August 25, 2022 Board of Education Work Session and Regular Meeting

001that's the correct one um we're gonna do the pledge of allegiance during the regular meeting will be okay to hold into that sure okay we'll get started with the presentation so we're concerned with the owner representative interviews for any introductions or well i guess i'll uh you know we interviewed three different firms during our buildings and grounds meeting earlier this month uh we narrowed it down to two firms and we're scheduling here tonight at 5 30 and 1 6 15. so the first one here at 5 30 is called nv5 and we'll just go ahead and turn over they can introduce them and take it away thank you my name is mark sneaky i'm the managing director of mv5's local office um from stolen just one of the first just mentioned how exciting we are

002to be back we felt the great connection of that first meeting uh talking with the team and uh great fit to meet the needs of riverside and support efforts um forward as we discussed so uh a little bit about mv5 we have a 50-year plus history serving clients in the cleveland area those clients range from k-12 clients like yourself we have an active renovation project in ravenna that's um healthcare clients such as metro health and the cleveland clinic actively working over at the vendor hospital project i'm sure if you're interested by 6 15 you're seeing that come out of the ground and government sector where judge economy is a trusted client of ours we've helped deliver the combined office uh building um down riverwood road which is just being turned over and activated and we're

003supporting the efforts further with their court complex so i wanted to uh just mention that our team that serve k-12 clients so we bring that by the strength as well with us to support local leopards we have a team of great pms estimators and schedulers all in-house you know we don't go for subcontractors to do all of those specialty areas which are very important planning on a personal note i graduated from ohio state as a structural engineer as a designer for the first half of my career in the last 10 years i've been working over on the project management side helping owners like yourself plan and make sure their projects finish on time and budget successfully [Music] but um so i apologize for my back to those in the room um i am a senior

004project manager with nv5 it was wonderful to meet some of you a few weeks ago it's nice to meet the others today my focus is really on strategic planning so as an honors rep my role is to represent the owner find a unified voice very data driven um being able to quantify unquantifiable things so that we can get to uh the best solution moving forward and then obviously planning that out usually it's a multi-phased project short-term long-term goals um but within that i i know we got into it um into some detail so thank you for giving us another opportunity to present because i actually came prepared with some of those documents that i referenced at so let's kind of walk you through what we see as the first step um really from what we

005gathered in that first meeting seeing that there are multiple options on the table based on what we envision having multiple options on the table um and so i'd like to kind of walk you through what that process looks like um hopefully this is you know that we're on the same page here i really would love for this to be a conversation that there are things that you have questions about want to know a little more in depth that's i'm assuming that's what this is for right um and so what what i've done and you you'll have that in front of you um i have a few extras that others in the room want [Music] services um project management owners we are the jugglers of all right we manage all of the information put it together

006in a process in the system that is digestible that's really what our job is so when when as an owner sometimes it feels really overwhelming that there are so many pieces and parts where really their focus um help focus the team into one unified voice you know sometimes that's challenging to do given what our past has been here at riverside phase one was completed successfully congratulations you guys have some awesome new elementary schools first day of school here at the high school um and maybe phase two looks a little different i think that phase two that was originally proposed that didn't pass maybe that isn't um what we're moving forward with but potentially an option so inside of this brochure the first thing you'll see are these conditions of satisfaction conditions of satisfaction is really

007just a fancy term plus same project goals what this is is a understanding from a multifaceted understanding of the project goals so from uh site access from programming academic programming perspective from a financial fiscal perspective we want to make sure we understand all of the goals of the project right so no nothing should no turn no stone could go unturned in this process this is a work session so right now you see some pretty tiles right this is from another project that i'm using for reference very similar um to this not a school but still a project that the owners did not know what they wanted to do but they had an idea and they had a lot of ideas so you can imagine how challenging it is to get to a end result when

008everybody has different ideas and different goals from multiple different departments within the city so within that work session we were able to identify these 10 2 46 right gold that we're able to then check as we move forward in identifying all of our options how are we measuring against these goals so if we move to the next page and obviously i should say these are going to be specific to you right these are not your goals but similar to this it will be a multi-faceted what you'll see next is a high level executive summary so when i mentioned earlier we are able to take unquantifiable information like values and goals and missions of the school and the district and quantify them so what you see here are colors right green yellow and red fairly self-explanatory

009but as the core team identified our multiple options we were then able to go back to our options and say how does that work with that goal does it meet our goal does it not meet our goal and we score and at the end you go to the next page you will see even further detail about a recommended option so you'll see that there were five options hybrid one was what was recommended we provided square footage the approximate cost maybe the financial details this owner was looking for and then the breakdown of that option in particular what you're seeing is really highlighted right it's one page of 250 pages of information but what we want to do is be able to give you digestible information so that you can then go to your community in

010your storms and we've done our diligence we've collected the data we understand what it's telling us and we can be very transparent we understand that this school district fortunately ranks 531 on the ofcc eligibility list which is wonderful but not wonderful um so we do need the community support right eventually unless somebody else is coming out of pocket as a donor so i think transparency is really important um we found that in other projects in the past being transparent with the community and the stakeholders the user groups obviously as the owners um will get us to success even if there are hiccups right but what our job is is to identify those before they happen at identifying the risk um and being able to you know work through that obstacle rather than being faced with

011a major challenge um so i kind of walked you through what our initial phase would look like i really do think that this is a three to four month engagement there are lots of things that fall within um if you want to really go into some nitty-gritty one of the options that i was thinking of please send me another setting but option one would be maybe what you're thinking of space two right where you're doing it six through twelve here at riverside and then you're um and then lamuth middle becomes elementary that is what originally phase two was maybe that is option one and we kind of work through that option two main is a renovation of this school keeping it as an eight three four again i normally we're stepping and just assuming but

012that could be an option and maybe move becomes elementary and one of the other elementary schools becomes male right we're going to put everything on the table i'm assuming all of you have lots of great ideas that's probably why we're here interviewing this because everybody has such great ideas um but really get those on paper understanding the data and then being able to decide for what's the best path forward um mark did mention that we are in house estimating um so a big piece of this first phase would be facility conditions assessments really understanding what we're currently working with in the district because we've got to put a number to that it's going to be an option somewhere right what does a renovation look like and then also breaking out what are some immediate needs

013we've got some money we don't want to continue to defer some major projects so we would want to identify that as a short-term goal making sure that we have this larger picture knowing we want to move forward phase two and three but there are some immediate needs i'm seeing as well that would i would uh just further um the importance of those conditions of satisfaction you know and hearing from all voices understanding and documenting what are what what does success look like early on and those are for reference throughout the project as we bring on board a design team eventually in a construction team so everybody understands what success looks like we see quite a bit working with teams how uh quickly um different stakeholders on project owner contractor design teams all feel like they're

014connected and all on the same page but without that documentation things get off out of alignment very quickly so i guess i would open to a question in terms of kind of the first step and hearing from all voices documenting some of the different options forward and helping um get actionable information for this team does that feel like a need early on for what uh riverside needs to move forward yeah i think i'm not speaking for everybody man i think our first step is really just to figure out again there's a lot of the first ideas up here that what we where we need to focus and what do we need to do to move forward i think that's part of the first step is trying i the idea of getting us all to put

015it out there and then figure out how do we kind of meet somewhere but i also i also agree that hearing with some of those things that are not our phase two phase three type of things what can we be doing now what should we be doing now putting those things on the table as well um can you can you address then what happens like that you don't replace the architectural firm that you're not here to replace the you know like some of those things as you go through this whole process and then say for example we get to the okay we're ready to do a phase two or whatever we're gonna put that out there to the public whatever it happens to be like what your role is in that because i don't i

016don't want to misrepresent to the public that we're bringing somebody on in replacement of those individuals yeah so we are an extension of you is what we offer um we don't want facebook designers we don't babysit the designer so they would like to maybe say that right but we are we hold everybody accountable on your behalf so being transparent with the community an owner's rep is that unified voice um what we would like to see as you know the initial steps in this strategic thing and getting all the ideas then um once we have some recommendations or some options on camera you'll have some numbers you'll understand what the buildings might need that next step would be to bring in a design team and if you have somebody that you want to use already or

017if you have to go out to the public maybe if we know that one of our options is to redesign the space and we want to get that up to the public we'd like to have that as a conceptual line as a rendering so that you know we can show that to the public we're not designers we do have in-house designers so we need to call on them but that's not our goal our role is to just kind of keep everybody in line the nicest way possible but really we do just juggle a lot of balls so we don't replace the designers and i would i would add you know the um having somebody objectively you know supporting you as kind of the owner agent uh as it's referred to a lot of times uh

018does have somebody at the table that's gonna has already said hold people accountable but what that means is uh are they completing the tasks that are expected in a timely fashion and we see a lot of times in a lot of these projects that are hearing or finishing late is uh things got sideways you know design teams ran designing stuff that kind of went off off kilter and you had to bring them back you know that adds time um you know there there was some scope missed or some things like that that's our job to make sure things are flowing to have our hands on the budget making sure that in a timely way we're meeting our milestones so that's why we're different than those design and construction stakeholders so question so it could very

019well be that we move forward with some adaption and improvements to the existing structure here at the campus so so that's that's going to be a very you know sometimes a lot of work and sometimes not so much how being a large firm how are you going to be able to to adjust to those absolute flows of potential workloads that's some you know customizing an approach with our staffing that you know meets your needs would be something that you should expect from us you know we don't you know add staffing during periods then it's not required so we would have to flow our team and our involvement uh to match the needs of customizing saying that though you would have me um as part of this project from day one through the end of the

020project so my schedule would revolve around her schedule right so when we know that there are ebbs and flows of the project and that is actually on that last sheet that i didn't speak to earlier but you do have a schedule as the top graphic up there schedules especially in an academic calendar are fun very colorful and there are a lot of moving pieces so we're very well versed in acclimating our schedule to the academic calendar and then to the contractors calendar and when students are in certain places working nights or weekends should we have to i mean get it done right but we like to plan around holiday breaks making sure that students have you know other swing spaces to stay in for a semester and that's those are things that we plan down

021to the room that they will be in starting on what day so we're part of that entire year of the process um and we are dedicating the community can you tell us a little bit about so obviously we're by board members that have become one voice can tell us a little bit about how you work or examples of how you work with other groups to try to get to that point sure yeah i will i will bring up the city of cleveland once again um there were 11 departments we already know that government is a lot of red tape a lot of bureaucracy everybody loves their voice heard and you know 11 departments from planning zoning historic environmental mayor's office of capital projects everybody has separate goals and really their goal is the only one

022that's important to them because ultimately they have to report to their director that hey we met our goal what we did and it takes us back without technology without all that extra stuff we have work sessions so we bring everybody in the room and it's a three four hour i mean when you have that many people right we're there for several hours multiple times but that first time we're kind of taking up a room like this putting white boards all over those sticky big boards and we are just writing we're getting ideas out there's no yes there's no no there's no buts we can do pros and cons but we just want to talk about goals what are we looking for right and it's also a really great time for me to gather my amount

023of information so that deep data dive data dump that i will ask for is i want to know everything that's already in your brains that you've known about for the past five years right since the inception of this maybe even before that um but that really is how we start so it's not to make it sound like kumbaya but that's really what we do and everybody provides their opinion then i take all those opinions and i then start to quantify it we come back a second time we start to write out options still we're not talking about good bad right or wrong right we're really just collecting data so we can't argue with data right um the data will then drop a good decision so um when we look back on this sheet right we

024had to identify how we were able to meet these goals okay we've got a couple that weren't met that were not green but for the most part this aggregate score was the highest and therefore it was what was recommended and so the overall goal of the team is to provide the best recommendation right at the end it's not about who's right who's wrong we're going to look at the big picture we're going to understand the financials how it impacts the students how it impacts the community the enrollment the demographics everything and then make the best decision from there but it's um it's definitely a fun process uh and really it's just a matter of getting a lot of information out i hope that was a helpful answer question for you you said we have you

025from the outset correct i'm sorry for that again we have you from the outset yes okay and then um also what was stated is there would be other staff so how many other staff will participate and what will they do what's their role sure so myself as a senior project manager will be your point of contact i will be your day-to-day the beautiful thing about the nb5 solar office is that we are able to provide a menu of services so for what i foresee we will have some cost estimating needs specifically with some facility condition assessments also with any new design providing some cost estimates for any new design and that would be dan sexton who's in our office he is on that last page right at the bottom that's dan unfortunately he was on

