck as they prepare to travel to atlanta georgia for the skillsusa national competition that will take place june 20th through the 24th so at this time when i say your name please join us on stage and i'm going to have you stay on stage when i go through the other state qualifiers so at this time javier dean zachary halstead gavin rupert grant wheelock evie bennett ryan nichols and chaos price get out of here okay so i will now recognize students from each ctso i would ask that we please hold applause i'm sure that's going to happen until after all students are on the stage so our first is deca and also you can stand right there evie also on stage with me right now is melinda o'connor she is our skills usa coordinator and

020she helps guide over 350 skills usa ctso students so thank you mrs o'connor all right so our first is deca and with deca deca prepares emerging leaders and entrepreneurs in marketing finance hospitality and management and high schools and colleges around the globe so this time when i say her name please come up nicholas seifert brandon valeri catherine klepsick delaney guillery jonathan mcgurko braden neu anthony evans kayla anderson benny leduca max fredine sinea howard ashanti williams michael archake evelyn medjuri gwen mahoney honya imran nathan armstrong cameron michael juliana bola kalencic tyrone penny and alexa and alexia cendrick so that's our deca let's give them a minute to come on up it's not gary all right i will now move on to ffa or to future farmers of america the ffa formerly future farmers of america is

021a national organization dedicated to preparing members for leadership and careers in science business and technology of agriculture local state and national activities and award programs provide opportunities to apply knowledge and skills acquired through agriculture education the ohio ffa association has 25 577 members and 324 chapters throughout ohio at this time can we please have nathan huffman isabella lundy jackson caska and heather wharton please come up all right yes i help you yep all right i will now move on to hosa hosa future health professionals is a national organization of secondary and post-secondary students that supports career development and health professions and improvement of health service delivery to the general population after high school over 90 percent of hosted students continue to pursue a career in the health professions this time we have peyton smith emma

022gaddis tyler diekmann kaniah felder deja stennis sarah hustak anna english erica kirby alexa govich jada banks and treasure dial that's that's okay congratulations we can still keep going keep it we can clap we play i know so i got so many all right and now lastly skillsusa skillsusa is our largest ctso and is a partnership of students teachers and industry working together to ensure america has a skilled workforce skillsusa serves middle schools high schools and college post-secondary students preparing for careers in trade technical and skilled service including health occupations skillsusa empowers its members to become world-class workers leaders and responsible american citizens nicholas bassey lauren johnson evan mendenhall dominic paris sierra pannell nicolino ricci nathan rowan xander sedmak krista theoni piper yusera oswald vaughn let's say ozzy and we say oswald too madeleine womack christopher

023kamasa shyla alexander xavier batista javier dean blake compton joshua pringle donovan rendurly evan pajeska alexander blystone thomas waddell samuel marinar anthony schroeger stevie dome evie bennett again chaos price ryan nichols aiden place i apologize for how successful our kids are i know this is a lot i'm sorry christopher sue cup gavin rupert zachary halstead grant wheelock nathan wilson gabriel dell gunner lacquer andrew gilbert nicholas evans tarek sorry that last name please join me in congratulating let me wait till everybody gets on stage hang on just excited congratulations so okay now please join me in congratulating our 2022 ctso state qualifiers thank you you guys can go sit down now thank you so much congratulations again to all of our students this evening we are very impressed and proud of your achievements we're just going to

024take a couple minutes to break anyone who would like to leave me do so at this time thank you all for coming out or you're welcome to stay for the remainder of the meeting thank you [Music] thank you to get people ready our meeting thank you madam president members of the board at this time under my update i would like to share some short videos that highlight some of the positive things that have been happening here in the district in recent months the first video clip highlights how one of our math school middle school math teachers makes her content relevant to students by using her former students as role models hi mrs laurie's eighth grade math class my name is roland pachinger i'm a firefighter paramedic with the city of mentor we use math quite

025a bit in our career whether it's in the ems or the fire setting math and miss laurie's class isn't just about memorizing equations she has a goal to connect real-world careers and math together and it's done through lori's legacies former students who send in videos explaining what their job is and how it uses math answering the age-old questions students ask when will i ever use this i know they're never going to love math probably as much as me but i want them to see that all of these professions i mean we have a little bit of everybody up there from pharmacy we have many different types of engineers but we have people in aviation we have people in the service so i mean from every aspect of life that they do use map and all

026the folks that i work with we're creating algorithms because the work we do is based on artificial intelligence and machine learning so how it started was a few years ago i had a couple girls that really wanted to learn more about nasa i showed some short clips on nasa and then i thought well maybe next friday i'll try something else over this past summer i thought to myself you know what i really want to expand this and how can i do that angie sought out instructional coach anna pavko to help formulate how lori's legacies would work to help make it personal to her students angie had them fill out a questionnaire about jobs they think they might be interested in and come up with questions they had to send to her legacies then angie went

027searching through old yearbooks for students and connected with them via facebook and linkedin to see if they'd participate now every friday students wait to see which career they'll hear about next and how math is used software engineer had like an interesting job working with planes and making sure they don't and everything's working good with them and the healthcare ceo ceo runs a company which i thought was pretty interesting the video that set up most to me was um the cnn one with megan it was really cool because like i had sort of like wanted to do something in reporting and journalism before because i love writing and it just further like set in my mind that i like wanted to do something in like reporting and journalism so right now we've got the systolic at

02872. which is a little low so we're going to use math and we're going to raise that up we're shooting for about a hundred so we'll give somebody once we did the padlet and anna and i sat down we really truly wanted to start with let's try one or two videos and see if the kids are even hooked as we started watching videos and kids would get more and more excited and have further questions and really go hey i think i've cemented my idea on what i really like to do i think that i got more excited and so we were like we've got to find people in these specific areas of interest because then the kids were really you know they were willing to go i can't wait for a friday i want to

029watch those videos and hopefully today's my video i've always kind of enjoyed math but it really showed me that a lot of careers more careers than i thought would use it do use it to be able to see how it's helped our students today be able to make those connections a lot of them you know are doing these algebraic equations and they don't see it but it's been really cool to see how various adults have talked about problem solving in general and using different ways of thinking about things or illustrating concepts that are all mathematic skills that they've learned and implemented getting in contact with her former students has been one of angie's favorite parts but she also sees the seed this project has planted in current students as they realize it's never too early

030to start deciding what path they want to take to find a career they'll one day love you know what all these kids turned out they all went their own direction and they're all happy and that's one thing that we've learned from the videos is they every one of the videos you need to find something that makes you happy and feel fulfilled and when you get that feeling there's nothing better so congratulations to mrs lord we're very proud of that initiative our second video tonight showcases how earlier this year students at both shore and memorial participated and make a difference day to make an impact on our greater community and community service hi and thanks for watching i'm melissa blackburn a senior at mentor high school as students we often hear about the opportunity to go

031out into our community and serve but recently thanks to an organized event at our middle schools called make a difference day it was more than just talk with the support of their teachers eighth grade students left their classrooms behind for the day to see how they could make a positive impact in the world around them laughter and joy can be heard around the community as more than 500 mentor school's 8th graders rolled out of our middle schools to help out around town volunteering is something that everyone should do to just give back it makes you feel good the students are giving back as part of make a difference day an event where actions speak louder than words we always tell them things that they can do out in their community in order to have that

032positive impact but really giving them the first hand experience to experience that and go out and see sites that many of them don't even know is in their backyard is what this day is all about by visiting more than 25 different locations across lake county our students are learning community service can be as easy as giving up your time to make a connection with someone who's looking for a friend to rolling up your sleeves and offering cleaning or gardening or other types of hands-on help to partnering with existing community outreach programs that already do so much for so many just doing your thing i'm gonna make you famous at locations like salvation army students help prepare and serve lunch for our neighbors in need our volunteers did similar work for project hope and end 68

033hours of hunger which is an organization that works hard to feed local families i think it's important for students as far as middle schoolers to give back because there are students within middle school that are getting our bags so students that they might know the food that we pack into bags is done strictly with volunteers so without volunteers we couldn't get our work done other local groups rely on volunteers too our students teamed up with deepwood to spend quality time with people with disabilities these moments are uplifting engaging and empower all parties involved they're always excited to have visitors here and it gives a lot of opportunity for both sides to learn about each other from bowling at deepwood to a bowling alley knocking down pins was building up relationships in more places than one

034i think the purpose of today is to learn how to make new friends and accept others for who they are and not to think that if they have a disability that they're any different from us students also had the opportunity to get an inside look at the needs within our own mentor school from providing practical support like cleaning buses and helping organize materials to educational support of spending time in classrooms offering peer-to-peer tips on topics like math some students use their talents to create classroom resources this included making follow-along recordings to help students learn to read i was doing the read aloud so i would say i would i love doing the voices splash splash what is that sound what is hopping and jumping around it's safe to say our students surely made a splash

035jumping around town and giving back to the community on make a difference day great job to our students and thank you to all of our community partners for welcoming mentor schools to be a part of your day i applaud the administrators and staff at the two middle schools for doing that and it was a little harder to do that during covid but they've continued that tradition and it i think it'll continue for some time our third video features an assembly that was held a little bit earlier this spring at shore and similar assemblies are take place with the same speaker at other buildings in age-appropriate ways [Applause] we're excited to bring uh gym basketball jones today just promote that message of kindness here at shore and um you know students hear it all the time

036from their teachers but it's nice to bring in someone from the outside to help spread that same message and then to see it in a creative presentation [Applause] my assemblies usually involve interaction i'm doing basketball stuff and we have prizes and kids have opportunities to win those prizes by whether they're shooting a basketball playing simon says a dance-off we teach a lot about growth mindset we fail forward we don't fail apart we stick with things we all learn over time some of the things is simon says and in the simon says we encourage skipping so we overcome our mistakes and we embrace them and move on you know i want kids to realize that they're important that they matter and that they can learn for me it was challenging because i wasn't special ed and

