001i think everybody's back it looks like we're good to go so we'll call the meeting to order mr paco can you take the whole season here here we've got visual here here oh can we stand for the pledge of allegiance on behalf of the board i'd like to welcome all students staff parents and interested community members tonight's board of education meetings i'd like to remind everyone that this is a meeting of the board of education held in public for the purpose of conducting school district business it is not to be considered a public community meeting there is time for public comment during the meeting in the public participation section on the agenda [Music] we have a motion to approve minutes for january 27 20 two board meetings now you have a second second any discussion
002hey can you call them hello tom all right scott digital all right glenn grassy aye lord kennedy aye motion carried special reports yeah we'll have one um we had one action plan for our exchange students to resign since we moved discussion of old business right any new business so board of education committee and liaison reports for the superintendent's business advisory report there was a meeting of the business advisory committee they actually had a chance to meet with this side we shipped him and speak with the students and give some hopeful ideas on career development how to network how to promote themselves it was just really an open discussion among the business advisory council i was able to attend it was really interesting to see what the students were thinking about or some of the questions
003that they had as they spoke to the different community members the next one is curriculum programming committee and alumni association mr official met with the alumni association and um they need to get a paypal account set up because they're still collecting cash and checks and so i talked with treasurer placo and he looked into it and said doesn't know if that can go through the school so i've informed the association they need to set up their own paypal account and hopefully that'll be done soon and what that will do is if that will allow anyone who is going to make a donation can do that through paypal online and they won't have to have a one-on-one meeting to collect 25 so anyway also they are looking for a lot more members alumni join up and
004um we'll talk about that more in the future okay so on sunday march 13th there is a saint patrick's day parade and they're looking to walk in that parade it starts at the fairgrounds and ends at hell regals and it starts at 3 o'clock and they're asking that if anyone from riverside wants to walk in that to meet at the fairgrounds at two o'clock that's sunday march 13th fundraisers at party in the park july 1st through the 3rd so they're planning that they're also planning a duck race and everyone's seen the little duckies that that are at the fairs that go through the water right so they go down to the grand river uh down by helen hayes and lyman park and they do that down there and it's going to be a 50 50
005raffle and it's going to be connected with harvey high school and they said it's been successful in the past and right now that is scheduled for saturday october 1st they do have a golf outing that they're looking to plan and that will also be with harvey high school and that date is yet to be determined so that is the alumni on the curriculum we did not have a meeting but um there's a couple things that i would like to present today and also let's go back to the alumni there's a scholarship program from the men of honor some of these guys are here today and the men of honor social club is looking to assist young men in their pursuit of higher learning be that in a university or a technical or trade school setting
006applicants should fill out the attached scholarship application form which i will give and get to the school and have it signed by their guidance counselor special consideration will be given to those young men raised in a single parent household and those facing financial hurdles other considerations include past school performance awards and achievements extracurricular activities volunteerism and community service and membership in groups and organizations and so the amount tentatively is three thousand dollars and uh there may be further discussion on that but right now that's the medevac scholarship program uh coming back to the sel program that was brought into riverside i'm going to read part of an article and actually part of two articles social emotional learning cell is in government schools and education circles today but its origins in the occult have been largely
007obscured so far the truth was hiding in plain sight all along the collaborative for academic social and emotional learning castle the parent company that sold riverside the responsive classroom program one of about one of the leading outfits promoting cell reveals a great deal about the nature of cell on its website according to the history of cell offered by castle even the very term social emotional learning was developed during a meeting held at the fetzer institute no further details are provided on castle's website about this however even a brief amount of re research shows the mention of thessar institute is just a tip of a massive iceberg indeed the new age institute boldly proclaims that his primary mission is spiritual supposedly aimed at helping build a new spiritual foundation for a loving world this spiritual foundation
008though is not christian or anything remotely compatible with christianity or judeo-christian principles rather it is based on the occult new age teachings of individuals such as lucifer publishing company founder alice bailey self-proclaimed herald of world teacher benjamin krem and other gurus the fencer organization keeps a relatively low profile but author brian wilson blew the lid off fetzer in his agenda in the book john e fetzer and the quest for the new age wilson showed fetzer was such a zealous disciple of bailey who claimed to receive special revelations from spirits known as ascended masters these are dead people as she says communicate with her that he would host sessions at the institute where bailey's great invocation would be recited bailey long expressed a special interest in the education of children in her book education in the
009new age bailey's supposed ascended masters revealed that the coming world government she predicted would synthesize marxism with neo-scholasticism through a process achieved using the education methods pioneers pioneered by socialist john dewey the founding father of progressive education plenty of powerful individuals and organizations aside from cell procurers have seized on these ideas united nations assistant secretary general robert mueller not the robert mueller in the investigations even based his world core curriculum on the teachings of bailey and her ascended masters he admitted in the forward to the curriculum's teacher's manual values being taught using cell are very much in line with bailey muller and other procurers of new age progressive views everything from globalism and social justice are being marketed to children under the guise of self as its promoters openly admit after an initial response from
