001i would like to call to order the june 7 2021 board of education work session at 5 p.m roll call please jason whitaker here jerry bettio here nancy brown here lisa johnson bowers here jessica wright here you'll please stand for the pledge i pledge allegiance okay may have a motion to adopt tonight's agenda so moved second any discussion hey roll call whitaker hi perio aye brown aye johnson bowers aye right aye okay the first item on our agenda is a recognition i'm gonna go ahead and turn it over to mrs bro all right thank you so much mr bratton and i would like to congratulate along with the rest of the district our spring sports state qualifiers so i'd like to start off with recognizing our five state qualifiers for track so we had jayla
002atkinson in the 800 meter she placed third as a freshman xavier preston and the 100 meter and then our 4 by 200 meter relay xavier preston brian turner clayton mosher and dustin horner so congratulations to them what a great accomplishment yeah really wow that's something else okay moving on to superintendent's recommendation um ms pro any comments so um we are going to eliminate our current administrative position of our emis coordinator so we are going to move those services onto and under neonet for efficiency we already contract with neonet for many of our services they are our go-to when we have questions for emis so it'll just streamline our process okay may i have a motion to approve the elimination of the administrative position of emis coordinator so moved second any discussion may i make one
003more comment yes we would like to thank pam canfield for her service to the district she retired previously has been rehired and we want to thank her for her years of service any other discussion okay roll call betty oh i brown aye johnson bowers aye whitaker aye right aye okay can i have a motion to approve tonight's consent agenda please so moved second all right um ms pro any comments um i don't have any other comments that's what's already in the agenda to approve the district's waste removal service agreement with waste management of ohio okay any discussion from the board um i have a question i know waste management management is a reliable company but have we ever looked into any other company for their services i know we've had them for quite a number
004of years uh mrs bettie we participate in the schools council consortium that's up in off rockside road i can't tell you the exact name but they do certain bids and they consolidate those bids from companies in and around and do many schools to get the best price so that's how this uh that's how we came to pick waste management so okay all right thank you any other questions or comments okay roll call please brown hi johnson bowers aye whitaker aye video aye right aye okay next item treasurer's recommendation instagram you have any comments i asked the board to approve the creation and appropriation of the educator initiative grant from the gar foundation in akron for the amount of six thousand eight hundred and seventy dollars once a first and second uh we will in past
005we can set this up for the teachers to start the process of spending their grant okay may i have a motion please so moved second any discussion all right roll call please johnson bowers aye whitaker aye video aye brown aye ray aye thank you okay old business so under all business we have our neola board policy number 5336 and this is our care of students with diabetes this is our second reading we had our first reading on 5 24 21. it was reviewed by the policy committee on march 29th and may 20th and i do have copies if anyone in the audience would like one okay i believe that's moves us to our next the work session we have one item for our work session that is board support of dei objectives ms brown you
006asked to have this added so i'll go ahead and turn it over to you thank you mrs wright mr whitaker mrs bettio and miss johnson bowers i asked for this discussion how we as a board of education can support the objectives of the diversity equity and inclusion or dei committee beyond saying the words we support them what action can we take for example what changes can the policy committee recommend that will codify the dei objectives what can the safety committee implement that will support the dei objectives and what action items can be added to our superintendent's performance evaluation to hold him accountable for the success of our dei initiatives we cannot answer those questions right now because as a board we do not fully understand or appreciate what the dei committee's work is and i'm
007deeply concerned that as a board we are not even in agreement about the need for this work the scope of this work is broad and can seem daunting even overwhelming mr whitaker said at our last meeting that he had never heard this phrase used before but we cannot eat the whole elephant at once my plan therefore is to break the issues being addressed by the dei committee into manageable pieces and for us to work on a few pieces in every work session this is not in place of or in addition to the work of the dei committee but in full cooperation with it my goal today is to inspire you to action and believe me i am stepping far outside of my comfort zone to do it i wholeheartedly despise conflict and strenuously avoid confrontation
008yet here i am like you i ran for school board because i want to make a real impact in our community the primary need of our students all of our students is to feel safe and included and they don't they don't all feel safe they don't all feel included they don't all feel like the curriculum addresses their lived experiences and that's a problem we have heard from families who are pulling their black students from stone monroe falls schools because we have failed to create a safe and inclusive environment for all of our students and i know we all want our students to feel safe and included at school but when when it comes to matters of race there is still hesitancy from this board to address it in some ways i understand that because i
