001Good evening everyone. Welcome. Like to call to order this regularly scheduled board of education meeting, April 23rd, 2025. It is 5:30 p.m. Miss Stoy, would you please call the role? here. Mr. Gomez here. Mr. Harris here. Thank you. B is approval of the agenda. It is recommended that the board of education approves the agenda of the April 23rd, 2025 board of education meeting. Action by the board of education in adoption of a consent agenda means that all items are adopted by one singular motion unless a member of the board of education, treasurer, or superintendent requests that any such item be removed. from the consent as a consent agenda and voted upon separately. So move second. Thank you. M would you please call the role? IC is our opening ceremony versus ourformational item. This meeting is
002a meeting of the Kyogre Falls Board of Education in public for the purpose of conducting the school district's business. It is not a public community meeting, although there are opportunities for public participation. If an individual wishes to address the board regarding a topic found on the meeting agenda, the individual must complete a registration form found inside the attendance notebook and present it to the treasurer. Following the introduction of the topic by the board president, followed by board discussion, the individual will be recognized. If an individual wishes to address the board regarding a topic not found on the meeting agenda, he or she must notify the superintendent and board president of the topic no later than three business days in advance of the meeting. These individuals may share their comments during the board business portion of
003the agenda. In both cases, the individual will preface comments by an announcement of his or her name and address and limit comments to three minutes. All statements should be directed to the board president. No person may address or question board members individually. An unabed board agenda for this meeting can be found on your electronic device at the address shown on the screen. And for your convenience, hard copies of the board agenda may be found on the table by this sign in book over here to everyone's. The next policy committee meeting is May 12th, 2025 at 5:30 p.m. at the board of education offices, 405 road, Kyoga Falls. The next regularly scheduled meeting of the Kyoga Falls Board of Education is May 14th, 2025 at 5:30 p.m. in the Kyogre Falls High School Library. And now
004for our pledge of allegiance and welcome, Mr. United States of America and the Republic for it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Welcome. Our vision city, the hub of our community of caring. We innovate, we create, we personalize education for all. Our mission, every student, everyday, every opportunity. Thank you very much, Miss Stoke. Miss White um was not able to be with us. One of our board of education members, her husband R.J. passed away two weeks ago. And so we wanted to take a minute to um just have a moment for her and her husband. And Mr. Gomez is going to read some of her husband's with heavy hearts and profound sadness that we announce the passing of Robert John R.J. White, a cherished husband, devoted father, loving grandfather,
005and dear brother who left this world on April 9th, 2025 at the age of 72. R.J. was a remarkable man whose spirit touched the lives of everyone he met. Born on February 23rd, 1953, R.J. found joy and solace through his unwavering devotion to his loving wife, Patrice. Together, they built a beautiful life filled with laughter, joy, and a shared love for family where they raised their five wonderful children and on their two beautiful grandchildren. A proud veteran, R.J. served his country with honor and pride, embodying the ideals of bravery and resilience. His military service not only shaped him as a man, but also instilled in him values of integrity and commitment that he carried throughout his life. R.J. was also an unwavering fan of the Cleveland Browns. He spent countless Sundays cheering them on, filled
006with hope and anticipation for the day they would finally claim a Super Bowl victory. His enthusiasm was infectious, bringing and friends together in spirited gatherings filled with laughter, camaraderie, and the occasional debate over game plays and team rosters. As we say goodbye to a remarkable man, we take comfort in knowing that R.J. White will forever remain in our hearts, a guiding star, illuminating our past with love and inspiration. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Gomez. Our for sending our love and our thoughts, our prayers to her family. Item D is presentations. First, we have awarding of It is recommended that the board of education grants a Kyoga Falls High School diploma to the following individual who has now completed the requirements stated by the state of Ohio for high school graduation. Mr. Hi, Mr. Harris. Hi,
007Mr. Scher. Hi. Hi. Congratulations to [Applause] Brook. Next up we have um Mr. Peter with our bridge competitors and also you'd like to come up from the SE county engineers office. You guys You're the one [Applause] that you're far more important than um I'm uh the woodworking teacher at high school uh primarily and these gentlemen um are some of the gentlemen that were in my woods three class this year. And one of the things that we did there is uh we designed and built little balswood bridges uh for the Summit County Engineers uh annual competition. For those of you that don't know, uh balsa wood is actually the softest hardwood on planet Earth. So it's an incredibly soft little lightweight wood um that we use. And then the challenge for the kids is to try
008to come up with uh something very out of that very light material. Um, and off the top of my head, I can't remember. The competition is open to like all high schools in Summit County. Each school can bring up to three teams. A team consists of no more than three people uh on each team. And there were seven 27 28 teams there. This year um we brought three teams and uh our three teams finished first, second, and third overall. Um, I did just for I like visuals. So, I printed off um those are the designs for that these gentlemen all came up with. Uh the way we do it is I have every kid come up with their own design. first uh and then they get put together into groups and then as a group
009they look at each other's designs and they kind of have to come up with one design that they think works best from those three designs that they start with. Uh and then so this is what they kind of finished on. So you can tell each group's design is quite different from the others. Um which is kind of the cool part of the competition. And um they get three hours the bridge from scratch. Uh and for winning this year, um we have a representative from the Summit County Engineers Office of Ellen Brewaker County Engineer, I would like to present T team won for the winner of 24th annual building competition, but I mean the other teams did phenomenal also second third place and Peter might have not mentioned it but I think you guys got like
010a sweet spot because you know where the the weight that breaks the bridge could be up to the heaviest 157, right? And then like these bridges only weigh an measured in in grams. We have to like convert everything to the same units. So basically the the weight that's on top um you know that's the numerator and then the bottom is the weight of the bridge. So that's how they get an efficiency score and better the the higher the efficiency of the bridge, you know, that's [Applause] good job. Mr. Gas, if you could um distribute the certificates and then um if you could please all stay after for um photos after we do top tigers. We'd love to get your picture and congratulations. Awesome work. Wyatt, we keep seeing you week after week, bud. Thank you.
011And thank you to Mr. De um for coming as well. He actually I got some really cool pictures of the Route 8 project he was showing me earlier and how it's coming along and all the planning that goes into it. Not unlike what you guys had to do in three hours. Obviously takes longer than three hours to build a whole brand new route. But we're excited to drive over that when you know it's glued together. I We made that clear, but all the wood joints are glued together. It's really important. Congratulations. Next, I'd like to call up Miss Alison for the staff board. Good evening and congratulations. That was quite impressive. I get to continue with impressive people at the falls in um recognizing our April staff star award that's nominated by their colleagues. And
012before I call that person up, I want Cat Scoff to join me at the podium. She is who nominated our recipient and also Miss Jennifer Scalla the principal at Dwit. So this evening we are honoring Mr. Shane Davidson who is a pair professional at Dwit. Come on up Shane. Shane Davidson is an incredible asset to Dwit Elementary and Kaio Hoga Falls City Schools. His dedication to helping put students who need a little or a lot extra as a pair professional is impressive. daily. He strives to work with our students who struggle the most to integrate them into their general education classrooms and help them to be successful in whatever task they are undertaking. I have to believe he has the most physically demanding job in our school. Whether it's running after a little friend on
013the playground or helping that same friend off the floor when they're having a little bit of a meltdown, Shane never hesitates to do what's right for each child under his care. And let's just say he gets his steps in every day. His dedication to these students and to Paga Falls is unwavering and we're very lucky to be his co-workers and his friends. Want to say a few words about Mr. Davidson. Uh I'll tell you he's an exceptional pair professional. He has immense patience. His ability to remain calm in any situation is invaluable. He has great empathy and compassion for his students, providing comfort, encouragement, and builds trust with them. His ability uh his adaptability and flexibility in the elementary classroom uh can be unpredictable, and Chain is able to shift gears quickly and adjust to
014changing schedules while supporting the unique needs of his students. His enthusiasm and positive outlook create an encouraging learning environment for his students. Mr. Davidson's unwavering care for his students allow them the opportunity to thrive. We at DWIT appreciate his dedication to making sure students are given everything that they need to be successful. Thank you, Mr. [Applause] D. Next Tiger. I'd like to Dr. Good evening. Good evening. Oh my goodness, Mr. Gomez. What was that? I only heard you. It's warm. I know it is. So, we'll get moving. Good. Good evening. Good to see you. I got a little over here. Thank you. All right. Um well, as um Miss Koko said, I'm Dr. Co superintendent of schools and this evening we are going to recognize our top tigers which is very exciting for our students.
015Um I just want to tell you a little bit about it. Um how many of you this is your first time? I'm going to ask the question in reverse. I usually do it the other way. How many is this your first time coming for a top tie your parents or guardians? Okay. How many of you have been here before? Okay. Nice. All right. Um so you can give the speech then tell them what it's about. All right. So the Top tiger award is given by our board of education uh members to students from each building each month and the students are chosen by various staff members uh in their buildings and I get the honor of reading about each one of the students. Uh I'm going to ask students that you pay attention very carefully
016because I'm about to give lots of directions. Ready? So what's going to happen is I'm going to call your name one by one. You will come forward and you're going to stand right here and then you are going to face everyone. You're going to get some goodies from Mr. Gomez. He'll be my helper this evening. So, he will hand you some things and then I will be reading about you, what your teachers had to say. So, which is the really exciting part. And then you're going to stick around just a moment longer. You're going to come over here. Mrs. Stewart is Miss Stewart is behind me. She is going to take your picture over here. All right. And then when you're finished, you can go back to your seats. So, hopefully you followed all those
017directions. We'll see. Um, who gets to go first, right? You'll be our we'll help you along if you get lost in all those directions. Um, in addition then we have um you will go to the cafeteria afterwards and you're going to get a group photo and um families you can also get some pictures there and you'll hear more about what you're about to get over there in just a moment. And we also have is it up here. We have a sign that will go home with each of you so you can put it in your yard or in your window. So very cool top tiger and that is compliments of our teachers union. is here this evening. So, we thank them for their support. And then we also have many other generous sponsors that I'd
018like to thank. Um, one of them is our Kyhoga Falls Schools Foundation and Alumni Association and they also are very encouraging of our students. Mrs. Kathy Moffett is here this evening to represent them. So, she's going to say a few words and then we will get started with our awards. Thank you. [Applause] Thank you. I still need a script. Um I'm Kathy Taylor Moffet. I'm here representing Cal School Foundation Alumni Association. And we would so like to welcome all the families and our top tigers for this evening. We want to tell you a little bit about us because we think that we're the like the best secret in C Falls and we don't want to be. Um, every year we give over $150,000 of scholarship money to our graduating seniors. We also invite all of
019our students here who are top tigers to march in our Memorial Day parade. You will receive some directions for that and we will be passing out top tiger t-shirts for you to wear during that parade. Um, we sponsor class reunions. We also have a wonderful recognition program that's coming up on May 6th. We invite all of you to it. We will be recognizing our graduating seniors who have received scholarships from the foundation. We also have many distinguished alumni who have graduated from falls and done amazing things since they have graduated from the high school. And we also have some teacher grant awards. So, not only do we give scholarships, but we also give grants to teachers. And all of this is possible through wonderful donations from people like you, from local businesses, and from former
020graduates. So, thank you so much for being here this evening. I think that's it, but thank you so much and we'll see you soon. Top tigers. Okay. So, as a reminder, you'll head over to the cafeteria. You'll stay in your seats and I believe they get a shirt, right? You said a shirt. And um so then we'll get our picture after you get all those fun things. All right, students. Are you ready? One person's ready. We should just pick you first then since you're ready. No one else is. Just teasing. All right. Thank you. All right. We're going to start with Zitz Elementary. And our first student is Griffin Clayton. Griffin. [Applause] You have a fan. But it's three girls over there. Griffin Griffin, are you in fifth grade? Are you in first grade? Is
021it first? All right. Okay. Oh. Oh, thank you. All right. Do you want to come here and read this? All right. All right. Griffin, let's hear what we got to say about you. Griffin has a kind and gentle spirit and is always thoughtful of others. He is a true friend to everyone with a heart of gold. A wonderful example of kindness. He comes to school daily with a positive attitude and resilience no matter what challenge is thrown his way. Griffin approaches every task with enthusiasm and a strong desire to learn. His dedication to his work is remarkable. He consistently puts forth his best effort, excelling in every academic area. Griffin is a role model for his positive behavior in our classroom, and we are lucky to have him here at Dit. Way to go, Griffin.