010castle offering to make somebody available for an interview neither the fencer institute nor castle responded to multiple requests for comment so that's one article and this one is excuse me i just i guess i want to understand was this the part of the committee meeting or was there not a commitment well there wasn't a committee meeting okay so i guess at this point in our agenda it's really about reporting what was discussed in the committee meeting for everybody to understand yeah just bring your curriculum information because this is what we're now teaching in the school okay in our district mr fisher what um what article is that i can get that to you because i don't have it written on here i typed it out in double space so it's easier to read so i'll
011give that to you and this is just an update on sell with ohio value voters calls on the ohio state board of education to immediately rescind their strategic plan that includes cell as one of their four learning domains based on evidence provided by protect ohio children coalition ohio's education system is putting families in danger by promoting cell frameworks and programs so it undermines parental rights so the cell program part of our curriculum and that's what i'm talking about is part of our curriculum they instruct children they have rights to confidentiality and privacy from their parents and not tell their parents what they're being taught about in school promotes data collection and i don't know if we've gotten the data collection here i don't think so yet but this is part of their whole program government
012databases are collecting data on students to follow them for life to measure outcomes for the working classes of society and the collective good parents have not consented to this data collection and many responses are private information best suited between a counselor and a patient phone amps among others are also being used for students to provide data impersonates mental health services and i have brought this up in a curriculum meeting that we had when i did a presentation many cell programs are designed to shape the child's developing brain to accept particular world views regarding sexuality racial attitudes and other social issues under the guise of providing a mental health benefit promote psychological evaluations by unqualified teachers interventions may be prescribed by a teacher with limited training that may adversely impact a student's permanent data file lack
013of education resources can mean that their evaluations are administered by untrained or poorly trained personnel and what i said here was i'm sure all the teachers aren't psychologists involves problematic privacy policies may disclose student data that could be used against parents in regards to the personal choices they make for their children if situations are detected regarding gender sexual orientation or other sexual rights violations this could become a window for family disruption or even separation it promotes activism and allegiance and division cell is promoted as the lever for equity and social justice critical race theory and marxist lessons are taught regarding oppression oppressors intersectionality race gender and religion in ways that promote illegal sectarian concepts community organizing events and after school programs are routine routinely promoted so i can forward these articles to you jim so
014you can know where they came from that's all i have buildings and ground operations committee and legislative liaison sure we had a meeting on february 8th and i think that the main thing to come out of that meeting was um there's been discussion about taking the building the residential unit that we bought next door to the uh the band field uh we talked about converting that into space for the maintenance department uh we talked about this several months ago that you know probably in the second half of 2021 at that point my personal opinion is we either need to to occupy it or we need to raise it we cannot leave it vacant so so the the idea is to bring the maintenance department together in one location it will add for for better coordination
015among the the different employees of the maintenance department and it will allow for more effective coordination and frankly execution of what needs to be done in the schools um initially it was uh the constitute to make it usable in that format was about seventy four thousand dollars but since then uh we were able to to make some changes and it's about fifty seven thousand is what it would cost and that's actually part of the billions and grounds uh agenda today is to approve that um i believe that it is in our best interest to utilize the building that's there i'm not sure that any of the 57 000 it should be need to be raised if the levy should pass but but i think that the advantage of of having that the maintenance department together
016is is very useful um one other thing that would be part of this is there's a uh right now we utilize the underneath the stands for storage so part of this effort would be to also build a still building which would take about 14 spots in the overflow parking that building would not be permanent because we don't know exactly again if the level should pass we don't know where buildings will be built so that building is is uh could be disassembled and put elsewhere there's nothing permanent about it and so that would not you know except for this this assembly there would be nothing lost and that's underneath the home bleachers so so that so would clean up the clean up the stadium and make it uh in the it would be enclosed so the
017materials there would be better preserved and what have you um one thing that we we often have and i'll just keep this short uh we we haven't we have had a fair amount of snow this year um and and uh remarkably for a change i think the uh the snowplow contract has worked out pretty well so that is a few fewer things keeping people up at night um let me see if there's anything else we covered a whole lot of different things um but i think those are the major items mrs grassley you were there as well though the fact that the building would be movable is the benefit to us just because um even if the levy passes we can we can take that out building and move it somewhere else and it would
018still be usable i did want to touch on the water leak that we had in john r if you could mr isak if you could please at least briefly touch on that because we had gotten some water bills i thought to me that was that was an important item that we had covered in that meeting we i received a phone call from the paynesville utility department they were informing me that we were going to receive a rather large water bill and they had noticed excessive water use through riverside at 585 riverside drive for over three and a half months we were not aware in my department of any complaints or notifications that we were not receiving water anywhere in the building upon getting the phone call i summoned several of the maintenance individuals we did
019an investigation and it turns out that in the crawl space under the underneath the john our first floor the three inch main water line that feeds the john our side of the building four of its mari wires had broken when the three inch water line dropped a good foot it snapped a three-quarter inch water line that was feeding one of the hallways for the school uh it is apparent that this water line according to the timeline that the water department gave us i was running for a good three to three and a half months the water was not going into the sewer it was actually going into the dirt floor and gravel flooring that is underneath the first floor of john r we shut the main valve off we pro pressed on a three-quarter inch