026vacation so he could not make it tonight and then brian stewart in the industry 40 years our master scheduler he will be part of the project um very much involved but you won't see him as much he will be providing us the reports we will be asking him for those updates really his role will be very heavily rooted in the construction process once we really start bringing on the to cm or how it'll work delivering this project he'll be really essential in that role now do you oversee them or are they separate entities so this would be what i would say our project i will manage the project and i'll bring them in as needed we all manage ourselves right so they don't say like i manage them because they're some senior to me but

027they're excellent what they do i bring them into my projects all the time that's really how our office works is we give each other little bits of our information i work on other people's projects as equipment planning and by strategic planning so we work really well together that there's a nice flow of information and so then how do you vet the contractors and subcontractors well yeah that's an extensive process you know the uh what we do uh like geogra county um you know we were bringing a cm on board at risk on that project that all of their numbers uh when we were part of that selection process as you know having that expertise and being able to vet that is something that's a skill set that somebody needs to be experienced that doesn't go

028through both dan and ryan have a lot of k-12 experience both on estimating schedule side doing exactly what you're talking about letting the contractors assuming that uh there is isn't any risks you know when we look into the details of the project and that this team knows what the risks are sometimes there's a best value need versus low bid there's a lot of different options to explore each come with different risks that everybody's in alignment with that i guess what i mean is how do you vet them for maybe what losses they've had in the past if you get into very high level projects you have to be at like 99.85 to even be considered uh with no losses for a certain period of time and that sort of thing so how do you vet

029them in their employees to see what we're getting on site we could have a pre-qualification process for the various contracts that set those requirements you know would be one way and we typically do that hand in hand with the construction manager right we're not at least in this project i don't believe we're going to act as gc now we could and should we act as gc we would obviously take them through that vetting process obviously also our relationships in this area over the past 40 years will get us a lot a lot of phone calls you know that gets us a lot of information but we're also in the industry we're working with a lot of these players right now we would ask anybody who's been in to provide us just like we would have

030to provide to you any of our losses i need any financial um information we're a publicly operating company so anyway um but we would ask that of vending stocks or vendors and the firm's history is one piece of the puzzle but just as important as the people they're offering for our project uh you know with the years of experience we have um in this region we have a good feel for just about everybody but uh we don't want the firm's c team or d team we know the issues were there we want to know the risks involved with who they're going to supply and make sure that they commit them to the project long term i think that would be important i do think just from a dynamic from the riverside we definitely want the

031owners agent and the the cm to be different right so we have that that check absolutely and there's transparency we'll provide with our reporting to what the different you know allowances are and contingencies there's a lot of things with the budget that unless you're down in the details know some of the exposures maybe with some potential change orders and understanding especially on how that fits maybe if we have some i don't know a parallel path some of these smaller projects that i'm going but all this fits together into a big puzzle and us explaining that in a very digestible way in a very timely fashion to you is one of the tools you guys can be uh successful so uh have you executed between a 30 and 40 million dollar project in the last couple

032years yes i've been accounting in schools county um office building uh it was um just about 30 million dollars and um through one of the most uh turbulent times this industry's ever seen over the last you know three years we were able to design that there was the typical issues which it sounds like you guys may have experienced in the past where design teams cis are kind of at gridlock are having those estimating capabilities in-house objective really helped move that through in very positive ways that project is delivered under budget a lot of enhancements to that project were able to revisit the budget um we were able to get a lot of enhancements that initially were not thought they could be part of that project and then deliver it on time it's a very a

033success story there's a lot of projects that people are experiencing different uh issues and then what was uh your total cost on that project as um your role your charge to the owner about um 580 000 um that's full design and um construction owner rep we did uh do some change orders you know for our contract to help support the owner there was um significant needs from an i.t perspective for more of a comprehensive look at some things that wasn't part of our additional scope like i said we have that deep bench strength we have a whole office that does nothing but i t av design they asked us we were able to surprise going out to the market for roof management planning no bids we have those in-house capabilities we're able to add that

034there's a lot of value-added opportunities we can bring to the table as options obviously we'd never want to bring any option to the table that was above kind of the market rates and we would let the market tell us that but we have that did you say you're the designer on that project too or no that was uh tv and architects they were talking about i think maybe do an i.t in-house as the additional item but you were able to handle that in-house is what you were saying really helped the owner from a strategic planning perspective kind of figure out different upgrade options a lot of times the in-house teams are confident on what they want but they want somebody uh that you know with with the experience to say yeah that is the right

035you know we're doing this all over the country this is these are some other things you may want to explore before you move forward it's always good to have that sounding board so that's where we put the leverage i think when mr platka was talking about what you started out by saying we did it from the full design oh um so to clarify we were the owners rep from the inception of design so we managed that design process there were designers on board ta did the design but when you think of all of the pieces that go into the design and having 15 there are 15 entities that occupy that building they're all individual entities they're not in title department and licensed bureau things like that um and everybody having that voice so we were

036able to work through that design phase as the owner's rep i think um james you had mentioned or asked a question you know and correct me last time we met you know how do we avoid running to the designers pushing their design on us i mean if they're really into these windows or they're really into blue walls or right whatever their thing is and i think my response to you was well we wouldn't ever let it get that far right we wouldn't have those windows on that drawing because we're very clear up front with what your project goals are right so these project goals make their way through the entirety of the project so if part of that is a design element or the lack of a specific design element that when an architect or

037design group is brought on board they're brought up to speed by us and it takes that legwork off of you to bring a whole nother person on board right get them up to speed with all the things that you have that's that's our job is to collect that data provide them that report so they understand what they want so you will walk with them with a list of requirements that you know we have agreed to and make sure they stay with them so once you say this is what we want to do i i unfortunately i get to say no a lot and unfortunately i'm pretty good at it so my job is to represent you right and we've been very lucky i mean we work with some really great design firms we get great

038people to work with part of the team and i think it's clear that i am pretty black and white and very open i'm pretty candid um there is no news that goes untold so even the bad news right we have to tell that um but we are that we don't use collaboration as a you know little buzzword because everybody's talking about it we really do collaborate we talk through things with the design team with the construction manager with you guys i mean this is a process there's a lot of pieces and we're here to build a relationship so that we have a really successful project at the end or multiple projects right we want we want what's best for you as the district question not a not a happy question right but a question that

039we've probably probably all experienced at one time or another what happens at the end of the project if something wasn't done quite right and now it needs faced sure well uh obviously uh there's a lot of coordination to prove there's an issue you know sometimes it's bringing in a third party expert you know if you're dealing with something with glass or you're dealing with something um you know flooring issue or you know there's some experts that need to come in there obviously uh sometimes you know we'll support the owner to prove our case if you will obviously our designers saying it's an issue but we need to you know if we're going to get into some potential litigation have a very rock solid approach you know we would hopefully um within um coordination outside of

040leading eagle we would come to a resolution there that everybody is on the same page with those issues nobody wins as it gets into a very litigious scenario we do in-house have construction claims experts we call it the dark side of this business again whether it's schedule issues quality issues you know material issues time-related impact issues you know we dissected all of that and been able to a lot a lot of the times uh it's helping illustrate the issue uh so that everybody can understand it is how you begin to solve those issues you hope to catch them all early but there is some things that you know don't come out until that very end a lot of power can you even give me a specific example of where you've got to the end of

041a project discover something's wrong and how you resolve that issue again well right so there was um you know the glass in the drag comedy project uh their um architect noticed late uh you know in punch list that it wasn't meeting the specs um certain elements of it you know we had some different collaborative meetings virtually and that everybody is on site mature you know some of the glasses removed and tested and the manufacturer decided to replace it so that replacement you know is ongoing so there's other parts of that glass that are still being discussed but there's a resolution there that obviously anything that gets to that point there's uh some impact you know we got people not working out of a product you know a building that needs some class replays but uh

042in the end the owners can get you know what was uh deserved it sounds like the the owner was kept hold in that in that situation the issue was determined to be with the the oem of the glass of the other windows exactly right and then with all projects you know from the executive level for my support i'm always a phone call away obviously orderly would be as well there's nothing that we do um going vote on our own that does not have input from everybody we're talking to tonight you know we would stay lockstep with with this team at all times we could represent this team obviously without you know everybody being present but we would uh you know be truly objective you know in your support is there somebody at the kind of

043such a recent project is there somebody at the county that you would be able to refer to we wanted to just sure definitely uh there's quite a few uh but jerry morgan uh is the time manager uh he won't give you his contact information he may also be a so are there any good questions that that we haven't asked that we should have i guess i guess one question i had would be what what's the team's expectation on timeline how quickly are you trying to reach some type of milestone or do you need is that step one to kind of figure that question about it i guess i'm not sure that we've there's a consensus but my my thought is that we have zero room for screw up and and so whatever it takes to

044come together in consensus and then to execute effectively and then deliver that's what we need to do so i don't know i i can only speak for myself i don't have it i mean it needs to happen sooner than later but you're not saying that needs to be done by you know that's great that's very helpful but again i'm one one of five okay and so this process in this process will identify the path we're looking to take and how long it'll take us to get there right and there may be multiple paths there may be a short term there may be right where you would have called it phase two and three maybe we've got several paths that we're taking simultaneously so we'll map that out and it's getting back to the jog up

045project how long did that take in terms of construction design from the from the beginning planning to completion i want to say about three years paper take but uh you know there's obviously uh design you know with public procurement process things don't move as quick as they do in the private sector in the private sector we do a lot of fast tracking if you will we're not even done with design but let's get like the foundation work out on the street get people moving dirt as quickly as possible with public procurement you know there's probably some different steps and time it takes especially from a legal perspective to get people on board and contractually set they think moves things a little bit slower than the private sector but we would obviously move things as fast

046as this team wants to move yeah rob these we obviously operate with some limitations because of the school year and then we're looking at all the opportunities off days summer weekends that sort of thing and depending on the scope you know some of it is there's some autobots thinking we can do about maybe uh with procurement issues with the procurement for electrical items and mechanical items are very far maybe we would grade out different scopes so that we can get things moving in terms of the manufacturing side of the different pieces you know if it allows us to you know get things moving a little bit right there's some low-hanging fruit and of course you it has to fit through the schedule but you take the low hanging fruit and get going yeah having stuff

047on hand i'm sure everybody's heard about it but it's hard to get materials last minute you know you just have to avoid rework and do it right the first time these days um and and planning has never been more critical so um you know the other question i would have you know there's part of it is the the timing side of how quickly you guys want to move i guess is there any backlog of just very critical work items even a small scope that needs to be right off the bat something we need to look at and bring a team on address so i i can well you may recognize the both of us has been on the billings and grounds so uh mr arlessik who's our our head of maintenance did provide a list

048of things and and there are some things on the list that you know need to be resolved in the next you know 18 months or so and then some things that were longer out i don't know there are concerns i don't know that there's anything that that necessarily keeps him up at night but there are many things that that need to be done he said there was not anything absolutely that's good yeah i mean i guess i guess from my perspective right we'd have to rank those things right and figure out is it best to approach some of those or start fresh or whatever like i think that's the whole reason why we're having these conversations is to figure out like what is our next step is it gonna be something to the tune of

049phase two is it new construction is it repair and new construction what is it what does this look like um you know we have about three minutes left gonna be respectful of the timeline just the support we were great at kind of positioning the prioritization of those and then getting some things moving and getting that actionable so some decisions to be made and some things moving that you know there's a low risk that you know someday you know we may be replacing this yet again in a few years want to have those missteps any other final questions yes thank you thank you so much yeah it would just uh end with you know uh we're very excited uh for the potential here we'd love to uh serve everyone uh in this room and all of

050the stakeholders of her side so if there's any questions we'll get you jerry's information we were available to answer this thank you thank you all right thank you um as you're not shadowing anybody ready to start it's nice to see you again i thank you for inviting me to come back and make another presentation i'd just like to give you a paper copy of what is getting presented to see and so you have [Music] i appreciate the opportunity to come back and speak with riverside local school district and be able to review and ascend some of the challenges that face the district and also to be able to see about how to work towards finding solutions for them you know i'm aware that there are layered complications and i am sensitive to that reality and