037it took me a long time to learn and develop that confidence so my program is trying to create opportunities for kids to experience things that help them build confidence i got to do a trick with him and we got to do simon says some of my highlights personally from today's fun assembly was just seeing all the students get to interact whether it was simon says or coming up for the basketball tricks and even seeing a bunch of staff members get involved the message of kindness is huge here in middle school you know so many students are going through so many things um behind the scenes that we always don't know um that about them so just always being able to smile in the hallways and as basketball jones said today you have the opportunity to

038make someone's day just with a kind word of a smile it goes a long way here at shore and he said jim if you want to treat people well and say you're kind you need to see the good in others regardless of what they're doing to you how they act or the challenges they face my organization is all about empowering kids and teachers to overcome obstacles and improve i sort of have a slogan i spend character and effort into academic success whether it's in the classroom with the students or the teachers prepping for a class or talking to schools about overcoming obstacles and sharing my personal story of going from special ed to graduating in the top my class in college do you want to understand why some people reach great levels it's because they

039bring out the best than others this is a great school you're from ventura this school is known statewide this is not a normal school in ohio this is a school with a lot of prop no do me a favor bring out the good mothers at this school i'd say it was a great assembly overall i loved watching basketball jones when i was little and doing the assemblies when i was in elementary school [Music] we appreciate that gym basketball jones keeps coming back to our schools for many years now and uh seems like he never ages um last video i want to show showcases our stick together program where mentor high school students visit our elementary schools with an anti-bullying message [Music] so if you put two pieces of duct tape together like this like a

040friendship two friendships coming together it makes it even harder to tear apart and harder for people to break you down high school students part of the cards club presented to every fifth grader and mentor on bullying prevention encouraging students to stick together and we're showing the fifth graders here about bullying and how they can sort of chain reaction of kindness and help spread kindness to keep themselves and others happy the presentation which has been going on in mentor for almost 10 years is entirely student-led with speakers student-created skits and audience participation and so what happens when people are not kind us like when they're mean yep our feelings get hurt so we were asking them about like what kindness means and what like they think kindness is and like how they feel when someone's kind

041of them and then we also ask them about like examples of like bullying and like how bullying makes them feel and then we also made them think about like ways that they can stop bullying and like we also made them think about like why people bully so they can like gain a different perspective about like why people may be doing that this message is often when they hear from teachers but it means much more coming from their peers well i guess like the high schoolers are kind of like kids like us so like it's better when you hear it from them because like kids can trust kids more than like sometimes adults because you just feel like you relate to them more so it was like better to hear it from them because then it's

042like more like trustable i guess the students really look up to our high school students so it's very important for them to hear from their peers that it's it's cool to be kind and it's cool to do the right thing and that even these peers that they look up to by nature are also working hard to spread the message to do the right thing in difficult situations students signed duct tape got questions answered about their upcoming move to middle school and pledged to stick together i think that my favorite part of this is signing the pledge and like showing the fifth graders like how they can make a difference in the world and like really like spread kindness to people around them and show them like the different ways that like they can stop bullying

043so they have a better understanding of how they can make a difference i would like to thank mrs kristen kirby mrs liz rutkowski and senior erica blackburn for producing these and we while we still these are a lot of some of these things are works in progress we are making efforts to continue to promote kindness in our schools and the more we can tie that to learning all the better the last thing i want to mention in this part of the meeting is that we heard the feedback during the last month or two regarding the approval of new curriculum materials per the board's request the curriculum council is in the process of updating the curriculum recommendation process for the board this document is currently in draft form but in police report that extra checkpoints and

044updates have been added these include extended timelines improved communication and specific procedures for public review we hope to have this finalized within the next few weeks thank you okay next we have approval of minutes this would be our regular board meeting from april 12 2022. so moved second please call the rule justly yes just pay yes let's cook yes mr tuttle yes yes motion carries 5-0 and now we'll have hearing of the public on agenda items only good evening amanda alofie 5428 marshy elaine i have a child at shore i just want to quickly ask a question i want to address your revised policy on the use of face coverings this evening i have read it and no surprise i don't agree with most of it but i realize that the majority of you do

045my question is simply why are mask exemptions not referenced in the policy and can we continue to expect this allowance if needed in the future we got a legal opinion on that and that's one of those things that can be added um and as you know this past year we were able to do that so to have that flexibility in the future going forward but as you know we already have some history of allowing the mask exemptions correct as necessary so is it not something that would will be in writing anywhere and the reason i'm asking is you know as a family who did take advantage of the exemption um at the beginning of the year it was not really communicated to us by anyone at the schools that it was an option um we

046certainly weren't given the document or shown where to to find it or how to use it um it was really through word of mouth that we as parents kind of continue to figure out how to do this and you know not just for the students but for the staff as well i know that there were many staff members who did not like the fact that they had to wear masks but were not did not feel comfortable looking getting trying to get an exemption and i just feel like if there were guidelines written somewhere um that can be followed that everyone could reference that that might make that that i mean of course we don't ever want this to to go back to this hopefully but if it does i think that might be that's a

047suggestion that i have if you could put those police guidelines in writing i think that might be beneficial to a lot of people not just again not just students but staff as well thank you [Applause] anyone else on agenda items um hello everybody um my name is lindsay wall i live at 7250 beechwood drive and mentor and i have two kids in the school system one at ridge and one at the mentor high preschool um so today at 4 30 i received a phone call from the assistant principal at ridge elementary she was in her car actually driving to a dentist appointment not home um she was calling to check on my son who's in first grade because he got hurt at recess today she took her her time out of school hours and called

048me personally to check on my first grader to make sure that he was doing okay and it wasn't like some major injury or anything i didn't even get a call earlier in the day from the nurse but um the fact that this assistant principal actually took the time out of her her schedule to to call and check on him it just it touched me um greatly and i just want to use that to lead into the fact that last week was teacher appreciation week and all of the staff members through mentor schools they all work extremely hard and i just wanted to remind everybody that and also thank you guys very much i know that one of the agenda items is the um the raise for the teachers and i just wanted to let you

049know that i am in full support of that as i believe our teachers deserve more honestly watching everything that they do for our kids for the families the parents it's tremendous and i could not be more thankful to all of the teachers and all of the staff members and also to the board you know a lot of people don't recognize the the work that you guys put in behind the scenes and i think that they're like president breiner said at the beginning everybody is going to have a difference of opinions there's there's going to be one side and another side but it is an opportunity for us all to listen to each other and grow together and learn together and i just wanted to remind the board that there is a great group of people

050that stand behind you and support you and truly do appreciate everything that you do so thank you very much just would like to make a reminder that this section is for items on the agenda only we'll have a second section later for any topic thank you my name is michelle pokelsick excuse me can you say that one more time i apologize michelle last name pochelsic would you like me to spell it i would please p-o-k-e-l-s-e-k thank you you're welcome i live on cedarwood road in men around the lake madam president and board members this feels like deja vu so some of this is from when i talked in august of 2021 but i think we need reminded freedom over one physic one's physical person is the most basic freedom of all people in a free

051society must be sovereign over their own bodies telling people how to live their lives around health and bodily autonomy is in direct violation of the 4th and the 14th amendment in the u.s constitution this is the important part so listen carefully the supreme court has stated multiple times in case law the manner of rearing determining educating shaping the child's character falls entirely under parental authority it is the job of the parents or guardians not the teachers school board members superintendents principals or other adults with influence on a child to make medical decisions for them masks are medical devices you are not the parent nor the child's doctor masking or not masking should be optional for all parents have the right to make that decision for their children it's been proven by stanford study in the

052recent study by university of louisville that masks don't stop viruses they're ineffective to block transmission of viral disease the wearing of a mask has demonstrated to have adverse physiological and psychological effects other effects are fatigue depression chronic stress activation of fear and shortness of breath and even acne here's some information from america's front line doctors let's talk about the risk to mask wearers most know that the virus particles are very tiny however bacteria are about 50 times larger than virus particles as such virus particles can enter through the mass pores yet the bacteria remain trapped inside of the mask resulting in the maskwear continually exposed to the bacteria the fact that mask wearers present a serious risk or harm to the wearer means they should not be required that's your word required for children particularly

053given that these children are not ill and have done nothing wrong that would warrant an infringement of their constitutional rights and bodily autonomy furthermore misrepresenting the use of a mask as being intended for antimicrobial or antiviral protection and or misrepresenting mass for the use of infection prevention or reduction is a deceptive practice under the federal federal trade commission it's clear there is no waiver of liability under deceptive practices even under a state of emergency thank you thank you [Applause] all right thank you next we have superintendent's report and recommendations mr porter madam president members of the board i have the following recommendations listed under the consent agenda and recommend approval of items 781-2784 second any discussion please call the world mrs payne yes miss cook yes it's dressling yes mr tuttle yes miss breiner yes

054motionscary50 thank you 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 i do want to mention on the 9.48 use of face coverings through excellent feedback from the board we are adjusting our face covering policy to make the decision in the future by five board members taking the burden off the superintendent again there's not a final vote on that tonight but i appreciate the input to arrive at this proposed change madam president and members of the board i have the following board of education policies on the agenda for a second reading and i am recommending approval of both policies i do want to add that if the public participation policy revision is approved

055that will go into effect immediately for the second hearing of the public this evening the board provided meaningful input again about the changes in order to make sure we can still hear what is important from our public as well as remaining efficient and making sure we can attend to the board business at hand so moved second a discussion please call the rule miss justlyn yes miss cook yes ms payne yes mr tuttle yes miss breyer yes motionscary50 thank you madam president and members of the board i'm recommending approval of agenda item c1 related to certified personnel and c2 through c4 all related to human resource matters i am also recommending approval of agenda item d related to the negotiated agreement with men or teachers association and agenda item e related to the administrative staff resignations

056i do want to add regarding the negotiated agreement with mta we are very appreciative of the collaboration in order to reach a deal the three-year deal calls for a 2.75 raise each year and that was made possible based on some health care insurance concessions as well as some other non-financial language adjustments in his section later this evening mr wade will help us understand how this impacts the five-year forecast so moved second any discussion madam president i i would just also like to thank the negotiating team i know that the negotiations were also made possible by the leadership of mr porter you know he he's done an excellent job creating a relationship and that negotiations does have significant concessions that our teachers took and took it for the health of our district so i want to