020shutoff valve to stop the leak and the next day we went back under and we reattached the water line that had broken when the main line had dropped the main line has now been supported everything is functioning i did call the water department to let them know we had found out what the issue was they are aware of it and they were passing along that information to the sewer department to let them know that we should not get a sewer bill uh for that and we have not heard any information since that point and just to be clear as you had described the meeting the water was going down underneath the building but it was it was draining into the earth we had no puddling outside the building there was no puddling underneath the building
021when we were crawling underneath there and the crawl space is about a 24 to 26 inch crawl space that is uh dirt and gravel debris and there was no water pressure issues or anything no no because the main line was still intact okay um it was just that one line that was feeding a couple areas that were more so the janitorial plaza and i i just thought it was a thing so i just thought it was um an interesting thing that had come up that you know goes to show that we have things that are going on in our buildings that we can't see anymore um that have an effect on you know could have an effect on the usability of our facilities um i just thought it was an important item thank you yeah
022i did receive the water drill was twenty thousand dollars like nineteen thousand dollars and they didn't send the letter so there's that they have a review committee process so i wrote letters and explained the situation and helped rich and just asking for if there's any relief that they can provide they have a program that that's in place so i sent that letter out last week so he was going to hear that any credit back to us what's the difficulties uh nowhere near that but i don't know okay you know much lower okay and there's some other things that we talked about with regard to to custodial support and other things but i think there's there's still being there's still a discussion so that's all i have next would be policy committee and booster organization uh
023ms hardin is not here i don't know if mr had to do that anything from the policy committee perspective we have done that okay joe should be ready probably i know that ms hardin did meet with the rpta um but i didn't get any update from her so um i have nothing required for there the rpta is gonna host their annual easter egg hunt for the first time i mean it was an annual and then it got canceled in 2020 and 2021 august august april 9th will be the rpta easter egg hunt here on the front lawn the riverside campus at two o'clock i think it always snows that day so you're not i hope not i think the last one we had was actually decent weather so we can keep ourselves all right next
024is the superintendent's report thank you we're going to go to where a month um we had 802 public cases reported to us the numbers are that are below reflect how many coded cases were in each of our schools last positive case that we received noticed was february 15th uh as you can see the week of february 21st of the four day week due to president's day we had absolutely no uh reports of any coping cases it's the far right bar side in there because it's a zero this is an interesting slide these are all the districts in lake county um reigns uh in terms of the percent of covet cases as it relates to student population or student enrollment as you can see we're the third lowest at 15.6 of our population pains while i
025still believe have masks but i think they have something going on where if you if they have five or less confirmed cases per week for three weeks straight they might ease off of the mask and as you can see on the very bottom there um kirkland meadow wycliff and little beast like remove their mask mandates this month so overall this reflects the whole season the whole school year and again the only much lower than us for wickliffe and painful city these are the number of quarantines we've got one quarantine it was a student that wasn't feeling well that tested negative but his parents one of his parents tested uh positive so that's why we have one in week 27. that was a self quarantine and as most people know probably in this room that the
026cdc rescinded their order that people were required to wear masks on public transit they rescinded that order on february 25th so we put out notice to our parents on saturday february 26 letting them know that it was not required anymore to wear a mask they still can if they want but bus drivers don't need to wear them um i don't think i saw any bus drivers wearing them uh today um but uh it was for effective today uh which was monday february 28th strategic plan update we're still working very hard getting this thing done uh february 11th the board we had a board work session to discuss the strategic plan as the board knows the four target areas that we're working with are teaching and learning safety climate and wellness fiscal responsibility and advocacy partnership
027and engagement february 23rd the central office of building leadership met to develop priorities and action steps and on march 17th uh we'll meet with the strategic plan facilitators to finalize the plan so we can roll it out to the board of education for a possible approval on march 31st this is a draft of our calendar for next year it's not official obviously until the board says it is um what i want to point out everything is pretty traditional here and in the past a few years we've always said that we're going to have spring break the last full week of march regardless of where easter fell and that's what we have here but as you can see uh good friday is on april 7th and holy monday is uh the 10th and uh school districts
028are still doing this uh spring break in the march last week and march i thought that was the only thing that was kind of odd is the fact that we would have spring break then we would go back four days and then we would have a good friday off and um holy monday so this is what we're presenting to the board is some districts are are still sticking to this um but i didn't know whether or not the board would have any feelings about about coming back for four days and then having a good friday off monday we always tell our parents that it's last week in march we didn't want to necessarily deviate from it what's your preference i would keep it just because we always say it's the last week of march you
029know i'm coming back for four days i'm not you know i'm not real thrilled about it but it just happens to fall that way think about it let me know um i would like to have it on the board agenda for the 31st through all possible and this has school starting on august 25th am i reading that oh no yeah before the kids would be the 25th i know in past boards i know obviously mr officials knew here but past boards they always want to start a little bit later a lot of other school districts are starting the week of the 15th we're going to start on the 25th we're usually a week behind with a lot of districts um we have two weeks of break in december and we're the kids last day would