051it's something that i actually have had to deal with in previous projects before so you know i put together this presentation in order to be able to just walk through and provide you with a little high level of view and then you know provide some detail about process but just as an overview uh thorough management it's an independent consultancy um managing directors we partner especially with educational institutions and non-profit organizations um leora is actually shortened and cleveland ohio real asset management and as far as members of our team there's a hundred years worth of combined commercial and institutional experience in terms of building projects construction management so we do have the team the thing that i've been holding since coming from a previous review was this idea about this 2021 strategic plan the four areas

052of focus teaching and learning fiscal sensibility you know climate wellness advocacy partnerships engagement this is something that i think is a hugely important thing to reflect on because building projects that you undertake are going to impact all areas of the strategic plan and in that there is some embedded danger uh for the district and i think it's critical that as you look at getting an owner's representative you find an owner's representative who will be prepared to be on one hand an advocate for the district and somebody that operates as uh an extension of the district but something in that he was prepared to listen carefully to evaluate thoughtfully you know who's going to be in the process of strategizing in order to be able to find the most cost effective way and the best way

053to get impact from the district to my mind an honors representative really should be that somebody is advocating for a district and because the district is essentially granted taxpayer dollars you know it's there's a fiduciary responsibility to care for those carefully and at the same time to be able to demonstrate that there's sensitivity about how dollars should be spent in a time where we have high inflation and people are sensitive to the fact that their budgets are finite it's really important that projects get handled and done well so i put here you know heading on this particular slide and it is a bit within the industry something of a buzzword but i think it's important to step back from that and ask like what is it that would be accomplished through that process of collaboration

054and it's going to be a process of seeking input and shaping engagement with the larger community part of that visioning process can be done with the architect construction team but it's really important to get a clear sense of what it is that the community is wanting what community wants to see happen and then how that aligns with budgets and there may not be a ready way to identify them first you know one of the tools that i shared in the prior meeting was um i could use a matrix format you know that we do in order to be able to assess and create data points around what what the key priorities need to be for the community and fourth district based off of the input from people and then on the basis of that you're

055able to identify numerically some and get some clarity and some insight into sometimes very complicated very challenging issues i'm sharing with you as an example work that was done recently the shaker height city school district had a similar kind of a situation that they come through a multi-year process where they have been wrestling with whether to build a new middle school they ultimately did not end maybe a determination to build a middle school but they did decide to have 30 million dollars worth of bond let me spend and then in the midst of that process they had a elementary school that caught fire uh fermi elementary and that ended up being about a 15 million dollar uh project for the reconstruction of the building so we served as honors representative for shaker heights schools in

056that about 45 million dollars was spent um but in the second ranks in particular there was some real sensitivity about the spending that was taking place because [Music] 96 of the tax base in shaker heights is on residential homeowners and of every dollar that comes in taxes 72 cents of those dollars goes straight to the schools so for people in the community they love the schools but they also feel you know that things have to be done and managed well because the impact is so direct so from my perspective as as an owner's representative providing independent third-party analysis it's it's critical it underlies what we do you're advocating for the district you're advocating for community but every bit is important when you're ensuring accountability for the taxpayer and by providing somebody who's able to advocate

057and look at things with a different set of eyes it makes a difference in terms of the outcomes one of the things that was really important about what happened firmly is that we were able to actually go through a process of community vision getting some sense about what the community wanted there was because of the amount of damage that was done at the time there was a question about whether you compute the building or whether the bulldozer was not so much to fire the damage but it was 400 000 gallons of water that got poured over the top and it just made it a disaster but coming through that process of having community meetings and in a sense taking the temperature of the community and getting some sense about what the community wanted we were

058able to get to a place where we could have a clear vision and say okay we're going to keep the historic exterior we're going to renovate the building on the inside we're going to put on an addition so it became a very complicated process but i shared this particular slide because i think it's beautiful and one of the things that it shows is all the children who have come together and on the ib that actually signed their names you know as we were doing the construction process with schools so it became part of the community process of visioning and looking towards what would emerge in the midst of this crisis you can see from these kinds of images of the scale of the construction was substantial you know looking it up taking it down to

059the bare walls you see the process here the process beginning to rebuild and putting on new addition some of the elements of construction there are interesting opportunities that are presented when you have uh construction projects and when i think about what you're facing here whether it's a question of you know building something new whether it's permanent amendment to your existing buildings and updating them there are some very interesting for instance intentional design choices and one of the things that we decided to do a confirmation of our instance was to install linear diffusers it seems like a small thing but they end up updating spaces providing greater comfort and they also have an impact so you see sort of a before classroom that was a traditional classroom from 100 years ago and here's an updated classroom

060with linear diffusers led lighting you know it has updated controls it's a very warm and pleasant modern space but it's not cool in the way that some of the modern spaces already get built today that was an intentional thing but it was something that we were able to work towards by taking time getting the communities input and then working with the architect and the construction team one of the details that i just pointed out here this seems like a small thing to a lot of people but i think it makes a difference in terms of all your life is just taking the time to look the materials you're using so as an example you know looking at things like noise reduction coefficients it's not very fun to talk about this kind of stuff but you

061know like these particular ceiling tiles that we identified you know they have a sound absorption if if zero is no sound absorption and one this absorbs everything these demand is so it's really very good in terms of sound dampening so we could create a space that would end up having you know less ambient noise it was easier for the teachers something like this is a small thing it's invisible to most people but taking the time to do this kind of research it's important because it makes a difference in terms of people's lived experiences one of the one of the things that we end up encountering events in this project that was a nightmare was that the insured the reinsurer decided to be very difficult about certain elements of reimbursement we had a whole team from

062their insurance worked with us for the first four months roughly of the process uh signing off on everything and after four months they said yeah we're going to commit 12 million to this project and they ended up ultimately firing their own people and replacing them with a couple of consultants who they brought in and they wanted to revisit every decision and i have this picture here in part because one of the things i wanted to dispute was the idea of spending three hundred thousand dollars on a sprinkler system for an elementary school that caught fire i just thought that was outrageous you know and perverse but those are the things we sometimes have to deal with dealing with insurance claims and it's a complication especially in this case if you're dealing with older infrastructure figuring

063out how you're going to integrate things into that this particular image you see just shows you know elements of the wind being built elevator that was being put in the tower that's there and this integration of old and new obviously this is what shaker heights decided they wanted they wanted to have this kind of building because it serves as an anchor for the community it's not to say that every community would make the same set of decisions but i think it's important to understand what it is that constituency that lives in a place what they want and hear that and then to see how you can work towards supporting them you know there are issues that emerge you know like here are some new fire doors that were installed and really they i thought they

064looked great from a distance but you know you found once they've already been installed it was a very small flaw but this was disastrous because this particular little line that you see on the side of the door basically didn't cause the thing to fail in the end of the fire and it would not have aligned with fire code thankfully you know we caught this and we were able to then have the doors replaced before we ever even finished the contract but that was grace of the fact that when you're doing construction you're on site you're walking the grounds you're looking at everything consistently you're tracking your monitoring and you're keeping records about that and so that when things emerge you can get them called out very quickly a process of planning and sequencing that i

065think is hugely important for projects and i don't i don't think it matters greatly while you're talking about new construction or we're talking about integrating new construction elements with an older building this process of planning and sequencing that we went through of asking the members of our contracting team to actually make their commitments for what they could do how they would perform they actually touch in this case sticky notes and this isn't this isn't a you know a fancy system this is very simple but it's vital you know the people themselves would like what they would do when and what way we created a sequence inside the construction trailer so that we could actually see visually what everything was and everybody understood how everybody else was going to be held accountable and it also gave

066us the opportunity to see more globally what it is that was being laid out and in advance begin that process of figuring out where we needed to make adjustments to avoid the potential for conflicts between trades where you know one project had to get completed before another one see some other things here in terms of just brick matching and some of the historic architecture but then the process of building back with updated systems you know and trying to improve things and sense more insulation you know other buildings didn't always have that but we were able to do this and put in new infrastructure in terms of i.t putting in new infrastructure and getting something that would end up serving the district hopefully for another hundred years much like previously then you see a few images

067of classrooms above the left just kind of an empty space with construction materials and you see what things began to look like in other spaces from the other panels on the upper left there is a combination library and neighbor space lower left is the major space on the upper left is the library space it's a you know a very modern kind of a space but it also is on the scale in this case that i think serves their children in this in this school very well because you're talking about grades k through four so you know any any building project i think has to take into account who's engaging with it whether it's teachers whether it's children you know and how they can use the spaces um and so this was something that we wrestled

068with we also sought to get really high quality finishes and by working and planning things out longer term even though this happened much of the construction was happening even during the midst of coded we were able to get the results that we wanted so you can see on the upper right for instance the sill and the trim work you know that kind of detail that we were able to bring out on behalf of the district and then this shows you some images of the final you know previously there'd been no lunchroom or community room space it was something that we were able to install as part of the process you see updated the classroom and a couple of views of the exterior of the building maintaining on one hand the architectural integrity and at the

069same time being able to offer something that was updated and moving more in the direction of you know what i think some would consider a 21st century you know learning space thankfully fedway was able to be finished on time on budget you know there was improved community connectivity as a result of it people really gathered around us and they were excited about it we even used it as an opportunity to connect with the community by bringing in in some cases you know setting up a promotion of street parties you know having um pizza vendors and other food trucks that would come where people could come and see elements of the construction taking place and have a chance to participate on another level and for we've also offered at certain moments guided tours of the construction

070zones and that was something that i also think helps people because when we can visualize them and see them where they can walk through a space and envision what's happening just much more powerful a big plus from my mind is that we were also able to use this to spur some economic development in the area it impacted real estate values and the speed in which the properties were turning firmly became desirable but beyond that and i think in more importantly really the trade ties with contracting firms were able to be leveraged on behalf of student engagement so that we could get students opportunities to learn and connect with trade contractors and so that they could have other options moving forward um you know i think it ended up being a good project and an example

071of something that i reflect on when i think about where riverside is because there's an opportunity for you to take the best of the old and potentially or connect and bring something new to the forefront and it's a situation where you know we would love the opportunity to be able to work with riverside local school district and i think the background and the experience that we've had whether it's on this project or working collaboratively with other educational institutions or non-profits i think reminds us well to potentially be able to be of service to you but ultimately you have to make this decision for what kind of support you feel is going to put you in the best position and that's effectively the end of this make myself presentation to answer questions and see what i

072might be able to clarify um i have a question so um can you tell me how many people on your stamp and what expertises they bring to the table for the projects that like whatever they may be we're a small firm and so there are essentially three key members of our team um robert baker iii frederick esprit iii and myself as managing director so it's a small company having said that we have a network of independent consultants that we also utilize and leverage and we need to bring in additional expertise or scale it's one of the things that allows us to be able to maintain a lower overall cost structure and to be able to provide more value to our clients because we don't carry in high overhead and you don't have a lot of

073additional expense but there's among this team you know frederick iii has an extensive background in terms of construction design and management and brings that together on these projects you know commercial construction understanding the process that things move through and he has a history also of quite a very detailed and very very strong reports that are very useful and that's both on the inside of residential construction and on the side of commercial construction probably the third was directly involved with a project that i was not part of but it was a 220 million dollar project which was the south franklin circle construction for johnson you know it's a multi-phase project involving a combination of residential living spaces commercial facilities at a scale that goes beyond anything that most people encountered so i would say that yeah

074we offer something that's a little different than some companies and that we're um on one hand it's a sort of small but mighty but we also have the ability to be flexible and that's something that um you know we pride ourselves in not being able to um in a sense have the meter running on behalf of our clients because again in that spirit of need to advocate on behalf of taxpayers we're trying two questions this was a 45 million dollar project and what was your charge so my the charge over that period of time would come out to approximately i'd say about 230 000 um and i would have to double check the figure but i think that's pretty close i was the direct project manager on firmware construction so 15 million dollars worth of

075that process you remain 30 million dollars i was involved with that i served in the same capacity in the district i didn't have the same necessary set of responsibilities because the scale of it was such that we were doing um foundation where we were doing whole faces of buildings in terms of masonry so you would you know get the project set up it would be a long-running project you would you know manage the contractors but we had also something that we had done which i think was a good decision on the part of the district the district made a decision ultimately to have a construction manager at risk come in and that was something that i think actually protected the district because it helped to ensure the deliverables and make sure that those deliverables were