009used to be there too until a year or so ago i didn't understand how important it was to talk about race and actually take action against racism exactly 40 years ago on this very day 146 classmates and i graduated from washington senior high school in our little town in rural southwestern ohio we were the end of the baby boom generation born when kennedy was the president toddlers when the civil rights act was signed into law and just starting school when dr martin luther king jr was murdered as a white middle-class child with two educated parent college-educated parents i was always placed in the advanced classes where my teachers challenged me and encouraged me the five black students in my grade were never in the same classes as me in high school i enrolled in the
010college prep classes while my black peers were shuffled off to the vocational school 20 miles away and of course this all seemed completely normal to me but now in hindsight i see how miserably the school system failed them how the unconscious or even perhaps conscious bias of my administrators and teachers created a gap between the students of color and the rest of us it's crazy that here we are 40 years later and the system is still failing black students it's crazy that here we are now in a position of power and i'm pleading for this board to take this seriously and to commit to meaningful change so the question is how can we commit to making changes for our students of color first off the work starts with ourselves recognizing the bias that each of
011us carry and that's hard it takes sincere committed effort to identify and understand our biases one of the best examples of bias is the hesitancy to simply say black lives matter this simple phrase saying that someone's actual life matters should not be a difficult thing to get behind but that's where bias comes in until our entire board can say without hesitation that black lives matter how can black families and students possibly feel safe supported and included in our district why do we need to recognize our bias because this unintentional bias left unchecked and undisputed becomes intentional racism i know this is hard to hear and it's natural for our immediate reaction to be to feel defensive but ultimately this isn't about us it's about making sure that all students have a place in stowe monroe
012falls schools we have to do the right thing here we have to do the work to make sure that every student feels valued respected and safe secondly the next step is to understand what we as individuals bring to our roles as members of the board of education how do our individual experiences attitudes and beliefs shape our work two weeks ago a mother stood before us and told us a heart-wrenching story about how she nearly lost her son to suicide because he was being bullied for being black imagine if that had been your child she wrote a follow-up email and i'm disappointed to learn that she did not hear back from all of us can you imagine if that had been your child and your story and no one cared enough to respond how can black
013families and students feel safe and included in our district when we can't even acknowledge their pain last summer when letters about black student experiences were shared with us one of our members was so disinterested and so unengaged she laughed and smiled while letters that describe the actual suicides of black students at the high school were read again how can black families and students feel safe and included in our district when we fail to listen when the chairs of our dei committee invited each of us to individual meetings only three of us accepted the invitation how can black families and students feel safe when we refuse to even learn what the committee is doing two weeks ago one of our members stated publicly that she sees no need for diversity equity and inclusion work in our
014schools that she's more concerned about the potential discomfort white students may experience if a more inclusive version of american history is taught how can black families and students feel safe when the implication is that a white student's comfort is more important than their sense of safety the same member questioned the wisdom of the jury in the george floyd murder trial and denied that any violence occurred at the u.s capitol on january 6. how can black families and students feel safe when a school board member refuses to accept that the justice system did its job or admit that a deadly insurrection occurred a quote that makes sense for these times is all that is necessary for the triumph of evils is that good men do nothing nothing will change if we do nothing and culture change
015is hard work our job as board members demands that we advocate for all students in this district that we ensure a learning environment that is welcoming and nurturing and above all safe and inclusive if we fail to provide this for even one student we have failed them all we have the responsibility and the opportunity to make that happen and yes in our dei work we will need to address the safety concerns of our asian american students and our jewish students and our lgbtq community as i've said our job is to make sure that all students feel safe and included in conclusion i repeat my goal for tonight's discussion which is that every member of this board will commit to doing the work to one identify our own biases and how they play a role in
016our decision making two get comfortable confidently saying black lives matter and three commit to working on pieces from the dei committee at every board work session mrs wright mr whitaker mrs bettio and ms johnson bowers i am asking you to do the work i am asking you to take this seriously and commit to doing the work of the dei committee because it's the right thing to do i am asking you to make this work a priority and give it the time and attention it deserves i am asking you to see things through the eyes of our students and families who feel vulnerable and understand how necessary this work is for our community i am asking you to build on our shared belief in the power of education and work together to ensure a safe welcoming
017and inclusive environment for every student justice ruth bader ginsburg said fight for the things that you care about but do it in a way that will lead others to join you i care deeply about this and urge you to join me thank you mrs brown could you give me just kind of a an idea of when i think a work session is certainly the appropriate place to have those conversations the individual pieces and breaking it down is a great idea can you give me an idea what it is you'd like to see sure um for example today that within the dei committee are several committees the one i've been part of has been the community committee and that committee has been made up of not just school people but also the police chiefs in both