030be uh june 2nd so we're not going too far into june when does kidron's done yeah the 30th it typically is i think it says no we haven't filled those dates in yet but it's typically like three or four days after the first day of school first day for kids i'm sorry first first grade yeah one through twelve um yeah just uh i i can send it to you via email you know you take a look at it just let me know two other things um i have mrs bailiff something there yeah mrs davis wants to give a quick a report of a project she initiated out of her office so i will hand out we were able to publish a local school a riverside local school district service recognition and this includes all of
031our staff um all 534 35 depending what day you're signing but this was put out several weeks ago still working on making some minor updates collect the information was collected from payroll reports going into people's files if they had any breaks in service started as a substitute so again we just wanted to do as best as we could to get it out there where all of our current employees stand with their years of service we hope to publish it publicly we're looking at kind of a light version of it because it is pretty hefty and it includes all of our staff and their work location so slimming it down for the public to share it has also been suggested and i did work with one of our tesol teachers at buckeye teresa curb off we
032worked on it for about three months to pull together still getting some feedback but we also met with our union representatives and we're happy to see it and kind of got the ball rolling on what comes next it's amazing how many people we have here that have been here like or more years it's pretty cool thank you um there's been a lot of discussion in their last couple board meetings about what kind of mental health services we try to provide in our district like mr official said in as much as we try to do what we can as educators we're not experts in that area we don't claim to be but we do contract with some professional organizations out there that help us provide uh some mental health services to our students and i thought
033it would be a good time to at least present what it what we offer to our students and i have um i have mrs lightning is going to present this so i would like to go into a little bit i'm going to start with a little bit of background with regards to mental health services i'm sure many of you you're not able to watch tv or read the newspaper without seeing the impact that we are facing today with mental health across our student population both statewide and nationally just a little bit in terms of what mental health is it refers to the emotional psychological and social well-being of an individual it includes the individual's ability to navigate through life's challenges develop positive relationships adapted changes and utilize coping mechanisms along the way what we know
034about the development of mental health and youth and adolescents we know that childhood and adolescence are critical stages for the development of mental health we know that there's rapid growth and brain development that occur during this time period and negative experiences and traumatic events during youth and adolescence can significantly impact a student's mental health the consequences of not addressing mental health issues in youth and adolescence can have less and have a lasting impact across into adulthood you can spend a lifetime trying to forget a few minutes of your childhood and the types of traumatic events that we're seeing and dealing with nowadays i'm sorry include physical sexual or psychological abuse natural and technical disasters such as hurricanes terrorism and coven domestic violence community violence the death of a close friend or relative war and military
035related situations such as deployment or injury serious accident or illnesses divorce bullying discrimination and homelessness all these types of traumatic events can lead to trauma-related stress in youth and adolescence quick story um when i actually first graduated from college um i was a school psychologist and of course you graduate and at a um you're you know you're energetic and want to basically save the world and i really wanted to work with children which is why i went into the field to begin with and one of the first students that i began counseling in an elementary school i was down in cincinnati at the time was a fourth grade student who had significant behavioral problems and not producing in the classroom academically was not being successful and he was a student who um during first grade
036had come home after school to find his mom who had committed suicide and so this is the impact that he had in the school environment and he was trying to really deal with this horrible experience and the loss of his mother and i quickly realized at that time i wasn't saving the world but to make the difference in a student's life and to try to help him cope with this traumatic event and provide resources and assistance to him and even today i obviously still think about him and wonder of course he'd be you know graduated by now so um really was an eye-opening experience for me and then um the impact of trauma in youth includes anxiety depression low self-esteem and self-confidence behavioral difficulties substance abuse and suicide so prevalence rate of um of mental
037health disorders in youth so prior to the cobin 19 pandemic and i know we've even talked about this at some previous um board meetings in some of our committee meetings we were seeing an increase already across the board in our student population and a lot of mental health disorders anxiety and depression were probably the two most significant areas that we receive an increase in our adolescents and our high school students so prior to cobia 19 pandemic approximately 20 of children ages 3 to 17 in the united states had a mental emotional or developmental or behavior disorder from 2009 to 2019 the number of high school students who reported persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness was more than one in three students this is an increase of 40 percent suicide behavior also increased with an increase
038with 19 seriously considering attempting suicide and approximately 16 making a suicide plan this was an increase of 44 percent then between 2007 and 2018 suicide rates increased by 57 in youth ages 10 to 24. there were more than 6 600 suicide deaths in 2022 in this age group the pandemic has further impacted the mental health challenges facing youth and adolescence in the fall of 2021 experts in pediatric health did declare a national emergency in child and adolescent mental health i think you should go back to that that you meant to 2020 i think right 22 in this age so who's providing services um in the riverside school district we currently um contract with two mental health agencies i believe we began our um contract our partnership with crossroads health about four years ago and then
039we actually added on this year now we have signature health that is providing services to uh students in the district as well crossroads currently provides us with five counselors across the district or qualified mental health specialists and signature health provides us with two counselors to work with our at-risk high school students and students with significant social emotional and behavioral disabilities during 2020 and the during the 20 20 21 school year crossroads provided the following services individual under group counseling to approximately 250 students in grades kindergarten through 12th grade and then 145 plus hours of prevention training and assistance to staff and i just would like to um note that students are identified for mental health services through a referral process either by parent referral or student i'm sorry or riverside staff referral or as part