076they knew what they were getting up front they could know the cost another timeline and all the parties all the subcontractors coming through the construction manager risk for all scope review you know typically let me interject this next question how do you vet your contractors and subcontractors so a process of scope reviews so in this particular case the construction manager at risk that was realized building construction i participated in those of your reviews for proposals you get a brand of proposals but there's no guarantee that what actually is proposed actually aligns with what you need and equally you oftentimes find when you start feeling the layers of the onion of the proposal but what they're telling you about either their capacity or their ability or what they can do it may reflect reality but sometimes

077it doesn't and sometimes you know they've got too many projects where they don't have the ability to tell you that we're going to commit this to the project those subcontractors as you're going through that 100 point scope review you begin to get real clarity on where they match up or they're falling short you also get an opportunity to align those different proposals so that you can see where they come in equally because of subcontractors as part of that work with the construction manager at risk they also revival effectively liquidated damages in the event of non-performance there is an embedded commitment on the part of all the parties to pull together and to work together to make sure that the project gets done so that that was a game changer i think and let me let

078me dovetail so i actually lived in shaker for quite a number of years and i know the community has very high expectations in everything they do how are you able to bring all those parties together and come up with a a plan that worked because they you know they're they're you know a lot of doctors a lot of attorneys a lot of uh you know university professors and things like that there's just it's a it's a very high expectation community is what i would describe i absolutely would agree with you it is a very high expectation community and it's one of the things that i think makes it both a wonderful place to work but also makes it a challenge because you have lots and lots of people to in some cases legitimately being themselves

079experts in other cases you have people who feel that they're experts subject matter experts and so you have to find a way to to listen so one of the things we did do very early in this process was to go through a sense what i would call a listening campaign you know holding meetings at local library holding meetings in the various elementary schools um inviting people to the community center to come and hear a presentation and also provide their input and we would go through a process of putting up you know whiteboards and distribute what was most important to them and they would go through this process we would ask for their input and then go back and take the data that was gathered and we could use that as a way to determine a

080path forward it's what made it possible for us to realize okay there isn't cohesiveness around the idea of this new middle school uh but there was a desire to make sure to protect the underlying infrastructure of the building so that's 30 million dollars in what we spend on stuff that's for most people largely invisible you know waterproofing foundations windows it's just not fairly exciting but that clarity that emerged from those meetings was really helpful and then we also leveraged input from uh you know the parent-teacher organizations within the community and we also were getting input then from the shaker and teachers association so you know having the input of these different groups and then going beyond that and having conversations with people that were working within your district so that we could get a sense

081about what it was that people for instance on the janitorial staff custodial team they needed or you know what the teachers and people were working with building what their experiences were where those shortfalls were and so once we had a better understanding about those things it made it much easier to say okay these are the things that we might work on because that's where the rubber meets the road and so for you know teachers a large portion of this money ended up being spent at worldwide elementary school basically trying to address water infiltration you know my kids were there okay it's uh yeah it's again it's not exciting stuff to most people but i think it's really important because that's where people's lived experiences and so when teachers are seeing that they've got um you

082know moisture you know that's appearing inexplicably in the corner of their room or you know when we're aware that things begin to shift in terms of foundations or the risk that's caused and when you're having repeated water infiltration it meant that we could go and begin the process of addressing those things so have another question so this is likely to be a cyclical environment where we have high activity and then on them and so how given you're relatively small how do you think you can do you think you can handle such an ebb and flow of the work cycle that's an excellent question and i would and i appreciate you asking it because i think it's an important thing for everybody to understand again we are we are small and i just want to be

083transparent about that but you know when we make a commitment to a project we need a commitment to ensure that that project is managed well i know the experience of our clients is good because otherwise we don't survive like that's just fundamentally how that works and that's that's that's a tribute it's a market element i would tell you that typically what we will do is we will have one primary client who have a secondary client of a much smaller scale something else that we're working on at the same time so it's not as if it's just one project the scale of the projects also are different you know sometimes we have clients who have a tremendous amount of need you know for a period of time so like as an example i think in your

084case you know if you've got uh 13 weeks of summer right like this is the key time but they're going to be other windows of time where you may need a handful of 20 or and that's not something that's unfamiliar you know that's part of the cycle of what we manage and something that we've done consistently for our clients so if if it turned out that the scale and the scope of what is being envisioned on the part of riverside was substantially marketed then my answer to you in terms of how this would get done is that i don't think as a mayor's representative we necessarily have to manage every single aspect of this project the scale of the information is that large i would actually make the suggestion of hiring construction management firm that

085will actually do the work for for you and has embedded it in that certain services that they've been provided with no extra costs so there's no reason for the district you know in terms of the firm one of those things could be leveraged through a construction management company especially if you're doing one of those instruction management risks that's that's part of what we're able to get when you did the middle school that that's kind of it's kind of the scenario we might be in right how did you work around the classrooms and the school year and things like that in order to get the 30 million dollars invested in the school and still have a school function as a school at the same time so to be clear the district made the decision not to

086pursue the rebuilding experience right so they were called internal improvements correct internal improvements but not just in middle school it was across multiple countries so we had that without any buildings but the the underlying issue that i think you're asking about really is that that key issue is swing space you know how do you accommodate your students and how do you ensure that that environment is warm safe and dry and it you know provides a conducive learning environment for the teachers to operate and so that was something that we ended up having to deal with with firmware we actually had to find a way to get that student population relocated across three different buildings in history to be able to continue because one of the things we discovered was the cost for that swing space

087we started talking about bringing in you know what i'll just call trailers in a sense but you know they're classrooms they're they're modular construction units that are brought in um and and some of them are probably beautiful they're impressive in terms of what they're able to engineer today but the cost for those before was was high and we knew that they were too high for us to be able to articulate that we would take that step and go back to the taxpayers and say this is what we were doing so we found a way to repurpose spaces inside of other existing buildings that we had we use that to house the students i would just note that at this moment in time those modular you know spaces that i'm talking about i think we've used

088the swing space as a possum and has gone up substantially and it's something that dependent upon the scale of the construction that was made in your vision you know it could be a phase two of phase three but um that would be a detail that would be considered very careful because it's one place where you could find you know costs running and you know if your sequencing isn't right and if you don't have the construction team function the way they need to you don't have their way of ensuring that everybody gets back in the classroom you need to and that your your billing on that ends by contrast cleveland heights university heights when they went through the process of doing their rebounding of their high school and their middle schools and then working their way

089down to elementary schools they were about to build quite a substantial structure that you were running to work on for further correct it's firmly correct yes but not the other projects correct no that's incorrect i was brought in to work on the other projects as well the difference is that on these other projects i was working collaboratively with the construction management team and our subcontractors and so we got those projects going just different scope different scope and then when they were trying to determine what they were doing with the dollars that they had available and firmware obviously being destroyed by fire right so it wasn't something that they had determined we should do something with our schools we've got a school to burn we have to do something with that right so that kind of

090decision was already made in some respect um like who led those meetings like who who was driving the visioning meetings for the district so the finishing meetings were driven by a couple of different parties so the district has a communications director so the communications director was part of that we had some community members who also were part of the process we also had members of the what we're just going to turn more generally sort of like community people who are committed to this who want to get involved and want to run and so you know coming through that process of vision you know i worked with them in that but i wasn't necessarily the person who was directing me something that i had done previously for other organizations and so i feel comfortable you know

091doing that and drawing out the information being able to create data off of it but in case of this really what it was more about in the case of fern lending was sounding people for what it was their vision was as part of a larger issue trying to define a master plan for the district it was actually accelerated some elements of that and that master plan piece i think is important because if you can establish a master plan you know the general aggression you're going to begin working towards that even if it's implemented in the case of fernway the fire really did accelerate the only [Applause] there also are some tough equity issues because you know fernway is a school that's located in the corner of the city that i think most people described as

092being relatively affluent and you have school buildings in other parts of the city that are not necessarily as affluent and so there was some underlying sensitivity about what what disability would look like and how it would serve and we actually took it as an opportunity to create a building that we hoped would become a model for the larger district in terms of what we could do we could update the buildings we could provide air conditioning we provide comfortable warm spaces in terms of learning environments but without necessarily having to deconstruct everything for the people in the community and many of them are living in 100 year old homes and they see value in their homes and they see value in these buildings and so they want to have that protected so that process of visioning

093is something that i think the district is still going through they've come through a process now working with the city of shepherd heights and the libraries in order to see if they could find a way forward and actually called it you know go forward campaign and now they're in a place where i think the organizations come to the realization that they have some objectives and some things that are in alignment but some other things that are different so how that impacts the development shaker will be a distinctive so as the the owners wrote can you describe how you kept i don't know did you report to the superintendent to the board to a committee what did that interaction look like so the what the interaction looked like was said i was reporting directly to the

094chief operations officer jeff garcia's name and also director for buildings and grounds uh and then would regularly meet with stephen wilkins who at the time was the assistant uh superintendent and was meeting on a regular basis as well which time it was uh but in terms of that sort of communication process and working with that team my most direct involvement on a daily and year daily basis officer and then i'd say probably twice a week maybe with the assistant superintendent and maybe once a week with the superintendent you know trying to be respectful of people's time and not bring issues forward that didn't need to be dealt with how is the public kept apprised of the forward motion in the board as well but did you did somebody give an update during their board meetings

095did you participate in that or was it was it through the superintendent i did participate in that and so we would provide at every board meeting we basically provide an update in terms of the construction processes and what was taking place and we would take turns and do it collaboratively in some cases it would be an instruction manager team somebody's in the construction management team general manager you know we'll be making a presentation or it might be in some cases um jeff doesn't chief operations officer for shaker in some cases in some cases but you would work collaboratively and with and then figure out you know how best to present things the way it didn't become confusing you know if you want to provide consistent updates you want to be transparent about what's taking place

096so people understand the process of living through but just transparently not everybody is equally prepared or good to deal with the nuances of insurance negotiations or what it means when you're trying to find a contractor to that reporting was taking place consistently um so you know much like the board meetings you would have um be reported and be made available it would also provide reports within the community so going out to the library holding special meetings sending out messages via social media platforms let people know hey we're having a sounding session we're gonna ask you to come if you're available to come and be part of this process and to share information to hear what the community was feeling about what we were seeing and to begin we have to any others think we're good

097well i um just shared one last little detail and then this was something that i ended up dealing with as we were going through the process of you know it looks fine um uh actually uh this is definitely high school yeah this is so this is on the south face of shape rights high school but yeah we ended up replacing the wall which is but when you take a closer look at some of the details on it what you end up seeing is that the contractor would perform the work didn't use you know galvanized materials for instance as you see there on the left you know and the discussions were important those are very small matters but rust will expand and destroy that newcomer and equally image we see on the right is an example

098of the way that the stairs have been put together this compactor you know i think essentially sent out their 15th and you know this was something that we ended up calling to their attention and having them come and basically rip everything out and try and do it you know and that was a form of warranty you can bring that forward and i think it's important because again to a community where 72 cents of every dollar is going straight to the schools if schools don't do this kind of management then these projects become grossly more expensive now that concrete thing if you're looking at it again it may not look quite a lot but because it actually ties into the foundation it was going to be a lot of water to infiltrate and so you would

099not only have your degradation of retaining wall over time through the top but you also have the degradation of that point of contact between those concrete stairs and the substructure of the building water's the end you've got to find a way to keep the water out and so you know this was one of those things that how exactly do you assign a value and to having to capture these things and not having the district have to spend the money i mean that project in a sense is a 30 000 project you know it's the cost of the district if you had to go back five or ten years from now and rip all that out and then address the damage that you have in the foundational building um so to get a contractor to come

100back did that require legal action or yeah so the beautiful thing is that you build the relationships with their contractors working with them consistently and so they not only understand that it sounds strange but they also understand something about your heart the fact there's something there that resonates i think you know the toughest contract on some level you know they're aware that they have a responsibility beyond just the job in this case when we show them the conditions they recognize and acknowledge the fact that properly thank you just to keep everything on time it's seven o'clock so appreciate it thank you i appreciate your time [Music] sorry tired [Music] uh [Music] it's like taylor now [Music] and we'll do that um all right we'll call the regular reading to order my opinion here can we

101stand for the pledge allegiance of the united states of america and to the republic for which it changed one nation [Music] indivisible with liberty and justice for all welcome on behalf of the board i'd like to welcome all students staff parents and interested community members tonight's board of education meetings i'd like to remind everyone that this is a meeting of the board of education held in public for the purpose of conducting the school district's business and is not to be considered a public community meeting there is time for public comment during the meeting and the public participation public participation section on the agenda our first item on the agenda is an executive session so um a motion to adjourn to executive session at 7 05 pm to discuss matters of personnel appointment and or appointments