022All right, our next student is Lucy Hager. [Applause] You all voted to the superintendent. I'm so smart. I know all these things. I just Good guess. All right, Lucy. Let's see what we have to say here. Lucy is an exceptional first grader who consistently ates a passion for learning and a deep curiosity about the world around her. She approaches challenges with a positive attitude and resilience. Always eager to try new things and explore different ideas. Whether excelling academically, participating actively in extracurricular activities, or showing kindness and empathy towards others, Lucy stands out as a role model to her peers. Her strong work work ethic, leadership abilities, and creative problem solving skills make her an inspiration to her classmates. Lucy is involved in Girl Scouts, plays basketball, soccer. Wow. And participates in camp invention in the
023summer. We're offering that again this year. She also helps her her elderly neighbor and donates her toys and clothes to people in need. Wonderful. Lucy has a bright future ahead and her potential for greatness is truly limitless. Are you learning all this for the first time or are you just like amazed that I know all that stuff? Yeah, I think that's it. I think that's it. All right, sweetheart. Congratulations. You're All right, moving on to Lincoln, we have Robert Hit Helitzka, the third. Yes, thank you, Robert. Oh, come here, Mom. Over here. Over here. Come here, sweetie. You heard all that cheering. You want to be part of it. I got you. Stay right here. And you go by Robbie, right? Yeah. Awesome. Okay, Robbie. Robbie has returned back to Kaihoga Falls this year. From
024the beginning of the year to now, there has been so much growth in his work completion and behavior. Robbie is always eager to answer and participate. He usually raises his hand before speaking and is engaged in most lessons. He has also improved tremendously in his social skills. Robbie is really starting to learn self-regulation skills independently. We are very proud of all your accomplish accomplishments, Robbie. Congratulations. All right, our next student is Kylie Ortiz. [Applause] Kylie consistently demonstrates the qualities of a truly exceptional student and a wonderful member of our school community. She is always polite to teachers and classmates and her interactions are marked by genuine empathy. In the classroom, Kylie is attentive during lessons and demonstrates a genuine desire to learn. She is also a helpful and supportive member of our school. Whether it's
025assisting a classmate who needs help with a task or volunteering to tidy up the classroom, Kylie consistently demonstrates a willingness to contribute. Kylie exemplifies the values we strive to instill in our students. She is a shining example of a kind, respectful, and responsible individual. [Applause] All right, moving on to Preston. We have Janice [Applause] Hollis. Janice is new to Preston this year. Welcome. And you would never know it by the way she has shown black tiger pride from day one. From the moment Janice arrived at open house, she had a big smile. And she has had that smile every day. All right, there it is. She brings a positive attitude and confidence with her work as she works hard and never hesitates to help others. The fifth grade team says that Janice is one of
026the most polite students they have had the pleasure to teach and she never hesitates to ask questions or try new things. We cannot wait to see what the middle school chapter will bring for you. Congratulations. [Applause] All right, our next student is Nicholas Bails. How did you like that? Let me just tell you, if I did that for my sixth grader, I would be in a lot. She would be not happy with me. But that's what we do, right, parents? I told my daughter, it only gets worse. You think I embarrass you now? Just wait. All right. Nicholas is also new to Preston this year and the Preston staff is glad he joined them. Nicholas is a polite and hardworking young man. Even though he came to Preston in November, he didn't hesitate to jump
027right in to help with the younger students during lunch. He participates in class and has a terrific way of explaining things that benefit his peers. Nicholas is one of those students who who you know you can always count on and is always doing the right thing even when no one is looking. That's the best. Nicholas, we cannot wait to see the things you accomplish next year and beyond. Congratulations. All right, moving along to Price. We have Everett Teter. Right, Everett. Everett is a pleasure to have in class. He is a strong reader and his math skills are equally impressive. He works hard and loves to participate. What really sets Everett apart is his character. He's kind and considerate towards his classmates. He's always the first to offer a helping hand, whether it's explaining a diffic
028difficult problem or simply offering a comforting word. He's the kind of student who fosters a positive and supportive supportive classroom environment. He has a big heart and it shows in everything he does. He truly shows his Black Tiger pride. All right, our next student from Price is Sums Suma Tumbapu. [Applause] Oh, with an escort. Nice. I saw you today at Price. I remember you. Hello. All right. Ready? All right. Suma. Suma. Am I saying that right? Okay. And if not, you say, "Dr. Z, you are messing that up." Okay. You just tell me. All right. We got it. Is a remarkable possesses a remarkable blend of quiet kindness and academic strength. During guided reading, her comprehension is truly advanced for her age, and she consistently demonstrates a willingness to support her peers. Rather than simply
029providing the answer, she guides them to think and use strategies that were taught in class. Not only is she a strong student in reading, she also strives in math. She is truly an exceptional student, and we are so proud of her growth and the positive impact she has had on the classroom. Congratulations, [Applause] All right, our next student is from Richardson and it's Isaac Corey. Got your shirt on, ready to go? I love it. Nice. Isaac is a wonderful, kind-hearted student. He arrives at school every day with a smile and a positive attitude. Isaac is a role model to his peers and leads by example. He has a heart of gold and truly cares about others. His patience and understanding makes him a great partner to peers needing assistance. Isaac can always be counted on
030to be polite and respectful. He is a true example of black tiger pride. When he is not at school, he enjoys playing basketball, spending time with his family, and reading. Nice. With Isaac's kind personality and great work ethic, he will see great success in his future. Congratulations. [Applause] All right. And our next student from Richardson is Elodie Clubnik. [Applause] I love that dress. It's so It's like school. Says scream school. I love it. Very cute. All right. Elodie is an absolute joy. have in the classroom. As a new addition to Richardson this year, she has transitioned seamlessly. Every day, she arrives with a bright smile, a positive attitude, and an eagerness to learn that inspires those around her. Her kindness, compassion, and warmth never go unnoticed by her teachers and classmates, making her a true
031friend to everyone. Outside of school, Elodie's creativity shines through her love for dancing and playing video games. All right. Her dedication and enthusiasm in everything she does are truly remarkable. You are already making a difference and we can't wait to see all the incredible things you will accomplish in the future. Congratulations. All right, one more elementary school. That's Silver Lake. And our first student is Jose Enoa. Is Jose here? Mr. Okay. All right. Well, congratulations to Jose. Make sure he gets all of his goodies. Our next student is Ethan Johnson. [Applause] All right, we got a runner here. Nice. All right, Ethan. Ethan consistently demonstrates exceptional dedication and maturity. He arrives each prepared to learn, diligently completing assignments with meticulous care and a clear sense of pride. Beyond academic excellence, he actively participates in class
032discussions, offering thoughtful insights in fostering a positive learning environment. His consistent adherence to school rules, coupled with his genuine kindness and respect towards peers and teachers establishes him as an exemplary role model. His commitment to hard work uh along with his caring nature makes him a truly outstanding member of our school community. Ethan, you should be very proud of yourself. [Applause] Congratulations. My assistant got it. Thank you. All right, moving along to middle school. We have our middle school students. First up from Bolic, Jason Mazar. [Applause] Well, geez, you could have stood. Can you stand any further back there? We'd have to open the doors. Come on, join us. I know. Middle school. I know. Jason. All right. Jason has put in an incredible amount of effort lately. That's why you stood in the back
033because you want to put all that effort to get forward. I get it. Nice. He has faced challenges in the past, but his dedication to growth and improvement is truly inspiring. His grades and attendance are steadily improving and he is showing a strong commitment to his education. Beyond that, he is consistently respectful to his teachers and the adults around him. Keep up the great work, Jason. Your hard work is paying off and we are so proud of you. You're higher. We're gonna give you a pin. All right. Our next student from Boolic is Grace Sacket. [Applause] Grace. All right. Grace truly embodies the spirit of a black tiger at Bolic. Her teachers consistently praise her remarkable responsibility and her unwavering dedication to being a positive role model for everyone around her. Grace's kindness and sweet
034nature create a warm and welcoming atmosphere in every classroom. She is a diligent and hardworking student, consistently demonstrating a strong commitment to her studies. From her punctual arrival to her thoughtful participation, Grace efforts are deeply appreciated by her teachers. We have really enjoyed seeing her come out of her shell and her positive attitude and consistent hard work make her a joy to have in class. She brightens our days and we are incredibly fortunate to have Grace as part of BS. All right, moving along to Roberts Middle School, we have Nolan [Applause] Elier, Ryan consistently demonstrates a strong work ethic in all of his classes. He is always prepared, participates actively in discussions, and strives to understand the material thoroughly. Ryan is a positive role model for his peers. He is respectful, kind, and always willing
035to help others. Ryan demonstrates strong integrity by always being honest, and responsible. Great traits. All right, our next student from Roberts is Sophia Riddle. I knew you were in eighth grade. All right, Sophia. The eighth grade team at Roberts Middle School is honored to nominate Sophia Riddle for Top Tiger for the month of April. Sophia is an honor role student, demonstrates leadership, and is positive and kind to her peers and teachers. Sophia consistently demonstrates a strong work ethic and enthusiasm for learning. She works hard and takes ownership for her learning. She exhibits kindness, respect, and a willingness to support her classmates. Outside of school, Sophia is a dedicated and talented uh middle school cheerleader. Nice. And softball player for Little League North. Nice. What position? First base. I see that. First or third? I got
036you. Okay, for these reasons and more, the eighth grade team at Roberts Middle School wholeheartedly nominates Sophia Riddle for Top Tiger. She makes our school a better place, and we cannot wait to see what she achieves in high school and [Applause] beyond. All right, high schoolers, see if they're here this evening. Our first student is Owen David Fuller. Owen, welcome. Did you just meet him? All right. I see some red faces. They like they like they pretend not to, sir, but they really like it. All right. David is an insightful, caring, and personable student. From the very first day in creative writing class, Mr. No recognized that he is was not only a talented student who wanted to do well, but even more so he wanted to see others succeed and would build them up
037whenever possible. Additionally, in his honors ELA 12th class, David demonstrates his academic maturity and critical thinking skills through his command of language in both written expression and class participation. From his outstanding work ethic in the classroom to his enthusiasm on the volleyball court, David makes the high school a better place, and it is great to see him receive the top tiger award. Oh boy. All right. Our last student of the year. Everybody get ready. Yeah. I don't know what's coming next. All right. Now, our last student to mention is Savannah Fuller. She was prepared. She saw it coming, right? Did you know it? You do that. You suspected I saw your teacher. I know. I know. So, parents do. We just We're good at it. Okay. Okay. Yeah, she's like it, too. I can tell.
038All right. Savannah has had tremendous growth in honors ELA this year. She is an extremely gifted writer who continually uses her strong writer's voice, not only to make meaningful connections with the text read in class, but also to apply work's overarching themes to her own personal experiences. The combination of Savannah's strong writer's voice and intellectual curiosity has helped her blossom into an active and competent participant during class discussions. Her cander when speaking like that and courage when challenging the ideas of others demonstrates her strength and resilience. She is always respectful and kind towards classmates and teachers and because of this she is most deserving of being a top tiger. [Applause] I love it. All right. Well, made the evening more enjoyable than listening to me. Um, so, uh, before we break for to get our
039pictures taken. Um, one, I just want to congratulate all our students. It's such a joy to read about each one of you and to hear those common themes. I also heard that we have at least three new students to us this year and we appreciate the way you've come into our district and um bought into our black tiger pride and so thank you for that and uh parents, family, guardians who are here this evening. Thank you to all of you because students, our children don't just uh come this way, they are they are um under your care and your guidance and so clearly you have done some great things with your children. So congratulations to all of you and our staff this evening, which is very kind of our teachers and uh support staff and
040principles to be here in support of your children. We want to thank you as well. All right, we'll head over to the cafeteria for our pictures. Thank you. Everyone's ready. We're on presentations number five. We're ready for our literacy presentation to call up Miss Amanda Heler and Miss Tina and Miss Crystal. Welcome ladies. Yes, of course. You're always welcome to join any presentation. I had to run there for a while. Oh my goodness. Um, thank you, President Koko, Vice President Gomez, board members, um, Dr. Celico, Mr. Stoy, and the community, uh, for having us here tonight. So, uh, we're so excited to be able to do an annual update about literacy here. Uh, this, uh, group of ladies are just amazing leaders. Teacher leaders are the most important leaders. sometimes they um they really make
041things happen in our schools um many times beyond what we can do as administrators. So, we're grateful for their leadership. Uh so, tonight we're going to give you an overview. Please stop us and ask questions. We'll be diving into literacy kind of um we might geek out a little bit about it. We just kind of love it. So, um but we appreciate your time and support for us tonight. So, thank you. Little spicy feel. She'll be our she'll be our thumbs up. Thank you. All right. Well, just like Mrs. Hoffman said, thank you for having us. We're excited to give you a brief overview of what we've been working on for the last year. Um, a little bit has changed since last year. So, we're kind of excited to show you what we've been doing.
042So, first of all, um, we as coaches have many, many roles within the district. And with that, we wear many hats. So those hats do change throughout the school year. This is just a couple of the things that we do. Currently we have a book study which is a volunteer program that teachers can sign up to do. It's about 20 minutes a week. We meet in the mornings and discuss a book to stay relevant with current topics. Um we definitely support our teachers by co-eing. We co- plan with teachers. So we have a lot of little hats in different areas, but we really again like to tailor it to the individual teachers needs. Not every teacher's the same, just like our students. So we want to give them the support that they actually need. So
043with that in mind, we actually are really trying to dive into data. So this past school year, that's what we focused on. Last year, we did have data meetings. They were a little shorter. They were about 45 minutes in length and they were held three times a year and we would have an occasional pop in meeting. However, this year we really wanted to make sure that we have a solid foundation for our teachers and our students. So, we increased the duration. We have twohour meetings and they happen or five times a year now. So, with that in mind, this is kind of just like an outline of what our meetings look like. The top of this timeline is our beginning, middle, and end of the year. These are our overarching meetings where we get a
044lot of that basic data, our initial benchmarking. We want to see where our kids are at at the beginning of the year, how they progress to the middle of the year, and where they end up at the end of the year. So with that, we're part of a benchmarking team who goes around to the buildings, and we assess every student three times a year to make sure that our data stays consistent with our and also the conditions. We want to compare apples to apples and not apples to oranges. So, we're part of that great team. Once we collect that data, if we need to dig deeper, we perform diagnostic assessments to figure out where a potential weakness may be for a student or where they might need just a little bit of a push. We'll
045do phonics screeners, spelling screeners, um we'll even back test to see if maybe that grade level is not the best instructional level for intervention for that particular student. So we take all these little pieces of data and we kind of funnel them together and look at the whole child. So your beginning, middle, end of the year, we typically try to look at tier one, which is the whole class. But for our bottom two dates where it's the check, those are progress monitoring days. We want to on students. We want to continue to make sure that that trajectory is going up for each of those students. And if not, that's our time to problem solve. We use those two hours to collaborate with our intervention specialists, with our school sites, the gened teachers, the title teachers.