018stone monroe falls mayors city council members and part of what we've worked on all year is actually we're actually in the process of producing right now which is a video outlining why we each wanted to do this work and interestingly just sitting there listening to each person get up and kind of present why they were there it gave me all sorts of additional ideas we could have the police chief of stowe and the police chief of monroe falls sit with us and talk to us about what they've done in their police work and how that impacts the school because that does include the school resource officers we could have the committee that's working on the curriculum talk to us about what they've looked at what they've found the personnel committee could talk about the what
019they're doing to attract a more diverse um staff um but we could tracy cosmetic and i talked about it at length about just different ways we could break this down depending on what either a what the board is interested in we could lead it and say this is what we would like to hear or we can rely on the dei committee to say these are what we think what we think the board would be most interested in where we could use the most support from the board or certainly a combination thereof i think i think from a transparency point of view that's actually really a great idea and you know our dei committee is not a board committee in that it's not a for example not all five of us are there and so having
020people come to the work session and having that discussion i think is actually a really great idea um give it up give the rest of us an opportunity to have a frank conversation um [Music] it's such a broad topic and it it i feel overwhelmed by it a lot i feel like the sense of i want to take action i want to take action and i don't know what to do and then through this process i've been finding there are things to do to work on its pieces parts and and i think also our dei committee has been in existence now for a year and they've they've made a lot of headway but it's it's really when in the grand scheme of things it's this small step and i think at this point i think
021they're probably ready to start presenting yes their information to us so i think i think that's a great idea um just quickly we were talking about policy you had mentioned policy and i know there is a policy committee i've sat on it up until my new job and i no longer can make the right the time for it but i know that that is something that they've been working on and so having them come and talk about what they'd like to see in a policy or what is right beneficial and and will help us as a board discuss it and then we can take it to the policy committee to do you know the how does this work in our district how does this work for us what are the what are we getting ourselves
022into legally that kind of stuff the the less touchy feely right things so and it gives us a chance to address the concerns about critical race theory and if that's going into our our curriculum or not which in their presentation two weeks ago mrs collier specifically stated it's not but it's a chance to have that as a conversation instead of just we don't want this well we're not doing it well it's it's more than that it's more detailed than that and we can we can have that discussion and and really ask a lot of questions and certainly demystify what what the work that's being done right you know and i look at the safety committee especially right now since there are concerns about students not feeling safe i've talked to a couple other people that
023serve on that committee and we've we've bounced around some ideas of some things we could do and it needs to be obviously in conjunction with what the district as a whole is doing but just we need to look at some of those things so it's a chance really ultimately this this we're talking about culture change and it has to start at the top we can't wait for the committee to do it and have it spread out it needs to come from us we need to put the things in place that everybody else in the district can use and certainly we've got a committee that's doing an an enormous amount of work for us we're not having to go do all that leg work but we can certainly participate and and help and certainly is that
024real yeah sorry and as an aside and outside of the dei committee there are other committees that i would like to see more updates from too so i think this is a great opportunity for us to look at our work sessions and i know mrs johnson bowers has brought this up repeatedly let's have a real work session yeah so i think that that adding this and then looking at our other committees for additional updates would be it would be helpful too very good thank you what for my part what i would like to see rather than some kind of standing try to fit something into every single work session i have a philosophical not issue with with that i would really like the committees and the the people working on that committee to come to
025us when they have something that they want to present and make them feel empowered to do that rather than have a standing slot because you could end up with a lot of different initiatives having standing slots and then sometimes the conversation isn't you know one week it might be a really big issue and then the next week they didn't really have a lot and i don't want to start the process of giving lip surface to any community unnecessary because they don't necessarily have anything to bring at that moment and so i guess with regard to a lot of the other committees and things going on it kind of i was more speaking generally i'd like to hear more in this forum no i i would too but i would like them to do it when