102a second um what is the executive session because i may have to excuse myself when we get over there [Music] so we're just going to move over for a second and then we'll be right back thank you everybody um we'll move right on to approval a minute so we have a motion to approve minutes as attached for the july 28 2022 board minutes we already did in there i think all right any discussion i did the correct error on the minutes that mr heck dropped my attention that standing by the wrong person getting the policy up the other last meeting trying to tweet those deliver hardin hi laurie aye motion carried any special reports no special reports tonight [Applause] all right any discussion of old business do i think you need to visit the board

103handle correct any discussion on what was passed out for the board handled okay we initially said we would talk about it do you want to discuss it on uh policy better um we do need to reschedule facilities but i don't know how how we want to address the um owner representatives um any discussion there that we should have here at the table so we know how we want to proceed forward so um we can't really schedule facilities yet so we'll have to wait for that all right any other old business that we don't want to address right now we're a different part of the home all right any new business all right so that brings us to the board of education committee and liaison reports um i will provide an update on the superintendent's business

104advisory um right now they are working on putting a meeting together so there has been there has not been a meeting yet but there will be soon i have been told all right that brings us to curriculum and programming committee and alumni association um mr fishel will write an update so they're at the beginning of the school year and another round of curriculum and um so there are some new classes that are being implemented other ones that are being prepared that's just a general scope on the on the alumni association there is a golf outing september 24th everybody and anybody is invited and it's at this country club at 12 30 100 per person of course 400. for foursome the mission barbecue is going to be catering it and you can say from experience they

105have really good food and um so uh and it's a fundraiser for both riverside and harvey it's a joint effort and then also in october there's a duck race that's another fundraiser for both harvey and riverside a joint effort and so that that date will follow i don't know if you can give any updates on the new classes just to kind of promote some of the new things we brought yeah i mean there's um when we have a meeting jen you can you know chime in if you want it was kind of generic um there was no eighth grade class that we were that we were putting in place right yeah and some of that was almost a construction right uh opportunity different things like that and so and there but there's also a couple

106things that are being worked on they're not completed yet and um i believe that um curriculum director malacca sent out an email to that effect you know and it's not quite completed yet so when it's completed maybe next month and give a full update okay thank you great that brings us to buildings and grounds and operations committee mr hack okay so we had a meeting on august 9th i have unfortunately forgotten my minutes so i have a few things that i recall but i'll be reliant on thank you that is that is terrific so kind of kind of a summary is that the the uh the maintenance crew with the summer health really did a terrific job of getting the the buildings ready i i have not obviously been to the campus i've been by

107um parkside i haven't been by the other schools but but if they're indicative of the other schools we're we're good to go the the uh maintenance has done a great job of shining the floors and different things you know painting and the floors in um buckeye were were ground and then resealed and and uh so they're good to go hopefully for a very long time a lot of work was done at melridge um on the gym floor that is done did i have one thing please rejecting so the grinding and refinishing is the terrazzo floor is not tile so just everyone knows right rich yeah okay so that's almost like they're saying it's a lifetime thing uh so hopefully it's a lifetime thing well it's a lifetime thing uh the norwich floor uh in the

108gym the tile was taken up and it's it's now uh basically uh they round the concrete and they sealed it the same with the the john r cafeteria work was done in the in the uh rhs kitchen um so so basically we were able to through through the leadership of mr lessig uh able to do a lot to get us ready for the school year which obviously started today so that is a feather in everybody's cap who helped make that happen of which a lot of people were involved um we do many of you may remember that we have a failed boiler overheads at the move we had an original schedule there were issues getting some parts so that is delayed but but i had a brief conversation with mr arlessic this morning and he

109assured me that it would be online before it got cold so i've said that publicly now you know everybody knows so uh so but but that is obviously aware of it and we are working diligently to make sure that happens and then one of the other things that i would point out that is uh uh has not happened in a while is that we did sign the snow removal contract what's unique about that is with the same company we had last year so that's that's good hopefully things are looking up with regard to snow removal mrs crossy did i miss anything that you would uh no i was at melbourne yesterday unfortunately we did not have kindergarten orientation in the gym so i couldn't see the gym floor but i did see the floor as

110a puppet because they're so i know i just thought my transportation department to the other day and the floors and everything was really good over there also and everybody seemed happy as we were driving bus again so as far as legislative goals i i don't think much is going to happen until they blame that session after election november so there might be some movement on various bills but uh i don't think that much is going to happen between them policy committee and booster organization liaison mrs hardin yep so we had a policy committee last meeting last week it was um really very quick because we went over the handbook and i think we were all right i'm just pretty much in agreement with what osba had created for us so um you know they wonder

111if there's any other changes that need to be made things like that um but i suppose because i think everyone was pretty much feeling pretty good about what we read on there as far as booster um the biggest thing is that we do have the new riverside campus pta they are up to 61 members i know it's a good start they so interest is a special thank you to we've got um four people that stepped up to be board members for them marcy feather mary kuzina michelle eveling and dan solomon so a big thank you to those four people that are taking this on because they said they've had seven meetings since april trying to get this charter going because it's a lot of work to get a new pta off the ground just there's

112one other position to um they have listed on here that's the president vice president treasurer and secretary in their minutes and then the pta has a advisor from our school to the other pta to the main pta group just saying amy's already stepped up and volunteered for this month john kalin the rpthere is that return about no well i don't know national pt because it's a to take that position too so there's some time commitment and she was a volunteer yeah they're doing a lot of great work so they're still looking for more members um but the meetings are going to be the first monday of every month for the rest of the year the exception of september will be the second of the month but you know they said they're really excited to get

113started hopefully make some good do some good things because i can't it's been a really long time that's it thank you alright that brings us to the superintendent's report over the last couple weeks as everyone knows that today was first day of school for grades one through twelve uh tomorrow we'll be providing breakfast for all staff meetings on the behalf of the board of education uh yes campus today i did see a lot of uh i know board members were in different buildings today i saw a couple of board members that were standing outside at arrival at the campus and i was pleasantly surprised that although there's a lot of drivers uh today um considering it was the first day uh the parking lot was clear by 7 22. um you know so in the

114next couple weeks as always it will settle down these are our enrollment update as you can see we have 4 183 students kindergarten did increase to 246 um june of 2022 a couple months back we had 4 256 students just applied so we're down 73 students from june until today but if you look at first day last year we're actually up 33 students so we're pretty steady we have pre-school kindergarten we'll start on august 29th which is a monday uh students went through orientation and screenings uh all this week and we also had a new teacher orientation bus tour we had this years ago and it kind of fell by the wayside i think the last time we actually when someone actually got sick so um i don't think that's the reason why we stopped

115it but anyway we started it up again and and one of the people that were coming to our district to know about our districts it's large 65 64 square miles but we wanted them to know where some of the other buildings were to be honest with you when i started here wasn't when i was an assistant principal at the high school i didn't know where some of the elementaries were until about a year just because this is being opened so we thought it would be a good idea to get an acclimated to the other buildings in our district as well no one got score we also had our teacher of opening day we held in our field house to welcome back all our teachers typically we have it in the auditorium as you can see

116some um other frames here that we had some training going on in alice training which is a next slide anyway so ellis training is alert lock down and swarm counter and evacuate last time we had a formal training analysis i believe was in 2018 we had these discussions with our uh these students with our teachers our teachers are very good about talking to the kids about what to do when there's potential incidents of school threats we wanted to say thank you to the sheriff's department and also the presenters the very heartstring lieutenant clary harvester and also detective corey garco gave a presentations and uh each because each training was three to four hours so he was he was trying to go through a lot of information a lot of material with um with our our

117teachers and our other staff as well today while visiting schools um and walking by i was listening to some of the conversations as i was passing through and popping my head in some of the classrooms and so some of the classrooms they were on that part of what to do we don't want to we don't want to scare kids but we want them to be prepared and know what to do in case uh there's none there so we're really good about that today also we have a safety grant that we received earlier this month governor dewine announced nearly 47 million in funding for 1183 schools we initially applied for it we didn't get it and then all of a sudden there's some money we were able to get some money for the school schools in

118our district that we applied for that grant one is buckeye maurice la booth and riverside campus as you can see it's not either of the two newer abilities because we do build some safety protocols in those buildings on august 9th of this past month we had an architectural firm come in and look at what they can do about some of the entranceways and also you're going to notice that i'm on the agenda today there's going to be a resolute two resolutions in terms of safety one is um to have a small um entrance wave um checking uh area box uh for our our deputy um and also we're gonna going to um ask the board uh for a formal commitment to put sros in each of our abilities i've been having discussion of deputies in

119each of our lives i've had discussions with the department and uh also really been looking for personnel and i thought well obviously if we're doing something a little bit different than we have in the past i need to get approval from the board so i have it on the agenda and i spoke to um captain izzo today they've been having trouble trying to find people but they have found at least one right now and possibly a second one and if uh if it's approved by the board today i may have an sro in one of our elementary schools by monday a deputy or an sro sro for those people that are here and sros go through training school resource training these uh typically you have someone that's been in law enforcement for a while who

120some of them are retired but still want to be involved and they are just we call the deputy at the door they are certified to the state the peace officer and that's why sometimes it's a little difficult to find people because they want to find the right person you may have a very good law enforcement or you know cop but we might want to make sure that it's also somebody who's really good with kids you know and visitors coming into the building um and um they find them and then we interview them as well and hopefully like i said if you get this thing approved we can get somebody in one of our elements i believe we can do it by scholars were identified and are the college board recently released the scores of these

121individuals and we had staff going throughout our district putting signs in front of the yard congratulating them in our special way for the second year in a row um we've done the signs and we've had 50 students that remained ap scholars which was tied for the most in school history mrs gerbauf is the person in that picture and she's one of our new assistant principals also had a community kindness day back on august 4th this is not in chronological order i just wanted to keep all the overwhelming stuff together but we wanted to also say special thanks to our side students which are students initiative for developing excellence they put together our good bags and went throughout the district and trying to get back to those people who are very good to our district and

122support our district community it's kind of like random acts of kindness in our strategic plan update we did meet on august 11th with all of our leadership teams every director and and uh administrator were there to um learn more about how that plan was developed and what we can do about moving forward trying to brainstorm about um getting our changing plan together or actually playing people together and um starting to build this this partnership with some of the people that aren't necessarily related directly to the schools people that are out in the community um and uh trying to push this district forward is what all stakeholders are are needed in order to do this so if there's anyone out there that might be interested in some of the areas that are listed on the right

123side of the screen all you have to do is call the central office and you can see what they can do about getting people and teams that they're excited about that brings us to treasures report and committee update so finance and audit and personnel committee update mrs grousey sure we had a meeting on august 18th at 8 a.m we talked about a number of personnel positions that are available in the district and we talked again about the job fair that we had had back on july 19th which was the first one and um which was very successful and out of that job fair we've hired um eight eight new hires across areas of interest in the district so that's fairly successful for a first attempt at a job here i would consider that a success

124and so we're uh we'll be considering doing that again um we have 24 i don't know if there's more than that now 24 new teachers and tutors at new teacher orientation on august 16th which was really great when we talked about finance we talked about the audit which is starting i know that's exciting news for everybody but that will be happening soon we have i'm not going to i'm not going to steal mr plaque's thunder um about some of the other things that we talked about our audit but we also talked about owner's rep interviews in which we had those individuals here today and that we would sign hopefully have contracts that if we approve somebody today and bring those that we were trying to contract together for september we talked about those safety grants

125which we have two hundred thousand dollars um available for fours for the school buildings in our district that was applied for last year we didn't get it but then it already opened up and some of you were awarded that money um kind of at the last minute it was kind of a surprise you opened the email and there was riverside's name on i don't know if you found out about it any differently but i just found out you're just on a list you open up the list [Music] i know i was sort of surprised with that yeah for august so um there's that but then there's a second round of those funds because each building is theoretically allowed to a hundred thousand dollars so they'll be applying for the second half of those dollars i

126don't know when that is due and i don't know what we have to do to get that but like we'll see pretty soon um and then the other thing that i know that we have on the agenda is we have to um select a delegate to the osba uh convention in november i don't know who's attending at this table so we'll have that on the agenda that we'll have to address we also did talk about the um the security booth that we're going to be putting outside that is on the agenda we talked about that as part of finance and how much that would cost we've talked about some designing and architectural reviews in place going on right now for vestibules of our other elementary schools and potentially at le mouth so those conversations are