057thank the teachers the mentor teachers association under the leadership of mr greg lowry for leading the teachers into that decision for your professionalism we do value your expertise as educators and we thank you for the concessions that you made excuse me and i'd you know like to just thank everyone that was involved in negotiations it went smoothly and i think we have an excellent deal to move forward for the district thank you mrs cook any other discussion please call the roll miss jesslyn yes miss cook yes miss payne yes mr tuttle yes miss breiner yes motionscary50 you this concludes my portion of tonight's agenda thank you mr porter we are at board of education report and recommendations madam president members of the board mr porter uh ask for the approval of the educational service center

058agreement with the western reserve motion thank you any discussion please call the role ms payne yes miss cook yes miss jesslyn yes mr tuttle yes miss breiter yes ocean carries 5-0 man of president members of the board mr porter asked for the approval of the hpc medicaid school program service agreement some moved second any discussion please call the role yes mr tuttle yes miss cook yes miss payne yes miss breiter yes motion carries five zero madam president members of the board mr porter ask for the approval of the tips membership agreement second any discussion please call the rule mr tuttle yes miss cook yes miss dressling yes miss payne yes miss breiner yes motion carries 5-0 madam president members of the board mr porter asked for the approval of the resolution authorizing the agreement of

059the purchase and sale with casper enterprise group incorporated so moved second any discussion please call the roll miss jessling yes miss cook yes miss payne yes mr tuttle yes miss breiner yes ocean carries 5-0 madam president members of the board mr porter i asked for the approval of the power school mutual termination release agreement so moved second any discussion please call the roll miss justly yes miss payne yes ms cook yes mr tuttle yes miss breiter yes motion carries 5-0 madam president members of the board mr porter are asked for the approval of the resolution to accept the superintendent's resignation and prove employment at certainly morton school principal second discussion please call the rule mr tuttle yes miss justling yes miss cook yes miss payne yes miss breiner yes motion carries five zero thank you

060mr wade next we have legislative report mr toad thank you the ohio legislator returns after may primary election a bill to watch in may is the house bill 583 the bill is sponsored by reps adam byrd republican new richmond and don jones republican freeport and would extend the current temporary flexibility for school districts regarding the educational requirements of substitute teachers until june thirtieth two thousand twenty four the bill also would establish a study committee to examine the substitute teacher shortage currently the bill also appropriates 338 million in fiscal year 2022 to the federal school lunch program however house bill 95 that was signed by governor mike dewine on april 18th also included that sign that saint bill language house bill 583 passed the house on march 30 2022 and had one hearing in the senate

061primary and secondary education committee before the spring recess the bill is expected to move quickly out of the senate and could potentially include several amendments before the ohio senate votes on the bill to do to legislators wanting to address certain education related items before the start of the 22-23 school year senate bill 306 is also a bill to watch the bill is sponsored by senator andrew brenner republican powell and would establish a voluntary tutoring and remedial instruction program that public schools and chartered non-public schools may choose to participate in by notifying the state superintendent of public instruction the bill would require the esc of central ohio to employ tutors and coordinate placement of tutors in participating school the bill also would require 16 regional esc's selected under the bill in conjunction with the esc of

062central ohio to administer the training program for tutors in their regions brenner introduced the bill in early march and later amended the bill to align with dewine's announcement of a similar program during his state of the state address on march 23. recently introduced legislation house bill 619 representative willis blackshear junior democrat dayton and jessica miranda democrat forest park to allow school districts to permit k-12 students to take up to three mental health days per school year as excused absences or as in school mental health program and allows school districts to work for a student who uses the mental health day to the appropriate school health and social support services such as counseling social work or psychological services house bill 633 introduced by rep j kyle kohler republican springfield to prohibit the sharing of public school

063student directory information without written consent of the parent or guardian and requires any directory information provided to a recruiting officer for any branch of the united states armed service forces to be used solely for the purpose of providing information to students regarding military service hospital 639 introduced by reps tom young republican washington township and andrea white r kettering to require students who enter the ninth grade on or after july first 2023 to have self-defense included in their one half hour one-half unit of health instruction and beginning with the 2023-24 school year required teachers who provide health instruction to complete a course in self-defense training that is determined by the school district any comments input questions the last one's kind of interesting [Applause] thank you you're quite welcome student achievement report mrs cook thank you i've

064heard a lot of great things tonight so um i'll try to address some new ones in april our students in grades 3 through 12 have been busy i'm completing their state assessments our high school students began taking advanced placement assessments last week and this will continue this week students across the district in grades kindergarten through 10th will be participating in benchmark assessments including iready and renaissance star these district assessments provide teachers with immediate ongoing data that is used to drive differentiated instruction and the data is reviewed by grade and subject level teams as well as building and district leadership teams to help us make decisions within the district to best serve our students we do have a fresh air challenge going on all of our elementary and middle school students began participating in the mentor

065schools foundation fundraiser the fresh air challenge during this time students are encouraged to turn off the tv put away their video games leave devices on their chargers and pledge to get outside for 30 minutes or more and enjoy the fresh air there are a multitude of fabulous prizes for paying one dollar to participate and all proceeds will benefit the mentor schools foundation and grant program that provides opportunity funding for activities and projects that directly benefit our students on thursday april 14th at paradigm the annual mentor public schools cultural heritage fair was reinstated this is an annual event where our english language learner students who represent 22 cultures from across the world and speak one of 22 world languages other than english share their project-based learning projects with the school community as well as external stakeholders

066approximately 100 people were in attendance including parents teachers administrators and other family members this event is a celebration of the rich cultural diversity and experiences our students bring to their school and to our community each english learner student across all grade levels researched an aspect of their family heritage and documented the history of their heritage in specific projects completed with their respective english learner teacher students shared their projects with the community this joyous occasion was the culmination of the english language arts and english learner curricula based on the ohio content learning standards students were encouraged to teach others about their culture by creating interactive displays students from india exhibited henna artwork and taught others how to create and apply designs other students came dressed in their cultural attire or native dress from their homelands teaching

067others about different clothing were worn around the world families participated in creating crafts home reading in their native languages playing instruments and they danced a photo booth was also available for families that documented the special occasion everyone in attendance had a great time made connections and walked away with some new knowledge of different cultures we look forward to continuing this tradition next year the top 25 um which is mennor high school's show choir performed april 22nd through the 23rd with a show featuring disney movies for the 50th anniversary of disney world and at memorial this spring play the little mermaid made a splash april 29th through the 30th mrs jesslyn and i were proud to celebrate the outstanding academic and service-based achievements of our senior class at the recent 2022 senior awards ceremony our students

068were recognized for high academic achievement and thousands of dollars in scholarships were awarded several of these were awarded by community members and men are high school alumni and the week before several of us were able to see the senior art exhibit and that was also on display during the senior awards ceremony and it was wonderful to see that all of the senior projects a lot of the ap scene the senior ap students were able to have a full display of all of their culmination of artwork and all of our other seniors also had display boards the artists were present it was nice to talk with them mentor high school also hosted spring signing day with three athletes committing to colleges to begin their collegiate athletic careers congratulations to conor larrick who's attending mercyhurst college where

069he will play soccer josh riscoe attending bowling green where he will be a member of the cross country and track teams and randy salee attending walsh university to play baseball we have so much to be proud of with our senior class and we wish them a safe graduation as they prepare for employment enrollment or enlistment thank you all right thank you mrs cook and next our chief financial officers report and recommendations mr wade thank you madam president members of the board mr porter mrs cook i apologize i was just super excited to get my presentation tonight so i was a little premature up here wanted to start off with uh a correction on a comment that i made last board meeting and i apologize in advance and and desire to always be accurate and transparent

070i wanted to update the community and the board on the total amount of funding that we've received from the federal government in the form of relief funding for the entirety of the pandemic when i spoke last month i was focused on this area here which is primarily what we have left or what we're currently spending because we've already spent the first half and if you were here in november when i gave my november update or an appropriations we shared this information but i thought it worthwhile since i made an error last month to correct it but also share it again so our total funding that we've actually received is 8.6 million dollars in federal relief funds how that has been spent this portion has already been spent back in 2021 we received sr1 funds totaling

071587 000 approximately we received a broadband grant for about ten thousand dollars and we received sr2 and crf suburban funds totaling 2.6 million dollars the majority of these funds were spent as you can see on additional staffing that was needed during the 2021 school year that we hired over 58 long-term teachers to reduce class sizes throughout the district so that we could have social distancing and seven additional long-term custodians for the additional cleaning and sanitation that happened during the height of the pandemic we also spent about five hundred thousand dollars on supplies in the various forms mostly in choroplast surrounds and micro barriers for the students and some additional chromebooks that we bought for non-public school students as required by the grant we spent the broadband on our antenna mounting that we did for the

072district to increase the wi-fi during that time and we spent about two hundred and four thousand dollars on bipolar ionization units to help maintain the clean air throughout the district where we're at now is we have four point nine million dollars approximately an arp s or three funds an additional four hundred and two thousand dollars in our special ed funds uh just on this slide uh the majority of these funds are going to be used for staffing um we'll be using them for 63 long-term intervention subs throughout the next three years this year included so it's about 21 subs a year to help with the academic gap that had occurred during covid so that covers the salary and benefits for those subs over three years as well as pays for intervention for this fiscal year

073summer school and next year summer school instruction for helping students who have seen a decline in their academic progress 75 000 has been budgeted for supplies instructional supplies and another twenty five thousand dollars for transportation for summer school so that students who may not have a ride for whatever reason would be able to be transported so that they can get that extra intervention we use the arp idea special ed funding and i've talked about this a number of times for two additional special education teachers for fiscal year 22 two additional classroom assistants in 22 two additional classroom teachers the same for 22 would then roll over to 23 and paying for one of those additional classroom assistants out of the same funding again to make sure that we have the support for our students who

074have special needs to make sure that we continue to control any learning loss that may have occurred during covid we also have allocated uh nine thousand five hundred dollars approximately the crossroad for support services and additional twenty almost twenty one thousand dollars for non-public purchase services again per the guidelines of the grant we're using some of the other ida early childhood special education for our summer preschool testing again from a standpoint of educational experience the sooner that we can intervene with students the better it is to get them back on track so ms bowser and her team are allocating almost ten thousand dollars of that funding of the twenty nine thousand eight hundred dollars to preschool testing uh sixteen 000 for instructional supplies an additional 3 800 for instructional support we also received a grant

