001fishel here melinda gracie here here we stand for the pledge of and allegiance a republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all on behalf of the board i'd like to welcome all students staff parents and interested community members to tonight's board of education meeting i would 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 it is not to be considered a public community meeting these there is time for public comment during the meeting in the public participation section on the agenda [Music] first action is to approve minutes so we have a motion to approve the minutes as attached can i get second a second any discussion i was not here
002for that meeting so i will i'm going to go ahead and stay informed any other discussion all right mr placo can you call the role hi jennifer harding hey all right that brings us to special reports thank you mr speaker we do have a special report today um we have a young man from lamouth here who participated in the young marine program which was a program i just learned about this year and i thought it was a quite a an achievement for this young man to have gone through this program and so i invited them here to be recognized by our board and he also has a couple of program leaders here that are going to talk about the program so young marine private aiden coulter again is a 7th grader at lamuth middle school
003he enrolled in the greater lake county young marines based in mennon as a recruit in july 2021 graduating as a private in february 2022. private coulter joined the young marines program because he has an interest in enlisting in the military when he graduates from high school and wanted to get a taste of the military experience before he commenced that's the funding for you once in the military private culture hopes to focus on military police and eventually having a career in law enforcement in his spare time private culture enjoys outdoor activities and volunteering at the leroy vfw two other representatives from the greater lake county young marines are here with us tonight mr sickles and also mr cook at this time i would like to introduce mr sickles who will talk about the young marines program
004and if you can come up i know there's a lot of people here today you want to say anything no all right my name is phil sickles i'm with the greater lake county young marines i don't know if anybody's heard of them before but we've been around this is probably our 20th year we're getting ready to start so i i started the unit back in and what we do is we basically uh go over or teach kids leadership principles the leadership principles that we learned in the marine corps okay and what we're not is we're not a paramilitary group okay we don't teach combat skills we're not taking him out and shooting any guns or anything like that but we teach character building self-discipline leadership and teamwork those are our core principles and we work
005hard and we play hard okay we the discipline aspect has to be there if it's if it's there then we start working on the character building we we want these these young kids to be leaders and not followers we want them to make good decisions especially as a time in the times where they're going through junior high school high school and things like that so that's what we focus on we try to get we try to get some of the scare tactics out of there like the public speaking we teach them early how public speak so in our program in our unit alone i've had females going to the united nations and giving speeches to uh the women's delegates there so here they are you know learning public speaking and all of a sudden they're
006at us they're on stage and they've done really good um physical fitness we promote the physical fitness you know we want again we want them to build up their stamina be able to react in difficult situations and and things like that some of the things another thing that we're not we're not a scared straight program okay we want good kids we want to try to get them around other good kids and in doing that then they they develop that camaraderie with good kids working with good kids homework you know when uh kids are coming into the program and they're not doing so well in school guess what i have a whole group where i have select kids that are doing good in different areas and there they could work with them so a lot of
007positive things going on with the young men's program so what i'm gonna do i know i can't take up a lot of time here you guys look like you're ready to go but at least some brochures up here it has our website it has a little bit about what i talked about and if if you're interested look up our our website and kind of see what we do and you know hope to see some of the kids there on behalf of the board of education we want to present you with a certificate of recognition great job no more okay all right so that brings us to the discussion of old business i think we have a few topics on our list right um you want to start all right please so i'm going to pass
008up a hard copy of the resolution so every year the ohio school board association of which riverside school board is a member of they go out to the member uh school boards and ask if there's anything that that should be updated regarding the platform for that organization and how school boards association and and there are a number of things that that that platform drives one of which is it drives the agenda for those lobbyists that osba hires to go to the state house and and work with the legislatures in both the house and the senate so the open the time that they are looking to get feedback for the platform is is may 31st but we're a little ahead of this ahead of schedule and last month i presented just as a kind of a
009heads up to the other school board members a platform which focuses on improving parental or really transparency and parental rights and so the uh it is a resolution um and i won't read the whole thing because it's five pages but i'll try to catch the highlights so that we can everybody can understand but it says whereas the osba promotes and supports reforms to provide for a system of public schools that is accountable to the communities they serve and prepare students to be productive citizens in a competitive global society we're asked answering the call to action for osba whereas while the current osba legislative platform contains students and learning learning and learning school governance finance and personnel flanks there is no plan advocating for parental rights so what this is is i'm gonna i will i
010will read this there's two paragraphs and then uh so people can get a better sense of what this is about it's i'm on the third page if you're following along and it's parental rights the parental right to know all aspects of students in learning school governance finance and personnel is essential to a thorough and efficient system of public education as guaranteed by the ohio constitution and applicable laws parents are their children's first teachers and decision makers in education student learning is more likely to occur when there is an effective partnership between the school and parents greater parental involvement in the education of their children's generally results in higher academic achievement improve student behavior and reduce absenteeism by way of example the osba continues to provide state and federal parental right to no laws that continue
011to foster the principle set forth by the ohio state board of education in the parent and family involvement policy as approved january excuse me july 10 2007 and then there are there are 16 points that kind of draw out more detail but i will not uh read all 16 points to you but it's all about parental rights and transparency and then specifically what we are uh what this motion if its passes would do is uh is the following now they're and i'm on page five now uh now therefore be it further resolve that the board board president treasurer and superintendent shall jointly submit this resolution to the osba executive director osba legislative services director osba officers osba executive committee osba board of trustees and osba legislative platform committee members requesting that the requested parental right
012to know amendment be added to the osba legislative platform for immediate review and approval now therefore be it further resolved that the board president treasurer and superintendent shall generally submit this resolution to all local state and federal elected officials representing the territory of the board now therefore be it further resolved that the board's delegate to the 2022 delegate assembly shall actively support and advocate for the adoption of the parental right to no amendment set forth in this resolution and the last one no now further now therefore be it further resolved that this resolution shall be in full force in effect from and immediately upon its adoption by the board so i i know there's five pages i didn't cover all of it um hopefully we've had a time to go through and see if there
013are any questions but um i would make a motion to approve but the motion is actually later in the agenda so we'll change so we can just have discussion now okay and then we'll approach it at the end of the agenda okay okay terrific so i have some some commentary on this um first of all as you're reading on page five jointly submitted by the board president treasurer and superintendent of this district the superintendent and the treasurer of this district haven't weighed in on this nor has our staff nor any of our administration i have a problem with that we're bringing this and we are here to ask the osba to add something to their platform agenda that we have not asked anyone anyone whether or not they have any input on this at all
014i have an issue with that i have an issue with i'd like to know who wrote this resolution this is not coming from you specifically i'm quite certain because this was written by some law firm and i would like to know who's behind that and what political agenda they have in asking the osba to to have this agenda platform item be even presented to them to me is not transparent and i'm just making that as a statement so i would like to know who's behind this as an agenda okay so this was written by mcgowan and marklin which is a law firm that represents a number of school districts in ohio um and so that's that's why you can you can see that it was done professionally and certainly not by me um the the
015point of transparency is is not a partisan issue so i guess i'm a little confused as to what you are are pursuing are we are we about transparency or or are we not and and certainly from my perspective as a board member my goal has always been to make you know make riverside basically the best value in lake county and that is from an academic perspective from a financial perspective and trying to create the environment where we graduate students into our society that have respect for the country have knowledge have critical thinking and all the things that i do whether inside or outside the school are consistent with that and and so that that's your answer i i my opinion on this is that this is coming from some political agenda somewhere from some pac
016or something that's being promoting this as a there's legislation already you know in in front of the house and senate in ohio that is already addressing these items i don't feel that that's a transparent answer when i'm talking about transparency it's not about parental rights for me it's about like where this is coming from but it is about parental rights so what do you think of parental rights in knowledge tom i just don't think that this is i i believe we haven't even had we haven't even had respectful discussion with anyone in this district about so to to your point to your point everybody was copied on this the administrators were copied on this that was given at the it's been available for over a month there has been no feedback from from people i
017that they they read the emails so so i i guess i really am having a problem with you not embracing frankly transparency because what what what what potential hang up did you have that we have not discussed this with the interested parties in this district we have not had a work session to have conversation about this this is something that i believe that at the end of the day if we are going to ask the osba to come across with platform agenda items that this should be a unanimous unanimous decision between staff administration and board members and i don't think that we have that communication yet okay well mrs grassley i got to tell you i'm a little disappointed we've had this for a month you have not advocated for any of those things we
018have had that but the res nobody else has had they did i sent it out to the board of education distribution okay that absolutely has been out there for a month if you had been uncomfortable with this i wish you had had reached out to me and we could we could have had a better dialogue and certainly some of the things you just talked about could have been alleviated and i but what did i don't i don't recall that whatsoever so i mean obviously we can go back and look at the the video but but certainly i i did try to uh be transparent this has been out there for well over 30 days and and uh and when it comes down to to it i don't think that the transparency and parental rights is