040of the iep process for students with disabilities and then how services are funded so mental health services in fiscal years 20 and 21 the district receives student wellness funding through the ohio department of education through the student wellness and success fund and then in fiscal years 2022 and 23 the district will receive funding from the following sources the disadvantaged people's impact act um which we will be receiving 95 521.49 and then the base cost student wellness and success component which will receive eight hundred 227 four dollars and twenty nine cents are there any questions about any services that we provide within the district next is the treasures report and committee update so a finance and audit and personnel committee and strategic and this is dropping so i'm just going to touch on the strategic plan
041dr kayla said our just gave us an update on what's going on here um i have an update from patty coslow who's cheering or you know facilitating the plan development um and she just indicated that things were going well and that after the central administration has their meetings with their administration teams they're going to be starting to draft the goals they have some meeting time set aside for that and then we should get that plan in completion for our march 31st board meeting um and you know based on the information that was provided to us by our central administrative team at our work session on the 11th it sounds like it's going to be a really you know addition to our district so i'm happy to see that so we'll see more of that in
042our next full board meeting we had a personnel and finance committee meeting on february 17th at 8 30. we had a number of agenda items we covered all the things that are in our finance and personnel agenda here we one of the things that we did talk about at length two things was we have a item b on our finance agenda is the permanent appropriations revision of those permanent appropriations because we got additional funding so every time we do that we have to you know reappropriate our permanent appropriations so that we can actually spend the dollars that will get granted to us so that's what that's for if anybody has a question on that we also talked about the new funding formula and that there's not really any material changes or updates at this time
043mr platko and i are attending a workshop tomorrow it's not really a workshop it's a it's a discussion-based forum for the new funding formula where you can actually provide some input to the people that are after the first couple payments that we've received some conversation on that so that will be interesting um we discussed in brief about the difficulty of finding tech support for our you know tech department um and that it's it's becoming increasingly difficult to find individuals to fill those positions um so we talked about that and other than that that about wraps up my summary for that meeting mr placo all right i have a short update tonight we are out to bid right now for the employer replacement project that was moved to middle school as you know middle school will
044remain regardless of the results of the may levy the bid opening date is march 14th at 1 pm so at that point we will uh open bids and see what that project is and hopefully on march 31st approval earning contract to the lowest um an update on the cell tower you know a few years ago we erected the south tower outback um improvement fund that the proceeds from the cell tower go there for turf replacement um it's a verizon cell tower well american tower has now added a t to that tower so we'll get an extra 300 a month through that and so we currently have eighty-two thousand dollars in that turf replacement fund and we'll collect about twenty three thousand that that was the foreign purpose of putting it up in the back there
045that land is of really no use because it's so close to the uh but uh understand that once you when we put the turf in it was everything was out the door was like 850 some thousand dollars to replace it if you already have turf in and you replaced her if you're looking at um north of 400 and some thousand dollars so our whole purpose with that field was to allow not only school-sponsored events on it but since we believe it as a community field we let all the youth programs that aren't really sponsored but our feeder groups to use it the average um life of the field uh in certain circumstances is 10 to 12 years since we have all this youth side we're thinking probably eight to ten by that time we'll hopefully
046have enough money not to have to dip into any type of pi level to have it replaced and the last thing i just wanted to point out this is a little confusing on the agenda under the building's ground section item a is to purchase three school buses uh through ohio schools council property purchasing bidding process and that's using the state of ohio grant that we talked about last month the 135 000 grant would go towards to purchase those buses the second resolution is to go out to bid for three more buses plus five special needs buses and that is um we talked about the us epa grant that hasn't been officially awarded yet but it's coming from sixty thousand dollars going to go back out to bid again because a high school council does it
047twice a year and that time has kind of lapsed so we got bid for the additional three buses and then hopefully purchase three more when we get awarded the us epa grant and the special needs buses we want the bid in the fall we were looking at possibly using uh american rescue plan idea funds for that we're still looking into that so we figured we'd go out and rebuild it again just because we got the physically actually making purchases and there's no cost to that program so we can just blocked it later if we want to pursue that or not once we get all our ducks enroll make sure that we can do what we're trying to do that's why it's a little confusing to see we're buying three buses but they have to do
048for and then the plan to kind of move buses through and buy new buses we're in a really good place then based on some of the grants and the purchase of new buses correct yes we're trying to buy five a year to get a 10-year um the special needs bus area is somewhere that still needs attention so we might have to make a purchase of a few regardless of if we can utilize grandfather now we'll kind of cross the bridge participation portion so anyone wishing to address the board of education will be recognized by the board of president speakers are requested to identify themselves in their topic comments are limited to three minutes sorry hi my name is tim hickey i'm a peytonsville township resident i'm also a full-time engineer with 17 years of experience
049in piping expansion compensation seismic control and hot water heating in the construction industry the reference that ms grassy made to point out that there's things not that you can't see going on in a building is a definite highlight to the problem that he pointed out of a cost cutting measure i will guarantee you those pipes do not have proper expansion compensation or flexible connectors the result of putting a levy in that's going to clearly fall short are these cost cutting measures that go into the construction and it's only people with no experience on the board that have supported this levy but really what i want to ask is about the rally meeting that ms grassy organized outside of a full public invite in support of the levy does the board present to the public both