075for arp homeless of 22 000 approximately we have seen an increase in the number of homeless students attending mentor schools we've actually spent all this money plus some to transport students who are homeless to mentor schools as required by law so going back just to kind of summarize again we've received almost 8.7 million dollars spending most of that on salaries and benefits to provide instructional support for our students and staff and the remaining balance that is to be spending has been budgeted as such forward and again i apologize for the miss speaking last month but i wanted to clarify that for the group so everybody understood where our funds are and what we have spent it on and where we plan to spend it on from a budgetary standpoint any questions from the board on

076our relief funds mr porter was i correct in all of my explanations there a little bit out of my purview but i think i have a little bit of experience in the area that being said um this is the point in the meeting where i always give our monthly update it is a little bit shorter than usual because i'm going to go into extensive updates to the board with regards to our forecast this slide looks familiar it kind of the summary of where we're at now after 10 months of our fiscal year and as we are 10 months in our fiscal year this is pretty much we're getting close to the point now where we know where we stand we received both uh of our first half collection from our fiscal year which is the

077second half collection of the calendar year for revenue locally as well as the first half collection of this calendar year which is our second half collection for revenue they if you remember our fiscal year goes july to june which is opposite of the calendar year so we've received all of our funding for revenue from the local tax base as well as the majority of our funding from the state funds and we've received some additional grants so we are actually up 1.2 million dollars in projected revenue that's up almost 531 thousand dollars from last month that is because some of the grants that i've been referring to from our technology department and mr lynch and mr woodworth have come in so we're seeing that increase now this month of why we're ahead of the game because

078they apply for those grants almost totally one million dollars which has now been received by the district our expenses are down by 2.1 million dollars which is great because our budgetary year for most of our spending outside of salaries and benefits has subsided and we think that we have good tracking on that which is down about another 317 000 from last month so we're again we're continuing to trend in the right direction uh this is going to have a net increase on our cash balance at the end of the year of about 3.3 million dollars and has reduced our deficit spending to just under 9 million or 8.4 million dollars for the fiscal year again trending about 1.2 million dollars higher than projected most of that comes from two areas that would be the grants

079we received from the federal government for technology as well as our restricted state aid being higher than we projected and i'll get into more detail with that when i speak to the five-year forecast and again we see the same trend that we have seen uh throughout the year with a reduction in where we're spending our money our supplies our textbooks and our general supplies are down in our world that's what we call the 500 accounts so our general supplies continue to underspend budget which is good that goes back to uh strong fiscal management by our superintendent our administrative team making sure that we're only purchasing the things that are necessary and those reduction in expenses has led to primarily the majority of that 2.1 million dollars of reduced spending any questions on our monthly financial

080updates before i go on into the update not seeing any so when i presented in november this was a snapshot of where we were at it was uh somewhat bleak and we've kind of touched on this and this is where we've been trending from before again we were projecting a hundred and four point eight million dollars in revenue we're actually 1.2 million dollars better as i just shared and we were definitely spending by 11.7 and as i shared that's been reduced to about 8.4 we were looking at a deficit spend of about a negative 20 million dollars which our cap with our cash balance then at the end of the fiscal year with the levies being renewed in 24 which are renewal levies at a minus 1.2 million dollars so in our five-year forecast we

081were showing a negative cash balance fast forward to today with having 10 months completed looking at our current spend changing some assumptions in our forecast based on the tentative agreement with the teachers association included as well as some budgetary constraints put in place to help control spending by our superintendents across the board as well as looking at the economic impact i'm pleased to announce to the board in the community as we know we've reduced our deficit spend even below this a little bit more our last year being reduced to below 20 million dollars and putting a cash balance in our system at about 13 million dollars when we conclude our fiscal year 2026. kind of digging in a little bit deeper just as a reminder to our community and to the board this is our

082revenue breakdown 72.6 or 73 of our revenue comes from the local tax base with about another fifteen percent coming from the state this is always an interesting one we talked about this at the citizens financial committee we get another seven percent back in property tax reimbursements and depending upon who you are and where you sit depends on who really gives you that money i always like to say it's the taxpayers getting the reimbursement the state likes to take credit for it and say it's state funding so it could either be that we're at 79 local tax base or 22 state funding um you know so but reality is is that's the reimbursement from the rollback and homestead tax exemptions that we get so you get money back from the state uh for that which reduces

083the taxpayers burden for that standpoint we get about four percent of revenue from other areas investments sales of materials and supplies that have outdated as well as fees that we collect and we receive a small fraction from federal resources on a regular basis i like to show this graph because it shows our historical trends in our revenue as well as where we're projecting so obviously everything 19 through 21 is where we were prior to this fiscal year as well as where we're going the blue would be our local tax base again just so you see that it's relatively flat we don't see a lot of growth there our orange is our tangible personal property tax our green is our state aid and we do are seeing some growth in that area as we as we

084trend down and i'll get into that more detail and then the other big area is the homestead rollback property allocation that you see here i should the educator me wants to ask a question to the audience and say why do we see this here at the end if you've been paying attention which i know a lot of you have been here regularly so i'm sure you would all give me the right answer i will say because it's not because we're losing revenue it's because we have a tax levy that has to be renewed and we can't make the assumption that this is when this is going to occur because at the end of 2024 we have a renewal that will have to go in front of the voters which will be a no tax increase

085which would need to be improved for approved not improved approved excuse me for us to continue at the trend that we're seeing here but by law for our forecast we have to change where that line is on the forecast and we have to deduct it so we see about an 8 million decrease here and a 16 million dollar decrease here because we would lose half a collection in fiscal year 25 in the full collection in fiscal year 26. so it's not that the money's going away it's just by law we have to locate it somewhere else because we can't assume that it's going to pass with 100 certainty but i would be confident that we will continue to be good stewards of our district's money and we will continue to display that before 2024 when

086we have to put that renewal up so when you look at this chart this is really a chart to kind of show a comparison of where we are now versus november anything that is black and that is not a zero is where we've seen an increase in revenue anything that is in red would be where we saw decreases so i'm going to highlight on the top part here as you can see based on where we are having a full year looking at the increases that we receive in the local tax base on our inside millage based on the valuations because just as a reminder just because the property valuations went up by 20 percent the district does not see a 20 increase in our revenue from taxpayers because house bill 920 does the correction and

087lowers the effective millage rate by appropriate proportion the only increase that the district sees is on our inside millage the unvoted inside millage we see that growth so we are seeing some increase in our general property tax year year based on what i projected in november the red numbers which i never like to see i would say though i'm not going to go into a whole lot of detail because in reality they are insignificant on 116 million dollar budget or 106 million revenue being off by five thousand dollars doesn't have a drastic impact what i will explain here though are these numbers here in 1.010 in fiscal years 23 through 24 25 and 26 we have a large spike here and this is what we call because of a collection split if you as you

088all know you can pay your taxes monthly through your escrow account some people pay them directly to the auditor's office and treasurer's office excuse me and some people pay them all at once or they pay them in their splits of halfs so when we're making projections we know historically our tax base collects at about 100 percent and we see about 52 percent of the people pay on the first half collection in about the other 48 paying on the second half collection well i assumed in our first collection of this calendar year which is our second collection for our fiscal year that we were going to have about four hundred six thousand dollars more in collections that didn't happen that could be because people decided to delay their payment because they were going to attest their

089valuation it could be because they decided they're going to pay their entire property tax in the second collection of the year which is falls into the next fiscal year for us it could be for a variety of reasons so we're assuming though that that 400 6 000 will be collected in the second half of the calendar year which then will bump up our collections for fiscal year 23 in the first half so that explains why it's a little bit higher than the rest of the out years this is because i was just raw i was assuming that our evaluations would go up by approximately 13 and i think the county average was closer to so we are seeing an increased uh revenue collection on our inside millage and that explains why we're seeing some revenue

090increase here in our general property tax for the residential and commercial property tax the other area that i would point out would be down here in our state aid and our unrestricted and restricted state grants is i've explained a number of times we have the new fair school funding model for the collection of state funds based on a per-pupil expenditure which was different the state did not release information on how that actually was going to hit our bank accounts until january so when we made the assumptions in november they were just that they were assumptions based on what we had been told the calculations had not been done yet by the state so we did not receive our first actual payment on the new funding model until uh january 1st we get two collections a

091month things weren't sorted out until the first payment in april so now that we have a good understanding of how the fair school funding model works we were actually overestimating what we thought we were going to get an unrestricted grant aids and we were underestimating what we thought we're going to get and restricted it obviously washes out and we're actually receiving more than we were initially anticipating so we are seeing these values here more in state funding than we thought which is great for the district last area of revenue that i wanted to touch upon just because these are some numbers i think that are somewhat significant the reason why we're seeing a large value here higher than projection goes back again to the federal grants that mr woodworth and mr lynch have secured for

092us this also is the area where we denote our loss in interest revenue which has not been a good year for interest for for the district but we received more grants than revenue that we lost in interest so we are still in a net positive as well as we coded differently where we were coding the sale of our electronic devices which is our main sale of assets that we have i'm actually going to correct this and make this different as we move forward work next month so that we see it consistently but you can kind of see there is a little bit of a wash but there will be a negative here because we're expecting our interest on our investments to continue to decline because of the fact that our cash balance is decreasing getting

093into our expenses again we're a service industry we provide education for our students the majority of our budget 77 of it comes in the form of salaries and benefits the other 10 approximate comes in the form of purchase services that we basically use to help us run our schools on a variety of different areas and then the other six point two five six point two seven percent comes in the form of other transfers that we do and we spend about five percent on supplies capital outlay and again these have flipped just as a reminder to the board back in november we approved the policy change where capital assets went from five hundred dollars to five thousand dollars so what qualifies as a capital outlay or capital asset has been changed so more things are falling