019a is a partisan issue so i guess i'm i'm wondering what what do you have against parental rights and transparency i don't have anything against then we should not have any problems with this i guess i just have a couple questions too real quick so how were i guess how was that law form law firm introduced and then how did we come about this particular resolution because again i'm all for parental rights i mean i've been involved in the schools and involved as a parent and i sit on this board as a parent so i love parents rights i love when we get participation so i'm not against parental rights i guess i'm just as mrs grossly trying to understand how did the law firm get it and then how did it fall into our
020because we didn't have discussion or we didn't incorporate our attorney into any kind of discussion so i guess i'm just some of the same questions so so and good good questions so so what happens is typically when there is something that goes before the osba that would be for the the platform committee there there is a single set of language that that goes around and so i have met with people who are consistent with with you know the things that i just said earlier about what i'm trying to do there was engagement with mcgowan markling and they developed this this particular proposal so i talked to the osda today because i just wanted to make sure that i understood what's the next steps and how this all progresses so they said if we do adopt
021the resolution and we do send it through again it goes first of all to get approval to then be passed on to the um osba conference or as it has passed by 75 i guess what i want to make sure is that even in reading this one of my concerns that stood out is that again all for parent involvement i mean i'm sitting here again as a parent who's involved obviously i'm all for parent involvement but i guess my concern is is that there's got to be some parameters too for when the parent involvement is not um and maybe i'm not seeing that or how we protect the other people in the district when parent implement starts to hinder learning or stop us from accomplishing things that we want to do so that's where my
022concern is and i don't see it in here and some of the language is very all like it's very encompassing it's all of this all of that um completely and there's just a few pieces and then the other piece is a lot of this we're already doing right so a lot of it we're already doing like um notifying parents of communicating with parents i mean we get a ton of communications i see daily you know what i mean so a lot of it we're already doing some of it i think we're doing but it the wording just makes me nervous because it says all it's like all-encompassing so what happens if we communicate but every parent doesn't say they received it like i don't know that's how some of the language reads to me so
023i guess that's my concern okay so so although riverside is is doing some of the things that we're talking about this this would be again the the goal of the or the purpose of the platform for the ohio school board association is to be advocates down in the state house to pass legislation that is consistent with this so so in in the end this does not change our policies at all right so this this is strictly so so i guess i think in in this there is another layer of engagement right so say this gets through osba it gets through the the conference in november right and is approved then then then you go to engage the state house right and and and different concerns can be brought up and there's an opportunity for people
024to speak when those bills are being reviewed so so that i think there are several steps along the way that that could could potentially change this in what you're talking about in some of the issues you addressed but if we do not pass this then then it it calls into question whether or not the osba would actually pursue this as their in essence their marching orders and i guess we're i still i completely understand but i guess i'm concerned if we give that brother a view does it tie our hands in situations where we need to do something and we we see that today in laws that are passed right so sometimes our hands are tied when we're trying to accomplish discipline or um other things you know what i'm saying and again i guess
025what i'm asking is there any possibility that we could have discussed this as a board and had something put together okay about a parent called it you know what i'm saying so i guess i i i appreciate your comment but this has been out there for 30 days and and and i i guess if there was dissension i did not descend but if there were there are questions i certainly wish that they had been brought up prior prior to our board meeting to to have been addressed but luckily this is not due until the 31st so so let us let us move forward and have those discussions um and then we still have the opportunity to pass it before the deadline so we do have some time so is there a time are you guys
026anything any discussion or any i was just going to agree with what you said i mean i think this is paul as you as a parent right i've had kids in this district for 13 years now an involved parent this this is extremely broad and to your point if it was something that we wanted to do drafted with our own attorneys would be one thing but i i also have concerned about where this suddenly came from um i'm not comfortable with it one of my concerns is there's some things in here that makes sense but maybe this is what i what i think our concern is one of the items is ensure that all parents shall be notified of all instructional materials such as textbooks reading material videos digital materials websites apps using their children's
027curriculum you know how many books we have in our district i mean we can make them available if parents ask but to say it and we ensure that we're notifying them of every single piece of instructional material that's impractical it's just too broad i would i would also like to address the fact that there's current legislation again in front of the ohio state legislature that is already addressing this issue and it's extremely politically charged right now and i don't believe that this type of a platform agenda um lends itself to an objective opinion i think there's some politicalness to it that i don't feel that we should be taking that stand right now i think i'd rather let it play out in the legislature and if you have advocacy concerns that you'd like to address
028that you can go do that on your own as an individual but i don't believe that we should be charging in that area at this time well i and i i certainly agree that we need to approach this in a deliberate manner and i would advocate for us to have a working session on this i i guess whether you know transparency is a nonpartisan issue and if there are some issues within the pres within the platform that need to be tweaked i think we can do that but but we are in a politically charged environment i think there's just no two ways about it and we need to do we we represent the people many of whom are here tonight that that we need to take this and and try to make our environment as
029as transparent as possible and and that if that's a partisan issue then boy that's really quite a statement so at this point um i you were working i would like to move to a working session and you were talking about the possibility of trying to set the date yeah is everybody available for we're done ready so there's a couple options here we can let this go and not move to a working session and vote on it or we can um spend some time as a team and try to figure out if there's edits or changes to what's here that we would be comfortable with is everybody okay for a working session i'm on vacation starting the 14th of may and i won't be here at the meeting because i'm still on vacation and so i
030would appreciate it if we're going to have that conversation we're going to have a vote that we do that before i leave because i would like to vote on this so preferably i'd i'd just rather just vote on it this evening it makes sense to to create your own i think if there are some things that all of the board agrees on you might want to add it this is a suggestion to the osda we don't have to use this as a template we use some of it the ones that the board agrees on as a whole that's what i i would be willing to talk about it and see if there's tweaks to the language that we can make that were like the statement you read like i think it's important for people to
031have the opportunity to see our curriculum see our books do what they come in and look at them that's fine but i don't know i think those all statements are what can make me nervous and i agree the broadness of the entire thing is just right and certainly i you know if we need to modify it to move it forward and and get people comfortable that's i am certainly open to that so melinda you would like us that we'll have to have a special meeting if we want to vote on this before you leave out of town all right so what is what's everybody's time looks like right if we're talking about evenings i have one free evening until may 31st literally i would have to be in the morning unless the only thing i
032have is friday the 13th literally okay so i am available on friday the 13th [Music] i i am not well i'm happy to do mornings but i haven't i've got no evidence okay and i am flexible in the you know i could accommodate my schedule i am i am out of pockets um the 12th will be a challenge but i could even meet in the morning then yeah we have a finance meeting on the 11th and buildings and grounds on the 10th and curriculum and eyes right yes i got my calendar changed all right so so i could do the morning or the third i could do the morning of the 13th is anybody available in the morning oh so let me ask this i mean even even looking at next week and i'm i'm
033sorry that everybody has to listen to our scheduling here but um well we can certainly put an email together too and try to get a date if we have to because we need to have our administration there as well right so so the 13th is is a potential day is there any just so that we can accelerate the email chain is there any are there any out of bound days or unavailability the week of the day it worked out mornings yes on the week of what the 7th the 7th 2nd so i i do have great flexibility in the week of the second morning and evening so i can make second third or fourth work in the morning is there anybody who's in and again i apologize right but but is is is is anybody
034who's out on the weekend the second then we're getting special if that's the if we have some availability that overlaps then then maybe we can take the details to email to schedule the actual meeting i definitely could not do thursday morning neither can i can anyone do the second third or fourth i'm i'm good those days just official i will make myself available when it's good for everybody else i'm starting are you good either the second third or fourth any of those days so when we go to move so we have to make a motion to move the meeting or move that vote so we can just postpone it with an unknown date at this time yeah okay and we should do that when we come to that portion of the agenda or should we
035just do it right now this motion to postpone that to a future sure i make a motion to move the meeting and vote on the osba platform plan to a future meeting as determined by availability that's not gonna any discussion mr plato can you call the roll lord misty aye tom heck aye scott fischel aye melinda grassy hi stanford aye all right um i know you also had um in regards to policy 0175.2 we were asking some questions i don't know if those were answered we had passed that in a previous meeting i was just inquiring as to when we posted on our um probably the next policy reading no the next couple days and just send it through as a separate policy and so they're just basically the processing then once you head into
036the workbox site so it should be the next couple days okay we also have as old business um the board self-evaluation i just pulled a copy of a since we said we were going to commit to doing this and kind of stalled but as we come around to doing the um dr kayla says and doctor our mr platfo's uh evaluations would be a good time for us to confirm what do we want to take a look at over time to make sure we as a board are working effectively so i made a copy of um this board it's just a standard one for something for us to start begin our discussions about so i just brought it for review thank you and i figured we can set a working session when we start talking about