127being had and you know information that comes back from architectures or architectural firms and whatever and designers just to see what that might cost us and what we can do and then we also covered the security officers at the other elementary schools what that would cost the district and the really great thing about that is that they were the employees of the district because they're not they're not sheriff's department sro staff they would be district staff so they would be dedicated to our facilities and so that was you know that's that's one of the concerns that the community has is safety at the other of the other school buildings and so that's being addressed by putting this on the agenda so and i'm sure that you will be putting that as an advisor forecast that's

128all i have thank you update from the treasurer all right just to touch on that safety grant one more time you know we did we applied for the hundred thousand per building uh the state award 50 000 for building using federal funding which is how they how they funded that originally they had five million dollars set aside for safety grants and they received about i don't know many applications of many applications so we awarded the first five million using state funds and in this kind of surprise award they use 47 million dollars of federal funds that the state has through the american rescue plan to fund these grants and there's about 53 million dollars left to apply for so we will apply for the additional 50 000 per building and we plan on using those

129problems for secure vestibules and at the schools that are eligible for example we were not eligible because they're the ofcc projects over the last five years so we can apply for any funds for those schools uh i'm attending the webinar i attended the webinar last week on the the amount we were awarded 3 000 for building i had to take another one next week about the additional funds available and those applications are due by october 3rd and multi-layered they'll turn on fairly quickly can you clarify what it means by each building 15 how many buildings uh four buildings so it's buckeye in all ridge blue and campus so one of the things that frustrates me about the grant was you could apply for 100 so anybody who applied for less than 50 got the full

130amount but if you apply for more than 50 you're capped at 50. and now the rate opening helps the schools it did not take the time to have the safety of itself be done and go through the work of defining the first time now have a chance to apply and give some of those funds as well so you know i wish they would have supported the original applied for the districts they put all their work into but we regardless we're going to go through and apply it in and hopefully receive those funds and even if we don't we'll use our permanent improvement quantity of projects because we feel very important so can i ask you a question on that because and you may not have the answer for this right now but those are federal

131funds so they have to follow federal contract guidelines so we'll have to go through all that public bid process and we have to do federal wage you know like prevailing wage and all that is it just apply to the 50 000 or the 100 000 and then the rest of the contract doesn't have to apply there isn't the whole contract that's something that you might want to ask during those webinars because yeah it depends on how you use the fonts and how you structure your contract so that would that would be an interesting separate contractors you could you know say the project was 200 000 but you only have 100 if you had two different contractors different contracts technically you have all the procurement guidelines and one just follow the state process right so it

132would be interesting so there's just some special rules that you have to follow that probably will make those projects cost a little bit more as a result but that's just the strings you have to go yeah we're um also dr kayla's mentioned the security booth uh on the approval tonight we may make some adjustments to it make it a little bit bigger so the cost might increase but we'll move forward assuming the board approves if there's an additional cost we'll just move forward and not delay delay that process in the mission with the resolution on the agenda for the additional officers in elementary schools we may call a special meeting before the next meeting to try to employ some of these individuals one candidate is through the sheriff's office which is an easy thing to

133do with the sheriff's office on a regular basis but another potential candidate that they're meeting with next week is currently played somewhere else so you know little thumbs you never resigned in the position until you record approve that another and wait until september 22nd and then that person getting noticed october by time and also with all the hiring going on there's still additional positions that are vacant so it'd be nice to if you're able to fill those positions before the next meeting so you might have a short special meeting some morning sunday week or two lastly with the osba capital conference delegate alternates on the agenda tonight so far i've already heard from florida gracie that are attending i'm sure he also interested in attending would be to approve that delicate alternative for that meeting

134which occurs in columbus on november 14th which is monday to 2 30 p.m yeah i'm probably going to attend also [Music] sure i think just to keep in mind with the new policy that we've um we put out there about making sure that we represent the entire board's kind of opinion whatever comes through so whatever the delegate is i think we have to provide the materials yeah the expectation would be to make sure we have that conversation would you guys agree we had the court approved in october before the meeting but that the changes at the meeting you do 2 30 on monday anybody else want to do it um i may be out of town and i'm not hundred percent sure right now so i'll be firm okay melinda i know you're is received

135the otter state award for our last state audit as of june 30th of 2021. it was announced by the press release in april this year by governor state but never gave us the physical award had to go to the website finance and i dropped it off i think it was last week so now it's the seventh consecutive year that we've gotten our state award and now the next fiscal year is over and we're starting that audit process all over again and all those positive questions i was going to say it but i didn't want to say that i don't want to take it away from you that's that's a real accomplishment for the district just to get that award for seven years in a row um you know it's it's surprising what what fiscal responsibility

136they take that into a lot of consideration when they when the auditors come in here and they look at things and they look at absolutely everything and you don't get that award for for just doing a nice job so that's all right that brings us to public participation anyone wishing to address the board of education will be recognized by the board president speakers are requested to identify themselves and their topic and comments are limited to three minutes [Music] i can go over here anyone with public comment yes sir okay so i'm chris hanson i'm with the district i still have a son in high school now some of you may already know me i know some of the teachers here i recognize um so last month i was watching the video of the board meeting

137and i saw the issue on seo and i had some deep concerns as a parent with a child still in the school district i didn't know much about this so i started performing some research on my own digging into some of this and it's i'll tell you what it's frankly scary to me because as we all know right now there's a lot going on in this country and we're probably we're kind of in a battle for the soul of america i feel like um it's this globalist agenda versus our national america and our constitution and to me this this seo is part of this global agenda i've i've researched it i've researched the organization castle and who's who's funding it and who founded it and a lot of them are globalists going from the ross

138childs to the rockefellers to soros bill gates you go through the whole plan and it's the same players in the global agenda it almost seems like agenda 21 to me which is now agenda 2030 and pushing this on our children i heard someone ask in that board meeting last month are the teachers trained in psychology to handle kids are they taking on the role of the parents are they trained in psychology to be this this could be a form of manipulation so that they're it's they start to accept everything in regard to gender race it looks like crt and gender issues can be introduced into the seo into this um you know into this system it seems like it's set up for crt and gender identity to come into them and that the kids are

139their minds are going to be accepting of this they can be manipulated it doesn't seem like maybe maybe my values as a christian first and an american second maybe my values don't agree with your values that you should be pushing on our children i have an issue with that so i'm very concerned about it about this role playing and other stuff that i read about does anybody here know about be the change organization it's a non-profit 501c4 anybody know about that they're on oakland california are are you guys gathering their literature where is the literature coming from for this program thank you any other public participation please my name is paul robertson i live in concord i've lived in there for 22 years i've served on the meadow schools business advisory council after 10 years

140my education that i have a master's in biological engineering neuroscience a minor in psychology stressing child early child development this comment is regarding your selection for the contracting firm for your building projects um i ran a employee baptist practice for 47 years you've consulted with mentor schools west young schools and workplace schools our value proposition was that we were a local company and i never met anybody from cleo or clero or nd5 or knew anything about them before today but oftentimes we were competing with national firms our value proposition was we were local so we were more concerned about the local result um if you look at the presentation that was done the working session md5s charges are about 19 percent of the contract claro was about 6 percent so all lc uh all out

141sql and i don't have the ability to evaluate uh how they would do the job but if you go through your process and all else is equal then i think you should give strong consideration to working with a local company they have a much greater vested interest in success because they depend upon their reputation to keep working in this area and that was just my experience working in a similar fashion as a consultant thank you sure any other public participation yes sir john music painful township yes i i agree with the gentleman up here about sel i am against sel and crt it should not be taught in our schools our children come to schools get educated on math science reading writing and so forth not sel or crt and like i've mentioned before look

142where we rank in the world in education we spend more money than any other industrial country industrialized country but last time i looked this way 17th in the world i talked to us ics who gives the visas and now you wonder why all these people are coming from other countries is because they are better educated and they think about that's our fault because the people have not spoken up and that's what i'm here last month's meeting i want to thank mr hack mr official for speaking up i agree with what they said the two greatest documents ever written for our bible and our serious people keep saying democracy remember the pledge and to the republic for which it stands in our constitution there's seven articles and 27 independents nowhere is it mentioned democracy read article

1434 section 4 and it talks about republics and the thing about and if you look about democracy look with democracies that there's many countries with various levels they call the democracies i don't think there's very many people that want to live there in my opinion democracy can become a mob rule and the thing about it is again i want to thank mr official mr hack for speaking up i agree with both you gentlemen for what you said and the thing was us as you know i have a member of the family still going here at riverside and i'm speaking up for our children our kids are here to get educated not indoctrinated and just mr hack mentioned books and i brought a couple books in and think about this and i've read them american marxism

144battle for the american mind i see a lot of the ideas that they're experiencing here in this book and as we say our elected officials should do do what you said you would do so i'm asking you your number one priority is to educate our students not indoctrinated but i want our kids to become more competitive and i in my opinion is hey let the parent take their kids and take their money with them it'll make schools competition always makes things better and i i'm all for that you know my time is almost up again i thank you for allowing me to give you give my opinion today thank you thank you any other public comment yes sir hi i'm chris salon from painful township i was here for my first board meeting ever in

145the last last month with my daughter i was here to support her when she was talking about her experiences in the school as a recent fred and how she was hoping to try to help herself become a safer place for everybody because she certainly experienced things like racism and bigotry very intensely over the time here um so this is my first experience and when i sat in here and i saw us talking about the communist manifesto and marxism i was shocked i mean it's i don't know why we're talking about that kind of stuff in a school board meeting we are supposed to be talking about how to educate people how to educate our kids and it's interesting that we're already talking about the social emotional learning um what was weird about that to me

146is again we were talking so much about things around conspiracy theories and boogeyman and there was a comment from the board that talked about um social emotional learning might be okay now but we're gonna debate and switch and then we're gonna turn everybody together i mean that that's just fear-mongering so i i didn't understand how that got into the conversation i didn't understand how we talked about chromebooks and computers shouldn't be with our kids our kids shouldn't have them because we could have a situation where someone's evaluation if a kid is evaluated in the third grader and he's not going to get a job when he's 25 or something like that because of something written in a chromebook i mean taking away our the technology from children that will help them learn because of that

147there needs to be controls and can bear concerns about that but to say no we're not going to do chromebooks or or give kids technology because of the boogeyman isn't this great um and then finally last 60 seconds um it was just so interesting the most bizarre moment was besides the feminist transphobic thing that happened for a while last month besides that we were talk aboard the board was talking about what is so bad about our our education system right now is that academia is an echo chamber that there isn't enough conservative voices in academia and that person was talking about inclusion and equity and diversity in that world right and that's exactly what we want to hear equity divergent diversity and inclusion in this building in this school district and but what we're talking

148about here is communism but when you talk about forgive more conservative voices in academia it's eliminating the echo change thank you any other public comments yes yeah um you know once again on the issue of the sel and all that i'm opposed to it um you know the school's job here is to teach the children teach them the curriculum it's not to indoctrinate them or to change the political views that's that's the job of the parents at home and uh so again reiterating what some of these other people have said that's what i want the school board to focus on is the curriculum teaching the children the actual class uh whether it's physics chemistry world history keep it to that okay and let us parents do the job of you know educating our children and

149matters of the other stuff okay um i also wanted to um mr lessig wasn't here last month uh hope you had a great time at your daughter's wedding by the way i just wanted to once again thank his entire crew and him for all the effort that he's put forth across the entire school board uh mr fishel and i spent many hours in the school in a number of the buildings over the course of summer i always saw people from his crew working really hard and i think that the result speaks for itself once again mr less awesome job i think he should be employee of the month if not the quarter and along with that last month i talked about donating fans for the school to put into some of the classrooms um some

150some of you may not be aware there are several classrooms at john r in the general side of the building that have multiple fans ironically also the boardroom behind me has has several fans and they they're very effective particularly on days like today and first couple weeks of school in the last couple weeks of school so i have two fans that myself and some other parents have raised some money for uh mr lessick said to turn him over to him and we'll i'll be doing that with you by monday mr arvlasic and i sure would appreciate that they could be installed and any other teachers that feel that they have a need that you need for something like that i'm trying to marshal the efforts of parents and some of the community to provide those