046Everyone is included so that we can make sure that we can answer questions that teachers have and provide them the support that they actually need. So, what we're going to do is we're going to kind of just very briefly show you what the format looks like. One of the things we really wanted to do is we wanted to make a very clear protocol so it was very consistent for our teachers when they came to us and provide them with the tools to be successful. So when we're talking about those three meetings, big meetings for the year, we follow a protocol that we developed with our education service center. And this is just like a brief example. So what we do is we import the data from our beginning, middle, end of the year and we
047look for trends. We want to Where are students growing? Is there more growth in one particular classroom than another? And then that starts the conversation. What are you doing with your instruction in tier one versus what am I doing? Can I change it? So we have some in-depth conversations and it really helps the teachers one to begin to feel confident in what they're doing, but then also have the confidence to share it with others. A lot of times as a teacher you're behind the door. you think you're doing what's best for the students and you maybe and sometimes when we need to refine it a little bit. So it's great to have those other minds working with you. So this is just what our protocol looks like. We go through a series of questions, we
048document, we use that information and then we figure out what our next steps are going to be. So some of the assessments that we give our students, we try to track as much as we can to make sure we're looking at the whole child again. So with that we a variety of spreadsheets which are great at times and overwhelming at others, but we really do track a lot of the data. So, you can see at a glance how a certain class is doing. You can see how a grade level is performing or maybe just a subs skill or subgroup of students that you're particularly working for. So, that's kind of just illustrated in the images up there. They're just different documents that we use to track data. So, I just wanted to show you where
049we're putting everything. All right. So then when we go to progress monitoring days, those are the two that we have in the middle of our overall benchmarks. Those ones are a little bit more intimate. Usually we really try to get to the nitty-gritty of what the student needs. So we can do that by using their typical in instruction materials like foundations or maybe witten wisdom. and we'll look at how they're doing on their test scores and again have those same similar conversations and see what it is they need, what can I do different as a teacher or what can I do as a literacy coach to help support my teachers as well. So that's just a snapshot of what that looks like. All right, so to the diagnostic measures, these ones are what we use
050to really try to pinpoint what our students need. And like I said earlier, we do try to figure out specifically what one student may need. It is not the same for all students. So you may have a fourth grader who is struggling to spell. That spelling skill may not be their true deficit. It may be something totally different such as phmic awareness or a phonic skill. So a big part of our job is really trying to troubleshoot and figure out what that student needs and we use different diagnostic measures to do that. So in addition to being part of the benchmark team, we're typically the ones who will walk around and pull a kiddo and assess them and provide feedback with the teacher and then plan with the teacher what next steps could look like.
051Now this is a lot of information. Now our teachers have been walking through this step with us for three years now. Um the buildings have had three literacy coaches shared between the six of them for three complete years. we built a little bit more on top of it. At times it can be overwhelming. So what we did is we actually created a protocol for our teachers. So they have this protocol to start at step one. What do I need to do day one of school? What am I going to do day two? When do I administer this assessment? You can click on this link if you need an intervention. So everything we're walking the teachers through in person. We also have physical documents with hyperlinks so they can refer back to them as needed. So,
052this is what our teachers do have access to and it outlines our series of eight steps. And if we click to the next slide, this is a nice one. This is called our decision making framework. This is where we guide our teachers to help figure out where that deficit might be. And with that, if you look at the bottom, we have letter L and F, which stands for letter name fluency. That's our lowest level skill to the top which is oral reading fluency and reading comprehension. So it is basically a series of literacy steps. And as a teacher you would look at this and say all right my kiddo is not responding well for letter name fluency. If they're not doing so well I would look to the left because it's a weak deficit and
053I would focus more on accurate and automatic letter recognition. If it's a strong skill, we give a suggestion on the right hand side. So, you can look at it through both lenses. If you have a student who's progressing well and a student who might need a little bit more reinforcement and then we go just a little bit deeper. So, our teachers will use this then to determine maybe what type of intervention they can use and kind of go to that next step without us in the building. Because we are shared between the two buildings, we want to make sure that our teachers have the tools that they were not there and this is a great resource for them. And if we go to our last slide, so you're probably wondering, well, what does this equate
054to? So this is some data that we have that we're really proud of. We've been using Aadian for the last three years. And so now we have some historical data built into the system. And if you look at the left hand column, that is in 2223. The percent represents the percentage of students who are at or above grade level by the end of the year. Benchmark, not grade level, sorry, at or above benchmark by the end of the school year. Then you go to the next column, which is purple, that's our 2324 school year, end of the year where the kiddos are ending. However, if you go to the blue column, the last one on the right, 2425, if you actually look at those numbers, our teachers have done such a good job of getting
055kiddos to surpass the end of the year benchmarks that we have already established. So they were leaving kindergarten at 49% in 2223. They are leaving kindergarten in 232 24 at 65% and in January of this year our kindergarten is already at 66%. So that's showing us that what we're doing is working. We're reaching those end of the year scores now at the middle of year and that's what we would like to to increase. Mrs. Houseman, how do we read this data across cohorts? So, like where are my kindergarters and then so the early literacy indicator kind of reads that fall to fall. Okay. So, what we're hoping is our fall scores this year were higher than last year's fall. So, we're hoping to see our early literacy score to show that growth. Does that answer
056your question a little bit? What I'm saying is like if I'm looking at 22 23 end of year kindergarten just go diagonal diagonal so 49 to 56 23 49 to 56 and to 55 is it fall to fall end of year end of year to middle of year school And then they're at 62. Okay. Aadian, we didn't go too much into it, but Aadian has many measures and they change throughout the year. So the expectation and the benchmarks does continue to increase, which is why you don't always see a large amount of growth at certain grade levels based on those measures that are being assessed. Here's my question, Miss House. So then we have 62% at middle of here in grade two and 55% in grade three. And we know that they're trying to bring
057back the required third grade guarantee and make it a little bit stricter. So what are we doing for that 45% and that 38% to get up there? I celebrate our successes, but I'm worried about that 45% and that 38% because we got a short time. So, we are investing in our training which is a very prescriptive very much a science reading type of professional development. We're doing that this summer. Um, and so we're also looking to increase the intervention period from a 30 minute to 60 minute period for students who need more support. So, we're building a new schedule next year as well as building a new model with the structure specialist. The intensity of those supports are increasing. Um, so we're layering every year as we go. So hopefully we will continue to um
058decrease that number and have more children. Does that help you? Yeah, because I see success. I don't want to diminish that. that that's why you'll see in almost all our goals we put 100% because we can't how do we say less than that right especially when they want to bring back and they're trying to we don't know where they're going to end because we're still in this budget process but they're talking about making that even stricter taking out some of the provisions we had before with IEPs where we could kind of write it in they want to try to take some of that away from us so I just worried I think we're I think we're leaving because we know holding back kids is so harmful. We know it is a negative. So I stresses
059outce them. So we don't want that for our kiddos. That concludes my portion. So I'm gonna turn it over to Amanda. What's her signal? Um, so now I get to talk to you about all of the exciting things that our teachers and students are doing. Um, so this is some of the professional development that has taken place this year. So the literacy coaches have been able to receive some professional development with a foundations coaching series. Um, we've been using foundations K through three for a few years now and that training really helped us understand how to deepen that. now that we've been using it for a while. Um we've also gone to this literacy coaching network at the Northeast ESC and that's been a fantastic opportunity for us to um just brainstorm with other literacy
060coaches and see where other schools are at. So that was nice for us. And then on the other side you'll see some of the things that our teachers have done this year. So the speed learnings those are the like 20 25 minute like focus sessions that we have before school. Um, usually like once a month or so and the building sub trainings and the staff meetings, those are all based on building need because we understand that every building has various needs and we want to make sure that we target those. Some of the things that we have done would be the refreshers. So, um, like Crystal said, we've been focusing on data. We want to make sure our teachers are understanding that data. And then we have also focused foundations. So now that we've been
061using it for a few years, we really want to um build our teachers capabilities in following the integrity of the program. And then the subtraining um we've done a progress monitoring so that they can help gather that student data as needed. Um we've also done some foundations training so that they understand what curriculums are being used and how those come together to support the students. And then we've also worked closely with um the people who I've listed. So Alyssa Bird at the Summit ESC, Dr. Lorie Wilong, and Dr. Brian Dross have supported us with different instructional needs. So I just wanted to highlight we've been working with Lori Wilon quite a bit this year. um and our teachers have really caught on to some of the strategies that she has taught them. So these are
062examples from a couple of our buildings um using some of those strategies. So this one is the Freyer model. So the Freyer model is going to help students understand vocabulary at a deeper level. What I really like um if you notice the second grade students both of those are from different buildings. They are using W and wisdom m So, we're seeing that commonality across buildings. Um, I also really liked the differentiation between these two students. So, the one that's all the way to the left, that student was ready to be challenged more. So, they were able to mark up the vocabulary word in the middle following what they learned in their foundations program and added some more details compared to the one that's on the right side. I also really liked how the fourth grade
063student, this model kind of beefs it up, I guess I would say. Um, so it changes from the example sentences to facts and characteristics about that word and then instead of having a picture of that word, they're thinking of non-examples. So it deepens that thinking a little bit. And I really liked this example here because the student did a really good job of incorporating their math understanding Okay. So, next we have word storming or it's also called ABC brainstorm. So, this is done before you teach a lesson. You want to see what the students already know. Like what words do you already know about this topic? So, uh the fourth grade classroom used that template to review student understanding of earth and space science before learning. and there were things that student listed that I
064was quite impressed with because I was I forgot about it. Um, so that was nice to see. And then on the right we have the essential words routine. This doesn't show all of the steps involved in the essential word routine, but really you're introducing the word. You are giving a student friendly definition of that word. you talk about the word structure and then you provide an example sentence one or two and then they provide more sentences using that word so they're hearing that word repeated and repeated and repeated. Um the eel example I think did a really good job of really limiting the language for that student and that definition so that that student understands what that is. Okay, so next is witten wisdom. Um, this slide really just gives you kind of like a
065timeline to the supports our uh teachers received. So we started with our first followers for implementation in the fall. They received a PD from Witten Wisdom themselves. And then all of the remaining teachers also received an introduction to Witten Wisdom so that they can start to wrap their heads around this those changes. And then towards the middle of the year, the first followers had a second session so they can dive a little deeper into their knowledge. And the midyear adopters also had that same session since our teachers really enjoyed that one and found a lot from it. So, we had them do that as well. And then we have our continued support throughout the year. So, during our early release time, we have Alyssa Bird. Um, she's done things where, uh, she goes over the
066manual with them so that they can understand the different parts and pieces and they talk about vocabulary deep dives and just other information as we see the teachers. Are we seeing like as we have the data dates, are we seeing an impact with different words. What do you think? So definitely we're also noticing a lot of districts I had this recently that there was a very rich and dense curriculum but because we try to do it in a very progressive manner through the year and got to choose their entry point. It's actually I think speeding up our adoption and people are buying into it. We're not having as much um overwhelming thoughts even though it can be that kind of it seems to be going like we're going slow to go fast if that makes
067sense and and we know there's been a lot of change with the elementary with their ELA program. So I think this model bring some excitement for people who started it and then it trickled and then some were asking us to start which is what we all want right and I always say we don't want to do things to teachers we want them to feel part of decision making part of what we do and so that's been received well so I think some of that has made them grow in the program quicker so this is an example of a kindergarten writing. So this is an end of module task. So this is after like I think it was like 36 lessons or so. And um I I really liked this example. So in this example you