037evaluations and we can set and say do we want changes or do we want to um make any additions to it is everybody okay with that yeah no it makes sense all right and then we also want to talk one of the topics that keeps coming up is the arrangement of our board agenda and trying to put the committees um closer to the consent agenda the committee reports closer to the content agenda one of the one of the things that does is it puts the um public participation before we give any kind of reports from the committees that might sometimes answer the public's questions so we just wanted to toss that out to the board for discussion to say we want to make a change um still are we okay with um just open public
038discussion before we give those updates that might answer people's questions and just get thoughts on leave it the same or let's consider that change that makes sense all right i'm good either way i'm i'm neutral on that okay mrs grassley miss arden or mr fisher i'm neutral also i mean i think that if i mean let's be honest generally speaking we don't have so much public participation typically right but um in the times that we do and certainly in some of our bigger meetings in the past i think that it could be helpful to hear some of the things that to your point things do get answered later i don't i don't see any harm in it sure the fact that it forces people to stay longer they don't really want to um but again
039i would i'm finally going to get away it doesn't make that much of a difference to me i could go either way as far as these go okay so i mean if there's no real push for changing and i will leave it the same although mr christensen i mean is this something you feel strongly about no it was brought up multiple times during other conversations like it was one of those things i just want to make sure we finish our discussion on so it didn't continue to come up i think we had moved to the finance portion previously moved to finance committee to with the treasury update at the same time people generally overlap each other and we thought about moving the other committees to right with the consent agendas but that would put all
040the committee updates and discussion after public participation would sometimes would alleviate their questions from the public they might already they would have been answering updates now after that time instead of so it was just that i wanted to make sure we closed the loop on so it didn't keep resurfacing all right any other old business that i did not have marked down was there anything else um there was one thing that i saw in the other days and a question i've had a couple people ask me so i saw the sixth grade campus back on here which is so exciting to see if those kids get to do that again um a couple people have reached out to me that we've had a few of our grade levels that missed everything right through pilot and
041then if we were considering trying to add at any point trips for some of those grade levels that didn't get any of the things you know we've got grades that didn't get sixth grade camp well tracy right our kids no sixth grade camp no chicago trip no dc trucks like didn't get anything so i don't know if there's been any consideration about trying to add a trip and part of the reason why some of these larger trips you have to plan so far in advance and the cost was somewhat prohibited when we were still having some recovered issues because there was a question whether or not you have to do a room or a boardwalk that in itself makes a big difference in how much that trip would cost so a lot of those trips
042were cancelled um we were trying to hang on so long as we can before we would lose money but unfortunately these companies wanted everything up front some money um principals know that most particular cases and i think one is at the mood that they're going to plan a day for the kids that missed out on the larger trips almost like a fun day type of situation and um we're getting some people to um you know help along with the uh with the parent with the teachers and staff to run those programs so it may not be a trip to chicago or washington d.c unfortunately but we are again trying to get back to that um i think on tonight's agenda you're going to see that there's going to be a trip that we're asking the
043board to approve for next year's disney trip for our band and i don't think they've gone since 2018 or 19. uh so we're getting back to it unfortunately it was just a residual effects of trying to second-guess what it's going to look like in the spring well you know ali said that's why i was just curious if you said they're doing things it'll move the read i guess it's that point doing anything from those other like i said i know for a fact or eighth graders missed all all three because sixth grade camp got cancelled right right there and when corporate started so they missed out on everything if we were considering anything like that for either freshman year or something or something like that which is untraditional but would still give them one of
044those experiences that those kids look forward to right my younger kids my older kids i should say love sixth grade camp and those kind of things and they're right you know anyone here from the moon they can speak a little bit more clearly than so there is going to be as far as we're aware um a seventh grade day planned and i know that uh nation last nation and jonathan reach who originally was in charge of the trip has been kind of spearheading that do you know if anything's happening i think mr sergeant was asking about eighth grade too i don't know i was just happy to hear that we had students that were confident enough to go to the camp um you know and uh for a while they weren't sure if they're gonna
045have enough students but we do have enough now any other old business i think we have a few things that are on the new business list anybody want to kick it out you know there was uh one this is just a brief one that there's a house bill 601 which is sitting somewhere out there in the legislature that would have the potential to increase strs on behalf of the board if i'm not mistaken it's just the board portion just the board portion from 14 to 18 which would uh be phased in over eight years and i asked mr platko if that were to pass what that would cost our district it was concerning to me that that you know that that's a that's a hefty increase and i just wanted i had asked him how
046much that would cost us and you had two about two million dollars yeah i'm trying to i was gonna annually that that would um affect us and again phased in over eight years again it's not passed it's it's sitting out there it's concerning that's a big hefty increase to district expenditures so i'm just keeping an eye on that so that was something that i just wanted us to be aware of is under new business the second thing i wanted to bring up we received an email this this morning i would i would think it was this morning i did not read until this afternoon it was concerning to me and it had to do with some you know entry to our facility over the weekend i would like to just again reiterate what we have
047discussed at previously amongst board members and what our expectations are of one another and that we should all have some respect for our administration if we want to enter the facility you know and bring a cadre of individuals into the facility with a camera that we should respect our administration and ask them for that permission they have said repeatedly that they would you know be happy to give people tours if they so desired um i know that members of our community are upset about that and i just wanted to address it and i thought that was a concern for safety security risk and liability on so many levels and that email for me was extremely eye-opening and concerning to me so i just wanted to bring that to the intention board with that as well
048i want to ask bridge too and when it comes to the weekend in that building how how would someone get ac like someone said they got permission from a janitor to walk in so do our staff know that we don't my understanding was that the individual the custodian in question was told that it was a board member and they were allowed in the building so they let them in i would just like to again go back to the expectations that we have of one another as board members you know the safety and security of our facility the safety and security of the assets that we have in this facility i know are the responsibility of mr placo mr lasic as our maintenance director um you know there are there's multiple things that we have liability
049for as far as um confidentiality um things that could be i just can't even imagine and and again the safety and security and the respect that we have again for our administration and asking them to do that for us is again just paramount i don't think i would ever come into the building unannounced or without permission or ask somebody to take me on a tour if that was so desired so so i just want to put it i think i want to make sure that we close the loop on this so we kind of have some understanding and expectations we've been talking about expectations aboard and how we work together so i guess mrs grassley what you're asking is that we should again if we think we want to come to the school we want
050to be you know visiting the school that we're just saying let the administration know that there's some awareness that someone's going to be in the building and what in what's happening and by all means i would imagine that our administrators would volunteer their time to come in i don't know if there's any other discussion on that that seems like a fair expectation to have any other i have nothing further to add all right so there was one other one that you had put on the table um the oh oh fsaa amendments to the constitution and bylaws i think you want to just kind of are we okay i think we addressed that but i also just wanted to make sure that if we had things that we wanted to bring to the table in the
051future such as this that mr um has brought to the table that we actually it's late timing it's it's kind of at the last minute i know that we've discussed it slightly at our last meeting however we have a full year to be thinking about what we would like to present for next year's agenda platform if there's anything that we want to do i just would suggest that we plan ahead well i guess when i looked at the os ohsaa 51 i thought a little bit i'm sorry oh ohsa i think we need to set an expectation for dr kayla's like what our expectations are what should come to the board for discussion versus what he can um sorry i am speaking of something completely different let me yes that one um um i had
052been made aware that our school principal our high school principal gets to vote on that and we don't ever we don't ever see what that platform is although it is out online that we can go out and look at it and whatever and i did but i'm just curious what it is now for a new strategic plan that we really uh take into consideration the advocacy part of it and there are some things that are coming down the pike in these different professional organizations that we should probably get the board percent advice so is there any way for us to get ahead of that so it's listed out there so we can get ahead of that i get updates on a pretty regular basis i can afford them to the board if you're interested in
053reading them and then we'll pause that that's key yep and then if there's one that we think needs to come for further discussion we can bring it inside i was totally okay i also anything else on that one right i also want to just kind of close the loop so we had the suggestion uh multiple times in a row now to make our meeting post available online so um we did post today's meeting online but i wanted to check with everybody we posted the general meeting online um so i don't know if we should be posting our committee needs i want to get the discussion of the board like should we post committee meetings also should it just be once a month post everything that we have for the month like how do we want
054to do that so that again nick has a good expectation but that if we're looking at transparency we should probably post all the meetings okay i mean if i think that that's a that that is an easy to do step that helps get people the information they need to attend the meetings that they would like to miss if they are post all at once at one time in the month like what he knows is that okay or do we think we need to post them a week before i'm just trying to kind of oh the ideal when the meetings are known they would be posted there's not so many that it would be difficult to do you know i i mean if we just added a checklist because we we do inform media of our
055meetings just add that to the checklist and it's done okay and then the last thing i had um was the student liaison um student achievement liaison i don't know what we've done with this in the past you know we i don't remember ever discussing it in a couple years i've been on the board but there is a student liaison a student achievement liaison in the osba and they've been sending emails to me as the board president so i don't know if we just want to go with that expectation that'll represent us or do we want to put it out and see if anybody wants to take on that liaison role with osba so i'm sure i need a little bit more explanation so they will talk about different programs and work with other schools to