094into the supply 500 because anything that's purchased for less than 5 000 technically falls in a general supply rather than a capital outlet so here are our expenses blue represents our salaries and benefits yellow represents our benefits green being our purchase services and as you can see there is a general incline which is different than what we had with regards to revenue because our revenue remains generally flat based how we fund schools in ohio proud to share this screen because it has lots of red on it which is great which means that explains that why we are seeing the difference in numbers that we saw on the second slide that i presented when i started my update there were we are a couple things i want to explain here first and foremost we're off by

095about 1.2 million dollars on personnel services this year this is a result of a higher than expected sub cost than we have seen for a variety of reasons mainly because of the pandemic that continues and needing subs for teachers and support staff higher than we've seen historically and for longer periods of time we expect this to self-correct as we continue to move out of the pandemic these increases are a result of the negotiated agreement with mta for the 2.75 percent increases on the forecast which is about 1.75 percent higher than we initially projected the question may be why would we do that which is a great question it's a fair question as we are deficit spending and i think it was touched upon by mr porter's because we had changes in health care and you

096can see that in the next line these changes in health care offset the most of those increases health care is our most unstable cost that we have as a district it's one of our fiscal management beliefs to control our health care costs health care on average across the country goes up anywhere from six to eight percent depending upon your health care plan it has been 10 years since we've negotiated a change in health care and i would like to thank the mentor teachers association for their willingness to engage in those discussions and to look at that data and help us continue to control that cost and some of the changes that we made in healthcare include increased co-pays a narrow network as well as increased deductibles and co-insurances with our plans which will help us

097save significant dollars as we continue to move forward and control that cost that's the one area in our budget that we can't control we can't control what our risk is going to be from year to year and i think by continuing to work together with our unions as well as with um education of our union members on both sides mta and mce we can continue to do a better job of controlling this cost and that's what you see here what i would just say for the rest of the areas as i said earlier is it kind of goes back to strong fiscal management by our superintendent and our administrative team with underspending the budget in the areas that we see here as a result this impacts everything to the right and we also because we

098are budgeting much sooner than we typically do we do not typically do our appropriations for the next fiscal year until after the fiscal year started in september we've started our budgeting process much sooner so the numbers that we have in 2023 i feel very confident of because we have our initial budgets from our departments in we can analyze that versus where we have our may forecast where we're budgeting we've made adjustments to the forecast into those budgets based on that to continue to make sure that we're thinking out in advance that we're not living year to year which is one of our fiscal management beliefs is to live within our five year forecast because from a financial perspective this document is a living breathing document that helps us make decisions on a day-to-day basis so

099what we have done is we've adjusted all of our out years in these areas to reflect the directive of our superintendent to control spending as well as our board and discussions that him and i have had together along with our board and our citizens financial committee as well as making adjustments that reflect what our budget is into the future i would also note i think it's worthwhile to make mention that we've included what we see is the economic outlook that we're currently experiencing with higher than normal inflationary increases in a volatile market even in the last i think five days we've seen some very tough times in our stock market i didn't check it at the end of the day but when i checked it earlier today it was still going down so we've made

100adjustments to that we can we can control through negotiations our personnel expenses we control that through collaboration and strong dialogue with both our unions we can control our purchase services our supplies and materials and our capital outlay and everything else behind here the one area as i said that we can't really control is is our health care and we're working to to control that the best that we can i think we see that with today's approved negotiated agreement with our teachers association what we have included in this and i think it's worth mentioning is that we have included in areas where we know that we will see an impact on our budget gasoline maintenance of our buses and our fleet we've increased our expected growth from 22 to 23 by 8 percent which is currently

101i think the latest inflationary area we did not increase our assumptions in the other areas because we can control that we're committed to maintaining educational quality at an effective price and the question was asked by the citizens financial advisory which i was not surprised by what if you see inflationary increases in those other areas that exceed your assumptions i said we'll do more with less and mr porter and i have had that discussion and whoever the next superintendent is she or he and i will continue to have those discussions to make sure that we're controlling those costs to ensure that we are educating our students in a safe environment maximizing their learning potentials and we have a great team of administrators and educators and classified staff that will help us make sure that we solve

102that problem collaboratively together so when we look at the big picture this is what if if you're a science person money person like myself or just a person who likes to analyze things in general this is what we showed in november the red line shows our increase in expenses the blue line shows our relatively flat revenue and as a result here last year was our first year that we started the deficit spend when those curves cross and as you can see as we the curve cross and this continues to grow our cash balance decreases and this is where we were showing that negative cash balance in 2026 proud to show this curve here we continue to flatten the green curve we will continue to try to do that at a greater rate as we continue

103to move out you can see the slight ever so slight increase in our revenue there which then has a resulting impact of an increased cash balance as i've shared with the board cumulative effects this current assumption on the five-year court forecast shows a net 14.7 million dollars favorable impact on our cash balance at the end of the five years and that's results of the increased revenues and decreased expenses that i shared on the previous slides one of the things that we have shared uh internally as well as a work session and i know there was a few members in the public that came to our work session on that and i appreciate that so this should hopefully look familiar to the two of you who are there and this kind of allows us to use

104analytics to determine when's the best time to approach a levy and when we had our initial levy discussion we were thinking really having the deep discussion on a multitude of things you know we have the renewal that we have to pass in 24. we know where deficit spending so when we put new money on to increase our revenue to support the expenses that we currently have how do we support the pi needs in the district and we were thinking maybe at the earliest if we wanted to keep the levy amount relatively small as soon as november of 23. i'm happy to announce that as a result of these updates you can see in 23 we're actually better than we were back in 22 when we did the initial forecast and 24 we're close to where

105we were and 22 and 23. so i think it's going to be some time at least a year before we have to ask for additional revenue from the taxpayers if not longer and i'm going to get into that a little bit further on as one of my summary points and talking points to the board and to the community on that but i think this graph really shows that we've we've kicked the can down the road so to speak and if we continue to control our expenses and utilize the monies that we receive hopefully we can continue to move that as far as we can out into the future i think a good graphic representation for the community the board also to assess our financial health is to look at the calendar days of cash on

106hand in 2024 in november we're looking at about 113 days of cash on hand that means we had enough cash to pay for 113 days to run our district happy to announce we've increased that by over a month and we're looking at 143 days i was joking with mr well actually i wasn't joking with him mr baccarello our new assistant treasurer was joking to me when he saw this he said he actually at his last update in madison before he left told the board they have an hour and a half worth of cash on hand currently not even in three years so you know i think that's that shows that we're in a in a decent spot financially we have to be aware that we are deficit spending we have to continue to control our

107costs and find ways to bring in additional revenue when feasible so what i did here is i just took my summary slide from november and updated it based on kind of where we're at so what we were looking at from a deficit spend here and i think it's important to announce to the community and the board we did present this to our citizens financial committee last thursday may 5th and they approved the assumptions and we had a good discussion on that as well as sharing with the fisc the citizens financial advisory committee information on how we invest in the district and introduce them to our investment firm red tree which i've shared at previous board meetings um and that was a good dialogue as well but we were able to reduce our deficit spending and

108outcast years here which is critical and we need to continue to control this as we move forward this is this is just where we're at this point in time does not mean that we're at where we should continue to need to be and moving forward from a district standpoint our second summary was is we need to continue to work to monitor our spending to find ways to control costs that is to flatten our curve we know 78 of our budgets and salary and benefits and i believe we did that through the negotiated agreement that we just received with mta and we have a tentative agreement with our classified employees that agreement is not included in this summary because it would be a little bit early to assume that that is going to be ratified and

109approved by the board because we just finished that deal last week but that will continue to have a positive impact on our budget when we talked in november we said our cash balance was actually negative happy to announce it's 5.1 million dollars by 2026. we still need to pass our renewal levy as i said in 24 by 24 the end of calendar year 24. we need to consider seeking additional funding to support our general fund within the life of the forecast the need for this levy has been delayed i will continue to work with the board and the superintendent to evaluate the timing to best do this and i think that we should consider after we finish the process of hiring a superintendent in the next few months to sit down and have another work

110session to look at where we're at financially and where would be the best timing to do that because we have a lot to consider we have a renewal to do we've had good dialogue about the permanent improvement needs of the district the permanent improvement levy brings in just over a million dollars we spend over a million dollars a year on roofs and we spend you know this year we're budgeting 1.4 million dollars for a paving project and that's being supplanted by the general fund so there's continued discussions on how to best meet the needs of our physical plant as well as a part of that discussion so we need to continue to do that and the point being here is that we are budgeted and we're supplanting the pi fund with about 11 million dollars

111out of a general fund if we could increase the pi fund that could delay potentially further the need for a new levy because we would then won't be supplanting that money out of the general fund to do that or we could drastically reduce the amount of money that we need for the general fund and just as a reminder to the board and to the community money that is approved for a pi fund can only be used for permanent improvements it cannot be used for salaries and benefits and the general fund then can then be used to only for salaries and benefits so there's i don't want to use the word protection but there's delineation on what those funds can be used so the 1.1 million dollars that we receive in permanent improvements can only be

112used for the bees books bricks balls buses things that cost more than five thousand dollars and have a useful life of more than five years typically and i just assure the board in the community as you can sense this is my excitement this is my i love this stuff this is my passion i can do this all day and i do we will continue to track our spending versus our forecast monthly share that with the community and we use analytics to do that which helps us be as close as possible so that when we're making decisions we have the most up-to-date transparent correct information in front of us to do that and i just will mention that the first reading of the appropriations change for the policy aligns with what we've been doing this entire

113fiscal year it reduces the amount of oversight for the board but puts it really where it's at and it's more restrictive than most districts but it puts it back more at the object level so if we were to move money let's say from a 400 account to a 500 account the board would still approve what right now we have some restrictions that even if we're moving between a 423 and a 419 and they're in different functions which could be from the high school to the middle school the board has to approve that when we track the way that we do we analyze the budget the way that we do on a regular basis as a collective group i think that's a little bit unnecessary and creates a burden on timing of things and additional workload