068see that the student is writing multiple sentences. They're on different pages but they still completed that all together. And um the paper that they're using shows you that they're starting with a problem and then they're going to the resolution and that language stays consistent from grade level to grade level. So, it's nice that they started with that. This is a first grade and this was um a task where students had to write an informative paragraph to answer the following focusing question. How did Jane Goodall make discoveries about animals? So, as you're looking at this example, you can see that the student gives a topic sentence. Jane Goodall was curious about and then they're able to list three details that go along with that. These are two examples of third grade writing and written wisdom. Um,
069so looking at these, you can see that their paragraphs are more complex. Um, and there's multi paragraph structured responses as well. And in both of these responses, the students are focusing on pulling evidence from the text and elaborating on that. When we were doing the um cards for veterans with representative Sykes at Preston, they were told the kids to write a paragraph and we miss Coco and I said that's five sentences, right? Because that's how we were taught and we were um instructed by Misses. I don't think we wrote paragraphs. We did not. But we so we were learned that the rigor of writing has changed just from when we were in school and Miss Smelter and Miss Hullman taught me fourth grade and it was five cents. I was not sitting with you. I
070did not write. We did not either. But yeah, so we were like kids are really writing a lot like they're not doing the coloring part which is what we were the rigor in the writing expectations and wisdom is very high. Um I have some quotes here in a minute from our teachers that'll show you. You'll see them talking about that as well. Um, okay. So, for wit and wisdom implementation, like ongoing support from us as literacy coaches, this is something that I started doing with my teams of teachers once they were feeling a little more secure in their wit and wisdom knowledge. So, this was like October, November, we started to talk about, okay, let's the next step in our understanding. So we started aligning wit and wisdom with our focus on teacher clarity so
071that we can build build a bridge with those two things. So we met with grade level teams and then we talked about the backwards design of W and wisdom so that we're starting with the end in mind and then thinking how are we going to get our students to that goal and then um we completed the there's a module study protocol so keeping that the end in mind. We looked at the whole module and then we went to the beginning once we were more familiar with that and started taking it lesson by lesson to see okay how are these lessons going to build and get us to that goal. And so this just kind of shows that process. So um the first is just an agenda so you can see kind of what that looks
072like. And then in the middle, those are some notes from one of the sessions that I had with one of my teams. So we can see, okay, we've accomplished X, Y, and Z today. Next steps for next time. We got to work on this. And then keep on building there. And then the last picture um shows this is a digital form that I used with the team when they were ready to dive into that lesson by lesson buildup. We loved using this form because It it shows us a couple of things. It shows us one the amount of time that we're really spending in each section of the lessons because they are very complex. Um do we really need to spend all that time right there? Is that part of the lesson really supporting that
073standard and that goal or do we need to prioritize another part? So we talked about being flexible with our times and then we really liked this form because it puts the students at the for on your plan. What are they doing in this lesson? Why are they doing that? So, it's always putting that in mind. And then these are those quotes that I had mentioned. Um, so I'll give you a moment to read some of those, but some of the highlights from these quotes from our teachers. They're noticing students learning and using new vocabulary. Students are engaged in the Students are being challenged. So the rigor is helping them to reach their full potential. The modules follow a theme that allows deeper background knowledge and understanding about topics and writing lessons are focused and students
074seem more prepared for the OS questions. Turn it over to wrap it up. Um, so we I want to touch on just for a second our local literacy plan. As we we were a part of the team that helped work on the comprehensive state literacy grant and while we were doing that we realized there was update needed to our literacy plan. So we worked on that as well. So I'm going to highlight a couple of those. I believe you have copies of those. So and it's like a 43 page document. So we're not going to sit through and read read those to you today but I'll just highlight a couple of things that you will find within the document. Um of the things in the document uh that we highlight is that as you've seen
075today there's an overall indication of a low reading achievement across the district. So we wanted to address these things in our local literacy plan. Um a couple of things we're addressing the preschool is part of that. Our e model I know Mrs. Sabatiki has been working on tiering that model so that will look a little different next year. um our structured literacy professional development. Mrs. House has been kind of touched on Orton Gillingham, which I'll talk about a little bit further here in a second, but that is a part of our plan going forward. Additional coaching supports for teachers. Uh we have a ratio, I think we looked at the ratio of um our ELA teachers, just ELA teachers, not becoming other content area teachers, and ourselves, and it's like 40ish to one, and maybe
076high 40s to one. So, if we can increase that at some point, if grant funs were available for that, we feel like having a smaller number of teachers to work with, we spend more time with each of those teachers. We feel like that could be impactful. Um our new structured literacy specialist, we'll look at what their um job is going to look like here in the next slide. And then implementation of academic parent teacher team. So this is something that we touched on and it's really about teaching parents how to support them at home. A lot of the things that we do and the language we use in school is not something familiar to anybody outside of the field of education. So putting investing some time in teaching teachers how to teach the parents and
077you know working all together so we're all the same. So those are some things you will find within that plan and then these are kind of just the next steps for us. So where we're going what we're looking to do for next year. So um on this slide here this is really what we're looking at for our tiger time our intervention next year. And as Mrs. Hman said we're looking to increase that time. going from 30 minutes to 60 minutes. So if you look at this uh pyramid at the top would be our most intensive media students in regards in regards to their foundational reading skills and they would be working with in a small group an intervention specialist um 60 minutes a day who has been trained with Gillingham in their curriculum the IMS
078curriculum. Um the next level of students who probably have pretty similar needs would work with our structured literacy specialist probably looking very similar. Um they will have a small group. They will be trained and they will work with them for 60 minutes daily. The next level would be what we call like our tier 2 or middle of the road are students who need some extra support beyond just tier one curriculum and they would be receiving that from their classroom teacher. So classroom teachers who already teach with foundations, they would be giving those students a double dose of foundations. We have found a lot of success this year using that as an intervention that double dose because some students just need to hear it more than once. And so hearing that um and trying it in
079a small group in a little different way has has proven to be successful for many of our students. And then below that is our tier one and that would just be our daily foundations core. And then during that tiger time they would have differentiated instruction. depending on what their needs are within the classroom. So, that's kind of the the model that we're looking at for intervention this year. I want to give a shout out to Mrs. Sean. She's been a big partner um in developing this model, the MTSS model and our model. So, um she's our partner in crime sitting there silently, but she has been a huge active member uh on our team and we thank her Um and so speaking of Fort Millingham, just want to highlight a couple of things. This is
080the training that the teachers will undergo um later on this summer. And it's um it's uh part of the structure our structured literacy program. It is explicit, it is systematic, and it is cumulative. And it's highly regarded as a top tier intervention. Um the next And these are just some of the components. Now, foundations what we already have is based upon the foundations of what we're dealing with. So, it does tie into this nicely. Um, it is multiensory. Um, as I mentioned, structured and cumulative. Um, flexible. So, just like we have flexible groups, we don't we don't want somebody in there and say, "All right, they're going to be in there for that whole year," unless that's what they need. Hopefully, that's not the case. Um, and then language based. So, it does touch on
081umic awareness, spelling, morphology, and all of those things. And then if uh we are lucky enough to receive that grant um additional training would be for all all teachers, all teachers, well all elementary teachers. And this just kind of supports how we can still use our curriculum because as it states here, you can uh use this approach in any curriculum or any classroom, but it's really investing in the teachers and just the teacher knowledge. And I feel like that's a part that maybe um we need, right? That's that's a part that we can continue to improve upon. If we have a good curriculum, we feel good about that and then we can continue to build our knowledge to make sure that we're implementing it in the right way. So, I think that is really nice
082that it goes right along with what we're currently doing for classroom teachers. And then the last slide here is just what's next for us. So, next year we're going to continue with our WIT Wisdom implementation. So, we'll have the final group of teachers start with Whit Wisdom. um they will get training over the summer as well. And then we're going to kind of up the pacing. As Mrs. Houseman said, we've been kind of uh we started very flexible this year. So, some teachers start at the beginning. Some teachers start at the middle of the year and their pacing has been a little bit all over the place. Some teachers have been taking a little bit longer to get through some of the lessons and some teachers are are going through at a speedier pace. And
083so our pacing, which has been a bit of a challenge, will be something that we're really going to focus on next year and kind of um look towards pacing it so many lessons a week, making sure that every all the classrooms are on a similar page so they can work together with planning and if there's any transfers between buildings, then they're in a similar area and that would be helpful there. So we're on pacing with wit wisdom. Um foundations, we've been doing it like um we said we've been doing for a couple of years, but just making sure we're doing it well, right? So, we just want to make sure we're going to hone in on a couple of things there. We decided we want to do a new teachers cohort. So, whether the teachers
084are new to the building, new to the district, new to the grade level, new to the content, we want to make sure that they feel supported and then can know who they can reach out to. So, we're going to build kind of a little group of them and that we can meet regularly to answer their questions and our TBTs. We've talked about some different ways to structure them. We do have three a month. So, we've tossed around some ideas of having maybe a writing, math, reading focus, um maybe having a literacy focus and then having maybe a BLT focus and then having like a principles, you know, choice depending on what their building is. So, we're looking at structuring them in a different way just to make sure that we're using our time effectively and
085it's it's meaningful meaningful for all the teachers. And then the last thing we're working on are some writing progressions. So, um there's one more slide here. I know that one you would think it was the last one, but it's not. I know. Um so, one of the PD days this year, we met in district-wide grade level teams and we looked at the writing standards for their grade level and vertically. So, a grade level below, grade level above. And based upon that, we chose the teachers were able to choose five what they think were like the non-negotiables when it comes to writing. We want to make sure when every student walks out of grade they can accomplish these things and that's common knowledge across all second grade across the district. So we came up with these
086writing progressions or the teachers chose them and we kind of organized them and put them together. We also put the next grade level's writing progression so we can keep going with our students who are ready for that. So these will be introduced if they haven't been already this spring to teachers and then next year will be something that we'll focus on throughout our TBTs in our discussions about writing. Any questions? Somebody talk more about these um academic parent teacher teams. You know that's one of my passions is making our curriculum understandable for families. So we um when we did of for the comprehensive grant. We it was very glaring to us that our parent engagement was missing. So um many years ago I was introduced to academic parent teacher teams. And what it is is
087a very prescriptive model of how you teach parents about reading. It can be individual graphs and information and teaching them how to read a report about their own child's reading. But then it's also teaching them a little bit about the science of reading. having some understanding about the background knowledge of how you learn to read. Um because parents might be trying to be helpful but they might be using a strategy that maybe doesn't match research what research tells us today for example. And so then you have these more academic meetings with parents instead of a conference where you're letting your them know about the present level but we're going to a deeper level. Some of those meetings the parents all come together and they as a whole group. So, they get to meet other parents,
088which is really exciting. And then some of the meetings are more oneonone. I think sometimes too it's hard for parents to understand um how to encourage their child as a reader on like what books to pick because they don't understand what reading level their kid might really be at. And um as much as we have tried and we've tried some things, those are not easy for our families to understand. We've tried some different great we've tried some great things, but um I can tell you when my sister gets up, she's just like, "Did it go up or did it go down?" That's really as much as you can really gather and you just kind of hope it went up and then think that that's good for your kiddo. But y teaching parents what is a
089just right book and you know how to choose the just right book for and so there are strategies behind that as well. And I think especially elementary would encourage your the transition from books with pictures to just books with words. And that can be a struggle for young readers sometimes because they want to cling to books with pictures as long as that's what graphic novels are. Yeah. But you know, graphic novels, but you got you got to pick some chapter you got to pick some chapter books too at some point. So, yeah. having nephews of that age, we're going through all of these things with them as well when I when I get to help take them to the library. Thank you. Thank you for your time. [Applause] There's one there is one got that