050sides of the issue i will tell you because i have current experience the concord fire stations i use this as an example they were putting out for two fire stations they came in so over budget that they can only build one i will also use an example from first-hand experience as ms grassy said the consultant that gave you guys the numbers for this project was from january of 2022 well hey tomorrow march 1st there is a 13 material supply increase that nobody in january would have accounted for because i work in that industry directly and i didn't know about it until two weeks ago i will also point out that our lead times have doubled doubled from 12 weeks to 24 weeks in the last 15 days now i knew that lead time was coming
051consultants did not but again does the board present it equally or is it just a rally to to only gain support because i don't feel like our community is being heard or represented by this board when a board member organizes some sort of event like that that i wasn't invited to i'm very active i've definitely noticed that the social media pages put up something within 13 hours of the meeting the last board meeting pointing out support or trying to gain traction for this ill-timed ill-advised levy the people in this room with 20 40 60 80 years of construction industries have pointed out the obstacles it's not about not building a school it's about putting the levy up at this time that's going to add tax dollars and for the rest of my life and then
052going to need another levy so i would like to see some equal representation you originally said hey we're only putting this up because i promised the voters but now you're holding rallies for it miss grassy are you giving both sides of the story thank you my name is brian massey e196 rainbow drive in concord township i firmly believe that honesty integrity and transparency are the keys to good governance and an informed electorate i come before the school board and administration to express my displeasure at your lack of transparency with the taxpayers of the school district in communication with the taxpayers he only stated that there's going to be a 5.37 5.37 mill bond levy on the may 3rd ballot you failed to disclose the facts the terms for 37 years the amount is 147 million
053725 000 the interest on the 37 year bond levy will be between 100 to 130 million dollars the architects recently increased their project cost from 135 million 994 to the 147 725 in the summer of 2021. the 147 725 is subject to increase i looked at the performance of the riverside school district during the school year 2018 2019 riverside received a grade of f from the state of ohio because you only met nine of 24 standards the overall proficiency scores for 2018 through 2019 for all grades and all subject is 75 of the nine school districts in lake county you rank fourth in proficiency with the 75 the proficiency scores are less in similar districts in 11 subjects that's 52 you couldn't even compete with similar districts and you scored less than the state standard
054which is only 65 in two subjects algebra and government the math proficiency scores for high school algebra was 54.5 and geometry was 64.4 from 2011 to 2020 the overall property tax the annual tax has increased 10 million 390 993 that's a 35.5 increase for the period of 2011 through 2021 enrollment has dropped by 763 students that's 14.7 for the period 2011 versus 2021 the cost per student has increased by 4726.73 that's a 58.9 increase so let me recap for you you're asking the taxpayers of the riverside school district to spend up to 277 million dollars for two new schools and your justification is this your enrollment is down 14.7 percent you have you receive enough from this state give them a little give them a little more time would you okay come on you know
055it's not going to really impact the length of the meeting to give a guy a reasonable amount of time to talk 1023 madison avenue i would like to yield as much of my time that mr massey needs to finish just going over these numbers that are very important for all of us to see or hear thank you mr graham your enrollment is down 14.7 over 10 years you received a net from the state for not meeting your standards your average proficiency score risks i know for all grades and the subject is 75 you're spending 58.91 more per student in 21 versus 2011 and you've now introduced responsive classroom teaching to introduce equity into the schools which will take the lowering of the standards because you're going to have less time to spend on the academics
056i'm requesting that the school start to think about the three r's again as opposed to this social justice that you're you have not demonstrated that we should support i've spent 80 000 in the in the 16 years that i've lived in this township so all we're doing is producing average students and you want us to spend more money to produce average students it's not acceptable so when you have a meeting in march and april make sure you tell the complete story of your performance please thank you thank you you're using sports from 2018 the scores from uh this past year just because this is a public participation i know i would like to i'd like to point some things out though performance index were second in the county the performance index oh the only one
057that scored better than us in performance at dex was kirkland we had a 83.9 as opposed to kirtland's 90.9 um in terms of the state report card in the areas of algebra government history biology english language arts and geometry in the county in algebra one we were third at the high school government we were eight history we were five biology we were three ela english language arts we were three and we were fifth in geometry for again the total performance index at the high school we were third out of the nine schools the only ones scoring higher than us were kirtland and perry okay can i can you share that with mr mouse it's uh you can look at it it's on the october uh video from our school improving students at risk readers uh
058we're the highest out of the nine uh school districts so i i i'm not sure why we're using data from four years ago but there's more current data i'd like to know why i didn't get a response to my question but mr massey gets a direct response from the superintendent i was correcting though i was putting out some uh scores from that are more recent data for his reference points where we're using data to current okay okay i just want to go back to the public participation is there any other public participation and i'm going to read something really quick i have permission to share this my name i'm sorry my name is jessica nagy i have two students in the district an eighth grader at this campus and a third grader um then i'm
059gonna leave because i'm not here for this i'm here for part of the mental health and a crisis that's happening on this campus um i'm not going to read this whole whole thing this is very difficult for me um i permission from my best friend to share this to whoever finds this i'm sorry but this world isn't for me i can't do it anymore i am done to those who cared i'm sorry to those who said that i was going to kill myself or the constant harassment saying i'm worthless and should die will you win i'm sorry to my friends i'm sorry to my family i hated most of everyone the only people who are allowed to cry are paisley cassidy anna ella michaela helena michaela my mom my dad tony my siblings my close