114for our staffs that are taking care of the budget um and i think that that you know i shared that with the board but i wanted again to mention the rationale behind that because it all goes back to what we're doing monthly and what the board's approving at the appropriation level as well as the five-year forecast level much like mr excuse me dr glavin i apologize for all the good information and the excitement on the budget but we are required by law to present this information to the board of education and have our may update approved and i'm happy to take any questions it's so impressive mr wade that you're not only able to bring us such good news but you're able to tell that story in a visually clear concise way so that the

115community can share our delight that we're in a better situation than we feared we might be and it gives us the opportunity to celebrate all of the collaborative work that happens between the superintendent's office all of the employees of the district and your office and and i'm very grateful thank you miss justin any other questions that concludes my report madam president members of the board mr porter i ask that we approve items b through h and addendums may be acted upon in this one motion so moved second any discussion please call the roll miss cook yes miss payne yes miss joslin yes mr tuttle yes miss breiner yes motion carries 5-0 madam president members of the board mr porter are asked for the approval of the resolution adopting the may update to the five-year forecast

116as presented so moved second any discussion please call the roll miss payne yes mr tuttle yes miss cook yes miss dressling yes miss breiner yes motion carries 5-0 thank you do we have any unfinished business any new business i just wanted to mention again mrs cook remarked about the fresh air challenge that the mentor schools foundation has introduced and and what a worthy initiative that is but i wanted to note how many outstanding sponsors generously contributed prizes and and some cash support to advance the work of mentor schools foundation and also to do something wonderful for our students to get them outside and enjoy glorious days like today's weather thank you all right next we have hearing of the public yes sir hello uh my name is dave lima uh and i live on litchfield

117drive and currently have no children in the mentor school system but three of our children are recent are not recent but graduates of of mentor school system and enjoying professional and scientific careers additionally two grandchildren who are recent college graduates making sense of the abundance of information that students have available to them requires thinking critically about that information the ability to sort through information and disinformation to discern the true from the fake is now more important than ever the first step to critical thinking is to consider more than one point of view it is important to go beyond trusting what you hear or read as the truth and examine the evidence for and against the view that requires having the opportunity to be exposed to more than one point of view and i believe our

118educational system should provide that opportunity all agree that graduating students who are skilled critical thinkers is important not only for the students future but i submit for democracy's future as well emphasizing curriculum content and the skills necessary to think critically about that content remains in my opinion a central function of education where the integration of the development of critical thinking is combined with the curriculum my understanding is that these skills need to be taught explicitly rather than assuming these skills will come along for the ride when thoughtful teachers run through complex material with their students but it may be even more important for teachers to inspire students to continue practicing these skills on their own the ability to think critically begins early in life when children ask why they are showing signs of trying to

119make logical connections between things they are observing in the world around them nurturing this ability through a child's development and beyond is extremely important i believe our students have the ability to use these critical thinking skills to sort through the diversity of views if only they have the opportunity to be exposed to such views to restrict access to diverse views discounts a student's ability to consider evaluate and decide to accept or reject the view under consideration it is my hope that the development of critical thinking skills is a priority within the mentor school system and that it is integrated within the curriculum thank you hi my name is monique pavelka 7715 chillicothe road mentor i have one senior that is graduating here in a couple weeks so um mary you must have felt me coming

120tonight because i appreciate your apology that did change what i had to say a little bit okay um at the end of it was april 12th we all um convened here and we had the last meeting right and so when i went home and you know weeks later i pulled up the agenda from the last meeting and i was just curious as to when executive session stopped what was so pertinent for y'all to discuss about the curriculum that was not discussed in front of all of us mary most of what i'm going to ask is rhetorical just a heads up that's directed to you mary i'm sorry we don't discuss what is this i'm curious as to what was discussed behind the curtain that couldn't be discussed in front of the parents that show up

121to the meetings it said in your agenda that it pertained to the curriculum that was discussed at the meeting on the 12th correct help me out here again there was executive session and what was discussed that in that meeting what was discussed that could not be discussed in front of parents we all know the answer mary okay we all know the answer are you speaking about after the executive session correct why did y'all go off of executive session for an hour and a half and it says in your agenda you went off executive session to discuss the curriculum and i'm assuming it was pertaining to the book that we all didn't want in our school system right this isn't a trick question i i'm not sure what you're referring to i'm sorry okay okay you

122know what we're gonna we're gonna need [Music] three minutes we're gonna have to like all do a round table or something because y'all aren't transparent you're not transparent okay and what that leads me to believe is that y'all have something to hide okay and you know what the taxpayers in this city most of them are not aware of that you know that thank you most of them are not aware of that okay hi i'd like to take my time time is expired i promise you i will make them aware okay you know i can mary or else you wouldn't be worried about it time is expired time is expired [Applause] hi my name is melanie majikis i live on birdie lane have two minor school graduates who actually both had mrs laurie at shore for

123math so it was nice to see that video earlier today just a couple of comments um just directed to the board i believe the previous comment violated the public comment policies in which you are not supposed to target individual board members or people associated with schools so it would be nice to see people following the rules that have been laid out for them the other thing i'd like to say is that there also shows a great under misunderstanding of what public boards are and are not allowed to do as the member of a public board of another entity public boards are permitted to go into executive session for purposes as outlined in the ohio revised code and they don't need the public's permission to do so so perhaps people could you know avail themselves of

124information about how public boards work before they start making assumptions about how this board is operating thank you just as a point of clarification if i could find it quickly i will read the summary of the minutes from the session open session that occurred after executive session i believe that was what miss i believe it's belvelka i apologize if i said that incorrectly i'll let the next speaker speak and then i'll share them once i find them on my computer i'm linda o'brien i live at 5842-100 court mentor ohio my opport my comments will be focused on an opportunity a critical opportunity for improvement i'm going to start by just sharing some facts that we should all know there are laws to protect the youth and others around them because their brains have not fully

125developed during school age years for the most part those laws would include things such as not driving until you're 16 not enlisting in the military without parental consent until you're 18 not voting until you're 18 and not purchasing alcohol or cigarettes until you're 21. it's a scientific fact that school-aged children are not fully developed brain wise to comprehend serious acts that can impact and alter their life in the life of others i want to point out to you that what you're doing in terms of educating our children in an area that goes beyond your boundary which is sex you are following a marxist agenda hear that marxist agenda the marxist agenda states very clearly that they will sexualize young children and once sexualized they can then brutalize and terrorize them into total submission that is

126their words not mine your educational material and the ideology that is being pushed on our youth for transgenderism and homosexuality is marxist transgenderism population is one percent homosexuals are three the rest of us 96 percent make up the total and we all deserve kindness and respect however america is blessed to be a land of individual rights and those parents their children are entitled to make their decisions about their sexuality but they are not entitled to push it on us and those that don't agree with their ideology are having this pushed on our children your priorities are to protect and educate our children period we are loving freedom lovers i mean freedom lovers of america my question to you is are you freedom lovers or are you marxists because clearly you have gone off the path

127of being a freedom lover and we the 72 percent that provides that blue range on the finances will stand against you if we have to mentor schools need to protect our children not sexually educate them we will either vote you down or vote your levies down if you don't make sound decisions about how you are teaching our children sex is not one of your subjects and i hope you will thoughtfully consider these facts and remember the silent majority is the 72 percent on your budget thank you thank you to read the minutes that were approved from the april 12 meeting after the executive session the board was an agreement that the book george was inappropriate and not a representation of the type of content aligned with the mission of the district for students grades k-5

128as such the board engaged in meaningful discourse over the remainder of the meeting on the board's role in the review of curriculum to best serve the community based on the recent feedback as such the board asked mr porter to create a committee to review current practice and policy to best evaluate curriculum and supporting materials to ensure they align with the state standards and the goals of the district thank you we are only allowed to speak once during the current session based on the new policy hi my name is ann anderson i have three children go to mentor schools one in high school and two in the middle school [Music] i was going to say i have a shirt on that says stronger together i had a big thing i wanted to talk about coming together

129but we keep going on the hamster wheel of you know pointing out people that are different if someone else is going to talk i'm going to have her thrown out because my husband was thrown out when i was talking so we're not going to put i'm not putting up with that ma'am not yours let's remain your comments to the board president okay folks in the audience if you please refrain from speaking i'm talking you're not so listen the bullying and harassment that i see you guys have to go through that we go through i'm going through currently right at this second from people that have obviously no respect for anyone because they speak out of turn it's not their turn they speak about that every minority community every week or every month that we come

130here i have to stand up here defend transgender people gay people i mean black people everybody if it's a minority community they're sick of getting picked on especially by people that really don't care to learn anything like i said last time you don't care to learn so how are we going to come together how are we going to come together now if we can we're going to keep doing this month after month this hamster wheel of these we i mean it's just left right left right it's ridiculous how are we going to come together if we put a little bit of this time into doing something positive to the for the community do you know what we could do but no that's not happening we keep coming up here we keep beating a dead horse

131about the same things that nobody has any answers they just want to come up here and complain anybody have any answers for anything i don't see anybody having any answers for anything we're just gonna keep doing it i know you guys are sick of it i'm sick of it we all have better time on our hand we could use our time better but no we have to come here i shouldn't even have to be here my kids at a soccer game tonight i should have been at the soccer game but i have to explain transgender people aren't given a green light they're born that way they can't help it do you think that my daughter would loves going through life getting picked on by people like yourselves that don't know any better if you are

132interested in anything that has to do with transgender people meet one they're amazing people they're regular people your children are going to learn about them because my children go to school with your children if you have a problem with that send them to a private school that's it my daughter's transgender deal with it no if we keep bringing up the same subjects i'm gonna say what i want you're talking about my daughter i get to say what i want if you don't like it stop bringing it up oh my gosh if keep the rules intact call these people in or we're going to do this forever it's going to go on forever [Applause] hi my name is alexa friel i live on mountain park drive in metro ohio i have three young kids and well

133in the district um they are currently at st gabe's i just want to say i feel really bad for the last person that spoke she's obviously clearly upset i think that the point is kind of going over everyone's head i'm a minority you spoke about black people i don't think anyone's we're not targeting any group there's a difference between pointing out and targeting and not wanting certain ideologies pushed onto five-year-old six-year-olds i also have a cousin who is transgender and i love him just the same so there's no hate and i'm sorry if certain people feel that way but once again if we want to come together we have to understand that i personally just wanted to come up here to touch on some things that are happening within our district i'm not sure if