090arranged. And last but not least, by any means financial future. No, that's not the one for Mrs. White. It doesn't have the literacy plan. Jody has the one for Mrs. White. Okay. First of all, it's very hard to like come up with some sort of funny meme when we're talking about this stuff that isn't like, you know, inappropriate or like whatever. So, I just went with something I think we can all agree on is the CS to um I hope we can all agree on that at least. Um and that uh won game one. So, it's a little Cavs theme today, but kind of a oh god Cavs theme, you know, like what just happened? So, um what I've done here is I've really kind of split it into um three sections. So, one will
091recap kind of how this all started, which is the November forecast and our financial recovery plan. um then show some uh trends that uh enrollment wise, birth rate, those kinds of things. And then um the second part would be the um the figures that um I had shown before about on average of our six elementary buildings the costs um associated with those. So um the first one is the November forecast. So if you recall um f year 27 was in the red by almost $4 million. Um so that triggered OD dew I just want to say OD uh to um to reach out to us. We had to um come up with a financial recovery plan and make sure that that year was not red um and it had to be in the black. Um
092one thing to point out um there's the renewal levies are included in those. So that is um that bottom line is assuming that passage of those renewal levies, but you can see those amounts there. Um but really the biggest line um and we talked about this before is 6.01 that um expenditure excessive revenue over under expenditures. Um and you can see that there's clearly more you know we have more expenses than we do um revenue which is really um So the financial recovery plan got us in line with DEW to satisfy them. But really the bigger problem is not just okay now we have we're in the black and so we can move on and and forget about it. The bigger problem is that um we are outspending the revenue um that we are bringing
093in. So the next slide um kind of shows where we were at cashwise. Um so you can see um you know previous actual uh this year we are and this will change here um a little bit come May when I do the forecast again. Um so this was November so 44 days uh cash on hand at the end of this fiscal year just six next year and then negative 21 there um in that 2027. I would like to point out that just three on a side note to the state budget just three years ago we were over the 30% cash balance just no I'm sorry two years ago we were over the cash balance threshold that they are proposing right now of 30% which would have reduced our revenue in the following year and look
094where we're at just two years later or a few years down the road. Um so that is a major problematic part of what the house has proposed. Um and there there are very many uh moving parts to that. Um and it is uh to just randomly pick one day of the year and what our cash balance is on the end of that without taking into account all sorts of other things. um and and the fact that we do have flat funding um for the most part. We don't have a lot of opportunities to raise revenue other than tax levies um in in the millions of dollars. Like obviously we can raise revenue but not to the point where we're going to satisfy that what we're spending more than what we're bringing in. Um so the
095next slide then shows what we did um in the financial recovery plan that was approved by OD back in um February. Um the board approved it. So we changed a few things. You can see um that 6.01 is still drastically in the red. Um even though we did make almost $4 million in um changes to the bottom line in FY27 which got us to about 81,64 um which you'll see here I think on the next slide. Um you know that's about 16 days which would not we we wouldn't be able to to move forward um hardly getting close to 26 but then zero in 27. uh we wouldn't have enough to pay the bills come that next July 1 because we wouldn't have enough cash on hand at the time. Um but you can see
096it is different. Um so the next couple slides um just show that comparison of what November to what we approved. So you can see um these are just the differences. So it was about um you know a little bit this year positive. Next year it added about 1.75 million then almost four, five, six. Um and you can see while it didn't get us out of the red, it did decrease that 6.01 line um by those amounts um going forward. But obviously we still have the the problem of um being very very uh slim at the end of 27 and still being in the negative in 28 29. And so this is a comparison of the uh days cash days on hand. So you can see it's pretty much the same um for this year. And
097then this next year it increased by about 10 days which is not a ton. Um and then it what is that number? 21 uh about 21 days and 27 um and then about 27 days. So not major. I mean you think we did 3.9 million in 27 and that's about 21 days um of expenditures. I mean our average payroll is about 1.5 million and that occurs July 10th would be our first one depend you know each year. So um those are So we go to the next slide. Hit the next one. Not current, but still it was a good it was a good f I like to use that one a lot when people say stuff and text and I'm like what are you talking about? Um so um as also a little bit of
098a reminder so when we um This started well back before we even did the uh five-year forecast in November. These discussions knowing um where we would be. Um so in our statement of facts when we uh put the renewal levy on last November um one section of that um we talked about potential future considerations if that renewal levy were not to pass. So what we would need um to to do um in order what our avenues would be remedy that. And you can see um I think there's one more. Yeah. So, uh we talked about reducing or eliminating open enrollment as an avenue. Uh we talked about selling the future uh current or future buildings which um we will move forward with on some of them. um the redistricting and closure of buildings and then
099the reduction of staff through attrition which is already happening um and was already part of that that financial recovery plan as well. So just a little brief history some of this you've seen some of it you haven't click it one more time. Yeah. So this is overall Ohio public school district enrollment. Um, so just kind of showing it's not specific to Kyoga Falls. It is a it is a statewide trend. Um, you can see what it's decreased. We've decreased more than the average. Um, but you can see other than like 22 where it popped back up a little bit after COVID and things like that. Um, that it's it's down. So for about a 10-year period, it's we've lost overall public enrollment of about 7.21%. Um, the state of Ohio. And so this one shows
100ours, which I've shown you before, where you can see for us in that time period, we decreased 24%. Um, so almost a quarter of our enrollment uh dropped in that 10-year period. Um, and you can see just in the last two years, it was almost four and just in the last five, 13.6% decrease. Um there are some reasons for that. Obviously it's a trend overall that it's enrollment is declining. Um but a bigger part of this too is that um live birth rates have gone down. Um and they they've gone down um over the course of the years. There's some spikes you can kind of see again right after right after COVID. Um but from 2009 to 2023 which is the most recent um they have out um birth rates decreased 20.56%. In that time
101period um and in the last five years almost 10%. So that has a huge contributing factor to a lot of this um why that's the trend for the state why that's the trend for us um has a lot to do with it. Um so everyone is experiencing this and and this is one of those reasons but this is one of the bigger reasons too. And then as we mentioned um I think I showed you this before kind of in that same 10-year period where our staffing levels um have been and you can kind of see you know it's kind of bookend. Um so we have um you know those beginning years. Then obviously we start to um around 2018 is when um OD at the time they were OD um came in and there what
102we had to do a reduction in force um of staff and um I believe that's the year they took a freeze um in the um on their salaries. Um then COVID hits and we don't need as many inperson we don't have as many tutors and those kinds of things or because we don't have kids in the lunchroom and so those kinds of uh employees were not necessary at that time. But then as we start to come out obviously we have to bring as we're back in person we have to bring some of those people back in order to staff our our cafeterias and our playgrounds and and all those things like that. So that's that. So now we are at to reviewing the closing of an elementary, the cost savings. So um just as a
103refresher, what I did um with this is take all six of our elementary buildings over the last three years and in each of these categories um and came up with an average cost um per category per year. So uh this is kind of somewhere in the middle then not necessarily the not necessarily the highest um that could be saved. Um but you can see um these are the different um salary positions or uh compensation that we pay out um to the tune of on average it was about 1.8 1.9 million um in staffing um just in salaries. Um the next slide will show the benefit side of that uh which is about 833,000 on average. um looking at our purchase services. So these would be um our nursing uh repairs and maintenances to the building
104um substitutes um that are outsourced um we're talking utilities in these buildings on average about 158,000 per year. Um and then supplies overall not again these these next few categories aren't going to be a ton of money uh because obviously we are a people business and you can see that in the forecast that that's the majority of where our expenses go. Um but supplies so we're talking custodial supplies, office supplies, library books, different softwares or subscriptions that are by building um comes a little under 30,000 on average. And then um some equipment uh building improvement. This would be you know uh when a when a boiler breaks down or when we have to um you know do a portion of the roof or when we have to do the parking lot would be site improvement
105when we pave or we or we stripe or things like that. So those would be uh you know more major improvements. Um technology um so that's a little under 200,000 on average. Um and this is very little but about 200 for different shipping fees and staff memberships to you know principal memberships to different organizations. Um so overall by those categories we're looking at about on average 3.1 million um savings um in that however if you recall um I know and when I did this we know that for those salary and benefits we're going to be able to get rid of every single person. Let's say if we close an elementary, um obviously, you know, there are still going to be um special education students that need their intervention specialists. There's going to need to be
106those aids are going to need to stay with that those special ed students. Um different things like that just depending. Um so when I looked at the next slide and I kind of put the impact of closing in elementary, I took those two um in half. So that 1.8 and that 833 um I assumed half of that savings um and not whole um when you're looking at this forecast impact um so if we go back we're looking at the top we're seeing what we most recently approved um and then if you factor in um those uh amounts from before taking half of just salary and benefits um you can see um We're assuming the closure would be in the 26 27 school year. Um that it gives us about 1.9 million. Then you can see
107as it the thing with this is other than the sale of buildings and things like that, this has a cumulative effect. So um you know those salaries um if they're gone they you know they're not compounding every year with whatever we're forecasting as the increases. Um, so you can see how it gradually, you know, it becomes then like three million difference in 28 and then almost five million in in 29. So it's kind of a rolling rolling stone there. Um, which is really the kind of cost cutting that we're going to have to look at. A one-time um influx is great, but it's just one time and we're not going to get that every year. And so it's going to help the bottom line that year and then that's it. And then we're still back
108into the spending. um more than we're bringing in. Um obviously since some of this we've seen a governor's proposal and a state uh budget that um or a house pass budget that is not doing us a whole lot of favors. It's probably actually harming us in in certain ways. Um some aspects perhaps not. Um but it's uh there's a lot of unknowns. um the Senate obviously still, but you know there could be less you know funding state than what I you know what we have in here um that we had when we did the financial recovery forecast and the information because we're basing it on um what we have this year which is the fair school funding formula. Uh the house version doesn't have a formula. It's just you get what you got is the
109year before and there's no formula. Um and the governor wanted to reduce the guarantee. um which would affect us because we are deep in the guarantee. Um so we would lose money under under that. Um so uh and we got our insurance rates which is going to impact our May forecast. Yes. Not drastically but it's going to take a little bit of a Yes. Yes. Um and you know we are still working through different attrition. You know, there have been more obviously as you've seen on these board agendas, more retirements, more resignations and things that you know, we are working through um those aspects of where perhaps we could save more than what we've already uh assumed in that financial recovery forecast. Um and so there there are some things there that also on the
110flip side may help us. Um and it's budget season, we're open to people taking more than 10% cuts. Yes, Mr. Oswald did. We appreciate you did. So the last the last slide is just this is also one of my favorite um it's not the calves but it is you know well and that's how I feel when I when I talk about this like what the heck but as a district we don't have a lot of options and I know no one uh certainly me and no one sitting at this table here um wants to have to any of this. I don't want to ever have to put on a levy. I don't want to have to close a school, any of it. Um, but we our hands are kind of tied um by the state
111government um and and just ways that we're allowed to to bring in revenue. And so, unfortunately for school districts, it's not about bringing in more revenue. It's usually about cutting expenses somewhere in order to balance the budget. And we know it's We know right now we've been focused a lot on the cost cutting measures so that we can set hopefully set ourselves up for success when we go and seek revenue from our community which we know is going to be part of this conversation on the other end. But I think unfortunately just going for money first when we haven't done what we can to cut costs in this climate when we know that new levies are failing more than they're passing statewide and communities near us as well. Not just statewide but near us as
112well. Um it's not a good climate for asking for new So the more we can show we've done what we can locally and with what's within our control. So much is not in our control unfortunately as much as we write and call those people that can make the decisions that we do. Um we're trying to control what we can so that when we go to the community and ask for that additional money, we can make the best case we can to them about why we're in that position as well. And and I will add and I I think I've mentioned this in the forecast before too. I right now on average for an Ohio school district the levy cycle is three years. So within three years of passing a new money levy people have to
113go back. Um we last passed new money in 2019 and we're in 2025. Um and we're still looking at eking out a couple years which is is well above the trend um for where it's at right now. Yeah, I think that speaks to the fiscal responsibility that we have done up to this point that for six years we've been able to operate on I know our household if we had to operate on the same budget as six years ago. Everything's more expensive and it's the same for our district. And we've been hit by all those same things that you would in your household. inflation. Um, you know, we experienced that with the 612 building. Um, you know, utilities are up. Everything is, you know, foods. Um, so we we experience all those things over purchasing.