056talk about what schools are doing as far as promoting student achievement and trying to find ideas to bring to the state in regards to what students are doing so it's really just working with different um board members and leadership groups within the osba to talk about vision accountability policy community engagement um public school advocacy and relationships so it's it's kind of like our other liaison roles like the legislative liaison where you're kind of looking at what the osba puts out and talking to them it's really that typical um so let me just suggest this and i guess often times in your liaison report with regard to the superintendent's uh i forget what it's called the business of the bible business advisory committee that doesn't mean very frequently would would this be too much of a
057burden for you since i'm very willing to do it but i wanted to make sure the board was aware of it if they if they had any other suggestions or ways to go no okay i think that makes sense [Laughter] mr fishel any no i agree with what you both just said all right i think that would be wonderful just want to make everyone aware any other new business all right so that'll take us to the um for our education committee and liaison reports so the first one is the superintendent's business advisory liaison so we have not had a meeting but we have one scheduled for the 16th of may um dr mullacher and dr vasuch will be co-presenting on new courses um credentialing and upcoming pre-apprenticeships so working with our business partners throughout the
058community and that will conclude my report um the next one is the curriculum and programming committee alumni association liaison mr fishel so the alumni committee has a um hall of fame dinner june 18th at the holiday inn on 306 and i believe the final price was 39 a person for dinner and they have a golf outing scheduled right now the date is september 24th and that golf outing will be coupled up with harvey and there will also be a duck race that is scheduled for october 8th and that will also be coupled with harvey the alumni committee is still looking for members so anyone that's been a graduate sign up because i think 25 gives you a lifetime membership [Music] and also some participation to operate the committee they're looking for a little bit more
059help although a few people just joined at the last meeting and there's a party in the park again coupled with harvey which will be coupled up with the duck race and that will be at the paynesville park veterans park and i think that's it that brings us the buildings and grounds operations committee and the legislative liaison mr hack so we had a meeting on april 4th and so we talked about a number of things we got a review of the the uh the personnel in the maintenance department and comparison to industry standards not in every area are we consistent with industry standards but but for the most part i think we are in in pretty good shape can i just add it's not universal but but overall we are we're we are in okay shape
060as far as having the personnel needed to do the the job that that needs to happen um we did talk about some things that that need potential being addressed uh down the road um it was just discussion we know that that some of the athletic fields need to be addressed one way or the other so we discussed that but there is no definitive plan or way forward but but we know that that things need to be improved as far as as that goes some bleacher issues as well the one thing that we we did which i thought i think is a is a something that will help all of us have more pride in our schools we talked about having um an outside landscaper come in twice a year potentially spring and fall to basically
061do some of the the maintenance work the the trimming and the the fine detail on the flower beds and things like that so that our schools look as good on the outside as they do on the inside so those were the the main things that i i have down that we discussed and more to come on on the fields is we it's important to figure out how to move forward and obviously next next tuesday would have a big impact on them as well um or potentially have an impact on them as well and yeah and you think the fields are something important i know one of my friends would reach out to me that i know our varsity baseball team today was the first home game they were able to have we had almost a
062month of cancellations because our drainage is so poor and that was one of the things that we discussed and there is no we know it's an issue we need to address it and and we'll see what happens as we as we move forward but it's it's we're not blind to some of the things that are that are of issue as far as liaison report that really was their department okay great thank you and then policy committee booster organization liaison ms hardin we have enough of the policy committee um as far as booster organizations i actually got a text today from a parent who would like to restart the riverside pto for the campus so i spoke to mrs lucas who said that she could reach out to her because she had worked with them so
063it would be a great thing if you can see a booster group up at that campus again for everyone here so i'll work with them to make sure they get in contact and get that going thank you and that brings us to the superintendent's report um i have a few notes on our um park sign and i know now i've been reading already [Music] there we go i was going to turn it over to mr sinclair the principal if you wanted to give just a synopsis of what it occurred um i do have my notes here i can make copies of it for the board but like i said i was going to read step by step the sequence of events um i think mr saint claire could probably do it in a more expeditious
064manner some on the clock so monday morning as we were checking the messages we received a voicemail clearly from a young student indicating that there was a bomb placed in anna marie fisher's classroom at that point in time the message was dated sunday the 24th at 7 16 pm how the messages work is the most recent one comes first and since this one was left on sunday it was we got it about 8 15 8 20. mrs renderman said you need to listen to this at that point i called mr schlick and we informed the school resource officer deputy roland and that triggered us contacting chris illner in the transportation department to divert the buses coming to as well as the parents who are already in route and some are actually in the parking lot
065at parkside dropping off their kids we were able to evacuate latchkey as well as the rest of the staff um away from the building um and then staff went over to smoke meadow that we found out the buses were being diverted to concord township hall at that point in time the vast majority of our teachers many of whom were here went up to concord township hall to be with the kids help parents check out sign out if they wanted to mrs weber was leading that front while i was with deputy roland and the concord township fire department we did a thorough sweep of the building we also looked at video surveillance we contacted rich to see if any alarms have been triggered over the weekend and we were able to ascertain that there was no
066entry into the building or any visual evidence of anything of the sort contacted um dr kales who was in route and the carabiner sent out a message saying that we're investigating a bomb threat and and then i think it was around 9 30 nick we sent a message first was around 8 45 the second one was about an hour later yeah that we were going that we were secure and that the building would be reopened at that point we had the buses come to the building i debriefed the teachers at about 10 o'clock in the morning when the buses were arrived we marshaled all the kids into the gym to kind of discuss the situation with them reassured them that their parents number one wouldn't let them come into the building if they didn't think
067it was safe number two the authorities made sure that the building was safe and number three the school administration including central office administration would not have them here kids went to class at about 10 15. had a pretty normal day i mean there was we had about 48 of our students absent about 250 kids roughly 265 kids maybe absent um on that day but i think overall the the response that we were able to get with um transportation the authorities the fire department um really helped make what was kind of a scary situation for a lot of families and a lot of staff and kids made it a good situation so it worked out really really well i received a lot of positive feedback on the amount of communication that we put out and thankfully
068it was just a a young a young student who didn't really realize the ramifications and consequences of of a supposed prank phone call so we're fortunate for that so does anybody have any questions for me on that in that regard is that fast enough no mine would have been shorter that is not true kids call off they were excused which you said was about 48 of the uh uh population or enrollment over there what time uh the police worked pretty quickly along with uh mr sinclair and identifying where the number came from what time was that about um i would say probably close to nine o'clock maybe before that so we then did reach out to the the number uh police were able to kind of backtrack where that number came from and then we
069contacted that owner of the number and we've brought the family in we're all actually also able to have the student removed from class and brought down to the office where we did a mrs webber and i did a search of the child's bag to ensure that there was nothing in that and then you know waited for his parents to arrive and get the role so it was pretty once we figured out where it came from it was very very quick we knew it was a student's voice we also had the police through the fire department through we also had the number connected to an individual um and we looked at the cameras in a nutshell we knew it was safe to go back in instead of canceling class and having parents picked up we gave
070out me to see the opportunity for people to go back into the building the teachers were great they helped out a lot i know a couple of them even stayed back and helped direct some of the parents away from the away from the school as well um a couple things we would probably do differently if we thought it was going to be a little bit longer we would have taken the students probably back to to riverside here um and the other thing is i'm going to emphasize to our administrators it's not um such a bad habit and to call that a line the night before just to see if anything is sitting there but uh mr sinclair and the staff did a great job considering the kids started this very instructional day at nine times
071[Music] so they have up on uh on the screen at our open enrollment numbers you know you talk about like 20 years ago about 300 students here up and enrolled in our district these are the numbers now we have a total of 83 for next year um you can see the numbers by building and by grade as you can see the numbers started in second grades because last year we didn't take any new enrollment students and at this point we would like to make a decision again as to whether or not we're taking any more um or we have a couple other options that i didn't send to the board through a friday packet one thing i want to make sure of this a lot but people think of open enrollment they think we're taking
072a lot from group we're not i mean if you think about it we only have 45 in grades two through eight and thirty eight from nine through twelve and in riverview it's getting pretty crowded over there we only have one open enrolled student over there so right now um there's a couple things i want to discuss with the board i would like to make a recommendation as well but i figured you can look at some of the different options number one is keeping all the current open enrolled students great uh 12 uh 2 through 12 totally 83 students and letting them you know work their way through the district without taking any new open enrolled students the second option was keep it opening open enrolled students grades nine through 12 totaling with 38. another option
073is allowing current families that relocate so like ones that are living here and they move in the summer up to august 25th have the opportunity to continue here or do not allow any more families open and roll and send all the kids back to their home school to be perfectly honest with you i think that last one is cruel considering we have kids that are here and we've made a commitment to them i mean even if you think about the number of uh 12th graders next year would be eight i think that would be awful so i was going to make the recommendation that we keep the 83 and if we want to phase this out we do it in a matter of 10 years slowly but surely the number's going to get smaller and