134people are aware of some of the stuff that goes on in different classrooms throughout our district to the best of my knowledge the things i'm going to mention have been supported by some of the board members thus far so i asked the members of the board directly if the situations that i'm going to discuss right now and i'm going to mention are these open for discussion with the community and with the parents or do these teachers just ultimately get to make the calls of what is being said within the classroom when the parents aren't even there and can you honestly say there's no agenda being pushed here left right it's very one-sided better lessons white privilege training gender neutral choir names um the high school men's and women's choirs are now gender-neutral names the book

135transphobia deal with it and become a gender transgender there was a pronoun survey that went out to the students in high school asking them which pronoun they wanted to go by without any parental consent or insight it went out the first and second day of school by many teachers the teacher who was allowed to put on all the electronic signs at the high school to say that not wearing a mask is sus which stands for selfish unsafe and sickening there is a ninth grade health class powerpoint that use lesbian couples as examples heather has two mommies a book is being proposed for the new second grade reading curriculum for second grade independent reading libraries i have a son in second grade and he's seven i know i'm not the only parent who has an issue

136with the items that i just spoke on if members of the board truly care about being inclusive or anyone in this community for that matter then all of our opinions should matter and not just one side it's very clear that the parents in this community simply have two options comply and agree or be forced to put your kids in a situation that goes against everything you stand for all while being bullied all along the way as a mother of three young and very impressionable children i would like to ask that more thought and care goes into these changes there needs to be more communication and more transparency not going off the record and bullying people i would never stand here in front of this group of people and ask for my religious beliefs my moral

137beliefs or my values as an individual to be pushed on an entire group of children and i think this excuse me thank you good evening my name is jen simmons i live on richwood drive and men are on the lake i am also the parent of a transgender male transgenderism is not an ideology and i would do anything for my child as i'm sure any parent who loves their child would again let me repeat transgenderism is not an ideology i was very thankful that there were books that were written by people who have undergone transformations that were there for my child as a resource because he had a lot of questions that i didn't have any answers to i'm not an expert i've never gone through that but there were resources available for my child

138along with counseling and support and love i'm shaking i'm so angry right now because i hear this and it boggles my mind because if you think about it we all have one end goal in mind and that is to love our children we are parents and we do anything to protect them to ensure that they have a diverse point of view for other people that they may not be similar to so that they can empathize with those people and if there were more training like this it's my transgender child calling me now if there were more people like this in the world and this point of view then there wouldn't be transgendered people getting run down in the street hit by cars murdered victims of hate crimes it's not that difficult to understand how to

139empathize nobody is trying to push an agenda it is a resource for children who are questioning their sexuality and guess what folks if your child becomes one of those people those people i pray that you are there as a voice and advocate for resources for them too so that they have some understanding a knowledge base and yes you get get counseling you do everything that you can as a parent that's all i gotta say peace thank you hi my name is michelle chrissy my address is 7070 chillicothe road mentor i currently have one daughter in ninth grade at the high school i was not planning on talking tonight but i'm listening to this stuff and i'm just sitting here i would like to say that this it seems like some of the people are getting

140really upset really emotional about this transgender issue i don't think not wanting our children to learn this type of information in school makes us homophobic transphobic any of that is what we're simply saying is this is not a school issue we want our kids to come to school to learn math writing the basic arts this is not i have problems i had five children one of them is a biracial child went through the mentor school system she got picked on just as much as my all-white child um kids are mean kids bully were obviously it's not okay but we're obviously putting i mean this whole first 30 minutes of the meeting was what we're doing so these kids can be kind to each other but when you go as far as infringing and talking about

141i don't want my children learning anything about other people's personal lives this is not an issue for the public schools this goes way beyond the scope i'm a catholic i have certain religious beliefs you don't teach those in school you have no business teaching other things in school so if we keep the politics out of it and just teach just teach learning just teach the kids reading writing arithmetic period end of it i'm sorry that there's people here that are struggling with their children we all struggle with our children with different issues everybody has a cross to bear and i don't expect the school to intervene when i have problems with my children i take them to a counselor i take them to a priest there's tons of resources outside of the school district that

142we don't need to start inflicting these issues these sexual issues onto our children and to our small children especially these these kids are little and they're learning about two mommies and different things like it's there's no need for it so i i'd like to apologize for the people who are really upset here and who are struggling with their children as parents none of us want to see any parents in pain with their children we all have the same basic thing we want our kids to do well and thrive but these are issues that don't belong in the school district and that's all that i think a good majority of the city is saying thank you so thank you [Applause] hi my name is pam granger i live on georgian quartz um i don't know if

143this is the appropriate moment for this but i just had a question about it sounded like the permanent improvements portion of the funding went from or what counts as a expenditure went from 500 to 5000 and so i was just curious if that impacts how much money we have to retain in that budget or if that can go to the general account great question i can answer that one that's awesome all that was was a policy change in how we code the expense simply put where if it was above 500 previously we would have coded it in a 600 account we've raised that limit to 5000 so now it just gets coded if it's below 5000 it gets coded as a 500 so it really doesn't change how much revenue that we have for general

144fund or permanent improvement it just kind of determines where we put the expense in our books by reallocating that expense if you're reallocating an expense to the permanent improvements fund or i just now like anything between that 500 and 5000 now go to the general no it doesn't have to do with the actual fund where the money comes from it has to do how we classify in our books from the expense standpoint so say you bought a before computer that cost two thousand dollars we would have coded that as a six hundred dollar expense and it could have came out of general or permanent improvement now if it's two thousand dollars it could come out of the same fund either or it's just now classified as a 500 expense i got it yep so it

145doesn't it doesn't change where the funding is coming from it's just how we code for our standpoints to track those expenses more of an internal control awesome thanks yep i am lindsay wall 7250 beachwood drive um two kids in the middle schools um i think i'm allowed to talk um so our kids this has been a really big adjustment for me this year with my son in first grade um last year being virtual school um i have never uh had you know my kids gone from me the whole day six hours actually it's really um a lot more than six hours considering he's on the bus for 40 minutes um [Music] they're at school more during the day than they are with me i basically get to feed them dinner play outside for a little

146bit and put them to bed and i just want to thank you and all of our teachers in the minor schools for having the materials to be inclusive allowing our children to explore during those long hours that they are in the schools and away from home since i only have a limited time with them at the end of the day um it's just it's kind of mind-boggling to me how this is um going back and forth so much about uh people who don't even have kids currently in school they did but don't currently and then parents that do have kids in school currently that haven't looked at an actual textbook lately i am very aware that our school system is not pushing pushing anything on our kids is it available yes i know that um

147when the end of the year comes and all of our junior high and high school students are choosing their electives and their courses and classes and whatnot sitting down with the guidance counselors that sexual stuff is not a course how to identify yourself is not a course this isn't something that is being put in the curriculum and pushed on our kids all that you guys are doing which i appreciate is allowing these children and kids and growing adults throughout the school system to have the option to learn and explore and and decide so thank you because you guys are with my kids more than i am currently and it sucks but i appreciate everything that you guys do thank you [Music] hello my name is mike williams i live at 6064 walden court and mentor

148and we have put four children through the mentor school systems dear mr porter mr wade and school board members i agree with you that there are a lot of positive things that happen in mentor schools and that the students have achieved a lot they have achieved so much and we do appreciate that however i would like to address some things about the curriculum that i don't agree with and i've talked about these before after seeing a facebook post from the president of the school board putting forth an article that sex education should begin in kindergarten i am deeply concerned about the direction this will continue to take our school system this is promoting ideas about sexual education which are not age appropriate and it tramples all over parental rights this is promote you are promoting

149lgbtq lifestyles gender identity racial issues all the time in the middle schools and this this to me is egregious and is doing harm to our children our innocent children if i were to approach a child other than my own to discuss sexuality or other sexual subjects i would be labeled a sexual predator and be accused of grooming if caught i would certainly be arrested and charged with a crime yet mentor schools is training their teachers to do this mentor schools does this all under the guise of diversity equity and inclusion but my opinion is not diversity it is perversity you are allowing our young children to be taught falsehoods and morally objectional behaviors this has got to stop if any of you on this board or a proponent of promoting these sexual ideologies being taught

150you are leading our children astray you cannot be trusted to make decisions that will safeguard our elementary students from sexualized teachings lesson plans and books you need to resign i believe that all of you on the board purport to be christians and so should be familiar with scripture let me remind you of matthew chapter 6 or matthew chapter 18 verse 6 but whoever causes one of these little ones who believes in me to fall away it would be better for him if a heavy millstone were hung around his neck and be drowned in the depth of the sea i would encourage all of you to heed this scripture thank you for your time thank you brennan towns uh marine parkway i have uh one daughter at orchard hollow and now that will be starting next

151year so there were a couple things i wanted to bring up um let me start by saying thank you to the board um all five of you uh superintendent porter um you're looking at your last couple of board meetings so i just want to thank you for your service mr wade for all the work that you've done since coming any teachers that may hear this administrators school staff thank you for your service uh this is a thankless job unfortunately thousands are leaving um by the day and i want to acknowledge that and hope that we continue to do what we can to keep and retain the best and brightest in our schools dave i mentioned earlier the importance of critical thinking i just wanted to come back to that because it was stated that opinions

152matter all our opinions matter and that is absolutely right and you'll have a right to speak but of course facts matter more of course truth matters more and it comes a point we have to really dig into what's true and we keep coming here and um i think it annie mentioned we go back and forth and it's it's tiring um and i really think we need to get to a point we have another setting for that back and forth to happen in a more fruitful way because i do believe in the power of democracy and dialogue it's getting exhausting but i still do believe in it but my wife said something and i have to echo it um if it's pushing an agenda to talk about two mothers then it must be pushing an agenda

153to talk about a mother and a father so at some point we have to acknowledge that um it's the truth um and then i'll try to say this really quickly my sister works in healthcare and she talks about a moment when they decide as a healthcare agency that a lot of the seasoned doctors were used to paper and of course coming into the 21st century that doesn't cut it there were errors there's a huge cost um there's organization that's involved with just managing all that paper and they had to make a decision do we stay with paper which we know isn't beneficial or do we switch to electronic and acknowledge the fact that we're going to lose some of the seasoned vets i think that we have to have that conversation here because i think