114Well, we are concerned about the tariffs because they're not all on hold and some of them could affect some of the purchases that we're looking at for technology because some of our technology does come through China where tariffs are we actually proactive on that impact future technology purchases. Yeah, we need to purchase things that are have already landed in America. Yeah. So, we we proactively instead of waiting till after July 1 said we need to do the the computer you know or technology now um and get that locked in um so that so that we don't see a significant increase um on that. The one other thing I want to comment on, I think that um while I hope that the savings would be more than the one, I think it's smart because one of
115the things I've heard a lot in the community as we talk about um closing elementary school is increased transportation costs. And um I think I just want to point out we are not assuming any savings in transportation because we know that that's going to be um probably an increased cost. And so by having that savings in half. It also accounts for possible increases in transportation because that's something I've gotten a lot of feedback from community members on that have been tuned into this is about transportation costs and what would that look like which we don't know until we get pinpointed more on where we're looking at. Um but that is a lot of feedback I'm getting and that kind of buffers that cost there as well. And we already have a somewhat of an increase
116factored in with the 612 building, which again is the same scenario. We don't really know what that's going to be until we're there and it's happening and and we see, you know, how many drivers we need and things like that. Um but we we've forecasted an increase for that purpose, you know, pretty conservative one um in trying to cover our bases there that it'll cover it. So We'll see what that actually ends up to be. Um, you know, we'll also gain a little bit of funding um as well on that end. But um, and Margie's been working pretty hard at being strategic with hiring and making succession plans and all that. and the addition of the vans that we purchased have been a a great help of transporting some of our special ed students and
117um other things that we would normally take a bus for or pay someone else um as a purchase service to do that. Um now we have the ability to do it at a at a cheaper cost. Thank you very much. Thank you so much for item is treasures CFOs business. So moved second. Dr. Lost. I was not here last anymore. And then we have a number of donations as usual um all over we see all the time obviously Curtis we've got a number of items at Richardson and then our purple stars made a donation there and And then last, I had a last minute adjustment allocation to our special education grant. that we needed to do an increase on the appropriations in order to be able to the um the purple star school with the
118fundraiser. I have been seeing a lot of purple light bulbs throughout the city. So, yeah, some people have been buying them. Hi Mrs. Schaer. Hi. Hi. Mr. Hi. CFO. I'd like to recommend the board of education investment schedule. So move start with interest. constructions because we're still a little low on the general fund balances at this point of the year. 585,000 for the month of March. Obviously, there's only a few of those that can be used to help us offset anything in the general fund. So, the general fund would be our star general investment and our free. So, general fund,00 fund. As you can see, February, March, we started to receive our tax advances from the county. Last year, this time last month operations under 12 million to end where we said we would be
119at the end of this at the end of June of this year in that last but I don't think too significantly um going forward. If you recall, part of the reason that we are drastically different than some of these other ones is that we made that double payment of insurance in October cash flow to our payments. decided to do it and then we'll take June will not have that in June the prior years in October and there pretty much status quo nothing out of the ordinary aletics athletics as we know we've been watching as we've been kind of doing separating the fundraiser things out of that. So they are at a small balance, but they're not really going to be spending a ton of money out of that account going forward compared to what you're
120seeing in like this 234. Um you can kind of even see in about when we started to phase out those fundraising accounts that we did not in those months overall. So I anticipate will You know, not real flush, but right questions. Hi Mr. Hi. Hi. I don't have a lot. Um I just I was not here last meeting because I was at the OSO annual conference um which is always very very well done event that you know we don't always see especially in times where we've got state budget and getting information and seeing how other people are being impacted or what they're doing. Um and so there was a lot of great sessions um a lot of great events and so we learned a lot and it's really benefit of being around colleagues and kind
121of talking about these things and discussing different things is really helpful. really appreciate the opportunity to be able to go to that Easter. We appreciate you going and bringing everything back. We did not get any pictures this time around. I did get I will say so Joanne nephew works for Ohio State so he is one of the people that during the game he's a senior there he like brings up the net when they kick the extra points and field goals so he's like on the field so he has access to the stadium so after the day was over a number of us and my two youngest kids actually came down with my parents and we got to tour the entire stadium like everywhere We got to go on the field. We got to go like
122the president's suite and it was it was a really really cool experience. Joerences I got voicemails. That was superintendent agenda. Dr. Thank you, Miss Coco. It is recommended that the board of education approves all items listed in the superintendent. Um, so we have a number of items this evening and it's the moment that many of you have been waiting for and I just believe how incredibly well behaved the little one is there and the baby. Yeah, I'm in awe. So, this is the big moment, I think. Right. Okay. So, we have um several personnel um that I'd like to recommend to you this evening um along with other personnel items um summer school transfers um just the routine transfers the literacy uh specialists literacy specialists that are listed there. Um, we have a leave of
123absence, some retirements that I like to point out. Um, Mr. Todd Gerski from Price Custodian, Rob Me in our IT department, and Douglas Kelvin of Price attendant. Um, we also have some contined approved. Congratulations to those folks. And then, um, back to our new players. So, this evening and Karen, I saw you there and I kept thinking myself, how do I rec But now I know we're visiting free schools today. All right. So with that, if I may just tell you a little bit about some of the folks in which we are recommending to this evening. Karen Fuller. Karen, we just want to raise your hand there. Karen Karen Fuller comes to us with 15 years of experience at the ESC preschool where she served as an early childhood intervention specialist. She earned a bachelor
124of science and education with a major in early childhood, mild, moderate, intense from Wall Street University. We are excited to have Karen join us in our inaugural opening of the Khog Falls preschool and we'll appreciate her experience um having been there. So it'll be a nice transition and we appreciate that opportunity. We're also excited to welcome Elana Felber is that right to our Kaihoga Falls preschool staff as an early childhood intervention specialist. She comes to us with three years of experience from Brunswick City Schools. And Elana uh earned her bachelor of science in education with a focus in early childhood education from Bowling Green. And she has also earned hours from both Bowling Green and Notre Dame College. We, as you can see, we've been busy hiring our preschool either. That's early childhood intervention specialist
125search. And um in that, we also have a third member to this preschool team, which is Emma Corell Corilla. It's on two lines. All right. There is some phonetics here, but it got chopped off into another line, and so I didn't do a good job with that. But I know baby back there. Fisher. I thought so. Fisher. Very cute. Um, she comes to us with nine years of experience with her most recent experience at breakthrough public schools for the past six years. Her education includes Bachelor of Science in Human Ecology from the Ohio State University with additional hours gained in Ashlin to gain her early childhood and intervention specialist licenses. She is excited to work in the city that she calls home as a resident of Kyoga Falls. Excellent. And then our next two hires
126are both joining us as district speech and language pathologists, assuming they get voted in this evening. Caroline, now is this silent s? How do we leg? I wish I laying on a board right now, frankly. Um, Caroline Bourlay is joining the Black Tiger family with 14 years of experience. Just had back surgery. That's why people here understand that. So, it's a little painful this evening. She earned her bachelor of science from the Ohio State University in sociology and a minor in communications. She then went to Kent State University where she earned a masterers of arts in speech and language pathology. Our second district speech and language pathologist this evening is Katherine. Okay. She comes to us with eight years of experience most recently serving the Summit County ESC. She earned her bachelor of arts with
127the major in communication science from the University of Pittsburgh. of arts in speech and language pathology was earned at the University of so happy to consider them this evening. I'm going to move on. We'll come back to all of you in just a moment. Uh the next several other contracts that we have this evening the cross cut thread solution um is our interpreter. Some more interpreting um services. I know you considered one the last uh board meeting. This is just another one. We have a contract through the ESC once again to hire doing our data analysis, our data dashboard. She will be with us at our monthly administrators meetings really focusing on data and student achievement and ways in which we can improve that. And we also have the in of payments. And I just
128want to point out here, it's not numbered. So, I didn't count how many there are, but if you open up the document, you will see that we are paying, and again, I learned this that parents um and I know we have some parents here this evening and others that are surprised when I tell them this um but I will say it once again that we are responsible as a public um LEA education district that we are we are required to provide train um transportation to students who attend parochial private community, excuse me, privateial schools. So that is a lot of students for us. Um if they if we are unable to provide transportation to them, we have to do what is called payment in lie of. And so I've been talking to our legislators. I
129presented a couple different occasions um to our legislators uh regarding this and how problematic it is for districts. One, it takes from our uh ability to transport our own students and making it very difficult. Um but it is also extremely costly to us and we do get reimbured but very small portion of that. So our don't get reimbured anymore. We used to but they took that away. Yeah. So there you have it that it's a very um costly thing for our district to do and I know people don't realize that and in addition to uh paying for that transportation we pay in what's been called in lie of so again if we're not able to transport them we have to pay parents of private schools to um for them to transport their own children. Right
130now it's $583 um per student. Um that could vary of course when you get into some other things and um but that uh has cost our district $45,000 almost now. So that is a big cost um and so I just want to take a moment to explain that to people who are listening to those of us who are in the office or in the um attendance this evening. And then our next five contracts are I'm going to defer to um Mr. Hutch to explain First two are contracts. First one is for manage broadband services. It's an increase in total contract cost but our reimbursement has contracted. Second contract is network. I'll try to explain what it does. Right now students when they come to the high school at various times various reasons they can be
131six different coming back in any number of scenarios when they come in two things at the entrance and two times are notated there has to be manual reconciliation every day as it's a major labor it's accuracy burden we finally found a product that will integ information systematform. The next one is for services from a company called Optimize. Our contract is up in almost a year from today. I really want to engage our district for proposal that hasn't happened in a while. So, that's what they do. They're a lot of fun people to talk to. That's what they do. contract and they're really good at it and they will for the 9,000 we'll pay for them positive guaranteec where I'm going to spend more money. This is for a replacement to what we currently use solutions.
132It currently manages transportation workflows and maint allows us to reserve and manage facilities management is one piece. And then on top of that, FMX does maintenative maintenance. There is a correlated verify. It allows our new construction of our district. $6000. So when you put in x amount of filters, does it alert you when it's time to do that again? Ultimately, we'll probably end up saving money because everything maintained on schedule. I'm happy that rate went to 80% from 60%. Is there explanation or reason why yes our economic disadvantage thank you and then on optimize optimize on um how will we measure that we saved that $9,000 we'll look at it we have really great records we'll know right away based on so contract have two components compariately in a bid matrix there. Do we lease
133all of our machines or do we least purchase? We just lease. Okay. Are we open to other options in the RFP process. We will defer to them on that based on my history with copers. I'm very hesitant to own them in year five. So they are heavily used and loved by our staff who may or may not be the most. It depends what maintenance agreements you get from the RFP and how many years they'll guarantee the machines for and that's all we need. who does this for a living. I did this in my day job. So, it was not fun. But I'm interested nonetheless what I'm really referenced. I won't my experiences but we did save money. And then I have a question for M. So um I know in our financial recovery plan we
134are we demanded 10% reductions in budgets and then I know we're and I'm not saying that all these contracts are not necessary because they are but they have to have a 10% reduction approving contracts for following years. So how does how do those two things? So their 10% is overall. So there are some things that we know especially in certain department you know there's not a lot of like oh we'll just cut 10% from that. Um but there are other discretionary areas of their budget um if that may need to be uh cut a little bit more than 10% perhaps if some of these contracts are significantly more or even the same overall we're looking at that 10% of their budget. for a lot of multip like you know we obviously not choice if we
135need to place a special education student. So those kinds of things are a little bit not under our but it makes their bucket of decision perhaps harder because what they have decision over Thank you for that. I appreciate it. questions. Mr. H. So, I just several of you. So, we're not we don't mean to put you on the spot. So, um, if you would, we you listen to us all evening, so if you'd like to just say a couple quick remarks at the microphone, if you can all just come forward, tell us your name again, and just say whatever you like to say. And congratulations. [Applause] Okay, perfect. Hi everyone. I'm Alana Felber. Um, I come from Twinsburg, Ohio. Um, I'm excited to really work in this district. I wanted to thank the board for
136your time and for allowing us to kind of come here. Um, I'm going to be a preschool intervention specialist. And what I think is really amazing is that this preschool program is going to be brand new. And so then all of us get to be part of that wonderful opportunity to lay that foundation for your early childhood program which I think is amazing. Preschool is a huge passion of mine and also these wonderful ladies as well. And I think that being able to kind of provide that education as we go through that career and that school year will do amazing things for this um wonderful program. So thank you for your time. Hello, I'm Emma Carella. I'm also going to be an intervention preschool teacher here at Coyote Falls. Um I live in the area
137right on Seventh Street, so it's always been a dream of mine to work where I don't have to drive an hour to work. Um preschool has been a passion of mine since I was a research preschool teacher at the Ohio State University and I'm so excited to go back to it and thank you so much for having us tonight. Hi, I'm Caroline Fordlay and um I'm just thrilled to be here. Um thrilled to be part of this team and get to know everybody. Um I have a four-year-old and a 5-year-old. So um you can say this age group is absolutely my passion. I just love love hanging out with them. They're um they're really amazing. So I'm just excited. Thank you. Hi, I'm Katie Calmon. I'm currently therapist at the preschool program. I'm going to
138be moving up to more school age and high school, but I'm really excited to get to see some of my preschoolers as they continue to grow up and get to see them learn and learn new things and new skills. So, thank you so much. I am Karen Fuller. I'm going to be one of the early childhood intervention specialists. I'm excited to be a part of your preschool program. I love teaching preschool children and I've been so blessed to be working with your current preschool at Chen and I'm so excited because they'll get to see my students again. Your littlest black tigers. I love them and their families and I love this district. So, I'm so excited. So, thank you guys so much. I'm so happy. Welcome to all of you and thank you for making
139the jump over. [Applause] Yes, there's we're gonna go on for a little longer. So, you have stayed long enough. So, please we'll just put our heads down. You look up. You're not there anymore. It's okay. Thank you. We welcome all of you. We're very excited for preschool as well. So, I can tell you that my my daughter that is almost she's 13 and a half, she still talks about her preschool teacher. We will occasionally run into her giant eagle or something like that. And you don't think that someone you think, oh, they're not going to remember that. She remembers and she remembers everything about how that first experience of education made her feel and how those teachers made her feel and made her want to learn and started. So, thank you for what you do.