074smaller the um to cut it off all together have some financial ramifications as well and gary's going to talk about that now okay go ahead it's a you know under the old funding formula they just started to receive six thousand twenty dollars for every kid that open rolled in and then every kid that open rolled out you would lose six thousand twenty dollars now under the fair school funding plan it's based on your district's wealth and like your it used to be called the state you're index and that's what the official name is now but you'd only get like what the district is funded for your regular kids now and you know we're on a guarantee which more than buddies the complication as well so basically right now it's it's there's bringing in additional oklahoma
075kids would basically bring us in close to zero revenue but closing open wrong there's a penalty built into the guarantee that if your open enrollment drops more than 10 percent they take funding away from you um that number of what's kind of interesting is it's kind of unfair because they don't look at open enrollment out they just look at open enrollment in so if your open enrollment out kids come back to you and you lose capacity and then you start turning off the end they're going to penalize you for it so there's a little bit of penalty built into the the funding formula but there's also a second guarantee in place which you kind of went over a couple months ago and it's it's quite convoluted that kind of gives us back that money right
076now that will end at the end of this biennium so next year we kind of kept hold after that we could start losing funds if our open enrollment drops off at a certain pace basically so it's very convoluted very complicated we're still trying to wrap our head around everything of how it works but if we were truly on a formula again we weren't in our guarantee we would essentially get what we get funded per kid under the formula now instead of the six out of twenty dollars and we're we're now just above the five percent floor so it's six percent so it's probably around if we were on the formula we'd probably get four or five hundred dollars a kid for open enrollment as opposed to six thousand twenty so so if i just should
077i wait you have more to talk about but i do have a question here when would you like me to ask the question all right just okay so so i guess when we're talking about a longer term and we're saying we went with option a the first option where we kept the current open enrollment in and then but we're phasing it out is there a penalty in the end when we are done with this group of students graduates from riverside there could be but we'd have to kind of wait until the next biennium budget is determined to know what those ramifications are and they could make a change to that rule because it's when they when they implemented the fair school funding plan the goal was to not to discourage open enrollment but in reality
078that that is one of the things they did for districts that consider welfare like riverside so and wealthier as opposed in the terms of property tax valuations and meetings and incomes so they might i i suspect there's going to be changes to that but what that looks like i don't know but right now there's a temporary guaranteed place this biennium so the penalty doesn't really affect us today today or next particular year by the next buying budget would come around we'll have to kind of see what that potentially so we can make a decision today and then if circumstances change we could we could change potentially change that decision based on those those new indicators yes thank you we make this decision every year we have to make it so just depending i mean that's
079five biennium budgets from now by the time 10 years rolls around so if you do yeah if you do that's actually 11 if you complicate from you're suggesting the third option oh i'm suggesting we just keep the current forms that are already in the pipeline but not except more it would depend but i mean for the 22-23 yeah yeah i i think our focus obviously is not questioning that i think our focus would be on the kids that have committed and then the financial implications what happens if a family has a student like in second grade that open enrolled now they have a kid and a burner coming in for knowing them okay so do we have a sense we went the first one and the third bullets allowing families that moved but allowing that
080is that that i mean i discuss some of this with our council and he looks at it as almost expanding the type of open enrollment that we have um the cleanest thing he said would be not to not to do it anymore just cut it off completely but i didn't think that was the right thing to do so any of these will work we just have to pick the one that we think is best serves in our district um so i would say keeping the 83 because they're in the pipeline if if someone's moving out of our district they have to be aware that they are going and every year even with the open enrolled students there's no guarantee that they're going to be back next year i have an extenuating circumstance with one particular
081student mom had called and it's it's honest to god it's like breaking my heart that that student can't come back um those are real tough conversations to have but it's like a situation where you treat you've got to treat everybody the same you can't it's always tough it is always tough this open enrollment it really is and dr keller says actually at the end of the year you have to look at absences we do there are some uh requirements as well you know the student is suspended depending on days we don't ask them to come back um if it's a situation of attendance there's a good chance we don't want to have them come back um you know everyone has this idea that students that are open and role are coming from other districts and
082they're causing all kinds of issues they're not they didn't know who they were really and that's the way we like it there are students once they open enroll here they're responsible for their own transportation but their everything every other opportunity is available to in the industry okay so we're just gonna go with the first option we're just to get full clarity on the third bullet point do we have a sense of on average how many how many students are in that situation i'm not off the top of my head mr flick typically deals with this he might know um it's gotta be fairly diminished i would just so the board knows i have to see what i don't at least with the high school there's i think there's um ohio revised code on it actually
083i have to look but if a student is opening a world our district and then moves out i believe we must keep them in to graduate i think it's it's incoming 12th graders or if they're a senior status yeah we have to keep them so their senior year so that is kind of like three but we're gonna we're gonna keep it's not really extensive but it's kind of like all okay we received a letter from mrs sally s green from tuscarist valley school board she's a tuscaloosa valley school board member she is the ohio board's northeast region executive member and she invited the riverside students to a recognition program for participating in the 2021 capital conference student achievement fair two groups were participants at that achievement fair one was the um recognizing riverside podcast and
084the members are reagan mcnally alex millocker and lexi wade they're all seniors and also our side leadership our side leadership is a student's initiative for developing excellence and we have participants michael keller and maddie brown there so we just wanted to let the board know that you know now as we're talking about achievement liaison and osba we participated in that actual program and our students were recognized in warren um maybe about a month ago melissa melissa also attended and actually took the kids in their car with it may or may not know one of them a couple of them are here full disclosure they had to sit through the osba meeting before they got their award and i had to take them all to dairy queen well deserved yes can i can i just say
085that it was really great to see you guys at the osba conference when we were there in november because it's been a long number of years that we've actually had representation there from our students so it was super exciting like to see us represented so thanks for coming thank you that your students are not here correct and the other group that i think it is the running that developed the running they were actually in the osb update recently i don't know if you saw the picture so they were in the osba update oh are they all good they're running rounds sofia price and sofia [Music] a couple other good pieces of news for our district is we were covered uh with the box eight uh on uh birthday and i was just gonna show this
086segment real quickly if it's at all possible nikki's going to show us for those people who weren't able to see this it's a really nice segment covered by jen hartford who's the meteorologist and foxy and it is never too late to start spreading that message just says welcome how's earth day so far yeah do we love it do we love our planet do we need a big favor look right into this camera [Music] so i had a chance to stop by buckeye elementary in hazel yesterday and the students introduced a new greenhouse for their garden club they also planted sunflowers painted rocks and learned about the importance of protecting the environment so these students were awesome they were energized they were engaged they're cool it's a great day so where was everybody with this birthday
087event on at buckeye elementary because it was an amazing day for those kids and they learned a lot and it's going to continue absolutely throughout the summer another garden club with that greenhouse thank you buckeye elementary huge shout out to you i had a wonderful day and it will be worth a lot and i need to take the little plants home and put them in their own garden [Music] you know reinvest in our planet that's the theme for earth day so this weekend would be a great weekend to do [Music] um rhs sophomore isabella hodge placed third in the fine arts division of the singing and rain event the event celebrates all students from northeast ohio who have participated in the art project to paint an umbrella this really does not do it justice you
088should see that umbrella up close it is amazing absolutely amazingly fast out of the art class they lined them all up and in the media center and we were able to get a donation and also vote on them my that was my vote and lo and behold she went third in this region it was uh absolutely uh stunning umbrella that she came our kids are really talented our program is very strong here at riverside beaver nation store is now online about the same launch last week the story that was launched by students in the fall the principals of business course taught by mr ross i mean he's not here this is ross's though you can speak for them she's our intervention specialist here she's been here since uh uh 2017. uh she received the freedom
089b walter outstanding educator award an award is given to a staff member who makes an extraordinary contribution to the education of students with disabilities she has a lot of energy she's also one of our coaches here and we just wanted to congratulate and recognize thank you easter egg hunt the first time in three years we were able to have it we just wanted to have a shout out to the rpta for again uh starting this program up again this event kids had a great time as you can see there's ace everywhere it was held on saturday april 9th and a lot of kids had a lot of fun i remember a few years back when i was attending uh one of these one of the kids had a uh he wore his cleats because he
090wanted to be able to get i don't know if anyone wore cleats this time around but it was well attended and uh thank you to all the all the people that were involved with the rpgta making that possible um last but not least i have dr malacca's going to give just a brief description of our summer school or at least an announcement that we are having summer school this year we wanted to let you know that we are going to run a summer school program again this summer for kindergarten through eighth grade it will be students will qualify much like they did last year so we're going to still work to address some of the maybe gaps in learning and the learning loss that occurred because of the pandemic we do have some money left
091in our sr fund to work on the learning loss issue so we thought continuing to provide some summer school programming would be good we're also going to run our credit recovery programs at the high school for 9th through 12th graders that did not pass all of their courses to be promoted to the next grade level what we will not do this year at the high school level there will not be transportation for high school students we will only be transporting through eight k through eight is going to take place either at riverview or a parkside so based on where students homes are we will divide them that way and they'll be k through eight will be in the elementaries 9 through 12 will not be required to be on campus so we'll run our credit