151things at no cost to the school so thank you for your time thank you any other public yes sir dennis king leroy township concerning curriculum yeah the sel stuff is really something you should be involved in reading writing arithmetic you know kid gets out of here you know kids have innate qualities either have it or they don't i'm sure you're well aware of that the important thing is can they read and they do basic math because when they get out of school they have to participate in society and you can't force anybody to like anybody else you have to stand on your own we're guaranteed life we're guaranteed liberty and the pursuit of happiness we're not guaranteed happiness we have to find that for ourselves and these kids need to understand that you can't force

152anybody to like anybody else but you can teach them to be polite and that's all there needs to be just teach them to be polite to each other that's all i have to say thank you thank you any other public comment yes sir my name is jamie field i'm 17 years teacher at riverside i'm a i'm a community member i'm a taxpayer i'm just like all of you and one of the things that i'm going to say in regard to seo and any of you would like to talk to me about what we're doing i teach third grade and i'm going to tell you yes we teach reading writing and arithmetic not every kid is coming with a parent who's doing the things you're saying you're already doing my students can't demonstrate understanding if they're

153coming from a home where they don't know i don't know if they got whooped that one or if they got beat the way i use social emotional learning in my class is to make sure my students feel heard cared for safe and respected that is what i teach my kids every i've been doing that long before critic this critical race theory social emotional learning all these other buzzword bingo garbage comes up that is what we're doing we are trying to provide an environment where students can succeed they are not going to succeed if they don't feel safe if they don't feel we care about them and they don't understand that everything we do is for them and to keep them going your your concerns are valid i understand there are examples going around of things

154that shouldn't happen there are always people who are well intentioned but do it horribly and that goes on both sides i don't care what side of the political spectrum you're on i can find holes in all of it we are talking about kids we are not talking about indoctrinating i have not indoctrinated one damn child my entire life but my kids who leave know for darn sure that i care about them and that's why they graduate and they still come see me as much as you love your kids we do too and we are not going to do a darn thing to hurt them and that includes indoctrinating i'm so sick of that word some of you use it so often i don't even know if you know what it means please understand if that

155was happening i wouldn't let it happen to my kid and i wouldn't do it to my students and if it was happening in my building i would say something there are teachers of every affiliation political all of it the entire spectrum in our school buildings i am blessed to be friends with some of the people who i argue with most your concerns are valid they should be heard but you need to know that we're not doing that that is not happening here and there's no gateway it's not coming i'll be dead before it shows up because it will not happen in my room thank you i have to tell you something mike manila from twinsburg i'm not from this area but i'm related with my good buddy or chris hanson's cousin and uh i could

156tell you this about scl and all that there's a lot of information you guys need to check on you can go on and get some bad parts about what he's talking about there's a lot of negatives about this and a lot of people think it's a back door to crt now i don't know all the facts on it but i don't like what it's doing and i don't like what i'm hearing about it i have four kids and i have five grandkids i raised all my four kids they're all professionals very good they didn't have crt or sel growing up i taught him what they needed to know the teacher taught him math social studies history okay that's what i expect teach him that i'll teach him the life lessons i'm a father very successful

157man my kids are all successful and my grandkids are babies and i don't want them into this i want them to live a normal life and be free thinking and independent and that's how i feel so i encourage all of you to do some studying on this seo uh because you can sugarcoat it all you want and you guys can clap for each other i'm going to tell you something don't do it study it and open your eyes don't let them sell you bill of goods that's all i got to say thank you any other public comment yes hi my name is zorko my two children go here i've been involved in their i guess every grade since kindergarten as much as i could i have seen kids come to school hungry i've seen kids

158come to school crying i've had kids tell me their dads in jail when i'm trying to help them just learn sight words like when i hear you guys talking about social emotional learning you don't realize how kids are so emotional they are so just looking for attention and their teachers are just trying to meet them at their level in each grade as far as are you hungry today can you tell me something about your home life i mean when you're talking about indoctrinating a student i've been at some of these meetings and i just listened to the teachers saying we're not doing that over and over again i listen to the administration say we're not implementing crt and it's like you can say it so many times but you just don't listen you're just coming

159to these meetings over and over again to say i want you to look more into it they're literally telling you they're not doing it and for some reason you're not listening to them like it just blows my mind like these kids have gone through covedo no school where mask at school don't wear a mask at school you can't have your sporting event you can't go on a field trip you can't do this like they are struggling and if you think they're not emotional i don't know like what you're looking at you're not paying attention to your own kids because they are i i don't need i don't even know how to explain it in any other way but the kids have struggled for the last probably three years let them come to school and talk

160to their teachers let them come sit in class and say i had a good day today teacher do you know why or i want to talk about my life for one minute of the 50 minute class they're in or they have this class where they're talking about a an issue with politics where the kids are listening to one side at home and then they're thinking in their own mind because believe it or not your kids don't leave your house and suddenly become some mindless blob they have their own thoughts you're talking about high schoolers here you're talking about elementary school kids here there has to be some way to get it through your thick headed minds that the teachers are not indoctrinating your children they're only at school for 180 days of the year they're

161with your family the rest of the time you are imposing your values on your kids the teachers are not indoctrinating them i just cannot wrap my mind around why people come to meetings and keep saying this over and over again and if you think your kids are being indoctrinated you're not paying attention like there's no other way to say it thank you any other public comment yes amanda i like mr field here live here with school here teach here got kids in the district i'm gonna be honest man when i uh when i signed up to be a teacher i woke up one day and i said man what can i do to indoctrinate kids and get rich this seems like the way to go and you know over the last couple of board meetings

162we've heard a lot about hey this is happening social emotional learning's happening communist manifesto is happening um if you don't agree with me you're a feminist if you don't agree with me you're a marxist and i'm just kind of curious if anybody's got any receipts any anybody got anything that that would indicate that like i can actually prove for example that you know the seo program that you're using here the one that's shaker not the one in twinsburg not the one in los angeles county or in chicago the one that you're using here is actually teaching double worship in the occult i'd love to see that receipt if anybody okay to come to my classroom and find the communist manifesto on my my shelf i welcome them to come on in or anybody else's classroom

163and the idea that one would simply look at someone they don't agree with and call names smacks of uh i think that was like cold war mccarthyism but i would be curious to see some receipts um no one's ever come to my classroom and seen what i teach nobody's seen me show animal farm in my class no one's seen any of the notes that i give and and and they're free for consumption they're on my google classroom give mr uh platco mr kayla's a call i can see any of it and that would put to bed any fears that you might have over names that might get called from people that disagree it's a pretty simple thing mr field's absolutely correct he and i are some of the best of friends that i've had we

164sit on the opposing ends of the political spectrum i can be a teacher i can be my politics can stay at home but they do there was an argument in my class last year as to whether or not ozinga was a conservative or a liberal which is kind of hilarious i'd love to i'd love to see the receipts if somebody can show them to me otherwise i'm going to keep asking because some accusations have been made and i got nothing to show for thank you can i respond to what he just said since he's asking for a receipt because i have an actual example at this point thank you any additional public comment after the meeting we can have a conversation it needs additional public comment what's the purpose then any additional public comment all

165right so we'll move on to the consent agenda part of our agenda tonight um the first thing on our consent agenda is financing we have a motion to approve the items listed on the finance and audit consent agenda is recommended by the treasurer items a through l times second a second thank you um mr flacco you put in the item c just to confirm through all the same things uh all right that brings us to personnel um so i'm going to make a motion to add an agenda item jay to the personnel agenda i'll second him um can we keep everything that's separate yes he's making the motion to amend the agenda thank you very much thank you mrs rossi i think oh sorry jennifer harding aye right i just want to make sure that

166i am consistent uh we have a motion to approve the items listed on the personal consent agenda as recommended by the superintendent items a through h second thank you is there any discussion on those items j on our agenda which is not printed uh the approval for jacqueline ferris is a tutor at mall origin elementary effective 8 25 22 paid at 25 11 per hour all right that brings us to buildings and grounds all right we have two parts to that as well so motions will approve the items listed on billings and grounds items a and b as recommended by the superintendents there a second second thank you very much any any discussion motion carried right so resolution to approve the owner's representative uh discussion uh as part of the consent agenda uh is there

167a second i'll send it okay so no doubt will be some discussion here all right so maybe i'll just do a little background real quick um we put out a request for qualifications uh several days back in july 20th for owner's representative firms we had four firms that submitted a statement of qualifications uh one withdrew so we interviewed three firms directly after the billions of grounds meeting earlier this month uh narrowed down to two firms that we interviewed during tonight's work session before the regular meeting um our advice code doesn't really spot a specific process for hiring an owner's representative we'll be essentially following what we would do for an architect which is putting out a statement putting out as the you know custody statements and qualifications and then this resolution would rank those firms

168who we thought was the most qualified firm who's the second most qualified firm once the board decides what that most qualified firm is we would go to that firm to negotiate a contract that would be approved at a subsequent meeting if we're unable to come to contract terms for whatever reason that may be we should move to the second firm on the list and try to negotiate with with that firm so that that's kind of how we do with an architect we figured we'd follow that same process for owners representatives seem like the most fair way and having a process that makes sense so at this point basically we had those two firms presented this morning with this earlier this evening and we seem to have decided what that ranking is number one i was

169very impressed with the presentation and i was honestly very bothered by the fact that the second group sent in on the first on the presentation by nb5 i know it was kind of not the most professional i didn't like that so if we just want to go down the table i i would rank nv5 as the first choice for myself and the reason i would like to explain why i ranked them that way i believe they bring the expertise necessary to do costing estimating bringing the group together to figure out what the strategic focus is for the group i thought they were much stronger in that in their presentation materials and what they bring to the table as far as that goes and so when we went through the levy for phase two we had

170a lot of community interest let's just use that as a word a community interest on what the cost estimates were for the facilities and so having somebody on a team that has those abilities to be able to do that right off the bat and bring those to the table before you even hit an architect i think is extremely important for us the fact that they have nationwide nationwide reach i think for us right now is important i don't know that that would be maybe quite so important at some other juncture in this district but i think i think that firm gives us what we need right now at this point so i was on the same page and one reason is because of the visionary i think we do need that support as a board

171right now is helping us bring all of our different ideas together and making sure um that we do represent what the district wants and that was the one main piece in um cleora i think it's the way to say it um you know they said that we would still own that visionary piece of it it didn't sound like there was a lot of support there for it i do have a question though like can we put parameters on how far we want them to take us and then re-evaluate right i mean we're not we don't have to sign ourselves into like you help us create it and then you even manage this afterwards or help us afterwards right we can say i think that's just yeah i mean every time i think about this too

172it's kind of like we're looking at two different things looking at figuring out how we move forward is part one and then execution of part two and similar to what we kind of play we do a tda we have like a pre-bonded contract that hey it gets you to whatever point whether that's the letter or plan or whatever that might be it's at that point if we know what direction we're going just have a contract for that piece you can always change direction even even with the with the defined issue if the fine issue that passed we weren't locked into tva fairbair harvard did the same thing with their body issue passed they went out and they interviewed architects they all they stayed with the same firm but they could have made a change to

173do that so it could be a situation whatever firm we also contracted we could do a partial contract this helps throughout where we're going and have a separate contract forward so in regards to that the contract i think the i think it's a simple answer and i think the answer is you do an hourly rate at any time you can cut it off yeah i mean i guess my thing that i would say is that again i think they brought to the table that they can help us hone the vision of what we need to do and take all of our opinions right and try to get us there i think that gives us a chance to see how they work with us and how they work with the district um you know community and

174we can reevaluate i just think it's important not to get too far with them and if it doesn't work out then we're you know stuck so however we want to work out the contract i think yeah so what i'm one what i'm talking about is the contract i think you know how do you disengage if you want to go to another party in a simple hourly contract allows you to disengage if you do a block contract you're forced to pay that amount of money even if you're not satisfied so if you find out in three weeks and you signed a 150 150 000 contract uh you're kind of stuck and but if you're doing an hourly rate you find out for whatever the reason who knows what reasons it might be can always make the

175change so we have the flexibility and that's part of having an owner's representative because they're looking out for us so anyone that's working with us should be amenable to that i would think yeah mr heck sure so i think either vern could could uh could do the job what i liked about cleora is i is they're they're more boutique as how i would describe it they are so mb5 is i think because they're a large organization they are more skilled at being able to handle a from start to finish construction right that's the type of firm that i perceive them to be is very good at that what is the likely scenario is that is that we we will have the cycles as i was mentioning we're gonna have peak times then we're gonna have