140We're very excited. I may continue well congratulations we've honored tonight but also administrative assistance day. So, we had a lot of fun in our office, including baby goat visits. So, we um pampered our folks and just want to thank everyone whether they're in central office or in any of our buildings. Baby goats. Very cute baby goats. Um so, we are I just want to thank all of our administrative assistants out there for the amazing work that they do and keeping all of us in line. Um I was able to attend the play. I know many of you were there as well. Yes, the musical. Thank you, Mr. Gomez. of the fall. I call every play, just so you know. I have the Broadway series and I call them all plays even though I know they're
141musicals, but I never say I'm decades, too. So, I'm not going to change, I guess. Um, we have uh May 7th, there's a a parent night that is going to take place for our sixth through sorry, fifth through 11th grade parents for the transition um to the new campus. And did that last night. I thought so. All right. And just the day we talked about it. So that's at 6 o' and we did that purposely because there's a pops concert that evening at seven at high school. So we thought people could double up if they need if they wanted to. Um so we're in the midst of planning for that. Uh and just making an informative session for our parents. Students are welcome to attend as well. The uh last thing I want to mention
142I I don't the night here, but I've been asked to speak a little bit about open enrollment. And so you heard from uh Mrs. Stoy this evening that we are certainly entertaining a number of strategies to um reduce um you know our expenditures and ways in which we can save money and as a district as we know there are not many ways to find we don't generate a lot of revenue. We're always unfortunately having to reduce to save money. So this is just yet another strategy and that we are in the process of um exploring and actually moving forward with I know there were some conversations today with Miss Bogdan and um Carlile looking at the reduction in staff which is never anything anyone wants to talk about or that we have to do but
143it is a way to save some money and so what um we've been looking at is exploring our open enrollment and um what we have learned and I've been learning as I've been here now just three years but some of the history and whether I don't know this is what I' I've been told based on co when we were in the co years we were given extra funds to reduce class size so you can have social distancing every district handled it differently uh where I was in my previous life we didn't reduce class sizes we did some other strategies etc but here we had very small class sizes to account for that um as a result we've maintained very small class sizes at least my tenure here and I think it's ste back several years
144and um 12 students in a class 13 14 15 16 those are realities like that is literally what we see in some of our classes um even today not as much as that because the last three years through attrition we have been able to reduce consolidate classes and still maintain very small class sizes. We want to take that yet into another year um to um again in consolidating reducing teachers which again is not anything we want to do but we also believe that we had a plan in which we were able to work it whereas classroom teachers we're not reducing any classroom teachers we have some tutors but um but not as a result of elementary consolidation so when looking at open enrollment there are some schools that particularly Richardson that we have adding teachers
145due to open enrollment students having them here. And there was a time, I've said this before and pardon me for those of you heard before, there was a time when it was um for lack of a better word, lucrative for districts to open enroll students because the money followed the child. There was it was worthwhile for districts to do that and because you would earn money um in doing in having that strategy. Since then, we've heard from Sto are you know, the state has not done us many favors in um in our formula and the money that we received from the state, but one of those things um is how they've changed the way in which open enrollment is funded. And so, as a result, we are no longer um making money from having open
146enrolled students. Uh we are actually at a point where it's costing us because while we are taking in open enroll students and Another tough conversation no one wants to have because we care about all children whether they're whatever city they're from. But in looking in the situation we're in right now examining that we have um a number of students that by keeping some of our open enroll students in some of our schools we are adding classroom teachers and that is become problematic um in terms of our budgeting and so what I have proposed and what we've been moving forward with is a reduction in in elementary of six teachers um that in the five of the six are a result of just reconfiguring open enrollment not not doing away with open enrollment in elementary but
147relocating families and this is where these decisions are very difficult whether you're relocating or whether you're I think one of the recommendations I heard from you is not only to consolidate but also eliminate reduce or eliminate was one of the ways which supported open enrollment. So I'm not suggesting we're eliminating it right now, but I am suggesting um that we move forward in relocating families that may have been in a school for it may be for a couple of years, few years at elementary, but offering them an opportunity to go to another one of our elementary schools. We are able to do so. We worked out those numbers and I sat and we worked on this for quite some time now and again today just to make sure I get accurate information but in reducing
148the five teachers we'll be able to save about $400,000 which is a good amount of money and again trying to show ways in which we can incur this this too would be cumulative I heard you say over time something that would continue um we are able to look now this would not impact intra district so again people get confused with intra district versus Open enrollment are students who do not live in our community. Intra district are people who may attend DIT their home schools dit but want to attend Richardson any one of those combinations. So intra district would not be interrupted as of right now. So I say this all with caveats because tomorrow we could have an influx of x amount of students at a certain school. that doesn't generally happen, but I don't
149want to be locked into, you know, what I'm saying to you is as of April 23rd. Um, so the open enrolled students that have so where you run into some of the schools that I've shared with the board, you know, the different uh schools that would be affected or different grade levels um that could possibly be affected the those students would have a spotlight in another school. As of right now, all of them would qualify for another opening elsewhere and their siblings would also be able to go to the same schools right now as of April 23rd. All right. What throws a little wrench into that is that um there's we have a first come first serve. So when your application comes in, that's where considers those first, right? And then there's she goes from
150there. Now um so that could that could have a little bit of an effect, but Again, just wanted to give that caveat as well that um that could change a little bit of what I've said here today. But in doing that, still allowing our open enroll students in elementary schools to still have a spot in our within our district, most likely with their siblings being able to follow, um we would be able to reduce five teachers. Um and with that, I should say, um the six teacher is um we kindergarten at Preston for now. But I see it's making a little bit of a comeback. So we don't know if that sixth position would be filled, but we wanted to be on the conservative end of cutting and always having the ability to add it
151back. Um I think that is what I've been asked to speak about. I looked at my notes, the questions I received from board members, but I'm happy to entertain any other questions or thoughts. lots of different documents, spreadsheets. I have a couple questions. Sure. I had originally asked for it to be considered to be put on the agenda and I think just going forward um I as one board member, our policy doesn't allow me to put something on the agenda. It just has be considered. But I would just suggest that if we're going to talk about something this important, it's better to have it noted on the agenda because then it gives the community notice that we're going to talk about So, I just want to make that comment. Again, I can't get something put
152on the agenda under our policies, but I just like to make that note because it gives them the community notice that we're going to talk about something like this because this could be something important to a community member that perhaps they would want to come speak on or be or know about. Um, but they don't know that we're going to talk about it because we didn't notice it on our agenda. So that's kind of why I asked for it to be put on the agenda as the item. Um, but when you said first come, first serve, is that in our policy or is that an administrative guideline? Because if it's an administrative guideline, you could change that to accommodate for for siblings. She she has the authority over the administrative guidelines of the polic. So
153she could change that to accommodate those families. So I would just suggest that. Um and when you say five teachers reduced, I just want you to clarify they're not actually being reduced because we have spots for them. Correct. Okay. I just want that. I feel like that's really important to clarify. Um when will we be able to communicate this to the impacted families directly so that they know well we just opened right on April 15th the open enrollment process so we've got a ways closes but we know who the families are now is what I'm saying so we could say this is what we're looking at you might be impacted we could put a little forefront effort into communicating that there could be Ultimately, um if we're not changing policy as a board, we don't
154really have authority over it. It's all administrative, right? So, the superintendent, we've given her that authority through polic So we give her our feedback. She knows when she asks for feedback, I give her mine. Dr. knows that I will. But um I also understand that if we've given her our policy gives her the authority to do something and then she makes the administrative guidelines that I'm going to uphold what that authority is as well. Um and then just advocate that our we find the way toast our families such as making sure that siblings can go together because I think that's important when we're talking about attendance being an issue if you have then we're telling a family well this sibling can still go here but now you got to send this sibling this one can
155go to Richardson but this one we only have a spot at Preston how are they going to get them there at drop off at the same time and not have tardies every day and that's going to impact attendance, which is another thing that we're considering. And then next year they can't come because they had too many tardies and we're bumping them out of the district because of attendance. So I just want to set our families up to succeed even in difficult circumstances for us financially and with enrollment. So I think that's important, but I also think communicating as soon as possible because maybe a family says I only want I only open a role because of this school and maybe they're going to explore another opportunity. You know, we don't know what's in the hearts
156and minds of all these families. So as soon as we can get that information to them so they can make whatever decision is best for their children and their family, I think is is really important as well. So options. part of one of the things that one I did not mention this but the average reducing five teachers we still have classes to one class like that I've been around a long time you all know I I mean, I've not seen classes. This is these are amazing classes and especially when you're in a financial situation for this district to be able to maintain classizes this small or reasonable um is great. Um the well the unfortunate thing is we can't which is going to be discussion topic later. Well, that's yeah that's another phase. I'm trying
157to start with this phase. Um but the um the average is around I'm just eyeballing it because I didn't do this average but it's probably around 20 per class. I see one class with 24 and the rest are now. So, here's the thing that I want to be careful of and that we have to think about our strategy with parents is because I don't I'm being a little selfish. I don't want to jeopardize our class sizes being larger by you know by moving students. We just have to be very careful that if we move eight open enroll students to another class that's at 22 and now it puts them at 25 like I don't I have to be careful and protect those numbers. So I just I have to be mindful of that. So we
158just have a little bit more research to do but this is what I wanted to at least suggest or share with you. This is the direction in which we're moving and we planned for and in doing so again that fulltime classroom teachers are not and they're rolling their students into that school. There's room in those classrooms. So I think it's reasonable to give our parents a heads up just a school at this point. We can say this is what we're going to but we can certainly do that. It's just we just right now. Number one, we have a request to address the board tonight. Thank you for being so patient. Enjoy. your board. Oh, I don't doubt it. I'm sorry. You don't have to do that. Just your name. Good evening. My name is Meredith.
159I'm a sophomore here at Cog High School. I'm here tonight to express my concerns regarding the impact of the parents bill of rights which took effect on April 9th. I'm especially worried about how this law will affect transgender students in our district, particularly those who do not come from supportive homes. While I'm incredibly fortunate to have supportive parents now, that has not always been the case. I did not receive that support until 8th grade after spending a full year in therapy. Before that, my mental health was in a very dark place. Once my parents finally accepted me for who I am, that dark burden was lifted. I'm not saying that support fixes everything, but for me, it saved my life. Without a doubt, I truly do not think I would be here today if my
160parents had not let me socially transition. I have been out as myself for 5 years now, and I know many students who are still waiting for their chance. For some, being forcefully outed at home could put them in real danger physically, mentally, and emotionally. I understand that there needs to be a line drawn when it comes to students making certain decisions and maybe that line in high school when they are a freshman. However, I can only speak to what I've lived. I'm thriving now because I have had the freedom and support to be myself. That should be the goal for every student. School should be a place where all students feel safe, respected, and supported no matter what their home life looks like. This law risk putting some of our most vulnerable students in even
161more vulnerable situations. My biggest fear is for my friends who still do not have the support I was lucky enough to find. I'm grateful for the support I've received in this district. I do want to be very clear. I have never and will never play on a women's sports team. I understand I have a physical advantage. I also understand that for some people sharing a bathroom with someone they know is transgender can feel uncomfortable or even strange. Honestly, the feeling is mutual. But when there are no family bathrooms available, the only safe option for me is the woman's restroom. If I were to walk into the men's bathroom as I look today, I could very likely be harassed or physically harmed. In situations when I have to use the women's bathroom, I'm not doing it
162to make anyone uncomfortable. I'm using it because it's the only place where I'm not in danger. I am hopeful that the board of education will encourage a continuation of respecting students wishes and boundaries, provide appropriate and accessible facilities for all students, and maintain an inclusive and diverse culture of caring as we move forward. Thank you for your time and your commitment to our community. [Applause] Item two is memorandum of understanding Ohio. It is recommended that the board of education approves the memorandum of understanding Ohio associ public school district building. Hi Mr. Harris public school employees recommended that the board of education approves the memorandum of understand similar but to address the preschool Please call the role item is resolution implementation of policies. It is recommending that the board of education approves the following resolution. Be
163it resolved that the board of education and directs that the district's policies and regulations and guidelines, mission statements, strategic planning, curriculum, programming and activities be implemented in compiance with title six of the civil rights act of 1964. This resolution is due to the certificate that was signed by our superintendent by Friday. So this is a stating that we are not discuss. It is recommended that Board of Education approves the following board policy AEA to replace and supersede in its entirety the current board policy AEA and the board resolution 20-124 from July 15, 2020 and to do so in a single meeting in accordance with board policy BF due to immediate action needed to address state and federal compiance requests and So in this instance of some folks have been following you may have seen the
164news different districts their reaction to Um the mandate I'll call it um for us to as superintendent or boards depending on how districts handle superendants to sign this document certificate stating that we will be in compiance with title six that we will not favor any one race over another race um etc. And um we've had a lot of lengthy lengthy discussions with this board. It was probably one of the hardest things I had to do, one of the things I did not want to do, but I didn't want to risk federal funding that would be at stake millions of dollars if I didn't do it as well as my license at risk. Um, so we signed it. I submitted it on Friday evening as long as I push it by midnight. Um, I also did
165do the followup letter. I received a call from which I was surprised. I was a little facicious with the woman who called. They said, "Oh, you did this job of making these calls and I let her know my dissatisfaction. I let her I know that she's not only the messenger, but they were unable to answer any of my questions." Um, and she said, "Um, the open enrollment, if you recall, the letter I sent stated that we're in compiance, but there's the law conflicts with what they're requiring us to do, which is in the open enrollment policy, it has to say about racial imbalance. While that is technically illegal under what we've just signed, I asked how they would state handle that and she said she didn't have an answer for me which I'm not surprised
166by. They don't have answers for a lot of things. There's a lot of lack of clarity in all of this but this is what we're doing. As a result we've had to we did not want to rescend our DEI policy as we know and so as a result we're doing a replacement policy that will continue um to allow us to educate all students. So we are going that is our job that is our mission and that is what we believe in and that every child that comes through these doors we will educate best we can and we will make sure that we are in compiance with the law as we always have been but we know we are absolutely required to do so or we lose funding I want to commend our policy committee Gomez