026they you know not necessarily uh do you know can we fit something into this meeting um because it kind of um i don't want to say cheap is the bigger things that they have going on but i i i guess i don't want to see them just come and try to fill time not that that's what they would do but this long table doesn't bode well for conversation anybody else like to add anything yes i have a few things to say i think the comments that i made at the last board meeting were misunderstood and i have a question to mrs brown since she's on the committee i would like you to give us some information on how this committee was started did the board approve it and when did they approve it i'd also
027like to know how we approved a ten thousand dollar stipend for each of the chair and co-chair of this committee and i'd like to know the dates that we approved it because i have no recollection of doing that secondly the only time that aisha and the co-chair we were at a meeting at lake views i believe it was lakeview school where they presented that they were going to start this committee so i have no recollection in it and if i'm wrong i stand corrected the other thing is i'd like to make a public announcement that i did not ignore the invitation to come to meet with this committee i had set a date and unfortunately something came up and i was not contacted by anyone to a future date to come to any meeting so
028you can't accuse any of us because we do have things in our life that sometimes come up that we cannot meet all our obligations and to say that we're not interested is a misstatement on their part i don't know if i can answer your question about how the committee was put together that would be more of a question for mr bratton cory i don't even know if mrs pro has any input on that i can jump in i mean i know how the process started the actual committee and the stipend i don't know that i can address so last year since i was the one the president last year we did have that on an agenda we did have a discussion on that and i believe the board did approve that dei committee with its
029structure that was put forth i don't recall mrs video whether we had a specific vote i know it was discussed at the at a meeting in which ms collier was identified as the chair and mr feldman and miss cosmets were were named as the co-chairs of that committee i think mr bratton probably would be the right person to answer the questions about the stipend well i wish someone would come and meet with the board as a whole so we can ask questions of how they're going to implement this when they're going to implement it how the teachers are going to implement it and i really feel that this is not a job our teachers are here to educate our children they are not here to get into the political arena such as this dei committee
030this is my feeling i'm not a racist person but i believe that the teachers have more important things to do than to sit down with kids from probably kindergarten or even at sixth grade level and tell them about what they should do and how they should behave their job is to educate the children in this district of any color any race any nationality anything and that's what we should as a board go ahead and make sure that they do is there a particular area of the committee that you would like to have come address you first or address us first i think they should all come so we can address all of them all of the different subcommittee chairs sure why not okay um any other discussion on this topic um i would like to
031add my understanding and i can clarify after the meeting uh with mr bratton is the dei committee is not a board committee so therefore it wouldn't have been approved by the board of education i did i was looking back in the previous agendas it appears on monday june 22nd of 2020 was our first statement that was drafted and was followed um it was immediately occurring prior around that time that they had that listening session so as a district we do have other committees within the within the district that are um not approved directly by the board of education superintendent committees well this type of curriculum that they're have on their agenda is not even approved as a curriculum item from the ohio board of education so why are we implementing it in the school district
032so that our teachers have to teach the children about diversity and inclusion and that sort of thing i wish somebody would explain that to me i believe mrs collier did as the curriculum supervisor she said it's we're following all the ohio department of education curriculum guidelines there is no new curriculum being instituted at this point well i'd like her to show me where this type of curriculum is in the ohio ode i think her point was that we haven't changed the curriculum so much as added inclusive materials to the curriculum correct yeah we've invested some some resources into purchasing materials where in the illustrations for example we have students that represent all of the nationalities and ethnicities you know within our district we had we went searching even prior to this for for materials where
033we had books that represented all of our students and we we struggled to find them so those are some of the main things that we've purchased so far but as far as any large scale changes to the curriculum none of that has occurred yet a real good place to start if it's ready before our next work session will be the the video that the community committee is putting together i think it will give you a good broad overview of who's involved and what issues and what areas of expertise they bring to the table as having worked with that group for a year i've really enjoyed that because like i said it's pastors and other community leaders and city councils and mayors and police chiefs fire chiefs it's it's just an interesting cross section and then
034listening to each person today sort of give their own summation of where they started and where they are now was really interesting today and i think can give a a real good base and starting point for us any other discussion okay the next item on our agenda is executive session we have three purposes for our executive session this evening we have one for the purpose of considering the employment of a public employee one for the purpose of compensation of public employees and one to consider the investigation of a complaint against a public excuse me a public employee or official may i have a motion please so moved second any discussion roll call please patio aye brown aye johnson bowers aye whitaker aye right aye we are in executive session at 5 30 pm we have
035no action after the executive session