060friends and family and finally sarah g i'm not going to say their names because they're students here and she goes on to say more this is from a 15 year old that goes here my best friend's daughter who's currently in the hospital now who tried to commit suicide on friday while you all are here talking about numbers and crt and banning books i don't know if you're all aware of what is happening at this building every day the fights there was one today the kid had to go to the hospital the racial slurs my daughter's biracial she hears this every day she's being called nnn word with the hard r mr fishel it's a problem it's a crisis problem the seven fights last week were because of the racial slurs we're because of child pornography
061being out i hope you know that every day these kids are being harassed and bullied and my best friend's daughter tried to commit suicide on friday and she's at rainbows right now this was her suicide note and you guys want to sit on your hoity-toity desks roll up your sleeves and see what's going on at this campus it's not about the numbers these kids are in crisis here this is everyday folks every day there's a fight i'm sorry and my time is up and i'm going to leave but you need to be aware of what's happening at the school every day please pray for my daughter my best friend's daughter thank you please carry on with your budgets i'm going to go home and check out my best friend and her daughter any other public
062participation today my name is al adams i live in leroy township um i also i know my clock started but the one thing i've seen in these board meetings is the board responding and answering questions during the meeting which i didn't see happening maybe there's more people but i have two issues the first is i'm curious if the school board is aware of the admissions policy change at auburn career center where they went from a interview process transcripts referrals a standard process to a lottery a standard lottery the best of my research not one of the ten districts were notified it was unilateral decision that was made over there i'd love to be corrected if i'm wrong and find out if there was participation but if there doesn't appear to be and if they didn't
063you didn't know about it is there excuse me any interest in stepping in and voicing your opinion on that one way or the other the other question is in regards to these meetings and i'm not going to lecture you on the levy or anything else too bad but who's in charge of the social media for the schools for the facebook and the twitter because i'll just add to what tim said the levy issue went up the next morning for the school i just went back on there sitting here and tried to find notification on those medias for a school board meeting and i couldn't find one i saw a post for after the meeting and what might have happened but the one thing i see when i post that i come to these meetings are
064people saying oh please remind me next time now i'm sure that there's something in the bylaws that says you have to put in the newspaper because we know in 2022 that's what everybody's reading but why doesn't somebody take the initiative to post on the school page when these meetings are so maybe there would be a better public participation i'd pray and maybe more people will come and be informed instead of just making one-sided decisions themselves based on what they see their friends or family or somebody post because that's the real goal the goal of these people here they're informing themselves you know how big your district is this isn't enough people this isn't enough people so you could do some little things to help inform them on what the meetings are they follow the school
065page oh look there's a school board meeting i'm gonna go nobody's cracking open the paper you know they're not not that has kids in this school more than likely and then just also to put numbers behind that i double check these numbers what he's talking about the percentage increase my first question is what was the number that they raised the original estimate to because the actual numbers for the fire station and i confirmed this with trustees over there they figured eight million dollars for the one fire station they're 1.8 million dollars over that budget right now which is 22.5 increase and that just happened so that's that's a real statistic locally of something that just happened you i'll stop any others i'm josh i have two daughters and uh kind of big backing on what
066um stratums have mentioned is i agree we uh haven't seen much in terms of really looking at where we're at as a community in the time of the world that we're living in where our economy has been crumbling and costs have been skyrocketing and how can you adjust for increases in all avenues like timelines and increasing costs and you're expecting us as a community to want to foot that bill and knowing that we've you guys had already made a decision without informing us as taxpayers for this district about the critical race dairy program there is not a critical there is not a race issue in this district as far as i can tell my daughters hang out with all races and creeds and i feel like a lot of what is happening with the divisiveness
067of trying to keep everybody divided critical race theory is going to definitely continue to add to that which then puts a bigger toll on to your discussion about children's mental health this whole divisive world we're living in is a big mess for the kids growing up in this world and that's what has me upset because i've had to deal with it in my own home for two very well adjusted children that are excelling in school but struggling with their emotions and dealing with friends that are battling all kinds of problems everybody needs a label nowadays because of programs like critical race area it's unjust it makes no sense we we have all we have my daughters have friends that are identifying now as a boy previously a girl they have friends that are of african-american
068and i have other things to even mention on that too but they get along fine you know they have a nice strong network there and marching band but this mental mental health is a real problem right now and we need to be focused on what we can do to help the kids look for programs that continue to divide them and push them into isolation with anxiety and not being accepted we need to be looking at programs that bring people together and not looking at ways to to to wedge people i don't have a whole lot more to say but i just have seen a lot my daughters know of two children that have committed suicide since last year my daughter went to prom with a gal that committed suicide and then over the christmas holiday
069the young man that took his life on a cruise ship lived in our neighborhood and was a friend of my daughter so yeah we've had to deal with a lot of it too so her lashing out makes i understand but it's everybody's dealing with it it's called getting involved and being a parent thank you yeah my name is chris weiss i live in leroy township two students in the high school one at parkside elementary i got three things i want to try to cover in the three minutes uh number one i'm against this sel learning okay uh critical race theory and any derivative thereof um you know social issues religion those kinds of things that's my job to teach in my home it's not your job to teach and i do not defer that to