092recovery courses asynchronously we are going to however hire a teacher from each discipline so one social studies one science one math to be here on campus if students need to come up and get tutoring or get assistance with their assignments we will have somebody available from tuesday on tuesday thursday fridays from 9 to 12 so the kids can come up but they will have to get their own transportation up here so similar to last year but not exactly the same so just get letting you guys know that in may you'll see some of those hires obviously we'll be through hiring teachers and then the four teachers up here our asynchronous teachers will also be on the agenda and those will i would assume will be the same teachers that have been teaching the courses throughout
093the year and then last last month we also discussed kind of getting an assessment of the of the learning gap and i know that with with testing coming up that we will get something of a debrief next month yes so this year um happily i suppose we're we're going to get the state test results starting the second week of may which has never happened before so we'll have some end of the year data to look at that i can add to that sheet and then we can take a look at also also by the end of may we'll have the final map scores so we'll really have a complete picture of where we are two years after we shut down the school and clearly we were all impacted by something that none of us controlled
094but but there are repercussions of that and anything we can do to to narrow that gap and and have a riverside diploma you know what it means in 2019 to what it means today is important for us to do michelle thank you dr kayla's anything else [Music] all right that brings us to the treasurer's report and committee update so finance and audit personnel committee and strategic plan liaison mrs grossi uh i don't have anything to report on the strategic plan except that it's on the agenda for approval so that's awesome um uh finance and personnel committee we had a meeting on april 24th at 21st at 8 a.m we started off with personnel updates and you know some of the things that we're going to be doing for the summer and summer hires and we
095talked about um some of those positions we reviewed the items on our finance committee agenda um mr platco had had put some he had put in applied to be the fiscal agent for the lake county school health care consortium and apparently someone else was chosen to be that so we had an update on that we talked about additional deputies that were going to try and get here for the next school year and we talked about how that affects the folks that are at our front entrance we had the audit report that was released if anybody wants some bedtime reading it's 96 pages [Music] so that was that was out there and we do have the five-year forecast that will probably be on the next agenda um for the may meeting that we have on may
09610th it is the tenth rate it's that week which is a little bit early but we're having it because again i'm not going to be here for the last two weeks of may um we talked about the potential of adding an assistant treasurer to our district which i'm sure as the time gets closer to asking for that position mr placker will have some additional information that he can share and then he went over the cash balance policy update from the treasurer all right uh i wanted to share with the board and the community tonight that we received a award from the treasurer of state called the compass award um the compass there's a press release for february that came out that said the ohio treasurer robert sprague has announced the compass award honorees for the
097month of february the monthly recognition program commends organizations programs and individuals across the state who are working to guide ohioans towards financial literacy education empowerment and for riverside local schools they just specifically talk about beginning in sixth grade students explore careers in world war real world application through interactions with people from their community as students in our high school they continue their college career exploration coursework experience work based learning opportunities other instructions provided to teach students how to make positive decisions related to managing their income as well as standalone personal financial management course so you know one of the career courses in the middle school i was able to attend and present earlier this year which was a fun experience and you know based on a cancellation from the other financial professional that i have
098so it was a little fun to be part of that process and you know i gave the kids some trivia questions on you know how much we spend that diesel fuel and tried to have them guess what it was you know it was kind of interesting to see what they what they came up with um on tonight's finance agenda we're approving the addition of an sro to our to our districts we'll have two full-time district-wide school resource officers uh it's written on the agenda tonight to authorize that admission but we're working with legal to update the sheriff's office contract so that will get approved at a later meeting but we needed that to have something formalized so the lake county can start that process to find that individual boiler update for the ruth middle school
099um on the agenda is to prove one more month of the temporary boiler that's in place out in the parking lot um as you know we bid out the project to replace the boilers earlier this year instructor will start this summer with um the contract has been signed by the by the construction manager and we have a pre-construction meeting on may 5th to discuss the project and how it moves forward and then lastly we mentioned we're a member of the lake county schools council for our health insurance benefits the general assembly earlier this week approved a premium holiday for the month of june so what that means is the uh basically we don't pay into we're self-insured for health insurance and basically the month of june they're going to skip collecting premiums so the district
100will need to pay and of course with several teachers here there will be no payroll deductions for their portion of those premiums in june usually i'd send an announcement uh closer to june when that time comes but with so many attendants i thought it was appropriate to share that good relationship thank you all right and 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 any public participation oh one second we're i'm barbara morris i live here in concord township i have had three children graduate from here i have three grandsons who are presently enrolled in within the school system i have serious concerns about what you're talking
101about progressing with putting a new school up i've worked in the building industry for many years and i'm aware of how all the planning goes for major projects and what is necessary for making them come about i also would like to ask a few questions um the viability of tearing down bring up a new school and tearing down the old school really leaves a wall of questions for me you have a basically secure building here that yes needs some major work i understand that however has that aspect been checked to see what the cost of refurbishing this part of the building and add additional classrooms to it will help rather than hinder my second question is has anybody really looked at what this economy is doing and do you are you aware of the rapid
102rate that all of the products need to build a school are rapidly rising um having been in the building industry and having to order them this is this is astronomical to me i have never seen products skyrocket as these have i really think that this system needs to be checked out and you need to find out what other viable situations are there because if you're going to add and round figures 250 dollars per hundred thousand dollars to the homes in the concord township they're going to be a lot of people that aren't going to be able to afford to stay there many of us are retired i'm all for school education and i back it all of the time but i think we should make a better judgment of what you're trying to build al
103adams 6868 open drive and leroy my topic is not the levy um what i did want to do is thank the board for posting board meeting on social media because it's not the same six to eight of us that have been here for the last few months this is spectacular i don't think this is the result of that but i'm glad to see everybody here um i'd also like to thank mr placo for fixing the slide so rapidly we pointed out to him that was at the meetings and i did just have one question that i had asked in the last meeting when you gave the information about the fair funding at the meeting where you put the levy on the board i'm sure about water mr platko had shown the slide where there was
104two temporary funding issues they both said temporary one was permanent one was going to go away mr hack did the quick math and said basically over the next six years it was going to dissolve 10 of the operating budget and somebody was going to get back to me haven't yet so i'd like to bring that up again because i think that's an important issue like i said not everybody's been here for all the meetings and that was something that was brought up right before the wedding went up and i'd just like to know because at the one informational meeting the last thing i heard was if legislation stayed the same there wouldn't be an issue which should be great but it's got to be one of the other so and also i have no vote
105i second an assistant treasurer because understanding school funding is some kind of wizardry that nobody can understand and i've tried so i appreciate what is being done up there but if you can get help for him you should [Music] hi cathy fishel concord township it's nice to see all the teachers here tonight um i have a bit of a concern and i'm loving everything that we're seeing on here i see that we're on tv with our kids on tv how fun for them i had a son that was on tv when he was in school what i would really like to make sure doesn't happen is that our school is on tv because somebody did something nefarious and i don't know you might all know that we had a video that was posted a couple
106weeks ago that some of the people here were walking around the school but one of the main things that they said right at the beginning was we're unsecure here i don't have a word for word we're unsecured here anybody that wants to come in and do anything can can come in and do something i saw it my heart dropped i'm going to tell you my stomach was sick that was pulled down because mr official called mr calis mr kayla said yeah i kind of saw that kind of questioned it a little bit but he went ahead and he posted it that put you all at risk and more important are students at risk if somebody i mean we just had a bomb threat the other day if somebody would have saw that that had any
107intention to do harm to this school they had a license because we posted right up right on youtube for all to see so my question is and it's not a question that needs to be answered but last month we talked about a 9-1-1 call that had wasn't able to go out of certain buildings in the district for two years two years and it's fixed my question is what is going on how are you protecting our kids and not only our kids but your staff and these teachers i don't ever want to see something on tv like we've seen in the past that's all i have to say any other public participation my name is carolyn i'm a senior here at riverside and i'm just gonna read and try not to put you to sleep so
108uh i wasn't sure if i was gonna say anything this evening but i feel like i owe it to my teachers to show my support through the five years i spent in this building i've watched numerous changes occur some positives and others not so much one thing i would like to bring to attention with all due respect is the reason this school still has any credibility still as students walking through these halls is certainly not because of our facilities the reason that this school is still standing is because of the teachers and administrators that put in a constant effort to keep it going the teachers they get here hours before they have to and don't leave right when that bell rings you are fortunate enough to still have teachers that are here for more than
109a paycheck ones that would do anything for their students ones that watch over us and ask us when they see something is off ones that stick their neck out to ensure that we are getting everything we need to be successful after we leave here and administrators that take the time out of their day to interact with us when they have a spare moment to name a few miss howary mr bioni mr lark ms cabell miss mcintyre mr huffman dr basic and mr liatsos the list could go on but these are just some that have directly impacted my life and taken the time to check up on us teach us life lessons from their own experience to step away from curriculum for a second and just take care of us to them we're more than a