167work leading up to this that is at the heart of this replacement policy. And no one no one warned me when I became president that this was going to be one of the first things was going to have to be dealt with. And it's it's not something that any of us, you know, I think as a board wanted to do. Um but the fact that we were able to and not and be able to keep the language and our policy to protect our students, protect our mission for every single student in this district was so important to us. for us to be able to do it in a way where we do not risk our funding for our superintendent um was important as well and we were able to do that process very painful process
168with this I believe I want to thank I wrote resolution 20-124 which was adopted on July 15, 2020. So happy to have it, but I understand our policy on accomodations for transgender students that we have to repeal because not given any other choice. Item six is our strategic plan goals adoption. It is recommended that the board of education adopts the strategic plan goals for the 2029 through 2029. I would love that. Yes. Culture of caring. The Ka Falls City School District is committed to fostering culture of caring for all members of the Black Tiger family. We believe that meeting the fundamental needs of individuals is essential for personal growth and success. Our goal is to prioritize and address these needs from basic to advance. Ensuring that every student, staff member, and community member is supported
169in their journey. By focusing on the unique needs of our district population, we aim to create an environment where all individuals can thrive academically, socially, and emotionally. facilitating our financial future. As the hub of our community, we will manage operational resources with financial transparency and responsibility to provide a safe, costeffective environment that enriches student success and promotes positive growth while fostering strong partnerships. Steering to student achievement, we envision a future where all students are empowered to reach their full potential as lifelong learners and global citizens. personalized innovative educational experiences that prepare students for employment enlistment and enrollment success. So move to something that we're culture facility student achievement and they go CFS so K falls So, got a little branding campaign coming out. It was It was my idea perhaps. Um, but we have a
170branding campaign coming out because we really want over the next um four years uh to invest in these goals throughout our district and um we tried to make them um meaningful. And then there's more intensive goals underneath these. Um but got Stewart's gonna work out. Hi. Hi. Item seven building action plan. Be it resolved that the board of education recognizes that due to the financial forecast, we hereby state we are moving forward with discussions on potential closure of an elementary building while continuing to collect data to further determine the best course of action. discussion. I'd like to amend it. I'd like to move to amend it to read the following. Be it resolved, the board of education recognizes that due to the financial forecast, we hereby state we are moving forward with the closure of
171an elementary building while continuing to collect data to further determine the best course of action on which building. That's could be it resolve that the board of education recognizes that due to financial We state that we are moving forward with the closure of an elementary building while continuing to collect data to further determine the best course of action on which building. I have the right to speak to my motion first. Um, my point in making the motion to amend it is that if we just say that we're going to keep talking about the potential closure, we don't give our community any more clarity on what we're doing than what we're already doing. We're talking about a we're continuing to talk about a nebulous then it moves us no further forward on what we're doing. The
172um if we're going to take action, we should give some sort of action. And I think our intention as a board is that we intend to close an elementary building. And I think whether we want to admit that tonight or we want to admit that at a future meeting, we at some point need to admit that. I'm willing to personally for Anthony Gomez as a school board member. go on the record and say I believe that closing an elementary building is necessary for the financial future of our district. And in my motion it says while continuing to collect data to further determine the best course of action on which building no commitment on which building which is part of what we have continued to state to our community in all communication. I don't think it
173pushes us um any further than any conversation we've had, but it also makes it clear what we're doing so that we're giving clarity to our community that it is our intention to close the building. I mean I would like to move forward with that much clarity personally as a board and I think our community that's engaged would like to have that much question with the discussion of the classroom sizes. Do you think that with the addressing classroom sizes and potential. Will that make any difference with heart forecasting that decision out at all or do you think that really the decision needs to be made like the time? The money doesn't change. Well, I mean probably next year. It's not a big for me. I think that having the action item being discussions on the potential
174building by taking this action we're all saying that we're moving in that direction if we were to not vote on this action say no we would be saying that we don't agree and we're not closing the building but it also leaves room continue and discussions without I want to be careful personally with all of our community as a whole as we're collecting the data and doing things that we everyone all of a sudden thinks that what if my child's not in elementary years. So, I want to be careful before we have data to collect to make a decision about any school buildings that we're noting any of our community or all of any and all because we haven't made that decision. So because we haven't made any decisions on there, then we're unnecessarily alarming every
175single person everywhere at all because we haven't made decisions for any of our buildings. When we say all people shouldn't be worried, I'm not saying all people shouldn't be worried. I'm saying we aren't far enough in the discussions to have any, not all, but any at this point until we treasure just told us it was the time to make the call. Well, that's what I was going to say. Do we have other options financially? Like, are there other things that we could be doing? Like, are we ripping the band off? Like, we're focusing our attention now on like this is this is what we need to do. Our facilitate because I'm the one that had to read that one. Facilitating our financial future. I'm the one that had to read that one. Cost effective environment
176success most positive growth. I mean like is there another is there another way that we can not be negative? Like could we decrease sizes? You know that's what is if there is something else then I'll say let's look at other data and but if there's not then let's start laser focusing your options in the next couple years. Well, and let me ask you this. So, let's say that we did do that. We put a levy on and it failed and it passed and say like it did give us another two years to like kind of figure out what we're doing or or it failed the failed does that hurt our options in the future for other any I'm just I hate to I hear what you're saying, Mr. Bill. I I hear both I hear
177both of you. I hate to prolong something if that's our only option. I also don't want to have to make a decision like this either. So, I would love to postpone it if there's a good reason to postpone it. I would say I would not suggest to go for a levy. Well, we don't even know what's going to happen with the budget. I mean, we're already doing everything responsible with what we have And I I do agree with that. I think this is an opportunity to show we are doing it. I think we're just I think what I'm hearing a lot of is trying to delay making decisions about making decisions when here's a decision that we can make. We don't need to pick which school And I know that personally in my thinking and
178looking at the data, I know I'm a little bit farther along than where some people on the board are comfortable with. I have two to three schools that I would be comfortable having more serious conversations about. And I have three schools that are um I don't think there's any reason to talk about. And I know that's not what we're talking about tonight. And I know that some of you are not there yet, but I and I'm not trying to have decision tonight, but we can make a decision that we're going to close a school, especially when our treasurer says we we need to. And and so we have a decision to make. Do we act in the financial advice of what our treasurer is giving us or do we not take the advice that our
179treasur is giving us when she says it's a necessity? That is ultimately what my motion is about. Do we accept or reject the advice that she has given us? And to your point, what you just said, Mr. is you just stated in your mind along and there's like three schools that you're really considering. So then are we if it were to come down to three schools for various reasons, are we then putting an entire community on pins and needles when in reality it's three build of people. We can have that conversation if we want. I'm ready for it. If we're we want to have that, I'll amend the agenda after we vote. We can talk about that as well. So, if we don't want to give people that worry, I'm very comfortable. And if people
180want to ask me which three, I will tell. Um because I'm not shy about that. But um I think that's a discussion. That's what I'm saying. But this is a decision we can make to say that we're we need to close an elementary school and that we are taking board action to say that we sent we just paid to send out a mailer to our entire community saying we're talking about closing elementary school. It's not like it's some hidden secret in our community that we're sitting up here having meetings talking about. We paid money to tell our community about this. So the community is on edge. I had people texting me and reaching out to me as They got the roar saying what's going on about this elementary school closing. So it's people are already
181on edge about it whether we vote on my motion or the original motion tonight. It's I mean we've got a whole crowd of people on edge about this tonight. So we can't say people whatever we vote on tonight the community's on edge about it regardless. It's not going to put people more or less on edge either way I think. But I think can decide to take the advice of our treasur and say we're going to close an elementary building because it's financially what we have to do that's understanding motion let's get that out concerns right here. So I would support I feel like after this discussion it kind of doesn't matter what the verbage what the um what it says at this point because I mean it's I I get what you're saying as well
182because ultimately we're going to land in the same place. That's why my argument is why don't we Yeah. If we're going to land there eventually, why don't we just land there tonight? That's kind of how I felt about it. And for the record, I did share with Miss Coco in advance of tonight that I thought the language was a little weak. So, I wasn't trying to shock her with it. I did share with that with that. I didn't share that with the whole board because Sunshine lost, but I just shared it with Miss We are allowed to have what? Mot Hi. for the elementary. Yes, Mr. Harris. Hi. Can we ask? Yes. If you want to go ahead, can we read Can you read it one more time, Mr. Gomez? Resolve the board of education
183recognizes that due to the financial forecast hereby moving forward with the closure of an elementary building while continuing to collect data to further determine the best course of action on which building. Thank you. I don't like to take for granted that people do know what's going on. I I'm surprised sometimes people because we do message things, but there are there are people that don't will be caught off guard by. So, I want to make sure that we are being clear to all of our families and I fored that this was going to be at least what I knew at the time going to be recommended. So they too are of course going to be concerned. Um so I would just appreciate knowing the direction how you would like to communicate to the messaging is asking
184these questions already like what do we say? So I just wait till tonight determine our next strategy for communicating to parents. I know it's in the war but this is pretty specific. pretty definitive decision. So I would just appate some guidance. It doesn't have to be tonight. You can think about it, but please travel. I would like to be sensitive and how we want that to go out. people getting ahead of it sooner rather than later puts in the Silver Lake home and school post tomorrow because it's usually really good and then we could just copy it and paste copy paste because she'll have something really good written We could probably steal part of it. That's true. Because I think we reached out and complimented her after last meeting. You might have something in drafts
185right now already. It is future agenda items. Just a reminder for everyone that we do top tiger at the first meeting in May. I know that it always get thrown off but because of the memorial they pray want to give them extra time and notice a little check that it'll be back. I believe it's the 20th anniversary this year of top tiger. Mayor Duny pointed that out to me. Um the 20th anniversary of Top Tiger being started. Mayor Duny mentioned that to me because when she was she believes when she was on the didn't you say 20th 20th anniversary of Tiger throw that in while I was tiger in the 1900s. I have something showing on our agenda. I don't know what this is and it's probably from Chris. He might not be articulating it
186right and Dr. David. All right. for May 14th and then the last game we'll have to do graduates first meeting in May. Oh, feed. Sorry. Do you need to have it? We're meeting this coming Monday, but I did want to mention um our parks and w update from Marie Ror. Excitingly, she mentioned that after this baseball season, because they're getting dugouts at the baseball field, but after this baseball season, they're going to be doing drainage work at our baseball field, which has been um something we've been asking for from Parks and Rock for at least a decade, if not more. So, we're very excited about that, and I want to share that Mrs. Work for being a wonderful student athletes. So alliance district remind everyone of the foundation alumni award scholarship that is May legislative
187Mr. Harris. Uh, no, I don't I don't I don't have anything. I I just want to thank for, you know, talking a little bit about how the budget's is playing into all this because it's not it's not the decisions we're we're wanting to make. We're kind of getting back into a corner with it. So, I appreciate it and um I'm hoping to uh we've been playing a lot of phone tech, but I'm hoping to sit down with Representative Paul here soon. He's been back here for a couple weeks, but I have a few more days here to try to try to get him locked down here. So, I'm hoping to talk through some stuff a little bit more about the nitty-gritty of this budget and uh I'll keep you posted. Thank you, Mr. Com. I
188cannot believe that it was the last one. Um they had a um they let alumni play like they came down the aisles alumni band came out and played at the end of the musical through the aisles and so I got to play with the alumni band and um I thought I was so smart that I printed my music off and got a liar and put on my instrument so I could play along with my music. I forgot that it was very dark in the auditorium. Um, and I could not be able to see the music very well and also be marching at the same time. So, um, did not do as well as I had hoped, but I did do it. I was very excited. Um, nerve-wracking. I forgot how hard it just memorizing the
189music. And you play a lot of you play the same song over and over. You play Tiger Egg. Tiger song. play a lot of the same music over and over again. So, you remember it, but yeah, I forgot how hard it was. Um, phenomenal and I was so hyper and hard to imagine. I was very hyper and um excitable for it. I can't imagine having to learn all those lines and sing all those songs on stage. Uh, the students did such a great job. Such a great job. Um, tremendous. Um, I would also On Tuesday, I went to a video conference. They had House Bill 96, the bannual budget, as passed by the House. Um, I printed out the handout that went with it. It's 32 pages. Um, it's a lot of information and I
190would go over it with you guys, but it's a lot and I can send it to you guys if you want to go over it. Um, it's online if you want to watch it again, but it's so much Yeah, I'll send it to you. It's not great. I'm not super stoked over it. So, I I will add one more thing. They did, and I think they um they sent a link out to us to contact our senators about the the 30%. So, and I think you kind of touch on it, we only get money so so many different ways and and they did talk specifically about, you know, you get money in. So, say you're gonna have a big project like say you're going to put air conditioning in your elementary school and you want
191to you have you save up a little bit, you can put it all in and then you have kind of money that you're saving up for so you can do it all at one time and you have like a larger carryover. So, and she's and she specifically talked about cops. So, what is that level? That's why they moved it to 30%. But you can just use the states credit rating. That's their answer now. So it was it was a lot. So I'll just be that again. So I'll send you guys for my comments. I'm not going to be long. It's been a very long night for everyone. I just wanted to send you We know how long we're all excited about the art tomorrow night. It looks to be perfect weather. Um so come on
192out to downtown falls from 5 to 8 for the art walk. Um it's always a great night. And then on Saturday, two is the Sustainability Expo at the Nitorium from 9 to noon. But since it's a three-hour window, you also have time to go over to Silver Lake. It's from 9 to noon Saturday. They're having their used book sale and student maker market from 9 to noon. So, hop on over there as well. And then May 2nd, we have our U military appreciation night at the natorium, which unfortunately I'll miss because I'll be down in Columbus for our board leadership institute workshop with OSBA. But I'm excited because um I was asked to present along with Mr. Hutch and Mr. Guestford on the security improvements our district has made um over the last several years.
193So we'll be presenting on Friday about that presentation that Mr. Hutch worked on. So we're excited for that. Mr. Harris. Oh yeah. Just be sure to just congratulations to our top tigers and all the folks we recognized this evening. I was going to do a plug for the art walk. I wore my monkey pen that we got at the last uh meeting. So uh just looking forward to that. with it. Hi, Mr. Gomez. Hi, Mr. Harris. Hi,