070you guys to do okay so i'd like to see that go away completely second thing discipline and dress code in the school last fall before the board elections i attended a public meeting and brought it up with two of the school board members who were seated at that time i got called a sexist misogynist for bringing up the fact that although this school district has a dress code that is printed and is supposed to be abided by although there have been multiple uh school emails and newsletters sent out reminding the students to include that when uh they had the letter ceremony over here in the field house that that was a professional attire event and the students were put on notice to to dress appropriately they don't okay and even though it is still winter
071time and it's 20 some odd degrees going to school you still have many students both females and males violating that dress code this goes to the the problem of discipline in the school okay my two sons uh that are in the high school freshman and sophomore they have entirely um ap and honors classes okay so in that note in their classroom things go pretty well the kids that are in those classes want to be there to learn my children don't go into the bathrooms during school okay uh not it's not that they're afraid they're gonna get their ass kicked in the bathroom but because of what goes on in these bathrooms smoking uh bullying tearing up the bathrooms i instruct my kids if you see a group of kids doing something they don't they're not
072supposed to be doing don't be there okay so when i say that my kids are afraid to go in the bathroom again it's be that they don't want to be in a place where when someone does try to crack down on the discipline that they're caught up in something that they were not involved in okay you had six fights last week uh six or seven there's a kid i don't think that has a lot to do with the fact that the kid is constantly involved in fights my sons have told me this occurs on a daily basis the students are also blockading bathrooms and are openly defiant to the teachers and the teachers tell me i spoke to 10 of 11 of my students teachers last week at student teacher conferences and they all tell
073me that it is out of control in this school that when they send a kid to the office the kids either don't go or they come back with a note and during the same class period time the teachers do not feel that the faculty is supporting them in managing this problem and it's only getting worse and if i could if i could ask for the remainder of scott's time one last thing i'd like to close a loop on here okay with regard to the school levy okay we're not against um providing our children the very best possible education and resources to learn okay but we don't support this levy to spend what with with debt service will be nearly 300 million dollars okay it's you don't you don't start a construction project without even so
074much as a sketch of what you're going to build and then say here write us a blank check and we'll let you know what we're going to build later okay that's just that's just insane okay and so you know and i want to say this too i have a huge investment in this school district okay this is my father's diploma he graduated june 1952 the first class out of riverside okay anybody wants to come and look at this bears the original link signatures of john r williams uh lemooth clyde head and evil at hazen okay i graduated in 1983 from this school my ex-wife my uh my kids grandparents uh all their cousins we're in our fourth generation of this family coming to the school okay i've invested my life here in my businesses my
075home and my property okay i've paid a ton of property taxes more than probably most people because of the other business ventures i have in this district okay so i do care we want to partner with the school board to help get to where we need to be with the resources with the infrastructure the edifice that will sustain this school district okay we do not believe that what you what the three to two decision is going for is going to succeed okay we know it's going to fail i have 37 years of construction management experience i hold advanced degrees in engineering and business management we have a gentleman sitting to my left who worked on the construction of the perinuclear power plant i've had discussions with him okay you cannot launch a project like this
076with no idea what you're ultimately going to build and tie yourself into uh a particular number when you have 37 years of debt service when you have in three years you're gonna have to get a renewal on your operating levy and when you're already looking at a ten percent pay cut from the state when you're already at the state floor of five percent funding okay this is ludicrous lastly i want to say that we want our side wants access to the school website to post our side of the issues we want to come and uh to the meetings that you're holding i believe that ms grassie and or mrs degrassi and the other females that are involved in these meetings may be violating the sunshine laws and if we find out that that's true we're
077going to follow up on it okay i'd also like to have a public debate where we can bring several of our people to debate your side of the issue in front of the public and so that they are completely and fully informed about the ramifications of what they're about to vote on on may 3rd thank you that brings us to our consent agenda portion of the meeting um finance and audit consent agenda i'm sure we have a motion shift from the items listed on the finance and on the consent agenda is recommended by the treasure writers a through h wait a second um i just wanted to uh thank the individuals for the donations that are in item h we have a hundred dollars in 1922 coffee and brew to the drama club and we
078have five hundred dollars from g c x s uh g g c x c sorry northern ohio volunteers to the riverside high school national honor society so thank you to them is there any other discussion of these agenda items can we call hello mr platform scott fishel all right degrassi hi lauren aye tom aye motion carry consent agenda for personnel sure we have a motion feature deities listed on the personnel consent agendas recommended by the superintendent items a through g for a second any discussion on any of these items not coming for the role elizabeth hi hi tom here all right uh consent agenda for curriculum and programming mostly to approve the items a through d on the curriculum and programming uh is recommended by the superintendent they have a second place thank you mr
079official during the discussion consent agenda for buildings and grounds and operations motion to prove the items listed on the billings and grounds consent agenda items a through e uh it's recommended by the superintendent is there a second a second thank you very much any discussion all right we call the rollers i'm back all right scott officials all right clinton grassy hi board of education update i would just like to invite the public to come and attend the drama production anything else all right so motion to adjourn to executive session at 8 19 can i have a pm to discuss security arrangements scott official all right carey