110statistic more than a number or another kid just passing through you are fortunate enough to still have educators in our building that um they just want to take care of us and i fear that in the next few years if you guys aren't careful um it's hard to find people that are doing this job to directly impact us i mean we're it we're your future the next 10 to 20 years i mean we're going to be your doctors your lawyers your teachers all of that that's us and the experiences that we have in this school will directly impact the people we turn out to be and i can't thank the teachers that i've had enough for uh taking the time to shape me into the person that i am and i hope that you guys
111are appreciating and doing enough for your staff and giving them a place to do that job that they do so well because i mean we don't have the best school we don't and i there's things i don't know and i don't understand because i'm a kid and i can't possibly begin to understand the financials that go into building a new school but i do know that when someone asks me if i like where i attend school it's not because of the building and it's not because of the space it's because the people that have taken the time out of their lives to try and better mine any other public participation yes one moment go ahead so my name is amy zarin i live in concord township what a wonderful speech so excellent you're a hard
112act to follow so i was almost going to sit down and say no but you should consider running for school board that that's probably your future um so i have three children in the district i have two at this campus and i have one at parkside um so my first thing i want to say is i want to thank the whole parkside staff including mr sinclair my daughter is in mrs fisher's class and she was not scared at all she didn't even know what was going on she was so calm a plus for all the staff i felt bad for mr st claire though that day he was chasing his umbrella at school drop off time so um a plus excellent um the other thing i want to discuss is um in relation to the
113levy i'm not here to talk pro for the levy or against the levy but one i'm here to talk about is there's a case involving the bellevue sugar creek schools from 2021 and those school board members were too involved in the levy two involved in levy the school board was and they determined that it swayed the decision too much of the voters and what happened most school districts from the ohio state school board association i've been a former school board member so they've been advised to have their levy committee their levy committee run everything and what i've seen on social media has been poor boardsmanship and what i'm seeing here has been somewhat poor boardsmanship with laughing rolling the eyes and the name calling on some certain board members which i'm not going to name
114out of due respect is just wrong um and then parental rights i wasn't planning to talk about that but yes if this district can't show any parent what they want to discuss shame on you i'm a parent if you can't open up any textbook and tell me what my kids are learning no and i do agree the teachers are making a huge sacrifice here and they are committed to the students but so are the parents that's it thank you go ahead i'm alex milaker i'm also a senior here at riverside i'm going to do some reading too all the statements come from a flyer posted on chris weiss's facebook with his name at the bottom of the flyer bill the people who have fallen victim to the endless spread of misinformation deserve to hear these
115statements put up to reality so to start off the flyer we have the statement of that the school needs renovations rather than a new building in reality simply renovating the school is not as simple as it seems the ohio facilities construction committee projected the cost of renovations to exceed two-thirds the cost of building new on top of that renovations do not accommodate things such as new safety advancements technology advancements creative art or career tech areas and that's just for starters with new school comes all these things that improve our learning environment an experience that would not happen with me renovations moving on the next statement the district has no idea what they're doing in aspects of blueprints and building plans in reality it would be clear that again we have visible proof this time in
116form of two elementary schools the cost of detailed building plan would be roughly 10 million dollars this school's money is such a concern we should understand that it makes no sense to pass the levy first and then play accordingly this is what was done for parkside and riverview and there were no issues moving on the statement the study being used to support this project was first from 2013 nine years outdated were the words on flyer this is at best a guess of what it would cost in reality first off i find it ironic that the flyer has nine years outdated in big bold all capitalized red letters for some reason a school that is turning 73 years old and will be the oldest school in lake county following the fair for its new school apparently
117just needs some renovations but that's beside the point if i'm not mistaken the 2013 study that is in reference was how the original issue one was developed which states in 2013 the building was inspected by the ohio facilities construction committee following this inspection the high school campus was ranked four in four sections and borderline in two the nine-year report is so outdated imagine what the school would be ranked as in deception now the statement considering the inflation gas prices the supply chain etc now is not the time for a huge tax increase in reality the flyer continues to push the agenda of this tax cost being outrageous if you look at the bottom of these fliers there's a web address to a gofundme with a goal of 30 thousand dollars requesting donations for what it
118does not save on the gofundme page so the thought process here to come combat a flyer deems as huge tax increases to ask people to donate money to a cause with a goal of thirty thousand dollars just to be clear to combat a tax increase for a new school there's a request for monetary donations from people the best part is there are people donating upwards of thousand dollars at a time people who are complaining about this tax increase are donating more money in a day than they would for an entire year if their house costs five hundred thousand dollars that's based off the 15.66 per month per 100 000 housing it appears it's a very affordable increase based on these donations lastly i would like to point out that as you drive through kansas city
119you will see countless vote no signs what are these signs doing in the city thank you yes good evening my name is jamie field and i'm here to speak on behalf of our only eight in regards to the actions of mr scott official related to the bond issue first and foremost mr official cast a vote to deny voters in this community a chance to make a decision that would impact their families themselves he did wanted to deny them the right to make that decision regardless of political affiliation voting is the structural foundation of a democracy a representative democracy if ever a question regarding what is best for our community it should be ultimately our community that makes that decision not one member of our community mr official used this position on the boe and his
120anti-tax viewpoint to prevent voters to have a say on this issue tyrants use their authority of their office to impose their will upon those that they are meant to serve this attitude and mindset has no place on school board additionally rlea became aware of a specific circumstance where mr official entered the home of a community member without invitation and refused to leave without being forced out these circumstances left them feeling intimidated and harassed not only has mr official use his position to try to stifle the will of the voters of riverside local school district but he also intimidated harassed those whose viewpoints are different from his this behavior is unacceptable it is anti-american and clearly not respectful of the constitution of the united states he should resign immediately in embarrassment should not open one to
121be harassed by an elected official in their home elected officials are charged with representing all voters not only those that agree with them and should be held to a higher level of ethics and behavior rna denounces mr fischel's actions by all means the voters of this district can and must exercise their votes and show what they want on all issues it is our god-given right as americans attacking someone over their personal choice is exactly the un-american behavior that should not be tolerated we demand that mr fishel stop this reckless and irresponsible behavior our board of education and all members should be focused on making riverside a better place not attacking and tearing down members of our community simply trying to participate in their school district thank you uh i'm christian weiss of leroy township i'm
122here to speak out and call for the taxpayers on to vote nolan issue one next tuesday on election day this is arguably for most people the largest tax decision of the rest of your life school district put this issue on the ballot after the school board decision was split three votes to two with mr hack and mr official voting no and giving a valid reasons not to proceed they will find that the existing buildings are sound and that necessary renovations can be completed for far less than the 283 million dollars with interest that issue one represents they also stated that due to inflation supply chain issues a war in europe and other factors would push the cost of the project beyond 147 million dollars by possibly 30 percent or more three board members voted yes
123to place this on the ballot and the district is run a campaign to mislead the voters into believing that the buildings are in too poor condition to maintain and must be rebuilt the teachers political action committee known as the kids committee has spent over twenty thousand dollars on billboard signs and direct mail the kids committee is funded by 120 teachers and faculty through payroll deductions funding over 941 dollars 63 of the 120 teachers don't live in the and district district failed to disclose to the voters many relevant facts regarding the issue and may have used school resources to support this it's a bond issue and the true cost is over 283 million dollars including interest and expected rate of 4 apr over 37 years they created not one single blueprint or preliminary study drawing and
124they claim it would cost 10 million dollars to create the drawings you don't have to come create the complete set of construction drawings to do a study of what the relevant costs will be and they fail to do that we don't know what they're going to build okay they can't even show us an artist concept of what they want to build they claim the buildings are in poor condition yet have not offered any proof that a reasonable person would conclude that in addition two of the four decommissioned buildings from phase one were sold to a charter school that ultimately competes with the district for students and they're both still operated as schools the buying levy does not provide for ongoing operation of the district nor does it pay teacher and faculty salaries bus drivers or
125upgrade the bus fleet those issues will ultimately have to be dealt with in another levee request in the near future the district claims ongoing maintenance costs are rising and only earmarks 250 000 a year out of a 44 million dollar budget to put maintenance of riverside and john r the maintenance director failed to discover a water leak and make repair until the district received a thirty thousand dollar water bill when the water problems in the bathrooms were known to exist several faculty members created a video which was published to youtube that directly disclosed weaknesses in the school security thereby putting the deputy sheriff resource officer and students of faculty at unnecessary risk my name is kelly borak i live at 7350 high blood court um in concord which you probably already know because that information
126was posted on facebook by course truly it's a public document i would like to start by asking all of those who gladly donate a portion of their paycheck to the kids committee to stand for my statement if you're already standing please raise your hand as an association rlia is devoted to our membership their well-being and the well-being of their families the unacceptable events that transpired on saturday april 23rd could have resulted in serious consequences for our members and their families since the action taken by mr mr christian weiss on that day rla leadership has fielded countless calls text messages and emails from members who are concerned for their safety mr weiss and mr official have been public and open in their desperate opposition to issue one through a public records request mr weiss obtained a