176some walls and some peak and and i i see cleora is being better able to to handle that environment and because we would always be significant to them that we would have their attention i think that we will at times we may have trouble getting any box attention because of that cyclical nature of what likely is going to come before us i also think that that what we we can do if we need the cost estimating in other aspects that that priorities have in-house that we can go with you know best of best of breed as opposed to what what necessarily is in-house with with nv5 again i think both of them can do it i think that that frankly the other thing i would say i nobody else has this experience but i did

177spend 13 years live 13 years in shaker heights they are an extremely high expectation community and anybody who can uh get through the minefield of opposing views and and come out with a great product and that's that's really truly something significant in my opinion obviously you don't have that relevant you know they don't have that same background but that that that says a lot about helping get people to to a common vision and executing that vision and make it form so so anyway my my one would be gliora um but you know and mp5 in i'm sure that we can work with everybody as well so my opinion is uh nv5 is charging 580 000 for a 30 million dollar project and cleora is charging 230 000 for a 45 million project we're going to

178lose at that rate half a million dollars to this project for the to the owner's representative and i'm not so sure that we need to spend that money um when uh cleora has shown that they just did a major school project in shaker heights which i have a roofing business i do a lot of work in shaker heights and i'll agree with mr hack that you have a lot of demands and a lot of different thinking and a lot of professional people that all kind of think they know the best way and if you can manage that minefield you can manage anything and i think that was shown today that that was managed so uh nv5 being a publicly traded company i don't know if you thought that they said that uh typically you know

179on a chart a publicly traded company is going to take 15 right off the top for their shareholders another 10 goes to the corporate office okay so now what are you left with 75 and and so we're going to be paying for corporate profits when i think that we need to pay attention to people's tax money and spend that as wisely and as efficiently and as effectively as possible and i'll just digress for a moment and say that's why mr weiss and i mr weiss was kind enough to give him his time and he's still working on a report because it's that's a lot of information a lot of that and so that's part of the reason why we went through and inventory both riverside and john are all the rooms to see what we

180have okay so being intimately involved like when i heard leora was intimately involved from the very beginning i like that approach a little bit better what i heard from nb5 is that we would have poorly poorly as as our person but also added staff i heard that and i picked that up that's why i asked a question they would have added stamp to that which means additional cost on top of that when i asked a question the thing that concerned me is when i asked a question of how do you vet your contractors and subcontractors nb5 said two things we could have a pre-qualifier could means they're not normally doing that and number two they said they count on their relationships with their contractors i like the idea of leora being more intimately involved just

181like the example at the end was able to solve that problem and the contractor take out a lot of work and do it the right way because the focus was a little bit more finely tuned as compared to mb5 was talking about after the project was completed they now are still dealing with window issues and myself i don't want to have that problem after after the project is completed and this may not be an exact you know a good example but here we're dealing with problems after the project still because we have to pay what robert's roofing for 20 some hundred dollars to do rook repairs because the contractor is in indiana and you can't get them here and and so i'm looking at that more intimate relationship with the ability to deal with all

182different personalities and ideas i like the idea of involving the community i like the idea of involving the teachers and the staff to get all of their information because they have it and then compiling all that data and then having community meetings along the way i just think that cleoro would be a better option for that choice especially for a school district that's my opinion so again some of the things you talked about were the back end of this process and i think that's what i'm saying i think i'm looking at the front end how do we get started and clearer clearer pretty much said figuring out where to start was on us it's the district they said they don't do that so that's why i'm we're mp5 but limited to that first part i

183think and then let's look at that maybe that was something that wasn't taken in uh hurt exactly properly but i think we could say that about mp5 and some of their answers so i guess we've got to go the reason i'm saying that is i did have a conversation when i checked into that firmware project with mr freer which is why i introduced him to the riverside project i had a conversation with him about how the project had gone and he explained how important it was to do the upfront planning and get everything exactly in place before you even start because if you don't do that you have problems as you go so that was one of the things i had asked him specifically because i myself having been involved in some larger projects when

184you see a project manager or whomever it may be overseeing something they're not always finely detailed and as you go you find out you have problems how do you deal with those problems and you're chasing those problems rather than preventing them so what i would say is i had that conversation myself so that's the reward it's worth department i think i think he said that he had community volunteers running those strategic visions like i don't think i don't think this i don't think we would district yeah but no i i agree with that but i think what he said was that people that wanted to be involved could be involved i asked him specifically who ran those meetings right volunteers and i don't think we're saying that the community can't be i mean we had

185the community involved all along the way in the first part but my thing is is that we need them to help us right now with the spiritual initial vision and that's where he did not come off as strongly i know you're saying you had other conversations but that's not what he said here at the table i think we need that upfront help right now we're not going to get anywhere i'm just saying they bring that to the table that's why they were able to finish in budget well and we need to your point lori we need someone that can help us as a fortified get to a place where we are all comfortable with the direction this is going and we need someone who's going to be able to really guide us in that way

186not not and nothing against volunteers we all have spent years volunteering before being on the board years and years but the truth of it is if you want you need a professional to help guide us through this process so we can get the five of us on the same page so that we can decide where what this district is going to look like going forward and i think they have a process for that right based on what they have down down to a scientist yes and again i think we relook then after we get through this first part we understand where we're going let's then now we know what our plan is then go back and we can interview again possibly and see who's the best person to help us fix this yeah i'm just

187saying for the money for a half a million dollars that it would end up being if you take that to 45 and 30 and move it out it's a half a million dollars to the district an extra cost i'm against that so i just want to be on the record saying i'm a guest against spending the additional half a million dollars it's another half a million dollars first of all i think that's a figure that you have in your head which is fine i'm not against that i'm just saying the other thing is i think that they were holding a whole project that again we're not asking for that we're asking for the upfront piece that support and we'll see how we work with them we also didn't ask them how much they saved the

188project so you know sometimes that's worthwhile and we could spend more money if they are to help us find our vision we could be spending more money working through it with cleora so again i'm just going based on this first part in my mind that's what we have to accomplish first but we're not going to get anywhere we have to figure out what we're doing so i don't know time i don't get anything else to say here no i don't i i mean i i would rank url first and in the five second i believe that either we're good it will work but i do think we are would be better but it's it's it's they're both confident one of the one things i bring up too is that we are already being based on

189qualifications so if you know if one firm's ranked one and we go and talk about a contract where it looks like it comes in too expensive we go to the second firm on the list and try again so it's not necessarily locked even locking ourselves basically whoever is the first one to go to negotiate their contracts too expensive see there's the rub you don't know what you're getting so if you have if you have a specific number then you're already starting off on the wrong foot because you don't know what you're going to get for that you can't you there's no way to vet that you only know as you go through it so as you if if it were the case where it's not working out you've already lost money it's no different than

190hiring a superintendent and then letting them go and having to pay their full salary because you didn't vet them coming in and school districts have had that issue i think this school district had that issue and so if you start on the right foot you're likely to end on the right foot if you start out going we hope this works and we'll see what happens a third or halfway through i'm just saying that's asking for trouble in my life being a construction person for 46 years that's asking for trouble mr blackwell what would you need from us to go and have those conversations is there any i figured that once we uh what once the front of the rank approved we'll meet with whichever person that is talk about what the contract looks like and

191bring it to the village and grounds committee during september and he kind of vetted that way before he gets to a september meeting and it's not ready for them like work on these construction projects we don't even know what those are yet those would probably be separate contracts yeah it's it's my thought that we might have one vision like superintendent kayla said he'd like to put so part of that whole vision would be building enough classrooms over there to move the eighth grade if that's an option you know the other option is we had looked at i had looked at it earlier would be adding classrooms to john r and to riverside but that would keep the 8th grade here so we're going to talk about all these things and we're all going to come

192to an agreement on which way you want to go but you want to have big one big master plan you don't in my opinion don't want to have a partial plan and then go we'll figure it out later because you almost always knowing doing that you want to have one master plan i don't think like that's what i think also i believe we need to know from beginning to end what's important difference and where we're going to put the classroom to the kids right so if it's a wish list and we pull it off why not do it i mean but it's like that's all in the planning stage correct yeah okay again coming back to an hourly rate i think would be a better way to go with the ability to just disconnect at

193any time that's in our favor of block contracts is that something that could be feasible or is what are your what are your thoughts on something along those lines i don't know what what the pricing model is typically someone like that's going to make about 170 an hour just saying so i think if you can investigate that that would be so i think where we're at is based on on the the polling is that number one will be mp5 number two would be cleora and um so we have a i think we already have a second so so i think we're hoping on comments so we'll just call the ball please today i'm laurie minsky hi tom hank aye scott digital mary linda all right billy's ground just one end all right resolution to improve

194the roadside local school district board of education handbook item e is recommended by the policy committee uh is there a second second thank you very much is there any discussion on the board of education handbook i did bring the hard copies that you trusted corrected some typos there was two of the committees were missing in the information of these make sure that the hyperlinks to board policies and heart rise code actually went to yeah i think it's a nice it's a nice handbook i think we can refer to it you know we made some additions to it ourselves and i think that was nice and you know we can always add to it later and further if we decide and i think that's important remember it's a living document that as things change we can

195make additions or subtractions or adjustments to it okay can you call the roll please tom hank aye scott mitchell all right olivia hi jennifer hardin aye laurie aye motion carry so board of education update welcome back students and staff another rock and roll year of riverside i just wanted to mention something to just recall the lag of personnel we have also over at the transportation garage last couple of years they're doing really well we're short drivers just like any other district they're doing everything they can to try to combine routes and get kids to school on time and our mechanics did a great job getting the older buses ready for inspection we got it done a little bit earlier than we typically have and they've actually also wanted to thank the word for their commitment

196to allowing us to purchase newer buses as you know the replacement cycle for some of the older ones um but the problem still exists in terms of the personnel it's not like any other position if you hire someone saying would be a custodian or possibly some of the word food service obviously through a training period but the cdl it takes weeks to um to do you just can't hire someone and put them in that position it's very unique um but we are willing to do that if there are people out there that are interested in becoming drivers all they need to do is you know contact transportation i don't have the number off the top of my head and now that i'm saying this but if they call into the central office we'll transfer them

197over and we'll do what we can to get people trained you know how uh many we say this chuck where's your kind of shirt you know i have to give you an accurate work we're combining routes every day so are we three short or eight children we could we could use honestly to probably use a good 70. that's i mean that's exactly what someone in the community just saw me the other day i mean so yeah at any given day we're combining a route so when the community when their child gets home a little late it's because we have extended around probably by square miles so just trying to get kids off but it's just not unique to us it is a you know we're going to look at other options but even those other

198options they're going to tell us no we can't even provide for the the districts we're doing so i don't know you know someone may have to take medical leave you know then you have uh people taking time off i mean legitimate someone getting married you know just even those small pockets of absences and we understand obviously there's a life beyond work um it's just really it's getting harder and harder i mean fortunately i mean you know our director is driving every day i mean right now she is covering a morning route and an afternoon now so when someone calls into the office they also have that understanding she's not able to get back right away right now i mean she is literally driving and one of our new assistants over there that she just came

199on is literally driving two full routes am and pm so it's just that's the kind of thing it's just i told him i'd get the answer back when karen was over here for the football game i saw two of the drivers sitting on the bench riverside class of 82 for all of you out there who might be watching this we are getting together for a mini-class reunion at from 4 until 10 at red hot grill on saturday so come come join us this saturday this saturday i also just want to remind the community that we just passed at tonight's board meeting the authorization to allow the district to hire deputies at four elementary schools which i know the community's been asking for and if they didn't hear it at the meeting and they don't watch

200this or they don't read the board meds i just want to reiterate to the community that we have given the approval to do that so i hope the board understands how huge that is it's going to make a lot of people very happy yeah and we didn't get into how it's being paid more but i understand from mr platko that a lot of that will not have to come out of our coffers for the first couple of years at least is that correct use for our federal stimulus money yeah um for the first two years or something like that we're allowed to do that correct and i've already got prior approval pre-approval but we have to revise our application any other board updates right so our next meeting um we have a finance and audit

201and personnel committee meeting on september 15th 2022 at 8 am we have buildings and grounds committee meetings september 19 2022 at 7 30 a.m we have a business meeting september 22nd 2022 at 7 00 pm so i will make a motion to adjourn at 904 pm can i get a second ocean carey