154we have to make do what's right even though we're going to lose some folks thank you else yes hello my name is barbara kelfoil i live at 10 100 mental lake court i have two children within the school system collectively my immediate family has had somebody within the meadow public school system pursuing their education since 1973. my children will be in the system until 2030. it's been almost 50 years that my family has entrusted mentor school system with their education over this school year at these board meetings i have witnessed a coordinated effort to shape that trust in the matter public school system each month i didn't think the board meeting could get worse but it has we started with mask debates debates about crt which is a college level course that's not even taught

155at mentor we heard harsh critiques on books such as an african-american family's experience during the great depression a critique on a book for transgender students that got all the way to a vote thank you for allowing transgender kids to have access to that book that speaks to them there was a call for more white authored books and bibles in the classroom we heard the repeated request to get back to the basics of math and reading yet no mention of getting back to the real basics of social interaction and classroom behavior we saw two citizens target a transgender student's public bathroom use at shore in april we saw a citizen question the cfo on the validity of the school's financials our curriculum director's integrity was questioned by yet another citizen and then we saw one board

156member say to the board president president are you calling me a liar to the cheers of a crowd who in turn requested the board president to resign what is going on here how is any of this helping our kids get through mentor public schools and become productive members of public society it is not it is it is a distraction an attempt to undermine the trust between parents and the school system why do this i think it is simply said that at the last school board meeting by a person who ran for the school board if you don't run mentor schools the way we want them to be run you will not receive funding every school board meeting this year that same theme has been echoed we do not want taxpayer money going towards public schools

157take them at their word and realize their methods all these things they're demanding can be instituted and controlled in private schools like saint gabe's not in public schools they don't want to fund public schools privatization of public schooling is the goal run schools privately voucher systems and all and i want put mentor public schools to be around for 50 more years to the board members the principals the teachers who all have our children's best interests at heart please do not bow to these pressures please know that you are supported by the majority of the community thank you [Music] good evening bambi vargo mentor ohio um the book heather has two mommies i would imagine you have students in this school who have two mommies and you have students in this school who have two daddies

158those children need to be affirmed they need to have literature they can look at and they see themselves thank you hello michelle picalcik again um i need a time of three minutes not 2 33 please okay um i want to thank you for the videos um at the beginning of this meeting i enjoyed them i thought you did they were well done and i appreciate seeing good things happen in this men are schools i have no children in the school district at this time but that's not to say that i won't have any grandchildren here someone remarked that maybe we shouldn't have a say in this our tax money goes to the school district we should have a say why not isn't this america we have differing opinions and that's all right too but we

159don't have to bring everything to the school some things are personal they should remain personal with the family as a matter of fact the parents have so right to tell their children what they want them to know it is mixing their heads up it's confusing them we're talking about little kids we're not talking about junior high senior high kids we're talking about little ones who just left their mother's home that they've been with for five years and then they go to school and someone tells them all this stuff as a matter of fact my grandson who's in kindergarten has a watch he can call me almost anytime the other day he called me and asked me some questions because one of his friends told him something and i said that's not true where did he

160get that from so you see kids at kindergarten are hearing these things from other kids and it's confusing them they don't understand that they don't even understand any bedroom stuff so leave it at home we won't bother you we we love all children but we have to set a limit for the schools because they've gotten out of control with what they're trying to do they're indoctrinating and i'm sorry to say that is is very real we need you to teach our students reading writing arithmetic science all those kinds of things but we don't need you to teach them about all the different kinds of sex there is out in the world we don't need you to teach them about that that's my opinion and there you go thank you [Applause] there you go hi i'm

161christy bellahovic i live on dahlia drive and mutter on the lake and i have a student at garfield and a student at lake who by the way is over the moon about this cloud outdoor challenge very excited i just want to simply say that i trust the teachers in the classrooms to handle an array of subject matter at grade appropriate levels they're professionals they are trained and educated specifically to run a classroom and educate children and they should be empowered respected and supported in doing so and i appreciate them and administrators librarians all educational professionals in our schools for all the hard work that they have put into becoming the professionals that they are and i am thankful to them for showing up each day to use their specialized knowledge and abilities to educate our

162children thank you thank you [Applause] uh hello anna pierreck excuse me 8651 manor road uh i do not have children in the school district uh i just wanted to thank the president of the board for your humble apology thank you very much for that um about someone referenced me not by name in one of the comments questioning the superintendent's finance disclosures at the last meeting he corrected those tonight so i just want to defend myself in in that matter and it is okay to question those who we put into office or into positions to represent us it doesn't mean that you're castigating the person or criticizing it it was just a matter of questioning how much the mentor school district received in coronavirus or covid uh monies grants to implement the inefficient unnecessary protocol such

163as masking it doesn't work but anyhow as far as laura has two moms or joey has two dads it's biologically impossible for joey or laura to have two same-sex biological human beings as their parents so it's confusing sure laura and joey can have uh two mommies at home just like they can have two sisters and two brothers but it doesn't mean that that that child is a product of a man and woman god created man and woman if your child comes to you confused about his gender or her gender just know that god created each and every one of us unique you are unrepeatable no one in this room can be replicated you may be able to be cloned but you cannot be replicated and your father and your mother created procreated you through the

164gift of procreation that our god has given us life through life and love thank you so roger jewel heart street matter currently have one daughter in the junior high school short junior high school i'd like to know just changing things up here a little bit selecting of the next superintendent like to know the meeting that we had with the the mediator i believe that's what you're calling her that's helping select this person him or her has anybody reviewed the notes and she said there was a record number of notes that were uh taken at that particular meeting with the parents i didn't stay for the community one but there was like she said that there was a record amount of notes that were written of things that parents were looking for in this person has

165anybody there was only one board member at the meeting so i'd like to ask why everybody else wasn't there to learn what the parents wanted in somebody do we have any kind of say in this other than having a meeting that you guys weren't at and how how do we have more say in who gets selected in this next position because it's pretty critical uh we feel that and i'm sure you guys feel the same way um so if somebody can answer that one that would be great has anybody looked at the notes from that meeting i've looked at the notes the notes are available to all of the board and i don't want to speak for everyone because i haven't talked to them outside of this meeting about that but i've looked at the

166notes at length are you guys going to do that are you going to meet on that are you going to take into consideration the things that are really on the hearts of the parents in this room all the way across the board and everybody matters folks nobody's arguing nobody's trying to say no child is less important than another i have never heard that out of this side at all and i've never heard that out of your sight either no child is less important than another no child needs to be or should be bullied for any situation but as a parent as a god-fearing man of 57 years old who's raised six kids you absolutely positively are overstepping your bounds by putting these books in the libraries and i heard something about one of them being

167in a second grade curriculum the facebook post that was put up by our president sorry to call you out mary but you put up a post that sex education should start in kindergarten through third or fourth or fifth grade absolutely positively not going to happen while i'm around in manor not going to happen it's perverse that's not it's absolutely perverse putting something on a kid that can't you should just be teaching them how to read how to color in the lines and how to get along with one another don't be teaching sex education to my kids my grandkids you're out of your lane please get back in your lane but i want to know how are we going to be more of a part of being involved in this decision for the superintendent thank you

168answer your question the purpose of our search uh committee the uh cheryl ryan being there was to obtain the feedback from the community and bring that information back to the board in fact all the board members agreed that we would not attend those meetings that we would wait for that feedback to come back from that person thank you we purposely did not go in yes i have reviewed that information and that feedback and it will be taken into account me wait let me answer mr jewell first if i could i went into the we had parents citizens entering their comments in to a post and i read those they were all typed in i went through those i forget how many hundreds there were there so i'm retired i could spend a day doing that

169and i did that and i made notes and you see me here sitting in this board meeting most of the time i write notes and so i read it i wrote notes so i'm acceptable to the input have you guys had a meeting on that input to help draw your own conclusions so far have you had any meetings on any of that input so far together that meeting schedule for tomorrow yeah excellent mr tuttle i appreciate you looking at those things i really do school board i appreciate you looking at those things i hope i hope we're taking serious all right we do have some serious concerns these are serious issues and and i have to echo i know i'm over my time but i have to echo mr williams in this putting a post

170on facebook about sex education beginning in kindergarten that's not somebody that i want representing um me to any board and i'm sorry but it's just we can't do that when we can thank you mr joel i have that comment put down in our notes i would like to just make one comment um mary is correct we did have just to clear it up on my end because i did show up for that forum the parents forum i was not intending originally to show up for it um but we did had we did have a discussion about us you know it was recommended strongly that we didn't go so that people could freely speak um i had talked to several people that day and they were pretty surprised that i was not going so i felt

171compelled to do so and i didn't say anything i just sat there and i took my notes and the notes that i took did match up with cheryl ryan and osba so that was a very good thing but mary is correct i just wanted to make that clear that we did kind of talk about that during a work session i think it was um and it was strongly recommended that we didn't go so that's not on anybody here that they didn't go i would like to add a little further to that mr jewell and that's uh regarding as board members there are two things that are most important that we're in charge of doing i'm not saying above the students but we are in charge of hiring the superintendent and the cfo i'm really proud

172about our most recent cfo and mr porter unfortunately he is moving on prior to mr porter i was instrumental in hiring mr miller i rate that really high in my experience over the many years that i hired and every once in a while dismissed not school employees but where i worked it is the highest responsibility i feel in that when we hire our superintendent he or she has got to be the highest quality and meet those things that our citizens expect of him or her you can count on me on that and then the rest of us we work hard at that you're quite welcome all right uh do we have a motion to move into executive session to discuss employee negotiation second was that ms jisling for the promotion yes thank you ms cook

173i got you for the second do we expect any vote on this should be no vote no vote okay and just so you know if we come out of executive session have any discussion you're welcome to stay for that or you may leave it is sometimes that happens um all right please call the roll miss cheslin yes miss cook yes miss payne yes mr tuttle yes miss breiner yes we're now going into executive session at 9 55 pm