127list of teachers who made donations to the kids committee which stands for keep improving district schools and published their addresses online encouraging the public to contact them while our rla fully supports the rights and freedoms given to us by the us constitution and the rights of citizens to request matters of public record we are appalled by the actions of mr weiss additionally we wonder if mr fishel was involved in these events as well our issue is not with mr white sharing the names of members all of whom gladly provide financial support to their community and the school district that they work in whether or not they live here but sharing members home addresses is a step too far because he can share this information does not mean that it is justified or ethical in today's
128polarized climate and with a sharp rise in aggressive behavior towards teachers nationwide we believe mr weiss acted inappropriately making personal information public can lead to real consequences for our members and as such we condemn mr weiss's actions while technically legal this act was underhanded and malicious and again we can't help but wonder if mr official was involved rlea acknowledges that bond and levy issues can lead to strong feelings from all parts of the community regardless of status however we fail to see the controversy of rle members providing financial support to an issue that will have positive effects for so many in the community our lea represents members with differing viewpoints much like what is found within our community but we are unified in our support of student learning and outcomes support of the kids committee
129is a personal choice by members that believe in the children of this community and the value of their future any other public participation hi everyone i'm alexis wade um my mom is actually the media center specialist here and cindy adams is my grandmother also treasurer of the kids community i am the treasurer i am not chris an agent all right so i'm going to be concluding alex's speech so to wrap things up i hope following this we can all start to understand that we do not need to listen to people whose goal is to spread fear hate and misinformation just to fit their agenda as a student that goes to the school and walks these halls and who has also walked the halls of south's high school's new building and many other modern schools i
130can confidently say that this issue is very important kids deserve the opportunity to get the best education and learn the experience possible it doesn't end there the teachers who spend 40 hours a week just in the classroom deserve this more than anyone the teachers who take care of your kids education the teachers who build relationships with your kids the teachers who when your kid is being extra quiet make sure that they're okay the teachers who fight for us day in and day out they deserve this it's time we fight together and start to look at the facts and do what is right for your kids my classmates our teachers and our community thank you where were you out for the last six months of board meetings hey can i get my time back for that
131time's up time's up hello my name is matt ozin i live and work here in riverside local schools my sons go here too tonight i'm speaking on behalf of the rlea related to mr hacks resolution letter to the osba it's the position of rlea that this resolution answering the call osba's call to action regarding parental right to know is redundant and that we suspect is backed by far-right political interests under the guise of parental rights to know such an item even without a political agenda requires input and buy-in from all those it affects as it does not include this input and buy-in the rla calls for the board education to reject the proposal any proposal proposition the board i'm sorry any uh the board can propose anything that it wants and uh that requires our
132i'm sorry i got ahead of myself any proposal or position the board makes that requires rlea to participate in any board members political leanings will be flatly rejected by the rla further any proposal position that requires action beyond negotiated agreement between the boe and the members of rla will be met with complete resistance and non-compliance any proposal or position that politicizes our classrooms will be met with complete resistance and non-compliance even if it is under the guise of parental right to know any proposal or position that furthers the political leanings and ambitions of any board member in any amount will be met with complete resistance and non-compliance the teachers of rla insist on being allowed to do their jobs we just teach these kids of the school district free from political interference we're passionate about
133our abilities to meet the needs of our students and we'll fight on behalf of the members of our members to work in environment free the partisan politics the rla does not participate in partisan politics on behalf of its members our positions endorsements and decisions are driven by a belief in the value that our teachers bring to the entire school district community the board of education needs to be prepared for absolute resistance from the rlea at any attempt to turn our classrooms and schools into political battlegrounds in closing the members of the board of education need to continue focusing on doing the business of the school district partisan activism and political ambitions have no place in our school district thanks participation i do not see it again okay thank you everyone right so that takes us
134to the consent agenda part of our evening so the first consent agenda is finance and audit yes we have a motion to approve the items listed on the finance and audit consent agenda is recommended by the treasurer items a through m second thank you um as part of that we always read our donations and we'd just like to thank achieving dreams llc for donating 500 to the riverside junior council for prom on that is there any other discussion on any of these agenda items all right well then mr platco can you call the role consent agenda for personnel sure we have a motion to approve the items listed on the personnel consent agenda is recommended by the superintendent items a through f give me a second a second thank you is there any discussion on
135these items [Applause] all right mr platt how can you call the roll glory misty hi tom mack hi scott official all right helena grassy aye jennifer aye motion carry consent agenda for curriculum and programming motion to approve the items listed on the curriculum and programming consent agenda as recommended by the superintendent any discussion second it's items a through g correct yes that would be a through g [Music] consent agenda for buildings and grounds and operations motion to prove the items listed on the buildings and grounds uh senate general agenda items a and b as recommended by the superintendent may have a second case a second thank you very much any discussion let me call the role please staff visual all right melinda grassy hi jennifer harding hi hi motion carry that brings us to additional
136items the strategic plan mrs rossi asked the liaison would you like to read it we would love to read it we have a resolution to approve the new riverside local school district strategic plan effective through the 25-26 school year there's a second a second just some commentary i would like to thank everybody who participated in doing that strategic plan and putting that together it was a lot of hard work a lot of effort we've been asking for that for a long time and thrills there's no other discussion can we call the role melon degrassi aye jennifer hardin aye lori pesky aye tom heck aye steph digital good night motion carry all right the other one removed the osba we moved and that brings us the board of education updates yeah i have something so on
137april 8th i attended the ohsaa uh better better together a summit on diversity inclusion equity and belonging and uh i was the so it was down in columbus there were approximately 200 people who attended broken down into four sessions i was able to save her for three of those four sessions i will tell you the ones i attended [Applause] the in the in the morning session the first one i attended was was called edison one it was in edison one the gender unicorn demystifying the lgbtqia plus spectrum in the second session i attended the anti-racism alliance and in the fourth session or the third session i attended the fundamentals of ddi so you know in the interest of time i do have some comments right you know the second one racism is is definitely not
138acceptable anywhere so so that was that was good the uh on the first one the gender unicorn demystifying the lgbtq while people certainly have the the right to pursue their life as they see fit we there are other issues that come up with that or come become involved with that but what i really want to talk about and and obviously we have a lot of divisions as is shown by today's meeting and and what i liked about the dei event it was presented by the dei coordinator engagement officer really for the the cavaliers and and what he talked about was was really kind of resonating with me and i and maybe maybe this is there's some things that we can all learn from this we're gonna we're gonna have a decision point by the voters
139on may 3rd and and you know then we we will move forward accordingly but but what he said diversity for the first you know for the sake of diversity and inclusion for the sake of inclusion i that that doesn't make any sense to me but what he talked about is is number one we're you know look around the room we don't have a very diverse room in one measure but we have an incredibly diverse room by almost every other mentor measure where you live your background your interests your likes what you're you're good at what you're not good at we are incredibly diverse this board is diverse even though we may all have similar skin color so diversity for diversity sake is not you know any and any group is going to be diverse i
140guess is the bottom line with that right so so he further he the cavaliers have five different uh total of five different organizations under them there's a team down in canton they own the uh the monsters uh and two other teams and and looking at parity within the organization they didn't really have it the cavs had great great office space and everything but the other teams really you know even though they're part of the same organization they had much inferior facilities they they address that they improve that trying to have a vision everybody can buy into and working to that vision the other thing they wanted to do which which also resonated with me they wanted to increase their fan base and so so what do you do you figure out the the part of
141the of the society that the dollars really they're after the sports dollar right there after they look at the sports dollars that they wanted to have more impact on or get more customers from and they put together a team that reflected that when i was at mba school one of the things that resonated with me about having diverse you know diversity if you have widget a and you're an american company and you want to market it down in peru by golly you better have somebody on your team a diverse team who understands peru right or you're going to do something stupid that was the the same thing that they did when they want to engage with the segments of the of the the population they didn't have where they wanted to grow their sales they
142brought people in from that there are ways that we can work together we do have a decision point on may 3rd things are set we will find out what happens but but riverside i've been on the board now then in my third term my 11th year we've gone through some really challenging times and some really great times and i am hopeful that after may 3rd we will respect whatever the voters say we will move forward and where it makes sense there's always going to be tension right there's always going to be tension between the people who have to write the checks and the people who who are part of the of the organization that that do the work there's always going to be attention but looking at the possibility of coming together as a as
143a community as a as a school i hope that we pursue that and i i think we'll be successful but there's a lot going on there's a lot of different aspects of diversity there's things that we can do let's find the things that unite us and not divide us and and let's move forward together because we we do have a great institution and many of the people in this room you are the reason that we have a great institution i've said before my kids went here i graduated from here in 82. riverside is good right let's there are gonna be issues but let's focus on those things that unite us and let's move forward together thank you i'll let everybody know do i sign up for class on may 11th um equity and education equality
144versus equity so it's out there on the ospa if anybody wants to join that um i think it's like an hour over lunch time so just something else that the osba is putting out there for us anything else i just want to thank everyone for coming it's nice to see people in the room great so we have a motion to adjourn to executive session at 9 07 p.m can i have a second second christopher didn't you call the role oh sorry for personal matters appointment or employment compensation security arrangements [Music] hi motion carry